Since sensors have limited range and coverage, mobile robots often have to make decisions on where to point their sensors. A good sensing strategy allows a robot to collect information that is useful for its tasks. Most existing solutions to this active sensing problem choose the direction that maximally reduces the uncertainty in a single state variable. In more complex problem domains, however, uncertainties exist in multiple state variables, and they affect the performance of the robot in different ways. The robot thus needs to have more sophisticated sensing strategies in order to decide which uncertainties to reduce, and to make the correct trade-offs. In this work, we apply a least squares reinforcement learning method to solve this problem. We implemented and tested the learning approach in the RoboCup domain, where the robot attempts to reach a ball and accurately kick it into the goal. We present experimental results that suggest our approach is able to learn highly effective sensing strategies.


A theoretical model to actualize digital holographic detection with the help of paraxial optical system based on the inverse calculation of diffraction is introduced briefly. A method to actualize the measurement when the measured object modulates the amplitude and the phase of object light simultaneously is proposed. The simulated experimental example is also illustrated with the help of numerical computation and computer-aided image processing technique.


High frequency low penetrance risk alleles for chronic lymphocytic leukaemia (CLL) have been identified at 6p25.3 ([rs872071][1], IRF4/MUM1 ), 11q24.1 ([rs735665][2], GRAMD1B ), 15q23 (rs7176508), 2q37.1 (rs13397985, SP140 ), 2q13 (rs17483466, ACOXL ) and 19q13.32 (rs11083846, PRKD2 ). Given a role in determining risk of disease it is plausible that these allelic variants also play a role in disease progression and overall survival. In order to test this hypothesis, polymorphic status was determined in a case series of 403 patients diagnosed with CLL recruited via 5 clinical centres in the United Kingdom. Mean follow-up time was 4447 days and 169 patients were deceased at the time of last follow-up. Kaplan-Meier survival analysis and the log-rank test were used to investigate the prognostic significance of constitutional genetic markers. Polymorphic variation at [rs735665][2], rs7176508, rs13397985, rs17483466 and rs11083846 was not significantly association with time from diagnosis to first treatment (p>0.05, log-rank test). However, a genetic variant in the 3′UTR of the interferon regulatory factor 4 ( IRF4 )/ multiple myeloma oncogene 1 ( MUM1 ) gene was significantly associated with poor prognosis. Specifically, carriers of the disease-associated variant at [rs872071][1] had a significantly shorter mean time from diagnosis to first treatment (3983 days), compared to non-carriers (7340 days)(p=0.001), although there was no significant difference in overall survival (p=0.29). The association with time to first treatment remained significant in multivariate Cox regression analysis that included age, gender, immunoglobulin heavy chain variable region mutational status and stage of disease at diagnosis in the model (p=0.021). IRF4 is expressed in germinal centre (GC) and post-GC B-cells, and is important for B-cell maturation and homeostasis. Taken together with the aetiological evidence, these data suggest that common allelic variation in IRF4 not only affects risk of CLL, but also predicts poor prognosis.

 [1]: /lookup/external-ref?link_type=GEN&access_num=rs872071&atom=%2Fbloodjournal%2F112%2F11%2F1060.atom
 [2]: /lookup/external-ref?link_type=GEN&access_num=rs735665&atom=%2Fbloodjournal%2F112%2F11%2F1060.atom


In the Chinese cultural context, dinner parties have been identified as an ideal venue to observe the dynamic ways in which mianzi or face is discursively enacted and negotiated in daily interaction (see e.g., Chen 1990). And recent studies (e.g., Spencer-Oatey 2007) show that scholars interested in the field of identity and researchers with a bent towards face and politeness can benefit from a greater cross fertilization. Yet, a cursory review of relevant literature shows that previous studies overwhelmingly explore the interrelationship between face and identity in the context of intercultural communication (e.g., Imahori and Cupach 2005, Ting-Toomey 2005). Moreover, the existing literature seems to be more concerned with social identities such as gender, ethnicity, race, etc. which have enjoyed a substantial history of academic interest. Comparatively, much less attention has been given to the research on identity which is discursively constructed in the course of interaction in intracultural settings. This paper therefore examines the interaction between doing facework and construction of group identity in the social event of dinner parties among native speakers of Chinese. It focuses on the ways in which a special group identity is constructed by participants of multiparty conversations at table in Mainland China.
The paper is based on a corpus of approximately 30 hours of audio-recorded spontaneous naturally occurring conversations and follow-up interviews.Applying such notions as membership categorization (Sacks 1992) and self-categorization (Tajfel 2010[1982], Turner et al 1987), I argue that a group identity is being constructed in the course of conversation over dinner. I maintain that although linguistic resources at the participants' disposal may differ, they are generally all concerted in their efforts to establish an in-group identity by creating a congenial social atmosphere. I show that such an identity is dynamically constructed in the conversation by building a harmonious interpersonal relationship. And for this purpose, a wide range of politeness strategies such as complimenting, congratulating, addressing, laughing, and joking are frequently employed by the participants.
This paper is hoped to extend our understanding of politeness as a social phenomenon and the construction of identity through politeness strategies. It concludes by outlining the implications for the way that findings in politeness research can inform research on social identity.


Only five years after the Royal Superior School of Commerce (the present Ca' Foscari University) was founded in 1868, the School introduced, for the first time in Italy, Japanese language courses taught by native speakers. The classes started in 1873 and continued until 1888, and were again part of the curriculum from 1909 to 1923. In those years a little number of very active Japanese teachers (interprets, linguists, sculptors and painters) contributed to shaping the education in Japanese of Italian students, who in turn went on to direct Japanese instruction in Italy. Their guiding spirit was Guglielmo Berchet, a tireless promoter of Italo-Japanese relations.


The border gateway protocol, the interdomain routing protocol for the Internet, allows for a wide variety of routing policies that may interact in unintended and unstable ways. Recent work on BGP and related protocols has begun to incorporate formal protocol models, which have enabled rigorous descriptive analyses of BGP. More recently, such models have been used to give prescriptive guidelines for the design of new protocols. These guidelines include both sufficient conditions for good routing behavior and limitations on what can be achieved without coordination between routers. Here we review potential routing problems, various formal protocol models, and the design guidelines they have been used to prove.


Background Supportive living (SL), also known as assisted-living, residents are at risk of progressive cognitive decline and physical frailty, requiring treatment decisions. As such ACP is recommended but the factors associated with readiness to engage in ACP in SL are not fully understood. Aim The purpose of this study was to explore perceptions of readiness, barriers and facilitators to ACP of SL residents, their families and clinicians. Method This qualitative study utilised an Interpretive Descriptive (ID) approach. Participants were 9 residents from 3 SL facilities, 6 family members and 8 SL clinicians in a health region with an ACP policy and procedure. Data collection consisted of semi-structured interviews with participants. Interviews were coded, analysed and themes developed within each group. Themes were also compared across the groups to understand areas of convergence and distinctness. Results For SL residents, ACP is closely related to making the transition to SL rather than health decisions. Clinicians are either task oriented or conflicted regarding ACP implementation. Families of SL residents draw on personal experience as most have lost a relative or experienced prior decision making for a family member. Early analysis demonstrates the emergence of five themes across the groups: conceptualization of ACP, readiness for engagement, health uncertainty and difficulty in decision-making, barriers/facilitators. Discussion These findings will be used in a knowledge-to-action program to inform the clinical approach, resources and health region processes aimed at increasing readiness for ACP and ACP engagement by patients and families in SL.


The search for synthetic opioids as alternatives to opium-based derivatives has provided an important impulse to drug development around the globe. An important goal in the systematic evaluation of new drug candidates is the identification of compounds that provide a more favorable side-effect profile, which includes reduced dependence-producing properties and abuse liability. A rich source of information about these research efforts can be found in the scientific literature. However, the exploration of these important discoveries has also been increasingly mined by largescale producers of these materials, which are then offered for sale. These so-called 'research chemicals' or new psychoactive substances (NPS)[1] have created challenges to policy makers, clinicians, and law enforcement around the world.[2]

Recent examples of synthetic opioids that emerged as NPS on the market, and which were associated with severe cases of adverse effects, include 3,4-dichloro-N-{[1 (dimethylamino)cyclohexyl]methyl}benzamide (AH-7921), 1-cyclohexyl-4-(1,2- diphenylethyl)piperazines (MT-45) and N-phenyl-N-[1-(2-phenylethyl)piperidin-4-yl]acetamide (acetylfentanyl), respectively (Figure 1). Following the recommendation provided by the World Health Organization's Expert Committee on Drug Dependence (ECDD),[3] AH-7921 was placed in Schedule I of the 1961 Single Convention, as amended by the 1972 Protocol in 2015.[4] Furthermore, ECDD's recommendation to place MT-45 into Schedule I and acetylfentanyl in Schedules I and IV of the same Convention[5] have been recently confirmed by the Commission on Narcotic Drugs.[6]3,4-Dichloro-N-[2-(dimethylamino)cyclohexyl]-N-methylbenzamide (U-47700) (Figure1) has recently emerged on the market and can be purchased from various Internet retailers and is a structural isomer of AH-7921 (Figure 1). The preparation of U- 47700 and other derivatives was disclosed by the Upjohn Company in the 1970s[7] followed by the recognition that U-47700 showed increased analgesic properties and morphine-like behavioural features in mice compared to morphine itself.[8,9] The presence of two chiral centres gives rise to a cis- and trans-racemic mixture with the trans-form being advertised for sale. Binding studies also revealed that U-47700 displayed an appreciable selectivity for the μ-opioid receptor over the opioid receptor.[10,11] A variety of cyclohexyl trans-1,2-diamines have been found to be potent analgesics and the vicinal 1,2-diamine pattern has provided access to a large range of substances with diverse biological activities.[12-14]

Since U-47700 did not progress to clinical trials, there is no direct clinical information pertaining to its effects. Keeping in mind the various limitations that may be associated with descriptions obtained from self-reporting users, its effects have been described with various positive and negative symptoms but appeared to be essentially comparable to other opioids. Specifically, euphoria was reported in individuals, sometimes being short-lived, as well as general lift in mood with these desired effects being experienced in waves. The negative effects were also opioidbased, including nausea with some users describing respiratory depression. For some users, U-47700 had a shorter duration of action and the urge to keep re-dosing was stated as being very high.[15-16]


In this paper we report the results of the estimation of a rich dynamic stochastic general equilibrium (DSGE) model of the U.S. economy with both stochastic volatility and parameter drifting in the Taylor rule. We use the results of this estimation to examine the recent monetary history of the U.S. and to interpret, through this lens, the sources of the rise and fall of the great American inflation from the late 1960s to the early 1980s and of the great moderation of business cycle fluctuations between 1984 and 2007. Our main findings are that while there is strong evidence of changes in monetary policy during Volcker's tenure at the Fed, those changes contributed little to the great moderation. Instead, changes in the volatility of structural shocks account for most of it. Also, while we find that monetary policy was different under Volcker, we do not find much evidence of a big difference in monetary policy among Burns, Miller, and Greenspan. The difference in aggregate outcomes across these periods is attributed to the time-varying volatility of shocks. The history for inflation is more nuanced, as a more vigorous stand against it would have reduced inflation in the 1970s, but not completely eliminated it. In addition, we find that volatile shocks (especially those related to aggregate demand) were important contributors to the great American inflation.


My aim with this study has been to examine how the fashion is a leading component in the novel The Picture of Dorian Gray.I have studied the role fashion plays in the novel and in which way it can be seen as a way of letting the reader know the important role of fashion in 19tcentury England and the morals of Oscar Wilde.To prove my thesis I have used literature that shows how Oscar Wilde uses influences from his own life in his writing of The Picture of Dorian Gray. I have also used Judith Butler's theory of performativity in analyzing the characters in ordet to display their way of staging themselves and their lifestyles and their dependence of that performativity in their interactions. Even though the theory of performativity often is used to hold the importance of the sexes, I have concluded that it has an important role in the novel when Dorian Gray interacts with the character Sibyl Vane who is an actress. My results have shown that fashion in the novel is often a way of letting the reader know important elements of a character in the way that certain fabrics and items are mentioned when Wilde writes about his characters. I have also found that fashion is an important factor when the characters judge each when they speak about the way they dress. The way fashion is presented in the novel is important to my thesis and has shown me how fashion can be used in literature as symbolic elements guiding the narrative.Keywords: Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray, Fashion in literature, Performativity. Judith Butler


The main cause of cement concrete pavement fracture is void beneath slab, while water is an important factor of void beneath slab. In order to clearly understand impact of water on void beneath cement concrete pavement, this paper analyzes penetration soaking role and scouring of water and studies the evolution process of void under slab. It is founded that the erosion of the grassroots and void beneath the plate influence each other. Conducting a Small-size simulation test by using Falling Weight Deflectometer (FWD), the movement condition of the water in empty area under concrete road and the effect of void size on current scour are got under the action of moving load.


This article provides a critical review of the main studies that, through statistical tests, have tried to evaluate the influence of political and institutional factors on financial policies and in particular on the capacity of the governments to contain public deficits. A detailed analysis shows that the operationalization of variables like the structure of the coalitions, the electoral system and the form of government, adopted by these studies is not always correct. The attempt to keep together in the same sample both parliamentary and presidential systems is also problematic. Nevertheless, the general hypothesis on the link between institutional arrangements and financial policies seems to be convincingly confirmed. In particular, less fragmented decision systems, characterised by a smaller number of veto-players, have allowed democratic governments to implement financial adjustment policies quite swiftly after the crises of the seventies. Finally, the exigency to master, through configurational analyses, the links between the overall political-institutional arrangements and budgetary institutions emerges.


The abundance of Oil Palm Empty Fruit Bunches (EFB), the lignocellulosic biomass waste from Crude Palm Oil (CPO) industries, offers a potential for its application as raw material for biorefinery. Its xylan content in particular, suggests that EFB can be used as raw material for xylanase production. This article studies xylanase production by fungal Trichoderma viride ITB CC L67, Aspergillus niger ITB CC L51, and Penicillium sp. ITB CC L96 using EFB as the substrate in solid state fermentation. The aims of this research are to evaluate the incubation time to produce the highest xylanase activity, to explore the effect of particle size of EFB on xylanase activity and to determine the optimal operation condition of each significant variable, including temperature and substrate ratio (g EFB in mL liquid medium) using Response Surface Methodology (RSM).  The method of Central Composite Design (CCD) is employed to investigate the individual crucial component of the operation condition, which significantly affected the enzyme activity. The incubation time of  T. viride, A. niger, and Penicillium sp. were observed to produce xylanase .  The result show that the xylanase activity is increase in the early phase of incubation at 0-36 hours, and remained constant afterward. At the time of 36 hours, the activity of xylanase produced by T. viride, A. niger and Penicillium sp. were subsequently 815 U/mL, 624 U/mL and 789 U/mL or equal to 8,146 U/g, 6,243 U/g and 7,892 U/g dry substrate. The particle size of the EFB is affect the growth and hence affects on xylanase production. It shows that the smaller size of EFB resulted in better fungal growth, which was indicated by higher biomass dry weight and higher protein content, as well as higher xylanase activity. The optimum conditions obtained xylanase activity is 740.6 U/mL or 5,095.5 U/g substrate, produced by T.viride ITB CC L.67 at 32.8oC and substrate ratio of 0.63.


Abstract— Hearts of wild-type and insulin-like growth factor-1 overexpressing (Igf-1+/−) transgenic mice were subjected to Langendorff perfusions and progressive periods of ischemia followed by reperfusion. Apoptosis was measured by DNA nucleosomal cleavage and a hairpin probe labeling assay to detect single-base overhang. Transgenic hearts subjected to 20 minutes of ischemia and 4 hours of reperfusion (I/R) sustained a rate of apoptosis of 1.8±0.3% compared with 4.6±1.1% for wild-type controls (n=4;P <0.03). Phosphorylation of the protein kinase Akt/protein kinase B was elevated 6.2-fold in transgenic hearts at baseline and increased another 4.4-fold within 10 minutes of reperfusion, remaining elevated for up to 2 hours. I/R activated Akt in wild-type hearts but to a lesser extent (1.6±0.3-fold). Pretreatment of transgenic hearts with wortmannin immediately before and during ischemia eliminated reperfusion-mediated activation of Akt and neutralized the resistance to apoptosis. The stress-activated kinase p38 was also activated during ischemia and reperfusion in both wild-type and transgenic hearts. Perfusion with the p38 inhibitor SB203580 (10 &mgr;mol/L) blocked both p38 activation and phosphorylation of Akt and differentially modulated apoptosis in wild-type and transgenic hearts. Pretreatment with SB203580 reduced apoptosis in wild-type hearts but increased apoptosis in transgenic hearts. These results demonstrate that Akt phosphorylation during I/R is modulated by IGF-1 and prevents apoptosis in hearts that overexpress the IGF-1 transgene.


Autonomous vehicles have a great influence on our life. These vehicles are more convenient, more energy efficient providing higher safety level and cheaper driving solutions. In addition, decreasing the generation of CO2, and the risk vehicular accidents are other benefits of autonomous vehicles. However, leveraging a full autonomous system is challenging and the proposed solutions are newfound. Providing a testbed for evaluating new algorithms is beneficial for researchers and hardware developers to verify the real impact of their solutions. The existence of testing environment is a low-cost infrastructure leading to increase the time-to-market of novel ideas. In this paper, we propose Auto Rio, a cutting-edge indoor testbed for developing autonomous vehicles.


Objectives: To examine the effects of fluid bolus therapy on systemic hemodynamics, renal blood flow, intrarenal perfusion and oxygenation, PO2, renal function, and fluid balance in experimental early septic acute kidney injury. Design: Interventional study. Setting: Research institute. Subjects: Adult Merino ewes. Interventions: Implantation of flow probes on the pulmonary and renal arteries and laser Doppler oxygen-sensing probes in the renal cortex, medulla, and within a bladder catheter in sheep. Infusion of Escherichia coli to induce septic acute kidney injury (n = 8). After 24, 25, and 26 hours of sepsis, fluid bolus therapy (500 mL of Hartmann's solution over 15 min) was administered. Measurements and Main Results: In conscious sheep, infusion of Escherichia coli decreased creatinine clearance and increased plasma creatinine, renal blood flow (+46% ± 6%) and cortical perfusion (+25% ± 4%), but medullary perfusion (–48% ± 5%), medullary PO2 (–56% ± 4%), and urinary PO2 (–54% ± 3%) decreased (p < 0.01). The first fluid bolus therapy increased blood pressure (+6% ± 1%), central venous pressure (+245% ± 65%), cardiac output (+11% ± 2%), medullary PO2 (+280% ± 90%), urinary PO2 (+164% ± 80%), and creatinine clearance (+120% ± 65%) at 30 minutes. The following two boluses had no beneficial effects on creatinine clearance. The improvement in medullary oxygenation dissipated following the third fluid bolus therapy. Study animals retained 69% of the total volume and 80% of sodium infused. Throughout the study, urinary PO2 correlated significantly with medullary PO2. Conclusions: In early experimental septic acute kidney injury, fluid bolus therapy transiently improved renal function and medullary PO2, as also reflected by increased urinary PO2. These initial effects of fluid bolus therapy dissipated within 4 hours, despite two additional fluid boluses, and resulted in significant volume retention.


The use of non-pharmacological interventions for the treatment of depression is evidence-based, effective and has been successfully used in many developed countries. Evidence for the usage of these types of interventions to treat depression in developing countries is not as widespread. However, two recent randomized control trials have demonstrated that a non-pharmacological intervention, specifically group interpersonal therapy (IPT), can be successful on a small-scale in Uganda to treat depression. Following a call to action by the international mental health community to act on the significant burden of depression that is afflicting the developing world, this report seeks to analyze the opportunities and constraints for scaling-up the health human resources needed to deliver this evidence-based intervention on a larger scale. This analysis was conducted by examining a previously published framework for scaling-up a health intervention in a resource-poor setting.


N‐acetyl‐cysteine (NAC) has been reported to have anticancer properties such as counteractions against mutagens and prevention of tumor progression by scavenging reactive oxygen species (ROS). However, here we report that NAC can enhance the anchorage‐independent growth of cells transformed by activated ABL tyrosine kinases or Ras. This effect was not dependent on loss of focal adhesion kinase activation. NAC rescued cell growth that was suppressed by heat shock protein (Hsp) 90 inhibitors possibly by chemical modification of their quinone moiety. NAC rendered Rat1/BCR‐ABL cells resistance to a Ras inhibitor manumycin in soft agar colony formation. In the absence of Hsp90 inhibitors, NAC stimulated the activation of MAP kinase in BCR‐ABL‐transformed but not in the parental Rat1 cells. We propose that NAC should be used carefully in cancer treatment. (Cancer Sci 2005; 96: 240 –244)


! Diabetic macular edema (DME) and proliferative retinopathy are common causes for blindness in middle-aged patients. The gold standard for treatment has been laser coagulation. Limitations of this therapy are refractive DME, ischaemic diabetic maculopathy and complications after laser application. The need for a non-destructive and effective strategy has led to investigations regarding vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) inhibitors for reduction of vessel leakage and oedema formation. VEGF antibody fragments have been approved for age-associated macular degeneration (AMD) in different countries and have proved to be safe and effective. Trials for different anti-VEGF compounds are nearing completion or are completed. Published data show a superiority of anti-VEGF therapy compared to laser coagulation. In the present article, data regarding dose, injection scheme and practicable application form are reviewed.


Our previous work has shown that phenyl phosphate acts as an exogenous substrate for GDP-mannose:dolichyl phosphate mannosyltransferase in rat liver microsomal fractions to give rise to phenyl phosphate beta-D-mannose, a compound which, unlike Dol-P-Man (dolichyl phosphate beta-D-mannose), cannot act as mannose donor for further mannose-adding reactions in microsomal fractions. The study has now been extended to the action of various aryl phosphates and structurally related compounds on several other glycosyltransferase systems in the microsomal fractions. (1) Examination of the ability of these compounds to accept sugars from various sugar nucleotides indicated that the individual compounds have specificity as sugar acceptors. Thus phenyl phosphate acted as an effective acceptor for both mannose and glucose, whereas benzenephosphonic acid was active only in accepting mannose. p-Nitrophenyl phosphate was a more effective glucose acceptor than phenyl phosphate, but had only 8% of the mannose-accepting activity of phenyl phosphate. (2) Phenyl phosphate had an inhibitory effect on the transfer of mannose form GDP-mannose to lipid-linked oligosaccharides and to glycoproteins in rat liver microsomal fractions. The inhibition depended on the concentration of phenyl phosphate and on the extent of inhibition of Dol-P-Man synthesis. It is proposed that phenyl phosphate has a direct effect on the synthesis of Dol-P-Man and that its inhibition of synthesis of lipid-linked oligosaccharides and glycoproteins could be a consequence of this effect.


markdownabstractThis thesis focused on several aspects to further improve locally advanced and recurrent rectal cancer management. During last decade, rectal cancer treatment has shifted increasingly towards a personalized treatment depending on the local tumor and the presence of distant metastases. A multimodality treatment can result in relatively good long-term outcomes for both Locally advanced rectal cancer (LARC)and locally recurrent rectal cancer (LRRC). This thesis aimed to further improve the multimodality treatment in order to offer patients the best oncological care.
Briefly, the _first part_ of this thesis, focusing on staging, showed a beneficial effect of restaging by thoraco-abdominal CT-scan after (chemo-)radiotherapy. It resulted in newly discovered distant metastases altering treatment in a substantial number of patients. Unfortunately, the beneficial effect of adding DCE sequences to local restaging by MR imaging after (chemo-)radiotherapy was limited.
The _second part,_ which focused on LARC, suggested that applying IORT leads to improved local control in patients with a microscopically involved circumferential resection margin (CRM). Furthermore, the treatment of cT4 rectal cancer in high volume cT4 hospitals may lead to an improved overall survival, while the effect of the hospital volume in cT1-3 rectal cancer is limited.
The _third part,_ focusing on LRRC, demonstrated that patients with local recurrences after previous pelvic radiotherapy and TME surgery should also be considered candidates for curative surgery. Additionally, it showed that complete resections with close margins between 0-2mm have a poorer outcome than wider resection margins of >2mm and that the effect of systemic therapy on the local recurrence in previously irradiated area was limited.


Research on the development of mobile-based learning media has been conducted to determine its feasibility, the affect on the improvement of students' critical thinking skill, and effectiveness of the media used in leraning. The type of this research is the development that refers to the ADDIE development model, namely: Analysis, Design, Development, Implementation, and Evaluation. This research was conducted  in SMA Negeri 5 Purworejo with the subjects of the trial amounting to 29 students. The instruments used in this study are: validation sheets, learners' responses, learning outcome tests, and learning implementation sheets. Based on the research data obtained from the validation of mobile-based media for learning from four validators namely: three expert lecturers and physics teachers had an overall score 3.56, included in the good category and feasible to use in learning. The improvement of critical thinking skills in the implementation phase obtained N-gain 0.61 and included the medium increase category. The effectiveness of the media used in the assessment learning with learners' responses received an overall contribution of 84% and included good categories, and was shown by the learning implementation sheet with an overall contribution of 95.8% and included in the excellent category. Thus the development of mobile-based learning media in this study is categorized as good and suitable to use as learning media, and also could help to improve students' critical thinking skills.


This paper develops new model selection methods for forecasting panel data using a set of least squares (LS) vector autoregressions. Model selection is based on minimizing the estimated quadratic forecast risk among candidate models. We provide conditions under which the selection criterion is asymptotically efficient in the sense of Shibata (1980, Ann. Statist. 8, 147-164) as n (cross sections) and T (time series) approach infinity. Relative to extant selection criteria, this criterion places a heavier penalty on model dimensionality in order to account for the effects of parameterized forms of cross sectional heterogeneity (such as fixed effects) on forecast loss. We also extend the analysis to bias-corrected least squares, showing that significant reductions in forecast risk can be achieved.


Though bull purchases greatly influence beef herd genetics and value-based pricing provides incentives for genetic improvement, research suggests that only small portions of the value of bulls at auction is attributable to expected progeny differences. Furthermore, much of this research focuses on Angus bloodlines, providing little insight for other breeds. This study revisits these issues using auction data on multiple breeds of bulls. Even after adjusting expected progeny differences for all breeds to Angus equivalents, across-breed differences in their valuations persist, which may reflect relative needs for improvement in birth weight, milking ability, and growth across breeds.


Psoriasis is a common inflammatory skin disease and its immuno-aetiopathogenesis has been extensively studied, using both human clinical samples and animal models of disease in the last four decades. This large effort has resulted in the identification of a number of psoriasis-susceptibility genes, T cells as critical effector cells in disease pathogenesis, and in a number of pro-inflammatory cytokines underlying the disease. More importantly, these findings have been translated into novel targeted therapies already in the clinic or in the advanced stage of clinical trials. Here, we review the more recent genetic and immunological findings and identify research gaps and future directions to take to further improve our understanding of one of the most common skin diseases.


Of 49 patients with hemophilia A or B, who had not received replacement transfusions for at least 72 hours, ten were demonstrated to have a prolonged value for the bleeding time. None had evidence of von Willebrand's disease or prior aspirin ingestion, and only one was found to have an associated intrinsic platelet defect. It appears that the bleeding time, generally thought to be a measurement of platelet-subendothelium interaction, may also sometimes be prolonged in congenital coagulation disorders in which platelet function is normal.


The enzyme methanol dehydrogenase (EC 220.127.116.11) from Hyphomicrobium X was used in an attempt to develop a rapid colorimetric test for methanol. The enzyme was stabilized for storage by lyophilization in the presence of the disaccharide trehalose. It was found that the enzyme retained significantly greater activity in the dried state with trehalose than without. The enzyme was partially purified by ammonium sulphate fractionation, after which it was found to be more stable in solution at pH 9 than at pH 7. A procedure is given which involves mixing a defined amount of enzyme with the methanol-containing water together with phenazine methosulphate (PMS), 2-6-dichlorophenol-indophenol (DCPIP) and cyanide, and observing the resultant colour change from blue to yellow if methanol is present. The sensitivity of the procedure is such that 9 mg L-1 of methanol can be readily detected.


Background: Limited prospective information exists regarding spectral-domain optical coherence tomography (SD-OCT) in secondary progressive multiple sclerosis (SPMS). Objective: Document cross-sectional and longitudinal retinal nerve fiber layer (RNFL) and macular ganglion cell plus inner plexiform layer (GCIPL) features of an SPMS clinical trial cohort. Methods: Prospective, observational study using a 2-year randomized placebo-controlled SPMS trial cohort with yearly SD-OCT testing. Post hoc analysis determined influences of optic neuritis (ON), disease duration, and baseline SD-OCT on annualized atrophy rates and on correlations between OCT and brain atrophy. Results: Mean RNFL and GCIPL values of patients (n = 47, mean age = 59 years, mean disease duration = 30 years) were significantly lower among eyes with prior ON than those without (no history of ON (NON)). Annualized RNFL (−0.31 µm/year) and GCIPL (−0.29 µm/year) atrophy rates did not differ between ON and NON eyes. Baseline RNFL thickness >75 µm was associated with greater annualized RNFL atrophy (−0.85 µm/year). Neither RNFL nor GCIPL atrophy correlated with whole-brain atrophy. Conclusion: This study suggests that eyes with and without ON history may be pooled for atrophy analysis in SPMS clinical trials using SD-OCT. Low baseline RNFL, small retinal atrophy rates, and lack of correlation with whole-brain atrophy in this population are important trial design considerations.


Numerical modeling is used to explain the origin of the large ON/OFF ratios, ultralow leakage, and high ON-current densities exhibited by back-end-of-the-line-friendly access devices based on copper-containing mixed-ionic-electronic-conduction (MIEC) materials. Hall effect measurements confirm that the electronic current is hole dominated; a commercial semiconductor modeling tool is adapted to model MIEC. Motion of large populations of copper ions and vacancies leads to exponential increases in hole current, with a turn-ON voltage that depends on material bandgap. Device simulations match experimental observations as a function of temperature, electrode aspect ratio, thickness, and device diameter.


The methodologies that might be best used to interpret Mass Observation's distinctive research resources have tended to be considered on a case by case basis by individual researchers and have rarely been the subject of concerted, dedicated scrutiny. During 2009-10, however, the University of Brighton research network Methodological Innovations: Using Mass Observation (MIMO) brought together 150 international academics, archivists, writers and artists to debate and share methods for analysing the materials of the post-1981 Mass Observation Project (MOP) in particular. Through discussion lists and events, a range of disciplinary approaches were brought to bear on core topics of methodological concern, from the 'representativeness' of the writing panel and discussions about sampling and extrapolation, through to debates on the very nature of Mass Observation (MO) material and how it might be defined. This paper draws on these productive discussions and brings them together with previously unanalysed insights and reflections on similar issues by MOP correspondents, for as Sheridan, Street and Bloome (2000) have argued, 'Mass-Observers themselves are as reflective and thoughtful about issues raised, methodological and theoretical as well as ethical and political, as the academic commentators.' Using responses to the MOP directive, 'Being Part of Research' in parallel with MIMO discussions, this paper draws new connections between contributors and users, as two of the core constituent bodies involved in the production of meaning in MO. Through comparative analysis of each groups' discussion of methodology, this paper highlights the often unarticulated but ultimately interdependent relationship between contributors and their readers in order to reveal their shared understandings, mirrored concerns and mutual imaginaries.


A detailed mechanistic study of the CH + O2 reaction, in which the products are involved, is carried out by means of CCSD(T)/6-311G(d,p)//B3LYP/6-311G(d,p) + ZPVE computational method to determine a set of reasonable pathways. The reaction is shown to proceed with an exothermic barrierless addition of O2 to the methylidyne (CH) radical to form intermediate HCOO (a2). The HCOO radical was found to have two dissociation channels, giving products P1 HCO and O radical through the nonplanar transition states, and giving intermediate CO2H (b1) through the planar transition states, in addition to the backward reaction forming the products radical (channel A, B, C, D, E). It is shown that B (HCO + O), E (CO + OH) are the major product channels with a minor contribution from D (CO2 + H), whereas the other channels for are less favorable.


Turbulence-degraded images can be restored by using the Knox–Thompson algorithm. This algorithm is briefly described, and its photon-noise limitations are discussed. Peculiar difficulties related to the phase dislocations in the Fourier space are pointed out, and a solution to this problem is proposed. This algorithm does not require more photons than the speckle-interferometry technique and could provide much more information on complex astronomical objects. To illustrate these phase dislocations and signal-to-noise ratio problems, different restorations are presented that result from degraded images obtained with a turbulence-simulation facility and from astronomical data.


ABSTRACT Fungi have an absolute requirement for K+, but K+ may be partially replaced by Na+. Na+ uptake in Ustilago maydis and Pichia sorbitophila was found to exhibit a fast rate, low Km, and apparent independence of the membrane potential. Searches of sequences with similarity to P-type ATPases in databases allowed us to identify three genes in these species, Umacu1, Umacu2, and PsACU1, that could encode P-type ATPases of a novel type. Deletion of the acu1 and acu2 genes proved that they encoded the transporters that mediated the high-affinity Na+ uptake of U. maydis. Heterologous expressions of the Umacu2 gene in K+ transport mutants of Saccharomyces cerevisiae and transport studies in the single and double Δacu1 and Δacu2 mutants of U. maydis revealed that the acu1 and acu2 genes encode transporters that mediated high-affinity K+ uptake in addition to Na+ uptake. Other fungi also have genes or pseudogenes whose translated sequences show high similarity to the ACU proteins of U. maydis and P. sorbitophila. In the phylogenetic tree of P-type ATPases all the identified ACU ATPases define a new cluster, which shows the lowest divergence with type IIC, animal Na+,K+-ATPases. The fungal high-affinity Na+ uptake mediated by ACU ATPases is functionally identical to the uptake that is mediated by some plant HKT transporters.


At the end of 2010, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN started operation with heavy-ion beams, colliding lead nuclei at a center-of-mass energy of 2.76 TeV per nucleon. These collisions ushered in a new era in ultrarelativistic heavy-ion physics at energies exceeding that of previous accelerators by more than an order of magnitude. This review summarizes the results from the first year of heavy-ion physics at the LHC obtained by the three experiments participating in the heavy-ion program: ALICE, ATLAS, and CMS.


Cysteamine is used as an orphan drug in the treatment of cystinosis to prevent
long-term cystine accumulation in lysosomes. Dosing in cysteamine treatment is extremely important
and overdose may cause some side effects. Up to now, various analytical methods have been used for
cysteamine determination. Many of these methods require sophisticated instruments, expert operators,
time-consuming measurement procedures and manipulation steps, expensive supplies and long analysis
time.

The present study deals with the development of a potentiometric PVC-membrane
cysteamine-selective electrode based on an ion-pair of cysteamine and its application in a
pharmaceutical formulation.

Cysteamine (Cys)-Phosphomolybdate (PM) ion-pair was synthesized by mixing the equal
volumes of 10-2 M Cysteamine HCl and sodium phosphomolybdate aqueous solutions. The obtained
precipitate was used as ionophore in the structure of PVC-membrane.

The electrode exhibited a linear response in the concentration range of 1.0×10-
1-1.0×10-5 M cysteamine with a slope of 51,7 mV per decade and detection limit of 1.0×10-5 M. The
potentiometric response of the electrode was very rapid (5 s), adequately repeatable, stable and selective.
pH working range and life-time of the electrode were also determined as 3.0-7.0 and 25 days, respectively.

A PVC-membrane cysteamine selective electrode was easily prepared. Cysteamine determination
in a pharmaceutical formulation was performed. Analysis results indicated that it can be successfully
used in drug quality control laboratories for routine analysis of cysteamine in pharmaceutical
preparations alternative to more sophisticated, expensive and time-consuming analytical methods.


Background Protease inhibitors boceprevir and telaprevir were approved by the European Medicines Agency in July and September 2011 respectively for the treatment of hepatitis C genotype-1 in combination with peginterferon and ribavirin (triple therapy). Purpose To describe the safety of boceprevir and telaprevir in clinical practise. Materials and Methods All patients who received triple therapy prior to commercialization (compassionate use) with boceprevir or telaprevir to September 2012 were included. Data collected were: drugs administered for triple therapy, analytical parameters (haemoglobin, neutrophils and platelets) and subjective adverse effects. Patients were educated by the pharmacist about the medicines at the start of triple therapy and interviewed about adverse effects monthly with each refill of triple therapy. Results Of the 36 patients with chronic hepatitis C included, 16 were treated with telaprevir and 20 with boceprevir. The most frequent adverse reactions were anaemia, neutropenia and thrombocytopenia. Anaemia was managed by reducing the dose of ribavirin (7 patients), erythropoiesis-stimulating agents (11 patients) and packed cells (7 patients). Neutropenia and thrombocytopenia were controlled with peginterferon dose reduction (2 patients) and granulocyte colony-stimulating factor (4 patients). Other adverse effects were fatigue or discomfort (16 patients), insomnia (5 patients), fever (5 patients), pruritus, dysgeusia, headache, nausea, diarrhoea and irritability. Eight patients had to discontinue treatment due to adverse reactions which were not controlled with dose adjustment or supportive drugs. Conclusions All adverse events observed were reported in the EMA studies. Protease inhibitors have shown improve sustained virological response in clinical trials but these drugs are associated with a lot of adverse reactions. It is very important to have close collaboration between the physician and the pharmacist for medicines management, so that adverse reactions not described in the drug information will be reported to health agencies. Abstract GRP-035 Table 1 Protease inhibitor No. of patients Anaemia Neutropenia Thrombocytopenia n (%) Boceprevir 20 17 (85) 14 (70) 15 (75) Telaprevir 16 11 (69) 6 (38) 13 (81) No conflict of interest.


T he now-classic National Science Foundation book Science, the Endless Frontier by Vannevar Bush, published in 1945, portrays science as an exploration of the unknown and an effort to understand ourselves and the world around us. This approach has proved to be highly successful, generating new discoveries that have had major economic and social impacts and truly changed the societies we live in. In 1997, the European Commission (EC) published a book titled Society, the Endless Frontier-A European Vision of Research and Innovation Policies for the 21st Century. This vision complements classical science and technology-driven policy with a problem-driven approach by directly addressing the many complex issues facing our societies, such as global change, ecological sustainability, genetically modified organisms, and energy and transportation systems.

It is becoming increasingly obvious that tackling planetwide issues requires extensive international research collaborations and multidisciplinary approaches, as well as the integration of contributions from basic and applied research, the application of new technologies and industrial processes, socioeconomic analyses, and even ethical considerations. It is also important to integrate the results all the way to policy alternatives with estimates of their costs and benefits, impacts and risks. This approach is being adopted in many countries today. But it is particularly important in Europe, where such questions are often complicated by the varying cultural and linguistic traditions of the 15 European Union (EU) member countries of today, and perhaps more than 30 tomorrow.

The landscape of European research and its collaborative aspects is complex. For large-scale facilities, separate organizations have been set up, some of them in collaboration on a global level, such as CERN for particle physics and the European Space Agency for space studies. However, most research is conducted in national programs with national funding. A new initiative—the European Research Area, launched by the EC in January 2000—sets out a strategy for a frontier-free research policy in Europe through improved cooperation between researchers in the member states.

About 15 percent of European public research investments are devoted to collaborative efforts, including about 5 percent to the EU research programs. The EU has just launched a new 4-year framework program for research and technological development, with a budget of 15 billion Euros. It has been structured to cover topics in four thematic areas: the life sciences; developing a user-friendly information society; competitive and sustainable growth; and energy, environment, and sustainable development. The majority of funding is devoted to 23 key "actions" that address, in a multidisciplinary manner, areas such as nutrition and health, control of infectious diseases, telecommunication standards and electronic commerce, sustainable transport and mobility, and global change. Such problems require multinational, even global, approaches, and hence they are natural choices for multilateral EU research. As an example of the success of this approach, research on European telecommunication standards, involving industry, the basic research community, and government, has laid the foundation for the worldwide success of the European mobile phone and wireless communication systems, such as Nokia and Vodaphone.

Science collaborations on bilateral levels between the United States and many European countries have long and successful traditions. To complement these bilateral arrangements, the EU and United States signed an agreement on cooperation in science and technology in early 1998 to address questions calling for wide international collaborations. Agreements similar to the EU-U.S. collaboration have also been made with other major countries. Many policy-related topics are being debated, and there are conflicting national and societal interests, such as those regarding genetically modified organisms. But this is merely one more reason why these issues should be studied jointly: to arrive at the best solutions before collisions arise in the trade arena or elsewhere. Research collaboration is clearly a non-zero-sum game: It benefits all partners and contributes to the solution of common, complex, and vitally important challenges.


In the late 1960s, a group of working-class residents and professional activists in Trefann Court, Toronto, convinced City Hall to abandon a proposal for the urban renewal of their neighbourhood. In the years since, activists and historians have celebrated Trefann Court as a defining blow to technocratic urban planning and the launch point for the career of reform politician John Sewell. Drawing on the archive left by Graham Fraser, the author of the foundational work on Trefann Court, this article introduces an alternative reading that centres the locally embedded organizing of working-class women residents. A closer look at the motivations of activists like Edna Dixon demonstrates a need to ground Trefann in a longer history of poor and working-class people's efforts to mobilize.


Objectives To model the relationship between EQ-5D-3L and EQ-5D-5L and examine how differences impact on cost-effectiveness in case studies. Methods We used two datasets that included both EQ-5D-3L and EQ-5D-3L from the same respondents. The EuroQoL dataset (n=3551) included patients with different diseases and a healthy cohort. The National Databank (NDB) dataset included patients with rheumatoid disease (n=5205). We estimated a system of ordinal regressions in each dataset using copula models, to link responses to the 3L instrument to 5L and its tariff, and vice versa. Results were applied to nine cost-effectiveness studies. Results Best-fitting models differed between EuroQoL and NDB datasets in terms of the explanatory variables, copulas and coefficients. In both cases the coefficients of the covariates and latent factor between -3L and -5L were significantly different, indicating that the two instruments are not a uniform realignment of the response levels for most dimensions. In the case studies, moving from 3L to 5L caused a decrease of up to 87% in incremental QALYs gained from effective technologies in almost all cases. ICERs increased, often substantially. Conversely, one technology with a significant mortality gain saw increased incremental QALYs. Conclusion 5L shifts mean utility scores up the utility scale towards full health and compresses them into a smaller range, compared to -3L. Improvements in quality of life are valued less using 5L than with 3L. 3L and 5L can produce substantially different estimates of cost effectiveness. There is no simple proportional adjustment that can be made to reconcile these differences.


The production of taonga is a sovereign Māori tradition closely guarded in contemporary Māori society. Many Contemporary Māori Artists observe taonga principles in their work though these qualities are stifled within the New Zealand art system. In the 1990s these subjects were fiercely debated resulting in Contemporary Māori Art being defined differently to the ancestral tradition of taonga. This debate created a rupture, which disturbs the practice of Māori art and is a major concern in the emerging practice of Māori art history. Reviving earlier arguments for Contemporary Māori Art to be defined according to the principles of taonga, this thesis applies the concept of 'contemporary taonga' to the art works of Brett Graham (Ngāti Koroki Kahukura), to argue that taonga production is active in contemporary Māori life and offers a new method to reconcile Māori art histories.  The practice of Kaupapa Māori research and theory enlivened the taonga principles of Brett Graham's art works. Intensive accounts of two art works, produced a decade apart, reveal 'contemporary taonga' to be a collaborative process involving recognition and instrumentalisation by authoritative Māori viewers. Kahukura (1996), produced in response to the debates was, however, overwhelmed by competing interests of the time. Āniwaniwa (2006) undertook an arduous journey—to the centre of the Western art world in order to be shown within the artist's tribal rohe—where Ngāti Koroki Kahukura kaumātua recognised Graham as a tohunga. Iwi leaders also employed Āniwaniwa in their Treaty of Waitangi claims process, functionalising the art work as taonga to support the advancement of their people. Āniwaniwa then left New Zealand to play a role in the formalisation of an international indigenous art network.   As a type for contemporary taonga, Āniwaniwa is an expansive model to introduce this concept to contemporary art discourse. The impact of this concept is yet to be realised though immediately reconciles long-standing issues in Māori art. 'Contemporary taonga' has the potential to radically reconcieve, and reorganise, Contemporary Māori Art practice and history according to the practice of ancestral Māori traditions and determined by the authority and agency of Māori people.


The filamentous cyanobacterium, Pseudanabaena, has been shown to produce reticulate patterns that are thought to be the result of its gliding motility. Similar fossilized structures found in the geological record constitute some of the earliest signs of life on Earth. It is difficult to tie these fossils, which are billions of years old, directly to the specific microorganisms that built them. Identifying the physicochemical conditions and microorganism properties that lead microbial mats to form macroscopic structures can lead to a better understanding of the conditions on Earth at the dawn of life. In this article, a cell-based model is used to simulate the formation of reticulate patterns in cultures of Pseudanabaena. A minimal system of long and flexible trichomes capable of gliding motility is shown to be sufficient to produce stable patterns consisting of a network of streams. Varying model parameters indicate that systems with little to no cohesion, high trichome density and persistent movement are conducive to reticulate pattern formation, in conformance with experimental observations.


As a result of our study, the new data on distribution of Stellagama stellio (Linnaeus, 1758) in Anatolia were obtained. The meristic pholidolial, metric (morphometric) characters and color-pattern features of specimens of S. stellio collected from five new localities in Turkey were given in detail and compared with regard to literature. Specimens examined in the present study were similar to S. s. daani specimens mentioned in the literature.


Huge reservoirs of natural gas have been discovered offshore the southern coast of Tanzania. The country might become a large producer of gas, and a potential exporter of liquefied natural gas (LNG) during the next decades. With this comes the promise of significant petro-revenues and prospects of natural gas-driven structural transformation, bringing with it improved economic and social conditions for the people of Tanzania. However, experiences from other countries suggest that it is challenging to turn natural resource wealth into improved welfare for the majority of citizens. In this brief, we focus on challenges related to the management of government revenues, particularly tax. We argue that continued efforts to expand the nonresource tax base is essential for successful management of the resource wealth. CMI BRIEF


A novel simulation technique which uses an event-driven VHDL simulator to model phase noise behavior of an RF oscillator for wireless applications is proposed and demonstrated. The oscillator phase noise characteristic comprising of flat electronic noise, as well as, upconverted thermal and 1/f noise regions are described using time-domain equations and simulated as either accumulative or non-accumulative random perturbations of the fundamental oscillator period. The VHDL simulation environment was selected for its high simulation speed, the direct correlation between the simulated and built circuits and its ability to model mixed-signal systems of high complexity. The presented simulation technique has been successfully applied and validated in a Bluetooth transceiver IC fabricated in a digital 130 nm process.


Named Entity Recognition (NER) is a crucial upstream task in Natural Language Processing (NLP). Traditional tag scheme approaches offer a single recognition that does not meet the needs of many downstream tasks such as coreference resolution. Meanwhile, Tag scheme approaches ignore the continuity of entities. Inspired by one-stage object detection models in computer vision (CV), this paper proposes a new no-tag scheme, the Whole-Aware Detection, which makes NER an object detection task. Meanwhile, this paper presents a novel model, Entity Candidate Network (ECNet), and a specific convolution network, Adaptive Context Convolution Network (ACCN), to fuse multi-scale contexts and encode entity information at each position. ECNet identifies the full span of a named entity and its type at each position based on Entity Loss. Furthermore, ECNet is regulable between the highest precision and the highest recall, while the tag scheme approaches are not. Experimental results on the CoNLL 2003 English dataset and the WNUT 2017 dataset show that ECNet outperforms other previous state-of-the-art methods.


A chitinozoan biozonation is established for the Upper Ordovician rocks of the Sennette valley in the Fauquez area and the Asquempont area, revising the existing chitinozoan biozonation of the Brabant Massif. The chitinozoans of fi ve formations (the Ittre, Bornival, Huet, Fauquez and Madot formations) are studied from 70 samples. The chitinozoan biozonation is correlated with Baltoscandia and the Avalonian Upper Ordovician type sections in the U.K. This correlation provides an accurate dating of the studied formations. A megaslumping event, affecting a part of the Ittre and Bornival Formation and causing the overturning of a pile of sediments estimated at minimum 200 m thick, may be placed in the mid Oandu (Cheneyan, middle Caradoc, early "Stage 6"). The volcanic rocks in the Fauquez area, formally thought to be restricted to the Ashgill, are confi ned to the late Caradoc - early Ashgill timespan. In addition to this, this paper presents new lithostratigraphical data on the Ittre Formation and the lower member of the Bornival Formation.


The current (1996) national probabilistic seismic-hazard maps utilize information about geologic structure and tectonics of the central and eastern U.S. to compensate for uncertainty that arises from the short seismicity record. Geology was incorporated into the maps mainly as seven source zones that are delineated in three distinct ways. The North American stable continental region is divided into two large zones, the sparsely seismic Precambrian craton and the more active Phanerozoic rim. Five other source zones are much smallerqthe Wabash Valley source zone is within the craton, whereas the Reelfoot Rift, eastern Tennessee, Charleston, and Charlevoix source zones are in the Phanerozoic rim of the continent. We document these zones and explain and justify their use. The seven zones provide a foundation from which we suggest a criterion for including more geology in future maps.


A mathematical model has been derived to describe the pressure drop along the conveying and reverse sections of a partly full, fully intermeshing co-rotating twin-screw extruder. The model extends previous work on single screw extrusion, whereby the Benbow-Bridgwater model of paste rheology is combined with a force balance on a plug of paste. Experiments to verify the model have been carried out using a laboratory scale twin-screw extruder fitted with a hydraulic feeder and a modified barrel section allowing the collection of pressure data at numerous points along the extruder. Initial results suggested that the model was able to correctly predict the trends observed but underestimated the absolute values of the pressure. This was attributed to a change in the rheology of the paste due to viscous heating effects. Further experimental work was carried out to determine the relationship between the rheological parameters and temperature; this allowed a temperature correction to be made to the initial data after which the agreement with the predictions was greatly improved.


Recent advancement in bio-medical field has attracted researchers toward BCG signal processing for monitoring the health activities. There have been various techniques for monitoring physical activities such as (SCG) Seismocardiography, Electrocardiography (ECG) etc. BCG signal is a measurement of reaction force applied for cardiac ejection of blood. Various measurement schemes and systems have been developed for BCG detection and measurement such as tables, beds, weighing scale and chairs. Weighing scales have been promising method for measurement of BCG signal because of less cost of implementation, smaller size etc. but these devices still suffer from the artifact which are induced due to subject movement or motion during signal acquisition or it can be caused due to floor vibrations. Artifact removal is necessary for efficient analysis and health monitoring. In this work we address the issue of artifact removal in BCG signal by proposing a novel method of signal processing. According to proposed approach raw signal is pre-processed and parsed to independent component analysis which provides the decomposed components and later k-means is applied to detect the components which are responsible for artifact and removed. Proposed approach is compared with existing method and shows better performance in terms of artifact removal.


The synchronous behavior of interacting communities is studied in this paper. Each community is described by a tritrophic food chain model, and the communities interact through a network with arbitrary topology, composed of patches and migration corridors. The analysis of the local synchronization properties (via the Master Stability Function approach) shows that, if only one species can migrate, the dispersal of the consumer (i.e., the intermediate trophic level) is the most efiective mechanism for promoting synchronization. When analyzing the efiects of the variations of demographic parameters, it is found that the factors that are stabilizing the single community also tend to favor synchronization. Global synchronization is flnally analyzed by means of the Connection Graph Method, yielding a lower bound on the value of the dispersion rate that guarantees the synchronization of the metacommunity for a given network topology.


ABSTRACT Following infection with Neospora caninum, BALB/c mice were shown to be resistant to an acute infection but developed a latent chronic infection. However, BALB/c background gamma interferon (IFN-γ)-deficient mice were sensitive to the acute infection. Since the immune response in IFN-γ-deficient mice is scantly known, we examined the function of macrophages, major histocompatibility complex (MHC) class II expression, T-cell responses, and serum cytokine levels in the mice. All IFN-γ-deficient mice died within 9 days of infection with N. caninum, whereas those treated with exogenous IFN-γ lived longer. Although N. caninum invaded various organs in both types of mice at the early stage of infection, the parasite was not detected in the brains of resistant hosts until 21 days postinfection (dpi). Peritoneal macrophages from IFN-γ-deficient mice were activated by exogenous IFN-γ associated with inhibition of parasite growth and nitric oxide production as were those from BALB/c mice. IFN-γ-deficient mice failed to increase MHC class II expression on macrophages. Moreover, BALB/c mice induced T-cell proliferation while IFN-γ-deficient mice did not. However, in vivo treatment with exogenous IFN-γ induced up-regulated MHC class II expression in IFN-γ-deficient mice. BALB/c mice treated with an antibody to CD4 showed an increase in morbidity and mortality after parasite infection. In serum, significant levels of IFN-γ and interleukin-4 (IL-4) were detected in resistant hosts, whereas IL-10 was detected in IFN-γ-deficient mice. The levels of IL-12 in IFN-γ-deficient mice were higher than those in BALB/c mice at 7 dpi. The present study indicates that early IFN-γ production has a crucial role in the activation of peritoneal macrophages for the induction of protective immune responses againstN. caninum.


Context
A child with symptoms placing him within the autism spectrum and with urine biochemical markers consistent with fungal (Aspergillus) colonization of the gastrointestinal tract was first treated with the antifungal probiotic Saccharomyces boulardii. A dramatic Herxheimer reaction provided strong clinical indications that mold colonization might be a factor in causing autism in this child.

Objective
The child's physician (Baker) wished to try a more potent antifungal therapy, itraconazole, in an attempt to reverse the child's autism since itraconazole is an especially effective agent against Aspergillus species.

Setting
The child was treated as an outpatient by the physician who had first diagnosed the child with an autism spectrum disorder.

Participant
A child with an autism spectrum disorder.

Intervention
The major intervention was increasing doses of the antifungal drug itraconazole. However, the Sporanox® brand of itraconazole gave the best results. The child was monitored twice weekly with liver function tests which remained normal throughout the therapy.

Results
The child had a complete recovery from all the symptoms of autism and in addition developed excellent academic, athletic, and musical skills. The recovery coincided with a marked reduction of urine markers of Aspergillus colonization.

Conclusions
Escalation of the dose of itraconazole resulted in a complete loss of all symptoms of autism over the course of three months. This rapid complete reversal of autism is consistent with several articles proposing mold in general and Aspergillus specifically as a potential major cause of autism.


DSM–5 includes 2 competing models of borderline personality disorder (BPD) in Sections II and III. Empirical comparisons between these models are required to understand and improve intermodel continuity. We compared Section III BPD traits to Section II BPD criteria assessed via semistructured interviews in 455 current/recent psychiatric patients using correlation and regression analyses, and also evaluated the incremental predictive power of other Section III traits. In addition, we tested the hypothesis that self-harm would incrementally predict BPD Criterion 5 over the Section III traits. Results supported Section III BPD traits as an adequate representation of traditional BPD symptomatology, although modifications that would increase intermodel continuity were identified. Finally, we found support for the incremental validity of suspiciousness, anhedonia, perceptual dysregulation, and self-harm, suggesting possible gaps in the Section III PD trait definitions.


A survey was conducted from November 2009 to April 2010 to determine how importers of pork define 7 predetermined quality categories (food safety, customer service, eating quality, product specification, packaging, visual characteristics, and production history) and to estimate willingness-to-pay (WTP) and establish best-worst (B/W) scaling (rank) for the 7 quality categories. Interviews were conducted in Hong Kong/China (n = 83), Japan (n = 48), Mexico (n = 70) and Russia (n = 54) with importers of U.S. pork or those who had purchased U.S. pork from distributors in the last 3 yr. Interviews used dynamic routing software and were structured such that economic factors for purchase were addressed first, allowing all responses to focus on quality. Questions about WTP and B/W were asked and then each respondent was asked to define what each quality category meant to them. Generalized linear mixed models were used to analyze frequency data. Over 70% of interviewees in Hong Kong/China, Japan, and Mexico responded that purchase price was influential in deciding whether or not to purchase imported pork. This number was lower in Russia, where respondents stated tariff rates were also important, indicating market access was a larger issue in Russia. Food safety was the most important quality category (price was not included as a part of quality) for imported pork followed by specifications. Respondents indicated some form of government inspection was how they defined food safety, whereas product size, weight, and subcutaneous fat were all included in the definition of specifications. Interviewees were more likely to pay premiums for customer service and less likely to pay premiums for packaging (P < 0.05). The premiums that were willing to be paid for guarantees of quality for imported pork variety meats were numerically lower than for whole muscle cuts or processed products. A guarantee associated with food safety of processed pork products was found to be the quality attribute for which importers would be willing to pay the highest premium. Production history was found to be the least important quality attribute for importers of all types of U.S. pork, except those in Japan. Exporters could increase profitability if a guarantee of customer service was made. Price, tariffs, and exchange rates are important to pork importers; these results indicated that if certain quality attributes could be guaranteed, exporters could increase profitability.


Objective: to determine the atherosclerotic vascular risk profile in patients who died of sudden cardiac death, treated in "Julio Trigo Lopez" Hospital during the period 20072011. Methods: an observational, analytical, and non-matched case-control study was conducted. Results: some atherosclerotic vascular risk factors were expressed significantly in the group of patients who died of sudden cardiac deaths (hypertension, smoking, obesity, ischemic heart disease, left ventricular hypertrophy, alcoholism). It was confirmed that the existence of 3 or more factors exponentially increases the risk of sudden cardiac death on total cardiovascular mortality. A significant presence of coronary atherosclerotic lesions was found in both groups, which determined the onset of coronary thrombosis and/or acute myocardial infarction that predominated in sudden deaths. Conclusions: there were no specific risk factors for sudden cardiac death. Some of them showed an increased probability for this type of event. The search for a risk profile for sudden cardiac death should be oriented to the research design which would include vital statistics of global mortality and not the specific causes (cardiovascular).


There are many possible sources of DC and variable frequency AC power, yet standard commercial appliances require constant frequency AC power. This paper present an alternative inverter principle, which simplifies control hardware and reduces switching losses compared to PWM techniques, yet provides acceptable voltage and current waveforms. This is achieved by the use of reinjection techniques, which are applied to a forced commutated inverter.<<ETX>>


Graphics processing units leverage on a large array of parallel processing cores to boost the performance of a specific streaming computation pattern frequently found in graphics applications. Unfortunately, while many other general purpose applications do exhibit the required streaming behavior, they also possess unfavorable data layout and poor computation-to-communication ratios that penalize any straight-forward execution on the GPU. In this paper we describe an efficient and scalable code generation framework that can map general purpose streaming applications onto a multi-GPU system. This framework spans the entire core and memory hierarchy exposed by the multi-GPU system. Several key features in our framework ensure the scalability required by complex streaming applications. First, we propose an efficient stream graph partitioning algorithm that partitions the complex application to achieve the best performance under a given shared memory constraint. Next, the resulting partitions are mapped to multiple GPUs using an efficient architecture-driven strategy. The mapping balances the workload while considering the communication overhead. Finally, a highly effective pipeline execution is employed for the execution of the partitions on the multi-GPU system. The framework has been implemented as a back-end of the StreamIt programming language compiler. Our comprehensive experiments show its scalability and significant performance speedup compared with a previous state-of-the-art solution.


Abstract. The temperature of photovoltaic modules is modelled as a dynamic function of ambient temperature, shortwave and longwave irradiance and wind speed, in order to allow for a more accurate characterisation of their efficiency. A simple dynamic thermal model is developed by extending an existing parametric steady-state model using an exponential smoothing kernel to include the effect of the heat capacity of the system. The four parameters of the model are fitted to measured data from three photovoltaic systems in the Allgau region in Germany using non-linear optimisation. The dynamic model reduces the root-mean-square error between measured and modelled module temperature to 1.58 K on average, compared to 3.03 K for the steady-state model, whereas the maximum instantaneous error is reduced from 20.02 to 6.58 K.


This case gives an overview of the Coca-Cola System in Chile and focuses on the Coca-Cola Chile Foundation (CCFCH), a non-profit organization dedicated to education. Created in 1992 with donations from Coca-Cola de Chile S.A. (CCCH) and the bottling companies Embotelladora Andina S.A., Coca-Cola Embonor S.A. and Coca-Cola Polar S.A., the foundation now faces an expansion dilemma in its most important program, the TAVEC Laboratories. Under this program the CCFCH donated interactive scientific laboratories to public schools as a way to help them teach physics, chemistry and biology. Each donation had a cost of approximately US$60,000. In December 2004, Eduardo Romo, Corporate Relations Manager of the CCCH and General Manager of the CCFCH, was reviewing a proposal to simplify the laboratories, reducing their cost, and thus allowing for more of them to be implemented in schools throughout Chile. The case focuses on this decision as it implies analyzing the pros and cons of the proposal and the overall role of the social initiative for the Coca-Cola System in Chile. Teaching Purpose: To examine the motivations for companies to create social initiatives and explore effective ways to implement, develop and manage them.


Longitudinal train dynamics (LTD) simulations have played an instrumental role over many decades in the development of longer trains, especially freight trains. Modern LTD simulations with individual vehicles considered and incorporating detailed modelling of couplings started during the 1960s. Since then, LTD simulators have been reported from all around theworld. It is well known that the researchers and engineerswidely used longitudinal train dynamic simulators in their projects and studies, but are there differences in these simulators and simulation approaches? Due to the commercial aspects and/or Intellectual Property issues, simulators were developed within separate institutions using developers' experience and limited testing data and publications. Currently, there are no standards or standard questions to assess the correct implementation of LTD analyses and the state of LTD studies. Given this situation, the Centre for Railway Engineering initiated the International Benchmarking of LTD Simulators (hereafter referred to as the benchmark). This special issue describes the benchmarking questions that have been sent to many research, commercial and government institutions and organisations across five continents and presents various papers that report on the approaches and advances in the topic of LTD. For all participants, this benchmark exercise offered a good opportunity to validate their research and access the expertise of other research institutions. More work will be necessary by researchers as this topic progresses with the analyses of all submitted results and contributions. Taking into account the current state of knowledge in this specific area and the editors' personal experience, researchers and engineers were invited to cover topics related to numerical and experimental studieswith the application of LTD simulators and approaches for this special issue. These included issues related to locomotive/train and wagon/train interaction, train dynamics simulation, vehicle/track resistance modelling, and modelling the behaviour of air brake, coupler and draft gear systems. This list of topics can be extended because recent research activities show that this area requires implementation of multidisciplinary knowledge and approaches. Some of proposed topics have been extensively covered by this issue, but there are still a great number of topics left untouched in the special issue providing opportunities for further research and development in this field. Wewould like to thank all researchers who have participated in the benchmark andwho have published their scientific ideas and developments. We hope that readers will enjoy reading the papers included in this special issue.


This paper describes how state and local departments of public health (DPHs) in the United States build HIV "out of care" lists using "Data to Care" guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). DPHs use these lists in prevention outreach and contact tracing. DPHs build out of care lists using data sent to them by laboratories every time a clinician orders routine HIV-related bloodwork for a patient. If a person does not report bloodwork, or shows poor results, they can be placed on an out of care list. The processes DPHs use to construct and refine lists show how HIV care data changed during the 2010s, transforming from a class of sensitive information with many restrictions governing its exchange into a class of data that is accompanied by a mandate for public health actors to exchange and utilize it in a variety of programs. Re-uses of HIV care data for prevention follow confirmation that antiretroviral therapy for HIV is an effective way to prevent transmission, a paradigm called "treatment as prevention." DPH personnel enhance lists by conducting investigations, matching lists against medical records, utilizing people search tools such as LexisNexis, searching social media platforms, and other methods. This can include collaboration with correctional and law enforcement agencies — a concern in jurisdictions where HIV nondisclosure is criminalized. Public health re-uses of HIV data are done without consent. This paper focuses on the labor and ethics of building HIV out of care lists, drawing on archival health policy data, fieldwork with the HIV/AIDS workforce in metropolitan Atlanta, and a literature review.


Depression is an independent risk factor for morbidity and mortality in patients with coronary artery disease (CAD). Altered autonomic nervous system (ANS) activity, a common feature of depression, is also a risk factor for cardiac events in patients with CAD. Heart rate variability (HRV) reflects ANS activity, and reduced HRV predicts morbidity in cardiac populations. The purpose of this study was to determine whether differences in HRV exist between depressed and nondepressed patients with CAD. Twenty-one depressed inpatients, with angiographically documented CAD were retrospectively matched to 21 nondepressed CAD patients by sex, age, and smoking status. Demographic, medical, psychological interview data, and 24-hour ECG recordings were obtained. Depressed subjects had significantly lower HRV, or trends toward lower HRV, than nondepressed subjects, even after controlling for severity of CAD. Subject groups did not differ on left ventricular ejection fraction, history of myocardial infarction, or any other relevant medical variable assessed. These results suggest that depression is associated with decreased HRV in patients with CAD, and may help to explain the increased rates of cardiac events observed in CAD patients with depression.


The effects of N-methyl- and N-ethyb-N'-nitro-N-nitmosogua nidines and methyl and ethyl methanesulfonateson DNA syn thesis in C3H/i 0T½mouse embryo fibmoblastsand Chinese hamster V79 cells have been analyzed by measuring the in corporation of tnitiated thymidine into the trichboroaceticacid insoluble fraction and the purified DNA of the cells, and by measuringthe fraction of parental DNA replicated by equilib nium density sedimentation in neutral cesium chloride gra dients. The inhibition of DNAsynthesis produced by the alkyl ating agents at @9O% lethal dose was uniformly associated with the cytotoxicity of all four of the agents in both lines of cells. The molar concentrations of the compounds required to inhibit DNA synthesis or produce cytotoxicity also correlated well in a bog-logplot, with their potencies in producing DNA lesions that are associated with mutagenesis. However, equi toxic doses of the alkylating agents that inhibited DNAsynthe sis to equal extents produced frequencies of mutationsand of alkali-labile DNA lesions that differed by about an order of magnitude, which did not produce major departures from the linear correlation apparent in the above log-log plot. Therefore, the kinds of DNA lesions that inhibit DNA synthesis and are associated with cytotoxicity in cells treated with the above alkylating agents are not uniformly associated with alkali-labile DNA lesions and gene mutations. Thus, evaluations of muta genic potency, by assays of DNA synthesis and cytotoxicity, will be falsely high for compoundsthat predominantlyproduce DNAlesions that inhibit DNAsynthesis and are associatedwith cytotoxicity. Such evaluationswill be falsely low for compounds that predominantly produce.DNA lesions that are mutagenic.


This paper presents progress on the design of a "smart elevator" to be used in conjunction with deep sea ROV operations. Deep sea elevators are gravity driven untethered platforms used to deliver and or return items from the sea floor. Elevators are used when items are too large or heavy to be handled by the ROV, or when the turn around time to recover and redeploy the ROV system for sample removal is prohibitive. Unfortunately, efficiency is complicated by the precision with which elevators can be landed at a specific location on the bottom and recovered on the surface because of currents and the inadequately known hydrodynamic effects. To improve the effectiveness of elevators we have investigated the gliding behavior of an elevator outfitted with wing foils in a variety of configurations. The foils are able to produce forward motion and turning that could be used to drive the elevator against a current or to a specific position on the seafloor. The results presented here for 1/10th and 1/2 scale models show achievable glide slopes of foward to downward velocity approaching .5 for situations representative of typical operating conditions.


AIM: To assess the effect of non-selective ETA/B (LU 302872)and selective ETA (LU 302146) antagonist on pancreatic histology and ultrastructure of acinar cells in connection with trypsinogen activation in early caerulein-induced AP.METHODS: Male Wistar rats with caerulein-induced AP,lasting 4 h, were treated i.p. with 10 and 20 mg/kg b.w.of each antagonist. Edema, inflammatory infiltration,necrosis and vacuolization of acinar cells in the pancreas were scored at 0-3 scale. Free active trypsin (FAT), total potential trypsin (TPT) after activation with enterokinase,and index of trypsinogen activation (%FAT/TPT) were assayed in pancreatic homogenates.RESULTS: In untreated AP, the edema, inflammatory infiltration, necrosis and vacuolization increased as compared to control healthy rats (P<0.01). None of the treatment exerted any meaningful effect on the edema and inflammatory infiltration. The selective antagonist increased slightly the necrosis score to 0.82±0.06 at higher dose (P<0.05) vs 0.58±0.06 in untreated AP. The nonselective antagonist increased slightly the vacuolization score to 2.41±0.07 at higher dose (P<0.01) vs 1.88±0.08in untreated AP. The decrease in the number of zymogen granules, disorganization of endoplasmic reticulum,autophagosomes and cytoplasmic vacuoles were more prominent in treated AP than in untreated AP groups.%FAT/TPT in untreated AP increased about four times (18.4±3.8 vs4.8±1.3 in control group without AP, P<0.001).Treatment of AP with both antagonists did not affect significantly augmented trypsinogen activation.CONCLUSION: The treatment with endothelin-1 receptors (non-selective ETA/B and selective ETA) antagonists has essential effect neither on the edema and inflammatory infiltration nor on trypsinogen activation observed in the early course of caerulein-induced AP. Nevertheless a slight increase of the necrosis and vacuolization score and some of the ultrastructural data could suggest the possibility of their undesired effects in caerulein-induced AP at investigated


The use of dental implants in replacing missing teeth is an integral part of restorative dental treatment. Use of conventional complete dentures is associated with several problems such as lack of denture stability, support and retention. However, when mandibular complete dentures were used with two or more implants, an improvement in the patients' psychological and social well-being could be seen. There is general consensus that removable implant-supported overdentures (RISOs) with two implants should be considered as the first-choice standard of care for an edentulous mandible. This treatment option necessitates the use of attachment systems that connect the complete denture to the implant. Nevertheless, each attachment system has its inherent advantages and disadvantages, which should be considered when choosing a system. The first part of this article provides an overview on options available to restore the mandibular edentulous arch with dental implants. Different types of attachment systems, their features and drawbacks are also reviewed.


The distribution of \g=D\5-3\g=b\-hydroxysteroid dehydrogenase was examined in the ovaries of hens aged 8\p=n-\30weeks. At all ages the interstitial cells (both thecal and stromal) gave a positive formazan reaction, but a positive reaction was not obtained in the granulosa cells of follicles less than 5 mm diameter in mature or immature birds. Since activity was restricted to follicles of larger size than this, it is concluded that steroidogenesis occurs in the granulosa cells for only the last 7\p=n-\8 days of their life in the preovulatory follicle.


This study attempts to identify possibilities for creating a unified offline and online customer experience across communication channels in a retail company. With the current technological development and the trend of customers shifting more to the online channel, the customers also expect more from this communication channel. Within the online channel a development into an omni- channel (unified experience across channels) approach is leading to new possibilities, and keeping up with the development will support companies to keep their competitive advantage.The study reviews a case (Mio) with an offline channel represented by several large scale retail stores in Sweden, and also providing an online channel as a website meant to complement the stores. The study reviews previous literature in the field of customer experience both online and offline, omni channel retailing, and marketing. This is the foundation, together with a benchmark case (comparison case), and a survey to gain further insight and widen the knowledge.The results indicates that there are specific features which could contribute to a more positive and seamless experience across channels for the customer. These are information availability, quality and consistency across channels. As well as, functionality for purchases, order handling and tracking, and interactive customer service online. This could preferentially be fused in one place as a customers personal profile, allowing for a portal with everything the customer needs during all phases of the shopping experience. These findings provide insight into how the online channel could be used to better complement the offline channel, working synergistically. Future research is needed to validate these initial findings.


Since 2000 the South African rand has been among the most volatile emerging market currencies, occasionally experiencing sharp depreciations. These sharp fluctuations in the value of the currency cannot be adequately explained by models of flow-supply and flow-demand of currency or by movements in fundamental factors, yet few studies have employed an asset pricing approach to explain exchange rate variability in emerging markets. To remedy this gap, we use an event study methodology to measure the impact of monetary policy announcements and political events on the exchange value of the South African rand. Using daily exchange rate data over the period March 1, 2000 to December 31, 2014, we find that the rand is highly responsive to both monetary policy announcements and political events. A total of 28 out of 43 monetary policy announcements displayed significant cumulative abnormal returns, while four political events, most notably the Marikana massacre, had significant impact on the rand.


This master thesis explores ways to apply geometric deep learning to the field of numerical simulations with an emphasis on the Navier-Stokes equations. With the recent success of Deep Learning, there should be room for experimentation also in the field of fluid simulations. Here we lead such an experiment. We propose an end-to-end differentiable architecture that allow object-to-mesh predictions of fluid simulations. We provide a comparison with a baseline and visual results on three different datasets: airfoils, backward facing steps and winged drones.


1. The coefficient of sliding friction between the ventral or lateral surface of a grass-snake varies from 0.2 to 0.6 according to the nature of the surface over which the animal is moving. 2. The distribution and magnitude of the external forces acting against a moving snake has been determined for (i) an animal moving through a close-fitting zigzag channel, and (ii) an animal gliding past one or more rigid pegs. The pattern of muscular effort required for these two types of motion is described. Forward movement is due to the operation of the vertebral column as a series of levers. 3. For a freely moving snake the propulsive force is of the order of one-third of its total body weight; when motion is artificially restrained a grass-snake can sustain a pull of four or five times its own weight. 4. The circumstances under which a snake can exhibit typical terrestrial locomotion as opposed to the movements exhibited in water are fundamentally similar to those of a quadruped such as a toad.


Different from land power system, marine high power rectifier power transformation device usually use thyristor as power devices. Thyristor open-circuit or short-circuit fault may occur if don't handle in time, the power side and load side will have serious consequences. Studying fast detection device of the thyristor fault has an important significance for rapidly inhibiting the spread of fault effects, reducing the maintenance and repair difficulty, improving reliability and maintainability of power transformation device. In this paper, two kinds of methods have been studied and designed for online real-time detection in controlled rectifier power supply thyristor short-circuit or open-circuit fault diagnosis. Structure of two kinds of devices, diagnostic procedures and introduction of key technologies were given, and submitted the test results. Test results show that two kinds of methods can quickly and easily complete controlled rectifier thyristor fault diagnosis and fault location, it is practical and applicable in real world application.


Although previous studies report on the effect of street washing on ambient particulate matter levels, there is a lack of studies investigating the results of street washing on the emission strength of road dust. A sampling campaign was conducted in Madrid urban area during July 2009 where road dust samples were collected in two sites, namely Reference site (where the road surface was not washed) and Pelayo site (where street washing was performed daily during night). Following the chemical characterization of the road dust particles the emission sources were resolved by means of Positive Matrix Factorization, PMF (Multilinear Engine scripting) and the mass contribution of each source was calculated for the two sites. Mineral dust, brake wear, tire wear, carbonaceous emissions and construction dust were the main sources of road dust with mineral and construction dust being the major contributors to inhalable road dust load. To evaluate the effectiveness of street washing on the emission sources, the sources mass contributions between the two sites were compared. Although brake wear and tire wear had lower concentrations at the site where street washing was performed, these mass differences were not statistically significant and the temporal variation did not show the expected build-up after dust removal. It was concluded that the washing activities resulted merely in a road dust moistening, without effective removal and that mobilization of particles took place in a few hours between washing and sampling. The results also indicated that it is worth paying attention to the dust dispersed from the construction sites as they affect the emission strength in nearby streets. ©Taiwan Association for Aerosol Research.


In breast cancer, the most interesting sites showing the regional spread of the disease are the axillary and internal mammary lymph nodes. Monoclonal antibodies are specific in detecting tumor metastases. The aim of this study is to present a simple method whereby the immunolymphoscintigraphic approach is introduced whether bimanually or parasternally. Twenty consecutive female breast cancer patients were imaged with 99mTc-labeled monoclonal intact IgG1 antibody (BW 431/26, Marburg, Federal Republic of Germany), which reacts with carcinoembryonic antigen. The labeling yield was in 10 cases over 98%. The patients had a suspicion of scar recurrency, skin metastases, or palpable lymph node affixions. The patients were imaged twice after bimanual s.c. injections (at 2-3 h and 20-22 h); the bimanual injections were given into first and fourth interdigital interstitial spaces and in one case parasternally following Sappey's lines. A total of 105 lesions in 18 patients were detected. Twenty-five lesions in 18 patients were verified cytologically or histologically. Sensitivity of morphological data was 84%. In supraclavicular and axillary lymph node regions the sensitivity was 90% and the specificity 88% compared to other findings. Most of the undetected lesions were skeletal. The carcinoembryonic antigen concentration in serum had no correlation with the findings. The human anti-murine antibodies showed in two patients of 15 elevated response. This immunolymphoscintigraphy method could be of clinical importance because it enables detection of both regional and systemic lesions in a common type of cancer. The method is sensitive, except for bone lesions, and might be applied for screening purposes in selected patients.


The main motivation is to investigate meson properties in the quark model to understand the model applicability and generate possible improvements. Certain modifications to the model are suggested which have been inspired by fundamental QCD properties (such as running coupling or spin dependence of strong interactions). These modifications expand the limits of applicability of the constituent quark model and illustrate its weaknesses and strengths. The meson properties studied include meson spectra, decay constants, electromagnetic and electroweak form-factors and radiative transitions. The results are compared to the experimental data, lattice gauge theory calculations and other approaches. Modifications to the quark model suggested in this dissertation lead to a very good agreement with available experimental data and lattice results.