Fluorescent patterns with multiple functions enable high-security anti-counterfeiting labels. Complex material synthesis and patterning processes limit the application of multifunctional fluorescent patterns, so the technology of in situ fluorescent patterning with tunable multimodal capabilities is becoming more necessary. In this work, an in situ fluorescent patterning technology was developed using laser direct writing on solid cellulose film at ambient conditions without masks. The fluorescent intensity and surface microstructure of the patterns could be adjusted by programmable varying of the laser parameters simultaneously. During laser direct writing, carbon dots are generated in situ in a cellulose ester polymer matrix, which significantly simplifies the fluorescent patterning process and reduces the manufacturing cost. Interestingly, the tunable fluorescent intensity empowers the fabrication of visual stereoscopic fluorescent patterns with excitation dependence, further improving its anti-counterfeiting performance. The obtained fluorescent patterns still show ultrahigh optical properties after being immersed in an acid/base solution (pH 5-12) over one month. In addition, the anti-UV performance of the obtained laser-patterned film with transmittance around 90% is comparable to that of commercial UV-resistant films. This work provided an advanced and feasible approach to fabricating programmable, performance-tunable, subtle fluorescent patterns in large-scale for industrial application.


Hearing loss is a condition highly prevalent worldwide. It affects people of a broad age range since the causes and risk factors are varied. At present, some types of hearing impairments have a palliative treatment whereas some, especially for those where otic neurons are damaged, cannot be properly treated. Recent findings had shown it possible to use human embryonic stem cell-derived otic neural progenitors (ONPs) as a new mode of treating hearing loss caused by damage to the spiral ganglion neurons (SGNs). To improve the efficiency and overcome some limitations of this potential treatment, we have applied principles of tissue engineering which involves an interaction between cells and an extracellular matrix –mimicking scaffold. Here, we describe the influence of poly(l-lactic acid)(PLLA) aligned fibres on ONP cell morphology, proliferation, neuronal differentiation and establishment of neural polarity under both progenitor and neuralising conditions. The results show that most of ONPs on aligned fibres exhibited bipolar morphology and extended their neurites along the major fibre axis. Their proliferation was lower than those in 2D culture but the differentiation of ONPs on aligned fibres was significantly enhanced in both progenitor and neuralising conditions as indicated by the fluorescence intensity and number of cells that were positive for neuronal markers (β-tubulin III and NF200) and the expression pattern of spiral ganglion molecular markers (MMP13, NPR2 and NTNG1). Moreover, axonal and dendritic markers (TAU and MAP2 respectively) were also induced after 14 days in culture.


In this paper, a wideband antenna system with four printed monopoles is presented. The antenna system contains two symmetric pairs of antennas, and each pair comprises two back-to-back monopoles with symmetric configuration, and a transformative dual inverted-L-shaped ground branches. The measured results show that the proposed antenna system has a wide bandwidth of 1260 MHz (1660–2920 MHz), for the return loss of less than −10 dB and the mutual coupling of less than −10 dB.


Library resources to support research and instruction for the activities of the Construction Management department in the College of Technology


In the paper "Gamma-globulin affinity for normal human tissue of the central nervous system" by C. D. Allerand and M. D. Yahr, which appeared on pp. 1141-42 of Science for 29 May, the beginning of the last paragraph should read: "The concomitant fluorescence of myelin sheaths with glial cells is of note in view of the concept that the sheath is derived from glial cell membrane (11). The specificity of 7Sγ-globulin. . . ."


Due to increased levels of stigma, discrimination and victimization Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer, Questioning or Intersex (LGBTQI+) youth face particular challenges in society. With the intention of better understanding the challenges and issues that LGBTQI+ youth are experiencing, this systematic review explored qualitative studies with a focus on mental health services and the requisite social support service policies and programs for LGBTQI+ youth. Qualitative research systematically examines the expressed thoughts and feelings of the research participants, and through reflective analysis of the themes and links discussed, can provide rich and nuanced understanding. A synthesis of the included studies identified five core themes: (1) Isolation, rejection, phobia, need for support; (2) Marginalization; (3) Depression, self-harm and suicidality; (4) Policy and environment; and (5) Connectedness. Key results suggest that community, school, and family resources to support resilience will optimize LGBTQI+ mental health. This systematic review of qualitative research provides a source of rich information to inform the provision of services and policies that will address the disparity into mental health statistics for the LGBTQI+ population.


The processes of serotonin and histamine absorption and release by the lungs were studied in dogs during 1 to 3.5 hour hypovolemic hypotension and during 24 hours after blood retains fusion. Absorption of biogenic amines by the lungs tended to increase in all the animals under hypovolemic hypotension. In the group of non-survivors the serotonin absorption by the lungs in the post-terminal period remained increased, while in the group of survivors it came down to normal soon, though the histamine release was increased. The above processes were aggravated in the group of animals whose lungs were affected by oleic acid. It resulted in the absorption of histamine instead of its release. The intensified absorption of biogenic amines by the lungs was accompanied by a quick fall in cardiac output, by the increase in resistance of systemic and pulmonary circulation.


Abstract We derive the conditions under which time-varying cointegration leads to cointegration spaces that may be time-invariant or, in contrast, time-varying. The model of interest is a vector error correction model with arbitrary time-varying cointegration parameters. We clarify the role of identification and normalization restrictions and show that structural breaks in error-correction models may actually correspond to stable long-run economic relationships, as opposed to a single-equation setup, in which an identification restriction is imposed. Moreover, we show that, in a time-varying cointegrating relationship with a given number of variables and cointegration rank, there is a minimum number of orthogonal Fourier functions that most likely guarantees time-varying cointegrating spaces.


Traces of former glaciation were studied on Erdmannflya and Bohemanflya. Both peninsulas were probably completely covered by glaciers during the Late Weichselian and the final dcglaciation took place around years BP. Esmarkbreen readvanced shortly after 9,500 BP, probably a local and shortlasting event. Raised beaches occur to about 60 m above sea level, and date back to about 10,000 BP. Initial land emergence was rapid, about 3m/100 years. It seems to have been followed by a marine transgression between 8,500 and 7,500 BP, which resulted in a large and distinct beach bridge and marine abrasion cliffs about 10-12 m above present sea level. Mytilus edulis lived in the area between at least 9.000 and 5,000 BP. Five thousand years ago relative sea level probably stood 3-4 m higher than today. Relative sea level has remained close to present during the last centuries. Different positions of glacier fronts in this century have also been mapped.


Constant variably acceleration motion model of flying plate is proposed and the model formula about the relationship between speed of flying plate and clearance is put forward, which provides theorotical basis for choosing optimum clearance by collision speed of different metallic materials in explosive welding industry production. High pressure impulse X radial photograph experiment was carried out, the photos of the flying stances of flying plate in different clearances were obtained and the corresponding flying speeds of flying plate were calculated. Curve fitting of the experiment data through constant variably acceleration motion model was carried out. The results show that constant variably acceleration motion model accords well with the experiment data,and the maximum speed of flying plate calculated through constant acceleration model is in good agreement with the values through theoretical calculation. Therefore, it is concluded that the motion of flying plate in the main follows the constant variably acceleration motion.


The partial oxidation reaction of CH4 led to the formation of CH3 OH in the presence of Ru-porphyrin oxo complexes (denoted as POR, POR-O and POR-OH where in the case of the last two, oxygen atom and the OH group were attached to the active site, respectively), in which Ru was present on different oxidation states. The simulations were performed based on Density Functional Theory (DFT) with extended geometric and electronic structure analyses of each reaction step. Moreover, the reaction pathways were investigated in different spin states. The Spin Crossover (SCO) phenomenon was found to play an important role in the kinetics of the reaction in the presence of POR and POR-O. Harmonic Oscillator Model of Aromaticity (HOMA) index was applied for different spin states to estimate the aromaticity changes of the pyrrole rings in the Ru-porphyrin complexes. In order to characterize the nature of bonding, the Natural Bond Orbitals (NBO) analysis including the Wiberg Bond Index (WBI) and Natural Population Analysis (NPA) was carried out. Finally, the Non-Covalent Interactions (NCI) index was employed to gain insight into interactions between the components of the reaction. It was found that the non-covalent interactions cannot be neglected in the studied reaction paths.


Author(s): Beeghly, Erin | Advisor(s): Munoz-Darde, Veronique; Wallace, R.J. | Abstract: When we call something a stereotype, we tend to mean it as a criticism. If someone says, "Asians are good at math" or "women are empathetic," for example, I might interject, "You're stereotyping" in order to convey my disapproval of their utterance. But why is stereotyping wrong? One tempting idea is that stereotyping fails to treat persons as individuals. Yet this idea itself is puzzling. How should we understand it? One possibility, to which many people are drawn, is to articulate the wrong in epistemic terms: we see the world in an incorrect way when we stereotype. Call this the epistemic hypothesis about the wrong of stereotyping. Another possibility is that the relevant failure is moral in nature: stereotyping is always morally wrong. In this dissertation, I consider both the epistemic and moral hypotheses and show that neither is defensible. Actually, stereotyping can be morally and epistemically permissible. One upshot is that we must give up the idea that stereotyping as such is wrong and think more carefully about how to distinguish permissible and impermissible cases. I argue that there will be no simple way to make this distinction, as there is no one wrong--epistemic or moral--that unifies all bad cases. So we must be pluralists about what's wrong with stereotyping. Moreover, we must recognize that the wrongs of stereotyping are purely extrinsic in nature, i.e., due to bad causes or consequences rather than due to features intrinsic to the very act of stereotyping. A second upshot is that we must think of stereotyping as normatively diverse: sometimes epistemic and moral norms prohibit it; other times, they do not. Epistemic and moral norms also have the potential to conflict in specific cases: a person might be epistemically rational to stereotype even if stereotyping is seriously objectionable from a moral point of view. I examine cases of alleged conflict and argue that, in fact, bona fide conflicts between moral and epistemic norms are far rarer than one would expect. Moreover, I demonstrate that--despite first appearances--they do not present tragic normative dilemmas in which people are forced to choose between morality and epistemic rationality. People can do the right thing without being irrational.


Background: Electrophysiologic (EDX) study is the most valuable method in grading the severity of carpal tunnel syndrome (CTS), but it is invasive and painful. We evaluated the efficacy of ultrasound for this purpose. Materials and Methods: Eighty-one wrists of 52 consecutive patients with clinical evidences of CTS, confirmed and graded by EDX as mild, moderate, and severe, were examined by ultrasonography. Cross-sectional area (CSA) of the median nerve was measured at the distal wrist (CSA-D), and proximal forearm (CSA-P), and wrist-to-forearm ratio (WFR) was calculated for each hand. Results: The mean CSA-D was 0.12 cm2 ± 0.03, 0.15 cm2 ± 0.03 and 0.19 cm2 ± 0.06 and the mean WFR was 2.77 ± 1.14, 3.07 ± 1.07 and 4.07 ± 1.61 in mild, moderate and severe groups respectively. WFR showed significant differences between the severe and none severe CTS groups (P < 0.001), but there was no significant difference between mild and moderate CTS groups (P < 0.381). CSA-D showed a significant difference between all groups (P < 0.0001). In the Receiver Operating Characteristic curve analysis, the optimal cut-off value of the CSA-D and WFR for detecting severe CTS were 0.15 (area under the curve 0.784, 95% confidence interval (CI): 0.662-0.898, P < 0.001, sensitivity of 68.2% and specificity of 70.9%) and 3 (area under the curve 0.714, 95% CI: 0.585-0.84, P = 0.001, sensitivity of 68.2% and specificity of 64.8%) respectively. All values were superior in CSA-D. Conclusion: Ultrasonography, can be complementary but not conclusive to the classification of CTS severities. CSA-D and WFR both increased in proportion to CTS severity, but neither parameter exhibited excellent performance in grading the severities.


The name of Bṛhaspati is associated with the materialist doctrine in India. He is supposed to be the preceptor of the gods. It was in order to help them in their battle against the demons that he created the materialist doctrine and thereby deluded the demons. This story, Puranic in origin, can be traced back to a late Upaniṣad, Maitrī. However, the story given in the Viṣṇu Purāṇa and other sources does not contain anything specifically materialistic; all the heretical doctrines preached by Māyāmoha appear to be pre-existing; the Jains and the Buddhists are particularly mentioned, not the Lokāyatikas or the Cārvākas. More interestingly, in some other later sources, Bṛhaspati does not seem to be a god or a demi-god; he is as much a human as Kapila, Gautama and other founders of philosophical systems are. This trend of treating Bṛhaspati as a human is found in Kṛṣṇamiśra's play, the Prabodhacandrodaya. He belongs to the camp of Kali. Whatever be the identity of Bṛhaspati, his attribution to materialism is inappropriate and has got nothing to do with the development of materialism in India.


We present evidence that learned density functional theory (``DFT'') force fields are ready for ground state catalyst discovery. Our key finding is that relaxation using forces from a learned potential yields structures with similar or lower energy to those relaxed using the RPBE functional in over 50\% of evaluated systems, despite the fact that the predicted forces differ significantly from the ground truth. This has the surprising implication that learned potentials may be ready for replacing DFT in challenging catalytic systems such as those found in the Open Catalyst 2020 dataset. Furthermore, we show that a force field trained on a locally harmonic energy surface with the same minima as a target DFT energy is also able to find lower or similar energy structures in over 50\% of cases. This ``Easy Potential'' converges in fewer steps than a standard model trained on true energies and forces, which further accelerates calculations. Its success illustrates a key point: learned potentials can locate energy minima even when the model has high force errors. The main requirement for structure optimisation is simply that the learned potential has the correct minima. Since learned potentials are fast and scale linearly with system size, our results open the possibility of quickly finding ground states for large systems.


The EAT/mcl-1 gene was isolated during the early differentiation of a retinoic acid-induced human embryonal carcinoma cell line to the trophectoderm lineage. EAT/mcl-1, a bcl-2 related gene, is involved in the genetic pathway of apoptosis; this suggests a role for apoptosis and the involvement of this gene in early placental development. In the current investigation, we analysed expression of EAT/mcl-1 at the mRNA level by Northern blot analysis and in situ hybridization, as well as at the protein level, by immunoblot analysis and immunohistochemistry. Our results identified constant expression of this gene in the placenta throughout pregnancy as well as a shift in its localization from the cytotrophoblast in the first trimester to the syncytiotrophoblast in the third trimester. In addition, there was an inverse correlation between EAT/mcl-1 expression and TaT-mediated deoxyuridine triphosphate nick-end labelling (TUNEL) reactivity in trophoblasts in the first trimester. These results suggest a role for EAT/mcl-1 in both early placental development in regulating trophoblast differentiation as well as a role for this gene in placental maintenance in regulating the process of trophoblast turnover.


The crystal structure of alpha(v)beta(3) in complex with a cyclic RGD-containing ligand has recently been demonstrated. However, the functional significance of each residue within ligand binding loops has not been fully elucidated. Here, by employing alanine-scanning mutagenesis, we have examined the functional role of ligand contact residues in alpha(v). Tyr178 --> Ala substitution (Tyr178Ala) and Asp218Ala abolished a monovalent ligand, WOW-1 Fab binding as well as soluble fibrinogen binding, which is in perfect agreement with the crystallography. However, Asp150Ala showed no or only a modest inhibition of ligand binding. In contrast, Tyr substitution at Ala215 (Ala215Tyr) increased WOW-1 Fab binding, suggesting that the substitution increased the integrin affinity. The adhesion assay to immobilized fibrinogen showed essentially the same data as obtained using soluble ligands. Our present data indicate that Tyr178 and Asp218, but not Asp150 in alpha(v) is critically involved in ligand-binding and that Ala215 could regulate the affinity of alpha(v)beta(3).


ABSTRACT In this paper, the dynamic security of a large power system against any critical contingency is predicted by a new type of radial basis function neural network, RBF-R NN, as it classifies the system's transient stability status online. In order to keep the number of measurements limited, as well as to reduce the complexity of the NNs used, the minimum redundancy maximum relevance is adopted as a feature selection method. Moreover, the classification performance of the RBF-R NNs is improved by eliminating the training set instances that are close to the security boundary. The proposed method is applied on a 16-generator-68-bus test system and the performance of the adopted RBF-R NNs is compared with RBF NNs, as well as with multilayer perceptrons. The simulation results show that a significant improvement in prediction accuracy is obtained by the RBF-R NNs together with the feature selection and the elimination of boundary instances.


Objective: Schizophrenia is a complex and chronic psychiatric disorder. In recent years, studies have found glutamatergic system participation in its etiopathogenesis, especially through aberrant NMDA receptors functioning. Thus, drugs that modulate this activity, as amantadine and memantine, could theoretically be used in its treatment. To perform a systematic literature review about memantine and amantadine use as adjunct in schizophrenia treatment. Methods: A systematic review of papers published in English indexed in the electronic database PubMed® using the terms "memantine", "amantadine" and "schizophrenia" published until October 2016. Results: We found 144 studies, 8 selected for analysis due to meet the objectives of this review. Some of these have shown benefits from such drug use, especially in symptoms measured by PANSS and its subdivisions, while others do not. Discussion: The data in the literature about these drugs use for schizophrenia treatment is still limited and have great heterogeneity. Thus, assay with greater robustness are needed to assess real benefits of these drugs as adjuvant therapy. Junho BT et al. / Arch Clin Psychiatry. 2019;46(6):165-8


Background Aberrations of EGFR signalling drive cancer development. In squamous cell lung cancer (SqCLC), EGFR is overexpressed. LRIG1 is a negative regulator of EGFR and patient pre-invasive SqCLC samples show LRIG1 loss, suggesting involvement in early disease pathogenesis. In skin and gut homeostasis, LRIG1 regulates stem cells. In the upper airway, basal cells act as stem cells and are the putative origin of SqCLC. We hypothesise LRIG1 has a key role in airway homeostasis and its loss promotes pre-invasive SqCLC development. Methods Lrig1 EGFP-ires-CreERT2 mice were used to delineate airway LRIG1 expression. Flow sorted LRIG1-positive and -negative murine basal cells were used in 2D and 3D colony-forming, spheroid and proliferation assays. A murine SqCLC model was set up through application of N-Nitrosotris-(2-chloroethyl)urea (NTCU). Pre-invasive lesions and tumour development were compared between wild-type (WT), heterozygous and LRIG1-knockout (KO) animals. Human basal cells obtained from bronchoscopy were sorted according to LRIG1 expression and used directly in colony-forming assays or maintained in primary culture to assess the effect of shRNA knockdown of LRIG1. LRIG1-knockdown cells were assessed in colony-forming and proliferation assays, and differentiation and invasion were assessed using organotypic models. Results LRIG1 is expressed by 40% of airway basal cells. LRIG1-expressing murine basal cells exhibit increased colony-forming capacity (p = 0.0286), spheroid formation (p = 0.0043) and proliferation (p = 0.0043) compared with LRIG1-negative cells. Similarly, LRIG1-expressing human airway basal cells isolated from endobronchial brush biopsy samples exhibit increased colony-forming capacity (p = 0.0469). Topical application of NTCU to mice recapitulates the development of human pre-invasive and SCLC lesions after 23 weeks. Results show lesions in LRIG1-KO mice to be larger than those of WT animals. Knock down of LRIG1 in cultured human airway basal cells alters cell phenotype, leading to an increased colony-forming efficiency and greater proliferation at cell confluence. Conclusions LRIG1 has an important role in stem cell homeostasis of the human and murine airway epithelium. Loss of LRIG1 promotes pre-cancerous lesion development in a murine SqCLC mouse model and behaviour of human epithelial cells in culture, indicating a potential target for chemoprevention of SqCLC in humans.


Although many studies have investigated the potential of passive cooling technologies in hot and arid areas, an important question remains. Why did architects ignore the passive cooling technologies in new buildings despite their sustainability? This study is based on this pivotal question. This study aims to review and explore the impediments that undermine the use of these technologies in hot, arid areas; moreover it intends to determine the most resilient passive cooling technique which may be used as a master technique in buildings by architects. The study focuses on twelve of a proposed passive technologies. These techniques are reviewed according to their potentials and challenges. Hence, the drawbacks of each passive technique will be identified in order to recognize the most resilient passive technology. This study suggests that spatial limitations are the most salient challenges facing architects when they attempt to utilize passive cooling technologies. This study also concludes that the openings created in the upper parts of external walls is the most flexible technique that can be implemented in new and existing buildings, without any of the aforementioned impediments.


The evolution of a turbulent tangle of quantum vortices in presence of finite-size active particles is studied by means of numerical simulations of the Gross-Pitaevskii equation. Particles are modeled as potentials depleting the superfluid and described with classical degrees of freedom following a Newtonian dynamics. It is shown that particles do not modify the building-up and the decay of the superfluid Kolmogorov turbulent regime. It is observed that almost the totality of particles remains trapped inside quantum vortices, although they are occasionally detached and recaptured. The statistics of this process are presented and discussed. The particle Lagrangian dynamics is also studied. At large time scales, the velocity spectrum of particles is reminiscent of a classical Lagrangian turbulent behavior. At time-scales faster than the turnover time associated to the mean inter-vortex distance, the particle motion is dominated by oscillations due to Magnus effect. For light particles a non-classical scaling of the spectrum arises. The particle velocity and acceleration probability distribution functions are then studied. The decorrelation time of the particle acceleration is found to be shorter than in classical fluids, and related to the Magnus force experienced by the trapped particles.


Abstract Basin modelling is a powerful quantitative tool and in order to be able to use modelling for the correct purpose and to expand the variety of problems where basin modelling with advantage can be applied, it is necessary to view basin modelling in the context of the general exploration process. Results from basin modelling are often directly used for ranking and risking of exploration targets. Due to the integrated nature of basin modelling it is applied more or less routinely throughout the exploration process for quantitative assessments. Awareness of some fundamental limitations of the models used is therefore vital in order to assess the overall uncertainty associated with the results. It will be shown how, through sensitivity analysis and risking of the modelling results, uncertainty ranges and confidence levels can be attached to the results. Examples of how sensitivity analysis helps in the process of understanding the system behaviour, reveals the critical factors, and provides the resolution limits on specified parameters will be given. Finally, a probabilistic procedure for assessing the uncertainty ranges and the level of confidence associated with modelling results will be given. A case history shows how the procedure can be used for providing risked entry parameters for the general risk assessment.


The aim of this study was to design and develop a control system using Short Message Service (SMS) and wireless networking (WiFi) technology to remotely control outdoor security lights in large organisations. The device comprises four main units, namely: the mobile phone or a computer system, the Global System for Mobile communication (GSM) modem, the switching unit and the WiFi module. One feature that makes the developed system better than other related existing works is its ability to use two means of control. It makes use of WiFi when the operator is within the coverage area of the network of about 100 m to the device, at no cost, otherwise it uses SMS containing certain codes to control the lights. A Subscriber Identity Module (SIM) card is placed in the GSM modem and SMS from the transmitter are sent to that mobile number. The module is also constantly checked by the microcontroller unit, processes the information, extracts the message and command from the GSM modem and WiFi module respectively and then acts accordingly. Owing to its simplicity, C programming is used to programme the microcontroller. The developed device when tested with three lighting points operating on 230V power supply, gives an impressive performance in terms of accuracy and promptness with both SMS and WiFi technology.


This study puts forward the problem of fast-rate fault detection based on multiple slow-rate sensors. A fast-rate residual generator with casuality constraint is established from the multi-sensor model. Parameters of the residual generator are determined via disturbance-decoupling based on left eigenvector assignment. It is found that the condition of disturbance-decoupling is related to the multi-rate sensor sampling nature. A numerical example is given to illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed residual generator.


In 2002, Linkoping University Electronic Press began development of a journal article reviewing support system (JARSS) as a tool for Editors of electronic journals. The system-s database contains submitted articles, abstracts and other secondary information, reviews, and e-mail communication for the purpose of submission, reviewing and final acceptance. The interface maintains a log of all events pertaining to the article and the associated status changes. The successive status options of an article (received, under review, conditional accept, etc.) correspond to the editorial workflow. JARRS has been used since its inception to run the Artificial Intelligence Journal (AIJ), an Elsevier publication. In essence a service is offered to take care of the technical aspects of journal publication, allowing editors more time to solicit papers of high quality.


Objective: Recent studies on the association between Uridine diphosphoglucuronosyl tranferases (UGT) 2B17 status and risk of prostate cancer (PCa) showed inconclusive results. To clarify this possible association, we conducted a meta-analysis of published studies. Methods: We searched published literature from PubMed, Embase, Google Scholar and China National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI). According to our inclusion criteria, studies that observed the association between UGT2B17 status and PCa risk were included. The principal outcome measure was the adjusted odds ratio (OR) with 95% confidence interval (CI) for the risk of PCa associated with UGT2B17 status. Results: A total of 6 studies with 7029 subjects (3839 cases and 3190 controls) were eligible for inclusion in the meta-analysis. Overall, there was a significant association between UGT2B17 status and increased risk of prostate cancer (OR = 1.74, 95% CI 1.14 - 2.64, P 0.001). Similar results were found in the subgroup analyses by ethnicity and types of controls. Conclusion: This meta-analysis demonstrates that UGT2B17 status is associated with prostate cancer susceptibility, and it contributes to increased risk of prostate cancer.


Condition monitoring for gas insulated switchgear (GIS) requires an accurate and reliable identification of the defective equipment in it for maintenance purposes. In this paper, a feature extraction procedure is explored, which is based on the power spectral density (PSD) of the denoised partial discharges (PDs) emanating from the defective equipment in the GIS. Furthermore, artificial intelligence techniques, in particular, the self organising map (SOM), are investigated for their roles as classifiers to precisely identify this defective equipment, based on the PSD feature patterns. The performance of the SOM-based classifier is ascertained by using the PDs acquired from GIS in the Korean 154-kV EHV transmission networks.


The COVID-19 outbreak has challenged the global tourism economy. It has particularly threatened the survival of tourism firms in developing countries especially those with the greatest growth of international visitors, such as Vietnam. This study aims to highlight the impact of COVID-19 on tour operators in Vietnam and explore their strategic responses to the crisis. Data were obtained from a recent survey initiated by the National Tourism Advisory Board and 32 in-depth interviews with managers of selected firms. The survey results demonstrate that the key influences of COVID-19 include plummeting revenue, increased costs, and employee redundancy. Furthermore, the majority of tour operators are aware of the need for restructuring and expect financial support from the government to overcome the crisis. The findings from the interviews reveal that tour operators focus more on short and medium-term strategies (i.e., retrenchment, persevering, and exiting) rather than long-term planning (i.e., innovating) in response to COVID-19. This study advances the knowledge and application of response-to-crisis strategies in tourism research, and its findings have practical implications for managers and policymakers in times of exceptional crisis like the COVID-19 pandemic.


We have shown that oxidative stress is a mechanism of free fatty acid (FFA)-induced β-cell dysfunction. Unsaturated fatty acids in membranes, including plasma and mitochondrial membranes, are substrates for lipid peroxidation, and lipid peroxidation products are known to cause impaired insulin secretion. Therefore, we hypothesized that mice overexpressing glutathione peroxidase-4 (GPx4), an enzyme that specifically reduces lipid peroxides, are protected from fat-induced β-cell dysfunction. GPx4-overexpressing mice and their wild-type littermate controls were infused intravenously with saline or oleate for 48 h, after which reactive oxygen species (ROS) were imaged, using dihydrodichlorofluorescein diacetate in isolated islets, and β-cell function was assessed ex vivo in isolated islets and in vivo during hyperglycemic clamps. Forty-eight-hour FFA elevation in wild-type mice increased ROS and the lipid peroxidation product malondialdehyde and impaired β-cell function ex vivo in isolated islets and in vivo, as assessed by decreased disposition index. Also, islets of wild-type mice exposed to oleate for 48 h had increased ROS and lipid peroxides and decreased β-cell function. In contrast, GPx4-overexpressing mice showed no FFA-induced increase in ROS and lipid peroxidation and were protected from the FFA-induced impairment of β-cell function assessed in vitro, ex vivo and in vivo. These results implicate lipid peroxidation in FFA-induced β-cell dysfunction.


Background: Little is known about how satisfied women are with their breasts and which factors influence breast satisfaction. Therefore, the aim of this study was to elucidate this by collecting data on breast satisfaction from the general population in relation to age, body mass index, lifestyle, psychological, and physical well-being. Method: This study was a cross-sectional population survey performed in 2019 in the north of the Netherlands, among randomly selected women between 20 and 80 years. Breast satisfaction was measured in the 1334 participants with the preoperative reconstruction BREAST-Q module. Other applied questionnaires were the Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale, Short Form Survey (SF-36), and a custom-made questionnaire on lifestyle and baseline characteristics. Representativeness was assessed by comparing the participants with Dutch normative data. Possible factors influencing "satisfaction with breasts" were analyzed using multivariate linear regression analyses. Results: The median (IQR) BREAST-Q score for "satisfaction with breasts" was mediocre: 63 (58–79) on a 0–100 scale. Higher age and higher SF-36 scores had a positive effect on breast satisfaction (P < 0.001 and P < 0.001, respectively) and a higher body mass index, smoking and anxiety score greater than 8 were negatively associated (P < 0.001, P = 0.013 and P < 0.001 respectively, multivariate linear regression analyses). Conclusion: These data are the first European normative data and can serve as a reference in future population and patient-based studies regarding breast satisfaction.


Tungsten oxide is an n-type semiconductor with inte resting physical and chemical properties that make it suitable for various technological applications. Tungsten oxide nanowires were synthesized not only at low temperature but also without the use of any catalysts. The tungsten oxid e nanowires were synthesized at 550 °C with tungsten layers onto the ITO glass using thermal chemical vapor deposition ( T-CVD). The SEM image shows that the tungsten oxide nanowires are effectively grown with the 200 nm tungsten film . The Raman spectra shoulder at ~690 cm -1 proves the synthesized of tungsten oxide nanowires.


Employers are sovereigns in their workplace. Market power disparities, enforcement gaps, and the dwindling power of the beaten US labor movement seem to guarantee that. But it is law that anoints employers as kings. Work law doctrine calls it the "employer prerogative," and it stands as the default governing rule in the workplace. This rule lays the basic legal structure of the workplace: all decisions fall within the employer's discretion unless altered by contractual agreements or mandated differently by a statute or court doctrine. The entire array of legal interventions in the workplace, and their accompanying normative debates, flows from this legal rule.

This Article calls to abolish the employer prerogative. It is too sticky, and subsequently, it skews all of work law theory and practice toward management interests. The Article begins by describing how the cumulative effects of a judicial presumption of prerogative, labor market power disparities, the employment at-will doctrine, and enforcement gaps make modifying this default a Sisyphean task. The argument follows by describing two mechanisms that tie the employer prerogative to the uphill political struggle of redistributing power in the workplace. To preserve their control, employers can use their prerogative to evade workplace interventions or punish workers and their communities for pursuing redistributive workplace policies. At the expense of any goal work law advocates might pursue, the employer prerogative is self-entrenching.

Perhaps the most troubling aspect of this default rule is that challenging it is a taboo of a sort. Hence, the Article concludes by offering a novel framework for considering possible alternatives to it. The Article describes alternative default governance rules and presents a set of new and renewed legal institutions designed to reallocate these default authorities among multiple stakeholders. These novel interventions offer the structural analysis and remedies vitally needed to correct the workplace's skewed status quo of power and to actualize work law's potential – unleashing it from its employer prerogative constraints.


We compare two recent extensions of the answer set (stable model) semantics of logic programs. One of them, due to Lifschitz, Tang and Turner, allows the bodies and heads of rules to contain nested expressions. The other, due to Niemelä and Simons, uses weight constraints. We show that there is a simple, modular translation from the language of weight constraints into the language of nested expressions that preserves the program's answer sets. Nested expressions can be eliminated from the result of this translation in favor of additional atoms. The translation makes it possible to compute answer sets for some programs with weight constraints using satisfiability solvers, and to prove the strong equivalence of programs with weight constraints using the logic of here-and-there.


This paper examines how finance officials in Khartoum came to see the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan as a single coherent economy. Recent scholarship has called into question the teleology that African independence inevitably lead to the emergence of nation-states. Especially prominent in these revisionist accounts have been counter-narratives regarding political rights. However an alternative means of de-centering the nation-state is to examine the creation of the economy and economic inclusion. My paper demonstrates this by focusing on development projects in southern Sudan, the Nuba Mountains and the Gezira Plains. Between 1946 and 1954 the national economy was only one of a host of competing, overlapping and contradictory ideas about how to manage and organize economic life within the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan. While planning is always a political act, I argue that the biases inherent in the use of particular types of planning, budgeting and accounting tools inclined finance officials towards emphasizing the national over alternative conceptions of the economy. I then discuss the different possibilities and constraints that planning in prose presented versus planning with numbers. My research is based on original sources gathered in the National Records Office in Khartoum, The National Archives in London and the Sudan Archives in Durham, England.


DSA will ultimately play an important role in the design optimization process. Part 2 of this paper presents an efficient and accurate methodology for the DSA of the cooling stage of the injection molding process. The DSA program developed in the present study utilizes the implicit differentiation of the boundary integral equations and the B.C.s presented in Part I with respect to all DVs to yield the sensitivity equations. In this DSA, we have considered various DVs as follows: (i) (DVs related to processing conditions) inlet coolant bulk temperature and inlet coolant volumetric flow rate of each cooling channel inlet, and (ii) (DVs related to mold cooling system design) radius and location of each cooling channel. Two sample problems are solved to demonstrate the accuracy and efficiency of the present DSA formulation and to discuss the characteristics of each DV.


Objectives The aim of this study was to investigate the impact of tissue plasminogen activator (TPA) on the treatment of feline aortic thromboembolism (FATE). Methods Cats diagnosed with FATE involving ⩾2 limbs were enrolled in a prospective, multicenter, double-blinded, randomized, placebo-controlled study within 6 h of an event. Diagnosis was made by clinical findings and one confirmatory criterion. Cats received placebo or TPA (1 mg/kg/h with the first 10% by bolus). All cats received pain control and thromboprophylaxis. The primary outcome was a change from baseline in a published limb score at 48 h. Secondary outcomes included 48 h survival, survival to discharge and complication proportions. Statistical analyses included pattern-mixture models, logistic regression and Fisher's exact, Student's t- and Mann–Whitney–Wilcoxon tests. Results Based on a power analysis, 40 cats were enrolled; however, only 20 survived to 48 h (TPA, n = 12; placebo, n = 8 [P = 0.34]). There was a statistically significant improvement in limb scores compared with baseline for both groups (P <0.001). Limb score at 48 h was 1 point lower (better) in the TPA group (P = 0.19). Thrombolysis had no statistically significant effect on 48 h survival (P = 0.22). Lower affected limb lactate was associated with better 48 h survival (odds ratio 1.53, 95% confidence interval 1.08–2.17; P = 0.02). The survival to discharge rates were 45% (TPA) and 30% (placebo; P = 0.51). Complications in the TPA and placebo groups included acute kidney injury (22% and 19%, respectively; P = 1.00) and/or reperfusion injuries (33% and 19%, respectively; P = 0.45). Conclusions and relevance Survival and complication rates of acute FATE were not different with or without thrombolysis. High in-hospital mortality decreased the statistical power to detect a statistically significant difference between treatments with regard to our primary outcome.


The final FRBR report was presented at the IFLA Congress of Copenhagen in 1998. This was the fruit of the work of a special IFLA Study Group that had begun in the early Nineties. The study of the functional requirements of bibliographic registrations derives from the need to deal with the problems that originate from the costs and development of cataloguing data bases. The path undertaken by IFLA for solving these aspects of the management of bibliographic information is the record analysis and its structure. FRBR,  Functional requirements for bibliographic records , raepresents an innovation in the study of a record because it introduced a rational and rationalizing method of analysis of the results of the cataloguing practices.  The IFLA study analyses a record through the creation of a model that represents > and which serves as a starting point >.  FRBR is a conceptual model that describes an internationally recognized bibliographic record; it analyses the record that results from the application of the current standards and norms.  The FRBR model is orientated, focalized on user functions ( find, identify [or better,  localize ],  choose ,  obtain ). The main entities ( work ,  expression , demonstration ,  item ) are identified on the basis of the functions carried out by the user, that is to say, they are those which the users seek, identify, choose and obtain with a current bibliographic registration.  FRBR goes a very long way towards satisfying the need for reflection strongly felt by the library community, but it should not be confused with a group of principles like those approved in Paris in 1961, which had the deliberate intention of forming new cataloguing codes. FRBR offers no solution or proposal of solution to the enucleated problems; it is an instrument of analysis of a record and its functionality. Precisely because of this, FRBR represents an epocal watershed, inasmuch as it is an essential instrument for the elaboration process of a new way of registering bibliographic information, a new way that requires further reflection and the development of a new model for structuring records and above all a new type and concept of catalogue.


Drug transporters significantly influence drug pharmacokinetics and pharmacodynamics. P-glycoprotein (P-gp), the product of the MDR1 (ABCB1) gene, is among the most well-characterized drug transporters, particularly in veterinary medicine. A number of clinically relevant, structurally and functionally unrelated drugs are substrates for P-gp. P-gp is expressed by a variety of normal tissues including the intestines, renal tubular cells, brain capillary endothelial cells, biliary canalicular cells, and others, where it functions to actively extrude substrate drugs. In this capacity, P-gp limits oral absorption and central nervous system entry of many substrate drugs. A number of MDR1 polymorphisms have been described in human patients, some of which result in altered drug pharmacokinetics and susceptibility to diseases such as Parkinson's disease, inflammatory bowel disease, refractory seizures, and others. An MDR1 polymorphism in herding breed dogs, including collies and Australian shepherds, has been demonstrated to be the cause of ivermectin sensitivity in these breeds. Recent evidence suggests that this polymorphism, a 4-bp deletion mutation, results in increased susceptibility to the toxicity of several drugs in addition to ivermectin. Furthermore, data in rodent models suggest that P-gp may play an important role in regulating the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis.


The electrical resistance in an earthing system basically consists of resistance of earthing conductors that is negligible and earth transresistance that depends on earth specific resistance varies with earth geology. In our country, designs are made considering earth specific resistance as 100Ω without making any measurements in most practices because these measurements are time consuming and costly. But this may cause important security gaps. This study is carried out to determine the answer of the question whether earth specific resistance could be determined without making any measurements? In this study geological data-earth specific resistance relation is modelled with decision tree classification algorithms in Weka software environment. The study is performed on the field that is located in Turkey. Estimation results yielded significant outputs. We expect this study to be pioneer for more widespread practices enhancing field diversity.


With the recent launch of the Global Development Lab in the Hunter and Stephanie Hunt Institute for Engineering and Humanity, fellows, faculty, and industry professionals have been working to create meaningful solutions to promote a resilient humanity, addressing the UN's Sustainable Development Goals and challenges. The Institute has taken on Dr. Ali Beskok's project, the development of a low cost, portable, Point-of-Care-Device for humanitarian and health applications. This paper provides a systematic review of current Point-of-Care-Devices using antibody antigen reactions. Additionally, it provides aspects of a market analysis and a literature review. Its overarching goal is to make recommendations regarding a disease the developing device could test for through antibody antigen reactions that would most positively affect global health. Traditionally, biomedical engineers have developed technologies in response to the needs of the developed world's medical community. These approaches often do not address the needs of the majority of the world's peoples afflicted with both communicable and non-communicable diseases as the developments are far too costly and those with most need have, at best, limited access to supporting clinical laboratory infrastructure in developing countries. A gap in care has emerged as a result of these conditions. As a result, Drs. Beskok and Koklu have developed a Lab-on-a-Chip technology that can test for a chosen disease with a turnaround time of just a few seconds and a detection limit of 1 ng of antigen per 1 mL of sample fluid. In contrast to other commonly used PoCD's, this technology can be adapted for detection of various diseases in various settings. This is a great improvement to current devices on the market in specificity, sensitivity, and ease of use, therefore making it particularly useful in high-throughput, low-skill staffing environments. In creating disease selection criteria for Dr. Beskok and his team's device, several factors were taken into consideration. Generally, the selection criteria consists of diseases that result in a high DALY value, are communicable, identifiable with antibody-antigen reactions, and can be tested for using urine. The diseases that were identified with this criterion were Tuberculosis and Malaria. Various antibody-antigen recommendations for diagnosis, advantages, and limitations of the proposed Point-of-Care-Device are discussed in the Proposed Disease section. In addition, current funding for each disease is overviewed. In order to make the greatest impact, deployment of the PoCD in the Sub-Saharan region, most specifically the Democratic Republic of Congo and Sierra Leone are recommended. Furthermore, children under the age of 5 who suffer from malnutrition should be given special attention. Focusing in these locations and populations will best aid in accomplishing the third Sustainable Development Goal set out by the UN: to ensure healthy lives and promote wellbeing for all at all ages.


In text mining applications, side-information is obtainable at the side of the text documents. Such sideinformation types are document provenance data, the links within the document, user-access behavior from net logs, or alternative non-textual attributes that are embedded into the text document. Such attributes might contain an incredible quantity of data for bunch functions. However, the relative importance of this side-information is also tough to estimate, particularly once a number of the data is noisy. In such cases, it is risky to include side-information into the mining method; as a result of it will either improve the standard of the illustration for the mining method, or will add noise to the method. Therefore, a principled means is needed to perform the mining method, thus on maximize the benefits from mistreatment this aspect information. The proposed system developing an application for recommendations of reports articles to the readers of a news portal. This paper designs an algorithmic rule which combines classical partitioning algorithms with probabilistic models so as to form an efficient clustering approach.


The last quarter of the seventeenth century witnessed the publication of a bevy of narratives of travel to India and to Southeast Asia. Many of these were very widely read, and they continued to be cited as authoritative source of knowledge throughout the entire eighteenth century. Very frequently, these narratives included accounts of the Cape of Good Hope, along with descriptions of the Khoi peoples, so-called "Hottentots," who lived there. These descriptions, while they have not entirely escaped the attention of scholars (especially South Africans), have largely been wrenched out of their original contexts. This paper will examine several French and English accounts — Tavernier's and Ovington's journeys to the Mughal court of India; Tachard's and La Loubere's missions to the king of Siam; and Dampier's voyage around the world — comparing the portrayal of Africans at the Cape to those of Asians described at greater length throughout these books. Such a comparison yields a more nuanced appreciation of European understanding (and misunderstanding) of non-Europeans, not only in terms of their "otherness" but also of their differences from one another. In fact, the terms of the contrast of Asians to Africans are highly ambivalent: order vs. anarchy, liberty vs. despotism, or industry vs. sloth, and also dissimulation vs. honesty. Such contrasts defined the parameters of much of the Enlightenment's characterizations of Asians as well as Africans, but also sets the tone for fundamental debates about Europe's own political values.


Many Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD) patients are known to have rare staining dystrophin-positive fibers, termed "revertants." The precise etiology of these rare fibers is unknown. The most likely explanation, however, is somatic mosaicism or somatic reversion/suppression. Immunocytochemistry was performed on serial sections from deleted and nondeleted patients, with a panel of antibodies--9219, 1377, 9218, and Dys-2--that span dystrophin. Both familial and nonfamilial patients possessed revertants. Either the same clusters or individual revertant fibers stained with amino- and carboxyl-terminal antibodies in all 14 DMD patients. In patients with deletions, revertants did not stain with antibodies raised to polypeptide sequences within the deletion. These results indicate that positively staining fibers are not the result of somatic mosaicism in deleted patients. Five of 10 patients without deletions had revertant fibers. In two of these patients, the revertant fibers did not stain with antibody 9218, which was generated against amino acids 2305-2554 and which corresponds to exons 48-52. The remaining antibodies from the panel stained the same fibers on separate serial sections in these two patients. The most likely mechanism giving rise to these positively staining fibers is a second site in-frame deletion. Antibodies generated to polypeptide sequences within deletions can be used to control for the natural occurrence of revertant fibers in myoblast transfer studies and may be useful in the detection of point mutations.


Abstract. The NY-Ålesund TurbulencE Fiber Optic eXperiment (NYTEFOX) was a field experiment at the Ny-Ålesund Arctic site (78.9∘ N, 11.9∘ E) and yielded a unique meteorological data set.
These data describe the distribution of heat, airflows, and exchange in the Arctic boundary layer for a period of 14 d from 26 February to 10 March 2020.
NYTEFOX is the first field experiment to investigate the heterogeneity of airflow and its transport of temperature, wind, and kinetic energy in the Arctic environment using the fiber-optic distributed sensing (FODS) technique for horizontal and vertical observations. FODS air temperature and wind speed were observed at a spatial resolution of 0.127 m and a temporal resolution of 9 s along a 700 m horizontal array at 1 m above ground level (a.g.l.) and along three 7 m vertical profiles. Ancillary data were collected from three sonic anemometers and an acoustic profiler (minisodar; sodar is an acronym for "sound detection and ranging") yielding turbulent flow statistics and vertical profiles in the lowest 300 m a.g.l., respectively. The observations from this field campaign are publicly available on Zenodo (https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4756836, Huss et al., 2021) and supplement the meteorological data set operationally collected by the Baseline Surface Radiation Network (BSRN) at Ny-Ålesund, Svalbard.


Security warranties of the RSA-type digital signatures are based on two main hypothesis: First, in the assumption that factoring gigantic integer numbers is a computationally unfeasible problem. Second, in the assumption that hash functions produce a unique digest for any digital document. With these two hypothesis in mind, in the last decades in Mexico, and also in other countries, legislation has been enacted to legalize digital signatures. In Mexico, the combination of the RSA algorithm and the SHA-1 hash function can be used to legally validate digital contracts. This selection of algorithms is known as the RSA-SHA-1 digital signature. However, recently the SHA-1 hash function has suffered a {\it falsification} attack in which, given an arbitrary document for which the SHA-1 digest was produced, it is possible to generate a second document with the same digest. In other words, this attack permits to find arbitrary pairs of documents that share the same digest. This situation has provoked that the RSA-SHA-1 algorithm used to sign legal contracts is on risk to be broken. In this article, some of the repercussions in the information security of the legal documents signed with this protocol are discussed. We also discuss some countermeasures that can mitigate this vulnerability.


In 1976, Moore investigated a class of self-dual double-circulant codes based on primes of the form q=3 mod 8. This paper shows that the corresponding length 168 code contains a weight 28 codeword and thus is not extremal. This answers a long-standing question regarding this code. The next five codes in this class are also shown not to be extremal.


Metal injection moulding (MIM) is a cost-effective technique for producing small, complex, precision parts in high volume. Each step in MIM process plays a vital role in order to achieve high quality final product. To have a good understanding of the MIM process and successful in manufacturing, characterisation of the material feedstock is essential. This paper presents the characterization of MIM feedstock consisting titanium alloy (Ti-6Al-4V) powder mix with binder 60 wt% of palm stearin and 40 wt% polyethylene. The characterisation of Ti-6Al-4V alloy powder, binders and feedstock includes scanning electron micrograph (SEM), thermo gravimetric analysis (TGA), differential scanning calorimeter (DCS) and rheological test were established. Rheological results exhibited pseudoplastic or shear thinning flow behaviour, where its viscosity decreased with increasing shear rate. The feedstock viscosity also decreased with increasing temperature and was found to be suitable for moulding.


Contagious ecthyma (CE) is one of the most widespread viral diseases; primarily affect goat and sheep but also reported from human, reindeer, musk ox, dog, cat, red squirrel etc. The disease is caused by contagious ecthyma virus (CEV) and he virus is circulating in Bangladesh. Present study was aimed at isolation, identification and molecular characterization of the CEV circulating in Bangladesh. A total of 13 samples (scab materials; 11 from goat and 2 from sheep) were collected from three different farms of Sylhet and Dhaka divisions followed by processing for virus detection by PCR and isolation in Vero cell. Four different sets of primers were used targeting four different genes of CEV. Of these samples, 10 (8 from goat and 2 from sheep) were found positive by PCR. From these positive samples three viruses were isolated. Sequencing of different genes of several CEV isolates has been done directly from PCR product using automated DNA sequencer 3010 Genetic Analyzer available at the National Reference Laboratory for Avian Influenza (NRL-AI), Bangladesh. Bangladeshi isolates were found to have 95-99% identity to each other. When compared to viruses from other countries, high homology (92-96%) was observed to viruses from New Zealand and India, and phylogenetically clustered with them. This is the first report of molecular characterization, though partial, of CEV in Bangladesh. Bangladesh J. of Livestock Res. 19(1-2): 97-106, Jan-Dec 2012


The Pulmonary embolism (PE) incidence is higher in patients with chronic kidney disease and renal transplantation (RT) than in general population. Thrombotic events are multifactorial in renal transplantation recipients and hypercoagulability is the most common factor. We present a case of a 67-yearold renal transplant patient with acute, large thrombus in pulmonary arteries and right heart cavities treated successfully with thrombolytic with low dosage in low infusion protocol.


In order to investigate the involvement of amino acids in the catalytic mechanism of the soluble epoxide hydrolase, different mutants of the murine enzyme were produced using the baculovirus expression system. Our results are consistent with the involvement of Asp-333 and His-523 in a catalytic mechanism similar to that of other α/β hydrolase fold enzymes. Mutation of His-263 to asparagine led to the loss of approximately half the specific activity compared to wild-type enzyme. When His-332 was replaced by asparagine, 96.7% of the specific activity was lost and mutation of the conserved His-523 to glutamine led to a more dramatic loss of 99.9% of the specific activity. No activity was detectable after the replacement of Asp-333 by serine. However, more than 20% of the wild-type activity was retained in an Asp-333 → Asn mutant produced in Spodoptera frugiperda cells. We purified, by affinity chromatography, the wild-type and the Asp-333 → Asn mutant enzymes produced in Trichoplusia ni cells. We labeled these enzymes by incubating them with the epoxide containing radiolabeled substrate juvenile hormone III (JH III). The purified Asp-333 → Asn mutant bound 6% of the substrate compared to the wild-type soluble epoxide hydrolase. The mutant also showed 8% of the specific activity of the wild-type. Preincubation of the purified Asp-333 → Asn mutant at 37°C (pH 8), however, led to a complete recovery of activity and to a change of isoelectric point (pI), both of which are consistent with hydrolysis of Asn-333 to aspartic acid. This intramolecular hydrolysis of asparagine to aspartic acid may explain the activity observed in this mutant. Wild-type enzyme that had been radiolabeled with the substrate was digested with trypsin. Using reverse phase-high pressure liquid chromatography, we isolated four radiolabeled peptides of similar polarity. These peptides were not radiolabeled if the enzyme was preincubated with a selective competitive inhibitor of soluble epoxide hydrolase 4-fluorochalcone oxide. This strongly suggested that these peptides contained a catalytic amino acid. Each peptide was characterized with N-terminal amino acid sequencing and electrospray mass spectrometry. All four radiolabeled peptides contained overlapping sequences. The only aspartic acid present in all four peptides and conserved in all epoxide hydrolases was Asp-333. These peptides resulted from cleavage at different trypsin sites and the mass of each was consistent with the covalent linkage of Asp-333 to the substrate.


The Adelgidae (Insecta: Hemiptera), a small group of insects, are known as severe pests on various conifers of the northern hemisphere. Despite of this, little is known about their bacteriocyte-associated endosymbionts, which are generally important for the biology and ecology of plant sap-sucking insects. Here, we investigated the adelgid species complexes Adelges laricis/tardus, Adelges abietis/viridis and Adelges cooleyi/coweni, identified based on their coI and ef1alpha genes. Each of these insect groups harboured two phylogenetically different bacteriocyte-associated symbionts belonging to the Betaproteobacteria and the Gammaproteobacteria, respectively, as inferred from phylogenetic analyses of 16S rRNA gene sequences and demonstrated by fluorescence in situ hybridization. The betaproteobacterial symbionts of all three adelgid complexes ('Candidatus Vallotia tarda', 'Candidatus Vallotia virida' and 'Candidatus Vallotia cooleyia') share a common ancestor and show a phylogeny congruent with that of their respective hosts. Similarly, there is evidence for co-evolution between the gammaproteobacterial symbionts ('Candidatus Profftia tarda', 'Candidatus Profftia virida') and A. laricis/tardus and A. abietis/viridis. In contrast, the gammaproteobacterial symbiont of A. cooleyi/coweni ('Candidatus Gillettellia cooleyia') is different from that of the other two adelgids but shows a moderate relationship to the symbiont 'Candidatus Ecksteinia adelgidicola' of A. nordmannianae/piceae. All symbionts were present in all adelgid populations and life stages analysed, suggesting vertical transmission from mother to offspring. In sharp contrast to their sister group, the aphids, adelgids do not consistently contain a single obligate (primary) symbiont but have acquired phylogenetically different bacterial symbionts during their evolution, which included multiple infections and symbiont replacement.


The ascent of 'school-improvement' discourses in recent educational development initiatives has often centred on the installations of senior teachers from other schools into those that are seen as 'failing'. Specifically, the notion of 'superhead' has been introduced in recent years as a strategy for improving 'failing' schools, where such individuals are given a brief of 'raising standards'.
Education' texts have abundant literature on alternative conceptions of leadership and on the role of leadership in effecting change. Little exists, however, on the impact of external leaders or 'superheads' transforming schools in challenging circumstances. Less still has been written on how individuals assume such roles and how they understand the process of transformation.
This study takes an insider-outsider perspective on the practical challenge entailed in transforming school performance. From working as a teacher and consultant in two of the three inner city case study schools in Northern England, I draw upon data generated by using a mixed methods approach across these schools, all emerging from challenging circumstances. I examine how leadership impacts upon middle leaders and pupils through the narratives of mainstream ideology. The voices of the adults and children in these data serve as a reminder of the human impact resulting from external and internal interventions in schools.
Social theory is mobilised in support of this task by drawing upon the writings of Foucault to problematise taken-for-granted practices in education. Foucault's tools provide a mechanism for inspecting the narrative, through which I align history, power and discipline to education. Thus, I argue that a 'superhead' being transported in to transform a school is too simplistic a notion and one that undermines the complexities visible within these data gathered in this study.


ABSTRACT A 15-year-old girl was followed up for 2 years in a district hospital for management of vesicoureteral reflux and, subsequently, hydronephrosis of both kidneys and required bilateral ureteroneocystostomy. Despite surgery, there was continuous progression of the left hydronephrosis. Referral to a tertiary hospital because of continued sterile pyuria prompted investigation for tuberculosis (TB): she was diagnosed with bilateral pulmonary TB and urine culture confirmed Mycobacterium tuberculosis. Despite tuberculous chemotherapy and dexamethasone, she required a left nephrectomy. Histology demonstrated necrotising granulomatous pyelonephritis. She remains well with normal function of the right kidney. Despite the rarity, chronic urinary tract disorders should always prompt investigation for tuberculosis.


Nephron-sparing surgery provides effective therapy for patients with localized RCC in whom preservation of renal function is a relevant clinical consideration. The technical success rate with this approach is excellent, and long-term patient survival free of cancer is comparable with that obtained after radical nephrectomy, particularly for stage I RCC. The major disadvantage of conservative surgery is the approximately 10% risk of postoperative local tumor recurrence. The risk of local recurrence after radical nephrectomy has not been determined but is presumably less. The indications for nephron-sparing surgery in patients with unilateral RCC and a completely normal opposite kidney are not established, and radical nephrectomy should still be considered the treatment of choice in this setting.


Investors must consider and explore two main parameters which are efficiency and its risk in investing and forming the optimal portfolio and select the optimal portfolio in base of these two parameters, and also by attention to these parameters try to optimize the two-parameter model.  Through the present research, the quality of forming the different portfolios from diverse stocks for minimizing the risk of portfolios collection was explored. The hypothesis is that each portfolio's risk formed from a collection of different stock risk is stated as the identified function. The identified function just depends on the investment's value which was done for considered portfolio's forming and the total portfolio's risk is a function of collection of separated risks of components of that portfolio. The main discussion of the present research is the nonlinear minimizing two-parameter which can be changed as a minimizing one-parameter issue for different identified goal function. The functioned researches have proved the optimizing two-parameter model both weakly and strongly by ignoring one of the parameters. Changing the two-parameter-optimizing issue as the single-parameter issue is one by the usefulness functions and risk. Key Words: Financial Markets, Specifying Optimal Attribution, Forming the Portfolio, Two-Criteria Issues, Single-Criterion Issues, Goal Function, Complete Risk.


Large physical networks of interrelated infrastructure components support modern societies as a collaborative system with significant technical and social complexity. Design and evolution of infrastructure systems seeks to reduce wasted resources and maximize lifecycle value. Interdependencies between constituent systems call for an integrative approach to improve interoperation but many existing techniques rely on centralized development and emphasize technical aspects of design. This paper presents a simulation gaming approach to collaborative infrastructure system design leveraging the technical strengths of simulation models and the social strengths of multi-player engagement in a game execution. In a strategic engineering game, models representing each constituent infrastructure system share a common graph-theoretic modeling framework and are integrated using the HLA-Evolved standard for interoperable federated simulations. A prototype game instantiation based on a space-based resource economy supporting future space exploration is discussed with the objective of identifying how factors of game play influence insights to collaborative system design. Future work seeks to develop, execute, and evaluate the prototype game to further research the use of simulation games in supporting collaborative system design.


Aimed at the work condition and structure's characteristics of a large discharge emulsification pump's crankshaft, the load type of a low rotational speed and high load were determined, and the quality of a crankshaft is related with material, manufacture, heat treatment and so on. Based on unit production model during the research and development, the processes of the roughcast, manufacture and heat treatment were described: The roughcast was forged by a forging die in order to suffice a low rotational speed and high load. The crankshaft was manufactured by a universal machine tool, clamps and measuring tools in order to obtain the precision of specification after processing. Heat refining after rough cutting, nitrogen treatment and polishing after finish machining were selected in order to improve mechanical property, application life and cost reduction.


Both scholarly literature and public debate about plea bargaining embody a false dichotomy. Commentators err in assuming that criminal trials are the only alternative to plea bargains, and that fewer plea bargains lead inexorably to more trials. This paper offers a different choice, and points to prosecutorial screening as the principal alternative to plea bargains. Prosecutorial screening is a viable and significant alternative to living with the dishonesty of plea bargaining or mandating trials. The empirical heart of our paper studies charging data from New Orleans, where over the last three decades the New Orleans District Attorney emphasized early screening of cases and actively discouraged any changes of criminal charges as a result of negotiations after the charges are filed. This analysis confirms that a big city prosecutor can invest serious resources in early evaluation of cases and maintain this practice over the long run. All prosecutors screen cases. By prosecutorial screening we mean a structured charge selection process with four interrelated features: early assessment, reasoned selection, barriers to bargains, and enforcement. First, the prosecutor's office must make an early and careful assessment of each case, before the initial charge is filed. Second, the prosecutor's office should file charges only in provable cases that the office would generally want to result in a criminal conviction and sanction. Third, the office must severely restrict plea bargaining, and most especially charge bargains. Fourth, the office must create sufficient oversight and internal enforcement mechanisms to ensure reasonable uniformity in charging and relatively few changes to charges after they have been filed. A prosecutor who makes a realistic and early evaluation of the case will decrease in the number of negotiated guilty pleas, especially (and critically) charge bargains. Intense prosecutorial screening may produce a small increase in the number of trials, but the more substantial change would likely be an increase in the number of open pleas made without prior bargaining between the defendant and the prosecutor. A screening system that produces mostly open pleas avoids the dishonesty of plea bargaining when the offense of conviction does not match either the charges the state filed or the reality of the offender's behavior. Principled screening produces convictions that align as closely as possible with both the actual criminal behavior and the charges the prosecutor initially files. The prosecutor sends a single, consistent signal about the wisdom and worth of the case. Our study calls on every prosecutor to rethink how the office screens cases and how it explains its practices to the public. The screening/bargaining tradeoff should also become part of the political dialogue about the justice system, especially at election time. The public question should not be the conviction rate, but rather the ratio of as charged convictions to convictions.


This paper examines the impacts of prenatal conditions and water quality on child growth using recent data from Indonesia. Our empirical results show that an increase in birthweight has significant positive effects on children's subsequent height and weight-for-age z scores, whereas an improvement in drinking water quality, as measured by coliform bacteria count, increases the weight-for-height z score. Interestingly, there is seasonality in birthweight; this measure is significantly higher during the dry season than during the rainy season, and is also higher in a Christian-majority province than in Muslim-majority provinces, during the period shortly after Ramadan. Finally, the availability of modern water infrastructure improves the quality of drinking water. These findings show that interactions of environmental variations affect early childhood human capital formation and can have long-term impacts on their outcomes.


The implementation of the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) will affect EAC countries in terms of tax revenues, trade volumes and poverty. Estimates paint a mixed picture among specific EAC economies regarding the increase in demand following the reduction in tariffs, also known as trade effect. Burundi has the most considerable total trade effect of US$ 9.5 million, followed by Kenya with US$ 5.2 million and Uganda with US$ 4.2 million. On the other hand, Tanzania and Rwanda register adverse total trade effects. All the EAC countries incur tariff revenue losses; for instance, Kenya incurs US$ 14.2 million loss followed by Uganda with a US$ 13.5 million loss. Whereas Uganda and Burundi experience positive welfare effects, Kenya, Tanzania and Rwanda experience negative welfare effects. To benefit from the AfCFTA, EAC economies need to (i) increase competitiveness to mitigate the negative impact of trade diversion (ii) pursue policies that promote industrialisation and (iii) compensate for the customs revenue loss by leveraging the envisaged increase in the trade volumes and value for other taxes.


A new genus, Methylophilus, and species of restricted facultative methanol-utilizing bacteria are described. These bacteria are aerobic gram-negative rods that occur singly and in pairs. In addition to methanol and glucose, a limited range of other carbon compounds including fructose and methylamines may be used as the sole carbon and energy source. The fatty acid composition is primarily of the nonhydroxylated straight-chain saturated and monounsaturated types. The major isoprenoid quinone components are ubiquinones with eight isoprene units. The major polar lipid components are phosphatidylglycerol and phosphatidylethanolamine. The deoxyribonucleic acid base composition is 50 to 53 mol% guanine plus cytosine. The name of the genus proposed for these bacteria is Methylophilus gen. nov. The name of the type species is Methylophilus methylotrophus sp. nov. The type strain is AS1 (= NCIB 10515).


In the aftermath of deinstitutionalisation and the move to community management of schizophrenia, relatives play an increasing role in the management of the illness. Families often complain of being misinformed and ill equipped to aid in the treatment. A supportive/educational intervention for relatives is described and evaluated. Seven parents with a schizophrenic offspring participated in a descriptive pilot study employing a pre-post-treatment design. To test the hypotheses that treatment would impact on participants' distress, burden, family conflict, isolation and knowledge of schizophrenia, before and after measures were taken on self-report indices utilising these features. Generalisation effects on family coping were assessed via tri-weekly telephone interviews for the duration of the study. The intervention included information and sharing sessions. There was a substantial reduction in distress symptoms, anxiety, depression, burden and the amount of family conflict; there was an increase in the duration of home visits, out of home excursions and knowledge of schizophrenia. Most of the subjects' needs were met by the intervention. These gains were achieved with a high level of consumer acceptance. It was concluded that this kind of education has an important role in psychosocial intervention with relatives of the mentally ill.


Since 1995, the United States Supreme Court has applied a new form of rigorous judicial scrutiny in assessing the constitutional limits of the Commerce Clause, a provision that long has functioned as the central authorization of congressional power. As critics on and off the bench have noted, the Court has advanced its conception of federalism by requiring that the regulated activity itself be economic or commercial in nature. A crucial aspect of the Court's approach that has received less attention is the prior step of selecting the relevant activity for constitutional analysis. Legislation can be viewed from a variety of different perspectives, and the choice of vantage points can be critical in determining the requisite commercial nexus. In the wake of the New Deal, the Court upheld legislation if it had a commercial connection when viewed from any perspective. This Article argues that in a break from a half century of settled jurisprudence, the Court recently has insisted on selecting a single perspective as determinative. This approach, which we term "unidimensional," relocates substantial discretion from Congress to the judiciary. Drawing on the insights of recent scholarship on statutory interpretation, we illuminate the flaws in the Court's unidimensional approach. Legislation implicates multiple motives, targets, beneficiaries, and effects. For the Court to pick out a single element as dispositive constitutes a groundless form of reductionism. Here, as in other aspects of its recent jurisprudence, the Court focuses on the common-law rights holder as the fulcrum of analysis. This framework tilts the doctrine against regulation, as it inevitably casts the state as a suspect interloper. Lower court cases evidence the confusion that the Court's narrow commercial activity analysis has generated. In place of this flawed, unidimensional approach, we offer a "legislativist" framework for Commerce Clause cases. Under the legislativist method, the text of the legislation guides the judicial identification of the relevant activities for purposes of Commerce Clause scrutiny. This approach retains meaningful judicial oversight, while avoiding the arbitrary usurpation of congressional authority inherent in the Court's current jurisprudence.


The production of social housing projects in Brazil has been criticized for systematically failing to meet the requirements of final users. This criticism comes mainly from post-occupancy evaluation studies carried out by academics. However, most of those studies have focused on the evaluation of housing product attributes, without considering the overall benefits resulting from the project. Due to the complexity of housing products, it is necessary to devise evaluation methods that enable a systematic analysis of the consequences for users. The purpose of this study is to propose a conceptual model that adapts value hierarchy concepts into the social housing context, based on the means-end chain theory. The secondary aim of this study is to propose guidelines for modelling value generation for final users of social housing projects, with the aim of supporting decision making during the product development process. This study was divided into four stages: (a) understanding existing social housing programmes in Brazil; (b) development of the conceptual model for value generation in the social housing context, based on value dimensions proposed in the literature; (c) development of a method for representing value generation in social housing projects; (e) assessment of the proposed solution through the evaluation of a housing project.


The strongest attack against quantum mechanics came in 1935 in the form of a paper by Einstein, Podolsky and Rosen. It was argued that the theory of quantum mechanics could not be called a complete theory of Nature, for every element of reality is not represented in the formalism as such. The authors then put forth a proposition: we must search for a theory where, upon knowing everything about the system, including possible hidden variables, one could make precise predictions concerning elements of reality. This project was ultimatly doomed in 1964 with the work of Bell Bell, who showed that the most general local hidden variable theory could not reproduce correlations that arise in quantum mechanics. There exist mainly three forms of no-go theorems for local hidden variable theories. Although almost every physicist knows the consequences of these no-go theorems, not every physicist is aware of the distinctions between the three or even their exact definitions. Thus we will discuss here the three principal forms of no-go theorems for local hidden variable theories of Nature. We will define Bell theorems, Bell theorems without inequalities and pseudo-telepathy. A discussion of the similarities and differences will follow.


Clinical isolates (869) and stock cultures (35) of Enterobacteriaceae were tested in parallel with the Minitek and conventional systems. The Minitek correctly identified 822 of 904 cultures. When a deoxyribonuclease plate was inoculated along with the Minitek, it was possible to speciate Enterobacteriaceae within 24 h. False-positive hydrogen sulfide reactions were the major fault with this system. Reactions were clear-cut and easy for technologists to read.


This paper deals with an application of wavelets for feature extraction and classification of machine faults in a real-world machine data analysis environment. We have utilized informative wavelet algorithm to generate wavelets and subsequent coefficients that are used as feature variables for classification and diagnosis of machine faults. Informative wavelets are classes of functions generated from a given analyzing wavelet in a wavelet packet decomposition structure in which for the selection of best wavelets, concepts from information theory, i.e. mutual information and entropy are utilized. Training data are used to construct probability distributions required for the computation of the entropy and mutual information. In our data analysis, we have used machine data acquired from a single cylinder engine under a series of induced faults in a test environment. The objective of the experiment was to evaluate the performance of the informative wavelet algorithm for the accuracy of classification results using a real-world machine data and to examine to what extent the results were influenced by different analyzing wavelets chosen for data analysis. Accuracy of classification results as related to the correlation structure of the coefficients is also discussed in the paper.


This paper is the second in a series treating the Amaranthaceae s.l. in South America. We present here a taxonomic revision of tribes Salicornieae and Suaedeae (subfamily Salicornioideae) based on the study of herbarium material, type specimens, digital images, original publications, and field observations. The South American Amaranthaceae s.l. flora includes Allenrolfea Kuntze, Heterostachys Ung.-Sternb., Mangleticornia P. W. Ball, G. Kadereit & Cornejo, and Salicornia L. from Salicornieae, and Suaeda Forssk. ex J. F. Gmel. from Suaedeae. Lectotypes for seven names are here designated. The distribution of all species is updated based on the revision and proper identification of many herbarium specimens and field observations. A new synonym for Salicornia neei Lag. is here proposed.


The efficacy of nimodipine in decreasing mortality and morbidity of subarachnoid haemorrhage (HSA) is evaluated in 51 patients admitted to the Neurological and Neurosurgery Departments of the Santa Maria Hospital. Reductions of 2 x (0.65, 6.39) of the incidence of ischemia in the total group and of 2.1 x (0.58, 7.79) of mortality in the sub-group with initial severity of less than 4 points of the Hunt score were observed relatively to a comparable group of patients previously admitted who did not receive nimodipine. Randomized clinical trials that tested the effect of nimodipine in the context of HSA are reviewed.


This paper shows that the WTO's Article XXIV increases the likelihood of free trade, but may worsen world welfare when free trade is not reached and customs unions (CUs) form. We consider a model of many countries. Article XXIV prevents a CU from raising its common external tariff, which makes CU formation less attractive and explains why free trade is more likely. In an equilibrium where two CUs do form, one is necessarily larger than the other. We show that Article XXIV has a 'composition effect' on CU formation, whereby CUs are (endogenously) less asymmetric in size so more goods are subject to tariff distortions as they move between CUs; thus Article XXIV may be 'bad' for world welfare.


By incorporating the Taylor-based nonlocal theory of plasticity, the finite element method (FEM) is applied to investigate the effect of particle size on the deformation behavior of the metal matrix composites. In the simulation, the two-dimensional plane strain and random distribution multi-particles model are used. It is shown that, at a fixed particle volume fraction, there is a close relationship between the particle size and the deformation behavior of the composites. The yield strength and plastic work hardening rate of the composites increase with decreasing particle size. The predicted stress-strain behaviors of the composites are qualitative agreement with the experimental results.


In its report 'Engineering: Issues, Challenges and Opportunities for Development' UNESCO (2010) identified a need to 'transform engineering education, ... to emphasize relevance and a problem-solving approach to engineering' particularly in developing countries. The potential rate of growth in conventional universities is limited and many look towards online, distance learning as a mechanism for addressing the rapidly growing shortage of graduates. But the limited range of online opportunities for undergraduates to develop and practise practical skills leads to scepticism that distance learning is viable in engineering. The Open University has recently been awarded £1 million to create the Wolfson Open Science Laboratory, 'a global centre at the cutting edge of practical science teaching - operated entirely online' (Open University, 2012). The University is committed to extending the Centre to include engineering. But there is, as yet, no widely-shared agreement over the role of practical work in the education of engineers that could lead to a strategy for such an initiative to gain worldwide acceptance (Feisel and Rosa, 2005). Movements such as CDIO (CDIO, 2012) have emphasised practical, problem-solving skills as the focus for effective engineering education but their approaches often present challenges for large-scale distance learning. If the benefits in scale and reach of online distance education are to be exploited to dramatically increase the supply of engineering graduates, there is an urgent need to develop a consensus on the role of practical learning activities in engineering education. This workshop will provide a forum to explore these and related issues.


ABSTRACT Noonan syndrome (NS) is a disorder causing symptoms like short stature, characteristic facial features, congenital heart disease, possible mental retardation, and pragmatic difficulties. This study describes the pragmatic skills in NS and discusses the linguistic profile of 17 informants aged 6–15 years, by comparing the participants' scores on the Children's Communication Checklist, 2nd edition (CCC-2) (Bishop, 2011), with a group of typically developing children of matching age and gender. Language impairments were common in the NS group. The results show that children and adolescents with NS do not have one coherent pragmatic profile. However, 76.5% of the participants displayed communication impairments, and pragmatic skills were significantly lower than in the control group.


B U D A P E S T, H U N G A R Y — Infliximab, in combination with methotrexate, shows promising results in reducing the severity of psoriatic spondyloarthropathy, based on the results of a 2-year open-label study presented at the 4th International Congress on Autoimmunity. Most of the 16 patients in the study showed improvement on several measures, according to Juan J. Scali, M.D., of Durand Hospital, Buenos Aires. The patients in the study—nine men and seven women with a mean age of 38 years—had severe manifestations of the disease, little or no response to methotrexate, and a mean disease duration of 16 years. Seven patients were positive for HLA-B27, which is associated with ankylosing spondylitis. Patients were given 5 mg of infliximab (Remicade) per kg of body weight as an intravenous infusion at baseline, at 2 and 6 weeks, and then once a month. They were continued on methotrexate 15 mg/wk. Patients were evaluated using the psoriatic arthritis response criteria (PsARC) and the American College of Rheumatology (ACR) response criteria (20, 50, and 70). With PsARC, a patient must show improvement in two of the four measures— at least 30% reduction of tender joint count, at least a 30% reduction of swollen joint count, a decrease of at least 1 point on the physician global assessment, and a decrease of at least 1 point on the patient global assessment on a visual analog scale—to be a considered a responder. When the ACR response criteria are used, the patient must show a 20%, 50%, or 70% improvement in tender joint count, swollen joint count, and three of five other measures—patient assessment, physician assessment, erythrocyte sedimentation rate, pain scale, or functional questionnaire. At the end of 24 months, 88%, 56%, and 31% of patients responded to treatment using the ACR 20, 50, and 70. With PsARC, 88% of patients had improvement at the end of the first year and 74% at the end of the second year. Psoriasis activity was also measured using the Psoriasis Area and Severity Index (PASI). Patients were considered to have active disease with a PASI score of 16 or greater. At 1 year, 90% of patients showed an improvement in PASI scores, which dropped to 80% at 2 years. Also, 70% of patients had a favorable opinion of their response at the end of 2 years. Infliximab had good safety overall; no patients had allergic reactions or adverse events, he said. Dr. Scali noted that the best results were seen at around 20 months. He recommended 6-12 months of infliximab therapy, followed by methotrexate alone. ■ Combination Demonstrates Promise in Psoriatic Arthritis


Using a randomised controlled trial to assess efficacy, a 'novel' pre-surgical exerciseconditioning (P–SEC) programme was investigated in this thesis addressing the knowledge gap in the literature regarding pre-surgical conditioning for improving objective measures of physical performance (neuromuscular and sensorimotor) and self-reported outcomes in patients waiting to undergo total knee arthroplasty (TKA) surgery. Crosseducation (CE) effects measured in the untrained limb following the P–SEC intervention were also investigated.A single-centre, assessor-blinded randomised controlled study was conducted over an 11-month period. Forty-six participants waiting to undergo TKA surgery were enrolled and randomised into one of three groups (two intervention groups (P–SECIPSI (n = 15) and P–SECCONTRA (n = 17), in which the knee extensors of the leg awaiting surgery and the non-surgical leg, respectively, were trained) and one control group (n = 14), which received usual care practice of no training). Seventeen participants (out of 46) had been lost-to-follow-up. Participants underwent evaluation at four pre-surgery assessments: ≈ 12 weeks (T1), 2 weeks (T2), 1 week (T3) pre-surgery, week of surgery (T4) and at 6 weeks post surgery (T5). Objective measures of neuromuscular (electromechanical delay (EMD), rate of force development (RFD), peak force (PF)) and sensorimotor (force error (FE)) performance outcomes revealed statistically significant group x time x leg interactions with moderate to large gains (12% – 37%; ES = ≤ 2.0; p < 0.05) in the respective outcomes. No statistically significant (p > 0.05) group x time interactions were found for the patient reported outcomes as measured by the Oxford Knee Score (OKS), Knee injure and Osteoarthritis Score (KOOS), 36-Item Short Form Health Survey (SF-36v2TM), Pain Self Efficacy Questionnaire (PSEQ), Performance Profile (PP) and International Physical Activity Questionnaire (IPAQ). Small but approaching moderate (4% – 11%; ES = 0.1 – 0.4; p < 0.05) CE-related improvements in the physical performance outcomes (EMD, RFD, PF and FE) were also reported in the untrained limb. This thesis provides evidence that a novel approach to P–SEC which elicited statistically significant improvements in physical performance outcomes (neuromuscular and sensorimotor) in patients waiting for TKA surgery compared to a usual care control group. Furthermore, this study is the first of its kind to evaluate and confirm the presence of CE in this cohort of patients. The novel characteristics of P–SEC highlight the importance for revisiting contemporary pre-surgical conditioning. Limitations to the study included sample' size attrition, with the potential for bias and inflated rates of Type II error. The thesis presents possible directions into the use of this 'novel' intervention in clinical practices and in other joint related conditions.


Infants' sensitivity to ostensive signals, such as direct eye contact and infant-directed speech, is well documented in the literature. We investigated how infants interpret such signals by assessing common processing mechanisms devoted to them and by measuring neural responses to their compounds. In Experiment 1, we found that ostensive signals from different modalities display overlapping electrophysiological activity in 5-month-old infants, suggesting that these signals share neural processing mechanisms independently of their modality. In Experiment 2, we found that the activation to ostensive signals from different modalities is not additive to each other, but rather reflects the presence of ostension in either stimulus stream. These data support the thesis that ostensive signals obligatorily indicate to young infants that communication is directed to them.