Purpose: A 40-year-old male with a severe corneal melting, peripheral infiltration and nasal perforation in the right eye after a not affiliated case of urethritis is reported. Methods: Retrospective case report. Results: A sample of conjunctival discharge was sent to culture, in where Gram-diplococci grew and therefore a systemic antibiotic treatment was initiated. Given the severity of the clinic, a penetrating keratoplasty is conducted two days after admission and the corneal button was sent to microbiology, which polymerase chain reaction was positive for Neisseria gonorrhoeae. Conclusion: Despite it being a rare process in an adult, keratitis caused by Neisseria gonorrhoeae should be suspected in all sexually active patients with conjunctivitis and with a clinic genitourinary medical history. The systemic therapy showed a superior effectiveness in combination with topical therapy than the last one on its own.


A small outbreak of measles occurred after a 33-year-old female aircrew (cabin) member presented at an emergency room with fever. Three members of the hospital staff were infected: a 42-year-old man, a 33-year-old woman, and a 26-year-old woman. The first 2 patients had not been immunised, and the third had received 2 immunisations according to the Dutch National Immunisation Programme. Vaccination of the 2 sero-negative patients within 48 h after exposure with the measles-mumps-rubella vaccine (MMR) did not prevent the development of measles. Vaccination was deemed unnecessary in the third patient. No tertiary cases occurred. The same measles virus (genotype D5) was detected by PCR and sequencing in all 4 patients. Measles remains a risk for hospital staff members who have not acquired natural immunity. The current policy of immunising patients within 72 h after exposure to measles may not be sufficient. It also appears that immunisation through the Dutch National Immunisation Programme does not always protect against nosocomial infection. Providing MMR vaccination or boosters to hospital staff in certain departments might be beneficial.


Birdfoot violet (Viola pedata L. [Violaceae]) is one of several Viola species that act as larval host plants for the rare regal fritillary butterfly (Speyeria idalia Drury [Nymphalidae, Argynninae]). Restoration or expansion of existing populations of V. pedata populations can be an important tool for preventing local extinction of S. idalia. Knowledge of environmental cues that affect germination will contribute to restoration efforts. Our investigation of seed germination of V. pedata indicates stratification is necessary for germination. Seeds exposed to longer lengths of warm-dry conditions and stratification had significantly higher germination rates compared with seeds exposed for shorter time periods. Elaiosome removal had little effect on percent germination, but indirect evidence suggests that elaiosomes increased vulnerability to pathogen attack. We recommend future efforts to germinate V. pedata seeds should begin by removing elaiosomes and exposing seeds to warm-dry conditions for 8 to 12 wk and then stratifying them for 8 to 12 wk.


Mycofactocin (MFT) is a redox cofactor involved in alcohol metabolism of mycobacteria including Mycobacterium tuberculosis. In recent years, a preliminary biosynthetic model of MFT has been established by in-vitro studies, while the final structure of MFT remained elusive. Here, we report the discovery of MFT by metabolomics and establish a model of its biosynthesis in Mycolicibacterium smegmatis. Structure elucidation revealed that MFT is decorated with up to nine β-1,4-linked glucose residues. Dissection of biosynthetic genes demonstrated that the oligoglycosylation is catalyzed by the glycosyltransferase MftF. Furthermore, we confirm the cofactor function of MFT by activity-based metabolic profiling using the carveol dehydrogenase LimC and show that the MFT pool expands during cultivation on ethanol. Our results close an important gap of knowledge, will guide future studies into the physiological roles of MFT in bacteria and may inspire its utilization as a biomarker or potential drug target to combat mycobacterial diseases.


Several lines of experimental research have shown that attributional styles are affected by the attributor's culture, inferential goals, and level of cognitive processing. Can these findings be replicated in natural settings? This study compared the attributions made in two domains (sports articles and editorials) of newspapers published in two culturally distinct countries (Hong Kong and the United States). Consistent with the cross-cultural research, attributions were less dispositional in the East than in the West. This cultural difference was weaker in editorials than in sports articles. The authors argue that the higher level of complexity, accountability, and uncertainty in editorials increased the cognitive effort expended to make attributions, which, in turn, attenuated their extremity. Implications for the mixed model of social inference are discussed.


The authors investigated the role of known risk factors in educational differences in breast cancer incidence. Analyses were based on the European Prospective Investigation Into Cancer and Nutrition and included 242,095 women, 433 cases of in situ breast cancer, and 4,469 cases of invasive breast cancer. Reproductive history (age at first full-term pregnancy and parity), exposure to endogenous and exogenous hormones, height, and health behaviors were accounted for in the analyses. Relative indices of inequality (RII) for education were estimated using Cox regression models. A higher risk of invasive breast cancer was found among women with higher levels of education (RII = 1.22, 95% confidence interval (CI): 1.09, 1.37). This association was not observed among nulliparous women (RII = 1.13, 95% CI: 0.84, 1.52). Inequalities in breast cancer incidence decreased substantially after adjusting for reproductive history (RII = 1.11, 95% CI: 0.98, 1.25), with most of the association being explained by age at first full-term pregnancy. Each other risk factor explained a small additional part of the inequalities in breast cancer incidence. Height accounted for most of the remaining differences in incidence. After adjusting for all known risk factors, the authors found no association between education level and risk of invasive breast cancer. Inequalities in incidence were more pronounced for in situ breast cancer, and those inequalities remained after adjustment for all known risk factors (RII = 1.61, 95% CI: 1.07, 2.41), especially among nulliparous women.


Hypoxic ischaemic injury can damage the brain at any age. However, the infant brain displays a unique profile of sensitivity and resistance compared to adult ischaemic stroke patients. Both pathology and response to treatment are uniquely affected by the molecular landscape of the neonatal brain. With new revelations in the biology of brain injury in perinates and neonates being discovered, as global mortality and morbidity increases research funding into infant brain injury, it is important to raise awareness of the unparal-leled challenge of treating these young patients. This chapter will review currently known differences between the infant and adult brain response to hypoxia, and address existing treatments alongside proposed treatments not yet evaluated by clinical trial.


High nitrate concentrations have been reported within Canterbury aquifers due to agricultural intensification. Reducing nutrient loadings to groundwater by a reasonable degree is difficult for industry because of the anticipated cost of effective mitigation technologies. A novel alternative is to decrease nitrate concentration through increasing the amount of water present in the aquifer through the use of Managed Aquifer Recharge (MAR) in combination with some minor farm-level mitigation practices. However, this poses a difficult economic problem that involves balancing the benefit of lowering nitrate concentrations in groundwater, improving reliability of groundwater availability for future irrigation, the capital cost of MAR infrastructure, and the cost of source surface water to use in the dilution. This study presents a dynamic economic analysis that weights these alternative sources of value. Overall, it is shown that a MAR scheme is of positive value to both the environment and economy, with an average benefit: cost ratio of four, and around $76m of income and 170FTE of employment gain per annum at regional level.


Abstract:This essay focuses on queer Indigenous life in the early twentieth century through an analysis of the archive of Nabor Feliz, an Indigenous sculptor who toured with major circuses. In the essay, the author employs queer critique and Indigenous theory to contend that the circus offered Feliz opportunities for Indigenous expressions of sexuality that might not have been otherwise afforded them in this period. The essay is based on an examination of the photographs, letters, and newspaper articles in the archive, which is housed at the Southwest Museum. To the author's knowledge, this is the first article-length piece on the complexities of queer Indigenous life in the first half of the twentieth century and the first study of Feliz's life and work.


Depth of Chloride penetration of Ultra High Performance Concrete (UHPC) with dispersed reinforcement in long term horizon is determined in this paper. This work deals with the one dimensional chloride diffusion, which can be potentially dangerous particularly for the durability of concrete structures. For the simulation of aggressive environment there was used chloride solution, where the samples had been stored for one year. Measured data were examined in relation to the depth of penetration of chloride ions into the concrete structure. Comparative measurements with normal strength concrete have been done as well. The experimental results showed that UHCP have more improved resistance of chlorides penetration than NSC and also chloride diffusion depth is significantly lower in UHCP.


The Norway rat (Rattus norvegicus) is found to inhabit many urbanized areas; needs to be controlled, given that it is a carrier of diseases and a source of economic damages. As harborage areas in suburbs, the rat prefers compost piles, cesspits, sewer systems, and basements that are near water. Norway rats prefer food sources such as waste disposal sites, unclean yards with trashcans, gardens, and slaughterhouses (Traweger and Slotta-Bachmayr 2004). The typical range for this species in an urban setting is 25-150 meters (27-164 yards). The research for this thesis was done in conjunction with the Cuyahoga County Board of Health (CCBH). Data was collected from residents who reported seeing a rat to CCBH. The resident's property and surrounding properties were then assessed for rat activity, harborage, and food sources. When rat activity was noted the property was baited using rodenticides, and re-baited until no further activity was noted. The number of baiting visits until no activity was noted was recorded for each location and was the main outcome variable of the study. The number of baiting visits was correlated to Census and parcel data utilizing Pearson, Kendall's tau, and Spearman's rho. Also Chi-squared analysis was conducted on the parcel data to determine similarities and differences with locations seeking county services for rat control and general demographic characteristics of the region. Finally, using the GIS system, densities were done to possibly show high concentration of rats to be used for future study sites.


Cassava mosaic disease and cassava brown streak disease are caused by viruses transmitted by Bemisia tabaci and affect approximately half of all cassava plants in Africa, resulting in annual production losses of more than $US 1 billion. A historical and current bias towards virus rather than vector control means that these diseases continue to spread, and high Bemisia populations threaten future virus spread even if the extant strains and species are controlled. Progress has been made in parts of Africa in replicating some of the successes of integrated Bemisia control programmes in the south-western United States. However, these management efforts, which utilise chemical insecticides that conserve the Bemisia natural enemy fauna, are only suitable for commercial agriculture, which presently excludes most cassava cultivation in Africa. Initiatives to strengthen the control of B. tabaci on cassava in Africa need to be aware of this limitation, and to focus primarily on control methods that are cheap, effective, sustainable and readily disseminated, such as host-plant resistance and biological control. A framework based on the application of force multipliers is proposed as a means of prioritising elements of future Bemisia control strategies for cassava in Africa.


This paper discusses the performance of Golden codes in a hybrid satellite/terrestrial system framework employing dual polarized MIMO-OFDM transmissions. Although the use of Golden codes in satellite and terrestrial scenarios has been studied independently, a realistic performance assessment must involve both components taking into account the relative delay between their reception. In fact, this work exploits the relative delay to create a multipath scenario and further improve the coding gain of the Golden codes, which is otherwise fixed. This is made possible by utilizing the Golden code in a Space-Frequency coding framework instead of the traditional Space-Time paradigm. The separation between the subcarriers constituting a Golden code is shown to be central to the coding gain enhancement and an algorithm to choose this separation is provided.


1. The type III variant of chloramphenicol acetyltransferase (CATIII) is resistant to inactivation by ionizable modifying reagents such as 5,5'-dithiobis-(2-nitrobenzoic acid) (DTNB) and iodoacetate, whereas it is sensitive to inhibition by similar but uncharged reagents, including 4,4'-dithiodipyridine, methyl methanethiolsulphonate (MMTS) and iodoacetamide. The target for these thiol-modifying reagents has been postulated to be Cys-31. This residue is situated within a part of the chloramphenicol-binding site formed largely from the side chains of hydrophobic amino acid residues, which might be expected to discriminate against the access of ionized ligands to Cys-31. 2. The substitution of Cys-31 by alanine, serine, threonine or methionine yields an enzyme that is resistant to inactivation by thiol-specific reagents. Replacement of Cys-31 by alanine, serine or threonine results in increased Km values for chloramphenicol with only small changes in kcat.. In contrast, the Cys-31----Met substitution mainly affects kcat. values. Although the kcat. for chloramphenicol acetylation is decreased 13-fold compared with wild-type CAT, the kcat. for the acetyl-CoA hydrolysis reaction, which occurs in the absence of chloramphenicol, is increased 2.7-fold. 3. MMTS modification of cysteine residues results in an adduct (-CH2-S-S-CH3) that is structurally similar to the side chain of a methionine residue (-CH2-CH2-S-CH3). The kinetic properties of MMTS-modified CATIII closely resemble those of [Met31]CAT.


Abstract An understanding of the cosmic ray modulation of life processes is critical to space exploration, evolution and current medical science. Previous evidence has implicated a role for cosmic rays in US female cancer, involving a possible cross-generational foetal effect. This study explores the global nature of that effect by examining cancer time variations for population cohorts in five countries on three continents. Age–period–cohort analysis was used to separate cohort-related effects from period-related effects, generating time signatures for comparisons among both male and female populations in the United States (US), United Kingdom (UK), Australia (AU), Canada (CA) and New Zealand (NZ). The available cancer mortality data spanned most of the 20th century for US, UK and AU, with shorter periods for CA and NZ. The longest cohort series spanned 1825 to 1965 and exhibited two peaks of higher mortality likelihood approximately 75 years apart in all countries and in both sexes. The constancy of this oscillation on three continents and both hemispheres suggests the presence of a global environmental effect. To explore a possible source for this effect, the birth cohort oscillation is shown to correlate with the variations in background cosmic radiation one generation prior to the birth cohorts. This confirms an earlier study correlating human breast cancer mortality and galactic cosmic rays. A corroborating correlation is also noted between the latitude dependences of cancer incidence in 42 countries and the intensity of background cosmic rays. The role of germ cells as a possible target of this radiation is discussed, emphasizing the amplification that must occur to make this weak radiation relevant to human health. Germ cell timing for this effect has profound implications for evolution, long-distance space travel and the colonization of planets with high background radiation.


A monoconical antenna type has been selected and successfully optimized by a electromagnetic field simulation program. A real antenna was constructed with the parameters found by several simulated parameter sweeps. The comparison between simulation and real antenna shows a good agreement and the comparison between an antenna constructed with the optimal half opening angle derived from theory and the new design parameters revealed that an enormous reduction of size of the antenna is realizable while still having an acceptable matching antenna with a rather smooth frequencies response. For applications where size is one of the most important parameters, this design is to be preferred. A pre-version of these antennas has been successfully used for example in [6]. In future work the influence on receiving characteristic of the polarization of the incident wave should be investigated.


The Location Index (Loc-I) project (http://locationindex.org) aims to enable government agencies to geospatially-integrate and analyse data reliably, effectively and efficiently across portfolios and information domains. Loc-I is part of the Data Integration Partnership for Australia (DIPA) initiative, which seeks to maximise government data to improve policy advice. This poster presents the current Linked Data approaches that provide general solutions for data integration of location-based data and its application in the Australian context. This poster was presented at the Earth Science Information Partners (ESIP) Winter Meeting in January 2020 in Bethesda, MD.


The paper seeks to revalue women's nonmarket work in the context of parts of rural Bangladesh, v} ich is where most of her women folk live. It raises relevant conceptual and methodological considerations relating to revaluation of women's work, reviews various sets of evidence on the pattern of time use of women in Bangladesh, and then puts up a broad order of magnitude as to the value of women's nonmarket work. For this purpose, it taken the sexual division of labour and sexual differential in rates of wages as given. The paper shows that rural women in Bangladesh work as hard, if anything harder, as mm on a daily basis. It also shows the widespread sexual distribution of labour in the sense of involving the influence of social stereotypes in the allocation of tasks between males and females. Finally, it shows that productive work within households consists of market work, typically by men, and a good deal of subsistence work and domestic work performed by women.


The incidence of diabetes mellitus has increased dramatically in Puerto Rico. On 1996, it accounted for 56.8% of all new cases admitted for dialysis. By 1998 the number increased to 59.9%, of which, 88.5% were Type 2 diabetic patients. Strategies for the reduction or prevention of renal insufficiency of Type 2 diabetic patients should include: identification of potential chronic complications, review of risk factors related to diabetic nepropathy, and the evaluation of the arterial blood pressure and renal function. The therapeutic actions which have shown reduction of proteinuria and reduction of the progression to end stage renal disease in patients with type 2 diabetes are: strict control of the arterial pressure, the use of converting enzyme inhibitors, low salt diet and control of the protein intake. It is recommended that type 2 diabetic patients with high arterial pressure, micro or macroalbuminuria and increased serum creatinine should be referred to the nephrologist as early as possible.


The effects of ozone exposure on lettuce leaves were investigated by means of gas exchange, modulated chlorophyll a fluorescence and antioxidants systems. High ozone concentration decreased the rate of photosynthesis at light saturation level and changes in stomatal conductance and transpiration rate. However, an increase in intercellular CO 2 concentration indicated a decrease in the carboxylation efficiency. These data agreed with a reduction of non-cyclic electron flow and lower capacity to reduce the quinone pool. Ozone affected the ascorbate pool and decreased ascorbate peroxidase activity, increased lipid peroxidation, altered membrane properties and reduced the development of non-photochemical quenching.


The epikarst is a permeable boundary between surface and subsurface environments and can be conceptualized as the vadose critical zone of epigenic karst systems which have not developed under insoluble cover. From a hydrologic perspective, this boundary is often thought of as being permeable in one direction only (down), but connectivity between the flow paths of water through the epikarst and the root systems of woody plants means that water moves both up and down across the epikarst. However, the dynamics of these flows are complex and highly dependent on variability in the spatial structure of the epikarst, vegetation characteristics, as well as temporal variability in precipitation and evaporative demand. Here we summarize insights gained from working at several sites on the Edwards Plateau of Central Texas, combining isotopic, hydrogeochemical, and ecophysiological methodologies. 1) Dense woodland vegetation at sites with thin to absent soils (0-30 cm) is in part supported by water uptake from the epikarst. 2) However, tree transpiration typically becomes water-limited in dry summers, suggesting that the plant-available fraction of stored water in the epikarst depletes quickly, even when sustained cave drip rates indicate that water is still present in the epikarst. 3) Flow paths for water that feeds cave drips become rapidly disconnected from the evaporation zone of the epikarst and out of reach for plant roots. 4) Deep infiltration and recharge does not occur in these systems without heavy or continuous precipitation that exceeds some threshold value. Thresholds are strongly correlated with antecedent potential evapotranspiration and rainfall, suggesting control by the moisture status of the epikarst evapotranspiration zone. The epikarst and unsaturated zone in this region can be conceptualized as a variably saturated system with storage in fractures, matrix porosity, and in shallow perched aquifers, most of which is inaccessible to the root systems of trees, although woody vegetation may control recharge thresholds. Keywords: hydraulic disconnection, precipitation thresholds, root zone, plant water use, recharge, epikarst storage, barometric pressure. DOI: 10.3986/ac.v42i2-3.670


Author(s): CHEN, Shuwen | Advisor(s): Murre, Cornelis | Abstract: E proteins have been shown to play an important role during various stages of B and T cell development. E proteins execute this regulatory function mainly via binding to the E-box sequence around the target genes. However, the activity of E proteins can be inhibited by Id proteins, such as Id2 and Id3 in the immune system.Previous studies have suggested crucial roles played by Id2 and Id3 in the differentiation process of certain T cell lineages. Id2 was required for CD8 T cell differentiation and activation, while Id3 was required to inhibit E2A activity upon pre-TCR and TCR signaling. During my PhD study, I performed a wide array of experiments to probe into the functions of Id2 and Id3 during the development of regulatory T cells (Treg) and innate-like follicular helper T (Tfh) cells. My work helped unveil that Id2 and Id3 expression was required for Treg cells to suppress the onset of fatal Th2-mediated inflammation. Meanwhile, I also discovered that thymic Id2 and Id3 expression was indispensable for inhibiting the expansion of innate-like Tfh cells and the pathogenesis of αβ T cell lymphoma.Besides T cells, B cells are also a target population to be regulated by Id proteins like Id3. Ablating Id3 expression specifically in the B cells, I found that these Id3-deficient B cells were clearly impaired in their ability to differentiate into germinal centers upon antigen stimulation. In addition, without Id3 expression, these B cells can no longer elicit any IgG1 response during the memory phase upon encountering a secondary challenge.To summarize, my PhD study helped to reveal the important functions played by Id2 and Id3 during the differentiation and activation of different lymphocytes.


ABSTRACT The aim of the study was determine potential mobility, sources, and environmental impacts of heavy metals in soil of urban apple orchards using a sequential extraction procedure and multivariate analysis. The soil and apple (Malus domestica Borkh.) leaf samples were collected from apple orchards of urban areas in Çanakkale, Turkey. A sequential extraction procedure was employed to determine the binding forms of Cd, Cr, Cu, Ni, Pb, and Zn in soil samples. Sequential extraction procedure revealed that mobile fractions (acid soluble, reducible, and oxidizable) of Cd (60.2%) and Pb (56.8%) were higher than their immobile fractions. Such higher mobile fractions indicate the anthropogenic sources, and multivariate analysis results also supported the existence of such sources. The relationship between pH and mobile fractions of the metals (sum of acid soluble, reducible, and oxidizable) indicates that Cd and Pb become more mobile under decreasing pH conditions. Considering all metals, except for Cd, a strong relationship was observed between metal concentrations of apple leaves and mobile fractions, and plants were primarily able to uptake the metals in these fractions. Contamination factor and risk assessment code results together also revealed that Cd was highly mobile; retained less and had high risk for the environment.


Equitable funding of public schools to reduce the disparities in education inherited by the post-apartheid government of South Africa in 1994 has become a priority. The Amended National Norms and Standards for School Funding (ANNSSF) required the ranking of schools into one of five quintiles of which Quintile 1 represents the poorest schools and Quintile 5 the most affluent. This amendment determines that schools serving impoverished communities should receive more funding. However, challenges exist regarding the implementation of the system, as well as the calculation base for maintenance allocation. In this study we used semi-structured interviews to collect data from 24 respondents from urban and township schools in Gauteng. Participants were selected by means of purposive sampling. Permission to conduct the research was obtained from the Gauteng Department of Education, the university's Ethics Committee and the school governing bodies. We handled financial information from schools with utmost confidentiality. We identified themes from interview transcriptions and we analysed schools' financial statements. The main findings relate to inaccuracies in quintile ranking, which result in inadequate and unfair school funding, which impact on schools' maintenance and learning and teaching. It is recommended that a more holistic approach should be followed to achieve equity in education. Keywords: disparity; education funding; no-fee schools; poverty score; quintile ranking; school fee exemption formula


Mozambique, like many nations in the geopolitical South, is a country grappling with issues of equity and justice. One of the more pressing issues pertains to the role of language in ensuring citizenship agency and voice. Much of this debate has been concerned with how to envisage the interrelationships and divisions of labor between local languages and Portuguese, that is, the form and organization of multilingualism. Mozambique since independence in 1975, has given increasing recognition to its many languages and to the diversity of its population, rolling out mother-tongue programs across the country (albeit experimentally) and recognizing the importance of local languages for plurality and cultural heritage. Nevertheless, Portuguese has remained the official and most significant language since colonial times to the present, and has strengthened its status as the language of modernity, national cohesion and global networking.


In recent years, many researchers engaged in diverse areas and approaches of "cultural-historical activity theory" (CHAT) realized an increasing international interest in Lev S. Vygotsky's, A. N. Leont'ev's, and A. Luria's work and its continuations. Not so long ago, Yrjö Engeström noted that the activity approach was still "the best-held secret of academia" (p. 64) and highlighted the "impressive dimension of theorizing behind" it. Certainly, this remark reflects a time when CHAT was off the beaten tracks. But if this situation begins to change today, in which direction will CHAT be heading? Will it continue to be one of those projects "unique for its practical, political, and civic engagement" committed "to ideals of social justice, equality, and social change" as it was in the beginning (Stetsenko & Arievitch, 2004, p. 58)? Although a positive future of CHAT seems to lie ahead, we consider in this article some of the problematics that may challenge all those who want to pass the "impressive dimensions of theorizing" from "insider" circles to a larger audience and from one generation to another as well as encourage newcomers to become part of this tradition through critical engagement in its theory and practice. A key to these engagements, we suggest, is not only the comprehensive empirical and philosophical basis, but also the role of dialectics as both topic and method. Therefore, the challenge for newcomers (as well as for "old-timers") to take on the tradition of CHAT is not a small one indeed. We assume that a major reason for the increasing interest in CHAT lies in its potential to provide a non-reductionist approach to human development, which is due to its affinity to dialectics; however, the close interrelation to a tradition that reaches back to the theories of Georg W.F. Hegel and Karl Marx, among others, is not the easiest to master.In consideration of these difficulties, the purpose of this article is to investigate how contemporary approaches within CHAT can continue to provide a dialectical framework to preserve and renew the critical intention of this tradition, and how we run the risk of losing this sting. Thereby, we sensitize researchers to the problem of developing a cultural-historical approach within a historical situation that confronts us with new, unanswered questions. In this light, we also problematize the use of scientific language, for it may lead us to speak and argue un-dialectically when in fact we intend or ought to think dialectically.This article seeks to convey insights and arguments of how we can relate our theoretical approaches to a tradition of dialectical thinking and in what ways this is paramount for a critical engagement in theory and practice. In the first part, we therefore discuss not only some major theorems in Hegel's and Marx's work but also, and above all, Vygotsky's way of developing the cultural-historical approach of psychology. Second, we argue that the contemporary, widely known version of CHAT, related to Yrjö Engeström's theoretical and empirical work, neglects different aspects of dialectical thinking and consequently narrows its potential to a socio-critical approach to societal practice and human development. A crucial question of this scrutiny will be the notion of contradictions and how development is supposed to be achieved. In general, our intention is not only to clarify the role of dialectics as a method for activity theory but also to problematize the role of the subjects of research in CHAT and to confront ourselves with the problems of practicing and developing a critical science in face of a complex and challenging societal world.


Recent advances in deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) sequencing technology have produced a massive amount of nucleotide sequences, which are stored in DNA databanks and genomic data repositories. Furthermore, comprehensive analyses of transcriptional and genomic elements have uncovered an elaborate system of gene expression that broadens our understanding of fundamental biological phenomena. The analysis of DNA data has therefore become essential to predict gene function or detect regulatory motifs through comparative studies. In this article, DNA databases, homology search tools and sequence alignment methods are surveyed. The concept of distance between genes and how to calculate this measure using DNA or amino acid sequences and introducing several commonly used techniques for phylogenetic analysis and tree evaluation are also described.

Key concepts

Advances in DNA sequencing technology have produced an unprecedented amount of sequence data.

The DNA Data Bank of Japan (DDBJ), the European Bioinformatics Institute (EBI) and the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) are the three major sequence data repositories. They exchange data periodically, and maintain various services for data search and retrieval.

Similarity searching, alignment of sequences, prediction of function and reconstruction of the evolutionary history (phylogenetic tree) of a group of species are among the most commonly used techniques for sequence analysis.

BLAST (similarity searching), ClustalW (sequence alignment), Pfam (protein domains) and TRANSFAC (transcription factors) are popular tools and resources.

The genetic distance, a measure of evolutionary similarity, is usually calculated as the number of nucleotide or amino acid differences (substitutions) among sequences. Nucleotide substitutions are synonymous (not affecting the codified amino acid) or nonsynonymous (triggering an amino acid change).

Distance- and character-based methods can be used to reconstruct phylogenetic trees. Distance-based methods reconstruct the tree from an estimation of the evolutionary distance among taxa. Character-based methods derive the phylogeny directly from the observable state of characters in the taxa.

The bootstrap method is commonly used to determine the quality of an inferred phylogeny.

Keywords:

DNA databank;
genome projects;
similarity search;
evolutionary distance;
molecular phylogeny


Despite the commercialization of a variety of different composting systems, the design and operation of composting systems to minimize the cost of producing compost remains a major goal. Evaluation of how system design and management affects the time required to stabilize compost is critical to optimizing the process. In this study, analytical equations relating biological and physical factors and compost temperature, moisture, oxygen level and decomposition rates for aerobic composting are developed. The study focused on the effects of intermittent aeration on the composting operation. A multi-parameter kinetic model in conjunction with heat and mass balance equations were used to predict and optimize the performance of composting systems. Equations evaluating airflow and on/off fan cycle times on composting temperature, oxygen and moisture were developed. Kinetic data from pilot scale experiments using three different feedstocks: municipal solid waste, biosolids/woodchips, and grass/leaves/brush were used in the derived equations to evaluate the composting systems operation.


Protein-lipid conjugation is a widespread modification involved in many biological processes. Various lipids, including fatty acids, isoprenoids, sterols, glycosylphosphatidylinositol, sphingolipids, and phospholipids, are covalently linked with proteins. These modifications direct proteins to intracellular membranes through the hydrophobic nature of lipids. Some of these membrane-binding processes are reversible through delipidation or by reducing the affinity to membranes. Many signaling molecules undergo lipid modification, and their membrane binding is important for proper signal transduction. The conjugation of proteins to lipids also influences the dynamics and function of organellar membranes. Dysregulation of lipidation has been associated with diseases such as neurodegenerative diseases. In this review, we first provide an overview of diverse forms of protein-lipid conjugation and then summarize the catalytic mechanisms, regulation, and roles of these modifications.Key words: Lipid, lipidation, membrane, organelle, protein modification.


Investigation of new high‐efficiency catalysts for the oxygen evolution reaction (OER) is important for propelling the practical applications of water splitting. Here we report the Aurivillius compound CoBi2O2F4 to be a novel catalyst for catalytic OER. After liquid exfoliation of CoBi2O2F4 crystals in isopropanol, the resulting thin sheets deliver a low overpotential of 334 mV and a small Tafel slope of 47 mV dec−1 for catalytic OER, exhibiting substantially higher activity and faster kinetics compared with as‐synthesized crystals. This attributes to the increase in accessible surface area and dangling bonds on the edges providing more active sites exposed on the surface after exfoliation. The positive effects of F− anions to benefit OH− adsorption/combination and p‐block Bi3+ cations to direct reactants to preferred sites are proposed to synergistically improve the Co‐active centers for catalysis; based on this, the OER reaction mechanism on this new catalyst is discussed.


Using continuous classification (specifically zonation in this study) it is possible to save continuity of changes in natural phenomena while representing them. Fuzzy Sets Theory is a proper tool to study and represent this continuity. As a case study in application of Continuous Zonation, fuzzy clustering among many other pattern recognition methods was applied to study erodability of Tajan river watershed. The results have been compared with traditional PSIAC method and have been represented as continuous erodability maps by using pixels value combination method. The maps show that even in area that a class is dominant, changes in erodability are visible . Also classes, which do not really exist and are only the artifacts of crisp boundary classification, are omitted. Transitional changes can be modeled similar to real gradual ones in nature.


Oocyte donation was carried out in 87 patients in 141 replacement cycles. These patients received oocytes from 108 women undergoing assisted reproductive technology procedures at our centre. Standardized hormonal replacement therapy and in-vitro fertilization procedures were performed. We divided recipients into four groups according to their age (group A, 21-35 years; B, 36-40 years; C, 41-49 years; and D, 50-61 years). Oocytes donors were 21-35 years old, and equally spread across these different age groups. There were significant differences in the pregnancy and implantation rates according to the age of the recipients; which were 45% and 23% respectively in women 21-35 years old (group A) versus 23% and 10% in women 41-49 years old (group C). A comparison of data between oocyte donors and young recipients, with similar results in donors and young recipients, with pregnancy rates of 45% and 42% and implantation rates of 23% and 19.5% respectively. Statistically significant differences were found between donors and the older recipients, pregnancy rates being 43% versus 23%, and implantation rates 18% versus 10%. These data seem to demonstrate a lesser likelihood of pregnancy and implantation in older recipients because of increasing uterine age.


What makes the year 2000 special is the moment it creates to "take stock" of our civilization as it is now and how it might become. While it is tempting to conclude that we are more civilized than ever before and that the development of leisure, recreation and sport in our societies are clear signs of that progress, further consideration is warranted. As 2000 approaches it is difficult to escape the stark contrasts created by our most contemporary acts of horror. While the string of school killings dominate our view of this subject, other arenas commonly viewed as safe havens are becoming contemporary killing fields. In Texas eight are killed in a church. In California three are killed in a hospital. In Yosemite three are killed in a National Park. Leisure settings, while obscured by these prominent events, are not immune from this contemporary trend. As in Yosemite, two women were recently murdered in Shenandoah National Park. Urban parks in Oregon have been the recent locations of serial homicides of women. Acts of violence against rangers and employees who manage public recreational land is show ing a marked increase punctuated by the 1999 murders of two park rangers in Oregon. The backdrop to these disturbing events is an increase in crime in these leisure settings (Pendleton, 1996; Shore, 1994). Predictably the response has been to place a higher emphasis on enforcement capability. A shift to a hard enforcement philosophy is evident across these recreational settings as indicated by specialty law enforcement careers in the National Park service and the move to arm state park rangers as evidenced most recently in Washington state, reversing an 85 year tradition of unarmed rangers. As the Millennium approaches it seems possible that crime and enforcement may becoming a defining part of an evolving leisure experience that has not been fully recognized and explored. Literature reviews of the crimeleisure nexus reveal a mere handful of studies that fail to examine leisure as anything other than a programmatic feature of crime prevention or as a metaphor for unoccupied time and thus an antecedent of criminal behavior. The data on policing and leisure is even more scant. Recent contemporary events along with emerging data, suggest the need to blend leisure, crime and enforcement into a research and policy development agenda (Pendleton, 1998). It seems relevant, on the occasion of the Millennium, to consider the challenges and opportunities that such an odd analytical marriage might present. Barriers to Understanding Leisure, Crime and Enforcement Intellectual Ambivalence: The first challenge to pursuing the study of leisure, crime and enforcement is the intellectual ambivalence that precludes such a study. When taken together the contrasts between leisure, crime and the use of force to secure safety underscore a fundamental paradox of our civility: the dependence of a civil way of life on the willingness or not to use force (uncivil means) to guarantee it. Inherent in the paradox of civility is a distaste toward coercion as a feature of our life. Arguably the study of leisure, recreation and sport has precluded the inclusion of crime and enforcement because of the antithetical character of such an intellectual pursuit. Findings from recent research reflect the operational features of this paradox: Canadian Park Warden: Historically the Warden Service has been dominated by the view that our job was to help visitors have a pleasant experience. Consequently we are guided by the view that we should give information, and help people and not ruin their trip by giving them a ticket (Pendleton, 1997, p. 56). A corresponding inattention to the presence of crime and the need for enforcement in recreational settings is evident in resent data reflecting institutional pressures to look the other way and/or a general lack of awareness of the nature of the phenomenon (Pendleton, 1997b,). Again data from participants in recent studies sum up this view: High Ranking Forest Service Administrator: "I don't want to be that close to it (enforcement). …


We investigate whether parents´ socioeconomic status affects children´s need for hospital services, and potential implications for need-based resource allocation models. Data are from somatic hospital stays by children below the age of 11 in Norway in 2011. Socioeconomic status is measured by parents' educational level or income. We find that the educational gradient is dominating the income gradient, and the effects are strong: Hospital expenditures of a child whose mother (father) has not completed secondary education are 51 % (42%) higher than average expenditures. The effect of parents´ educational level is strongest for the youngest children and is mainly due to emergency care. Since we find a negative correlation between the educational attainment and hospital expenditures, we argue that education level of parents should be included in the need-based resource allocation model. Published:  Online September 2017. In print December 2017.


ABSTRACT Educational policies increasingly emphasise early childhood science engagement. As key influencers in children's early learning, parents (n = 85) attending a science workshop in three urban schools in Ireland were surveyed regarding their attitudes towards science. Seventy per cent of parents believed that science education should begin in the pre-school years, before the age of four. Despite high levels of education, at least half of the parents expressed some lack of confidence in talking about, and in doing science with, their young children. Parents who reported less confidence in doing science activities with their children also reported reduced frequency of activities for five out of the seven science learning opportunities listed. Mothers, compared to fathers, reported less confidence in doing science activities with their children. Findings indicate that parents' confidence in science may impact early science experiences and highlight parents as a key support for increasing early science engagement.


Background: Listeria monocytogenes is a bacterium that is transmitted by food. This bacterium is the cause of Listeria disease, which causes severe symptoms such as meningitis, septicemia and abortion. Determination of the effect of different conditions such as pH, salt and temperature on survival of L. monocytogenes in food seems essential.
Methods: A standard strain of L. monocytogenes (ATCC: 19115) was used for this study. The bacteria was added in the concentration of 3 × 108 CFU/ml, to BHI broth medium at pH=4, 5, 6 and 7 and salt concentrations of 0, 7%, 14% and 21%. Temperature was 4°C and 20°C. Samples were collected every 24 hours from the cultured mediums in a special environment of PALCAM agar. This will be done until no colonies grow on the PALCAM agar environment.
Results: The effect of independent variable of storage temperature alone on the survival rate of L. monocytogenes in the level of 5% is not significant. Also, the increase in salt concentrations and pH together, increased on the survival of bacteria at 5% level. The minimum survival time was pH=4 and the salt concentration was 21% at 4°C for 19 days.
Conclusion: The results of this study showed that the effect of three factors (pH=4) and high salt concentration (21%) and temperature can reduce the bacterial survival rate in foods. This means that survival at low pH and salt concentration is strongly dependent on temperature.


How can social and health researchers study complex dynamic systems that function in nonlinear and even chaotic ways? Common methods, such as experiments and equation-based models, may be ill-suited to this task. To address the limitations of existing methods and offer nonparametric tools for characterizing and testing causality in nonlinear dynamic systems, we introduce the edm command in Stata. This command implements three key empirical dynamic modeling (EDM) methods for time series and panel data: 1) simplex projection, which characterizes the dimensionality of a system and the degree to which it appears to function deterministically; 2) S-maps, which quantify the degree of nonlinearity in a system; and 3) convergent cross-mapping, which offers a nonparametric approach to modeling causal effects. We illustrate these methods using simulated data on daily Chicago temperature and crime, showing an effect of temperature on crime but not the reverse. We conclude by discussing how EDM allows checking the assumptions of traditional model-based methods, such as residual autocorrelation tests, and we advocate for EDM because it does not assume linearity, stability, or equilibrium.


Abstract FDI is seen widely as a vital source of investment, technology transfer, and growth. The factors that attract FDI have been a longstanding source of debate. The authors present a comprehensive assessment of the accumulated evidence on one factor, the success of economic growth in attracting FDI. Meta-regression analysis is applied to 946 estimates from 140 empirical studies. The results confirm that, on average, economic growth is an important determinant of FDI. Overall, there is a positive correlation between growth and FDI and this is much larger among single country case studies than with cross-country analysis.


Background: Bulk purchase of Porcelain materials with some in less use and expiring before being exhausted has resulted in colossal economic loss in the past and present in our environment. Having knowledge of prevalent shade in this environment will minimize this loss. Objective: The study aimed at auditing the shade selection and identifying the most frequently selected shade for advanced restoration in the Conservative Dentistry Clinic as well as assessing the influence of gender and age on choice of shade selected. Methods: This is a retrospective study of shade selection for advanced restorations fabricated over a period of seven years in the University College Hospital Dental Clinic spanning January 2009 to December 2016. Data collected which was analyzed using the SPSS Version 22, includes: Socio demographic data, oral hygiene status and social habits, designation of the doctors that took the shade, types of advanced restorations, tooth/teeth restored, shades selected and types of shade guides used if indicated. Results: The outcome of the study showed that 'A' group shades were more chosen for advance restorations (50.6%). However, Vita shade A3 was the most selected of all the shades, while shade C4 was the least selected. Lighter shades of 'A' were more frequently selected in female patients (57%) while shade 'D' were chosen in the greater percentage of male patients (60%). Younger age groups less than 45years old tend to have lighter shade selected for their restorations. (Fig. 2). Conclusion: Vita shade A3 (3M3) was the most frequently selected shade for aesthetic advanced restoration. Lighter shades are generally selected more in the female patients and younger age group.


This article explores the definition of 'vintage cinema' and specifically re-evaluates the fetishism for the past and its regurgitation in the present by providing a taxonomy of the phenomenon in recent film production. Our contribution identifies three aesthetic categories: faux-vintage, retro and anachronistic; by illustrating their overlapping and discrepancies it argues that the past remains a powerful negotiator of meaning for the present and the future. Drawing on studies of memory and digital nostalgia, this article focuses on the latter category: anachronism. It furthermore unravels the persistence of and the filmic fascination for obsolete analogue objects through an analysis of Only Lovers Left Alive (Jim Jarmusch, 2013).


to have been left in the dark concerning the criteria to be applied to the selection of scientists to be invited to this "international" meeting. Prospective participants caring about the integrity of the world's scientific enterprise, however, may wish to be aware of the exclusionary policy governing attendance at that meeting. In view of the unsettled conditions in that part of the world, prospects for this meeting seem doubtful in any event, but that is an altogether different issue. EMANUEL EPsTEIN Department ofLand, Air and Water Resources, University ofCalfornia, Davis, CA 95616-8627


In wastewater treatment system, the humus soil activated sludge process is to culture microorganisms by setting the natural humus soil composite mineral filter to simulate natural soil growing conditions. After enriched and activated in the cultivation tank, the microorganisms with specific functions return to different position of activated sludge process and achieve enhanced operational performance. The project results showed the process could enhance the removal of nitrogen and phosphorus, reduce sludge production, improve sludge dewatering property and achieve odor elimination.


This paper presents an application of GPU accelerators in Earth system modeling. We focus on atmospheric chemical kinetics, one of the most computationally intensive tasks in climate–chemistry model simulations. We developed a software package that automatically generates CUDA kernels to numerically integrate atmospheric chemical kinetics in the global climate model ECHAM/MESSy Atmospheric Chemistry (EMAC), used to study climate change and air quality scenarios. A source-to-source compiler outputs a CUDA-compatible kernel by parsing the FORTRAN code generated by the Kinetic PreProcessor (KPP) general analysis tool. All Rosenbrock methods that are available in the KPP numerical library are supported. Performance evaluation, using Fermi and Pascal CUDAenabled GPU accelerators, shows achieved speed-ups of 4.5× and 20.4×, respectively, of the kernel execution time. A node-to-node real-world production performance comparison shows a 1.75× speed-up over the non-accelerated application using the KPP three-stage Rosenbrock solver. We provide a detailed description of the code optimizations used to improve the performance including memory optimizations, control code simplification, and reduction of idle time. The accuracy and correctness of the accelerated implementation are evaluated by comparing to the CPU-only code of the application. The median relative difference is found to be less than 0.000000001 % when comparing the output of the accelerated kernel the CPU-only code. The approach followed, including the computational workload division, and the developed GPU solver code can potentially be used as the basis for hardware acceleration of numerous geoscientific models that rely on KPP for atmospheric chemical kinetics applications.


Traders differ in speed and their speed differences matter. I model strategic interactions induced when high frequency traders (HFTs) have different speeds in an extended Kyle (1985) framework. HFTs are assumed to anticipate incoming orders and trade rapidly to exploit normal-speed traders' latencies. Upon observing a common noisy signal about the incoming order flow, faster HFTs react more quickly than slower HFTs. I find that these front-running HFTs effectively levy a speed tax on normal-speed traders, making markets less liquid and prices ultimately less informative. Even when infinitely many HFTs compete, in general their negative effects on market quality persist and such effects are more severe when HFTs have more heterogeneous speeds. I analyze policy proposals concerning HFTs and find that (1) lowering the frequency of periodic uniform price auctions reduces the negative impact of HFTs on market quality and (2) randomizing the sequence of order execution can degrade market quality when the randomizing interval is short. Consistent with empirical findings, a small number of HFTs can generate a large fraction of the trading volume and HFTs' profits depend on their speeds relative to other HFTs.


We study the behavior of dynamically-generated baryon resonances with heavyquark content within a unitarized coupled-channel theory in matter that fulfills heavy-quark spin symmetry constraints. We analyze the implications for the formation of charmed mesic nuclei and the propagation of heavy mesons in heavy-ion collisions from RHIC to FAIR.


Breast cancer is the most common non-skin cancer and the second leading cause of cancer death in North American women. Mammography is the only screening test shown to reduce breast cancer-related mortality. There is general agreement that screening should be offered at least biennially to women 50 to 74 years of age. For women 40 to 49 years of age, the risks and benefits of screening should be discussed, and the decision to perform screening should take into consideration the individual patient risk, values, and comfort level of the patient and physician. Information is lacking about the effectiveness of screening in women 75 years and older. The decision to screen women in this age group should be individualized, keeping the patient's life expectancy, functional status, and goals of care in mind. For women with an estimated lifetime breast cancer risk of more than 20 percent or who have a BRCA mutation, screening should begin at 25 years of age or at the age that is five to 10 years younger than the earliest age that breast cancer was diagnosed in the family. Screening with magnetic resonance imaging may be considered in high-risk women, but its impact on breast cancer mortality is uncertain. Clinical breast examination plus mammography seems to be no more effective than mammography alone at reducing breast cancer mortality. Teaching breast self-examination does not improve mortality and is not recommended; however, women should be aware of any changes in their breasts and report them promptly.


In communication systems transmitting data through unknown fading channels, traditional
detection techniques are based on channel estimation (e.g., by using pilot signals),
and then treating the estimates as perfect in a minimum distance detector. In this thesis,
we derive and investigate an optimal detector that does not estimate the channel explicitly
but jointly processes the received pilot and data symbols to recover the data. This optimal
detector outperforms the traditional detectors (mismatched detectors). In order to approximate
correlated fading channels, such as fast fading channels and frequency-selective
fading channels, basis expansion models (BEMs) are used due to high accuracy and low
complexity.

There are various BEMs used to represent the time-variant channels, such as
Karhunen-Loeve (KL) functions, discrete prolate spheroidal (DPS) functions, generalized
complex exponential (GCE) functions, B-splines (BS), and the others. We derive the
mean square error (MSE) of a generic BEM-based linear channel estimator with perfect
or imperfect knowledge of the Doppler spread in time-variant channels. We compare the
performance and complexity of minimum mean square error (MMSE) and maximum likelihood
(ML) channel estimators using the four BEMs, for the case with perfect Doppler
spread. Although all BEM-based MMSE estimators allow achievement of the optimal
performance of the Wiener solution, the complexity of estimators using KL and DPS
BEMs is significantly higher than that of estimators using BS and GCE BEMs. We then
investigate the sensitivity of BEM-based estimators to the mismatched Doppler spread.
All the estimators are sensitive to underestimation of the Doppler spread but may be robust
to overestimation. The results show that the traditional way of estimating the fading
statistics and generating the KL and DPS basis functions by using the maximum Doppler
spread will lead to a degradation of the performance. A better performance can be obtained by using an overestimate of the Doppler spread instead of using the maximum
Doppler spread. For this case, due to the highest robustness and the lowest complexity,
the best practical choice of BEM is the B-splines.

We derive a general expression for optimal detection for pilot-assisted transmission
in Rayleigh fading channels with imperfect channel estimation. The optimal detector is
specified for single-input single-output (SISO) Rayleigh fading channels. The slow (timeinvariant)
fading channels and fast (time-variant) fading channels following Jakes' model
are considered. We use the B-splines to approximate the channel gain time variations
and compare the detection performance of the optimal detector with that of different mismatched
detectors using ML or MMSE channel estimates. Furthermore, we investigate
the detection performance of an iterative receiver implementing the optimal detector in
the initial iteration and mismatched detectors in following iterations in a system transmitting
turbo-encoded data. Simulation results show that the optimal detection outperforms
the mismatched detection with ML channel estimation. However, the improvement in the
detection performance compared to the mismatched detection with theMMSE channel estimation
is modest. We then extend the optimal detector to channels with more unknown
parameters, such as spatially correlated MIMO Rayleigh fading channels, and compare
the performance of the optimal detector with that of mismatched detectors. Simulation results
show that the benefit in detection performance caused by using the optimal detector
is not affected by the spatial correlation between antennas, but becomes more significant
when the number of antennas increases.
This optimal detector is extended to the case of orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing
(OFDM) signals in frequency-selective fading channels. We compare the performance
and complexity of this optimal detector with that of mismatched detectors using
ML and MMSE channel estimates in SISO and MIMO channels. In SISO systems,
the performance of the optimal detector is close to that of the mismatched detector with
MMSE channel estimates. However, the optimal detector significantly outperforms the
mismatched detectors in MIMO channels.


This disquieting yet important book describes the injustices, humiliations, and brutalities inflicted on African Americans in a racist culture that was created—and protected—by the forces of law and order.
 Jim Crow Laws presents the history of the discriminatory laws that segregated people by race in the American South from the end of the Civil War through passage of the 1965 Civil Rights Act. To paint a true picture of these deplorable restrictions, this book provides a detailed analysis of the creation, defense, justification, and fight against the Jim Crow system.
 Among the subjects covered here are the origins of legal inequality for African Americans in the aftermath of the Civil War; the role of the U.S. Supreme Court in weakening constitutional protections against discrimination established in the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments; the white justification of segregation; and the extreme brutality of Jim Crow's defenders. Equally important, readers will learn about the psychological, political, social, and economic costs endured by the victims of Jim Crow inequality, as well as about the motivations, rejections, and successes faced by those who stood against these abominations.


We conducted human language identification experiments using signals with reduced segmental information with Japanese and bilingual subjects. American English and Japanese excerpts from the OGI_TS Corpus were processed by spectral-envelope removal (SER), vowel extraction from SER (VES) and temporal-envelope modulation (TEM). With the SER signal, where the spectral-envelope is eliminated, humans could still identify the languages fairly successfully. With the VES signal, which retains only vowel sections of the SER signal, the identification score was low. With the TEM signal, composed of white-noise-driven intensity envelopes from several frequency bands, the identification score rose as the number of bands increased. Results varied depending on the stimulus language. Japanese and bilingual subjects demonstrated different scores from each other. These results indicate that humans can identify languages using a signal with drastically reduced segmental information. The results also suggest variation due to the phonetic attributes of languages and subjects' knowledge.


The development policies of the Soviet period resulted in widespread environmental damage within the USSR. The profound societal changes initiated by the transition period led many to envisage an improving environmental situation within the successor states. This paper takes the example of Moscow city and assesses the environmental impact of the transition period within the region. The changing pressures being placed upon air, water and vegetation resources are examined. It would seem that many of the expected improvements in environmental quality have not materialized. New environmental pressures are a significant contributor to this situation. For example, the increasing number of motor vehicles is encouraging high levels of air pollution within the city. Water quality is being threatened by new housing developments and the violation of sanitary protection zones. Furthermore, the construction of office and retail space is placing pressure upon the city's green spaces. Nevertheless, the influence of the Soviet legacy should not be underestimated. The considerable physical and cultural heritage is having a profound impact upon the contemporary situation.


This paper describes the software integration of a treatment planning system (TPS), based on the open-source 3D Slicer package, with the Small Animal Radiation Research Platform (SARRP).The TPS is designed to enable researchers to replicate their clinical techniques, allow for image fusion with other imaging modalities, and provide dose computation and graphical visualization of treatment plans consisting of multiple x-ray beams and conformable arcs. The dose computation is implemented on a GPU to achieve high performance; the dose volume for a typical treatment plan can be computed in less than a minute.


The article presents the results of a research run by the Institute of Education Sciences – Department of Educational Counselling and Management in 2011 on the integration of the ICT tools in the activity of the guidance counsellors from different schools around the country. The article starts with a short overview of the way the web 2.0 tools are used in guidance counselling in other countries and what expectations are set for these new tools. Then the data collected on the use of web 2.0 tools are presented and analysed against the role of the guidance counsellors in the school context.
The research involved a number of practitioners in the field of career guidance in a training course with a pre- and post- self-assessment of the different ICT competences related to the guidance tasks. The aim was to identify how good are the counsellors in using wiki pages (wikipedia, google docs, other wiki sites), to assess and improve their ability to support a group of pupils to create a wiki project regarding study and employment opportunities, to create a thematically blog on a specific topic, to help pupils to participate in online decision making groups through web 2.0 tools, to collaborate with other practitioners at national or international level in order to build a database with relevant information, or their ability to teach certain counselling related topics and to use content management tools or self assessment on-line interest or skills questionnaires (ie. surveymonkey). The article ends with a set of specific recommendations for stakeholders in the national education system and new research and development areas to be approach forward.


Background Clopidogrel is a thienopyridine drug that acts by binding selectively and irreversibly to the adenosine diphosphate P2Y12 receptor on platelets. Platelet aggregation is consequently inhibited. Clopidogrel is used to prevent ischemic events in patients at risk, when other drugs fail or are not tolerated. Paediatric use is not authorised because of limited information about efficacy and safety. Purpose To illustrate our experience in the three-month use of clopidogrel in children with a systemic-to-pulmonary arterial shunt, prior to definitive surgical intervention. Materials and Methods On February 2012 a temporary systemic-to-pulmonary arterial shunt was placed in a four-month-old patient, affected by Tetralogy of Fallot with hypoplasia of the infundibulum and pulmonary valve. We administered two antiaggregant drugs, ASA 18 mg and clopidogrel 0.2 mg/Kg once a day, because of the high risk of thrombotic closure of the shunt. We chose an extemporaneous preparation of type 5 capsules with lactose as a diluent. After that, four other children (from 2 months to 4 years old) were treated with clopidogrel, mostly in association with ASA or together with enoxaparin. Results We prepared capsules from 0.75 to 3.5 mg. For all patients we obtained authorization by the Ethics Committee and the parent's informed consent. After surgery, the children were observed for 7–8 days depending on clinical follow up and complications. We checked the blood count and shunt patency with clinical observation, analysis and echocardiogram. After discharge, patients were first recalled 10–15 days later, then after 1–2 months to see the doctor, have an ECG, blood tests and echocardiogram. Pt was not necessary. No serious side effects were observed. Conclusions Paediatric clopidogrel treatment is rapidly increasing. A wider number of cases, a comparison with other professional experience, and, most of all, controlled clinical trials, would be desirable. No conflict of interest.


Copyright © 2015 by the Society of Critical Care Medicine and Wolters Kluwer Health, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Crit Care Med 2015 • Volume 43 • Number 12 (Suppl.) registry (>90% of all Dutch ICU admissions). To include only patients with an observational reason for admission, we excluded patients that received specialized ICU treatment from the beginning of the admission (defined as mechanically ventilation at ICU admission or CPR before ICU admission). A multivariate logistic regression model was created to select the covariates. Next, a simplified triage model based on a point system was developed. Results: There were 408,259 admissions to the participating ICU's, including 12,404 patients admitted from the emergency room with at least one diagnosis of intoxication (3.0%). 10,413 patients (observational reason for ICU admission) were included in the analysis. The strongest predictors that an intoxicated ICU patient will actually need ICU treatment are GI-bleeding, respiratory insufficiency, cirrhosis and a GCS ≤6. Alcohol and sedatives as intoxication type and a systolic blood pressure ≥ 130 mmHg (excluding other signs) make it less likely that a patient will need ICU treatment. The model to predict the need for ICU care has a high sensitivity (93.8%) and a high negative predictive value (98.9%). If this model would be used in clinical practice the admissions would be reduced by 35.6%. Conclusions: We created a model to predict the need for ICU admission with a high sensitivity and a high negative predictive value. The next step should be external validation of the model.


Abstract High-resolution intensity profiles can be generated from X-ray diffraction films using a desk-top scanner and computer image analysis. The resulting intensity profiles have spatial resolutions equal to, or exceeding that of modern powder diffractometers - at a fraction of the cost. This technique provides an economical way of preserving the information stored in libraries of old (and deteriorating) powder diffraction films. The same technique can also be extended to permit quantitative analysis of single-crystal diffraction films.


Costs associated with unscheduled and preventive maintenance can contribute significantly to an airline's expenditure. Reliability analysis can help to identify and plan for maintenance events. Reliability analysis in industry is often limited to statistically based approaches that incorporate failure times as the primary stochastic variable, with additional strict assumptions regarding independence of events and underlying distributions of failure phenomena. This foregoes the complex nature of aircraft operations, where a whole range of operational factors may influence the probability of occurrence of a maintenance event. The aim of this research is to identify operational factors affecting component reliability and to assess whether these can be used to reduce the number of unscheduled occurrences (i.e. failures). To do so, a data-driven approach is adopted where historical operational and maintenance data is gathered and analysed to identify operational factors with a measurable influence on maintenance event occurrence. Both time-independent and time-dependent Proportional Hazard Models (PHMs), models which incorporate operational factors as covariates, are employed to generate reliability estimates. Results obtained from analysing historical data of a set of ten components with respect to unscheduled removals indicates that adopting new maintenance schedules, derived from the proposed reliability models, could reduce the number of unscheduled occurrences by approximately 37%. The potential benefits of adopting the proposed strategy are extensive. Nonetheless, numerous assumptions have been introduced to overcome challenges imposed by the complex nature of the data. To overcome these challenges, recommendations are made for future development of the proposed approach


Although variations in elemental abundance ratios in the Milky Way certainly exist, details remain uncertain, particularly in the inner Galaxy, where stars and H II regions in the Galactic plane are obscured optically. In this paper we revisit two previously studied, inner Galaxy H II regions: G333.6-0.2 and W43. We observed three new positions in G333.6-0.2 with the Kuiper Airborne Observatory and reobserved the central position with the Infrared Space Observatory's Long Wavelength Spectrometer in far-infrared lines of S++, N++, N+, and O++. We also added the N+ lines at 122 and 205 μm to the suite of lines measured in W43 by Simpson and coworkers. The measured electron densities range from ~40 to over 4000 cm-3 in a single H II region, indicating that abundance analyses must consider density variations, since the critical densities of the observed lines range from 40 to 9000 cm-3. We propose a method to handle density variations and make new estimates of the S/H and N/H abundance ratios. We find that our sulfur abundance estimates for G333.6-0.2 and W43 agree with the S/H abundance ratios expected for the S/H abundance gradient previously reported by Simpson and coworkers, with the S/H values revised to be smaller as a result of changes in collisional excitation cross sections. The estimated N/H, S/H, and N/S ratios are the most reliable because of their small corrections for unseen ionization states (≲10%). The estimated N/S ratios for the two sources are smaller than what would be calculated from the N/H and S/H ratios in our previous paper. We compute models of the two H II regions to estimate corrections for the other unseen ionization states. We find, with large uncertainties, that oxygen does not have a high abundance, with the result that the N/O ratio is as high (~0.35) as previously reported. The reasons for the uncertainty in the ionization corrections for oxygen are both the nonuniqueness of the H II region models and the sensitivity of these models to different input atomic data and stellar atmosphere models. We discuss these predictions and conclude that only a few of the latest models adequately reproduce H II region observations, including the well-known, relatively large observed Ne++/O++ ratios in low- and moderate-excitation H II regions.


The long title tries to bring some of the crucial topics of this diploma work together: The linguistic as well as philosophical meaning of the "Phantasma", an initially Greek notion which comes to have some influence on philosophical debate since Aristotle's book De Anima - a debate that will last until the late Renaissance and, as I have tried to demonstrate, emerges again or is supposed to do so in actual philosophy. Therefore I positioned my discussion of the Phantasma in a philosophical as well as political debate of the early 16th century in the context of the neo-Aristotelian school of Padova and Bologna, employing the philosophical terms of a contemporary French philosopher, Cornelius Castoriadis. On the background of the socio-historical imaginary (l'imaginaire social-historique), the significance of the Phantasma and of phantasia would appear, until the 16th century, as the missing link between human perception and thought in the epistemological discussion of human cognition, but from then onward would be constructed as the feared opposite of the human ratio which will have to be persecuted and sent to prison or to lunatic asylums. Of course it is not the Phantasma itself which is set on fire, but, for example, an Italian philosopher named Pomponazzi only escaped very closely to such a cruel condemnation as the Roman Catholic Church of his time got notorious for (the Holy Inquisition). Beginning with the latter, the "Pomponazzi-affair", the analysis of the Phantasma then jumps over to a Deleuze influenced discussion of paradoxes which deal with cognitive and logical problems, and, after this "Intermezzo", gets back to the socio-historical background of 16th century philosophy. Enlarging the linguistic notion of the Phantasma to a person who is called a "phantast", for instance in a pre-critical work by Immanuel Kant, the epistemological discussion of the notion is itself widened by a socio-historical critique, following in some points Castoriadis as well as Foucault. The critique is founded in the presumption that, with Immanuel Kant as the outstanding philosopher of the Enlightenment, the Phantasma loses its significance as an epistemological technical term of philosophy and becomes the pathological stigma of an unreasonable human being: Not all human beings are, whilst thinking, doing this on the base of Phantasmata, but only "phantasts" whose ratio is already darkened by the Phantasmata. My purpose was to urge for a new understanding of the meaning of Phantasma and its correlates like imagination (phantasia), memory, thought, perception and intentional forms of action and their interplay - new, but still in the sense of Aristotle's phrase: The human soul never thinks without Phantasmata (De Anima, III, 7).


After more than two decades winding its way through a variety of United Nations (UN) mechanisms, in September 2007 the world's indigenous peoples welcomed the news that the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (hereinafter the Declaration) was at last approved by the vast majority of nation-states.2 The four settler3 states that opposed the Declaration initially (the United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand) have each in turn voiced their ultimate approval of the declaration and have issued statements in support to their indigenous citizens. In spite of the fact that these statements expressed a measure of regret for past wrongs committed, not one of those endorsements embodied a formal apology. Now that the Declaration has entered its eleventh year, many continue to question to what extent these endorsements have meaningfully advanced reconciliation for indigenous peoples and whether these endorsements were authentic in their stated desire to do more than just acknowledge the aspirations contained in the Declaration. This comment will examine the framework for political apologies in general and then consider the endorsements of the Declaration by the United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand in light of contemporary apology theory. The article will then examine affirmative actions taken by those states following their endorsements in order to advance the claims of indigenous peoples and look at whether these actions have fallen short in providing meaningful redress for centuries of past wrongs.


Summary We propose a semiparametric odds ratio model to measure the association between two variables taking discrete values, continuous values, or a mixture of both. Methods for estimation and inference with varying degrees of robustness to model assumptions are studied. Semiparametric efficient estimation and inference procedures are also considered. The estimation methods are compared in a simulation study and applied to the study of associations among genital tract bacterial counts in HIV infected women.


s 15 th World Congress on Disaster and Emergency Medicine s75 caution for resuscitation of patients in traumatic hypovolemic shock with or without head injury.


In this paper, we investigate the error performance of a serially concatenated system using a nonrecursive convolutional code as the outer code and a recursive QPSK space-time trellis code as the inner code on quasi-static and rapid Rayleigh fading channels. At the receiver, we consider iterative decoding based on the maximum a posteriori (MAP) algorithm. The performance is evaluated by means of computer simulations and it is shown that better error performance can be obtained by using low complexity outer and/or inner codes and the Euclidean distance criterion based recursive space-time inner codes. We also obtain new systems with large number of trasmit and/or receive antennas providing good error performance.


We report on an experimental study with UV and visible ultrafast time-gated emission and transient absorption of the early photodynamics of horse heart Cytochrome c in both ferric and ferrous redox states. A clear separation in time and energy of tryptophan and haem emission is observed. Excitation of the haem via resonant energy transfer from the tryptophan residue is observed in the subsequent haem electronic relaxation. Different Trp-haem energy transfer time constants of the ferrous and ferric forms are obtained. An almost instantaneous relaxation to the lowest singlet excited state (corresponding to the so-called Q band) characterizes the earliest electronic dynamics of the haem, independent of excitation energy, while dark intermediate states govern the ground-state recovery. The information gathered in these two experiments and in the literature allows us to propose a simple scheme for the electronic relaxation leading to ligand dissociation.


Understanding the relationship between the reflectance measured and the various cultural practices used in today's soybean production is key for further development and use of remote sensing as a tool for crop monitoring. Field experiments were conducted at the Purdue Agronomy Farm in West Lafayette, Ind. in 1978 and 1979 to study the reflectance factor (RF) of soybean (Glycine max L. Merr.) canopies as affected by differences in row width, population, planting date, cultivar, and soil type (Typic Argiaquoll and Typic Hapludulf). Reflectance factor (RF) data were acquired with a Landsat-band radiometer (Exotech 100), which is a four band radiometer with a 15-degree field of view that measures radiance in the following wavelength regions: 0.5–0.6, 0.6–0.7, 0.7–0.8, and 0.8–1.1 µ. Agronomic measurements included plant height, leaf area index, development stage, total fresh and dry biomass, and percent soil cover. Row width, planting date, and cultivar influenced the percent soil cover, leaf area index, biomass, and development stage of the soybean canopies. Changes in these agronomic variables were manifested in the canopy reflectance. Soil color and moisture were important factors influencing RF in single Landsat bands; however, the near infrared/ red reflectance ratio and the greenness transformation were less sensitive than the single bands to changes in soil background. Variations in spectral responses are strongly associated with planting date during early to mid-season, with the row width during mid-season to near maturity, and with cultivar at maturity. This information should be useful in applications of remote sensing for identifying crops and estimating crop condition and yields.


Introduction Demographic ageing is one of the major challenges for governments in developed countries because older people are the main users of health and social care services. More joined-up, partnership approaches supported by information and communications technologies (ICTs) have become key to managing these demands. This article discusses recent developments towards integrated care in the context of one of the arenas in which integration is being attempted, the Single Assessment Process (SAP) to support the care for older people in England. It draws upon accounts of local SAP implementations in order to assess and reflect upon some of the successes and limitations of service integration enabled by ICTs. Description of care practice At the Department of Health in England, policy and strategy are directed at the integration of services through a 'whole systems' approach, with services that are interdependent upon one another and organised around the person that uses them. The Single Assessment Processes (SAP) is an instance of inter-organisational and cross-sectoral sharing of information intended to improve communication and coordination amongst professions and agencies and so support more integrated care. The aim of SAP is to ensure that older people receive appropriate, effective and timely responses to their health and social care needs and that professionals do not duplicate each others efforts. This article examines examples from two programmes of work within the context of SAP in England: one with the direction coming from local government social services, the other where the momentum is coming from the National Health Service (NHS). Conclusion and discussion Both examples show that the policy and practice of ICT-supported integration continues to represent a significant challenge. Although the notion of integrated care underpinned by ICT-enabled information sharing is persuasive, it has limitations in practice. The notion of an 'open systems' approach is proposed as an alternative way of improving communication and coordination across the domains of health and social care.


The Schelling model of segregation between two groups of residential agents (Schelling 1971; Schelling 1978) reflects the most abstract view of the non-economic forces of residential migrations: be close to people of 'your own'. The model assumes that the residential agent, located in the neighborhood where the fraction of 'friends' is less than a predefined threshold value F, tries to relocate to a neighborhood for which this fraction is above F. It is well known that for the equal groups, depending on F, Schelling's residential pattern converges either to complete integration (random pattern) or segregation. We investigate Schelling model pattern dynamics as dependent on F, the ratio of the group numbers and the size of the neighborhood and demonstrate that the traditional integrate-segregate dichotomy is incomplete. In case of unequal groups, there exists the wide interval of the F-values that entails the third persistent residential pattern, in which part of the majority population segregates, while the rest remains integrated with the minority. We also demonstrate that Schelling model dynamics essentially depends on the description of agents' residential behavior. To obtain sociologically meaningful results, the agents should be satisficers, and the fraction of the agents who relocate irrespective of the neighborhood state should be non-zero.


Summary: The distribution and physiology of Cyanidium caldarium in its natural habitat in acidic hot springs and hot soils have been studied. This eucaryotic alga was the sole photosynthetic organism in habitats with pH less than 5 and temperatures greater than 40°. The upper temperature limit of the alga was 55° to 56° and the optimum temperature for growth was 45°. Temperature strains such as are found in blue-green algae of alkaline thermal habitats were not found for Cyanidium caldarium. In aquatic habitats the lower temperature limit was about 35° to 36°, the organism apparently being unable to compete at temperatures below this with other algae. In soils the alga was found at temperatures as low as 10°, apparently because in terrestrial habitats competition with other algae was less significant. The pH range at which the alga has been found in nature was from 0·05 to 5·0 and growth in culture occurred over this whole range. The optimum pH for growth was between 2 and 3. In nature the alga was found in habitats of widely varying light intensity, up to 7000 ft-candles. The alga became adapted to reduced light intensity by increasing its photopigment concentrations. Photosynthesis in populations adapted to reduced light intensities was inhibited by high light intensities. The alga grew well on glucose in the dark, and the concentration of photosynthetic pigments was reduced. When such bleached cells were transferred to the light in the presence of glucose, pigments were not synthesized and heterotrophic growth continued; when glucose was omitted, pigment synthesis occurred and photosynthetic growth resumed. Glucose did not inhibit pigment synthesis when added to cells growing in the light.


Hypertexts are becoming a promising solution in educational activities since they allow integrating, in the same product, in different ways for presenting a specific topic: traditional text and drawings, animated pictures and graphics, video and audio clips, interactive exercises and simulation, etc. Though lab classes are extremely important when teaching measurement issues, up to now these solutions seldom allow direct access to experimental activity involving the use of real instruments. Those that feature experimental activity generally have a high cost. This paper proposes different, low-cost solutions for integrating a remote laboratory in a hypertext of electrical measurement and shows how they have been implemented in the realization of a remote experiment on a three-phase three-terminal load


Home bias in international macroeconomics refers to the fact that investors around the world tend to allocate majority of their portfolios into domestic assets, despite the potential benefits to be had from international diversification. This phenomenon has been occurring across countries, over time, and across equity or bond portfolios. The bias towards domestic assets tends to be larger in developing countries relative to developed economies, with Europe characterized by the lowest equity home bias, while Central and South America—by the highest equity home bias. In addition, despite the secular decline in the level of equity home bias over time in all countries and regions, home bias still remains a robust feature of the data.
 Whether home bias is a puzzle depends on the portfolio allocation that one uses as a theoretical benchmark. For instance, home bias in equity portfolio is a puzzle when assessed through the lens of a simple international capital asset pricing model (CAPM) with homogeneous investors. This model predicts that investors should hold world market portfolios, namely a portfolio with the share of domestic asset equal to the share of those assets in the world market portfolio. For instance, since the share of US equity in the world capitalization in 2016 was 56%, then US investors should allocate 56% of their equity portfolio into local assets, while investing the remaining 44% into foreign equities. Instead, foreign equity comprised just 23% of US equity portfolio in 2016, hence the equity home bias.
 Alternative portfolio benchmark comes from the theories that emphasize costs for trading assets in international financial markets. These include transaction and information costs, differential tax treatments, and more broadly, differences in institutional environments. This research, however, has so far been unable to reach a consensus on the explanatory power of such costs.
 Yet another theory argues that equity home bias can arise due to the hedging properties of local equity. In particular, local equity can provide insurance from real exchange rate risk and non-tradable income risk (such as labor income risk), and thus a preference towards home equities is not a puzzle, but rather an optimal response to such risks.
 These theories, main advances and results in the macroeconomic literature on home bias are discussed in this article. It starts by presenting some empirical facts on the extent and dynamics of equity home bias in developed and developing countries. It is then shown how home bias can arise as an equilibrium outcome of the hedging demand in the model with real exchange rate and non-tradable labor income risk. Since solving models with portfolio choice is challenging, the recent advances in solving such models are also outlined in this article.
 Integrating the portfolio dynamics into models that can generate realistic asset price and exchange rate dynamics remains a fruitful avenue for future research. A discussion of additional open questions in this research agenda and suggestions for further readings are also provided.


BACKGROUND
Lipid-transfer proteins (LTPs) have been identified as major allergens of Rosaceae fruits in populations living in areas virtually free of Fagales trees, such as several Mediterranean communities. Pru p 3 and Mal d 3, the allergens from peach and apple, respectively, have a main clinical relevance in these areas.

OBJECTIVE
To isolate and characterize cDNAs for Pru p 3 and Mal d 3, and to produce recombinant Pru p 3 in the yeast Pichiapastoris.

METHODS
cDNAs for both allergens were isolated by polymerase chain reaction using nondegenerated primers. Expression of Pru p 3 was performed in P. pastoris using the pPIC 9 vector. The recombinant product was purified by gel-filtration chromatography followed by RP-HPLC. Immunodetection and immunoblot inhibition assays were carried out with sera from peach-allergic patients.

RESULTS
The cDNAs for both Pru p 3 and Mal d 3 showed a 273 open reading frame coding for the 91 amino acid mature polypeptides. The deduced amino acid sequences exhibited N-terminal regions fully identical to those previously determined for the natural peach and apple allergens. Pru p 3 was expressed in P. pastoris at 20 mg/L of culture medium. The recombinant allergen showed the same N-terminal sequence (plus a glutamic acid added for proper extracellular expression) and apparent molecular size as natural Pru p 3. Both the recombinant and natural forms of Pru p 3 displayed similar immunoglobulin (Ig)E-binding capacity in immunodetection and immunoblot inhibition assays.

CONCLUSIONS
Comparison of the complete primary structures of mature Pru p 3 and Mal d 3 deduced from their corresponding cDNA clones supports the close relationship between both allergens. Recombinant Pru p 3 binds IgE in vitro like its natural counterpart. Therefore, it can be a useful tool for specific diagnosis and structural studies.


Objective After disaster and breast cancer, self-immolation is the third leading cause of years of life lost among women in Iran. The aim of this study is to investigate risk and protective factors for self-immolation patients. Methods In a population based case-control study, 151 consecutive cases of deliberate self-inflicted burns admitted to the regional Burn Centre (Imam Khomeini hospital in Kermanshah province, Iran) were compared with 302 controls selected from the community and matched by sex, age, and living area. All cases and controls were reviewed for demographic variables, familial variables, adverse life events, mental disorders and potential protective factors. Results Using Multivariate logistic regression model of risk and protective factors, eight variables were significantly associated with self-immolation. Family size, Addiction of spouse, Individual history of suicide attempts, Adjustment disorders, Opium dependence, and major depression, were increased the risk of self-immolation and Consulting Services Applying and anxiety about School/University Performance were played role as protective factors. Other variables were not statistically significant. Conclusions Findings from this study suggest Family size, Addiction of spouse, Individual history of suicide attempts, Adjustment disorders, Opium dependence, major depression, are risk factors for self-immolation and Consulting Services Applying and anxiety School/University Performance were protective factors. Screening, identification, and education of at-risk individuals on problem-solving and other aspects of coping skills, as well as interpersonal relationships could be appropriate preventive actions and strategies to reduce self-immolation introduce in Iran.