Flooding has emerged lately as a major threat for poor people in the suburban area of Dakar (Senegal), a densely populated area. In this region, flood events are mainly controlled by rainfall intensity and groundwater level fluctuations. To assess flood risk at a neighbourhood level, accurate data on flood extent, exposure and vulnerability is required. The objective of the present study is to obtain these data combining remote sensing data and local knowledge. Field work data were collected through interviews with inhabitants. About 500 respondents were surveyed with the support of a local association and very detailed mapping was carried out to clearly identify elements at risk. Information collected at the household level concerns: 1) socio-economic data, 2) information on the property, 3) flooded houses and 4) strategies of risk reduction. This research demonstrates that local knowledge is an important tool to obtain accurate data useful for understanding flood hazard and vulnerability patterns. It provides quantitative data at the household level that can be used to complement conventional GIS and remote sensing data.


Sensitive, real-time detection of biomarkers is of critical importance for rapid and accurate diagnosis of disease for point-of-care (POC) technologies. Current methods, while sensitive, do not adequately allow for POC applications due to several limitations, including complex instrumentation, high reagent consumption, and cost. We have investigated two novel nanoarchitectures, the nanocoax and the nanodendrite, as electrochemical biosensors towards the POC detection of infectious disease biomarkers to overcome these limitations. The nanocoax architecture is composed of vertically-oriented, nanoscale coaxial electrodes, with coax cores and shields serving as integrated working and counter electrodes, respectively. The dendritic structure consists of metallic nanocrystals extending from the working electrode, increasing sensor surface area. Nanocoaxialand nanodendritic-based electrochemical sensors were fabricated and developed for the detection of bacterial toxins using an electrochemical enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) and differential pulse voltammetry (DPV). Proof-of-concept was demonstrated for the detection of cholera toxin (CT). Both nanoarchitectures exhibited levels of sensitivity that are comparable to the standard optical ELISA used widely in clinical applications. In addition to matching the detection profile of the standard ELISA, these electrochemical nanosensors provide a simple electrochemical readout and a miniaturized platform with multiplexing capabilities toward POC implementation. Further development as suggested in this thesis may lead to increases in sensitivity, enhancing the attractiveness of the architectures for future POC devices.


A clinical and genetic study of type 2 neurofibromatosis (NF2) has been carried out in the United Kingdom. Virtually complete ascertainment of cases in the north-west of England was achieved and suggests a population incidence of 1 in 33,000 to 40,000. In the UK as a whole, 150 cases have been identified and been used to study the clinical and genetic features of NF2. The autosomal dominant inheritance of NF2 was confirmed, 49% of cases were assessed as representing new mutations, and the mutation rate was estimated to be 6.5 x 10(-6). Evidence to support a maternal gene effect was found in that age at onset was 18.17 years in 36 maternally inherited cases and 24.5 in 20 paternally inherited cases (p = 0.027). The preponderance of maternally inherited cases was also significant (p = 0.03). Data are presented which suggest that there are two types of NF2, one with later onset and bilateral vestibular schwannomas as the only usual feature, and the other with earlier onset and multiple other tumours. A considerable number of cases did not fall easily into one or other group and other factors such as maternal effect on severity and anticipation need to be considered.


Deoxyguanosine kinase, which catalyses the phosphorylation of deoxyguanosine to form deoxyguanosine 5'-monophosphate, was purified 1024-fold from extracts to newborn-pig skin. This activity requires the presence of a bivalent cation and a nucleoside triphosphate, which functions as a phosphate donor, ATP being twice as effective as CTP or GTP and 4 times as effective as UTP. The enzyme appears to have a molecular weight of 58500 as determined by Sephadex-column chromatography. Optimal enzymic activity was observed at pH 8.0; however, the enzyme remained active over a broad pH range of 5.5-9.0. Several deoxyribonucleoside and ribonucleoside monophosphates and triphosphates were tested as effectors of catalytic activity. Effective inhibitors were dGMP [Ki(app.) = 7.6 x 10(-5) M] and dGTP [Ki(app.) = 2.1 x 10(-5) M]. Both of these inhibitors acted in a competitive manner. A Km(app.) of 3.2 x 10(-7) M was measured for deoxyguanosine and a Km(app.) of 3.3 mM was determined for MgATP. Of the four major deoxynucleosides tested, this catalytic activity appears to phosphorylate only deoxyguanosine; thus the enzyme is a specific deoxyguanosine kinase.


This paper examines whether decentralization increases the responsiveness of public investment to local needs using a unique database from Bolivia. Empirical tests show that investment patterns in human capital and social services changed significantly after decentralization. These changes are strongly and positively related to objective indicators of need. Nationally, these changes were driven by the smallest, poorest municipalities investing devolved funds in their highest-priority projects. The findings contradict common claims that local government is too corrupt, institutionally weak, or prone to interest-group capture to improve upon central government's allocation of public resources. D 2002 Published by Elsevier B.V.


Judge Nora Barry Fischer has served as a district judge for the United States District Court for the Western District of Pennsylvania since 2007, when she was appointed by President George W. Bush. Prior to her service as a district judge, Judge Fischer worked as a legal editor at Callaghan & Company, was a partner in private practice at Meyer Darragh Buckler Bebenek & Eck, and was an equity partner at Pietragallo Bosick & Gordon. Additionally, Judge Fischer worked as a trained mediator and arbitrator in Pennsylvania and West Virginia. Judge Fischer is a Fellow of the American College of Trial Lawyers, an active member of the Executive Women's Council of Pittsburgh, a past President of the Academy of Trial Lawyers of Allegheny County, and a member of the Pennsylvania Bar Association Commission on Women in the Profession, where she serves on the Mentoring Subcommittee. She received a Bachelor of Arts Degree magna cum laude from Saint Mary's College, and a JD degree from Notre Dame Law School in 1976.


Melanoma is a skin malignancy with a high mutation frequency of genetic alterations. MicroRNA (miR)-200b-3p is involved in various cancers, while in melanoma its bio-function remains unknown. In this study, we found that miR-200b-3p was down-regulated in melanoma tissues and cell lines compared to benign nevus cells. Overexpression of miR-200b-3p significantly inhibited the proliferation and invasion of melanoma cells. According to bioinformatics analysis and sequencing data, we supposed that SMAD family member 2 (SMAD2) was the target gene and nuclear enriched abundant transcript 1 (NEAT1) was the upstream long non-coding RNA (lncRNA) of miR-200b-3p. These predictions were verified by western blotting and quantitative real-time reverse transcription PCR (RT-qPCR). Luciferase reporter assays revealed that NEAT1 up-regulated SMAD2 by directly sponging miR-200b-3p. In vitro and in vivo, we demonstrated that both NEAT1 and SMAD2 could promote the proliferation and invasion of melanoma cells, and these effects were reversed by up-regulating miR-200b-3p. In addition, NEAT1/miR-200b-3p/SMAD2 axis promoted melanoma progression by activating EMT signaling pathway and immune responses. Taken together, the NEAT1/miR-200b-3p/SMAD2 signaling pathway promotes melanoma via activation of EMT, cell invasion and is related with immune responses, which provides new insights into the molecular mechanisms and therapeutic targets for melanoma.


Conventional benchmarking measures focus mainly on water produced whilst ignoring water produced but not reaching consumers, unaccounted for water (UFW). Benchmarking must credit utilities for a reduction in UFW and improvements in service delivery. This study measures the performance of 20 urban water utilities using data from an Asian Development Bank survey of Indian water utilities in 2005. It applies directional distance function as an analytical tool for measuring performance of water utilities. The results reveal that at the mean level, Indian water utilities have the potential of increasing water delivery levels and reducing UFW by 20%. About half of that can be realized by changing the scale of operation. Metering of the water delivered and the length of the distribution network are major determinants of performance of water utilities.


Co-management, that is sharing of responsibilities between governmental institutions and groups of resource users, is rapidly becoming popular in Asia. In many countries environmental management is reformulated from exclusive state control to various kinds of joint management in which local communities, indigenous peoples and non-governmental organizations share authority and benefits with government institutions. In this book case studies of experiments with co-management in a number of countries are combined with more reflective contributions pointing to underlying assumptions and problems in the actual implementation of co-management


Background: Zimbabwe's response to the HIV/AIDS pandemic in terms of prevention, testing, counseling and treatment has been commendable but inadequate in terms of provision of rehabilitation services to HIV-infected individuals.
Objectives: To determine the prevalence and extent of activity limitations and participation restrictions (disabilities) experienced by adults living with HIV/AIDS who are on Antiretroviral drugs (ARVs) and the factors associated with quality of life as assessed by the International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health (ICF).
Study variables: type of ARV, period on ARVs, last CD4 count, physical and mental health, previous injury, use of assistive devices, having an assistant, and demographic characteristics.
Outcome variables: quality of life (total score), domain total scores, reduction and stopping of usual activities.
Methods: A cross sectional analytical study was done with 59 consenting HIV positive adults on antiretroviral drugs attending an opportunistic infection clinic. An ICF-based interview questionnaire was administered on consecutive patients.
Ethical clearance was granted.
Data Analysis: Descriptive statistics were used to describe the distributions of participants according to demographic characteristics, clinical profile and prevalence of activity limitations and participation restrictions. Multivariate analysis was done to determine the factors that predicted quality of life. Level of significance was set at 5%.
Results: The mean age of participants was 41 years (+/- 9.3), 56% were female, 54% were married and 30.5% were widowed. Median period on ARVs was 13 months (I.Q.R 3-29) and median last CD4 count was 189.5 (I.Q.R 114-278). Thirty-two (54%) were on Stalanev. About 36% and 61% had stopped or reduced their usual activities due to the illness respectively. Most affected aspects were walking (71%), fine hand use (41%), lifting & carrying objects (71%), shopping (55%), housework (55%), remunerative employment (56%) and economic self-sufficiency (79%). The support and relationships and attitudes of health professionals (86% and 88%) and immediate family (75% and 78%) were the cited major environmental facilitators. Factors statistically significantly associated with quality of life were physical health (p= 0.01), mental & emotional health (p= 0.04), and use of assistive devices (p= 0.02). Period on ARVs and last CD4 count were not statistically significantly associated with quality of life.
Conclusion: HIV-related disabilities are prevalent even among those on antiretroviral drugs and their quality of life is reduced, hence the need to scale up rehabilitation services for them.


Hot rolled Ti microalloyed steel with polygonal ferrite and granular bainite microstructure and 640 MPa yield strength has been developed in BOF-CSP process. By chemical phase analysis, XRD, EDS and high resolution TEM, the particle size distribution, morphology, composition, crystal structure of precipitates were identified. Results revealed the steel containing Ti exhibits fine and uniformly distributed Fe3C-type carbides, the amount of M3C particles less than 18 nm in size was 0.2565 mass %. The high strength of steel is attributed to the precipitation strengthening effect of Fe3C, the yield strength increment from precipitation strengthening of Fe3C calculated according to the formula by Olson and Ashby-Orowan attained 234.4 MPa.


Immunoglobulins made by chickens bursectomized in ovo on day 11 of incubation were studied by two-dimensional gel electrophoresis. All such bursectomized chickens have limited diversity in their immunoglobulin molecules. A range of different degrees of diversity restriction was found in individual bursectomized chickens. The limited immunoglobulin diversity was stable for at least 20 weeks in that the same spots were found over this time span. Bursectomized chickens that responded to repeated antigen challenge had sheep erythrocyte- and dinitrophenol-specific antibodies of limited diversity. Different bursectomized responders made almost identical antigen-specific antibodies. The results were interpreted as indicating that individual bursectomized birds had been blocked at different points during the developmental generation of immunoglobulin diversity, and that the genetic mechanisms that underlie the developmental diversification of clones of B cells lead to a sequential generation of very similar antibody molecules in different embryos.


Multiple phases occurring in a Bose gas with finite-range interaction are investigated. In the vicinity of the onset of Bose-Einstein condensation (BEC) the chemical potential and the pressure show a van-der-Waals like behavior indicating a first-order phase transition although there is no long-range attraction. Furthermore the equation of state becomes multivalued near the BEC transition. For a Hartree-Fock or Popov (Hartree-Fock-Bogoliubov) approximation such a multivalued region can be avoided by the Maxwell construction. For sufficiently weak interaction the multivalued region can also be removed using a many-body \mbox{T-matrix} approximation. However, for strong interactions there remains a multivalued region even for the \mbox{T-matrix} approximation and after the Maxwell construction, what is interpreted as a density hysteresis. This unified treatment of normal and condensed phases becomes possible due to the recently found scheme to eliminate self-interaction in the \mbox{T-matrix} approximation, which allows to calculate properties below and above the critical temperature.


The Food and Nutrition Research Institute (FNRI) of the Department of Science and Technology (DOST), as in the past, led the review and revision of the 1989 Recommended Dietary Allowances (RDAs) for Filipinos, a vital and essential tool recognized in the nutrition and health community as the source of information on recommended energy and nutrient intakes for the maintenance of good health. This set of dietary standards is periodically evaluated and updated to keep pace with new knowledge on energy and nutrient requirements and metabolism. The set of updated standards is now called Recommended Energy and Nutrient Intakes (RENIs), defined as levels of intakes of energy and nutrients which, on the basis of current scientific knowledge, are considered adequate for the maintenance of good health and well-being of nearly all healthy Filipinos. As in the 1989 edition, intakes of energy, protein, calcium, phosphorus, iron, iodine, zinc, vitamins A, C, D and E, thiamin, riboflavin, niacin, folate, pyridoxine, water and electrolytes (sodium, potassium, chloride) are recommended in this new edition. The desirable proportions of protein, fats, carbohydrates as well as fiber are also provided, in addition to information on recommended intake levels for selenium, magnesium, manganese, fluoride, cobalamin, and vitamin K. These recommendations were derived from a review of current evidences, principally the UN-FAO/WHO's 2002 human vitamin and mineral requirements and the US-Institute of Medicine-Food and Nutrition Board (IOM-FNB)'s series of Dietary Reference Intakes, taking into consideration applicability in and achievability among specific population groups.


Helen Kraft considers director Milo Rau as an influencer. Kraft places Rau within a subcategory of influencer identified by economist and psychologist Robert Cialdini as intellectuals who are "well-connected, create an impact, have active minds, and are trendsetters." She argues that Rau fills that role in the theater and positions the director in relation to other postmodern thinkers and theater artists. According to Kraft, Rau actively courts controversy with his work as a means of drawing attention to conflict and corruption around the world, but, despite frequent comparisons to Bertolt Brecht, Rau is not an idealogue, exposing inconsistencies rather than promoting any single ideology in his work.


Background: Commonly used items like wallets, keys, and phones are both
tricky and impractical to disinfect from the dangers of harmful microbes.
This study demonstrates the efficacy of UVC-LED technology in creating an
efficient, useful, and practical solution.Methods: As a demonstration of the efficacy of the UVC-LED light (275
nm), a panel of UVC LEDs was fabricated and was driven with a constant
current electronic driver. Staphylococcus aureus and Escherichia coli were
placed on Petri dishes, and placed 38 cm away from the UVC-LED panel.
UVC flux measured at the petri dishes was 0.093 mW/cm2 . The method
involved exposing both the bacteria to UVC treatment for 4 and 8 minutes.
For each petri dish, the number of colony forming units were compared before
and after the treatment and compared to the control.Results: A significant reduction in colony forming unit (cfu) counts was
found in all samples for both sets of bacteria: 97.9% in the 4 minutes treat-
ment(22.3 mJ/cm2), and 99.9% in the 8 minutes treatment(44.6 mJ/cm2).Conclusion: UVC-LED technology offers an effective, simple and inexpensive approach for disinfection.


This article represents a review of risk factors and the mechanisms that determine the hypopharyngeal cancer. The most important risk factor is smoking, and in the majority of cases the patients have been abusive smokers over a long period of time. The recent findings in the molecular medicine have shown that neoplasm is a genetic disease, the development of the neoplastic cells being a consequence of the disruption of the proliferation, differentiation and apoptosis mechanisms. It has been noticed that in the past the incidence of the hypopharyngeal cancer was greater in men, but nowadays the difference between the genders has decreased up to 3/1, as a consequence to the growth of smoking incidence in women and HPV infection. It can be generally encountered on adulthood, with a maximum frequency at the age group of 40-60 years old. In most cases, the diagnosis is established in stage III-IV, and only in a small proportion in stage I-II. In half of the cases the primary lesion is associated with a satellite metastasis adenopathy in the lymphatic cervical ganglions, which leads to a very unpleasant treatment prognosis.


Many representatives of soil saprotroph fungi can penetrate into plant tissues forming endophytic associations with a positive effect on both micro- and macroorganisms. The endophytic fungi may positive act on growth processes, immune status, and resistance of plants to stress factors. For some crops, including buckwheat, the ability to form endophytic associations with soil fungi remains unexplored. Thus the main objectives of our study were to establish the features of interaction between Chaetomium cochliodes3250 and buckwheat plants. Conventional biochemical (content of plant growth regulators, activity of succinate dehydrogenase, acid and alkaline phosphatase, exoglucanase, endoglucanase, β-glucosidase, polygalacturonase) and physicochemical (content of photosynthetic pigments) study methods were used during the work. We established the capability of C. cochliodes 3250 for growth-regulating substances synthesis. The fungus could produce indolyl 3-acetic acid, gibberellic acid, that stimulates growth and development of plants both with mediator molecules, synthesizes 2,4-epibrassinolide, cholesterol and ergosterol playing an important role in plant resistance against pathogens. We found out that C. cochliodes 3250 was capable for active synthesis of cellulase complex enzymes (exoglucanase, endoglucanase, β-glucosidase) and polygalacturonase, necessary for fungus penetration into the root tissues. Pre-sowing treatment of buckwheat seeds by fungus caused the main physiological responses of plants: an increase of total adsorption and active working surface of the roots, the length and weight of plants, the leaf area and the content of chlorophylls a and b. Thus, the ability of C. cochliodes3250 to form an efficient endophytic association with buckwheat plants been improved.


A new method of fault sample selection is presented. First, the mapping relationship is established between the system components and system functions attributes according to the similarity of the system components and system functions attributes, the components are clustered to the class by fuzzy clustering method; then the fault sample is selected in the class according to relation of the faults propagation, the selected fault sample is validated by using the function adequacy and test adequacy. Finally From experimental results, the conclusion can be drown that the cost of this method is lower and the fault detection ratio is high. Compare with the other method the new method has certain advantages.


The aim of this study is to investigate the effect of sub-irrigation with untreated and treated municipal wastewater on soil chemical parameters. Three treatments were used: untreated wastewater (U), treated wastewater (T) and tap water (W), being the control treatment, in two soil types, Sandy loam (SL) and Loamy sand (LS). A sub-irrigation system including pots filled with soil was installed in one of the greenhouses of the Agricultural University of Athens. The wastewater used was applied in the soil in pots at a depth of 10cm and 20cm. In order to determine the changes of chemical parameters at the point where the emitter was placed, the soil was divided into two zones according to depth: (zone I -upper) and (zone II-lower). The pH, CaCO3 %, K μg/g, Na μg/g, P μg/g and EC μmhos/cm, were determined. Statistically significant differences (p <0, 05) in sodium Na+ μg/g and electrical conductivity EC were observed, only in LS soil. Phosphorus and sodium increased in zone (I) for SL soil (p <0, 05). Electrical conductivity and potassium increased in zone (I), while CaCO3% and pH increased in zone (II) for LS soil (P <0, 05).


The paper describes challenges identified while developing browser embedded 3D landscape rendering applications, our current approach and work-flow and how recent development in browser technologies could affect. All the data, even if processed by optimization and decimation tools, result in very huge databases that require paging, streaming and Level-of-Detail techniques to be implemented to allow remote web based real time fruition. Our approach has been to select an open source scene-graph based visual simulation library with sufficient performance and flexibility and adapt it to the web by providing a browser plug-in. Within the current Montegrotto VR Project, content produced with new pipelines has been integrated. The whole Montegrotto Town has been generated procedurally by CityEngine. We used this procedural approach, based on algorithms and procedures because it is particularly functional to create extensive and credible urban reconstructions. To create the archaeological sites we used optimized mesh acquired with laser scanning and photogrammetry techniques whereas to realize the 3D reconstructions of the main historical buildings we adopted computer-graphic software like blender and 3ds Max. At the final stage, semi-automatic tools have been developed and used up to prepare and clusterise 3D models and scene graph routes for web publishing. Vegetation generators have also been used with the goal of populating the virtual scene to enhance the user perceived realism during the navigation experience. After the description of 3D modelling and optimization techniques, the paper will focus and discuss its results and expectations.


Peripheral arterial disease (PAD) is a major public health burden with a prevalence of approximately 27 million people in Europe and North America. PAD is characterised by a progressive narrowing or occlusion of the major arteries in the lower limbs as a result of atherosclerosis. Because atherosclerosis is a systemic disease, patients with PAD are at high risk of lower limb complications and of cardiovascular and cerebrovascular ischaemic events. Despite the growing awareness that PAD is an important marker of generalized atherosclerosis, its systemic consequences are still underestimated and undertreated in comparison with coronary artery disease or cerebrovascular disease. To raise awareness and improve secondary prevention, this thesis focussed on the long-term prognosis of patients with PAD who were treated with infrainguinal bypass surgery. Our primary aim was to quantify the risk of ischaemic complications throughout the whole arterial tree up to 10 years after bypass surgery and elucidate its determinants. Data on fatal and non-fatal vascular events that occurred between 1995 and 2009 were recorded in nearly 500 patients who had participated in the Dutch Bypass and Oral anticoagulants or Aspirin (BOA) Study (The Lancet 2000;355:346-351). The follow-up data were complete in 94% of patients and enabled us to give a fairly accurate insight in the long-term course of PAD and to produce an easy to use tool to determine a patient's vascular risk profile. This so called BOA Risk Chart helps to predict a patient's long-term prognosis quickly and effortlessly without the need for any additional testing. Furthermore, we studied the former and currently applied drug treatments (i.e. antithrombotic, antihypertensive, and lipid lowering drugs) and cardiovascular risk management in PAD patients after they underwent peripheral bypass surgery. Both the results of our international survey among vascular surgeons throughout Europe and of our drug registration over the past decade in a sample of patients from the Dutch BOA study showed an improvement in the application of secondary prevention therapy, but also for it to remain far from optimal. Although these results should be interpreted with caution because of possible selection and survival bias, they do underline the frequently reported undertreatment of patients with PAD. Lately, bleeding –the main adverse effect of antithrombotic therapy– is reported to lead to a four- to five-fold or even a nine-fold increase in the risk of death, myocardial infarction, or ischaemic stroke in patient with coronary artery disease or cerebrovascular disease. As this association has not been reported in PAD patients before, we studied the consequences of bleeding in patients with PAD from the Dutch BOA Study and again in a pooled dataset of the Dutch BOA Study and the Warfarin Antiplatelet Vascular Evaluation (WAVE) Trial (N Engl J Med 2007;357:217-227). Our results confirmed the previous findings of non-fatal major bleeding being independently associated with a three-fold increased risk of new ischaemic events. Further research is required to elucidate the causal underlying mechanism of this new association. Until then, the prevention of bleeding is equally important as the prevention of ischaemic events. Finally, in daily life the prognosis after peripheral bypass surgery is determined by a patient's perception of health, rather than by clinical risk estimates. Therefore we studied the changes in patients' health related quality of life (HR-QoL) after peripheral bypass surgery over time. Their HR-QoL was substantially impaired in comparison with the HR-QoL of the general population at the same mean age, even if the patient had a patent graft or experienced no other vascular event during follow-up. Over time their HR-QoL worsened, mainly their physical health, and especially after the occurrence of a vascular event. Given that peripheral bypass cannot prevent the HR-QoL in patients with PAD to deteriorate over time, atherosclerotic risk management through lifestyle modifications and drug treatments might be just as important to stabilise the HR-QoL for as long as possible. In conclusion, PAD is a major public health burden, not only because PAD has a high prevalence and a progressive pathology, but especially because its the long term systemic consequences are largely disabling and currently largely underestimated.


It is postulated that communities using social learning on rural planning will achieve sustainable development. The construction of roads integrates geographic spaces and it is a requirement for competitiveness and development of the communities. In Mexico, the construction of roads and its improvement use existing ways originated by the transfer of cattle or the pathways drawn over past times, without considering any municipal or local development plan.
One looked for to define a reference frame on the importance of the ways, first in Mexico, the state of San Luis Potosi and the behavior of investment in the municipality of Salinas de Hidalgo, San Luis Potosi and to outline an intervention method that allows to design criteria for the decision in the road construction using like planning tool the social learning.
Any alternative of road selection it is desirable that should include local actors weighting their needs along with the technical criteria as well under an IPMA competence baseline scheme.


From the perspective of the educational sciences, globalization is one of the crucial subjects today and several educational movements attempt to open international markets by opening branches or working on cooperations. The Gülen Movement (GM) is one of these movements which has successfully globalized their schools and, thus has become an international educational movement in the last three decades, like the Waldorf and Montessori movements (Alam, 2019, p. 136). The purpose of this study is to examine the globalization of the Gülen Inspired Schools. A qualitative research design is used to study this issue. Semi-structured expert interviews are conducted with managers of the Gülen Inspired Schools and experts on the movement from three continents, such as Europe, Africa, and America. The results show that, initially, globalization strategies, founding, and the success of the Gülen Inspired Schools in different regions of the world are researched. Following the effects of the failed coup attempt in Turkey in July 2016 on the globalization of Gülen Inspired Schools, their current situation, and the future of these schools is discussed with the participants of this study. The results show that Gülen Inspired Schools used internationalization, despite globalization, and localization as a basic strategy throughout their international expansion. Besides, the failed coup also accelerated the global expansion of the movement and forced the movement and their schools to become more international and local. As a result, Gülen Inspired Schools transformed themselves into local schools without losing their international network and practice "global thinking, local acting" philosophy in these institutions.


This document describes a network that supports Service Function
Chaining (SFC) using the Network Service Header (NSH) with no payload
data and carrying only metadata. This is achieved by defining a new
NSH "Next Protocol" type value of "None". This document illustrates
some of the functions that may be achieved or enhanced by this
mechanism, but it does not provide an exhaustive list of use cases,
nor is it intended to be definitive about the functions it describes.
It is expected that other documents will describe specific use cases
in more detail and will define the protocol mechanics for each use
case.


Co-evolution of morphology and control is a powerful approach in robotics to study performance on a particular task, considering mechanical structure and control as a whole to accomplish a certain goal. Co-evolutionary methods have been used to study the effect of these two fundamental components, in particular when applied to locomotion and reaching tasks. The resulting robots are usually evolved in simulation for a particular static task, making it difficult to transfer the results to a real robotic system, where a certain controllability (beyond the scope of the particular task) is desired. In this work, we are interested in evolving a robot with an externally controllable behavior, in particular considering locomotion tasks. We investigate to what extent co-evolution can outperform the more traditional approach of evolving only the robot control. The locomotion behavior is evolved for a simulated quadruped robot, using a multi-objective evolutionary algorithm, considering speed and energy efficiency as the main objectives. Additionally, we introduce a third objective where we provide the robot with an external command indicating the robot locomotion direction, allowing us to steer the robot once it is evolved. The resulting quadrupedal robots show improved performance on the steering task when compared to robots where only control is evolved.


This article traces the beginnings of the various areas of physiological research on airway epithelium. First mentioned in 1602, it was not until 1834 that it was found to be ciliated. Goblet and basal cells were described in 1852 to be followed by about 10 other epithelial cell types (the most recent in 2018). It also contains nerve endings and resident leukocytes. Mucociliary clearance was documented in 1835, but the first studies on the ciliary beat cycle did not appear until 1890, and a definitive description was not published until 1981. It was established in 1932 that goblet cells in the cat trachea were unresponsive to cholinergic agents. But, only since 1980, or so, has any significant progress been made on what does cause them to degranulate. Active transfer of salts across epithelia creates local osmotic gradients that drive transepithelial water flows. Vectorial salt transport was first described for airway epithelium in 1968, and the associated volume flows were measured in 1981. Evidence that airway epithelium releases signaling molecules first appeared in 1981. Since then, scores of molecules have been identified. The pace of research in most areas increased dramatically after the development of confluent, polarized cultures of airway epithelium in the early 1980s.


Reducing dietary saturated fat by 7% of energy, a realistic target, would reduce serum cholesterol by 10% and mortality from ischemic heart disease by 25-30%. Randomized trials show that this mortality reduction is attained rapidly, usually by the third year after initial reduction of dietary saturated fat intake. Dietary change in adulthood may therefore reverse the adverse health effects of a high-fat diet in childhood. In the absence of such change, however, dietary fat in childhood may increase the risk of cardiovascular disease in adult life because of a longer duration of exposure to a high-fat diet. Assessing the effects of diet on cancer risk is more difficult. The intermediary markers of risk that are analogous to serum cholesterol are less satisfactory and there are negligible trial data. Cohort studies of diet and cancer, although subject to bias, do not favor a direct causal relation between dietary fat and cancer. But a reduction in risk is likely when dietary fat is reduced as part of a general change toward a healthier diet. The trend toward increased energy intake and body size in childhood and relatively low dietary fiber contribute to the decreasing age at menarche, which is associated with an increased risk of breast cancer. Low dietary fiber, low fruit and vegetable consumption, and high red meat consumption are associated with colon cancer and other cancers, and important causal effects of diet on cancer are likely. As with cardiovascular disease, this dietary trend that is commenced in childhood is likely to increase age-specific rates of colon cancer in adult life, but the risk may be reversed with later dietary change.


Background & objectives: Conventional methods to detect methicillin resistance in Staphylococcus aureus are inadequate as expression of resistance is subject to environmental and conditional expression of PBP2a antigen. The objective of the present study was to determine methicillin resistance in S. aureus by conventional susceptibility (oxacillin disc diffusion and oxacillin MIC) and molecular methods (PCR) and to evaluate latex agglutination test for the detection of PBP 2a and to compare the results of these tests for its sensitivity, specificity and rapidity. Methods: A total of 150 consecutive clinical isolates of Staphylococcus aureus received at the Department of Microbiology, Christian Medical College, Vellore, were included. Oxacillin (1 mg) disc diffusion and agar dilution method were used. The isolates were also subjected to latex agglutination test for detection of PBP2a and multiplex PCR to detect mecA and femB genes. Results: Of the 150 isolates, 33 were found to be MRSA by oxacillin disc diffusion. By MIC method, 13 per cent of the isolates had values 32 mg/ml, 6 per cent between 16-8 mg/ml and 2.7 per cent had a value of 4 mg/ml; 100 per cent concordance was obtained between the oxacillin disc screening and MIC methods. The latex agglutination showed positive reaction for all MRSA with only one MSSA being falsely classified as MRSA. The specificity and sensitivity were 99 and 100 per cent respectively. Test results were obtained within 15 min. By multiplex PCR, all 22 per cent of MRSA were positive for mecA and femB genes and additionally one MSSA carried mecA gene. However, femB gene was not found in 6 MSSA isolates. Specificity and sensitivity of PCR for mecA detection was similar to latex agglutination test. PCR system required approximately five hours. Interpretation & conclusions: Our findings showed that the conventional methods for detection of methicillin resistance like disc screening, disc diffusion and MIC are cost-effective but time consuming. Latex agglutination though expensive is rapid and can be a good preliminary screen with high sensitivity and specificity. Multiplex PCR is a good confirmatory test though expensive.


This work presents the first neutron characterization of artefacts from the grave-goods of Kha and Merit, a unique cultural treasure of mankind and preserved at the Museo Egizio in Turin. This magnificent collection, discovered in the early years of the last century, includes an impressive amount of artefacts such as coffins, textiles, metallic and ceramic pottery, and alabaster containers. The present study investigates two sealed potteries, using enhanced Neutron Tomography, Radiography, and Prompt Gamma Activation Analysis techniques. The neutron probe provides access to the morphological reconstructions of the inner parts of the vases and to map, with unprecedented details, the elemental composition of the surfaces and bulk areas of the potteries. The present work extends the knowledge to hitherto unknown contents of the sealed vases unlocking their secrets.


A conceptually simple method to calculate local and average pressure tensors in simulations of molecular systems with discrete particles is presented. The pressure originates from the linear momentum of the particles as well as from n-body interactions between the particles, and consists of one additive contribution for every term in the expression of the total energy. The basis for the calculation is the analysis of the velocities of the particles and of the n-body interactions between the particles at the molecular scale to obtain local pressures, and averaging of the local pressure over areas and volumes to obtain average pressures (H. Heinz, W. Paul, K. Binder, Phys. Rev. E., 72, 066704 (2005)). The explicit consideration of many-body interactions (e.g. angles, torsions, cross-terms) provides simple derivations of existing methods (method of planes, virial expression) and a straightforward extension to periodic systems. In periodic systems original particles are translated into the box in the moment of pressure calculation and the pool of n-body interactions considered is the same as in the energy expression (particle–particle and particle–image interactions). Local and average pressure tensors are augmented by interactions including particles and images, and translational symmetry to judge dissection by specified areas A α, compared to a non-periodic system. The method of planes and the virial expression, including the additional interactions in atom-based forces, are applicable without further changes in a periodic system.


The present study is concerned with the optimization of the cultural conditions of locally isolated mould cultures for the production of cellulose enzymes by both surface culture and submerged culture methods in conical flasks and stirred fomenter. The mould cultures after their isolation and screening were identified and found to be the species of trichoderma, Aspergilllus, penicillium, Rhizohus. The cultures of trichoderma viride GCB-20, Aspergillus niger GCB-5 however were best producer of cellulases. The agricultural byproducts such as wheat bran, bagasse, rice straw and wheat straw etc. were evaluated as substrate by both mould culture for the production of enzymes. Of all the substrates tested, however, wheat, bran was found to be an ideal substrate providing all the nutrients for the synthesis of cellulases. The parameters in solid state fermentation such as depth of wheat bran and its partial replacement with other agricultural by-products such as wheat straw, rice straw or bagasse, moisture content i.e. ratio of wheat bran to water, selection of diluents, extraction of enzymes and rate of fermentation were optimized.

The porosity of wheat bran substrate after moistening which water (1 : 1) was more suitable for the maintenance of aerobic condition during fermentation. Further increase production. Effect of the concentration of cellulose powder on enzyme formation was also studied. The enzyme activity was maximum in the presence of 1.0% w/v cellulose powder, 144 hours after spore inoculation (10.0 unit/m). Further increase in cellulose concentration resulted in decreasing the production of cellulases. The crude cellulase enzyme was also used for the saccharifivation of filter paper. Paper pulp, cotton fiber and CMC. The percentage decomposition was maximum in the presence of CMC (60%) and it was decreased in the order, filter paper, paper pulp, cotton.

Effect of the concentration of cellulase on the hydrolysis of cmc (1.0%) was also investigated. The hydrolysis of cmc was increased with increasing of cellulase units in the form of reducing sugar (glucose), being 1.27 mg/ml for one enzyme unit. The data show near linearity, and this means that the increase in enzyme concentration gave a linear relationship with it's activity. Effect of CMC concentration on the rate of enzymic hydrolysis was also studied; it was found that increase of cmc concentration resulted in more reducing sugar up to 1.6%, beyond which no more sugar was liberated. The rate of cmc decomposition followed similar trend, reaching the maximum rate at 0. 8 – 1.2% and then gradually decreased. This study indicates that the increase of cmc concentration more than 1.27 causes a relative decrease in substrate decomposition.

The delignified by solvent or alkali treatment was also examined for the production of cellulose degrading enzymes by Trichoderma viride GCB-20 in flasks. The amount of enzyme cellulase produced was greatly enhanced due to the removal of lignin material. The hydrolysis of the delignified, rice straw, wheat straw or bagasse by the enzyme celluloses was also investigated. The percentage decomposition was decreased in the order of bagasse, rice straw.

The production of cellulases in stirred fermenter (10 1) by Trichoderma viride GCB-20 using wheat bran and newspaper pulp was also investigated. Both the substrates were suspended in mineral salt solution with CMC. The rate of enzyme production was faster in comparison with shake flasks. The fermentation reached maximum 48 hrs after inoculation. That is , the better supply of oxygen in the fermenter was the reason for earlier the completion of the fermentation. The effect of the rated of aeration (250, 500, 1000 c .c /1/min.) on enzyme formation was also investigated. The production of enzyme was maximum when the rate of aeration was 1000 cc/1/min.


Abstract Plants thrive in virtually all natural and human-adapted environments and are becoming popular models for developing robotics systems because of their strategies of morphological and behavioral adaptation. Such adaptation and high plasticity offer new approaches for designing, modeling, and controlling artificial systems acting in unstructured scenarios. At the same time, the development of artifacts based on their working principles reveals how plants promote innovative approaches for preservation and management plans and opens new applications for engineering-driven plant science. Environmentally mediated growth patterns (e.g., tropisms) are clear examples of adaptive behaviors displayed through morphological phenotyping. Plants also create networks with other plants through subterranean roots–fungi symbiosis and use these networks to exchange resources or warning signals. This article discusses the functional behaviors of plants and shows the close similarities with a perceptron-like model that could act as a behavior-based control model in plants. We begin by analyzing communication rules and growth behaviors of plants; we then show how we translated plant behaviors into algorithmic solutions for bioinspired robot controllers; and finally, we discuss how those solutions can be extended to embrace original approaches to networking and robotics control architectures.


Parameterizable configurations are regular FPGA configurations in which some of the configuration bits are expressed as a Boolean function of a set of parameters. These configurations can rapidly be transformed to a specialized configuration by evaluating the Boolean functions for a specific set of parameter values and are therefore ideal for use in run-time reconfigurable systems. In this paper, the concept of Parameterizable Bitstream (PBS) is introduced to accommodate the use of parameterizable configurations in commercial FPGAs. A stack machine system is implemented that can efficiently transform a PBS to a specialized configuration.


Abstract Probiotic potential of two bifidobacterial strains isolated from feces of healthy adults and identified as Bifidobacterium animalis subsp. lactis was evaluated using in vitro testing. The analyzed strains were able to ferment a broad spectrum of carbohydrates, produced bioactive exopolysaccharides, demonstrated high survival rate in model GIT conditions, under heat and oxidative stresses, inhibited growth of a wide range of pathogenic and opportunistic bacteria, and proved to be safe for biotechnological application. Based on the complex phenotypic characteristics tested, Bifidobacterium animalis subsp. lactis may be regarded as prospective probiotic cultures.


ABSTRACT A full description of a complete and articulated, three-dimensionally preserved, placoderm fish, Materpiscis attenboroughi (Ptyctodontida), from the Late Devonian Gogo Formation is presented. The jaw articulation is unique in being preserved in situ, providing new morphological information on the articulation of the quadrate, metapterygoid, and labial skeleton. In addition, separate hyoid and opercular cartilages are identified, thus confirming their presence for the first time within placoderms. Preserved orbital ossifications indicate an anteriomesial orientation of this braincase region. The complete scapulocoracoid provides additional morphological information on the pectoral fin articulation. A new specimen of Austroptyctodus gardineri preserving the anterior portion of the head and jaws allows for revised descriptions of the endocranium and visceral skeleton, including the most complete endocranial ossifications recovered to date. As well, elements of the labial skeleton not known previously in ptyctodonts are preserved. Small amounts of soft tissues are recovered from Materpiscis, and extensive postcranial body muscle from Austroptyctodus. This new material resolves several questions regarding cranial and postcranial morphology of the Ptyctodontida. Moreover, similarities in placoderm and chondrichthyan pelvic fins and reproductive structures (claspers) suggest early parallel expression of HoxD and sonic hedgehog genes (shh), potentially representing the first evidence for expression of these genes in placoderms.


Abstract The composition of today's school classrooms is now more diverse in a world of greater global mobility and communication. For teachers, this adds further complexity to the task of ensuring each child has the most appropriate opportunity to learn. This paper posits that future teachers are more able to cater for cultural diversity by developing broader cultural perspectives than just a local one and are therefore better prepared both personally and professionally. This study investigates the engagement of undergraduate preservice teachers in an experience where they are not only required to explicitly focus upon the aspects of their professional practice, but are also challenged to reflect upon their personal development through exposure to a linguistically and culturally different professional setting. They are challenged to think differently. The analysis of the preservice teachers' perceptions demonstrates that an overseas professional placement has a significant and meaningful impact upon their knowledge, perspectives and future practice in multicultural settings.


Purpose: Approximately 25–30% of breast and ovarian carcinomas have amplification of the HER-2/neu oncogene. The aim of the present study was to focus on HER-2/neu gene amplification in different clinical stages of breast cancer in order to (1) determine if fluorescent in situ hybridization (FISH) can be used to detect HER-2/neu gene amplification in different clinical stages of breast cancer, (2) establish whether HER-2/neu gene amplification characterizes a subset of breast cancer in each of these stages, and (3) determine whether a trend for correlation of amplification with the clinical stage of the disease can be detected using the FISH technology.Methods: A total of 40 specimens of formalin-fixed, paraffin-embedded breast cancer tissues were analyzed cytogenetically, in a blinded fashion, for HER-2/neu gene amplification using FISH and the Vysis LSI HER-2/neu Orange and CEP 17 Green DNA dual color probe. The criterion for "high amplification" was an amplification ratio of >4.0, that for "moderate amplification" a ratio between 2.1 and 4.0, and that for "low amplification" a ratio of 1.5–2.0.Results: Using a cutoff point of ≥1.5, the overall frequency of HER-2/neu gene amplification among stage I tumors was 30% (3 out of 10). Of these, one-third (1 out of 3) showed low amplification, one-third (1 out of 3) were moderately amplified, and one-third (1 out of 3) were highly amplified. The overall frequency of HER-2/neu gene amplification among stage II tumors was 0% (0 out of 10). The overall frequency of HER-2/neu gene amplification among stage III tumors was 10% (1 out of 10). The sole tumor found positive was classified as moderately amplified by our criteria. The overall frequency of HER-2/neu gene amplification among stage IV tumors was 50% (5 out of 10). Four of the 5 tumors found positive were highly amplified. The overall frequency of gene amplification in the 40 cases studied was 22.5% (9 out of 40 tumors studied).Conclusion: Although a linear correlation between HER-2/neu amplification and clinical stage cannot be established at this time, it is interesting to note that when stages I and II, and when stages III and IV are combined, respectively, the latter category has a higher amplification frequency than the former. Furthermore, stage IV has the highest frequency (5 out of 10) of HER-2/neu gene amplification than all three lower stages combined (4 out of 30). This is no doubt due to the high frequency of gene amplification observed in stage IV tumors, which, interestingly, also demonstrate high level amplification of HER-2/neu gene copy numbers. Although the biologic and clinical basis for gene amplification is not clear, given the observation that the most aggressive disease stage is associated with the highest frequency of gene amplification and the most high level amplification, further exploration of HER-2/neu as a prognostic marker of poor outcome using FISH is warranted.


In a famous passage in A Room of One's Own, Virginia Woolf asked 'why women did not write poetry in the Elizabethan age'. She went on to speculate about an imaginary Judith Shakespeare who might have been destined for a career as illustrious as that of her brother William, except that she had none of his chances. The truth is that many women wrote during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and this collection will serve to introduce modern readers to the full variety of women's writing in this period from poems, prose and fiction to prophecies, letters, tracts and philosophy. The collection begins with the poetry of Isabella Whitney, who worked in a gentlewoman's household in London in the late 1560s, and ends with Aphra Behn who was employed as a spy in Amsterdam by Charles II. Here are examples of the work of twelve women writers, allowing the reader to sample the diverse and lively output of all classes and opinions, from artistcrats such as Mary Wroth, Anne Clifford and Margaret Cavendish to women of obscure background caught up in the religious ferment of the mid seventeenth century like Hester Biddle, Pricscilla Cotton and Mary Cole. The collection includes three plays, and a generous selection of poetry, letters, diary, prose fiction, religious polemic, prohecy and scienticficic speculation, offering the reader the possibilility of tracing patterns through the works collected and some sense of historical shifts and changes. All the extracts are edited afresh from original sources and the anthology includes comprehensive notes, both explanatory and textual. ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.


In this work, we address the Order Batching Problem (OBP) and we devise tailor-made Mixed Integer Linear Programming (MILP) formulations of the OBP considering composite, largest gap and optimum routing policies, for the first time. We also introduce a novel picker routing policy named as mixed policy which combines the properties of both midpoint and return routing policies. Then, we perform extensive computational experiments with MILP formulations of the OBP considering several combinations of routing and storage policies under different operating conditions on randomly generated test instances. Finally, we present several managerial insights based on the computational results.


OBJECTIVE
To find the rate of therapeutic control and the frequency of complications among patients receiving oral anticoagulant therapy, attending in a primary care center.

DESIGN
Descriptive study over the last four years.

SETTING
An urban primary care center.

PATIENTS AND METHODS
We included all patients in oral anticoagulant treatment controlled in our center among 1989 and 1993, excluding that patients with less than three months in control, or discontinued control. The prothrombin time was measured by international normalized ratio (INR). To measure the therapeutic quality control, we used the method proposed by the International Society of Thrombosis and Haemostasis. The frequency of complications was measured in number of events/100 patients/year.

RESULTS
In the 136 patients studied the average time in control was 23.57 months. The 68.37 percent of determinations were within satisfactory ranges. The frequency of minor hemorrhages was 13.36 by 100 patients/year, 1.08 of major hemorrhages, and 2.53 of thromboembolism events.

CONCLUSIONS
The results obtained in this audit are similar to the communicated by other centers. The therapeutic control of oral anticoagulants can carry out in primary care with enough quality and some advantages: more facility to health education, better accessibility, and more integration of anticoagulation therapy in global care of patients.


Retargeting a compiler's back end to a new architecture is a time-consuming process. This becomes an evident problem in the area of programmable graphics hardware (graphics processing units, GPUs) or embedded processors, where architectural changes are faster than elsewhere. We propose the object-oriented rewrite system OORS to overcome this problem. Using the OORS language, a compiler developer can express the code generation and optimization phase in terms of cost-annotated rewrite rules supporting complex non-linearmatching and replacing patterns. Retargetability is achieved by organizing rules into profiles, one for each supported target architecture. Featuring a rule and profile inheritance mechanism, OORS makes the reuse of existing specifications possible. This is an improvement regarding traditional approaches. Altogether OORS increases the maintainability of the compiler's back end and thus both decreases the complexity and reduces the effort of the retargeting process. To show the potential of this approach, we have implemented a code generation and a code optimization pattern matcher supporting different target architectures using the OORS language and introduced them in a compiler of a programming language for CPUs and GPUs.


Purpose: To evaluate and compare the expected effectiveness of the planned and delivered dose distributions in prostate cancerradiotherapy. The average setup uncertainties were determined by using the on‐board megavoltage computed tomography (MVCT) capabilities of the tomotherapy HiArt unit. Method and Materials: Co‐registrations between daily MVCT and planning CT were used. Before the delivery of each treatment an MVCT image was acquired. The therapists registered the MVCT image with the planning kilovoltage computed tomography (kVCT) images. The registration criteria were based on bony anatomy and contoured regions of interest. For a typical prostate cancer patient the dose distributions of the Helical Tomotherapy plan and that of the average shifted delivery registration were used. The dose distributions were compared based on dosimetric criteria and the biologically effective uniform dose (BEUD) together with the complication‐free tumor control probability (P +). Results: The average shifts that were observed are 10.7 mm for the vertical, 4.0 mm for the longitudinal and 0.5 mm for the lateral directions, respectively. At the optimum dose levels of the planned and delivered dose distributions, the P + values are 84.7% and 84.0%, respectively. The total control probabilities, P B are 93.0% and 92.9%, whereas the total complication probabilities, P I are 8.3% and 8.9%. More specifically, the response probabilities of the different tissues are 95.6% and 95.5% for the GTV, 97.4% and 97.3% for the seminal vesicles, 0.8% and 0.7% for bladder and 7.6% and 8.3% for rectum. Conclusion: It is shown that the intra‐fraction movement of tumors can be reduced by using the MVCT co‐registration. This appears to be a powerful tool, which can result in improved sparing of critical structures, while delivering high doses to the target. The use of P + — BEUD diagrams to compare similar treatment plans may show that in radiobiological terms they may be quite different.


Financial services and technology companies invest significantly in monitoring their complex technology infrastructures to allow for quick responses to technology failures. Because of the volume and velocity of signals monitored (e.g., customer transaction volume, API calls, server CPU utilization, etc.), they require sophisticated models of normal system behavior to determine when a component falls into an anomalous state. Gaussian processes (GPs) are flexible, Bayesian nonparametric models that have successfully been used for time series forecasting, interpolation, and anomaly detection in complex data sets. Despite the growing use of GPs for time series analysis in the literature, these methods scale poorly with the size of the data. In particular, data sets containing multiple timescales can pose a problem for GPs, as they can require a large number of points for training. We describe a novel method for including long and short timescale information without including an impractical number of data points through the use of a binned process, defined as the definite integral over a latent Gaussian process. This results in a binned covariance function for the time series, which we use to fit and forecast data at multiple resolutions. The resulting models achieve higher accuracy with fewer data points than their non-binned counterparts, and are more robust to long tailed noise, heteroskedasticity, and data artifacts.


SUMMARY.  Due to the introduction of computer technology into manometry laboratories, three-dimensional manometric images of the lower esophageal sphincter can be constructed based on radially oriented pressures, a method termed 'computerized axial manometry.' Calculation of the sphincter pressure vector volume using this method is superior to standard manometric techniques in assessing lower esophageal sphincter function in patients with gastroesophageal reflux disease and idiopathic achalasia. Despite similarities between idiopathic achalasia and chagasic esophagopathy found using clinical, radiological, and manometric studies, controversy around lower esophageal sphincter pressure persists. The goal of this study was to analyze esophageal motor disorders in Chagas' megaesophagus using computerized axial manometry. Twenty patients with chagasic megaesophagus (5 men, 15 women, and average age 50.1 years, range 17–64) were prospectively studied. For three-dimensional imaging construction of the lower esophageal sphincter, a low-complacency perfusion system and an eight-channel manometry probe with four radial channels placed in the same level were used. For probe traction, the continuous pull-through technique was used. Results showed that the lower esophageal sphincter of patients with chagasic megaesophagus have significantly elevated pressure, length, asymmetry, and vector volumes compared to those of normal volunteers (P < 0.05). Aperistalsis of the esophageal body waves was observed in all patients and contraction amplitude was lower than that in normal patients. We conclude that patients with chagasic megaesophagus have hypertonic lower esophageal sphincter and aperistalsis of the esophageal body.


Data Centers have evolved from mainframe systems and enterprise networks into sophisticated networks of 100,000 or more servers for supporting next-generation Computing-as-a-Service (CaaS) and Cloud computing infrastructures. The evolution of data centers has resulted in an expected exponential increase in both data center network traffic and data center energy consumption. Thus, there is tremendous interest in state-of-the-art research in data centers with the objective of designing efficient data center network (DCN) architectures and developing strategies for minimizing energy consumption.
In this dissertation, we propose HyScale and SlimNet, cost-effective and scalable DCN architectures using hybrid optical networks. The proposed architectures are fault-tolerant, recursively defined, and have low network complexity. Moreover, the proposed architectures also have several desirable graph-theoretic properties like high bisection-width and low diameter. We propose a non-selfish destination selection paradigm for containing the impact of the changes in the availability of the resources at a destination. We also present efficient non-selfish heuristics for minimizing the resource blocking rate.
We adapt energy models for developing comprehensive and state of-the-art energy models for servers and network elements in data centers. Using the server and network energy models, we propose a green routing scheme that minimizes the total combined energy consumption of all servers and all network elements in a data center under dynamic traffic. The proposed green routing scheme uses dynamic voltage scaling, rate adaptation , and anycast transmission for minimizing the total energy consumption in a data center. Finally, we propose thermal-constrained energy-aware algorithms for partitioning tasks in multi-core multiprocessor systems using both worst-case execution time and actual utilization of the tasks.


We use Hartree-Slater self-consistent-field wave functions to compute photoionization and photorecombination cross sections and rates for partially ionized iron atoms, both in their isolated state and in a plasma environnment. The calculated cross sections are fitted to analytic expressions so that the photoionization and recombination rates can be given in closed forms. Our analytic representation satisfy the requirement that the oscillator-strength sums S/sub 0/, S/sub 1/, and S/sub 2/ must converge.


The Epstein–Barr virus (EBV) nuclear protein 2 (EBNA2) and herpes simplex virion protein 16 (VP16) acidic domains that mediate transcriptional activation now are found to have affinity for p300, CBP, and PCAF histone acetyltransferases (HATs). Transcriptionally inactive point mutations in these domains lack affinity for p300, CBP, or PCAF. P300 and CBP copurify with the principal HAT activities that bind to EBNA2 or VP16 acidic domains through velocity sedimentation and anion-exchange chromatography. EBNA2 binds to both the Nand C-terminal domains of p300 and coimmune-precipitates from transfected 293T cells with p300. In EBV-infected Akata Burkitt's tumor cells that do not express the EBV encoded oncoproteins EBNA2 or LMP1, p300 expression enhances the ability of EBNA2 to up-regulate LMP1 expression. Through its intrinsic HAT activity, PCAF can further potentiate the p300 effect. In 293 T cells, P300 and CBP (but not PCAF) can also coactivate transcription mediated by the EBNA2 or VP16 acidic domains and HAT-negative mutants of p300 have partial activity. Thus, the EBNA2 and VP16 acidic domains can utilize the intrinsic HAT or scaffolding properties of p300 to activate transcription.


Healthcare professionals' (HCPs) skills in person-centeredness are pivotal for delivering successful diabetes self-management education and support (DSMES). Many HCPs favor person-centered methods as a concept but implementation in practice remains challenging. The main focus is on information about diabetes, complications, medications, diet and exercise. This study explored how HCPs implement new methods to facilitate person-centered DSMES in groups. The study was guided by action research and divided into three phases (investigation, action, and pilot) using a variety of qualitative methods. In step one, observations were conducted across five educational settings including 49 persons with T2DM and 13 HCPs to explore HCPs' person-centered skills. In step two, 14 HCPs collaborated in two workshops to develop new methods e.g., exercises and dialog tools to prompt discussions about psychosocial aspects of diabetes and to fit educational needs to both the individual and the group. In step three, we pilot-tested the methods using observations in three settings and interviewed 5 HCPs and 27 participants with T2DM. A final workshop was conducted to evaluate the methods. Systematic text condensation and hermeneutic analysis were used to analyze data. Implementation of the methods was characterized by three categories. Some HCPs chose not to implement the methods because they conflicted with their usual practice relying on the biomedical model. Other HCPs agreed with the concept but was unable to structure the process, leaving participants uncertain about the aim. Finally, some HCPs succeeded with implementation promoting participants' needs, reflections and discussions in groups. Implementing methods to deliver person-centeredness is complex and requires systematic training of HCPs. The training should be structured stepwise incorporating techniques directed towards existing skills including ample time to train and reiterate skills. Disclosure V. Stenov: None. G. Wind: None. M. Vallis: Speaker9s Bureau; Self; Novo Nordisk A/S. Advisory Panel; Self; Novo Nordisk Inc.. Speaker99s Bureau; Self; AbbVie Inc.. Advisory Panel; Self; Valeant Pharmaceuticals International, Inc.. Speaker9s Bureau; Self; Merck & Co., Inc.. Advisory Panel; Self; Sanofi. Speaker9s Bureau; Self; Sanofi. S. Reventlow: None. N.F. Hempler: None.


Effects of glue spread, adhesive kind and curing agent ratio on bonding quality of wood-FRP (Fiber Reinforced Plastic) interface were investigated to choose the optimal adhesive and condition of bonding wood-FRP composites. Two different kinds of epoxy resin and one kind of curing agent were used to bond wood-wood and wood-FRP samples with three different glue spread. Shear strength of samples were measured by compression shear test. The results indicated that bonding strength of wood-FRP sample with glue spread of 300 g/mm2 and curing agent ratio of 40% were the best, when using the same epoxy resin and curing agent. The shear strengths of wood-FRP samples were less than those of samples without FRP. The bonding qualities of samples with E-44 epoxy resin/T-31 curing agent system were better than those of E-51 epoxy resin/T-31 curing agent system.


We show that the local bias in U.S. mutual fund portfolios varies significantly over time and is more pronounced at times of heightened market uncertainty, such as during financial crises. Similarly, the local bias is less pronounced in periods when market sentiment is strong. These results do not depend on past fund performance or fund inflows during good times. Additionally, we do not find that fund managers earn superior returns on local stocks during periods of heightened market uncertainty. Overall, we conclude that informational advantages or scale economies are unlikely to be important factors in explaining the dependence of local bias on market conditions, and that our evidence is more consistent with a behavioral explanation whereby changes in market conditions affect the preference for local stocks of ambiguity averse investors.


During the titration of encephalomyocarditis virus on primary mouse cells it was observed that both the size and number of plaques were increased by pretreatment of the cells with saponin which was being used to lyse erythrocytes. Crude brown saponin was freshly dissolved for each experiment to give a 2% solution in 50% ethanol. Saponin from batch 205470/630707 prepared by British Drug Houses Ltd was used for all experiments. Cells were obtained by trypsinization (Dulbecco, 1952) of the embryos from 17-day pregnant Porton white mice. Before centrifugation the trypsinized cells were exposed for 5 min. at room temperature to 0.02% saponin. They were then centrifuged and grown as monolayers in 10% calf serum in medium 199. The cultures were infected with Habel's large plaque (τ) mutant of encephalomyocarditis virus grown in mouse brain and were incubated in 5% CO2 under an overlay of medium 199 containing 0.176% bicarbonate, 5% calf serum, 5% chick embryo extract and 0.75% Difco Noble agar.


Abstract Performance management is one aspect of major reforms which have transformed the public sector workforce in Australia and other Western countries since the 1980s. Embedded in the discourse of managerialism, performance management represents an attempt by the state to make workers—in this case teachers—more efficient, more effective and more accountable. In this paper we want to explore and compare a number of perspectives on performance management. Firstly, we consider several evaluation studies which have been undertaken in various contexts over recent years. These studies tend to take for granted the assumptions behind performance management and to judge its effectiveness within the framework of managerial thinking itself. Secondly, we review the critical literature which locates performance management in a broader social and political context and considers the interests it might serve. Finally, we present the perspectives of a focus group of teachers who are currently 'being performance manage...


Microwave-assisted organic synthesis has many advantages and is widely applied to a variety of reactions. We have developed a new single-mode microwave applicator, specific to continuous flow synthesis, whose main feature is that it generates a uniform electromagnetic field inside its resonant cavity. Two well-known reactions, the Fischer indole synthesis and the Diels–Alder reaction, proceeded very quickly when a solution of substrates was pumped through a helical glass tube reactor inside the resonant cavity, under a pressure of 2.5 MPa. The desired products were obtained in high yields. This compact apparatus constitutes a new method for switching organic synthesis from batch to continuous flow, and enables continuous synthesis of products at a scale of 100 g h−1 or more.


Describes the process used by the Mater Infirmorum Hospital in Belfast in 1992-1994 to achieve high quality care (Seamless Service), and motivate staff to deliver and measure performance. Aims of the project include focusing the organization on the customer, improving teamwork and motivation at all levels. After comprehensive data collection from GPs, patients and staff forums developed a full TQM strategy to gain support and maintain momentum including innovative staff events (every staff member was given the opportunity to attend) where multilevel, multidisciplinary workshops enabled staff to design customer care standards, develop teams and lead customer-driven change.


In order to determine the bluff body and slitted bluff body flame stability and combustion performance, atmospheric low-speed experimental platform was used to carry out diesel fog combustion experiment for two types of bluff body, which are respectively streamlined V-form added straight channel and triangle V-form added straight channel. Results have shown that flame stability and combustion efficiency of streamlined bluff body is orderly slit width at 13mm, 6mm, 0mm and the triangular bluff body is orderly slit width at 6mm, 13mm, 0mm. Optimal combustion performance is streamlined bluff body with slit width 13mm.


Background: Heavy metals are known as significant pollutants because of toxicity and nonbiodegradable characteristics. Cadmium is one of the heavy metals that have carcinogen potential. So, this study carried out in order to investigate the acorn fruit ash efficiency in cadmium removal from aqueous solutions. Methods: This study was done in the batch laboratory conditions. In this study, the effect of different parameters including pH, contact time, adsorbent dose, and initial cadmium concentration were evaluated. The Langmuir, Freundlich and Temkin isotherm models were used for analysis of the equilibrium isotherm. Adsorption kinetics of cadmium by different models were also investigated. The measurement of residual cadmium in the samples was determined by atomic absorption spectrophotometry at 228.8 nm. The SPSS-16 software was used for analysis of data. Results: According to the results, the maximum adsorption capacity of cadmium was 9.29 mg/g at pH=7 and 8 g/L adsorbent dose. The removal efficiency was increased with increasing contact time and decreased with increasing of cadmium initial concentration. Investigation of achieving data showed that the adsorption process followed better by Freundlich isotherm and the pseudo-second order kinetic. Conclusions: According to the results of this study, it could be concluded that the acorn fruit ash had high ability in cadmium adsorption and could be used as a cheap adsorbent in the removal of cadmium.


Although technological innovation can improve health outcomes, the precise magnitude of the contribution and its value are not easily measured. The findings reported by Jonathan Skinner and colleagues temper the favorable conclusions reached by observing correlations between improvement in heart attack outcomes over time with spending on medical products and services. Improvements in health care depend not only on producing better technologies, but also on using technology better.


The objective of this work was to assess the photosynthetic efficiency of sugarcane crop, in pre-emergency application, of two herbicides inhibiting photosynthesis. For sugar cane cuttings planting (variety SP80-3280), pots with a capacity of 8 dm3 were used. Atrazine and tebuthiuron application was performed by using a stationary spray installed in laboratory conditions and after treatment application, plants were transported to a green house where were kept until the end of the trial.  The reading of transport rate (ETR) was conducted in the middle portion of the youngest leaves of sugarcane with a portable fluorometer, with intervals for ETR assessment constituted by: 16, 17, 19, 25 and 30 days after herbicide application. It was also realized visual analysis of phytotoxiciy performed 30 days after application. The results showed that tebuthiuron herbicide caused greater reduction in the rate of electron transport than atrazine. In relation to herbicide symptoms, there was no significant difference between the studied herbicides. At the end of the work it could be verified that the chosen method using fluorometer to measure the rate of electron transport after herbicide application was adequate, allowing verifying sugar cane crop intoxication, even before any visual detection of herbicides performance in plants.


Traumatic neuromas are sometimes formed in the surgical scars. Peripheral nerve injuries lead to complex clinical presentation. They are benign tumors which are formed by critical nerve tissue interaction and are extremely painful. They are formed by intraneural or extraneural scar formation affecting the nerve-gliding plane. Their main clinical presentation is neuropathic pain. This condition is also termed as "painful scar neuropathy." There have been different approaches to treatment depending on the type of lesion whether it is perineural, endoneurial, or combined and type of pain due to traction or trauma, rest pain, and severity. Varying degrees of therapeutic success has been described in literature using different techniques. There is no consensus on the best therapeutic approach to treat neuropathic pain due to scar tethering. Patient counseling about the condition and the need for multiple interventions, if needed, is essential. Here, we report a case of a 16-year-old female with traumatic neuroma of superficial peroneal nerve formed in the surgical scar of chronic osteomyelitis presenting with severe pain and paresthesia treated by pulsed radio frequency (PRF). PRF is a novel therapeutic method to treat many conditions in pain medicine as it offers treatment without motor deficits and deafferentation syndrome.


In the last years, due to the continuous decreasing of the starting material deriving from the fossil sources and the increasing of the greenhouses emissions, the research has focused their effort on the developing of new industrial processes based on the transformation of starting materials deriving from the renewable sources into energy, fuels and chemicals. In particular, the aim of this thesis involves the investigation of two different processes: the first concerns the transformation of 1 butanol into butenes and maleic anhydride by oxidehydration process carried out in gas phase using vanadium/phosphorous mixed oxides. The second process regards the transformation of acetol to pyruvic acid by gas phase selective oxidation reaction, using different vanadium containing systems as catalysts.
The results have shown the operative condition, the textural properties of the catalysts and the interaction between the substrate and the catalytic surface influence notably the reaction pathway.


The successful application of thermocompression lead bonding to semiconductor or thin-film electronic devices depends on the establishment of the associated parameters. The quality of a thermocompression bond is primarily related to the process temperature and bonding force. A technique using the coefficient of friction is presented that both reduces the time necessary for determining optimum parameter values and increases the accuracy of the results. Modem theories of the friction process are used to develop mathematical expressions for shear and tensile bond strengths in terms of friction measurements. A further application of the parameter determination technique concerns the measurement of surface contamination that may affect thermocompression bonding.


INTRODUCTION
High-voltage electrical injuries remain a difficult challenge for physicians. The survivors often have complicated wounds over the trunk or extremities, and some of them may develop hypoxic encephalopathy. The emergence of spasticity following hypoxic encephalopathy may further interfere with the healing of wounds.

CASE REPORT
The authors report the case of a 17-year-old male with strong spasticity of finger flexors graded 4 by the Modified Ashworth Scale (0-5) after electric shock. He also had a nonhealing wound on the flexor side of the left index finger after 6 weeks of standard wound care. The wound measured 0.3 cm × 0.3 cm × 0.2 cm in size. The authors hypothesized that wound healing was negatively affected by spasticity and expected the wound might heal gradually after reducing the strong spasticity of the index finger. The authors employed electrical stimulator for guidance and injected high-dose (50 units/muscle) botulinum toxin type A into the flexor digitorum superficialis and the flexor digitorum profundus of his left index finger. At 7 days following administration, focal spasticity of these muscles in the left index finger decreased from 4 to 1 on the Modified Ashworth Scale. At 21 days post administration, the wound healed completely.

CONCLUSIONS
For patients with hypoxic encephalopathy due to high-voltage electrical injury, botulinum toxin type A injection may be an option of therapeutic approach for both reduction of spasticity and facilitation of wound healing.


The terahertz quantum-cascade laser (THz QCL) based on bound-to-continuum structure is demonstrated. The X-ray diffraction measurement of the material shows a high crystalline quality of the active region. A THz QCL device was fabricated with semi-insulating surface-plasmon waveguide. The test device is lasing at about 3 THz and operating up to 60 K. It shows a single frequency property under different drive currents and temperatures. At 9 K, the maximum output power is greater than 2 mW with a threshold current density of 159 A/cm2.


This paper proposes a novel prediction method for Total Column Ozone (TCO), based on the combination of Support Vector Regression (SVR) algorithms and different predictive variables coming from satellite data (Suomi National Polar-orbiting Partnership satellite), numerical models (Global Forecasting System model, GFS) and direct measurements. Data from satellite consists of temperature and humidity profiles at different heights, and TCO measurements the days before the prediction. GFS model provides predictions of temperature and humidity for the day of prediction. Alternative data measured in situ, such as aerosol optical depth at different wavelengths, are also considered in the system. The SVR methodology is able to obtain an accurate TCO prediction from these predictive variables, outperforming other regression methodologies such as neural networks. Analysis on the best subset of features in TCO prediction is also carried out in this paper. The experimental part of the paper consists in the application of the SVR to real data collected at the radiometric observatory of Madrid, Spain, where ozone measurements obtained with a Brewer spectrophotometer are available, and allow the system's training and the evaluation of its performance.


Alcohol-related liver disease is the second most frequent indication for liver transplantation (LT), yet as many as 90% to 95% of patients with alcohol-related end-stage liver disease are never formally evaluated for LT. Furthermore, despite its significance as a cause of chronic liver disease and indication for LT, it has received little attention in recent years for several reasons, including the good posttransplant short-term results, and the lack of specific "drugs" used for this disease. A writing group, endorsed by the International Liver Transplant Society, was convened to write guidelines on Liver Transplantation for Alcoholic Liver Disease to summarize current knowledge and provide answers to controversial and delicate ethical as well as clinical problems. We report here a short version of the guidelines (long version available at www.ilts.org) with the final recommendations graded for level of evidence. The writing group membership is expected to remain active for 5 years, reviewing the guideline annually, and updating the online version when appropriate.


Protons provide superior radiotherapy benefits to patients, but immense size and cost of the system limits it to only few centers worldwide. Proton acceleration on μm scale via high intensity laser is promising to reduce size and costs of proton therapy, but associated beamlines are still big and massive. Also, in contrast to conventionally accelerated quasi-continuous mono-energetic pencil beams, laser-driven beams have distinct beam properties, i.e. ultra-intense pico-sec bunches with large energy spread and large divergences, and with low repetition rate. With new lasers with petawatt power, protons with therapy related energies could be achieved, however, the beam properties make it challenging to adapt them directly for medical applications. We will present our compact beamline solution including energy selection and divergence control, and a new beam scanning and dose delivery system with specialized 3D treatment planning system for laser-driven proton beams. The beamline is based on high field iron-less pulsed magnets and about three times smaller than the conventional systems, and can provide high quality clinical treatment plans.


We employed cutting-edge high-resolution functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) at sub-millimetre resolution to study visual perception in the human brain. First, we studied bottom-up (i.e. sensory driven) processing in visual cortex. In particular, we investigated how variations in simple physical properties of a visual stimulus affect neuronal activity in visual brain areas. This research was followed by a complementary study on top-down effects. The term 'top-down' is used to describe aspects of perception and cognition that are not directly driven by physical properties of the sensory input, but by prior knowledge, expectations, attention, or other high-level mechanisms. In summary, we provide novel insights on the detailed spatial profile of bottom-up and top-down processing in human visual cortex, and have employed a new modelling technique to account for known biases in the high-resolution fMRI signal


Colitis-associated cancer (CAC) is one of clear examples of inflammation-carcinogenesis sequence, by which the strict control of colitis with potent anti-inflammatory or anti-oxidative agent offers the chance of cancer prevention. Supported with the facts that Rac1 binds and activates STAT3 which are significantly up-regulated in inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) as well as CAC, but 8-hydroxydeoxyguanosine (8-OHdG) paradoxically can block Rac1 activation and subsequent NOX inactivation in various inflammation models, we hypothesized that attenuated Rac1-STAT3 and COX-NF-κB pathway by exogenous 8-OHdG administration may ameliorate inflammatory signaling in dextran sodium sulfate (DSS) induced colitis and can prevent CAC. Before commencing carcinogenesis model, we checked whether exogenous 8-OHdG can alleviate IBD, for which IL-10 knock-out mice were designed to ingest 5% DSS for 1 week, and 8-OHdG is given through intraperitoneal route daily. 8-OHdG treatment groups significantly reduced pathologic grade of DSS-induced colitis as well as various inflammatory mediators such as TNF-α, IL-6, COX-2 and iNOS in a dose-dependent manner. In order to document the cancer prevention effects of 8-OHdG, mice were injected azoxymethane followed by drinking 2.5% DSS for 1 week, after which 8-OHdG-contained diets were given for 20 weeks. As results, mice which consumed 8-OHdG-contained-diet significantly reduced both tumor incidence and multiplicity. Rac1 activity and phosphorylated STAT3 level were significantly attenuated in 8-OHdG treated group. Significantly decreased levels of MDA, MCP-1, MMPs, COX-2, NOX4, and β-catenin nuclear accumulation were responsible for cancer prevention effects of exogenous 8-OHdG. In conclusion, we clearly showed cancer preventive effect of exogenous 8-OHdG against CAC. Citation Information: Cancer Prev Res 2011;4(10 Suppl):B49.


In this lively and yet scholarly book, creative artists, people who direct channels of communications, and social scientists present their numerous positions and deeply felt disagreements. Originally released thirty years ago under the rubric "Culture for the Millions, "the work discusses whether or not American culture is in a state of rise or decline; whether mass media dilutes the arts or provides more art for more people; whether cultural leaders are in touch with their audiences, and other such issues. This volume brings together outstanding artists, scholars, and media executives who present their wide-ranging and deeply felt positions and disagreements. "Mass Media in Modern Society "remains a classic, not only for what it represents as a historical document, but also because of the centrality of its discussions about the nature of cultural participation and aesthetics hi modern society. The contributions include: Paul F. Lazarsfeld, "Mass Culture Today," Edward Shils, "Mass Society and Its Culture," Leo Lowenthal, "A Historical Preface to the Popular Culture" Debate," Hannah Arendt, "Society and Culture," Ernest van den Haag, "A Dissent from the Consensual Society," Oscar Handlin, "Comments on Mass and Popular Culture," Leo Rosten, "The Intellectual and the Mass Media," Frank Stanton, "Parallel Paths," James Johnson Sweeney, "The Artist and the Museum hi a Modern Society," Randall Jarrell, "A Sad Heart at the Supermarket," Arthur Asa Berger, "Notes on the Plight of the American Composer," James Baldwin, "Mass Culture and the Creative Artist," Stanley Edgar Hyman, "Ideals, Dangers, and Limitations of Mass Culture," H. Stewart Hughes, "Mass Culture and Social Criticism," Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., "Notes on a National Cultural Policy."


This paper focuses on the improvement of the conceptual structure of FrameNet (FN) for the sake of applying this resource to knowledge-intensive NLP tasks requiring reasoning, such as question answering, information extraction etc. In this paper we show that in addition to coverage incompleteness, the current version of FN suffers from conceptual inconsistency and lacks axiomatization which can prevent appropriate inferences. For the sake of discovering and classifying conceptual problems in FN we investigate the FrameNet-Annotated corpus for Textual Entailment. Then we propose a methodology for improving the conceptual organization of FN. The main issue we focus on in our study is enriching, axiomatizing and cleaning up frame relations. Our methodology includes a data-driven analysis of frames resulting in discovering new frame relations and an ontological analysis of frames and frame relations resulting in axiomatizing relations and formulating constraints on them. In this paper, frames and frame relations are analyzed in terms of the DOLCE formal ontology. Additionally, we have described a case study aiming at demonstrating how the proposed methodology works in practice as well as investigating the impact of the restructured and axiomatized frame relations on recognizing textual entailment.


Lipids are fundamental building blocks of cells and their organelles, yet nanoscale resolution imaging of lipids has been largely limited to electron microscopy techniques. We introduce and validate a chemical tag that enables lipid membranes to be imaged optically at nanoscale resolution via a lipid-optimized form of expansion microscopy, which we call membrane expansion microscopy (mExM). mExM, via a novel post-expansion antibody labeling protocol, enables protein-lipid relationships to be imaged in organelles such as mitochondria, the endoplasmic reticulum, the nuclear membrane, and the Golgi apparatus. mExM may be of use in a variety of biological contexts, including the study of cell-cell interactions, intracellular transport, and neural connectomics.


This study was designed to evaluate the physiological importance of cardiopulmonary receptors with vagal afferents in controlling renin release during perturbations in blood volume. Intravascular volume of chloralose-anesthetized dogs was expanded by 7.5 ml/kg body wt, with an isotonic isoncotic solution containing 3% dextran for colloid. Volume expansion resulted in a 50% decline in renin secretion. However, volume expansion after bilateral cervical vagotomy, the proposed afferent limb of the reflex, also suppressed renin release. In another group of animals, the left kidney was surgically denervated and the right kidney extirpated, and again infusion suppressed resin release. In all groups, the infusion significantly suppressed renin release when compared to each dog's own control period, as well as when compared to the corresponding time controls. Our data indicate that the renin response to intravascular volume expansion was not mediated solely by the vagi or renal nerves. A combination of intrarenal factors may, however, have been responsible for the suppression of renin release observed. Our results do not support the hypothesis that the renin-angiotensin system is an efferent limb of the cardiopulmonary reflex during adjustments to alterations in blood volume.


Contamination of the traditional gold-mining areas of Transbaikalia (Russia, Siberia) is described. To estimate the placer gold-mining impact on the ecological quality of river waters, extensive investigations were carried out in two river basins of the Lake Baikal catchment. Significant deterioration of river water quality (pH, turbidity, electric conductivity, and content of metals) was detected in the gold-mining sites. The extent of mercury contamination depended on the duration and intensity of mining activities. The most severe cases of mercury contamination were observed in areas with direct use of the mercury-amalgamation technique. Mercury concentrations at the gold-mining areas and at background sites varied from <0.001 to 0.78 mg kg−1 for bedrock and minerals, <1–183 ng m−3for the atmosphere, 0.013–3.59 mg kg−1 for soils, <5–5000 ng l−1, and <5–27 800 ng l−1 for dissolved and particulate water fractions, respectively, and 0.008–54.2 mg kg−1 for river-bottom sediments.


In this paper, we trace the evolution of capital controls on foreign in- stitutional investment in India, by hand constructing a a dataset of legal interventions with respect to foreign institutional investment in India. We classify interventions into different categories depending on whether they pertain to procedural or substantive measures (such as investment limit or conditions), and also classify them depending on the asset class that they affect. We assign scores to each intervention depending on whether it re- stricts or liberalises the regime governing foreign institutional investment in India. The dataset can be used to understand the manner in and extent to which, Indias capital account has gradually opened up since the economic liberalisation reforms of the mid 1990s and the circumstances in which these interventions were made. It can also throw insights on the impact of different legal interventions with respect to foreign institutional investment on outcomes such as foreign investment inflows into India, currency volatility, credit growth and stock market returns.


Objectives The aim of the study was to 68%, temporally in 53%, and aurally in 9% of cases [3]. Palpation


The elastic anisotropy of copper leads to significant variation in the x-ray elastic constants (XEC), which link diffraction-based strain measurements to stress. An accurate depiction of the mechanical response in copper thin films requires a determination of an appropriate grain interaction model that lies between Voigt and Reuss limits. It is shown that the associated XEC weighting fraction, x*, between these limits provides a metric by which strain anisotropy can be quantified. Experimental values of x*, as determined by a linear regression scheme of diffraction data collected from multiple reflections, reveal the degree of strain anisotropy and its dependence on plastic deformation induced during in-situ and ex-situ thermal treatments.