The probable cause of ischemic stroke is often inferred from the size and location of the infarct, in combination with an evaluation of the heart and the presence of extracranial arterial occlusion or high-grade stenosis. The used conventional imaging techniques were designed to image the intracranial vessel lumen instead of the wall itself. Pathological changes, however, often (primarily) involve the vessel wall, even without causing luminal stenosis. Therefore, conventional imaging techniques generally underestimate the true disease burden. To image the vessel wall directly, intracranial vessel wall MRI can be used. This quickly evolving imaging technique receives more and more attention both in the clinical and the scientific setting. In this thesis, the utility of intracranial vessel wall MRI in two different cerebrovascular diseases: intracranial atherosclerosis and cerebral vasculitis is described. Focussing on the combined depiction of intracranial vessel wall pathologies and parenchymal brain damage, Chapter 3 demonstrates that the combination of infarcts and vessel wall lesions can help to differentiate between different disease entities. For instance, patients with intracranial atherosclerosis show a high prevalence of brain parenchymal lesions (both CMIs and macroinfarcts), and macroinfarcts seem to be related to specific pattern of vessel wall abnormalities (Chapter 4). For the assessment of intracranial atherosclerosis a transverse large coverage MR brain sequence seems to be most promising for clinical purposes (Chapter 5). This sequence was successfully used in patients with middle cerebral artery stenosis, demonstrating that many asymptomatic lesions can be observed next to the known symptomatic lesion(s) (Chapter 6). Finally, Chapter 7 sheds light on the use of vessel wall imaging in cerebral vasculitis. The diagnosis of this disease is very challenging and includes invasive methods in the diagnostic work-up, with a brain biopsy being the gold standard. Sensitivities of conventional methods, however, are low, necessitating a different, less invasive method, like vessel wall imaging. In this final chapter, intracranial vessel wall MRI in patients suspected of vasculitis demonstrates resolution of contrast enhancement of vessel wall lesions after therapy, suggesting that visualizing the enhancement pattern of the (pathological) vessel wall could be a first step towards a non-invasive diagnostic tool to diagnose these patients. The sequence can be easily implemented in the clinical protocol and used for diagnosis, since both 3T and 7T were equally able to image the enhancement pattern. This provides us with a new potential application of intracranial vessel wall in clinical practice.


This paper examines the impact of overall happiness of citizens on economic growth across countries. We …rst document a robust positive correlation between overall happiness level and economic growth across countries, and then exploit the variation in sex imbalance, a factor that impedes normal mating and thus causes unhappiness, to instrument happiness and identify its causal impact on economic growth. Our results show that happiness has a positive causal e¤ect on economic growth. Other things being equal, a one-standard-deviation increase in happiness raises growth rate by approximately two percentage points. In addition, we …nd that life expectancy and investment ratio are two possible channels through which happiness works.


AMPA Receptor antagonists have received considerable attention in recent years. Within the class of excitatory amino acid receptor antagonists AMPA receptor antagonists have shown excellent neuroprotection in several models of cerebral ischemia and neuronal injury. However, poor physical properties have been a major limiting factor in developing these as viable drug candidates. The quinoxaline-2,3-dione template has been the backbone of various competitive AMPA receptor antagonists such as NBQX, PNQX, YM-90K and more recently ZK200775. The SAR learned from these have been valuable for developing the AMPA pharmacophore model (Fig. 2) and has been discussed in detail in this review. There have been efforts in this area to design very selective AMPA receptor antagonists by minimizing the interaction at the NMDA associated GlyN receptors. Compounds designed by BASF and Yamanouchi have been successful in these efforts and their compounds show excellent affinity for the AMPA receptors. Efforts by Warner-Lambert and Novartis also highlight significant success in developing balanced AMPA and GlyN receptor antagonists. Non-competitive AMPA receptor antagonists are also being pursued for various neurological disorders including neuroprotection and are divided in two major classes, viz. positive and negative allosteric modulators. The physical properties of negative allosteric modulators such as GYKI 52466, which belong to the 2,3-benzodiazepinyl structural class have been significantly better. However, the in vitro activity of these compounds has been in the micromolar range and the overall class has the disadvantage of not having a high throughput assay. Other classes of compounds such as phthalazines and quinazolines are being developed and have raised hopes for the second generation of compounds in this area.


Orlando Figes's book The Crimean War: a history, based on English, Russian, French and Turkish sources, throws a new light on the Crimean War in a number of ways. It shows that the conflict was far from being a small war, but a landmark event. It was the only example of a war between Britain and Russia—and it led to enormous casualties. It also represented a stage in medical history, since most of the casualties were caused by disease. In Britain, it marked a new advance in the power of the press, which did much to fuel anti-Russian sentiment. The war was also fuelled, on both sides, by religious and nationalist sentiment—but its most important cause related to the fate of the Ottoman Empire, then in decline, and fears that its collapse could result in a dangerous power vacuum. The war still has a significance for the present day because the collapse of communism has failed to resolve the antagonism between Russia and the West. Here, the book throws an important light on the development of British and western attitudes towards Russia, many of which were shaped in the nineteenth century. The book deserves attention, both here and in Russia.


The classical posterior alpha rhythm has been decomposed into regular and irregular components using orthogonal transformation. A periodicity generator is considered, which has three characteristic control parameters: the periodicity, the amplitudes or scaling factors and the pattern associated with successive periodic segments. The regular component is shown to be equivalent to an oscillator or periodicity generator whose parameters are dynamically varying and, thus, producing both amplitude- and frequency-modulation. The irregular component is devoid of such modulating behavior. Electroencephalogram signals from normal, maniac and epileptic subjects are studied. Through analytic signal-based analysis, it is shown that for the regular component, healthy brain possesses universal scaling behavior, whereas heterogeneous scaling or absence of universality is observed for the diseased brain.


Gene expression studies have revealed that there is more than one cellular pathway governing growth inhibition and apoptosis. Mutations in the ras oncogene that(activate ras) are known to lead to the inactivation of genes that are directly involved in these pathways of growth inhibition and apoptosis. Oncogenic activated ras inhibits TGF-P signalling through the down-regulation of RII expression and abrogates apoptotic pathways through down-modulation of PAR-4 gene expression. A majority of pancreatic turnours harbour K-ras point mutations and these mutations dysregulate, the growth inhibition and apoptosis processes. This leads us to hypothesize that K-ras mutant phenotype status in pancreatic turnours will alter the expression of the RII and PAR-4 genes, and would further dysregulate growth inhibitory and apoptotic processes. In this
study, the majority of pancreatic turnours showed down-regulation of RII and PAR-4 gene expression. A strong correlation of down-regulation of RII and PAR-4 with K-ras
mutational status was observed. In particular, down regulation of PAR-4 correlated with poor survival in patients with pancreatic adenocarcinomas. Blocking the function of oncogenic ras by using a famesyltransferase inhibitor (Frl) restored RII expression and TGF-P signalling, and this caused enhanced sensitivity of cell lines to radiation. The restoration of RH function by FrI was linked to down-modulation of DNA methyltransferase enzyme that is often implicated in hypermethylation of promoters.
Over-expression of RII in pancreatic tumour cells led to the restoration of TGF-P signalling and enhancement of radiation sensitivity. Induction of the pro-apoptotic
effector gene, bav (bcI-2 family member) by radiation in RII over-expressed pancreatic cancer cells, was found to be a key mechanism involved in radiation sensitivity. Overexpression of PAR-4 sensitized the cells to radiation and this sensitization was linked to down-modulation of radiation induced Bcl-2 protein. Together, these findings strongly suggest that the restoration of function of the key growth inhibitory and cell death genes RII and PAR-4, which are affected by oncogenic ras mutations in pancreatic turnours will restore and enhance cellular responses to radiation induced clonogenic inhibition and apoptosis.


Abstract : The effects of changes in the coefficient of friction (CoF) between the contacting surfaces on the fretting wear characteristics of Cu-Al coating on Ti-6Al-4V were investigated. This Cu-Al coating is part of a system that is applied to titanium turbine blades to reduce fretting at the interface. In the application, there is a solid lubricant that is added on top of the coating as an assembly aid and to help reduce the friction while the lubricant remains within the contact. Previous studies have researched the characteristics of the coating without the additional lubricant. In this study, liquid motor oil was applied to the contact region to simulate real-world conditions with a lower CoF. To characterize the wear, several methods were used, the most useful being the accumulated dissipated energy method. The accumulated relative displacement method did not take into account the differences between the tangential forces for tests conducted at different CoF values, whereas the dissipated energy method did. The wear characteristics of tests conducted in the current study were similar to those of a previous study, conducted at a higher CoF, when analyzed with the dissipated energy method, but this was most likely due to the ambiguity of the calculated wear volumes.


76 Abstract— Nowadays due to easily available hardware and availability of unlicensed frequency spectrum the use of WLANS has increased tremendously. Such WLANS are set up by untrained system administrators with no topology planning. The Access Points are also placed haphazardly. The performance of such Uncoordinated WLANs is greatly affected due to availability of limited number of non-overlapping channels. The cognitive radio provides the clients to make use of free channels from licensed spectrum when they are not in use by primary users. Thus in cognitive environment more channels are available to the clients. This paper describes a novel channel assignment scheme for cognitive radios.


We have found that the energies of the Zn semicore 3d electrons in crystals ZnX (X = O, S, Se, Te), in the wurtzite phase, are localized in narrow intervals within the valence band. It was found that the widths of these intervals at Γ point of the first Brillouin zone are equal to 1.24, 0.68, 0.50 and 0.40 eV for ZnO, ZnS, ZnSe and ZnTe crystals, respectively. It was found that the wave functions of the Zn 3d electrons strongly overlap with the states of the valence and the conduction bands. Consequently, the widely used exchange-correlation energy functionals, constructed in the LDA and GGA-PBE approaches, are inappropriate for systems with narrow band of highly correlated 3d electrons. That is why we performed calculations based on the hybrid exchange-correlation energy functional, HSE06, and the obtained eigenenergies and eigefunctions were used in the construction of the Green's function. Consequently, the basis of this study is based on the two modern concepts of electronic theory of crystals, namely the hybrid exchangecorrelation functional and quasiparticle approach. The values of the bandgap, Eg, obtained here in the GGA-PBE approximation, are well-matched to the results found by other authors. The values of Eg, calculated using the combination of Green's function methods and the hybrid functional for the exchangecorrelation energy, HSE06, are equal to 2.34, 3.28, 2.35 and 2.13 eV for ZnO, ZnS, ZnSe and ZnTe crystals, respectively, if the mixing factor in the functional is 0.25, that it is the standard. We calculated the electron energy spectra for ZnO, ZnS, ZnSe and ZnTe crystals, with mixing factors, different from the standard ones, namely of 0.40, 0.375, 0.35 and 0.325. The corresponding band gaps have been acquired the values of 3.29, 3.83, 2.81 and 3.43 eV, which are very well matched with the experiment.


Human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1) proviral DNA sequences in the 5' long terminal repeat (LTR) were examined among 28 drug-naive individuals. Twenty-four subjects had highly conserved LTR sequences, however, more significant changes were observed in the remaining four LTR sequences. These included a 9-bp deletion preceding the NF kappa B elements and a duplication of the RBF-2 motif. A higher overall frequency of mutations within the LTR occurred within NFAT-1 and Sp-1 sequences. Importantly, a novel 16-bp deletion was found in the distal NFAT-1 site.


available suffice it to point out that in the first study the antibiotic data are clearly incomplete and some patients were seen only once a year by a urologist, with follow up data being sought by questionnaires sent to general practitioners.' In the second study specimens were obtained from patients in Crewe and sent by post on dipslides and in boric acid to a laboratory in London.9 As no attempt was made to detect fastidious organisms it is unjustifiable to draw conclusions about the effect of antibiotics on the possible presence of such organisms. In my experience attempts to eradicate lactobacilli from the urethra by giving antibiotics facilitate infection with resistant bowel organisms. The only approach to the problem that I have found to be successful is to withhold antibiotics and await the gradual restoration of a balanced urethral flora.' The earlier in the natural course of the condition that this approach is adopted the more likely it is to be successful. If these patients are treated repeatedly, and particularly if long courses of treatment are given, the likelihood of the recalcitrant establishment of lactobacilli, or other fastidious organisms such as Gardnerella vaginalis, in the tissues is greatly increased. For this reason our laboratory's reports of specimens from which lactobacilli are isolated carry a suggestion that antibiotics should be withheld.


Asymptotics of solutions to Schrödinger equations with singular dipole-type potentials is investigated. We evaluate the exact behavior near the singularity of solutions to elliptic equations with potentials which are purely angular multiples of radial inverse-square functions. Both the linear and the semilinear (critical and subcritical) cases are considered. Dedicated to Prof. Norman Dancer on the occasion of his 60th birthday.


Abstract Deuterium ion implantation and subsequent X-ray Photoelectron Spectroscopy (XPS) and Thermal Desorption Spectroscopy (TDS) experiments were performed with varying implantation temperatures to reveal chemical behavior of tritium produced in Li2TiO3. These experimental results showed that there were four deuterium trapping states; two of which were interacted with and without oxygen near the surface, and the other two were interacted with E'-center and with oxygen with the formation of O-D bond in the bulk. These trapping states of deuterium in the bulk were almost the same as those of tritium generated in thermal neutron-irradiated Li2TiO3. The total amount of deuterium retention in the bulk was almost constant until O-D bonds formed in the bulk were decomposed, indicating that tritium trapping could proceed under hot atom chemical reactions. It was concluded that E'-center could trap the implanted deuterium more frequently than oxygen with the formation of O-D bonds in the bulk. Annihilations of them due to oxygen recovery could increase the retention of D with the formation of O-D bonds, resulting in the almost constant deuterium retention ratio up to its decomposition temperature of 573 K.


In this paper we revisit the issue of aggregate output decline that took place in the early transition period. We propose an alternative explanation of output decline that is applicable to Central- and Eastern-European countries. In the first part of the paper we develop a simple dynamic general equilibrium model that builds on work by Gomulka and Lane (2001). In particular, we consider price liberalization, interpreted as elimination of distortionary taxation, as a trigger of the output decline. We show that price liberalization in interaction with heterogeneous adjustment costs and non-employment benefits lead to aggregate output decline and surge in wage inequality. While these patterns are consistent with actual dynamics in CEE countries, this model cannot generate output decline in all sectors. Instead sectors that were initially taxed even exhibit output growth. Thus, in the second part we consider an alternative general equilibrium model with only one production sector and two types of labor and distortion in a form of wage compression during the socialist era. The trigger for labor mobility and consequently output decline is wage liberalization. Assuming heterogeneity of workers in terms of adjustment costs and non-employment benefits can explain output decline in all industries. DOI: 10.15458/85451.27


Efforts to remove excess nitrate in the groundwater typically involves expensive ion-exchange membranes or slow reacting bio-reactors. Nano-sized zero valent iron (nZVI) has been used successfully to reduce nitrate into ammonia in various sites in USA and Europe. However, nZVI has a number of major setbacks associated with it, namely the tendency to agglomerate due to magnetic properties, and the possible toxicity due to the nano-sized material.  To circumvent these two setbacks, nZVI could be adsorbed onto solid support. In this research, geothermal sediment microsilicate 600 (Misi) was utilised as a support. Initial results suggested that Misi has potential as a support for nZVI, however modifications were required to improve the adsorbance of nZVI onto Misi surface. Calcination, activation, acid wash and iron oxyhydroxide coating were used as surface modifications for Misi. It was found that the two most important modifications for nZVI adsorption was calcination at either 400 or 600 °C and acid washing in 5.6 M HCl.  Equipped with this knowledge, other silica and silicates were also used to adsorb nZVI. For pure silica surfaces, 3-APTES and 3-TPTMS ligands and pore enlarging methods of calcination of porogen and salt wash were also used. nZVI was not able to be fully adsorbed on pure silica surfaces. Four other silicates were examined: Rice husk ash, Western Australia silica fume, Mt Piper fly ash, and precipitated aluminium silicate. Of these, only Western Australia silica fume and precipitated aluminium silicate showed potential as nZVI support. Based on the SEM-EDS XRD data of all the silica and silicates, it could be tentatively concluded that nZVI requires an aluminium silicate surface for successful adsorption. Aluminium silicate surfaces typically has an exchangeable cation present, and this cation might play a part in nZVI adsorption.  The nZVI/Misi surface was then utilised to reduce nitrate. It was discovered that even though activation and FeOOH did not play a part in nZVI adsorption onto Misi surface, these two steps were important in reduction of nitrate, as the presence of activation and FeOOH increase the reduction of nitrate significantly within 60 minutes. The Misi-supported nZVI were also shown to be more stable in dispersion, and less agglomerated as shown in a sand column experiment.


Summary.  The spectral density function plays a key role in fitting the tail of multivariate extre‐mal data and so in estimating probabilities of rare events. This function satisfies moment con‐straints but unlike the univariate extreme value distributions has no simple parametric form. Parameterized subfamilies of spectral densities have been suggested for use in applications, and non‐parametric estimation procedures have been proposed, but semiparametric models for multivariate extremes have hitherto received little attention. We show that mixtures of Dirichlet distributions satisfying the moment constraints are weakly dense in the class of all non‐parametric spectral densities, and discuss frequentist and Bayesian inference in this class based on the EM algorithm and reversible jump Markov chain Monte Carlo simulation. We illustrate the ideas using simulated and real data.


A new intelligent fusion scheme for human operator command and autonomous planner/controller in telerobotic system has been developed based on the event-based planning and control theory. It provides a unified model to integrate a human operator control command with action planning and control of autonomous operation. As a result, the telerobotic system can perform tasks which cannot be done by either human operator or autonomous planner/controller alone. This scheme lays down a foundation for planning and control of a general robotic system involving human operators, and provides a natural and efficient way to fuse the human intelligence with the machine intelligence. The scheme is implemented and tested on a PUMA 560 robotic system. The experimental results of obstacle avoidance, and hybrid force/position control with a commanded force are presented.


The Australian and New Zealand Intensive Care Society Adult Patient Database (ANZICS APD) is one of the largest databases of its kind in the world and collects individual admissions' data from intensive care units (ICUs) around Australia and New Zealand. Use of this database for monitoring and comparing the performance of ICUs, quantified by the standardised mortality ratio, poses several theoretical and computational challenges, which are addressed in this paper. In particular, the expected number of deaths must be appropriately estimated, the ICU casemix adjustment must be adequate, statistical variation must be fully accounted for, and appropriate adjustment for multiple comparisons must be made. Typically, one or more of these issues have been neglected in ICU comparison studies. Our approach to the analysis proceeds by fitting a random coefficient hierarchical logistic regression model for the inhospital death of each patient, with patients clustered within ICUs. We anticipate the majority of ICUs will be estimated as performing 'usually' after adjusting for important clinical covariates. We take as a starting point the ideas in Ohlssen et al and estimate an appropriate null model that we expect these ICUs to follow, taking a frequentist rather than a Bayesian approach. This methodology allows us to rigorously account for the aforementioned statistical issues and to determine if there are any ICUs contributing to the Australian and New Zealand Intensive Care Society database that have comparatively unusual performance. In addition to investigating the yearly performance of the ICUs, we also estimate changes in individual ICU performance between 2009 and 2010 by adjusting for regression‐to‐the‐mean. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.


In contrast to the beta-linked GlcNAc, the alpha-linked GlcNAc has not been commonly found in glycoconjugates. We have recently revealed the presence of an unusual endo-beta-galactosidase (Endo-beta-Gal(GnGa)) in Clostridium perfringens capable of releasing GlcNAcalpha1-->4Gal from glycans expressed in the gastric mucous cell-type mucin [Ashida, H., Anderson, K., Nakayama, J., Maskos, K., Chou, C.-W., Cole, R. B., Li, S.-C., and Li, Y.-T. (2001) J. Biol. Chem. 276, 28226-28232]. To characterize Endo-beta-Gal(GnGa), we have cloned its gene, gngC, from the genomic DNA library prepared from C. perfringens ATCC10543. The gene encodes 420 amino acid residues including a 17-residue signal peptide at the N-terminus. Using pUC18, we were able to prepare 25 mg of the fully active and pure recombinant Endo-beta-Gal(GnGa) from 1 L of Escherichia coli DH5alpha culture, which was 170 times higher than that produced by the original clostridial strain. Endo-beta-Gal(GnGa) shares a low but significant sequence similarity with two other endo-beta-galactosidases (16-21% amino acid identity). It also shows some similarity with bacterial 1,3-1,4-beta-glucan 4-glucanohydrolases of the glycoside hydrolase family 16. Endo-beta-Gal(GnGa) was found to contain the EXDX(X)E sequence (Glu-168 to Glu-173), that has been identified as the catalytic motif of families 16 and 7 retaining glycoside hydrolases. We have used site-directed mutagenesis to show that Glu-168 and Glu-173 were essential for the Endo-beta-Gal(GnGa) activity. By NMR spectroscopy, Endo-beta-Gal(GnGa) was found to act as a retaining enzyme.


In a group of 541 white diabetic men aged 20–59 yr attending one clinic it was found that 91 (15%) drank heavily, while a further 39 (7%) had frank alcoholism. The prevalence of symptomatic peripheral neuropathy was much higher in the 120 men who drank excessively. It is considered important, therefore, when treating diabetic patients with peripheral neuropathy not to assume that the diabetes itself is the cause in all cases. The alcoholic intake of the patient should be ascertained and, if excessive, it should be pointed out to the patient that this may well be the predominant factor causing symptoms.


This paper presents two new methods for estimating the capacitance value of DC-link capacitors for single-phase AC/DC PWM converters. At no load condition, a controlled AC current (or a controlled AC voltage) with a lower frequency (30Hz) than the line frequency is injected into the input side, which then causes AC voltage ripples at the DC output side. By extracting the AC voltage, current, and power components on the DC output side using digital filters, the capacitance value can then be calculated, for which the recursive least squares (RLS) method is used. The proposed methods can be simply implemented only with software and no additional hardware is required. The simulation results are illustrated to verify the proposed estimation algorithm.


We exploit a unique setting to examine how managerial and economic connections affect the current and former subsidiaries ("subsidiaries") of a parent firm undergoing a restatement and bankruptcy. The demise of Enron and the varying nature of ties between Enron and its four publicly traded subsidiaries allow us to examine if capital market reactions for each of the subsidiaries surrounding Enron's failure vary with the nature of their connections to Enron. We observe no significant differences in contemporaneous market reaction regardless of the nature and strength of connections between Enron and the subsidiaries, providing two main insights. First, over the year following the Enron events, those subsidiaries with ownership or accounting ties but with weak economic ties performed in-line with the industry, consistent with the lack of a differential market reaction across these sets of firms. This result contrasts with recent studies finding evidence of manager fixed effects affecting accounting choices. Second, we find that Enron's most economically connected subsidiary (predictably) went bankrupt shortly after Enron, suggesting a market under-reaction at the time of the Enron events. Additional analysis provides some limited evidence that low institutional ownership or slow analyst forecast updating partly explains this under-reaction. Our study adds to the literature on restatements, management reputation effects, peer information transfer, and the market's ability to react to specific fundamental information.


This study investigated the psychological correlates of truancy among secondary school students. A sample size of 339 (three hundred and thirty-nine) SS 2 secondary school students were drawn using purposive sampling technique. The research adopted a correlational design and Pearson Product Moment Correlation Statistical tool. Three research questions and corresponding hypotheses were stated for investigation. The instrument for attitude to school, self-concept and locus of control measured 0.68, 0.64 and 0.72 respectively. The result of the study revealed that there was a positive correlation between students' attitude to school and truancy, a weak negative correlation between self-concept and truancy, a strong positive correlation exists between locus of control and truancy. It is recommended that federal and state ministry of education should include moral education in the school curriculum.


There is an ongoing concern about the unfavourable position of migrant youth in education and on the labour market, in particular concerning them dropping out of school or becoming unemployed. This leads to a great proliferation of policies and measures to tackle these problems. In this thesis the presumed problematic school-work transition of migrant youth is studied. First on an individual and social level by looking at their experiences with schooling and work, and the role of their family network therein, and secondly on a structural institutional level by considering the vocational education and training system and the contributions of education and labour market policies. A mixed methods approach is employed consisting of observations in schools, interviews with youngsters, teachers and other professionals, a youth survey and analyses of existing data and policy documents. The results point out that the majority of young migrants fares well in education and on the labour market and that a smaller share has problems; there are important differences in and between migrant groups. Analyses of the dropout rates indicate that the overall majority of dropouts do, in fact, perform well on the labour market. At the same time there is a fairly small group of youngsters, who lag behind - they are neither in school or training, nor are they employed. However, this group is seen to represent the entire group of dropouts and this has a negative impact on how migrant dropouts are viewed. The survey and interview results reveal that the majority of migrant youngsters, girls in particular, have a positive school satisfaction, are motivated to make a career and are optimistic about their future perspectives. Their family network serves as an important frame of reference and stimulus: communicating about school with parents and (older) siblings contributes to a higher school satisfaction. Many migrant youngsters, however, do not receive any support with school and also miss role models which makes it harder to make the right educational or professional choices. And for girls care responsibilities at home can hinder school engagement. School failure is within the policy framework foremost individualized, ascribed to individual or groups related deficits. Structural or institutional issues are hereby barely discussed. In the educational system these are the (early) selection mechanisms which contribute to youngsters making a wrong study choice and the competence-based and new learning that is by both students and teachers negatively perceived as lacking structure. When looking for a job or trainee post, migrant youngsters can be confronted with exclusion due to discrimination or a presumed lack of soft or social skills deemed necessary for employability. Finally, the re-integration policies which aim to lead youngsters (back) to school or the labour market are not adequate: interagency cooperation between public and private partners hampers and the most difficult group is not sufficiently reached.


The aim of this paper is to examine the contribution of public inquiries to the reform of child care law and practice in England and Wales in the 1980s. Particular attention will be paid to the most recent inquiry, the Cleveland Report (Secretary of State, 1988). We wish to argue that a consensus has evolved on what must be done which is characterized by its reliance on what we call legalism. Evidence for this development is found both in the proposals for legal and administrative reform, and in concerns around social work practice. The reframing of child care issues around the pole of legalism is then located within the wider social and political context. Our conclusions are that 'legalization' may have significance in legitimating the social work profession and its role in child protection work, but that faith in legal intervention as offering a 'solution' to the problem of child abuse, is likely to be misplaced.


In the 10 years since I relocated to Halifax, Nova Scotia from Toronto, Ontario, I've had three family physicians. The first closed her practice to specialize in another area of medicine. The second returned to her home province. The third I've been seeing for the past four years and I pray she isn't planning to leave me anytime soon. Why? Because according to Take as Directed: Your Prescription for Safe Health Care in Canada, the chance that I'll find another family physician to accept me as a new patient — especially if I'm in my senior years and riddled with health problems — is slim.

This book's coauthors have the inside scoop: Rhonda Church is a family physician in rural Nova Scotia and Neil MacKinnon is the associate director of research at Dalhousie University's College of Pharmacy in Halifax. Among their many credentials, Church chairs the Canadian Medical Association's Core Committee on Health Care and Promotion, while MacKinnon has been the lead investigator of several studies on the safety and effectiveness of Canada's medication-use system.

According to its press materials, the book was written in part to inform Canadians about the practical things they can do to prevent adverse events. It's also meant to be a guide on how to optimize the use of medications at home and avoid potential conflicts with herbal supplements and prescription medications. While it delivers on those promises, the practical advice tends to get lost in a sea of statistics and references.

The passages that will engage (and terrify) ordinary Canadians aren't the statistics and references. Rather, it's the fictional anecdotes based on the authors' experience in their professional practices that health care consumers will find compelling. In chapter one, "Paul's Peril: A Cautionary Tale," there's the story of how senior citizen "Paul" receives a prescription for antibiotics he didn't actually need for a cold virus from a harried physician at a hospital emergency department. The antibiotics interact harmfully with one of Paul's regular medications, which he didn't disclose to the doctor because he could not recall its name. Poor Paul ends up with a potentially life-threatening condition that can cause the disintegration of muscle tissue and kidney failure.

Image courtesy of ECW Press

The authors are adept at painting these kinds of health-scare pictures. They're also skilled at presenting information in plain language, tossing in Maritime references to lighten depressing details, as in "Meanwhile, closures and service interruptions at emergency departments in more remote areas of the province are as common as fog off Peggy's Cove" and "a rising tide lifts all boats. … In our case, the rising tide may be new disclosure guidelines for health professionals for reporting errors."

But what of the practical advice? In chapter three, "Rubber-gloved requiem," the authors urge patients to police their own health care, detailing how to do so in seven exhaustive steps that include being an active participant in the process, a recurring message throughout the book. It would seem that the days when doctors exclusively did the diagnostic detective work and follow-up for their patients have gone the way of the house call.

One thing is certain: Church and MacKinnon aren't afraid to expose the ever-widening gaps in Canada's health care system by comparing it to other sectors. They state that "The system that was designed forty-odd years ago is just that — a system that was designed to meet our needs as a nation forty-odd years ago. Imagine the airline industry trying to land planes at Toronto's Pearson airport using a system designed more than forty years ago, or security personnel relying on practices and policies from the same era."

Take as Directed has been well endorsed; it features seven testimonials from reputable organizations such as the Health Council of Canada, the Canadian Pharmacists Association and New York's Commonwealth Fund.

While ordinary Canadians will glean some insight into how to more effectively navigate the system, this book would be best read by physicians and other health care professionals. It should also be included in medical and pharmacy school curricula, for it illustrates that the healing of our fractured health care system must come from within.


The electrokinetic technique is an emerging technology presently tested in situ to remove dissolved heavy metals from contaminated groundwater. There is a growing interest for using this system to cleanse clayey soil contaminated by toxic metallic ions. Currently, there are very few available non-destructive treatment methods that could be successfully applied in situ on low permeable type of soil matrix. The main objective of presented study was to validate and possibly enhance the overall efficiency of decontamination by the electrokinetic technique of the low permeable soil polluted by the arsenic in combination with chromium and copper ions. The chosen mixture of ions was imitating leak of pesticide well known as chromate copper arsenate (CCA). The chosen technique is showing a big promise to be used in the future as a portable, easy to install and run on sites with spills or leaks hard to reach otherwise; such as in the dense populated and urbanized areas. Laboratory electrokinetic experiments were designed to understand and possibly manipulate main mechanisms involved during forced migration of ions. All tests were conducted on artificially contaminated kaolinite (low permeable clay soil). Electrokinetic migration was inducted by the low voltage dc current applied through soil column. Series of experiments were designed to assess the efficiency of arsenic-chromium-copper remediation by applying (1) only dc current; and (2) by altering the soil environment. Obtained results showed that arsenic could be successfully removed from the soil in one day (25 hours) span. It was significant time reduction, very important during emergency response. Mass recovered at the end of each test depended on initial condition of soil and type of flushing solution. The best results were obtained, when soil was flushed with either NaOH or NaOCl (total removal efficiency 74.4% and 78.1%, respectively). Direct analysis of remained arsenic in soil after these tests confirmed substantial drop of the initial mass of arsenic in soil profile from 51.54 mg to 10.62 mg (NaOH) and 5.68 mg (NaOCl) after 25 hours of treatment.


Global variations in reef productivity during the Quaternary depend on external parameters that may alter the global chemical balance in the oceans and atmosphere. We designed a numerical model that simulates reef growth, erosion, and sedimentation on coastlines undergoing sea level oscillations, and uplift or subsidence. We further develop a probabilistic evaluation that accounts for variable vertical ground motion, erosion, and foundation morphologies. Absolute sea level change appears primordial, as productivity must have increased by an order of magnitude since the onset of the glacial cycles, ∼2.6 Ma. But most important is relative sea level change, i.e., eustasy modulated by uplift or subsidence, that rejuvenates the accommodation space and exposes pristine domains of the shore to active reefs at each cycle. Integrated over the long‐term, vertical land motion sets the pace of reef growth: productivity in tectonically unstable domains is thus expected to be up to 10 times higher than in stable regions, if any. We quantify the global length of reef coasts and the probability density functions for slopes and uplift rates. Productivity waxes during transgressions to reach 2–8 Gt  CaCO3/yr and wanes during highstands, which may contribute to increase atmospheric pCO2 by several tens of ppm during deglaciations. Over the last 1.5 Ma, reefs precipitated ∼0.8 × 106 Gt  CaCO3 (∼500 × 103 km3), the equivalent of a 1 m‐thick layer spread over the entire surface of the Earth. This production modulates the calcium budget, for it represents some 30% of the modern Ca flux in the ocean.


Chemokine receptors are G protein-coupled receptors that mediate migration and activation of leukocytes as an important part of a protective immune response to injury and infection. In addition, chemokine receptors are used by HIV-1 to infect CD4 positive cells. The structural bases of chemokine receptor recognition and signal transduction are currently being investigated. High-resolution X-ray diffraction and NMR spectroscopy of chemokines indicate that all these peptides exhibit a common folding pattern, in spite of its low degree of primary-sequence homology. Chemokines' functional motifs have been identified by mutagenesis studies, and a possible mechanism for receptor recognition and activation is proposed, but high-resolution structure data of chemokine receptors is not yet available. Studies with receptor chimeras have identified the putative extracellular domains as the major selectivity determinants. Single-amino acid substitutions in the extracellular domains produce profound changes in receptor specificity, suggesting that motifs in these domains operate as a restrictive barrier to a common activation motif. Similarly HIV-1 usage of chemokine receptors involve interaction of one or more extracellular domains of the receptor with conserved and variable domains on the viral envelope protein gp 120, indicating a highly complex interaction. Elucidating the structural requirements for receptor interaction with chemokines and with HIV-1 will provide important insights into understanding the mechanisms of chemokine recognition and receptor activation. In addition, this information can greatly facilitate the design of effective immunomodulatory and anti-HIV-1 therapeutic agents.


The vividly coloured Neotropical genus Callipia Guenee (1858) (Lepidoptera Linnaeus, 1758, Geometridae (Leach, 1815), Larentiinae (Leach, 1815), Stamnodini Forbes, 1948) is revised and separated into four species groups, according to a provisional phylogeny based on Cytochrome Oxidase I (COI) gene data and morphology. Fourteen new species are described using COI data and morphology: a) in the balteata group: C. fiedleri sp. nov., C. jakobi sp. nov., C. lamasi sp. nov.; b) in the vicinaria group: C. hausmanni sp. nov., C. walterfriedlii sp. nov.; c) in the parrhasiata group: C. augustae sp. nov., C. jonai sp. nov., C. karsholti sp. nov., C. levequei sp. nov., C. milleri sp. nov., C. sihvoneni sp. nov., C. wojtusiaki sp. nov. and d) in the constantinaria group: C. hiltae sp. nov., C. rougeriei sp. nov. One new subspecies is described: C. wojtusiaki septentrionalis subsp. nov. Two species are revived from synonymy: C. intermedia Dognin, 1914 stat. rev. and C. occulta Warren, 1904 stat. rev. The taxon hamaria Sperry, 1951 is transferred from being a junior synonym of C. constantinaria Oberthur, 1881 to being a junior synonym of C. occulta stat. rev. The taxon admirabilis Warren, 1904 is confirmed as being a junior synonym of C. paradisea Thierry-Mieg, 1904. The taxon languescens Warren, 1904 is confirmed as being a junior synonym of C. rosetta , Thierry-Mieg, 1904 and the taxon confluens Warren, 1905 is confirmed as being a junior synonym of C. balteata Warren, 1905. The status of the remaining species is not changed: C. aurata Warren, 1904, C. brenemanae Sperry, 1951, C. parrhasiata Guenee, 1858, C. flagrans Warren, 1904, C. fulvida Warren, 1907 and C. vicinaria Dognin. All here recognised 26 species are illustrated and the available molecular genetic information of 25 species, including Barcode Index Numbers (BINs) for most of the taxa is provided. The almost threefold increase from 10 to 26 valid species shows that species richness of tropical moths is strongly underestimated even in relatively conspicuous taxa. Callipia occurs from medium to high elevations in wet parts of the tropical and subtropical Andes from Colombia to northern Argentina. The early stages and host plants are still unknown.


ITFA was likewise decimated, falling from 1.1%E to 0.1%E in both men and women. Eleven hundred and ninety-three fewer CHD deaths (BEST UI 1,149 – 1,688), were potentially attributable to the ITFA reduction, representing some 11% of the overall 11,100 CHD mortality fall in Denmark between 1991 and 2007. The greatest attributable mortality falls were seen in the most deprived quintiles (reflecting their bigger reductions in ITFA consumption). Adding ITFA data to the original IMPACTsec model improved the overall model fit from 64% to 73%. The major contributions to the fall in CHD mortality remained consistent across a wide range of sensitivity analyses. Conclusion Denmark's mandatory elimination of ITFA was very effective. Furthermore, it may well have accounted for approximately 11% of the substantial reduction in CHD deaths achieved between 1991 and 2007. The most deprived groups benefited the most, thus reducing inequalities. Adopting the Danish ITFA regulatory approach elsewhere could substantially reduce CHD mortality while also improving health equity.


I propose an analytical approach to design flattened wavelength splitters with cascaded Mach-Zehnder interferometers when wavelength dependence of the directional couplers cannot be neglected. I start from a geometrical representation of the action of a doubly point-symmetrical filter, assuming no wavelength dependence of the couplers. Next I derive the analytical formulas behind its working principle and extend them to the wavelength-dependent case. I also show how the geometrical representation allows one to broaden the class of working structures.


Since 1995, indigenous peoples from around the world and United Nations (UN) member states have been meeting once a year for two weeks to discuss the UN Drafted Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (DDRIP). The DDRIP is a proposed document that defines the human rights of indigenous peoples including indigenous peoples' right to self-determination, and collective rights to land and natural resources. Since it was first tabled in 1995, the DDRIP has generated much debate. In the past nine years, only two of the forty-five articles in the DDRIP have been passed by the UN Working Group on the Drafted Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. This thesis explores the process of the DDRIP negotiations and the meaning it has for First Nation peoples (specifically Mohawks of Kahnawake), the Canadian government and Canadian/First Nation relations. My research was conducted over a two year period and consisted of participant observation, archival and newspaper research, and formal and informal interviews. As my theoretical framework, I used Risse and Sikkink's (1999) "spiral model" on the socialisation of international human rights norms into domestic practice and Sherry Ortner's theory (1999) on power and resistance. I argue that the indigenous peoples' experience at the Working Group on the DDRIP has theoretical significance for the study of globalisation, state control and civil resistance. New political opportunities and relationships are being created and contested across national and international boundaries as indigenous peoples seek recognition of their human rights, and negotiate a place within the world's political process.


Antibodies to Neospora caninum were detected in 5 (10%) of 52 coyotes from Texas. Antibodies to Toxoplasma gondii were detected in 32 (62%) of 52 samples from these same coyotes. Four (80%) of the 5 coyotes that were seropositive for N. caninum also had antibodies to T. gondii. Nineteen (37%) of the coyotes did not have antibodies to either parasite. Three coyote pups were inoculated with the brains from mice infected with 3 strains of N. caninum originally isolated from dogs. None of the pups developed neosporosis or excreted N. caninum oocysts in their feces. The pups developed anti-N. caninum antibody titers of > or = 1:800 but did not develop antibodies to T. gondii. Results of this study indicate that antibodies to T. gondii are more common than antibodies to N. caninum in coyotes. Additionally, young coyotes appear to be resistant to experimental N. caninum infection.


A simple stereo algorithm is presented for determining the three-dimensional position of object points in a scene. In this algorithm two independent measures of similarity, the zero-crossing pattern and the intensity gradient, are combined to improve the matching process. Zero-crossing neighborhoods are classified into 16 possible patterns according to their local connectivity. In the matching process a relaxation method is used to find the best matches. Three constraints are incorporated into a single relaxation process, namely, disparity continuity, figural continuity, and smoothness of the probability of matching.


Spatial Networks represent the connectivity structure between units of space as a weighted graph whose links are weighted as to the strength of connections. In case of urban spatial networks, the units of space correspond closely to streets and in architectural spatial networks the units correspond to rooms, convex spaces or star-convex spaces. Once represented as a graph, a spatial network can be analysed using graph theory and spectral graph theory. We present four steps of modelling a spectrum for an urban spatial network; present an implementation of a state-ofthe-art spectral graph-drawing algorithm and showcase a Spatial Eigenvector Centrality index, which is based on a novel definition of spatial networks based on Fuzzy Closeness indicators computed using Easiest Path distances.


The paper deals with the basic philosophy and structure of remote controlled laboratory for experimentation in Electrical Engineering. The laboratory collects experiments from fields of Power Electronics, Electrical Machines, Electro-Mechanical and Motion Control Systems. The workbenches in the real laboratory are used over internet. The real experiments of the remote controlled laboratory are placed at various universities. A special care is devoted to preparation of the learners to experimentation, including examining their knowledge before joining to the experiment. To have a feeling of participation in the experiment, except of the measurement data, also the signal from web camera is transferred to a distance operator.


Machine learning benefits from large training datasets, which may not always be possible to collect by any single entity, especially when using privacy-sensitive data. In many contexts, such as healthcare and finance, separate parties may wish to collaborate and learn from each other's data but are prevented from doing so due to privacy regulations. Some regulations prevent explicit sharing of data between parties by joining datasets in a central location (confidentiality). Others also limit implicit sharing of data, e.g., through model predictions (privacy). There is currently no method that enables machine learning in such a setting, where both confidentiality and privacy need to be preserved, to prevent both explicit and implicit sharing of data. Federated learning only provides confidentiality, not privacy, since gradients shared still contain private information. Differentially private learning assumes unreasonably large datasets. Furthermore, both of these learning paradigms produce a central model whose architecture was previously agreed upon by all parties rather than enabling collaborative learning where each party learns and improves their own local model. We introduce Confidential and Private Collaborative (CaPC) learning, the first method provably achieving both confidentiality and privacy in a collaborative setting. We leverage secure multi-party computation (MPC), homomorphic encryption (HE), and other techniques in combination with privately aggregated teacher models. We demonstrate how CaPC allows participants to collaborate without having to explicitly join their training sets or train a central model. Each party is able to improve the accuracy and fairness of their model, even in settings where each party has a model that performs well on their own dataset or when datasets are not IID and model architectures are heterogeneous across parties.


Abstract A fourth species of rock crawler (Notoptera: Mantophasmatodea: Mantophasmatidae) is described and figured from an individual preserved in middle Eocene (Lutetian) Baltic amber. Adicophasma grylloblattoides Arillo and Engel, new species, is distinguished from its close relative, A. spinosum Engel and Grimaldi (reinstated), by the reduced pedicel, absence of spines on the maxillae, absence of mesofemoral spination, and proportions of the thoracic segments. The fossil shares with A. spinosum the presence of profemoral spination (confirmed by a new photograph of the holotype) and absence of the dorsal profemoral carina, characters that differentiate Adicophasma from the monotypic Raptophasma; it shares with all Baltic amber Notoptera the absence of the setal fan on the arolium. As noted by previous authors, the former order Mantophasmatodea is related to modern Grylloblattodea, whereas Mesozoic and Paleozoic grylloblattodeans represent a stem group to both. As such, Grylloblattodea and Mantophasmatodea are considered suborders of a single order, Notoptera Crampton (sensu novum), following the recommendation of Engel and Grimaldi (2004). The names for three rock crawlers are emended in order that the specific epithet may match the gender of the generic name: A. spinosum, Mantophasma zephyrum Zompro et al., and Tanzaniophasma subsolanum (Zompro et al.) (nomina emendata). Raptophasmatinae and Ensiferophasmatidae are new synonyms of Mantophasmatidae, while Tanzaniophasmatidae and Austrophasmatidae are newly demoted in rank to a subfamily and tribe of Mantophasmatidae, respectively. A hierarchical classification of Polyneoptera is appended.


Keratoconus is a condition in which the corneal shape becomes steeper and more irregular between adolescence and the mid-thirties. It is a common cause of visual impairment with disease progression typically managed with rigid contact lens. Traditionally, no intervention has been available to arrest or slow disease progression. As a result, keratoconus is the commonest indication for corneal transplantation in young people. Over the last decade, outcome data has accumulated for new interventions for keratoconus that have radically altered the treatment options for these patients and promises to avoid the sight loss associated with this condition. These interventions include corneal collagen cross-linking (CXL), intracorneal ring implantation and photorefractive keratectomy (PRK). The laboratory and clinical work presented in this thesis explores these new interventions under two key headings: corneal shape stabilisation and visual rehabilitation. I have developed two novel ex vivo techniques which provide quantitative means of measuring riboflavin across the whole cornea in both epithelium-off and –on techniques. Using these methods I have concluded that no existing commercial transepithelial CXL protocol matches the riboflavin penetration achieved following epithelial debridement. I present novel iontophoretic protocols that, by increasing riboflavin concentration, soak duration and current dosage, matches epithelium-off absorption. I additionally report prospective outcomes of an accelerated version of CXL in keratoconus confirming it is a safe and effective iteration of the original 'Dresden' protocol. Finally, I present interim outcomes from a prospective study of simultaneous ocular wavefront-guided PRK and CXL showing significant improvements in corrected distance visual acuity beyond that expected with standard CXL.


Ethnography is an important endeavor that serves as a tool for understanding diverse forms of living and experiencing the world. Ethnographic data collected is beneficial for meeting the cultural demands and needs of others. Ethnographic research tools, such as participant observation and questionnaires, have been developed for studying other cultures. However, greater emphasis and reflexivity needs to be given to the role of the anthropologist in the field. The ethnographer is not a one-way street. How s/he is perceived by the local community is imperative to the access of cultural data and the quality of data gathered. The ethnographer's training should focus on abiding by a code of ethics that emphasizes concern for the well being of the subjects studied. Ethnographic research methods are herein presented along with characteristics (evidential and non-evidential 'identities') of an anthropologist that may affect his/her access to information and the quality of data collected. Several examples of field researchers' experiences are presented. Muslim North Africa is considered as a region demanding attention to its specific cultural realities. These examples address cultural factors in determining appropriate research processes for access to and quality of data. A greater focus on the ethnographer as a research tool and the emphasis on abiding by ethnographic ethical standards would continue to improve the quality of ethnographic data, and the value of its applications. In training anthropologists on research tools, equal emphasis needs to be given to reflexivity and our responsibilities as ethnographers to the people studied.


Effective communication with patients is essential to quality care. Obviously, language barriers significantly impact this and can increase the risk of poor patient outcomes. Smartphones and mobile health technology are valuable resources that are beginning to break down language barriers in health care. We present a case of a challenging language barrier where successful perioperative communication was achieved using mobile technology. Although quite beneficial, use of technology that is not validated exposes providers to unnecessary medicolegal risk. We hope to highlight the need for validation of such technology to ensure that these tools are an effective way to accurately communicate with patients in the perioperative setting.


When Sylvia Plath's Ariel was published posthumously, A. Alvarez in the Observer wrote: 'If the poems are despairing, vengeful and destructive, they are at the same time tender, open to things, and also unusually clever, sardonic, hard-minded ...They are works of great artistic purity and, despite all the nihilism, great generosity ...the book is a major literary event'. This selection made by Ted Hughes from all her work shows that Sylvia Plath is clearly a major poet of the twentieth century.


Catalyst layers are one of the most important parts of the PEM fuel cells and the cell performance is highly related to its structure. Catalyst layers are generally made by uniform distribution of catalyst on carbon cloth or carbon papers to form electrodes. In this paper, the idea of using non-uniform catalyst layer instead of common uniform catalyst layers is presented and simulated by a two-dimensional steady-state computational model. The model accounts for species transport, electrochemical kinetics, charge transport and current density distribution. A fuel cell test stand is designed and built to facilitate experimental validation of the model. Modeling results show that electrical current in catalyst layer is non-uniform, influenced by the channel-land patterns in bipolar plate geometry. Our simulations results also suggest that some non-uniform catalyst distribution patterns regarding to bipolar plate configuration will improve the performance of the whole catalyst layer by increasing catalyst utilization factor. Therefore, it is necessary to design non-uniform catalyst layers regarding to specific procedure. Plasma sputtering method is used to fabricate non-uniform catalyst layers. In this method, the platinum is deposited on the carbon cloth in the plasma-processing chamber. Indeed, an experimental procedure is presented to facilitate the fabrication of non-uniform catalyst layers by plasma sputtering.Copyright © 2010 by ASME


CONDORCKD is a system implementing a novel approach to discovering knowledge from data. It addresses the issue of relevance of the learned rules by algebraic means and explicitly supports the subsequent processing by probabilistic reasoning. After briefly summarizing the key ideas underlying CONDORCKD, the purpose of this paper is to present a walk-through and system demonstration.


The thesis looks at the determinants of the location of economic activity and the impact that different location patterns can have on economic and social outcomes. Chapter 1 provides a brief introduction and summary of the remaining chapters. Chapter 2 looks at neighbourhood effects on school drop out rates using data from the Australian Youth Survey. We identify two different types of neighbourhood effects. First, teenagers are more likely to drop out if the average drop out rate in the neighbourhood is high. Second, teenagers are more likely to drop out if they live in neighbourhoods with a high percentage of adults with vocational qualifications. Chapter 3 uses similar data to test for neighbourhood effects at different spatial scales. We find that educational composition of larger neighbourhoods influences drop out rates, possibly reflecting the structure of local labour market demand. We also find that low socio-economic status of the immediate neighbourhood has an adverse impact on drop out rate. Chapter 4 considers the evolution of European regional unemployment. European regions have experienced a polarisation of their unemployment rates between 1986 and 1996, as regions with intermediate rates have moved towards either extreme. Regions' outcomes have closely followed those of neighbouring regions. This is only weakly explained by regions being part of the same Member State, having a similar skill composition, or broad sectoral specialisation. Even more surprisingly, foreign neighbours matter as much as domestic neighbours. All of this suggests a reorganisation of economic activities with increasing disregard for national borders. Chapter 5 considers mobility within the US city size distribution. Papers that study city size distributions have concentrated predominantly on the shape of that distribution, while ignoring mobility within the distribution. We develop a series of tools that can be used to study such intra-distribution dynamics and apply them to data from the US. Chapter 6 uses a similar set of tools to examine spatial aspects of the evolution of the US system of cities. We find that some features of that evolution are consistent with theoretical models developed by the new economic geography.


Abstract We describe the points system as proposed by the Belgian Commission for Pension Reform 2020–2040. Intragenerational equity can be realised through the allocation of points within a cohort. The intergenerational distribution is determined by fixing the value of a point for the newly retired and a sustainability parameter for the actual retirees. The value of the point links pensions to the average living standard of the employed population. We propose an automatic adjustment mechanism, in which a key role is played by the career length. This mechanism induces a balanced distribution of the burden of demographic and economic shocks over the different cohorts.


Industry standards for cow evaluations based on calf performance typically use Most Probable Producing Ability, which does not consider performance past weaning. In more recent years technologies such as grid marketing and individual animal identification have provided more data in later stages of fed cattle production and brought about opportunities to enhance cow evaluation. This study suggests two methods of cow evaluation using lifetime performance of calves; one on individual cows and one using cows grouped by age. Even with unaccounted variation of sires, some cows consistently produced an above- or below-average finished animal. Younger cows and very old cows typically produced calves with lower lifetime returns, but causes varied between efficiency, weight, and carcass quality. Both methods highlight calf performance relationships and show potential for enhancing management decision-making.


[Purpose] This study investigated the relationship between herniated nucleus pulposus (HNP) and fat infiltration of muscles around the spine by measuring body mass index (BMI) and fat infiltration of the muscles around the spine. [Subjects and Methods] Subjects were 82 people, both men and women they were divided into two groups, a normal group and a patient group who were suffering from serious HNP between L4 and L5. Of the anthropometric measurement, and fat infiltration muscles by measuring the cross-sectional area from the center of the disc to the muscle around the spine and the cross-sectional area of fat infiltration. [Results] Fat infiltration rate of each lumbar layer in the normal group was different L34–L45 and L45–L5S1, but not between L23–L34. Fat infiltration in the muscle between the normal group and patients with HNP was different in the layers and the difference was greatest in the L5–S1 layer. [Conclusion] We performed correlation analysis of BMI and the total fat infiltration rate in each group to find the relationship between obesity and fat infiltration in the lumbar spine. Fat infiltration increased, and normal people or patients with chronic back pain are considered to be exposed to other diseases as fat infiltration in the lumbar spine increases.


Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to explore how Americans choose a country and medical facility to travel abroad for medical treatment based on the following factors country environment, tourism destination, medical tourism costs and medical facilities and services.

Design/methodology/approach
Online survey with the help of Amazon Mechanical Turk website was used for data collection, and 541 valid cases were used of American residents who had travelled abroad for medical tourism. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses were undertaken to validate the scales.

Findings
Findings indicated four major factors that can influence American medical tourists' choices of medical tourism destinations. These factors are overseas' country factors, attractiveness of tourism destination, medical tourism costs and facilities and services. Both the convergent and discriminant validities for the constructs were established. The results of the measurement-model-fit based on various measures were within the suggested cut-off values.

Research limitations/implications
Out of the 541 responses of post-travel experienced medical tourists, it is hard to tell how similar/dissimilar the participants are in terms of ranking the four factors. To be competitive to attract global medical tourists, research suggests that the five popular countries of treatment, India, China, Thailand, Mexico and Turkey, identified in this study should provide high quality of medical and tourism facilities to patients.

Originality/value
This study contributes to the understanding of the underlying factors, which influence American medical tourists' choice of destinations, with validated scales. For this exploratory research, 25 new items together with 34 items from other studies were adapted.


Concerns about youth behaviour and risk are central to current policy and practice. Reforms in children and young people's services have included an emphasis on participation, youth action and youth-led services through a development of a citizenship curriculum in schools, youth councils and new youth funds (DfES, 2006). Recent policies such as Youth Matters (DfES, 2005) highlight the importance of inclusiveness, increased participation and influence of young people in building community capacity. However, there is a tension in approaches to youth engagement which emphasise a 'top-down' target driven approach, as opposed to a more 'ground up' approach to enable young people to influence youth based initiatives (Milbourne, 2009). It is therefore important to create new spaces in which marginalized young people who are often invisible within youth initiatives are encouraged to participate and have their voice heard.
This paper will explore the methodological issues of using participatory and performative means to create a more accessible and effective arena in which marginalised young people's attitudes towards risk and safety are explored. It discusses a current project which aims to bring young people from diverse cultures together through links with a performative project in Barcelona, and local community groups in Bournemouth. The core aims are to find out whether young people's attitudes to risk and safety are affected by what they hear or read in the media or by the prevailing opinion in their local community/culture. This includes an exploration of whether young people's perceptions of powerlessness in their local community impact on their notions of risk and safety.


In an effort to investigate the pharmacological basis for the health promoting actions of Chinese tonifying herbs in four main categories (Qi -invigorating, blood -enriching, Yin -nourishing and Yang -promoting), antioxidant and immunomodulatory activities of the methanol extracts prepared from 36 tonifying herbs were examined by both in vitro and ex vivo assay systems. The results indicated that the tested herbs showed in vitro (–40%) and ex vivo (–30%) antioxidant activities. Among the herbs, almost 60% of the Yang -promoting herbs showed in vitro antioxidant activity. The overall correlation between in vitro and ex vivo antioxidant activities was poor, except for the Yang -promoting herbs. In regard to immunomodulatory activity, the Qi -invigorating herbs (60%) and Yin -nourishing herbs (75%) showed in vitro immunostimulatory activity, whereas 56% of the Yang -promoting herbs showed in vitro immunosuppressive activity. About half (44%) of all tested herbs showed ex vivo immunostimulatory activity and 6% showed ex vivo immunosuppressive activity. The overall correlation between in vitro and ex vivo immunostimulatory activities was apparent, particularly for the Yin -nourishing and Yang -promoting herbs. The measurement of antioxidant and immunomodulatory activities may serve as a means for functionally relevant quality assessment of Chinese herbs and their related health products.


COVID-19 associated pneumonia and acute respiratory distress syndrome are characterized by a lipid mediator storm with massive increases in lung and systemic thromboxane A2 >> prostaglandin D2. Thromboxane A2 is a potent vasoconstrictor of pulmonary veins >> arteries, and thereby promotes an increase in pulmonary capillary pressures, transudation of fluid into the alveolar space, pulmonary edema and ARDS. Thromboxane A2 also increases vascular permeability, contracts bronchial smooth muscle, triggers and amplifies platelet activation, and promotes a prothrombotic state. PGD2 promotes a Th2 immune response that is atypical for viral infections and inhibits antiviral defense by suppressing interferon λ expression. D-dimers, urinary 11-dehydro-TxB2, and IL-13, a Th2 cytokine, have emerged as key biomarkers of severity and organ failure in COVID-19. Ramatroban is an orally bioavailable, potent, dual antagonist of the thromboxane A2 (TPr) and PGD2 (DPr2) receptors. We report use of ramatroban in 4 COVID-19 outpatients, 22 to 87 years of age, with acute onset / worsening of respiratory distress and hypoxemia. All four patients experienced decrease in respiratory distress and increase in SpO2, within hours of the first dose and thereby avoided hospitalization. By the 5th day all 4 patients had complete resolution of respiratory distress and hypoxemia. Ramatroban (Baynas®, Bayer Yakuhin Ltd., Japan) has an established safety profile, having been indicated in Japan for the treatment of allergic rhinitis for over 20 years. As a broncho-relaxant, anti-vasospastic, anti-thrombotic and immunomodulator, ramatroban addresses the fundamental pathophysiologic mechanisms underlying respiratory and critical organ failure in COVID-19, and therefore merits urgent clinical trials that might impact the ongoing pandemic.


IVANOVA , E., V. DOLTCHINKOVA and Ch. ROUMENIN, 2013. Electrokinetic potential of pea thylakoid membranes under static magnetic fi eld (2t) treatment: role of iron ions and light exposure. Bulg. J. Agric. Sci., Supplement 2, 19: 147–150 The effects of static magnetic fi eld (SMF, 2T) on pea thylakoid membranes were investigated under photosynthetic and actinic light exposure. The pea plants were subjected to light intensity of 2000 lx (HL, high light) and to 650 lx (IL, intermediate light), respectively in order to specify the effect of SMF (2T) on the electrokinetic potentials at the membrane surfaces. We determined the electrophoretic mobility, zeta potential and surface charge density of thylakoids in dependence on the iron content of the 'Fe-suffi cient', 'Fe-starved' and '2 x Fe' variants. The generation of light-induced increase in negative zeta potential of 'Fe-suffi cient' SMF (2T) pre-exposed thylakoids (HL, IL) was due to an enhancement of net negative surface electric charge on the outer surface of the membranes. The primary electron-transport processes across the thylakoid membrane was increased due to actinic light treatment to the 'Fe-starved' SMF pre-exposed thylakoids (HL) because of most densely packed thylakoids. A decreased lipid peroxidation by SMF (2T) exposure before or after actinic illumination of thylakoids was observed. It could be due to a recombination of radical products as a consequence of an indirect action of magnetic fi eld on thylakoids from 'Fe-suffi cient' and '2 x Fe' plants. The electrokinetic potential changes in pea thylakoids upon SMF (2T) exposure depend on Fe content in growing medium as well as light intensity (HL, high light; IL, intermediate light) during pea plant growing.


Network operators gradually open their interfaces to formerly hidden services. This fosters the development of a new class of mobile applications that take into account user's location and presence information. However, this development also raises problems especially the lack of protection of privacy in location-based services. This paper proposes a service architecture that is aimed at overcoming some of the shortages of currently existing context-aware applications that make use of network providers services as well as existing mobile payment systems. We therefore introduce the combination of tickets together with a novel privacy enhancing mechanism that is based on the notion of pseudonyms. Compared to other privacy enhancing solutions our pseudonym mechanism can also be implemented on mobile devices that have some restrictions regarding resources like memory or processing power. Due to their flexibility tickets can be used for many different kinds of applications. One important aspect in this respect is the highly postulated pay-as-you-go model. We give an example of a transport ticket application and explain the message interaction patterns for the basic functionalities of the systems, regarding aspects like data and privacy protection. This example further shows how 3rd party application providers can build meaningful mobile applications that are accepted by users


BACKGROUND
This topic had not been researched previously and the information gained could have implications for midwives working with Chinese women everywhere.

AIMS
To explore the specific childbirth expectations of Hong Kong Chinese first-time pregnant women.

METHODS
This was a cross-sectional descriptive survey study and a Chinese version of the Childbirth Expectations Questionnaire was used to collect data. The sample consisted of 186 first-time pregnant women who first attended the antenatal clinic at a large public hospital in a major geographical region of Hong Kong.

RESULTS
Results showed that the Chinese pregnant women, the majority of who had not attended childbirth education classes, had high expectations of support from both their partners and midwives during labour and delivery. Conversely, expectations toward their own ability to cope with pain were relatively low. In addition, the pregnant women expressed concerns about the severity of labour pain and indicated low expectations about minimal use of medical interventions during labour.

CONCLUSIONS
This study results add to the existing literature about childbirth expectations of first-time pregnant Hong Kong Chinese women. Midwife educators should incorporate the findings into childbirth education classes to help pregnant women develop realistic and positive expectations.


Abstract A cross-system comparison of organic carbon origin and behaviour in nine European estuaries is presented. The study sites display a very large range of hydrological and environmental conditions. The watershed of the respective estuaries were characterized by plotting the total organic carbon (TOC) in the rivers versus the inhabitants/discharge ratio. This allows to distinguish four types of watershed with regard to anthropogenic forcing and organic carbon levels: polluted by sewage inputs (Scheldt and to a much lesser extent, Ems, Sado and Thames), decontaminated (Elbe and Rhine), pristine (Gironde and Douro) and eutrophized (Loire and Scheldt). In the estuarine zone, dissolved organic carbon (DOC) almost always decreased linearly with increasing salinity. Exceptions were: the Scheldt, where a net consumption of sewage-derived DOC was observed, the Gironde, where a net production of DOC occurred in the maximum turbidity zone (MTZ) and the Sado and Ems, where DOC was supplied from large intertidal areas. By contrast, a large fraction of the riverine particulate organic carbon (POC) was mineralized in all the estuaries, except the Douro, where residence time of waters is only a few days. A fraction of POC appeared however refractory and accumulated in the MTZs, where terrestrial soil-derived material dominates (Elbe, Ems, Loire, Gironde and Sado). In the marine regions of most estuaries, autochthonous POC was present during spring and summer. The analysis of all river and estuarine data allows estimation of the loss of continental POC occurring in each estuary. It decreases in the following order: Scheldt⪢Thames>Ems=Sado=Loire>Gironde>Elbe>Rhine>Douro, which almost corresponds to the anthropogenic pressure in the respective watersheds. Two major variables appear to control the intensity of this mineralization: the origin of the POC, the lability increasing with pollution, and the residence time of particles in the estuarine zone.


In light of the continued primacy of national identities in European politics, this article considers the earlier and largely unexplored genealogy of modern European nationalism advanced by the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche towards the end of the nineteenth century. It argues that by analysing the rise of modern nationalism in Europe within the broader context of European nihilism, Nietzsche was able to gain original insights both about the appeal of national ideas in Europe and about why such ideas were perpetuated. On the basis of this unique understanding Nietzsche subsequently developed an innovative critique of modern nationalism that remains pertinent not only for the contemporary debate on Europe, but also for current attempts to theorize the rise of modern nationalism in Europe. Nietzsche's own idea of the 'good Europeans', in turn, is one that transcends nationalist perspectives without, however, replacing the former with an essentialist idea of Europe.


Several studies have shown that the prediction of protein function using PPI data is promising. However, the PPI data generated from experiments are noisy, incomplete and inaccurate, which promotes to represent PPI dataset as an uncertain graph. In this paper, we proposed a novel algorithm to mine maximal dense subgraphs efficiently in uncertain PPI network. It adopted several techniques to achieve efficient mining. An extensive experimental evaluation on yeast PPI network demonstrated that our approach had good performance in terms of precision and efficiency.


The essay focuses on the processes of intermedia in visual media. The author's analysis of the merging of still, moving and computed images reveals that, in intermedia, images tend to-ward a spatial, rather than temporal, organizing prin-ciple. This shift becomes evident in particular in the moving images in such elec-tronic films as Peter Greenaway's Prospero's Books. The limits of intermedia in the electronic medium are unfolded in the concept of the coherent im-age by Zbigniew Rybczynski. Another concept of com-pression and convergence is demonstrated by Clea T. Waite in her crossing two-and three-dimensionality in a video installation.


Direct interactions among species are only possible if there is some overlap in their geographical distributions. However, despite intense focus of macroecological research on species geographical ranges, relatively little theoretical and empirical work has been done on the evolution of range overlap. In this study we explore a simple model of range overlap based on a log-normal distribution of species range sizes along a one-dimensional domain, with or without absorbing boundary conditions. In particular, we focus on the mean and variance of range overlap distributions, as well as the topology of the resulting overlap networks with respect to their degree distribution, evenness, and betweenness scores. According to the model, there is an approximately linear relationship between many aspects of the distribution of range overlaps and their underlying species distributions, such as their mean and variance. However, the expected mean number of non-zero range overlaps for a given species varied from linear to convex depending on the variance of the underlying geographical range distribution. The expected topology of range overlap networks varied substantially depending on the mean and variance in the corresponding geographical distributions, particularly in the case of the degree and closeness distributions. Finally, we test the expectations of our model against five datasets of altitudinal distributions of Neotropical birds. We found strong departures from the expectations based on our model, which could potentially result from phylogenetic niche conservatism related to altitudinal gradients in environmental conditions, or from the asymmetric colonization of mountains by species from lowlands. Potential applications of range overlap networks to a variety of ecological and evolutionary phenomena are discussed.


Multiple Symbol Decoding of Differential Space-Time Codes. (December 2003) Rohit Singhal, B.Tech., Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur, INDIA Co–Chairs of Advisory Committee: Dr. Xiaodong Wang Dr. Costas N. Georghiades Multiple-symbol detection of space-time differential codes (MS-STDC) decodes N consecutive space-time symbols using maximum likelihood (ML) sequence detection to gain in performance over the conventional differential detection scheme. However its computational complexity is exponential in N . A fast algorithm for implementing the MD-STDC in block-fading channels with complexity O(N ) is developed. Its performance in both block-fading and symbol-by-symbol fading channels is demonstrated through simulations. Set partitioning in hierarchical trees (SPIHT) coupled with rate compatible punctured convolution code (RCPC) and cyclic redundancy check (CRC) is employed as a generalized multiple description source coder with robustness to channel errors. We propose a serial concatenation of the above with a differential space-time code (STDC) and invoke an iterative joint source channel decoding procedure for decoding differentially space-time coded multiple descriptions. Experiments show a gain of up to 5 dB in PSNR with four iterations for image transmission in the absence of channel state information (CSI) at the receiver. A serial concatenation of SPIHT + RCPC/CRC is also considered with space-time codes (STC) instead of STDC. Experiments show a gain of up to 7 dB with four iterations in the absence of CSI.


An objective indicator of the ripening level of fruit is the peel texture. A texturometer was used to determine the penetration stress as a function of ripening time in mature-green pineapples (Red Spanish), The ripening was achieved under controlled temperature (65° F) and relative humidity (85%) conditions. Penetration stress as a function of ripening time showed significant differences. These differences were used to classify the ripening stage of the fruit. Meanwhile, pineapples showed a penetration stress profile which coincided with the traditional ripening classification in terms of the peel color and its distribution on the fruit.


In recent years record low Arctic sea ice extents have been observed repeatedly. This can have important impacts on the Arctic energy budget as well as on the large-scale atmospheric circulation. Impacts of both a reduced and a removed Arctic sea ice cover are investigated with the atmospheric general circulation model EC-EARTH-IFS. Therefore sensitivity experiments driven by original and modified ERA-40 sea surface temperatures and sea ice concentrations have been performed at T255L62 resolution, corresponding to 79 km horizontal resolution. In winter, over the Arctic the reduced or removed sea ice leads to strongly increased upward heat and longwave radiation fluxes and precipitation while in the surrounding areas reduced upward turbulent heat fluxes and precipitation are simulated. In summer, the most pronounced change is the stronger absorption of shortwave radiation in the Arctic which is enhanced by optically thinner clouds. Averaged over the year and over the area north of 70 N, the negative energy imbalance at the top of the atmosphere decreases by about 10 W/m2 in both sensitivity experiments. The energy transport across 70 N is reduced. Over the central Arctic in winter a baroclinic response can be seen with sea level pressure decrease and 500 hPa geopotential increase. The circulation cells are weakened due to the reduction in poleward heat transport in the sensitivity experiments, especially the polar cell, implying a weaker jet stream. Results of these idealized sensitivity studies are different compared to climate predictions with coupled atmosphere-ocean-sea ice models which consider many more feedback mechanisms. The upper tropospheric warming in the tropics in those coupled climate simulations leads to a stronger westerly flow in the mid-latitudes. Furthermore Arctic cloud cover generally increases. The uncertainty in simulated Arctic cloud cover can have important implications on the future development of Arctic sea ice and therefore also the large-scale circulation.


Most cases of Angelman syndrome (AS) result from loss or inactivation of ubiquitin protein ligase 3A (UBE3A), a gene displaying maternal-specific expression in brain. Epigenetic silencing of the paternal UBE3A allele in brain appears to be mediated by a non-coding UBE3A antisense (UBE3A-ATS). In human, UBE3A-ATS extends approximately 450 kb to UBE3A from the small nuclear ribonucleoprotein N (SNURF/SNRPN) promoter region that contains a cis-acting imprinting center (IC). The concept of a single large antisense transcript is difficult to reconcile with the observation that SNURF/SNRPN shows a ubiquitous pattern of expression while the more distal part of UBE3A-ATS, which overlaps UBE3A, is brain specific. To address this problem, we examined murine transcripts initiating from several alternative exons dispersed within a 500 kb region upstream of Snurf/Snrpn. Similar to Ube3a-ATS, these upstream (U) exon-containing transcripts are expressed at neuronal stages of differentiation in a cell culture model of neurogenesis. These findings suggest the novel hypothesis that brain-specific transcription of Ube3a-ATS is regulated by the U exons rather than Snurf/Snrpn exon 1 as previously suggested from human studies. In support of this hypothesis, we describe U-Ube3a-ATS transcripts where U exons are spliced to Ube3a-ATS with the exclusion of Snurf-Snrpn. We also show that the murine U exons have arisen by genomic duplication of segments that include elements of the IC, suggesting that the brain specific silencing of Ube3a is due to multiple alternatively spliced IC-Ube3a-ATS transcripts.


Abstract The paper analyzes the role of the national team of Spain denoted by the neologism La Roja in promoting patriotic sentiments and building national unity. In a 2014 study entitled Goles y banderas. Fútbol e identidades nacionales en España, Alejandro Quiroga Fernández de Soto argues that the successes of the team in 2008-2012 (Champions of Europe in Austria and Switzerland, World Champions in South Africa and again Champions of Europe in Poland and Ukraine), brought about a patriotic revival, while La Roja itself became an integrating factor which united the Spanish regardless of political differences and distinct identities. The assertion is highly debatable for two reasons: firstly, the resurgence of the national symbols was temporary and did not occur uniformly across the country, especially in Catalonia and the Basque Country; secondly, it would be more fitting to speak of journalistic patriotism rather than actual patriotic revival within the Spanish society. The paper critically assesses the patriotic discourse rooted in the successes of La Roja in 2008-2012. Their poor performance in the last major tournaments in 2014-2018 and absence of any particular euphoria surrounding the national team confirm that the wave of flags which swept the country in the successful period was not an expression of profound, patriotic renewal of national symbols. At most, it may be argued to have been a forced attempt to boost Spanish (centralist) nationalism in the face of the increasingly active peripheral nationalisms, especially its most radical, Catalan embodiment.


Pragmatist philosopher John Dewey famously stated that man is a creature of habit, and not of reason or instinct. In this paper, I will assess Dewey's explication of the habituated self and the potential it holds for radical transformative processes. In particular, I will examine the process of coming to feminist consciousness and will show that a feminist-pragmatist reading of change can accommodate a view of the self as responsible agent. Following the elucidation of the changing self, I will appraise key pragmatist concepts of inquiry, such as doubt and self-reflexivity, with regard to their treatment of deep-seated internalizations of oppressive norms and the initiation of change. Ultimately, I will argue that a feminist-pragmatist understanding of transformation is conducive not only to the project of personal transformation, but also to social and political change more generally.


A Diol with endocyclic structure that is 1-methyl-4-isopropyl-bicyclo [2,2,-2,3-two hydroxymethyl-5-Octene (MIBHO), deriving from terpene, was synthesized using the aid of lithium aluminium hydride (LAH) as reductant in THF media at 65 °C. The optimum synthesis conditions were confirmed by analysing the factors on reacting temperature, reacting time, different solvents and reductants. The molecular structure of the novel compound has been characterized by FT-IRGC-MS and 1H-NMR analysis. The data reveal that LAH could effectively reduce terpene maleic anhydride to corresponding alcohol, and the conversion rate of raw material could reach 84%.


Background: Vitamin D (vitD) may be involved in different extraskeletal conditions as well as skeletal muscle diseases. It has been hypothesized that, at least in part, a low level of vitD could contribute to facilitating cancer development. Breast cancer (BC) seems to be associated with low levels of vitD. Materials and methods: This was an observational retrospective evaluation of 87 women (mean age: 54 ± 12 years old) who underwent surgery for the treatment of BC. Our main purpose was to correlate the types of BC and the levels of vitD. Results: A positive significant correlation (R > 0.7) was found between non-invasive carcinoma in situ and 25(OH)D levels and age (R = 0.82, p < 0.05). A positive, but nonsignificant, correlation was reported between invasive ductal carcinoma and 25(OH)D and age (R = 0.45, p > 0.05). A negative but nonsignificant correlation was found between invasive lobular carcinoma and 25(OH)D and age (R = 0.24, p > 0.05). Discussion and Conclusions: We did not find a significant relationship between vitD and BC subtypes. Considering the positive significant correlation between vitD levels and age for in situ BC, although preliminary, our results seem to suggest a possible role of vitD in in situ BC. However, these findings need to be confirmed in larger studies.


We investigate the antioxidant activity and protective effects of the aqueous leaf extract of Pistacia lentiscus (AELPL) against ulcerative colitis induced by acetic acid infusion through the rectum in Wistar rats. Phytochemical analyses allowed the identification of numerous phenolic compounds in P. lentiscus leaves such as flavonoids (isoquercetin and luterolin), flavonols (catechin, rutin, and kaempferol), phenolic acids (ellagic and dicaffeoylquinic), and tanins. Acetic acid exposure induced macroscopic colonic mucosal lesions with hemorrhage, congestion, edema, and the development of an expected oxidative stress state revealed by an increase in lipoperoxidation and carbonylation of proteins and a decrease in sulfhydryl (SH) group levels and antioxidant enzyme activities such as superoxide dismutase, catalase, glutathione-S-peroxidase, and glutathione transferase, as well as an increase in the inflammatory cytokine, interleukin-6, in the colon and plasma. Administration of acetic acid also increased plasma and tissue levels of hydrogen peroxide and rates of iron and free calcium, whereas AELPL significantly and dose-dependently attenuated all the previous biochemical alterations and intracellular mediator perturbations. In conclusion, the AELPL exhibited a potent cytoprotective effect against acetic acid-induced colitis in rats, mainly through its antioxidant and anti-inflammatory activities.


We investigate strategies to improve the utterance verification performance using a 2-class pattern classification approach, including: utilizing N-best candidate scores, modifying segmentation boundaries, applying background and out-of-vocabulary filler models, incorporating contexts, and minimizing verification errors via discriminative training. A connected-digit database recorded in a noisy, moving car with a hands-free microphone mounted on the sun-visor is used to evaluate the verification performance. The equal error rate (EER) of word verification is employed as the sole performance measure. All factors and their effects on the verification performance are presented in detail. The EER is reduced from 29%, using the standard likelihood ratio test, down to 21.4%, when all features are properly integrated. key words: 2-class classifier, discriminative training, N-best hypothesis, word verification


As part of our effort to search for circumstellar disks around high-mass stellar objects, we observed the well-known core G31.41 +0.31 with ALMA at 1.4 mm with an angular resolution of ~0.′′22 (~1700 au). The dust continuum emission has been resolved into two cores namely Main and NE. The Main core, which has the stronger emission and is the more chemically rich, has a diameter of ~5300 au, and is associated with two free-free continuum sources. The Main core looks featureless and homogeneous in dust continuum emission and does not present any hint of fragmentation. Each transition of CH3CN and CH3OCHO, both ground and vibrationally excited, as well as those of CH3CN isotopologues, shows a clear velocity gradient along the NE–SW direction, with velocity linearly increasing with distance from the center, consistent with solid-body rotation. However, when comparing the velocity field of transitions with different upper level energies, the rotation velocity increases with increasing energy of the transition, which suggests that the rotation speeds up toward the center. Spectral lines towardtoward the dust continuum peak show an inverse P-Cygni profile that supports the existence of infall in the core. The infall velocity increases with the energy of the transition suggesting that the infall is accelerating toward the center of the core, consistent with gravitational collapse. Despite the monolithic appearance of the Main core, the presence of red-shifted absorption, the existence of two embedded free-free sources at the center, and the rotational spin-up are consistent with an unstable core undergoing fragmentation with infall and differential rotation due to conservation of angular momentum. Therefore, the most likely explanation for the monolithic morphology is that the large opacity of the dust emission prevents the detection of any inhomogeneity in the core.