For the Otto Wagner area which is situated in the west of Vienna, one pavilion is selected to be refurbished for sustainable and energy-efficient construction to simulate the thermal and energy performance of the building. The selected pavilion has been redesigned to be used as a student residence while preserving the cultural heritage. A dynamic building simulation model is used to improve the energy efficiency and livelihood of Otto Wagner area with the main focus on heritage conservation. The pavilion of four levels is re-designed according to the proposed regulations of plus energy university building to become a student residence. The energy demand can be decreased while preserving the buildings' heritage requirements. Various changes are made through Sefaira tool in SketchUp model: optimization of the U-values of roof, walls and floor, addition of different layers of sustainable energy efficient insulation materials to decrease the overall energy demand, vacuum insulated panels and rigid cellulose board used to maintain existing roofline and calcium silicate boards to allow for vapor permeability in the brick walls, all working towards achieving the standards of zero energy buildings in Austria. The specific energy demands for heating, cooling and lighting are decreased in the proposed model to reduce the overall energy demand. The main goal of this study is achieving a plus energy district for the entire Otto Wagner area by improving the building envelope and integrating renewable energies using Polysun simulation tool. The selected building achieved the standards of zero energy buildings in Austria by optimizing the energy performance and to assess the thermal comfort in the building, both natural ventilation and mechanical ventilation are used to reduce the summer loads.


Background T1 and T2 cardiac magnetic resonance (CMR) mapping methods have shown promise for infarct characterisation in patients with acute ST-elevation myocardial infarction (STEMI). Non-ST elevation MI is typically a sub-acute problem with infarct characteristics that are less readily defined. We prospectively studied the diagnostic accuracy of two novel (T1, T2 mapping) and one established (T2 STIR) CMR methods for imaging the ischaemic area-at-risk (AAR) in patients with a recent NSTEMI. Methods NSTEMI patients underwent contrast-enhanced CMR at 3.0 Tesla (T) after percutaneous coronary intervention. The presence/extent of infarction was assessed with late gadolinium enhancement imaging (Gadovist, 0.1 mmol/kg). The infarct-related territory (IRA) was identified independently using a combination of angiographic, ECG and clinical findings. AAR was assessed with T1, T2 and T2 STIR methods by 2 observers who were blind to all of the clinical data. Comparisons were made between CMR and clinical findings. Results Seventy-three NSTEMI patients (mean age 57 ± 10 yrs, 78% male) underwent 3.0 T MRI. The mean infarct size was 5.5 ± 7.2% of left ventricular (LV) volume. The AAR T1 and T2 times were 1323 ± 68 ms and 57 ± 5 ms, respectively. The extent of AAR (% of LV volume) estimated with T1 (15.8 ± 10.6%) and T2 maps (16.0 ± 11.8%) was similar (p = 0.838), and moderately well correlated (r = 0.82, p < 0.001). The 95% limits of agreement for mean AAR estimated with T1 versus T2 maps were -13% and 13%. Mean AAR estimated with T2 STIR (7.8 ± 11.6%) was lower than that estimated with T1 (p < 0.001) or T2 maps (p < 0.001). There were moderate correlations between AAR estimated with T1 maps vs. T2 STIR (r = 0.54, p < 0.001), and AAR estimated with T2 maps vs. T2 STIR (r = 0.46, p < 0.001). The 95% limits of agreement for mean myocardial AAR estimated with T1 maps vs. T2 STIR were -28% and 12%, and for T2 maps vs. T2 STIR -32% and 16%. The IRA was correctly identified in 52 patients (71%) when with T1 CMR, 56 (77%) with T2 CMR, and 32 (44%) with T2 STIR CMR. The diagnostic accuracies of T1 and T2 CMR for identification of the IRA were similar (p = 0.125) whereas T1 CMR and T2 CMR had higher diagnostic accuracy vs. T2 STIR (both p < 0.001). Inter-observer agreement for IRA assignment was moderately high when analysed with T1 (κ = 0.790, p < 0.001) and T2 (κ = 0.794, p < 0.001) maps, but low with T2 STIR (κ = 0.555, p < 0.001). Conclusion T1 and T2 maps have higher diagnostic accuracy than T2 STIR maps, implying superior clinical utility with T1 and T2 CMR for infarct characterisation in NSTEMI patients.


Multi-class text classification is one of the key problems in machine learning and natural language processing. Emerging neural networks deal with the problem using a multi-output softmax layer and achieve substantial progress, but they do not explicitly learn the correlation among classes. In this paper, we use a multi-task framework to address multi-class classification, where a multi-class classifier and multiple binary classifiers are trained together. Moreover, we employ adversarial training to distinguish the class-specific features and the class-agnostic features. The model benefits from better feature representation. We conduct experiments on two large-scale multi-class text classification tasks and demonstrate that the proposed architecture outperforms baseline approaches.


OBJECTIVES
We show the effectiveness of treatment with continuous intrathecal baclofen infusion in a case of hereditary generalized dystonia refractory to anticholinergics, tetrabenazine, pimozide, L-dopa, benzodiazepines and thalamotomy.

CLINICAL CASE
A 26 years old female patient, when she was 11 years old began with torsion dystonia in her left feet, that progressively worsened to involve her entire body. She had painful spasms. She had four brothers, three of them with dystonia and one healthy. Her uncle grandfather had similar symptoms. Complementary explorations to reject secondary origin was negatives. She was treated with high and progressive dosages of anticholinergics, pimozide, tetrabenazine, benzodiazepines, L-dopa and thalamotomy without improvement. Underwent intrathecal baclofen test dosing, we used 25, 50, 100 micrograms/day, the last one with improvement during 10 hours. A pump was inserted with an initial dose of 220 micrograms/day. After pump insertion, baclofen dosage was gradually increased to 450 micrograms/day. She had a great improvement in right part of her body and less in her left body. Painful spasms had disappeared.

CONCLUSION
We propose continuous baclofen intrathecal infusion pump for patients with severe torsion dystonia that not response to ordinal treatment.


Nitrous oxide (N2O) is the third most abundant anthropogenous greenhouse gas (after carbon dioxide and methane), with a long atmospheric lifetime and a continuously increasing concentration due to human activities, making it an important gas to monitor. In this work, we present a new method to retrieve N2O concentration profiles (with up to two degrees of freedom) from each cloud-free satellite observation by the Infrared Atmospheric Sounding Interferometer (IASI), using spectral micro-windows in the N2O ν3 band, the Radiative Transfer for TOVS (RTTOV) tools and the Tikhonov regularization scheme. A time series of ten years (2011–2020) of IASI N2O profiles and integrated partial columns has been produced and validated with collocated ground-based Network for the Detection of Atmospheric Composition Change (NDACC) and Total Carbon Column Observing Network (TCCON) data. The importance of consistency in the ancillary data used for the retrieval for generating consistent time series has been demonstrated. The Nitrous Oxide Profiling from Infrared Radiances (NOPIR) N2O partial columns are of very good quality, with a positive bias of 1.8 to 4% with respect to the ground-based data, which is less than the sum of uncertainties of the compared values. At high latitudes, the comparisons are a bit worse, due to either a known bias in the ground-based data, or to a higher uncertainty in both ground-based and satellite retrievals.


Social Democratic parties have long been steady pioneers of European democracy, but over the past decade they have suffered a humiliating collapse. It is commonly asserted that European countries have entered a classless society. Subsequently, mainstream left parties adopted broad electoral strategies to appeal widely to the median voter, exemplified by the Blair-Schröder Third Way. Electoral backlash following the British and German social democratic party's 1990s neoliberal shift, their approach to globalization as well as their handling of the financial crisis and refugee crisis have eroded their popularity. Subsequent frustration with the political establishment is exemplified by the cultural backlash thesis. However, a countermovement signified by postmaterialism and social liberalism calls for transformative social and political change. The two convictions clash on binary issues, exacerbating a righteous divide between sociocultural liberals and conservatives, recently popularized as the "anywheres" and the "somewheres". This paper puts forth the necessity for social democratic parties to re-engage with the cleavage politics of today. This is particularly important as today's cleavages are largely ideologically driven. Questions of electoral strategy, ideological positioning and mobilisation tactics are contested intra-party. Attention is paid to Corbyn's Labour, whose move towards traditionalism at first earned electoral support, only to be discredited in 2019. In comparison, the German SPD embraced centrism in 2017 and were penalized for it. They must now respond and offer a strategic alternative following competition from the Greens and Die Linke.


The aqueous environment of ancient Mars is of significant interest because of evidence suggesting the presence of a large body of liquid water on the surface at ~4 Ga, which differs significantly from the modern dry and oxic Martian environment. In this study, we examined the Fe-bearing minerals in the 4 Ga Martian meteorite, Alan Hills (ALH) 84001, to reveal the ancient aqueous environment present during the formation of this meteorite. Extended X-ray absorption fine structure (EXAFS) analysis was conducted to determine the Fe species in ALH carbonate and silica glass with a high spatial resolution (~1–2 μm). The μ-EXAFS analysis of ALH carbonate showed that the Fe species in the carbonate were dominated by a magnesite-siderite solid solution. Our analysis suggests the presence of smectite group clay in the carbonate, which is consistent with the results of previous thermochemical modeling. We also found serpentine in the silica glass, indicating the decrease of water after the formation of carbonate, at least locally. The possible allochthonous origin of the hematite in the carbonate suggests a patchy redox environment on the ancient Martian surface.


Injuries to the central nervous system, including craniocerebral trauma and peripheral nerve injuries, are dealt wtth well and concisely. An extremely well-constructed review on cerebral and spinal tumours is presented. Once again, the author's dynamic approach is reflected in his appraisal of the present status of conservative versus surgical interference in aneurysmal rupture and heemorrhage. His chapter on vascular disease of the central nervous system is thoroughly up to date, and he gives the current view on the hremodynamics of the carotid and vertebral-basilar system. His discussion of recurrent cerebral ischremia is timely.


Recent cognitive and evolutionary research focusing on the relationship between religion and morality investigates the various mechanisms religious systems use to regulate human social behaviour. One outstanding question regards what defines and shifts in-group/out-group boundaries. Previous studies suggest that beliefs in moralistic and punitive gods may contribute to the expansion of the social circle beyond kin and kith, though few have assessed the role moral cognition plays in this expansion. Using the moral foundations questionnaire (MFQ) and two behavioural economic games among Hindu participants from the ethnically and religiously diverse island of Mauritius, we conducted two field experiments to assess prosocial behaviour. The first measures biased rule-breaking (Random Allocation Game), and the second measures prosocial giving (Dictator Game). We predicted that the higher the MFQ binding score, the higher the donation to distant anonymous recipients. We report on the effects of moral profiles; and quantitative aspects of religious beliefs (degree of belief) and practices (frequency of ritual participation) on prosocial behaviour.


Abstract In this work we present a series of experiments that examine the relationship between oxygen fugacity and Cr valence ratio in olivine grown from a basaltic liquid. These experiments are specifically targeted for an olivine-rich martian basalt composition that was modeled after the bulk chemistry of the meteorite Yamato 980459 (i.e., Y-98). The chromium valence ratio in the olivine crystals was measured with X‑ray absorption near edge spectroscopy (XANES) at the Advanced Photon Source, Argonne National Laboratory. Results from the XANES measurements indicate that the ratio of divalent to trivalent Cr in the olivine is not only systematically correlated with fO2, but is also reflective of the molar Cr3+/Cr2+ in the silicate liquid from which it grew. In this way, measurements of Cr valence in olivine phenocrysts can yield important information about the oxygen fugacity and molar Cr3+/Cr2+ of its parental liquid in the absence of a quenched melt phase. Although the results from the experiments presented in this work specifically apply to the Y-98 parental melt, the concepts and XANES analytical techniques discussed within the text present a novel, generalized methodology that may be applicable to any olivine-bearing basalt. Furthermore, the XANES-based measurements are made on a micrometer-scale, thus potential changes of the Cr3+/Cr2+ in the melt during crystallization could be examined with a great deal of spatial detail.


The purpose of this paper was to provide a review of the theory of Optimization, in particular non-linear and quadratic programming, and the algorithms suitable for solving both convex and non-convex programming problems. Optimization problems arise in a wide variety of fields and many can be effectively modelled with linear equations. However, there are problems for which linear models are not sufficient thus creating a need for non-linear systems. This project includes a literature study of the formal theory necessary for understanding optimization and an investigation of the algorithms available for solving of the non-linear programming problem and a special case, namely the quadratic programming problem. It was not the intention of this project to discuss all possible algorithms for solving these programming problem, therefore certain algorithms for solving various programming problems were selected for a detailed discussion in this project. Some of the algorithms were selected arbitrarily, because limited information was available comparing the efficiency of the various algorithms. It was also shown that it is difficult to conclude that one algorithm is better than another as the efficiency of an algorithm greatly depends on the size of the problem, the complexity of an algorithm and many other implementation issues. Optimization problems arise continuously in a wide range of fields and thus create the need for effective methods of solving them. We discuss the fundamental theory necessary for the understanding of optimization problems, with particular programming problems and the algorithms that solve such problems.


ABSTRACT An automated computer aided diagnosis system has been proposed for detection of microcalcification (MC) clusters in mammograms. The proposed system is a whole system including suspicious regions identification, MCs detection, false positive reduction and benign/malign classification. For classification of suspicious microcalcification regions, a multilayer perceptron (MLP) neural network was used with grey level co-occurrence matrix (GLCM) and statistical features.  Then to decrease the false positive classification ratio, we used cascade correlation neural network (CCNN) with grey level run length matrix (GLRLM) features. In the last step, hybrid form of discriminant analysis and support vector machine (SVM) methods were used with GLRLM features for benign/malign classification of detected MC clusters. The open access Mammographic Image Analysis Society (MIAS) database was used for the study. Experimental results show that the proposed algorithm obtained 86% sensitivity, 98.3% specificity and 1.163 FPpI rates for detection an for diagnosis of breast cancer, the obtained sensitivity and specificity values are 100% and 100% respectively. Despite the vision difficulty of MC clusters, the novel system provides very satisfactory results. Furthermore, the developed system is fully automatic whole system which gives outputs as percentages and transformed assessment categories. Keywords: Mammograms, Breast cancer, Computer aided diagnosis, Cascade correlation neural network (CCNN), Grey level co-occurrence matrix ( GLCM), Grey level run length matrix (GLRLM).


The UK's first offshore oil production began in June 1975 from the Argyll Field. In a 17-year period the field produced 72.6 million barrels of sweet, light crude. However, in 1992, production from the field became uneconomic, the field was abandoned, all wells were plugged and the facilities removed. In January 2002 two new oil companies, Tuscan Energy and Acorn Oil and Gas, were awarded the licence to redevelop the Argyll Field – now renamed Ardmore. A field development plan was submitted to the DTI and approval granted in October 2002. The first Ardmore well was drilled in the summer of 2003 and 'second' oil flowed in September 2003. Ardmore is a geologically complex field with four distinct reservoirs, of which the three oldest appear to be in both pressure and fluid communication. During the 'Argyll' production years (1975–1992), vuggy, karstified, Zechstein carbonates were then interpreted to have delivered about 80% of their oil in place. Rather than reflecting an error in volumetrics (underestimated STOIIP) the oil is interpreted to have come from the underlying Rotliegend and Devonian sandstone reservoirs. Natural aquifer support was significant for the Rotliegend, and probably the Zechstein reservoirs, while the volumetrically dominant Devonian reservoir produced via pressure depletion. Recovery from Jurassic sandstones on the west flank of Ardmore was minimal. Vertical and low deviation subsea wells tied back to a floating production system were used for the initial development of Argyll. As production progressed, the increasing water cut and lower reservoir pressure required artificial lift for most wells. The limited amount of gas available restricted the number of wells which could be produced. There were several wells drilled late in field life which tested oil using nitrogen gas lift but which were abandoned without being produced due to the restrictions of the gas lift system. Argyll was abandoned in 1992 with an average water cut of about 70%. Detailed subsurface studies, integrating the geology, geophysics and petrophysics with the 17 years of dynamic data, have led to a better understanding of the field performance and have allowed new development targets to be identified. The redevelopment of the field targets a combination of attic oil in Zechstein, bypassed oil in the Rotliegend, resegregated oil in the Zechstein and Rotliegend and unproduced but proven oil in the Devonian.


Objective: Children born small for gestational age (SGA) are at risk of future obesity and associated comorbidities. Therefore the identification of risk factors and novel biomarkers which are associated with this risk are needed for early detection and to improve preventive strategies. Spexin (SPX), a novel neuropeptide that is involved in the regulation of obesity and fat metabolism, is a candidate biomarker for predicting obesity and related comorbidities at an early age. The aim of this study was to investigate serum levels of SPX in term infants born small, appropriate, and large for gestational age (LGA) and its association with newborn anthropometric measurements. Methods: One hundred and twenty term newborn babies classified as SGA, appropriate for gestational age (AGA), or LGA and their mothers were included. SPX, leptin and visfatin were measured in cord blood and maternal serum by enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay. Results: Fifty-six (46.7%) neonates were girls and 64 (53.3%) were boys. The mean birth weight was 3170.70±663 g, birth length was 48.9±2.79 cm, and head circumference was 34.5±1.67 cm. Birth weights, lengths, and head circumferences of the neonates in the SGA, AGA, and LGA groups were significantly different. Cord blood SPX and leptin levels in the SGA groups were significantly lower than those of both the LGA and AGA groups. Cord blood visfatin levels were significantly lower in the AGA group than the LGA and SGA groups. Maternal SPX levels of SGA babies were significantly lower than those of the mothers in both the LGA and AGA groups, but no significant difference was observed between the SGA and LGA groups. Maternal visfatin levels of the AGA babies were significantly higher than the maternal levels of SGA and LGA groups. There was no difference in terms of maternal leptin levels. Cord blood SPX and leptin levels were positively correlated with birth weight, length and head circumference. Birth weight increased significantly in line with maternal pregestational body mass index. Conclusion: The lowest SPX levels were found in the SGA babies and cord SPX level was significantly correlated with newborn length, weight, and head circumference.


This paper discusses Laudan´s claims (1981) that neither reference nor approximate truth explain the success of science as some realists have maintained; that the main realists theses about conceptual change and scientific progress are wanting, and that the history of science decisively confutes naturalistic scientific realist theses. Laudan´s arguments are examined in detail and it is shown that there are possible realist answers to his objections, provided a different view of scientific theories than the syntactic one normally accepted by naturalistic realists is assumed. This alternative view must include the notion of model as a central component of scientific theories, as developed e.g. by Harre (1970). It is also argued that Laudan´s arguments are based upon too narrow a conception of reference. It is shown that a more elaborated notion, e.g. that suggested by Kitcher (1978), can fruitfully be used by realists to explain convergence and also to rebut Laudan´s claim that there are theories, e.g. flogisto or ether theories, whose central terms did not refer but were nonetheless successful. The alternative view of reference sketched here according to Kitcher shows that some tokens of terms like 'flogisto' and 'eter' as used by the original flogisto and ether theorists did have genuine reference. The paper goes on to argue against the naturalistic idea that reference and approximate truth alone can explain why theories are accepted by scientists and why them follow, as a matter of fact, a retentionist methodology. Laudan shares the naturalistic idea that this is an empirical hypothesis, and so he tries to refute it on the basis of historical examples. The paper argues that this naturalistic view will not do. A broader theory of science is required which, besides realist theses, should develope adequate concepts to deal with the social factors of science; e.g. experimental practices, communication processes, exercises of power through them, etc. It is advocated that a theory of science of this type should be developed in order to defend realism. But then, most of the naturalistic premisses shared by realists and antirealists should be abandoned. An important consequence is that history of science, although not irrelevant for the realism-antirrealism debate, cannot be taken as a basis of neutral, hard facts, against which theories of science can founder. On the contrary, historical studies of science will necessary presuppose a theory of science. Therefore scientific realism must be seen as a philosophical doctrine to be disputed via philosophical arguments, and the idea that it is an empirical hypothesis should be abandoned. [L.O.]


Complex systems and their analysis, construction, management or application are the motivation of all articles in this issue of CSIMQ. Different perspectives exist on what actually causes "complexity" in systems. In systems theory, a widely spread view is that complex systems have many components with emergent behavior, i.e. the large number and the dynamics of components are decisive. In business informatics, the complexity of information systems is attributed to their socio-technical nature, which acknowledges the interaction between the human actors and the information technology in an enterprise. Understanding the context of complex systems or their components is supported by modeling and is a key aspect of preparing organizational solutions. Models do not remove the complexity of the real world but help to understand it and to design and develop solutions. All articles in this issue are in some respect concerned with models or modeling. The articles also reflect recent trends in industry and society, such as digital transformation and applications of artificial intelligence, and show that these trends will not necessarily reduce complexity in systems but rather require the combination of proven approaches, such as modeling, and new methods for managing this complexity.


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Aim: Natural materials have advantages over synthetic materials as pharmaceuticals because they are nontoxic, less expensive, and easily available. Furthermore, they can be modified to obtain customized materials for drug delivery systems better or equivalent to synthetic products that are commercially available. The present investigation aimed at the optimization of controlled release hydrogel microsphere of metformin hydrochloride prepared with bora rice flour (BRF), mucilage of Dillenia indica fruits, and mucilage of Abelmoschus esculentus in combination. Materials and Methods: Physical, mucoadhesive, and in vitro drug release properties were studied. Validation of the optimization process, selection of optimized batch, and stability study of optimized batch were also among the objectives of this study. The response surface approach was used for optimization process. The experimental values were compared with the predicted values, and percentage errors were calculated. Results and Discussion: In the statistical optimization process, the models for the selected response variables were significant. It was observed that there was variable influence of the concentration of the independent variables (BRF and mucilage) on the responses. Mucilage exhibited pronounced effect on the properties of microspheres than BRF. However, the observed effect was the resultant effect of the influence of individual variables on microspheres. Conclusion: In this study, much deviation was not of the experimental values from the predicted values


Apple ( Malus Sylvestris Mill.) is annual crop which come from Asian area of West with tropical sub climate. In Indonesia, apple crop represent one of the horticulture commodity getting attention to be developed by because representing commodity having high price and to the number of society plant horticulture crop one of them is apple crop in various area.
But at some years lately Stone apple owning four varietas ( manalagi, beauty rome, anna, and wangling) shall no longger earn to be exeeded to become primadona. Started since year 2002 strarting sigh all farmer [regarding/ hit] the existence of degradation of production.
Climate represent one of the important factor in determining efficacy of farming or production but still less is getting of attention which is big to be compared to other factor like crop and land;ground. As a result research or apresiasi about climate less, though if existence of climate earn other optimal such as those which hence becoming worthwhile source to farmer. In the situation attitude hence activity of climate data analysis and also interprestasi require to be [done/conducted] to climate information earn didayagunakan so that can improve result of production.
Target of this research is to know influence some climate element to apple crop productivity.

In this research of location determined to intend in District Of Bumiaji Countryside of Giripurno and Countryside of Giripurno Municipality Batu, Province East Java because the area represent sentra produce apple in Town Batu. This Research is [done/conducted] in June until September 2005. Appliance which [is] used in this research is software ( MS Excel software), enquette ( kuisioner), measuring instrument and stationery.
Materialss which used in this research : climate data, data conservancy of crop, result of interview with responder owning apple crop which have ( 0 – 20 thn).
From result of correlation analysis known that do not all climate element influence result of Apple, only temperature climate element, rain day and speed of wind. Of Picture 7 seen that growth of diameter and is wide [of] tree kanopi closely related, with fast growth happened from age 2 until 6 year. Tardy growth later;then after Apple old age 8 year.
Result of test compare ( Tables of 1) growth among Countryside of Tulungrejo ( 1200 dpl m) and Countryside of Giripurno ( 750 dpl m) indicating that growth of bar diameter in countryside of Giripurno compared to bigger of diameter in Countryside of Tulungrejo, specially for crop to old age 2 – 12 year. While for Wide growth of Kanopi difference of height of place do not seen.
Pursuant to result of solution and perception of analysis for the study of agroklimat in Stone Batu, hence earning in concluding as follows :
1. Growth apple tree bar diameter in bigger Giripurno compared to in Tulungrejo
2. Diameter Apple which grow in Giripurno and of Tulungrejo much the same to at tree age ( 2-20 year)
3. Produksi apple in district of Bumiaji influenced by climate factor especially mean temperature, maximal temperature, rain day, and speed of wind while production per tree at apple crop influenced by mean temperature, maximal rain and speed of wind.


In this article, I approached the concept of natural law, starting with the analysis of some of its first definitions developed by Cicero. Moving toward recent history, I demonstrated the usefulness of this concept in the context of dealing with legal systems specific to dictatorial regimes. Next, I presented arguments proving the existence of natural law and I determined its content, referring to the general principles included in it, which underpin positive law, and to its importance in terms of ensuring respect for fundamental rights. In the final part of this article, I analyzed the confrontation between jusnaturalism and legal positivism in order to highlight even more clearly the features of natural law. Last but not least, I stressed the importance of choosing a jusnaturalistic legal mindset in order to prevent and fight against legal systems that are manifestly contrary to natural law.


While high-rise mass-timber construction is booming worldwide as a more sustainable alternative to mainstream cement and steel, in South America, there are still many gaps to overcome regarding sourcing, design, and environmental performance. The aim of this study was to assess the carbon emission footprint of using mass-timber products to build a mid-rise low-energy residential building in central Chile (CCL). The design presented at a solar decathlon contest in Santiago was assessed through lifecycle analysis (LCA) and compared to an equivalent mainstream concrete building. Greenhouse gas emissions, expressed as global warming potential (GWP), from cradle-to-usage over a 50-year life span, were lower for the timber design, with 131 kg CO2 eq/m2 of floor area (compared to 353 kg CO2 eq/m2) and a biogenic carbon storage of 447 tons of CO2 eq/m2 based on sustainable forestry practices. From cradle-to-construction, the embodied emissions of the mass-timber building were 42% lower (101 kg CO2 eq/m2) than those of the equivalent concrete building (167 kg CO2 eq/m2). The embodied energy of the mass-timber building was 37% higher than that of its equivalent concrete building and its envelope design helped reduce space-conditioning emissions by as much as 83%, from 187 kg CO2 eq/m2 as estimated for the equivalent concrete building to 31 kg CO2 eq/m2 50-yr. Overall, provided that further efforts are made to address residual energy end-uses and end-of-life waste management options, the use of mass-timber products offers a promising potential in CCL for delivering zero carbon residential multistory buildings.


Tomorrow's massive-scale IoT sensor networks are poised to drive uplink traffic demand, especially in areas of dense deployment. To meet this demand, however, network designers leverage tools that often require accurate estimates of Channel State Information (CSI), which incurs a high overhead and thus reduces network throughput. Furthermore, the overhead generally scales with the number of clients, and so is of special concern in such massive IoT sensor networks. While prior work has used transmissions over one frequency band to predict the channel of another frequency band on the same link, this paper takes the next step in the effort to reduce CSI overhead: predict the CSI of a nearby but distinct link. We propose Cross-Link Channel Prediction (CLCP), a technique that leverages multi-view representation learning to predict the channel response of a large number of users, thereby reducing channel estimation overhead further than previously possible. CLCP's design is highly practical, exploiting existing transmissions rather than dedicated channel sounding or extra pilot signals. We have implemented CLCP for two different Wi-Fi versions, namely 802.11n and 802.11ax, the latter being the leading candidate for future IoT networks. We evaluate CLCP in two large-scale indoor scenarios involving both line-of-sight and non-line-of-sight transmissions with up to 144 different 802.11ax users and four different channel bandwidths, from 20 MHz up to 160 MHz. Our results show that CLCP provides a 2× throughput gain over baseline and a 30% throughput gain over existing prediction algorithms.


This review intended to update the results of combination two burst, type III and V in one solar flare event. Magnetic reconnection of both burst will be explained theoretically. Both bursts are found on 19th September 2011 associated with Cclass flares on active region 1295. We concentrate on the mechanism of evolution the bursts which play a role in the event. It is found that type V burst appeared with five second after type III. There are a few sunspot regions on the solar disk but most are magnetically simple and have remained rather quiet. An interpretation of this new result depends critically on the number of sunspot and the role of active region 1295. Sunspot number is increases up to 144 with seven sunspots can be observed. During that event, the speed of solar wind exceeds 433.8 km/second with 2.0 g/cm3 density of proton in solar corona. Currently, radio flux is also high up to 150 sfu. Solar flare type C6 is continuously been observed in x-ray region for 24 hours since 1541 UT and a maximum C1 is detected on 1847 UT. Although the sources of both bursts are same, the direction and ejection explode differently. It is believed that the ejection of particles in type III burst is more compare type V. In summary, the behavior of type III should be critically understood in order to predict the formation of type V burst.


Laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy (LIBS) is currently considered one of the most active research areas in the field of analytical spectroscopy. Over the years, scientists and engineers have focused on the development of LIBS as a tool for chemical measurements, with significant efforts in developing new devices, methods, and data processing algorithms to improve the analytical performance of LIBS. In combination with tailored excitation methods using multipulse, multiwavelength laser systems, substantial improvements in detection power, representativeness, accuracy, and sampling throughput have been achieved. Development of LIBS instruments with extended capabilities for energy delivery to the sample using ultrashort laser pulses has been undertaken, which has permitted a better understanding of the underlying issues of LIBS; notably, laser interaction with matter, plasma dynamics, and properties. As a result, LIBS has emerged as a powerful alternative for chemical analysis in a wide front of applications, from geological exploration to industrial inspection, from environmental monitoring to biomedical and forensic analysis, from cultural heritage to homeland security. While LIBS certainly has practical utility in many laboratory-based chemical measurements, the true potential of this technology becomes apparent when it is used for applications inaccessible to more conventional analytical techniques. Inspection of the elemental composition of distant objects and LIBS analysis underwater solids constitute examples of the exclusive capabilities of LIBS. Since detailed account of plasma fundamentals, instruments, methods and applications of LIBS can be found in the extensive literature on the topic, this viewpoint focuses on the key features that contributed to the influential, problem-solving character of LIBS. We take the perspective of our own work in the field and discuss current achievements in standoff LIBS methods, underwater solids inspection, and single nanoparticle analysis. We then introduce the strategies used for improving the detection power of LIBS and discuss the use of LIBS in combination with other spectroscopic tools. Finally, we identify challenges that merit further attention, by underlining some possible ways to solve the most common impediments for advancement of LIBS towards an enabling analytical technology. Standoff LIBS


Astrophysical observations give convincing evidence for a vast non-baryonic component, the so-called dark matter, accounting for over 20% of the overall content of our Universe. Direct dark matter search experiments explore the possibility of interactions of these dark matter particles with ordinary baryonic matter via elastic scattering resulting in single nuclear recoils. The ZEPLIN–III detector operated on the basis of a dualphase (liquid/gas) xenon target, recording events in two separate response channels – scintillation and ionisation. These allow discrimination between electron recoils (from background radiation) and the signal expected from Weakly Interacting Massive Particle (WIMP) elastic scatters. Following a productive first exposure, the detector was upgraded with a new array of ultra-low background photomultiplier tubes, reducing the electron recoil background by over an order of magnitude. A second major upgrade to the detector was the incorporation of a tonne-scale active veto detector system, surrounding the WIMP target. Calibration and science data taken in coincidence with ZEPLIN–III showed rejection of up to 30% of the dominant electron recoil background and over 60% of neutron induced nuclear recoils. Data taking for the second science run finished in May 2011 with a total accrued raw fiducial exposure of 1,344 kg·days. With this extensive data set, from over 300 days of run time, a limit on the spin-independent WIMP-nucleon cross-section of 4.8×10−8 pb near 50 GeV/c2 WIMP mass with 90% confidence was set. This result combined with the first science run of ZEPLIN–III excludes the scalar cross-section above 3.9×10−8 pb. Studying the background data taken by the veto detector allowed a calculation of the neutron yield induced by high energy cosmic-ray muons in lead of (5.8±0.2)×10−3 neutrons/muon/(g/cm2) for a mean muon energy of 260 GeV. Measurements of this kind are of great importance for large scale direct dark matter search experiments and future rare event searches in general. Finally, this work includes a comprehensive measurement of the energy dependent quenching factor for low energy nuclear recoils in a plastic scintillator, such as from the ZEPLIN–III veto detector, increasing accuracy for future simulation packages featuring large scale plastic scintillator detector systems.


BACKGROUND: Intraneural administration of local anesthetics has been associated with nerve damage. We undertook the present study to investigate histological changes induced by ropivacaine injection into rat sciatic nerve. METHODS: Fifty-four adult male Lewis rats were randomly distributed into 9 groups, 6 animals per group. Fifty microliters of normal saline, 10% phenol, or 0.75% ropivacaine were administered by intrafascicular injection, extrafascicular injection, or extraneural (topical) placement. At 2 weeks, animals were killed and the sciatic nerve at the injection site was evaluated with light microscopy, quantitative histomorphometry, and electron microscopy. RESULTS: On cross-sectional evaluation, extrafascicular ropivacaine injection and extraneural placement of ropivacaine were both associated with damage to the perineurium, with focal demyelination surrounded by edematous endoneurium. Intrafascicular injection of ropivacaine resulted in a wedge-shaped region of demyelination and focal axonal loss with some regeneration, bordered by a region of normally myelinated axons in a background of edematous endoneurium. Extrafascicular injection resulted in more significant damage than extraneural placement of ropivacaine, but less than intrafascicular injection as shown with quantitative histomorphometry. Quantitatively, ropivacaine-injured specimens had significantly lower nerve density than saline-injured specimens. Wallerian degeneration and perineural edema were also demonstrated qualitatively with electron microscopy. CONCLUSIONS: This study demonstrates that, in the rat model, ropivacaine is associated with marked histological abnormality, including edema of the perineurium and axonal destruction with wallerian degeneration, when injected into or extraneurally placed onto a nerve. Extrafascicular injection and extraneural placement were associated with similar, although milder, histological damage than intrafascicular injection. Further work is needed to investigate the functional implications, if any, of the histological abnormalities observed in this study.


A new wideband bandpass filter configuration with input-output cross-coupling is investigated. The new filter is based on a transmission line filter with short-circuited stubs. In order to allow the filter to exhibit high selectivity filtering characteristic and to enhance the group delay with only a few resonators, cross-coupling between the input and output feed lines is introduced. As a result, new symmetrical pairs of transmission zeros are generated at the lower and upper stopbands, leading to a quasi-elliptic function response that improves the passband and out-of-band performances. A general circuit model for the proposed filter is presented and a demonstrator with approximately 48% ripple bandwidth at a midband frequency of 3 GHz is developed. The design is successfully realized in theory and verified by full-wave electromagnetic simulation and the experiment, where excellent agreement is obtained.


Circular RNAs(circRNA) are recently demonstrated to have a close relationship with tumors.To investigate the role of circular RNA in the pathogenesis of salivary adenoid cystic carcinoma(SACC), ten SACC tissues and paired normal submandibular gland(SMG) tissues were collected as the tumor group and the control group. Total RNA was extracted and then measured using ceRNA microarray (including mRNA, lncRNA, and circRNA) and miRNA microarray. Gene Ontology(GO) analysis and Kyoto Encyclopedia of Gene and Genomes (KEGG) pathway analysis were performed in order to investigate the function of the differential expressing genes. The ceRNA regulatory network was constructed to find the core circRNAs. Then the role of circRNA on proliferation was examined in the SACC cell line SACC-83 using CCK-8,qRT-PCR and western blotting, and its roles on migration and invasion were examined using wound healing assay and transwell assay. The results of the microarrays showed that 3792 mRNAs, 7649 lncRNAs, 11553 circRNAs, and 132 miRNAs expressed differentially. The ceRNA regulatory network analysis showed that hsa_circ_0059655 and other 14circRNAs derived from PYGB target on several similar genes by miR-338-3p.Among the 15 circRNAs derived from PYGB, hsa_circ_0059655has the most relationships in the ceRNA network. Furthermore, after hsa_circ_0059655 was knocked down in SACC-83 cells, the expression of hsa-miR-338-3p was up-regulated while CCND1was down-regulated. The proliferation, migration, and invasion of SACC-83 cells also decreased after hsa_circ_0059655 knock-downed.Taken together, the circRNAs derived from PYGB may regulate the tumorigenesis and development of SACC through competing with miR-338-3p.


The perception of prosodic structure (phrasal prominences and boundaries) may depend in part on acoustic cues in the speech signal and in part on utterance meaning as related to syntactic structure and discourse context. In this study we ask if listeners are able to differentially weigh acoustic and meaningbased cues to prosody. We test naive subjects' transcription of prominences and boundaries in spontaneous American English under three different conditions, all of which involve listening to audio recordings and marking prominences and boundaries on a transcript. The three conditions differ in the instructions given to transcribers. In one condition, subjects were instructed to transcribe prominence and boundaries based on meaning criteria, in a second condition they were told to transcribe based on criteria of acoustic salience, and a third condition had less specific instructions, without explicit reference to either meaning-based or acoustic cues. Our results show that subjects perform differently when focusing on meaning than when focusing on acoustics, especially for prominence marking, where partially different sets of words are selected as prominent under the two tasks. Boundary marking is more similar under the two instructions, with acoustic criteria resulting in more listeners marking a given word as pre-boundary, but with boundaries marked largely on the same words in both tasks. With non-specific instructions, performance was similar to that obtained under acoustic-based instructions. We report on agreement rates within and across conditions. This study has implications for models of prosody perception and the methodology of prosodic transcription.


OBJECTIVES
Successful cricothyrotomy is predicated on accurate identification of the cricothyroid membrane (CTM) by palpation of superficial anatomy. However, recent research has indicated that accuracy of the identification of the CTM can be as low as 30%, even in the hands of skilled providers. To date, there are very little data to suggest how to best identify this critical landmark. The objective was to compare three different methods of identifying the CTM.

METHODS
A convenience sample of patients and physician volunteers who met inclusion criteria was consented. The patients were assessed by physician volunteers who were randomized to one of three methods for identifying the CTM (general palpation of landmarks vs. an approximation based on four finger widths vs. an estimation based on overlying skin creases of the neck). Volunteers would then mark the skin with an invisible but florescent pen. A single expert evaluator used ultrasound to identify the superior and inferior borders of the CTM. The variably colored florescent marks were then visualized with ultraviolet light and the accuracy of the various methods was recorded as the primary outcome. Additionally, the time it took to perform each technique was measured. Descriptive statistics and report 95% confidence intervals (CIs) are reported.

RESULTS
Fifty adult patients were enrolled, 52% were female, and mean body mass index was 28 kg/m(2) (95% CI = 26 to 29 kg/m(2) ). The general palpation method was successful 62% of the time (95% CI = 48% to 76%) and took an average of 14 seconds to perform (range = 5 to 45 seconds). In contrast, the four-finger technique was successful 46% of the time (95% CI = 32% to 60%) and took an average of 12 seconds to perform (range = 6 to 40 seconds). Finally, the neck crease method was successful 50% of the time (95% CI = 36% to 64%) and took an average of 11 seconds to perform (range = 5 to 15 seconds).

CONCLUSIONS
All three methods performed poorly overall. All three techniques might potentially be even less accurate in instances where the superficial anatomy is not palpable due to body habitus. These findings should alert clinicians to the significant risk of a misplaced cricothyrotomy and highlight the critical need for future research.


The article discusses the history of a chapel in Arnionys, provides new information about its benefactors and proves its direct relation to Arnionys estate. According to Lucjan Uzieblo, the first church or chapel in Arnionys was built already in the late 15th century, although the original sources move this event to the first part of the 17th century. At that time, a wealthy protestant Dawid Szweykowski established his main residence in Arnio- nys and built a chapel as the place for his own eternal rest. After Szweykowski's death in 1644, its significance began to decline, while the Russo-Polish War in the middle of the 17th century utterly ended its existence. The document dated 1780 enumerates the personalities left after the death of Antoni Szpyrka and provides the first evidence of a Catholic chapel in Arnionys. The list leads to presume that Szpyrka's chapel was an individual and most probably wooden building. The same characteristics can be attributed to Kostrowicki's sanctuary as well, which should have been established in the late 18th century and functioned irregularly until the second part of the 19th century. In spite of the fact that the location of the chapels mentioned above is still unknown, it is clear enough that the present building does not stand in the same place. Its presence is a direct result of the Lithuanian-Polish demarcation line drawn in 1923, which separated the parishioners from their parochial church in Joniskis. The idea of a new church was initiated by the community just after the events. However, their plans were started to realize only in 1933. The newly built chapel was consecrated under the title of St. Mary the Virgin in 1935. While it was a public sanctuary, the plot and building materials were donated by the Count Michal Zygmunt Tyszkiewicz, who was the owner of Arnionys estate at that time. The building itself had a rather unusual character more typical of southern Poland than of Vilnius region. Unfortunately, the author of the project remains still unknown. The major losses were caused by the World War II and subsequent reconstructions during the Soviet times, when the chapel was turned into a cultural centre and later an octennial school. Despite the significant changes in its appearance, the chapel in Arnionys remained in its original inter-war location and was restored to the catholic community in 2002.


XML is based on two essential aspects: the modelization of data in a tree like structure and the separation between the information itself and the way it is displayed. XML structures are easily serializable. The separation between an abstract representation and one or several views on it allows the elaboration of specialized interfaces to visualize or modify data. A lot of developments were made to interact with XML data but the use of these applications over the Internet is just starting. This paper presents a prototype of a distributed editing environment over the Internet. The key point of our system is the way user interactions are handled. Selections and modifications made by a user are not directly reflected on the concrete view, they are serialized in XML and transmitted to a server which applies them to the document and broadcasts updates to the views. This organization has several advantages. XML documents coding selection and modification operations are usually smaller than the edited document and can be directly processed with a transformation engine which can adapt them to different representations. In addition, several selections or modifications can be combined into an unique XML document. This allows one to update multiple views with different frequencies and fits the requirement of an asynchronous communication mode like HTTP.


Activation of antilipolytic a 2 -adrenergic receptors by epinephrine during exercise in human adipose tissue. Am. J. Physiol. 277 ( Regulatory Integrative Comp. Physiol. 46): R1076–R1083, 1999.—The involvement of the antilipolytic a 2 -adrenergic pathway and the specific role of epinephrine in the control of lipolysis during exercise in adipose tissue (AT) were investigated in healthy male subjects (age: 24.1 6 2.2 yr; body mass index: 23.0 6 1.6). An in vitro study carried out on isolated adipocytes showed that the weak lipolytic effect of epinephrine was potentiated after blockade of a 2 -adrenergic receptor (AR) by an a 2 -AR antagonist and reached that of isoproterenol, a b -AR agonist. The effect of the nonselective a 2 -AR antagonist phentolamine on the response of the extra- cellular glycerol concentration (EGC) inAT during two successive bouts of aerobic exercise (50% maximum O 2 uptake, 60 min duration) was evaluated using the microdialysis method. The metabolic responses measured in perfused probes with Ringer solution were compared with those obtained in perfused probes with Ringer plus 0.1 mmol/l phentolamine. Plasma norepinephrine level was not different during the two exercise bouts, whereas that of epinephrine was 2.5-fold higher during the second exercise. EGC in AT was twofold higher in the second compared with the first exercise, and the same response pattern was found for plasma glycerol. The exercise-induced increase in EGC was higher in the probe perfused with phentolamine compared with the control probe in both bouts of exercise. However, the potentiating effect of phentolamine on EGC was significant during the second exercise bout but did not reach a significant level during the first. These results suggest that epinephrine is involved in the control of lipid mobilization through activation of antilipolytic a 2 -AR in human subcutaneous AT during exercise.


The chapter is devoted to the development of technologies for the processing of carbona- ceous wastes, including hazardous ones, using plasma energy sources. In particular, plasma-steam equipment provides complete environmental safety and high quality of the synthesis gas produced. Its application is also discussed to exclude the risk of environmental pollution by heavy metals, if they are contained in the recycled waste. The advantages of using oxygen instead of air as an additional reagent in gasification processes are underlined. It is shown that the proposed variant of the processing technology corresponds well to the general idea of numerous publications in the world scientific literature, known as the Waste-to-Energy. It has been shown that plasma equipment has significant advantages in terms of the commercialization of processes for the treatment of sewage sludge and some other hazardous waste.


Many LTE-Advanced algorithms and protocols rely on node coordination and cooperation to reduce power consumption, increase spectral efficiency and improve cell-edge performance. Functions such as Coordinated Multi Point, Network Assisted Handover, etc., require a standard connection among nodes to support their operations. The LTE X2 interface meets the above requirements and allows operators to connect nodes for both rel-8 and more advanced (e.g rel-13) functionalities. In this work we describe the modeling of X2 within the SimuLTE system-level simulator. Most research works assume an ideal X2 connection, with null delay and infinite bandwidth. However, the X2 delay and bandwidth do affect the behavior and performance of the aforementioned algorithms. Thus, using CoMP Coordinated Scheduling as a case-study to test X2 functionalities, we show how X2 round-trip delay affects the performance of the CoMP scheduler.


The influence of Medicare payments on cataract extraction was studied. This operation is now the most frequent one performed on Medicare beneficiaries. The rate per 1,000 has more than doubled. The aggregate number of operations has tripled since 1965. As the number of persons over 65 has only increased by 27% in that time and the number of ophthalmologists by 25%, it is evident that each surgeon is doing more cases. Analysis of two representative years of Medicare's payment records indicated that many more surgeons received high payments in 1977 than in 1972. This reflected an increase in fees, but also an increased number of cases. Just over 2% of surgeons received more than $75,000 for cataract surgery on Medicare beneficiaries. The suggested reasons for the findings are an absence of mutually accepted criteria for cataract extraction, Medicare's fee system, and public attitudes.


Rapidly improving electronic technology has led to a worldwide proliferation of portable electronic devices (PEDs). These have received a portion of the blame (or suspicion) for unexplained aircraft electronic-system anomalies. A significant concern about PED interference with airplane electronic systems, as well as ground communication networks, has brought about many debates; many people question the rationale and the existence of a solid scientific basis for current regulations and policies. The purpose of this paper is to provide a broad view of the issues associated with airborne operation of PEDs.


The cDNA encoding human Sia-alpha2,3-Gal-beta1,4-GlcNAc-R:alpha2, 8-sialyltransferase, hST8Sia III, was isolated by screening of a human brain cDNA library with polymerase chain reaction-amplified DNA probe generated from the sequence of mouse ST8Sia III (mST8Sia III) and by 5' rapid amplification of cDNA ends of mRNA isolated from human brain tissues. Comparative analysis of the predicted protein-coding region between our cloned hST8Sia III and mST8Sia III showed 92 and 96% identities in the nucleotide and the amino acid sequence, respectively. The soluble hST8Sia III protein expressed in COS-7 showed an extremely high catalytic activity of transferring sialic acid through alpha2,8-linkage to intact fetuin glycoprotein, whereas the transferring activity was completely undetectable toward either alpha2,6-sialylated glycoprotein or desialylated glycoprotein acceptors. Northern analysis of hST8Sia III showed that the transcript corresponding to 11 kb was expressed in both human fetal and adult brain, while the expression of the 5.5-kb transcript was restricted to fetal liver, indicating that the expression of hST8Sia III is developmentally and tissue-specifically regulated.


Potent, cyclic hexapeptide analogues of somatostatin are generally believed to adopt some common secondary structural features: a II′ β turn at one end of the cycle, and a type VI turn with a cis amide bond at the other. A proposed cis amide surrogate, the 1,5‐disubstituted tetrazole, has been placed into a cyclic hexapeptide analog of somatostatin in order to constrain the putative cis amide bond. The final cyclization was done by either chemical or enzymatic means. The product, cyclo(Ala6‐Tyr7‐D‐Trp8‐Lys9‐Val10‐Phe11‐Ψ[CN4]), was found to have 83% of the activity of somatostatin. Solution nmr analysis in DMSO/water revealed that the backbone as well as side chain χ1 and χ2 were well ordered. Relaxation matrix methods were used to extract distance restraints from the nuclear Overhauser effect spectroscopy data set, and these were used in a systematic search of torsional space to identify structures consistent with the nmr data. Restrained minimizations of these structures using a number of different force fields produced structures having the expected βII′ turn at D‐Trp8‐Lys9 and αβVIa turn in the Phe11‐Ψ[CN4]‐Ala6 portion of the molecule. The similarity of the minimized structures to those previously reported for cyclic hexapeptide analogues of somatostatin confirms the similarity of the tetrazole geometry to that of the cis amide in solution. © 1995 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.


The authors present a parametric model which covers the subthreshold and strong inversion regions with a continuous transition between these regions. The effects included in the model are mobility reduction, carrier velocity saturation, body effect, source-drain resistance, drain-induced barrier lowering, and channel-length modulation. The model simulates accurately the current characteristics as well as the transconductance and output conductance characteristics which are important for analog circuit simulation.


In this paper we present an example of interdisciplinary research through the work of the COFLA group. In the group there are researchers of various disciplines, including psychology, mathematics, engineering, and computer science, who work to understand a musical tradition as complex and rich as flamenco music. Several problems in the computational research of flamenco music are illustrated. Specifically, the problem of melodic similarity in a cappella flamenco songs is discussed. That problem requires the design of two distances, a melodic contour distance and a distance based on mid-level features. Both are combined into a unique distance that provides better results when trying to automatically distinguish different styles and variants.


The purpose of this study is to analyze the factors influencing the successful
implementation of projects initiated in secondary schools particularly the Public
Secondary Schools in Baringo District. The general objective of this study is to
investigate, factors that contribute to effective and successful implementation of projects
in public Secondary Schools. The specific objectives includes to determine to how the
availability of funds contribute towards successful implementation of projects, to
examine the effects of managerial skills of the personnel on the implementation of the
projects, to find out the extent to which time frames and planning influences
implementation of the said projects in public schools, and to find out the extent to which
stakeholders' contribution affect the successful implementation of projects in public
secondary schools in Baringo District. Chapter three provides the research design and
methodology. The study will be carried out in Baringo District which has 42 registered
public secondary schools. The study sample will comprise of 21 public Secondary
Schools in Baringo district. All Principals of the 21 sampled schools will comprise the
study respondents who were chosen using the simple random sampling as a sampling
design. Principals are the overall managers of the school's activities therefore this study
give them a priority. The study uses primary and secondary data. The primary data will
be collected through the use of questionnaires; on the other hand, secondary data is
sourced from literature review and from the ministry of education publications.
The researcher will use both qualitative and quantitative data analysis technique to
analyze the collected data. Data analysis involves the interpretation of information
obtained from the respondents. The use of descriptive statistics comprising of frequency
tables, graphs and charts. Findings will then be compiled into a report and a conclusion
drawn. Data will be presented in tables, graphs and charts and analyzed using descriptive
statistics


This study was undert a ken to test the application of environmental radioactive tracers for estimating sediment mass and sediment residence time in rivers. A continuous sampling of the Seine river suspended matter (SM) using sediment traps was made during two months, between Paris and the estuary, along a 120 km long river section. The hydrological regime corresponded to the low water stage, where the SM transport is reduced. The measured tracers in the SM include short-lived natural (7Be, 234Thxs) and artificial (131I) radionuclides, as well as the longer-lived natural 210P bxs and its descendant the 210Po. 137Cs was used to check grain-size effects. A simple steady state model allowed us to estimate the total sediment mass, i.e. the SM, plus the resuspendable matter (RM), and the sediment residence time. Despite their different half-lives (8 to 53 days) and their different geochemical properties, consistent results were obtained with 131I, 7Be and 234Thxs. The best estimate of the sediment mass present in the river is (24-41)·103 tons; it is essentially composed of the RM which is 10-17 times more abundant than the SM. In these hydrological conditions, the sediment residence time is quite long (1.6-2.8 months).


On 21 May 1984, a strong shock ( MS = 6.3, mb = 5.7) occurred in the southern Yellow Sea which shook the densely populated coastal area of Eastern China. About 1 min before the main shock, a foreshock of mb 5.4 occurred. Because of interference from the foreshock, no reliable P -wave first motions or focal mechanisms have been obtained for the main shock from local seismic data. In this paper, long-period teleseismic data have been used to investigate the source mechanism. Fault plane solutions determined from first motions as well as P and SH waveforms show a predominant strike-slip motion with a small dip-slip component on a steeply dipping plane. The tectonic environment of this event supports the observation that margins of former rifts tend to be sites of midplate seismic source regions. The Yellow Sea developed in a cratonic environment due to early Cenozoic rifting. The major graben faults strike NNE-SSW to NE-SW and are intersected by second-order faults trending WNW-ESE. Aftershock distribution suggests that the fault which generated the main shock probably strikes WNW-ESE. The mechanism determined in this paper strikes 120°, dips 88°, and slips 28°. This solution suggests that the earthquake ruptured along a secondary fault near the intersection of a more major NNE-SSW trending fault. The epicentral area is subject to to an ENE-WSW compression and a NNW-SSE extension. The seismic moment and focal depth are determined to be 1.09 × 1025 dyne-cm and 12 ± 4 km, respectively. Relative hypocentral locations indicate that the focal depth of the foreshock is similar to that of the main shock, and the hypocenter of the foreshock is located very close to the WNW-ESE striking nodal plane of the main shock mechanism and is about 20 km away from the main shock hypocenter.

Source properties of the southern Yellow Sea earthquake have been compared with those of three major earthquakes of North China. The stress drop of the Yellow Sea earthquake is determined to be about 42 bars. This value is much lower than the stress drops computed for the 1966 Hsingtai and the 1975 Haicheng earthquakes of North China. The southern Yellow Sea is characterized by short recurrence intervals, while the Hsingtai and Haicheng areas have very long recurrence intervals. The short recurrence intervals and low stress drop may reflect a lower material strength at the source region in the Yellow Sea.


Mixed results on the validity of Purchasing Power Parity (PPP) relationship in South Asian countries motivates this paper to conduct a further inquiry. Existing studies lack appropriate treatment of cross-country dependence in the testing procedure. In this paper we employ a method that allows us to identify the degree of cross-sectional dependence (CSD) and apply panel unit root test to accommodate this dependence on the real exchange rate series of five South Asian countries in the South Asian Association of Regional Cooperation (SAARC) which include Bangladesh, India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Nepal. We find evidence of strong cross-country dependence, cross-country correlation being 0.735. Our panel unit test results support the validity of long-run PPP in the sample countries. This result is in contrast to the previous studies in similar countries which did not accommodate CSD in their estimation. This finding implies that real shocks do not have any permanent effect on the real exchange rate and other things remaining the same, no active policy intervention is warranted for the sustainability of external balance.


The San Francisco East Bay landscape is a rich mosaic of grasslands, shrublands and woodlands that is experiencing losses of grassland due to colonization by shrubs and succession towards woodland associations. The instability of these grasslands is apparently due to their disturbance-dependent nature coupled with 20th century changes in fire and grazing activity. This study uses fire history records to determine the potential for fire in this region and for evidence of changes in the second half of the 20th century that would account for shrubland expansion. This region has a largely anthropogenic fire regime with no lightning-ignited fires in most years. Fire suppression policy has not excluded fire from this region; however, it has been effective at maintaining roughly similar burning levels in the face of increasing anthropogenic fires, and effective at decreasing the size of fires. Fire frequency parallels increasing population growth until the latter part of the 20th century, when it reached a plateau. Fire does not appear to have been a major factor in the shrub colonization of grasslands, and cessation of grazing is a more likely immediate cause. Because grasslands are not under strong edaphic control, rather their distribution appears to be disturbance-dependent, and natural lightning ignitions are rare in the region, I hypothesize that, before the entrance of people into the region, grasslands were of limited extent. Native Americans played a major role in creation of grasslands through repeated burning and these disturbance-dependent grasslands were maintained by early European settlers through overstocking of these range lands with cattle and sheep. Twentieth century reduction in grazing, coupled with a lack of natural fires and effective suppression of anthropogenic fires, have acted in concert to favor shrubland expansion.


Human-computer trust has shown to be a critical factor in influencing the complexity and frequency of interaction in technical systems. Particularly incomprehensible situations in human-computer interaction may lead to a reduced users trust in the system and by that influence the style of interaction. Analogous to human-human interaction, explaining these situations can help to remedy negative effects. In this paper we present our approach of augmenting task-oriented dialogs with selected explanation dialogs to foster the humancomputer trust relationship in those kinds of situations. We have conducted a webbased study testing the effects of different goals of explanations on the components of human-computer trust. Subsequently, we show how these results can be used in our probabilistic trust handling architecture to augment pre-defined task-oriented dialogs.


Riparian forests link terrestrial and freshwater communities and therefore understanding the landscape context of fire regimes in these forests is critical to fully understanding the landscape ecology. However, few direct studies of fire regimes exist for riparian forests, especially in the landscape context of adjacent upland forests or studies of long-term climate drivers of riparian forest fires. We reconstructed a low-severity fire history from tree rings in 38 1-ha riparian plots and combined them with existing fire histories from 104 adjacent upland plots to yield 2633 fire scars sampled on 454 trees. Historically (1650–1900), low-severity fires burned more frequently in upland than in riparian plots, but this difference was not significant (P = 0.15). During more than half of the fire years at both sites, fires were extensive and burned synchronously in riparian and upland plots, and climate was significantly dry during these years. However, climate was not significantly dry when fires burned in only one plot type. Historically, entire riparian zones likely burned in these two study sites of the Blue Mountains during dry years. This study suggests that riparian and upland forests could be managed similarly, especially given the projected increases to fire frequency and intensity from impending climate change.


Morphological convergence is a central concept in evolutionary biology, but convergent patterns remain understudied in nonvertebrate organisms. Some scallop species exhibit long-distance swimming, a behaviour whose biomechanical requirements probably generate similar selective regimes. We tested the hypothesis that shell shape similarity in long-distance swimming species is a result of convergent evolution. Using landmark-based geometric morphometrics, we quantified shell shape in seven species representing major behavioural habits. All species displayed distinct shell shapes, with the exception of the two long-distance swimmers, whose shells were indistinguishable. These species also displayed reduced morphological variance relative to other taxa. Finally, a phylogenetic simulation revealed that these species were more similar in their shell shape than was expected under Brownian motion, the model of character evolution that best described changes in shell shape. Together, these findings reveal that convergent evolution of shell shape occurs in scallops, and suggest that selection for shell shape and behaviour may be important in the diversification of the group.


for relationships with gestational age (GA), maternal age, race, body mass index (BMI), mean arterial blood pressure (MAP), nicotine/caffeine use, measures of uterine and umbilical artery blood flow resistance. Results: 111 consecutive patients had a complete multi-analyte screen. ANG-2 correlated with PIGF and pp-13 (Pearson 0.484, 0,326). PP-13 correlated with free beta HCG (Pearson 0.386, all p<0.0001). ANG-2 and pp-13 were the only factors related to BMI, while ANG-2 showed the stronger relationships MAP than PIGF. Smoking had a significant impact on pp-13 levels and only PIGF was related to placental Doppler studies (* =p<0.05, ** =p<0.001, table). PTX-3 had no significant relationships with any study parameter. Conclusion: Of the maternal serum analytes that reflect placental angiogenesis ANG-2 has a closer relationship with maternal vascular risk factors while PIGF relates more strongly to the placental circulation. PP-13 acts as a marker of placental mass illustrating the effects of smoking in the first trimester. These independent relationships support the use of multiple analytes for first trimester screening for placental dysfunction.


This study examined the effect of implementing personal devices into a fifth-grade mathematics classroom. Thirty-eight fifth graders participated in this eight-week project with a focus on six students to track their growth. During this study, students engaged in technology-based stations that pertained to our geometry unit and coordinate unit. Students took pre and post tests on paper to track progress. In addition, students completed online assessments within their practice websites to track comprehension and growth of the content. Furthermore, students were observed to ensure they were staying engaged in the online activities and to track student engagement about using personal devices within math.


The optimum treatment of patients with distal radius fracture has not been entirely clarified resulting in possible major variations between hospitals in the number of patients undergoing surgical treatment. The objective of this study was to examine the variation in surgical treatment rates of patients with distal radius fractures across Dutch hospitals. Retrospective study. Aggregated data for all patients with a distal radius fracture were obtained for 2012 and 2013 on the basis of reimbursement codes. The surgical rate across hospitals was corrected for several variables using linear regression analysis. We analysed a total of 95,754 reimbursements. The operative rate ranged from 0% to 23%, with a mean of 9.6%. Hospital type, the percentage of females, the percentage of patients over 65, the mean age, average socioeconomic status, and the total number of patients treated explained only 2.6% of the observed differences in operative rate between hospitals in 2012 and 11.6% in 2013. Our results suggest that non-scientific factors, such as surgeon's age, background, and local culture, influence therapeutic decisions in patients with distal radius fractures


We introduce a method for analysing emergent behaviours in multi-agent simulations using complex events. Complex events are composed of interrelated events, and they can be defined at any level of spatio-temporal abstraction (equal to or above the lowest level of abstraction given by the model). Minimal types of complex events define sets, which are equated with particular emergent behaviours and can be detected in simulation.

Since complex events are derived from the agent-based model itself, they provide significant benefits when compared with traditional state-aggregation methods. First, they provide a method of specifying emergent behaviour, so that such behaviour can be monitored. Second, they provide a mechanism that retains the underlying structure of that behaviour. This latter property supports analysis of the mechanisms at lower levels that give rise to emergent behaviours, and identification of patterns between levels. In other words, multi-agent simulations become less 'opaque' [1].


Currently, many centers use venovenous extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (VV-ECMO) as an adjunctive means of gas exchange to mechanical ventilation (MV) in patients with severe ARDS and refractory hypoxemia. One of the most interesting and controversial issues in the management of these patients is how to set the ventilatory strategy. The support provided by VV-ECMO makes the balance between risks and benefits of MV remarkably different from the conventional setting, since the need for MV to facilitate oxygenation and carbon dioxide clearance is greatly reduced or abolished during VV-ECMO. Therefore, the risks of causing ventilator-induced lung injury are of foremost importance; however, the issue of the optimum ventilatory strategy during VV-ECMO has not received sufficient consideration. This paper will describe the diverse MV strategies applied during VV-ECMO in clinical practice and will highlight specific pathophysiological considerations that are crucial in the process of defining optimal ventilation settings in patients with ARDS supported with VV-ECMO.


Abstract The IR extinction of clouds has been measured with a CO2 laster transmissometer (λ = 10.6 μm). Using an established linear relationship (based on the Chýlek approximation to the Mie theory) between extinction and liquid water content, the liquid water contents of clouds varying in both droplet size and concentration have been determined. These values are compared with liquid water contents derived from simultaneous cloud collection. The agreement between the two techniques is excellent having a correlation coefficient of 0.98 and corresponding favorable 95% confidence limits. The results indicate that this technique should prove extremely useful for the field measurement of the liquid water content of clouds and fogs.


Recorded domains on perpendicular recording double-layer media were imaged by magnetooptical Kerr effect microscopy. The reversal domains were observed at the edge of tracks by a head whose leading pole is wider than its trailing pole. It was found that the perpendicular magnetic field of a trailing pole overwrites the domains written by that of a leading pole. >


The supply of nutrients to the low-latitude thermocline is largely controlled by intermediate-depth waters formed at the surface in the high southern latitudes. Silicic acid is an essential macronutrient for diatoms, which are responsible for a signifi cant portion of marine carbon export production. Changes in ocean circulation, such as those observed during the last deglaciation, would infl uence the nutrient composition of the thermocline and, therefore, the relative abundance of diatoms in the low latitudes. Here we present the fi rst record of the silicic acid content of the Atlantic over the last glacial cycle. Our results show that at intermediate depths of the South Atlantic, the silicic acid concentration was the same at the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM) as it is today, overprinted by high silicic acid pulses that coincided with abrupt changes in ocean and atmospheric circulation during Heinrich Stadials and the Younger Dryas. We suggest these pulses were caused by changes in intermediate water formation resulting from shifts in the subpolar hydrological cycle, with fundamental implications for the nutrient supply to the Atlantic. on January 31, 2012 geology.gsapubs.org Downloaded from


An investigation was made to determine whether a sufficient amount of hydrogen could be efficiently burned in a compression-ignition engine to compensate for the increase of lift of an airship due to the consumption of the fuel oil. The performance of a single-cylinder four-stroke-cycle compression-ignition engine operating on fuel oil alone was compared with its performance when various quantities of hydrogen were inducted with the inlet air. Engine-performance data, indicator cards, and exhaust-gas samples were obtained for each change in engine-operating conditions.


AIMS AND OBJECTIVES
To evaluate the suitability of root cause analysis frameworks for the investigation of community-acquired pressure ulcers. The objective was to identify the extent to which these frameworks take account of the setting where the ulcer originated as being the person's home rather than a hospital setting.

BACKGROUND
Pressure ulcers involving full-thickness skin loss are increasingly being regarded as indicators of nursing patient safety failure, requiring investigation using root cause analysis frameworks. Evidence suggests that root cause analysis frameworks developed in hospital settings ignore the unique dimensions of risk in home healthcare settings.

DESIGN AND METHODS
A systematic literature review and documentary analysis of frameworks used to investigate community-acquired grade three and four pressure ulcers by home nursing services in England.

RESULTS
No published papers were identified for inclusion in the review. Fifteen patient safety investigative frameworks were collected and analysed. Twelve of the retrieved frameworks were intended for the investigation of community-acquired pressure ulcers; seven of which took account of the setting where the ulcer originated as being the patient's home.

CONCLUSION
This study provides evidence to suggest that many of the root cause analysis frameworks used to investigate community-acquired pressure ulcers in England are unsuitable for this purpose.

RELEVANCE TO CLINICAL PRACTICE
This study provides researchers and practitioners with evidence of the need to develop appropriate home nursing root cause analysis frameworks to investigate community-acquired pressure ulcers.


It is frequently observed that stress has appeared to be one of those influential factors that have critical impacts on human life; especially, the performance of a person, which is the key aspect of human life, is impacted by stress. The purpose of this research was to extend the existing body of knowledge on the relationship between occupational stress and employees' organizational commitment into the context of banking sector of Pakistan. This qualitative study is comprise of 303 respondents The statistical techniques that were used were Exploratory factor analysis (EFA), Confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) and Structural equation modeling (SEM). Employees were analyzed for their affective commitment, continuance commitment and normative commitments. Results shows that there is a positive or significant relationship between occupational role stress and affective commitments of employees, which implied that higher score on occupational role stress prompted lower score on affective occupational commitment of the Bank representatives. It was likewise discovered that the way of association additionally influenced the relationship between occupational role stress and other two types of organizational commitments i.e. continuance and normative commitments of employees. The level of significance for employees working in banking sectors of Pakistan was found to be insignificant for continuance and for normative commitment. These results approved that there is an opposite relationship between occupational role stress and normative and continuance commitment as compared to affective job responsibility of employees.


Infrared thermal imaging technology is a new nondestructive detection technology, which is widely used in pressure vessel detection. In this paper, three-dimensional temperature distribution model of pressure vessel with defects is established, and the influence factors on infrared detection of pressure vessel defect are researched. The influence of environmental factors, thermal excitation strength, thermal excitation time and defect size on infrared detection is analyzed. The results show that: (1) increasing thermal excitation can degrade the maximum reduced temperature when infrared radiation thermal excitation temperature is lower than 200°C, while the reduced temperature can be raised with the increased thermal excitation when the temperature is higher than 200°C. (2) the maximum comparison temperature increased first and decreased afterwards with the increasing thermal excitation time, finally reduce to the comparison temperature under steady state. (3) the influence of wind speed and surface blackness in environmental factors on infrared detection precision is greater.


Various types of x-ray endovascular embolization were carried out in 256 patients with renal parenchymatous carcinoma over the period of 1979 to 1991. Iodolipol chemoembolization with dioxadet, a fat-soluble preparation, significantly improved three- and five-year cumulative survival of operable patients to 82.5 and 77%, respectively, vs. embolization without dioxadet, when only 58% of patients survived for three and 51% for five years. In inoperable patients five-year survival after fatty chemoembolization was 24.5% vs. null in the group administered embolization without dioxadet. Ferrochemoembolization appears still more promising.


We describe "high-performance" liquid chromatography of urinary monosaccharides on a macroporous anionexchange resin (Hitachi 3013 N), with acetonitrile/water as eluent. The separated xylose, arabinose, D-fructose, mannose, galactose, and D-glucose were detected by means of a post-column reduction reaction of tetrazolium blue.Absolute limitsof detection were about 10 ng of monosaccharide. Lactose can also be measured.


Data centers are a major consumer of electricity and a significant fraction of their energy use is devoted to cooling the data center. Recent prototype deployments have investigated the possibility of using outside air for cooling and have shown large potential savings in energy consumption. In this paper, we push this idea to the extreme, by running servers outside in Finnish winter. Our results show that commercial, off-the-shelf computer equipment can tolerate extreme conditions such as outside air temperatures below --20 C and still function correctly over extended periods of time. Our experiment improves upon the other recent results by confirming their findings and extending them to cover a wider range of intake air temperatures and humidity. This paper presents our experimentation methodology and setup, and our main findings and observations.


An analysis has been conducted on the hydraulic bridge of the water hydraulic servo valve with annular clearance between sleeve and spool land as its first hydraulic resistance. Through some formula deductions, the simplified hydraulic bridge is drawn and the relationship between flapper displacement and differential pressure of spool ends, which is demonstrated by the subsequent simulation works, is extracted. By the CFD(computational fluid dynamics) simulation, firstly, the pressure distributions of the flapper face and the fore end face of the nozzle are obtained. Results show that the flapper has an annular area where the existing pressure is negative. Secondly, the relationship between flapper displacement and flow force acting on flapper is also acquired, which is much beneficial to the steady-state and dynamic analysis of the water hydraulic servo valve.


Microgrid is a part of the power distribution system which uses renewable energy based of power generation connected to the grid system. Multi energy power generation is composed of renewable energy systems including photovoltaic, wind turbine, energy storage and local loads. Testbed of a microgrid system is the technique to ensure stable operation during faults and various network disturbances in grid and islanding connected mode. In this paper the microgrid using renewable energy consist of a 3 kW photovoltaic, with 30 pieces of 12V for 100Ah battery bank, DC/DC converter, charge controller for battery, single phase DC/AC inverter and various loads (resistor, capacitor, inductor) are develop. The AC buses 240V voltage include with isolation transformer to simulate the grid voltage level by Matlab/Simulink software.


Growing plant cell walls characteristically exhibit a property known as 'acid growth', by which we mean they are more extensible at low pH (< 5) 1. The plant hormone auxin rapidly stimulates cell elongation in young stems and similar tissues at least in part by an acid-growth mechanism 2, 3. Auxin activates a H+ pump in the plasma membrane, causing acidification of the cell wall solution. Wall acidification activates expansins, which are endogenous cell wall-loosening proteins 4, causing the cell wall to yield to the wall tensions created by cell turgor pressure. As a result, the cell begins to enlarge rapidly. This 'acid growth' phenomenon is readily measured in isolated (nonliving) cell wall specimens. The ability of cell walls to undergo acid-induced extension is not simply the result of the structural arrangement of the cell wall polysaccharides (e.g. pectins), but depends on the activity of expansins 5. Expansins do not have any known enzymatic activity and the only way to assay for expansin activity is to measure their induction of cell wall extension. This video report details the sources and preparation techniques for obtaining suitable wall materials for expansin assays and goes on to show acid-induced extension and expansin-induced extension of wall samples prepared from growing cucumber hypocotyls. To obtain suitable cell wall samples, cucumber seedlings are grown in the dark, the hypocotyls are cut and frozen at -80 °C. Frozen hypocotyls are abraded, flattened, and then clamped at constant tension in a special cuvette for extensometer measurements. To measure acid-induced extension, the walls are initially buffered at neutral pH, resulting in low activity of expansins that are components of the native cell walls. Upon buffer exchange to acidic pH, expansins are activated and the cell walls extend rapidly. We also demonstrate expansin activity in a reconstitution assay. For this part, we use a brief heat treatment to denature the native expansins in the cell wall samples. These inactivated cell walls do not extend even in acidic buffer, but addition of expansins to the cell walls rapidly restores their ability to extend.


The traditional use of fermented foods is based on native knowledge and the use of locally available plant or animal sources as substrates. Several microorganisms participate in fermentation which includes bacteria and fungus. The present research focuses on identifying the micro-organisms present in batter samples using DNA Barcoding technique and determining novel method for isolation of DNA. Serial dilution in nutrient agar was performed for the isolation of bacteria and yeast. Bacterial and yeast colonies were collected from Sample-1 and Sample-2 and characterized using staining techniques. Using PCR technique, the 16S rRNA and ITS genes from isolated bacterial and yeast colonies have been amplified. The amplified products were further sequenced and the sequences obtained were matched using software for Codon and Code. The organisms were found to be Streptococcus lutetiensis and Saccharomyces cf. Paradoxus. Barcodes were generated and total acidity, volatile acidity and ethanol concentration of batter sample was observed to increase for consecutive rising hours. The ethanol concentration was found to be 10.8±0.2% and 9.6±0.12% for sample 1 and 2. This was found to be significantly higher. A novel approach for DNA extraction was determined and the DNA was isolated and validated using Agarose Gel Electrophoresis. Thus, organisms present in batter food products were identified using DNA Barcoding technique. An easy and reliable method for DNA extraction was also determined.


This study examines relative weighting of two acoustic cues, vowel duration and spectra, in the perception of high front vowels by Japanese learners of English. Studies found that Japanese speakers rely heavily on duration to distinguish /iː/ and /ɪ/ in American English (AmE) as influenced by phonemic length in Japanese /ii/ and /i/, while spectral cues are more important for native AmE speakers. However, little is known as to whether and how this non-native perceptual weighting can change as a result of L2 learning. By employing computational and experimental methods, the present study shows that Japanese learners of English exhibit different cue weighting depending on which language they think they hear. The experiment shows that listeners use more spectral cues and less durational cues when they think they are listening to 'English' stimuli as opposed to 'Japanese' stimuli, despite the stimuli being identical. This result is generally in line with our computer simulation, which predicts distinct developmental paths in first language (L1) and second language (L2) perception. The Second Language Linguistic Perception (L2LP) model, which incorporates the language mode hypothesis, provides a comprehensive explanation for the current findings.


Introduction: Primary sclerosing cholangitis (PCS) is a cholestatic liver disease characterized by chronic destruction and stricturing of the biliary tree, leading to fibrosis and liver cirrhosis. The underlying mechanisms of the disease are poorly understood. Areas covered: Multiple agents with various pharmacological activities have been examined in PSC patients with disappointing results. Ursodeoxycholic acid (UDCA) is by far the most extensively studied agent in PSC. Large prospective trials have failed to demonstrate a positive long-term effect of UDCA in patients with PSC. Antimicrobials have been examined in PSC patients but long-term outcome data are lacking. Immunosuppressive agents were tested in patients with PSC but the majority of these agents were associated with adverse side effects. Nor-UDCA is a newly emerging C23 homolog of UDCA that has shown promising results in experimental studies. The farnesoid X receptor agonists are an attractive class of drugs and are currently being studied in patients with primary biliary cirrhosis. Antifibrotic agents have yielded encouraging results in animal models of PSC but are yet to be evaluated in humans. Expert opinion: Currently, there is no effective treatment for PSC. It is our hope that the newly discovered potential therapeutic routes will lead to the discovery of a curative agent for this debilitating disease.