Background The impact of tuberculosis (TB) is exacerbated in Africa because of the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) pandemic. Pulmonary tuberculosis (PTB) diagnosis is difficult in HIV-infected patients and negative sputum results are more common which leads to diagnostic delay and increases morbidity and mortality. Extra-pulmonary samples such as stool may be easier to obtain and our approach may therefore significantly improve PTB detection in people living with HIV. Objective To detect Mycobacterium tuberculosis from the stool of HIV sero-positive individuals suspected of pulmonary TB. Method A total of 117 HIV-infected individuals from three public health facilities in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia were enrolled consecutively in the study. Paired morning sputum and stool samples were simultaneously collected from anti-retroviral therapy (ART) naïve individuals living with HIV and suspected for PTB. The diagnostic accuracy of the smear microscopy, culture and region of difference (RD)9–based polymerase chain reaction (PCR) in stool was compared with the accuracy of sputum testing. Chi-square test and kappa value were used to compare different method used. Results Sputum culture positivity for mycobacteria was confirmed in 33(28.2%) of the study subjects. Of 33 individuals positive for sputa culture, 10 individuals were observed to be stools culture positive. Of the 84 individuals negative for mycobacteria by sputum culture, three (3.6%) were stool culture positive and thus, the sensitivity and agreement between stool culture as compare to sputum culture were 30.3% and 0.33, respectively. Of 117 individuals, 11(9.4%) were sputum smear positive and of 11 sputum smear positive three were also stool smear positive. While of the 106 sputum smear negative individuals', only one was stool smear positive resulting in 12.1% sensitivity and 0.18 agreements against sputum culture. On the other hand, the sensitivity of RD9-based PCR directly on stool was 69.7% by considering sputum culture as a reference standard. Moreover, RD9-based PCR directly on sputum detected 7(6.0%) individuals who were sputum culture negative for M. tuberculosis. Conclusion M. tuberculosis was detected in stool of individuals living with HIV who were negative for sputum smear microscopy and culture. Hence, examination of stool samples alongside with sputum samples increases the detection of PTB in individuals living with HIV.


The Large Area Telescope aboard the Fermi spacecraft has detected more than 200 $\gamma$-ray pulsars
since its launch in 2008. By concurrently fitting standard geometric model light curves onto Fermi
and radio data, researchers have constrained the inclination and observer angles of a number of
pulsars. At first this was done by comparing observed and modelled light curves by eye, and later
via statistical approaches. We fit modelled light curves of 16 pulsars to radio and $\gamma$-ray data by
optimising a custom test statistic that we have developed for combining light curves across the
two wavebands, taking their disparate errors into account. We present geometrical constraints
found using this process, and compare them with results found by eye or using other statistical
methods.


It is widely accepted that Government and the conventional entrepreneurs cannot adequately meet all citizens' social needs especially in developing countries, hence the need for social entrepreneurship to fill this gap. Social entrepreneurs' are persons who create and manage innovative entrepreneurial organizations or ventures whose primary mission is the social change and development. Social entrepreneurship combines the resourcefulness of traditional entrepreneurship with a mission to change society. It offers insights that stimulate ideas for more socially acceptable and sustainable business strategies and organizational forms. This study provides a comparative analysis of five cases of social entrepreneurships that have been widely recognized as successful in India. The paper suggests factors associated with successful social entrepreneurship that leads to significant changes in the social and economic contexts for poor and marginalized groups. In this study propositions about core innovations, leadership qualities, organizational arrangements and scaling up in social entrepreneurship that produces social transformation leverage have been analyzed. The study recognized the differences across the 5 cases in their innovation forms. In addition, capacities for bridging and adaptive leadership appeared to be present in most successful initiatives. Two initiatives SEWA and SPARC were characterized by both high reach and high transformational impacts that were achieved through many organizational arrangements.


Vector quantization algorithms have long been used to find a finite set of exemplars which represent a data set to within an a priori error tolerance. Such a representation is essential in codebook-based data compression and transmission. The present study considers the situation where the data to be encoded consists of subclasses. The codebook must provide information compression within the several subclasses; however, minimization of interclass errors is of equal importance. We present modifications to a basic vector quantization (VQ) algorithm which adapts it to the multiclass vector quantizing setting. We then explore the behavior of the modified algorithm on selected benchmark applications. We show, in particular, that overlapping subclasses can be accommodated by the algorithm.


An approach for structural optimization with uncertainty is proposed in this paper, which is based on stochastic finite element analysis and an optimality criteria method. The sensitivity analysis of the structural failure probability via design variables are performed by difference method according to stochastic finite element analysis. The information of the partial derivatives is incorporated into the optimality criteria method. The optimization of the section of a beam with uncertainty, as a numerical example, is illustrated by the approach. The results demonstrate the efficiency of the approach.


Radio is the ultimate auditory display: all information is conveyed aurally to a listener. Sound from a radio invokes visual images in the imagination of a listener, the theatre of the mind. Listening to a radio voice creates images of a person talking from a studio live to their audience, providing information and entertainment. However, much radio is pre-recorded, produced in a radio studio at a different time and replayed on cue, often controlled by sophisticated computer systems. The art of radio production relies on developing excellent listening skills. The craft of radio production now relies extensively on digital audio technology. How has the process of radio production changed with the introduction of new technology, particularly the visualization of audio on a computer screen? Have these changes affected the listening skills of radio producers and has this affected the quality of radio production? This paper explores these issues based on individual interviews with experienced radio producers and the author's experience in training new producers.


The direct effect of temperature on the structural integrity of lysosomes was studied. Destruction of these particles was minimum in hypothermia but increased sharply in hyperthermia. A studied concentrated lysosome fraction proved to be heterogeneous in thermoresistance. The lysosome membranes started melting at 12.5 degrees C and melted completely at 38.5 degrees C. The results of the study show that the surrounding temperature may produce a direct damaging effect on the lysosomes, and support the assumption that the lysosomes play an important role as one of the key factors of the molecular mechanisms of the formation of a pathological condition in generalized hypo- and hyperthermia.


One of the fundamental mobile phone security problems in GSM is the absence of base station authentication, which allows man-in-the-middle attacks. During such attacks, a third party activates a fake base station, which acts as a bypass to the network, thus switching off the encryption and intercepting the user's communications. 3G mobile networks enforce mutual authentication but this can be circumvented if the 3G band is jammed by the attacker, forcing the phone to connect using GSM. GSM and newer standards provide a user alert indicating that the encryption has been switched off, which is called a Ciphering Indicator. In the present paper, different approaches followed by various manufacturers concerning the Ciphering Indicator are investigated. A total of 38 different mobile phones ranging from old to new and from simple to smart-phones that were produced by 13 different manufacturers were intercepted using a GSM testing device in order to document their reactions. Four approaches were identified with some manufacturers choosing not to implement the feature at all. It was also found that in the cases in which the feature was actually implemented, no universal indication was used and it was seldom documented in the phones' manuals. User awareness regarding the Ciphering Indicator and security issues was also investigated via an empirical survey employing more than 7,000 users from 10 countries and was found to be significantly low.


Cells react to viral infection by exhibiting IFN-based innate immune responses and integrated stress responses, but little is known about the interrelationships between the two. In this study, we report a linkage between these two host-protective cellular mechanisms. We found that IFN regulatory factor (IRF)7, the master regulator of type I IFN gene expression, interacts with activating transcription factor (ATF)4, a key component of the integrated stress responses whose translation is induced by viral infection and various stresses. We have demonstrated that IRF7 upregulates ATF4 activity and expression, whereas ATF4 in return inhibits IRF7 activation, suggesting a cross-regulation between the IFN response and the cellular integrated stress response that controls host innate immune defense against viral infection.


In this article, I introduce a new command, xtdcce2, that fits a dynamic common-correlated effects model with heterogeneous coefficients in a panel with a large number of observations over cross-sectional units and time periods. The estimation procedure mainly follows Chudik and Pesaran (2015b, Journal of Econometrics 188: 393–420) but additionally supports the common correlated effects estimator (Pesaran, 2006, Econometrica 74: 967–1012), the mean group estimator (Pesaran and Smith, 1995, Journal of Econometrics 68: 79–113), and the pooled mean group estimator (Pesaran, Shin, and Smith, 1999, Journal of the American Statistical Association, 94: 621–634). xtdcce2 allows heterogeneous or homogeneous coefficients and supports instrumental-variable regressions and unbalanced panels. The cross-sectional dependence test is automatically calculated and presented in the estimation output. Small-sample time-series bias can be corrected by "half-panel" jackknife correction or recursive mean adjustment. I carry out a simulation to prove the estimator's consistency.


BACKGROUND
Cardiovascular disease (CVD) is the most common adverse event of maintenance hemodialysis (MHD), in which serum soluble klotho plays a vital role. Tanshinone IIA (tan) has been used to protect the cardiovascular system for hundreds of years. This study was performed to investigate the effects of tan on klotho level and cardiovascular events of MHD patients.

METHODS
Totally 112 patients were enrolled in this study, and their demographic, clinical, and laboratory characteristics were collected at admission. Serum soluble klotho, carotid intima-media thickness (CIMT), and abdominal aorta calcification (AAC) level were measured to determine their relationship. Seventy-one patients were given sodium tan sulfonate injection according to their willingness, while 41 patients were not given any specific treatment. The endpoint events were recorded, including cardiovascular mortality, nonfatal cardiovascular events, and all-cause mortality.

RESULTS
All patients were divided into two groups on whether the level of serum soluble klotho was more than medium or not. CIMT and AAC grade showed significant differences between 2 groups (group of low level of klotho versus group of high level of klotho, CIMT: 1.03±0.22 vs. 0.85±0.20 mm, P<0.001; AAC grade: 5.04±3.93 vs. 1.69±2.30 points, P<0.001). All patients were followed up for at least one year. The results revealed that using tan improved the level of serum soluble klotho (490.23±153.97 pg/mL after using tan versus 444.49±143.32 pg/mL before using tan, P=0.042). Kaplan-Meier curves showed that cardiovascular event-free survival was significantly higher in patients given tan (P=0.040) compared with patients not given tan.

CONCLUSIONS
Tan effectively increases the level of serum soluble klotho and further reduces the incidence of cardiovascular events in MHD patients.


Background— Many small, randomized, controlled trials have evaluated the effectiveness of blood as compared with crystalloid cardioplegia for myocardial protection during cardiac surgery. Blood cardioplegia provides a closer approximation to normal physiology, which may translate into measurable clinical benefits. This meta-analysis describes the effectiveness of blood cardioplegia in lowering adverse postoperative outcomes. Methods and Results— MEDLINE, EMBASE, and the Cochrane registry of controlled trials were searched for clinical trials. The search was restricted to peer-reviewed English language publications of randomized controlled trials that primarily compared blood and crystalloid cardioplegia in adult patients. Each trial was blindly assessed and abstracted by 2 reviewers. The primary outcomes were: low output syndrome (LOS), myocardial infarction (MI), and death. Surrogate outcomes included postoperative creatinine kinase MB (CKMB) increase. Random effects summary odds ratio (OR) for binary outcomes, and weighted mean difference for continuous outcomes were calculated. A total of 34 trials were included. The majority of trials were conducted in patients undergoing elective CABG surgery (n=18). The incidence of LOS was decreased significantly with blood cardioplegia (OR, 0.54; 95% confidence interval [CI], 0.34 to 0.84; P=0.006; 879 patients, 10 trials). The incidence of MI and death were similar between treatment groups (MI: OR, 0.78; 95% CI, 0.54 to 1.13; 4316 patients, 23 trials) (death: OR, 0.80; 95% CI, 0.46 to 1.40; 4022 patients, 17 trials). CKMB release after surgery at 24 hours was reduced with blood cardioplegia (5.9 U/L; 95% CI, 1.6 to 10.2; P=0.007; 821 patients, 7 trials). Conclusions— Blood cardioplegia provides superior myocardial protection as compared with crystalloid cardioplegia, including lower rates of LOS, and early CKMB increase, whereas the incidence of myocardial infarction and death are similar.


Ontologies and ontology-based information systems are becoming more commonplace in knowledge management. For engineering applications such as product design, ontologies can be utilised for knowledge capture/reuse and frameworks that allow for the integration and collaboration of a wide variety of tools and methods as well as participants in design (marketing/sales, engineers, customers, suppliers, distributors, manufacturing, etc.) who may be distributed globally across time, location, and culture. With this growth in the use of ontologies, it is critical to recognise and address errors that may occur in their representation, maintenance and utilisation. Passing undetected and unresolved errors downstream can cause error avalanche and could diminish the acceptance, further development and promise of significant impact that ontologies hold for product design, manufacturing, or any knowledge management environment within an organisation. This paper categorises errors and their causal factors, summarises possible solutions in ontology and ontology-based utilisation, and puts forward an ontology-based Root Cause Analysis (RCA) method to help find the root cause of errors. Error identification and collection methods are described first, followed by an error taxonomy with associated causal factors. Finally, an error ontology and associated SWRL (Semantic Web Rule Language) rules are built to facilitate the error taxonomy, the root cause analysis and solution analysis for these errors. Ultimately, this work should reduce errors in the development, maintenance and utilisation of ontologies and facilitate further development and use of ontologies in knowledge management.


Obtaining information about crystallization kinetics is crucial to understand the transformation speed of phase-change materials and select materials for phase-change memory. In the current work, we first investigated the temperature dependence of the resistance of undoped and In-doped Sb4Te films and found that the crystallization temperature (Tp) and 10-year data retention of Sb4Te increased significantly when it was doped with In. We further employed ultrafast differential scanning calorimetry to explore the crystallization kinetics of In-doped Sb4Te with various compositions, and found In20(Sb4Te)80 to have has the fastest crystallization rate (∼7.1 m s−1 at 726.2 K). The In20(Sb4Te)80 film exhibited a high Tp (∼503 K), better data retention ability (∼418.7 K for 10 years), and ultrafast crystallization with strong non-Arrhenius behavior. These results indicated In20(Sb4Te)80 to be a promising candidate for use in applications of phase change materials.


The Second National Fadama Development Project was borne out of the need to ensure all year round agricultural production using available Fadama resources in Nigeria and also a follow – up to Fadama 1 that was adjudged successful. Its approach was Community Driven Development (CDD) with emphasis on social inclusiveness and empowerment of the rural people to take charge of their development agenda. The Project focused on increasing sustainably the incomes of Fadama Users via empowerment in terms of capacity building, advisory services, acquisition of productive assets and rural infrastructure development. As at mid – term, beneficiaries have increased their income by about 25%. So far, an estimated 2.3 million Fadama households have benefited from the expansion in incomes and wealth (asset) derived from the previously unavailable services provided by the project. The project had created about 126, 000 permanent jobs and an additional savings of more than $40.8 million have been realized by the majority of the participating states.


The Perception of Voice Onset Time by English-Speaking L2 Learners of Spanish with an Extended Partial Immersion Experience Jeremy Leigh Ingersoll Department of Spanish and Portuguese, BYU Master of Arts For adult learners of a second language, the similarities and differences in acoustic properties between their native language and the language they are learning can affect how they perceive the sounds of the new language. How learners perceive these acoustic properties will directly affect their ability to communicate. According to the Perceptual Assimilation Model (PAM) (Best 1995), learners will perceive the sounds of a language that is new to them based on how similar or different the sounds are from the learner's native language. Between the English and Spanish language, there are some sounds that share acoustic properties and others that show contrast. Such is the case with the stop consonants /p/, /t/, /k/, /b/, /d/, and /g/. These consonants exist in both Spanish and English, and though they are similar, there are important differences in how they should be perceived and produced. Despite the differences, these sounds are likely to be confused by L2 learners due to similarity in acoustic cues. This study will use Best's Perceptual Assimilation Model (PAM) as a framework. It will test the L2 perception of native English-speaking adults who are L2 learners of Spanish, have spent between 18 and 24 months speaking the target language as Latter-day Saint (LDS or Mormon) missionaries in the United States, and who are also currently university students enrolled in an upper-level Spanish course. It will focus on their perception of the acoustic cue of Voice Onset Time (VOT) of stop consonants.


Savings and financing are two significant products of Islamic banking in Indonesia. This study examines the relationship between these two products and key macroeconomic factors. The data was gathered from the Central Bank of Indonesia (BI), the Financial Services Authority (OJK), and the Indonesia Statistics Bureau (BPS). The profit-sharing rate (PSR) and profit and loss sharing (PLS) were examined using a mixture of the addition and balanced average approaches, whereas the relationships among the variables were analyzed using Pearson's and Spearman's rank correlation coefficient tests. The findings show a statistically significant correlation between the investigated variables. It was discovered that interest rates, inflation, the consumer price index, the currency rate, and the stock price index all influence savings and financing. There was a negative association between savings and inflation, but there was no relationship between savings and profit-sharing ratios. These findings have policy development implications for Islamic banking in Indonesia in terms of savings and financing options.


This paper uses British data to examine the effects of dividend taxes on investors' relative valuation of dividends and capital gains. British data offer great potential to illuminate the dividends and taxes question, since there have been two radical changes and several minor reforms in British dividend tax policy during the last twenty-five years. Studying the relationship between dividends and stockprice movements during different tax regimes offers an ideal controlled experiment for assessing the effects of taxes on investors' valuation of dividends. Using daily data on a small sample of firms, and monthly data on a much broader sample, we find clear evidence that taxes change equilibrium relationships between dividend yields and market returns. These findings suggest that taxes are important determinants of security market equilibrium, and deepen the puzzle of why firms pay dividends.


This paper addresses the understandability of smart contracts when compared to their traditional legal form. Our method is an exploratory case study conducted with 36 students in information systems (IS). We conclude that smart contracts written in Solidity language are understandable by users with a background in programming languages such as Java and Python. The main advantage of smart contracts is the clarification of complex and/or disperse clauses in legal agreements. A key disadvantage is the lack of support to contextual information. An hybrid of the two forms can contribute to the clarification of legal contracts, but also raises challenges to keep both versions synchronized. In the advent of blockchain-related implementations, our work contributes to the adoption of smart contracts in IS courses and prepares futures research to evaluate the understandability of smart contracts by IS experts, legal advisors, and end users.


Image-guided neurosurgery requires a method for compensating for the loss in registration accuracy as the surgery progresses due to tissue deformation subsequent to craniotomy at the start of a case. Modeling methods may be able to update the preoperative scans by estimating the tissue movement as surgery progresses. For these techniques to be useful, knowledge of the intrinsic mechanical and hydrodynamical tissue property parameters will be important. Preoperative DTI may be able to supply patient-specific data on model property parameters influenced by anisotropy in the flow field patterns. In this paper, we show simulation results on a model constructed from an actual clinical exam where DTI data was available. Specifically, we describe a simple technique for extracting the tensor map embodied in the DTI images and applying it within the model during tissue deformation calculations. The computed pressure field shows signs of localized disturbances which are congruent with zones having a high degree of anisotropy.


One of weak point of PS/clay nanocomposite is the lack of interfacial adhesion between clay and polystyrene matrix. In this research, the radical sites on the clay surface were induced via the plasma technique. The optimum condition for this process was investigated and used to treat bentonite before grafting styrene on clay structure. The increase of basel-spacing of clay was not noticeable from XRD spectra, but the FT-IR spectra showed characteristic peak of polystyrene implied that the styrene grafting was occurred on the outer surface of the clay. The impact strength is quite improved, especially for the higher ratio of styrene/clay during the grafting step.


Abstract Over the last 2 decades there has been renewed interest in developing advanced nuclear reactors and fuel cycles. Many of these advanced design concepts require or can use fuel elements that contain actinides recycled from light water reactor spent fuel. Irradiation of these elements in fast nuclear reactors is supposed to transmute them into less toxic isotopes and reduce their mass. Since transmutation is not efficient, recycling into new advanced reactor fuel must occur repeatedly to achieve a substantial reduction in mass. The introduction of this technology will create long-term proliferation risks and require safeguarding not only of plutonium, but also of the other target actinides: neptunium, americium, and curium. These elements will be present in isotopic mixtures for which information on their critical masses is unavailable. This paper provides data on critical masses and spontaneous fission neutron background for the isotopic compositions of the actinides of interest and their evolution in light water reactor fuel of various burnups and during spent fuel storage. These data are complemented by generic estimates of total inventories of these elements present in full-scale partitioning and transmutation fuel cycles being considered for commercial scale and of the time periods required for significantly reducing their proliferation potential.


Studies were carried out during May 1997 to January 1998 in Kishoregani district in Bangladesh to investigate the production potential of carp polyculture in combination with Amblypharyngodon mola in seasonal ponds. The preliminary results indicate that A. mola can be successfully cultured in small seasonal ponds in polyculture with carp. This practice can result in an increase in the households' consumption of small fish which have a very high content of calcium, iron and vitamin A. In addition to the nutritional benefits, it can also provide additional income through sale of carp and surplus small fish.


Two hundred seventy-three crossbred steer calves were fed until slaughter (November through May, 189 days) in either semi-confinement (partial overhead shelter, 88 sq. ft. per steer, concrete pen surface) or conventional open lots (windbreak, 448 sq. ft. per steer, dirt surface with mound). Within each housing system, cattle were provided with no bedding or bedding in the form of oat straw or shredded newspaper. Bedding was provided in amounts necessary to maintain a relatively dry, manure-free area large enough for all cattle to lay down at the same time. There were no interactions between housing systems or bedding treatments (P>.10). Feed intake did not dilfer (P>.10) between treatments at any time during the study. On the other hand, overall (day 1 through 189) daily gain was 8.6% greater for steers fed in semi-confinement pens compared to open lots (P<.001). Bedding also improved overall gain by 8.3% (Pc.001) compared to no bedding, with newspaper generally being as effective as straw. Similar benefits of housing and bedding were evident in feed efficiency as well. Housing and bedding improved overall feed efficiency 8.2% and 6.8%, respectively (P<.001). Less newspaper than straw was used in this study (232 vs 266 Ib per 100 head per day) and break-even values were $141.88 and $1 14.21 per ton, respectively. Both housing and bedding improved feedlot performance, with bedding being as effective in open lots containing mounds as on concrete. Newspaper can be an effective replacement for more conventional bedding materials.


To investigate the left‐ and right‐sided distribution of ovarian malignant surface epithelial tumours, data were collected on 209 women undergoing first‐line surgery for Stage I and II disease. Considering the unilateral cancers, the observed proportion of left‐sided lesions was 35/54 (65%) in the endometrioid, 20/45 (44%) in the serous, 19/35 (54%) in the clear cell, 13/29 (45%) in the mucinous, 2/8 (25%) in the mixed, and 2/5 (40%) in the undifferentiated histological type group. The proportion of left‐sided unilateral endometrioid cancers was significantly different from the expected 50% (χ21, 4.74, P= 0.03) and very similar to that previously observed for benign endometriotic cysts, constituting further evidence in favour of a possible development of endometrioid cancers from the latter lesions.


Blame games between governing and opposition parties are a characteristic feature of domestic politics. In the EU, policymaking authority is shared among multiple actors across different levels of governance. How does EU integration affect the dynamics of domestic blame games? Drawing on the literatures on EU politicisation and blame attribution in multi-level governance systems, we derive expectations about the direction and frequency of blame attributions in a Europeanized setting. We argue, first, that differences in the direction and frequency of blame attributions by governing and opposition parties are shaped by their diverging baseline preferences as blame avoiders and blame generators; secondly, we posit that differences in blame attributions across Europeanized policies are shaped by variation in political authority structures, which incentivize certain attributions while constraining others. We hypothesize, inter alia, that blame games are "Europeanized" primarily by governing parties and when policy-implementing authority rests with EU-level actors. We test our theoretical expectations by analysing parliamentary debates on EU asylum system policy and EU border control policy in Austria and Germany.


Disguise and hiding the identity are regarded as disgrace in many literary works. The same term is welcomed in certain states to such extent that disguise helps its owner to surpass the naïve stage to gain maturity . This research tries to shed more light on this theme so as to distinguish the hated disguise and the noble one to help readers to solve the ambiguity of this subject. The research sheds light on selected plays of William Shakespeare because of the overuse of this subject in his plays. Disguise is studied with emphasis on both sides of disguise due to playwright's authentic pen. The research tries to hold a logical comparison between the characters before and after disguise in matters of maturity and vision. Disguise appears as a weapon with two edges. The disguise that emerges in this research does not include on the disguise of dressing, but concentrates the disguise of behavior to be regarded as the most dangerous one.


Infection with high risk human papillomavirus (hrHPV) plays a central aetiological role in cervical cancer. Still, cervical carcinogenesis is a multistep process which requires other events in addition to hrHPV infection. Recent data have resulted in the following concept of cervical carcinogenesis: hrHPV infects normal squamous epithelium. In most cases this will not lead to a lesion or at worst give rise to a regressing low grade cervical intraepithelial neoplasia (CIN). Both phenomena involve viral clearance. Only persistent hrHPV infections will lead to a high grade CIN lesion, a subset of which may undergo malignant transformation. At the transition of CIN 2 to CIN 3 deregulated expression of the viral oncogenes E6 and E7 takes place, resulting in genetic instability. Subsequently, activation of the telomere-lengthening enzyme, telomerase occurs, at the result of which cells obtain an infinite replication capacity. Ultimately, successive allele losses occur at different chromosomal locations which, followed by a clonal outgrowth result in an invasive carcinoma.


Over the years, the complexity of space missions has dramatically increased with more of the critical aspects of a spacecraft's design being implemented in software. With the added functionality and performance required by the software to meet system requirements, the robustness of the software must be upheld. Traditional software validation methods of simulation and testing are being stretched to adequately cover the needs of software development in this growing environment. It is becoming increasingly difficult to establish traditional software validation practices that confidently confirm the robustness of the design in balance with cost and schedule needs of the project. As a result, model checking is emerging as a powerful validation technique for mission critical software. Model checking conducts an exhaustive exploration of all possible behaviors of a software system design and as such can be used to detect defects in designs that are typically difficult to discover with conventional testing approaches.


answering the above questions, in so far as it can be regarded as consisting of 8 inbred populations and all possible F 1 crosses between these. The records available are extremely comprehensive and provide effective environmental control, thus compensating as far as possible for the lack of experimental randomization of error. Consequently, the population can be analysed as a dialled cross. Great care has been taken in detailing the collection of the data and their reliability, and the general discussion pertinent to this results in an absorbing account of the history and sociological structure of Hawaii itself. The conclusions reached are: (1) First generation hybrids between races in man are intermediate in size, mortality, and morbidity between the parental groups. (2) At the present time, human populations do not represent co-adapted genetic combinations which are disrupted by outcrossing. It is unfortunate, however, that the authors have not seen fit to describe in greater detail the statistical methods applied, and that many of the conclusions reached appear to be dominated by a personal controversy. MICHAEL OAKES


To provide an ability to characterize local features for the chaotic neural network (CNN), Gauss wavelet is used for the self-feedback of the CNN with the dilation parameter acting as the bifurcation parameter. The exponentially decaying dilation parameter and the chaotically varying translation parameter not only govern the wavelet self-feedback transform but also enable the CNN to generate complex dynamics behavior preventing the network from being trapped in the local minima. Analysis of the energy function of the CNN indicates that the local characterization ability of the proposed CNN is effectively provided by the wavelet self-feedback in the manner of inverse wavelet transform and that the proposed CNN can achieve asymptotical stability. The experimental results on traveling salesman problem (TSP) suggest that the proposed CNN has a higher average success rate for obtaining globally optimal or near-optimal solutions.


Purpose: To determine the specific components of family history and personal characteristics related to disease perceptions about breast, colon, and ovarian cancers.Methods: Baseline, cross-sectional data on 2,505 healthy women aged 35–65 years enrolled from 41 primary care practices in the cluster-randomized Family Healthware™ Impact Trial, assessed for detailed family history and perceived risk, perceived severity, worry, and perceived control over getting six common diseases including breast, colon, and ovarian cancers.Results: Participants provided family history information on 41,841 total relatives. We found evidence of underreporting of paternal family history and lower perceived breast cancer risk with cancer in the paternal versus maternal lineage. We observed cancer-specific perceived risks and worry for individual family history elements and also found novel "spillover" effects where a family history of one cancer was associated with altered disease perceptions of another. Having a mother with early-onset breast or ovarian cancer was strongly associated with perceived risk of breast cancer. Age, parenthood, and affected lineage were associated with disease perceptions and ran counter to empiric risks.Conclusions: Understanding patients' formulation of risk for multiple diseases is important for public health initiatives that seek to inform risk appraisal, influence disease perceptions, or match preventive interventions to existing risk perceptions.


Background: Psychological therapy services are often required to demonstrate their effectiveness and are implementing systematic monitoring of patient progress. A system for measuring patient progress might usefully 'inform supervision' and help patients who are not progressing in therapy. Aims: To examine if continuous monitoring of patient progress through the supervision process was more effective in improving patient outcomes compared with giving feedback to therapists alone in routine NHS psychological therapy. Method: Using a stepped wedge randomized controlled design, continuous feedback on patient progress during therapy was given either to the therapist and supervisor to be discussed in clinical supervison (MeMOS condition) or only given to the therapist (S-Sup condition). If a patient failed to progress in the MeMOS condition, an alert was triggered and sent to both the therapist and supervisor. Outcome measures were completed at beginning of therapy, end of therapy and at 6-month follow-up and session-by-session ratings. Results: No differences in clinical outcomes of patients were found between MeMOS and S-Sup conditions. Patients in the MeMOS condition were rated as improving less, and more ill. They received fewer therapy sessions. Conclusions: Most patients failed to improve in therapy at some point. Patients' recovery was not affected by feeding back outcomes into the supervision process. Therapists rated patients in the S-Sup condition as improving more and being less ill than patients in MeMOS. Those patients in MeMOS had more complex problems.


Evolutionary changes in the health care delivery system and reimbursement of health care services in current healthcare scenario has dramatically changed the resource assessment and health care utilization. Not only that, it has also placed a greater emphasis on quality of services provided through different post acute care settings. Kissito Healthcare has designed and implemented a unique collaborative model named as Collaborative Patient Care (CPC) Model. Compared to standard care, CPC Model aims to address the organization's mission to deliver quality patient-centred care and demonstrate greater continuity of care, a shorter duration of stay and improved patient outcomes. The CPC Model is based on four tenets: process, quality, cost and outcome with the patient considered as the centre for the tenets. Evidence-based best practices and medicine are embedded in the care processes. Care is coordinated and integrated across all elements and in a culturally and linguistically appropriate manner. The intended outcomes of the CPC Model include reduction in preventable rehospitalization, reduction in mortality and readmission rates, continuity of care across all post acute settings, patient driven shorter rehabilitation and recuperation periods as opposed to Payment Setting. The model is theory-based, collaborative and multidisciplinary primarily focusing on patient-centred care. But evidence of the CPC Model's effectiveness remains inconclusive although there are positive outcomes based on intermediary results. Empiric evidence is needed to validate the effectiveness of the model. If proven effective, model can be widely implemented and translated to a national standard based on evidences.


During the lithospheric buildup to an earthquake, complex physical changes occur within the earthquake hypocenter. Data pertaining to the changes in the ionosphere may be obtained by satellites, and the analysis of data anomalies can help identify earthquake precursors. In this paper, we present a deep-learning model, SeqNetQuake, that uses data from the first China Seismo-Electromagnetic Satellite (CSES) to identify ionospheric perturbations prior to earthquakes. SeqNetQuake achieves the best performance [F-measure (F1) = 0.6792 and Matthews correlation coefficient (MCC) = 0.427] when directly trained on the CSES dataset with a spatial window centered on the earthquake epicenter with the Dobrovolsky radius and an input sequence length of 20 consecutive observations during night time. We further explore a transferring learning approach, which initially trains the model with the larger Electro-Magnetic Emissions Transmitted from the Earthquake Regions (DEMETER) dataset, and then tunes the model with the CSES dataset. The transfer-learning performance is substantially higher than that of direct learning, yielding a 12% improvement in the F1 score and a 29% improvement in the MCC value. Moreover, we compare the proposed model SeqNetQuake with other five benchmarking classifiers on an independent test set, which shows that SeqNetQuake demonstrates a 64.2% improvement in MCC and approximately a 24.5% improvement in the F1 score over the second-best convolutional neural network model. SeqNetSquake achieves significant improvement in identifying pre-earthquake ionospheric perturbation and improves the performance of earthquake prediction using the CSES data.


The purpose of this contest is to encourage undergraduates to begin a book collection or add to an already existing collection.


Alternative wheat storage policies which maximise the expected present value of returns for consumers, producers, a monopoly storage agency and society as a whole are derived using a dynamic programming model. Results are compared with those from an earlier simulation model, and are found to justify higher investment in storage capacity compared with that suggested by the simulation model. The model is extended to derive optimal storage policies if production follows a stochastic cobweb process.


In recent years, state departments of education have undertaken strategies to support local school improvement. Some emphasize school wide improvement while others focus specifically on instructional improvement. This study, based on case study methodology, sought to determine what factors were most important in the process of actually putting in place an improvement effort. The study indicated that the implementation within the school could be best thought of in four stages—initiation, initial implementation, complete implementation, and institutionalization. Each stage contained several factors that seemed essential to success. These factors included district support of several types as well as characteristics and actions in the school. Also certain factors/actions on the part of the state helped to support these efforts. These factors are described in this article. The types of school improvement programs reported here were found to work best in local environments that lacked turmoil, were not overloaded with innovation, were small in size and low in complexity at both the school and district levels.


ABSTRACT The search for alternatives to increase productivity and sustainability of livestock production in the Amazon region without increasing deforestation is challenging. Mixed pastures of grasses with forage peanut (Arachis pintoi) have shown positive economic impacts. However, gaps in the knowledge of the reproductive biology of A. pintoi have limited the development of new cultivars adapted to the environmental variations in the Brazilian Amazon. Pasture consortiums of Brachiaria humidicola with forage peanuts (cv. Mandobi) resulted in a 42% increase in weight gain productivity. New cultivars better adapted to the Amazon climate should bring even greater gains. We evaluated the mating system in twenty A. pintoi accessions, and approximately 40 offspring per accession genotyped with eight microsatellites (or markers). The parameters of genetic diversity and inbreeding, the outcrossing rate and coancestry were calculated. The observed heterozygosity was significantly higher and the fixation index was significantly lower in adults compared with the offspring. The crossing rate was variable among genotypes (2 to 80%), and the mean outcrossing rate was 36%. These results indicate that pollinator presence in pastures can influence gene flow in A. pintoi more than expected. Arachis pintoi presented a mixed mating system with a predominance of selfing, and families presented inbreeding and different levels of relatedness. New strategies of genotype conservation are needed to avoid pollinator-mediated crossing between accessions.


On its face, the connection between insider trading regulation and the state of mind of the trader or tipper seems intuitive. Insider trading is a form of market abuse: taking advantage of a secret to which one is not entitled, generally in breach of some kind of fiduciary-like duty. This chapter examines both the legal doctrine and the psychology associated with this pursuit. There is much conceptual confusion in how we define unlawful insider trading — the quixotic effort to build a coherent theory of insider trading by reference to the law of fraud, rather than a more expansive market abuse standard — which leads to interesting psychological questions as to the required state of mind. Is it always simple greed? What if there is an element of unconscious misperception — or rationalization — at work? My sense is that the causal explanations for what is charged as insider trading are sometimes quite murky and not easily explained as pure greed. The chapter thus tries to connect the law of insider trading to a more sophisticated approach to state of mind, motivation and causation.


We capture student interactions in an e-learning community to construct a semantic web (SW) to create a collective meta-knowledge structure guiding students as they search the existing knowledge corpus. We use formal concept analysis (FCA) as a knowledge acquisition tool to process the students virtual surfing trails to express and exploit the dependencies between web-pages to yield subsequent and more effective focused search results. We mirror social navigation and bypass the cumbersome manual annotation of webpages and at the same time paralleling social navigation for knowledge. We present our system KAPUST2 (Keeper and Processor of User Surfing Trails) which constructs from captured students trails a conceptual lattice guiding student queries. We use KAPUST as an e-learning software for an undergraduate class over two semesters. We show how the lattice evolved over the two semesters, improving its performance by exploring the relationship between 'kinds' of research assignments and the e-learning semantic web development. Course instructors monitored the evolution of the lattice with interesting positive pedagogical consequences. These are reported as well in this paper.


Introduction One of the causes of death in patients with chronic kidney disease on hemodialysis was due to the problem of uncontrolled fluid intake. The prevalence at Dr. Soetomo ireported hospital as much as 80% increase weight more than 6%.  Nursing education in fluid restriction was expected to improve adherence to fluid intake, and therefore contributes to the achievement of the ideal IDGW was  less than 2%. Method Design in this study was pre-experiment. The population in the study were all patients with chronic kidney disease undergoing hemodialysis. The samples  obtained were 28 respondents who met to the inclusion and exclusion criteria. Purposive  sampling technique was used in this study. The independent variabel was education. The dependent variabel was Inter Dialitic Weight Gain, Qb and systolic blood pressure. Body weight was observered before and after hemodialysis. Blood pressure was observered during hemodialysis. Data were analyzed using  Wilcoxon Signed Rank test with  significant level of p=0.005. Result The results showed that IDWG (p=0.157); Qb (p=0.007) and systolic blood pressure (p=0.021). IDWG patients did not undergo significant changes before and after education. Qb and systolic blood pressure of patients experiencing significant changes before and after education. Nursing educations  provides significant effect on the patient s fluid intake compliance with indicator Qb and systolic blood pressure. Conclusions Nursing educations would  provide significant effect on compliance if supported by many factors such as family support advocates, social support and motivation of the patients. The provision of education should be carried out continuously and sustainably to obtain optimal results in patients undergoing regular hemodialysis , especially in terms of compliance with hemodialysis therapy and fluid therapy regimen , in order to achieve adequate dialysis. In a subsequent study can be developed not only limited to the provision of education to the patient but also involve the patient s family .


Since its discovery more than 20 years ago the structure of a strongly fluorescent compound called "pleurodeles blue" has remained unknown. Isolation of this pigment has been carried out by successive column chromatographies including epichlorohydrin-triethanolamine-Sephadex and phospho-Sephadex. The structural elucidation of a novel pyridone N-glycoside, 1-beta-D-glucopyranosylpyrid-2(1H)-one-6-acetic acid, is based on a detailed study of its high-resolution mass spectra, 1H and 13C-NMR spectra and its hydrolysis to yield D-glucose.


Nurse-midwives often find themselves in situations where current research-based treatment conflicts with established practices that may be ineffective or even harmful. This text provides a roadmap for nurse-midwives who strive to implement change through evidence-based practice by presenting the most current evidence-based research on the care of childbearing women. It is the only book about evidence-based practice for nurse-midwives that encompasses the most controversial areas of practice. The text incorporates the foundations of midwifery and the midwifery model of care throughout. The book discusses the use of electronic databases in examining evidence and identifying best practices. It considers how the current workforce environment affects the practice of nurse-midwifery, and describes evidence-based practices in the care of childbearing women. Each chapter reviews current literature, describes contemporary practices and explores whether these practices are based on scientific evidence. Case studies enhance the examination of evidence and the identification of best practices. Key Features: Focuses on scientific evidence as the framework for the practice of nurse-midwifery Incorporates the hallmarks of midwifery and the midwifery model of care Examines practices that are in conflict with scientific evidence Provides guidance for practising nurse-midwives in implementing best practices based upon scientific evidence


This paper presents a new method for generating group digital signatures. Because of the importance of digital signatures in electronic management of business's documents, it is important to develop strong methods to enhance and authenticate business's documents in electronic environment, especially in sensitive applications. Existing methods normally implement asynchronous encryption algorithms like RSA for producing such digital signatures but we extent the approach by introducing the concept of document's context in order to group selected authenticated users to each context type. This scheme uses alternative steps for signing sensitive documents by classifying data according to their sensitivity such as classified, secrete, or top secret data. The main property of this scheme is that the group signature is a combination of message group and context group signatures. Finally, this scheme generates group signatures with multiple public keys corresponding to group members instead of one public key for each group implemented in most other group signatures schemes.


The direct detection of dark matter particles with mass below the GeV scale is hampered by soft nuclear recoil energies and finite detector thresholds. For a given maximum relative velocity, the kinematics of elastic dark matter nucleus scattering sets a principal limit on detectability. Here, we propose to bypass the kinematic limitations by considering the inelastic channel of photon emission from bremsstrahlung in the nuclear recoil. Our proposed method allows us to set the first limits on dark matter below 500 MeV in the plane of dark matter mass and cross section with nucleons. In situations where a dark-matter-electron coupling is suppressed, bremsstrahlung may constitute the only path to probe low-mass dark matter awaiting new detector technologies with lowered recoil energy thresholds.


BACKGROUND
Surgical site infection rates in the month following surgery vary from 1% to 5%. Due to the large number of surgical procedures conducted annually, the costs of these surgical site infections (SSIs) can be considerable in financial and social terms. Nasal decontamination using antibiotics or antiseptics is performed to reduce the risk of SSIs by preventing organisms from the nasal cavity being transferred to the skin where a surgical incision will be made. Staphylococcus aureus (S aureus) colonises the nasal cavity and skin of carriers and can cause infection in open or unhealed surgical wounds. S aureus is the leading nosocomial (hospital-acquired) pathogen in hospitals worldwide. The potential effectiveness of nasal decontamination of S aureus is thought to be dependent on both the antibiotic/antiseptic used and the dose of application; however, it is unclear whether nasal decontamination actually reduces postoperative wound infection in S aureus carriers.

OBJECTIVES
To assess the effects of nasal decontamination on preventing surgical site infections (SSIs) in people who are S aureus carriers undergoing surgery.

SEARCH METHODS
In September 2016 we searched the Cochrane Wounds Specialised Register, the Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials (CENTRAL) (the Cochrane Library), Ovid MEDLINE, Ovid MEDLINE (In-Process & Other Non-Indexed Citations), Ovid Embase, and EBSCO CINAHL Plus. We also searched three clinical trial registries and the references of included studies and relevant systematic reviews. There were no restrictions based on language, date of publication or study setting.

SELECTION CRITERIA
Randomised controlled trials (RCTs) which enrolled S aureus carriers with any type of surgery and assessed the use of nasal decontamination with antiseptic/antibiotic properties were included in the review.

DATA COLLECTION AND ANALYSIS
Two review authors independently performed study selection, data extraction, risk of bias assessment and GRADE assessment.

MAIN RESULTS
We located two studies (291 participants) for inclusion in this review. The trials were clinically heterogeneous with differences in duration of follow-up, and nasal decontamination regimens. One study compared mupirocin (2% contained in a base of polyethylene glycol 400 and polyethylene glycol 3350) with a placebo in elective cardiac surgery patients; and one study compared Anerdian (iodine 0.45% to 0.57% (W/V), chlorhexidine acetate 0.09% to 0.11% (W/V)) with no treatment also in cardiac surgery patients. The trials reported limited outcome data on SSI, adverse events and secondary outcomes (e.g. S aureus SSI, mortality). Mupirocin compared with placeboThis study found no clear difference in SSI risk following use of mupirocin compared with placebo (1 trial, 257 participants); risk ratio (RR) 1.60, 95% confidence interval (CI) 0.79 to 3.25 based on 18/130 events in the mupirocin group and 11/127 in the control group; low-certainty evidence (downgraded twice due to imprecision). Anerdian compared with no treatmentIt is uncertain whether there is a difference in SSI risk following treatment with Anerdian compared with no treatment (1 trial, 34 participants); RR 0.89, 95% CI 0.06 to 13.08 based on 1/18 events in the Anerdian group and 1/16 in the control group; very low certainty evidence (downgraded twice due to imprecision and once due to risk of bias).

AUTHORS' CONCLUSIONS
There is currently limited rigorous RCT evidence available regarding the clinical effectiveness of nasal decontamination in the prevention of SSI. This limitation is specific to the focused question our review addresses, looking at nasal decontamination as a single intervention in participants undergoing surgery who are known S aureus carriers. We were only able to identify two studies that met the inclusion criteria for this review and one of these was very small and poorly reported. The potential benefits and harms of using decontamination for the prevention of SSI in this group of people remain uncertain.


Background While there have been technical advances in endovascular treatment options for a wide variety of intracranial aneurysms not all aneurysms are suitable for coil embolization. Wide neck aneurysms at a bifurcation have remained technically challenging and coil retention is a valid concern. However, the PulseRider® (Pulsar Vascular, San Jose, CA USA) was recently introduced as an adjunctive device specifically designed to provide a scaffold at the neck of bifurcation aneurysms. The technology is specifically designed for complex bifurcations aneurysms to provide neck reconstruction and coil support. It provides coverage only where it is needed allowing for a low metal to artery ratio; this along with intraluminal patency is a significant advantages over current Y-stenting. Methods This is a review of data on eight (8) patients that had anterior and two (2) that had posterior circulation aneurysms. There were eight (8) females and two (2) males and the average age was 51 (range 41 to 62). The aneurysms were referred to as wide-neck when the dome/neck ratio was 1.5 and/or neck length was 4 mm. Results Overall, 10 patients were treated with the PulseRider device. Of the 10 patients treated two (2) had basilar artery aneurysms that had ruptured more than six (6) years prior and required retreatment. One patient had subarachnoid hemorrhage prior to treatment of a ruptured basilar apex and left middle cerebral artery (MCA) aneurysms but treatment with the PulseRider was for a right unruptured MCA. One patient with an Acom that had ruptured and was treated six (6) months prior had recurrence on follow-up. An unsuccessful attempted clipping was followed by endovascular treatment with PulseRider and coils. One other patient had residual aneurysm on one (1) week follow-up angiogram post craniotomy and was then treated with PulseRider and coils. All but one patient were started on dual anti-platelet therapy (Aspirin and Clopidogrel) prior to endovascular treatment. Because a decision was made to use the PulseRider intra-operatively in one patient there was an adjustment in heparin dosage and intravenous (IV) Aspirin 500 mg. was givenFollow-up angiography was done at 6 months on 2 patients and complete or near-complete (>95%) embolization was achieved in all patients and the branch vessels remained patent. The PulseRider adapted easily to the geometry of the aneurysm and the branch vessels allowing placement inside the aneurysm, in the branch vessels or in a hybrid manner with one side of the arch in the aneurysm and the other in a branch vessel. There was technical success related to placement of the device in all cases. All procedures were completed without complications. There were no neurological deficits. Conclusion Although this is a small series preliminary results are quite promising with good angiographic occlusion of the aneurysms. It will be necessary however, to obtain long term results on a larger series of patients in order to prove the safety and efficacy of this device as a treatment option. Disclosures H. Nahser: 6; C; support for Travel to meetings by various companies. A. Chandran: 6; C; Travel expenses to conferences by various companies. M. Puthuran: 6; C; travel expenses to conferences by various companies. P. Eldridge: 6; C; travel expenses to conferences by various companies. T. Patankar: 6; C; travel expenses to conferences by various companies. T. Goddard: 6; C; Travel expenses to conferences by various companies.


We assess size and scope-related economies in the global advertising and marketing services business. A translog cost function is employed wherein a firm's costs vary according to its scale and two dimensions of the scope of its operations. Parameters of the model are estimated via three stage least squares using annual data for 1989-2001 for an unbalanced panel consisting of the eight largest firms in this industry. A firm's total variable costs are affected by its scale, scope (mix of services and markets served), and by the interaction of the two dimensions of scope. The latter effect suggests that economies of coordination may accompany the strategy of jointly offering advertising and marketing services globally. Estimates indicate that the industry's long-run cost function is subject to very slight economies of scale. Diseconomies of scale accompany growth in volume obtained by extending either breadth of service offerings or market coverage. A small cost advantage, typically of one to two percent, is uniformly associated with joint production of services for the domestic and overseas markets, as compared to splitting up the firm into smaller stand-alone entities. Scope economies of a similar magnitude arise consistently from the joint production of advertising and marketing services.


The principles governing the use of anti-inflammatory drugs in rheumatology are reviewed. Non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs and corticosteroids, either systemic or local, have a transient effect. On the other hand, treatments with basic medications such as gold salts of D-penicillamine induce prolonged beneficial action. They are, however, useful chiefly in rheumatoid arthritis but not in ankylosing spondylitis or variants, nor in gout or osteoarthrosis. The side effects and contraindications are described and discussed.


The overall objective of the BATMAV project is the development of a biologically inspired bat-like Micro-Aerial Vehicle (MAV) with flexible and foldable wings, capable of flapping flight. This first phase of the project focuses particularly on the kinematical analysis of the wing motion in order to build an artificial-muscle-driven actuation system in the future. While flapping flight in MAV has been previously studied and a number of models were realized using light-weight nature-inspired rigid wings, this paper presents a first model for a platform that features bat-inspired wings with a number of flexible joints which allows mimicking the kinematics of the real flyer. The bat was chosen after an extensive analysis of the flight physics of small birds, bats and large insects characterized by superior gust rejection and obstacle avoidance. Typical engineering parameters such as wing loading, wing beat frequency etc. were studied and it was concluded that bats are a suitable platform that can be actuated efficiently using artificial muscles. Also, due to their wing camber variation, they can operate effectively at a large range of speeds and allow remarkably maneuverable flight. In order to understand how to implement the artificial muscles on a bat-like platform, the analysis was followed by a study of bat flight kinematics. Due to their obvious complexity, only a limited number of degrees of freedom (DOF) were selected to characterize the flexible wing's stroke pattern. An extended analysis of flight styles in bats based on the data collected by Norberg and the engineering theory of robotic manipulators resulted in a 2 and 4-DOF models which managed to mimic the wingbeat cycle of the natural flyer. The results of the kinematical model can be used to optimize the lengths and the attachment locations of the wires such that enough lift, thrust and wing stroke are obtained.


In the past year, magnetic resonance has assumed an increasingly important role in the study of patients with epilepsy that now extends beyond its demonstration of neuroanatomy and neuropathology into the fields of neurochemistry, neurometabolism and neurophysiology. For proper use of this information, epileptologists, neurologists and neuroradiologists need to understand the limitations as well as the strengths of this technology. Magnetic resonance literacy will increasingly become an essential part of all of these disciplines.


The 'Design Manual for Roads & Bridges' (DMRB) outlines the mandatory requirements for a ghost island right-turn lane at priority T-junctions on trunk roads in the United Kingdom (UK), based on a threshold for minor road traffic flow of 500 vehicles per day (TD 42/95). However, more recent guidance for local roads (Manual for Streets 2) acknowledges that junctions without ghost island provision "will often be able to cater for higher levels of turning traffic without resulting in significant congestion". This paper provides an assessment of this junction feature, appraising the original DMRB guidance, and testing the assertion in Manual for Streets 2. Utilising research undertaken as part of an MSc dissertation, this paper seeks to establish more applicable guidance for local roads in the UK, specifically targeting urban junctions with a 30mph speed limit and built up environs. Building upon a review of previous research projects, this study includes a modelling assessment of the two key design considerations relating to the provision of ghost islands: junction operation and road safety. The operation of the two junction types (simple and ghost island) has been assessed utilising the empirical traffic capacity model developed by TRRL's Kimber & Coombe (1980), as well as the vehicle delay model developed by Kimber & Hollis (1979). These models are incorporated into the PICADY software programme, which has been utilised to undertake detailed junction operation assessments. The road safety performance of the two junction types has been analysed through use of the collision prediction model developed empirically by Summersgill et al. (1996). The results of the research appear to indicate that ghost islands can provide capacity and delay benefits with respect to non-priority major road traffic, relative to a simple junction. However, the overall operation of a junction can be primarily influenced by the level of capacity and delay for the non-priority minor road traffic, and the results show that ghost islands can increase delays for this stream during the majority of the assessed scenarios. So ghost islands would be preferred to simple junctions for some traffic patterns, with the converse true for others, in terms of capacity and delay implications. These modelling assessments have been utilised to establish recommendations relating to junction operation, to provide a suitable starting point when considering whether to provide a ghost island at an urban priority T-junction on a non-trunk road in the UK. In terms of road safety, the authors research indicates that ghost islands are likely to increase the number of collisions at a priority T-junction. There is, therefore, a case that ghost islands should not be provided at urban priority T-junctions on road safety grounds. The recommendations from the paper aim to act as a guide to practitioners and early stage decision-makers to inform the decision as to whether a ghost island should be provided at a priority T-junction in an urban area, with no existing guidance for local roads in the UK. These recommendations are not intended to replace site-specific analysis, which should still be undertaken as part of the detailed junction design process to help balance the possible benefits in terms of reduced delay, against the expected disbenefits in terms of collision costs. Given the results of the research, this paper also seeks to consider the suitability of DMRB standards on local roads, not just in the use of ghost islands, but also other design parameters.


One of the most important objectives in the design of control systems is to achieve the good tracking performance in the presence of the internal parameter uncertainty and external disturbance. In this paper, a new multiple-input-multiple-output (MIMO) fuzzy disturbance observer (FDO) based on output measurement is developed to achieve the goal. A filtered signal is introduced to resolve the algebraic loop encountered in the conventional FDO. The contribution of the disturbance observation error /spl zeta/ to updating the parameters of the fuzzy system is analyzed in the sense of L/sub 2/ and L/sub /spl infin//. Then, the MIMO FDO is modified and the high gain observer (HGO) is employed to implement the output tracking control system. It is shown in a rigorous manner that the disturbance observation error, the tracking error and the state observation error converge to a compact set of which size can be kept arbitrarily small. Finally, the suggested method is applied to the speed control of a permanent magnet synchronous motor (PMSM) in the presence of the internal parameter uncertainty and external disturbance. The effectiveness and the feasibility of the suggested method are demonstrated by computer simulation.


necks elsewhere in the system. In Mr. Turner's hospital, for example, it could be more nurses in the operating theatres, or several prefabricated Honeywell theatres added to the plant, or both, and these could be financially feasible as each day saved in hospital costs £7. Discussions from the Ministry and the regional board on adequacy of resources in the Liverpool region focus on beds. Our studies agree with Mr. Turner's opinion that there is no shortage of surgical beds in his region. We are now examining other bottlenecks to the steady flow of patients through the hospital system, for example, waiting for outpatient appointments, x-ray, or laboratory tests, for theatre sessions, and the discharge procedure. Moreover, the very lack of relationship between the allocation and the site of beds, outpatient sessions, and theatre sessions in the several hospitals covered by one specialist may mitigate against an effective weekly pattern of work for the surgeon and his dispersed resources. It is puzzling that so little examination has been made over the years on such bottlenecks, particularly when the' system is so rigid, and hospital treatment has been changing so quickly, becoming more complex as well as more effective. A thoughtful letter from a practising surgeon indicates the inadequacy of management skills in meeting the title above-and also the defects in communication. I hope the B.M.A. will continue the debate.-I am, etc.,


The title of this paper is a conversational implicature analysis on Oscar Wilde's "Happy Prince". In this paper, the writer discusses conversational implicature in one of Oscar Wilde's short stories entitled "Happy Prince". The objectives of the study are to identify the implicature utterances conveyed by the characters in Oscar Wilde's "Happy Prince" and to describe the implied meaning uttered by the characters in Oscar Wilde's "Happy Prince". In this study, the writer applies qualitative research method. The objects of this study are ten utterances of conversational implicature in Oscar Wilde's "Happy Prince". Those conversational implicature are obtained through frequent reading and analysis. This study employed the researcher as the instrument to find adequate and profound data and analyze them. The procedures and steps that have been used in this research are: (1) the provision of data, (2) data classification, (3) and data analysis. In analyzing the data, the writer uses Gricean theory. It is a theory about conversational implicature generated by four maxims. Those are maxim of quantity, maxim of quality, maxim of relation and maxim of manner. Then the last step is (4) the presentation of data analysis. After conducting the research, the writer found ten conversational implicatures in Oscar Wilde's short story "Happy Prince". In the short story, there are some variation's meanings of the conversational implicature used in the short story which closely related to the conversational implicature; they are cooperative, politeness and ironical principle. In Oscar Wilde's short story "Happy Prince", there are six maxims of politeness principle, two maxims of cooperative principles and two maxims of ironical principles. Besides that, the reasons of the conversational implicature used in Oscar Wilde's short story "Happy Prince" are to make us easyly understand the dialogue in the short story conversations and it is aimed at minimizing misunderstanding among the readers and literary critics. Keywords: Conversational Implicature; Maxims; Gricean Theory; Short Story


Drawing from intersectionality theories and black feminist critiques of white, masculinist, and racist discourses still prevailing in the American popular culture of the twenty-first century, this article looks critically at contemporary images of African-American women in the selected television series. For at least four decades critics of American popular culture have been pointing to, on the one hand, the dominant stereotypes of African-American women (the so-called controlling images, to use the expression coined by Patricia Hill Collins) resulting from slavery, racial segregation, white racism and sexism as well as, on the other hand, to significant marginalization or invisibility of black women in mainstream film and television productions. In this context, the article analyzes two contemporary television shows casting African-American women as leading characters (e.g., Scandal, 2012-2018 and How To Get Away With Murder, 2014-2020) to see whether these narratives are novel in portraying black women's experiences or, rather, they inscribe themselves in the assimilationist and post-racial ways of representation.


The extraction and maintenance of Linked Data datasets is a cumbersome, time-consuming and resource-intensive activity. The cost for producing Linked Data can be reduced by a workflow management system, which describes plans to systematically support the lifecycle of RDF datasets. We present the LODFlow Linked Data Workflow Management System, which provides an environment for planning, executing, reusing, and documenting Linked Data workflows. The LODFlow approach is based on a comprehensive knowledge model for describing the workflows and a workflow execution engine supporting systematic workflow execution, reporting, and exception handling. The environment was evaluated in a large-scale real-world use case. As result, LODFlow supports Linked Data engineers to systematically plan, execute and assess Linked Data production and maintenance workflows, thus improving efficiency, ease-of-use, reproducibility, reuseability and provenance. The environment was evaluated in a large-scale real-world use case. As result, LODFlow supports Linked Data engineers to systematically plan, execute and assess Linked Data production and maintenance workflows, thus improving efficiency, ease-of-use, reproducibility, reuseability and provenance.


This is a review of research on child labor in Sub-Saharan Africa. It focuses on child labor taking place in the household, and controlled by relatives of the children, since this is the most extensive form of child labor in African countries. It is also the form of child labor that is the most difficult one to appraise from a normative point of view. Subtle trade-offs between schooling, leisure, and poverty across generations may be involved. Hence, the paper emphasizes welfare economics issues pertaining to child labor. Another feature of this study, is that it seeks to survey not only the economic research, but also research from other social sciences, particularly social anthropology. The social anthropological studies deal with an aspect of child labor, so far, less adequately dealt by economists - the relationship between their labor, and their socialization; how certain types of labor, and education may give rise to different preferences to the children as adults. A major, but tentative conclusion of this survey, is that the relationship between poverty, and child labor is less than normally assumed in the policy debate.


Introduction the syndromic approach to the management of sexually transmitted diseases (STIs) is recommended in areas without adequate laboratory support. We assessed the diagnostic accuracy of this approach in diagnosing Neisseria gonorrhoeae (NG), Chlamydia trachomatis (CT), Trichomonas vaginalis (TV) and Mycoplasma genitalium (MG) among 18 to 49 year-old individuals seeking treatment for STIs in a health centre in Nairobi, Kenya. Methods participants were recruited between April and June 2019. After providing written informed consent, an interviewer-administered questionnaire was completed. Endocervical swabs from women and urethral swabs from men were collected for STI testing using polymerase chain reaction (PCR). Diagnostic accuracy of reported symptoms was calculated using PCR as the gold standard. Results a total of 297 individuals (148 men and 149 women) were recruited. Majority of the participants had at least one reported symptom (130/148; 87.8% men and 145/148; 97.3% women). The most commonly diagnosed STI was NG (85/297; 28.6% 95%CI 23.5%-34.1%). Vaginal discharge syndrome had moderate (44.4%) to high (92.9%) sensitivity, low specificity, low positive predictive value (PPV) (2.4 % to 31.5%) and high negative predictive value (NPV) (68.2% to 95.2%). The lower abdominal pain syndrome had moderate to high sensitivity (40% to 71.4%), low specificity (30.9% to 35.6%), low PPV (9.9% to 15.8%) and high NPV (79.2% to 93.8%). The urethral discharge syndrome had high sensitivity (71.4% to 84.8%); moderate specificity (37.6% to 51.7%); low to moderate PPV (5.4% to 53.8%) and high NPV (83.6% to 96.4%). The kappa scores for the three syndromes were generally poor. Conclusion these findings support the need for the review of the syndromic management of STIs.


ABSTRACT Places that haunt us, as individuals and researchers, are those unquiet sites not done with unloading their stories – with reinventing them through us. Theirs are the partial stories that insistently suggest themselves in fragmented landscapes which beckon us, creep up on us, and that, unbidden, follow us home. These stories bring with them real and imagined pasts, yet also inklings of the possible futures they forebode. Disturbingly, they often seem to envelope our own stories – our perceptions, associations, attitudes, experience and affects – within their embrace. This paper is a meditation on such a site, the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park, and the haunting and haunted "spatial stories" that inform and frame my research on it. The site is one that disturbed my memory and posed part-formed questions for over two decades before I returned to attempt to discover why. It is a place that lingers pervasively, if imperfectly, in the memories of those who visit it. Drawing on a series of interviews and cognitive mapping exercises with visitors in situ and Australians who had previously visited the Park, this paper focuses on the redesigned, re-inscribed, reconstructed, much photographed, and disappearing memorial at its centre: the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Cenotaph.


Even if a precise, detailed geometry is essential for the study and documentation of a CH artifact, lots of information also comes from the color and appearance data. Since a complete reconstruction of the optical properties of an artifact is still hard to achieve, what is normally done is to rely on color data coming from photographic dataset. In this paper, we will describe the tools that MeshLab offers for the generation and processing of color information on a high resolution 3D model. We will show the basic operations available and present actual projects were this tools have been successfully used. The first step in the color management, is to align photos to the 3D model, this operation is possible in MeshLab in a short time by using a very simple interface. The photos aligned in this way may be spatially-explored directly in the 3D space, instead of browsing a folder on the disk, looking at the photos like see-through transparencies suspended in space or projected onto the surface. An interesting possibility is to use also unconventional photos, like photos with annotations, historical photos or even near-visible lighting photos (ultraviolet, multispectral, infrared, thermography….) The spatial exploration of the georeferenced photographic set is a powerful tool but, in many applications, it is needed to have the color information mapped onto the geometry. To this aim, MeshLab offers different color mapping tools to better cope with the different needs of the various datasets. By using the color data from the calibrated images, it is possible to generate detailed, artifact free per-vertex color encoding, fill an existing texture parametrization or generate an entirely new texture mapping, driven by the photographic coverage. The reconstruction of a faithful representation of the actual color of an artifact is often just a first step towards the understanding of the original aspect of the object. Almost always, the current state of an archeological find is degraded: to propose possible reconstruction of the original color of the object is a normal activity for archeologists or art historian. This task, however, is generally carried out on photos or drawings of the artifact, while it would be possible to do it directly on the 3D surface. The Surface Painting tools provided by MeshLab may be used to color the 3D surface using painting-like interface. By using this editing tool, it was possible to produce such proposed color reconstructions, directly on the 3D geometry. MeshLab is the most complete open source software for the creation and manipulation od high resolution 3D models of real-world objects, and the availability of such color management tools is an important instrument for the archeological and CH community


Authors. 2018. Genetic variability, heritability, correlation, and path analysis in tomato (Solanum lycopersicum) under shading condition. Biodiversitas 19: 1527-1531. Information on genetic variability, heritability and character association between quantitative characters with yield are crucial in crop improvement. Eighteen genotypes of tomato were evaluated to study the quantitative genetic of yield and various yield attributing character under shading condition at Pasir Kuda Station, Bogor Agriculture University, West Java, Indonesia from August 2016 until January 2017. The result showed that plant height, dichotomous height, fruit weight, fruit length, fruit diameter, number of fruit per plant, and the fruit set had broad genetic variability and high heritability. Characters with broad genetic variability and high heritability can be used as sources in shading tolerance tomato improvement. Fruit weight and fruit number per plant had significant positive correlation coefficient and direct positive effect on fruit yield per plant. It is, therefore, recommended that fruit weight and fruit of number per plant should be given due importance in selection to develop shading tolerance variety in tomato.


Microbial pattern and antibiotic susceptibility test in the hospital are needed as surveilance, pattern of antibiotic use, and infectioncontrol program. The microbial pattern and antibiotic susceptibility test are used as tools for hospital management to regulate theuse of antibiotics and for taking actions to control hospital infection. This research purposes to obtain the microbial pattern andsusceptibility test in Semen Gresik Hospital during January- December 2012. This was a descriptive study, data were obtainedfrom the patients' medical records in the Semen Gresik Hospital. There were 385 culture examinations from 337 patients. Out ofthese, 230 cultures showed growth, 100 isolates (44.5%) were Gram(+) and 130 isolates (56.5%) were Gram (-). Abscessspecimens, showed Escherichia sp.(32 isolates)is the most common bacteria. In blood cultures found Staphylococcus epidermidis (7isolates). Sputum cultures showed Escherichia sp. (5 isolates) and from throat swabs, Streptococcus viridans, Enterobacter, andEscherichia sp. were found. Antibiotic susceptibility test showed that Pipemidic acid and Amoxicillin were the mostresistant antibiotics while Phenems, Aminoglycoside and Fosfomycin, still showed a high susceptibility. Escherichia sp., Escherichiacoli and CONS were the most found microbes in this culture examination. Pipemidic acid and Amoxicillin were the mostresistant antibiotics while Phenems, Aminoglycoside and Fosfomycin, still showed a high susceptibility. (FMI 2014;50 37-42)


The main research question that this paper aims to answer is: 'In what does today's attack on humanities consist and how can humanities be defended?' In order to answer this research question, one needs first to describe how the humanities have argued for their usefulness before the Bologna Process; second, provide reasons for the claim that the Bologna Process would be a new type of attack; and third, analyse the new defences for the humanities, so as to discuss whether these are suitable. There are several arguments why employability should not be the main interpretation for 'usefulness' in education. Some authors argue that the focus on employability is a good excuse for European governments to give up on regulating the labour market, and instead transfer the responsibility on the citizens' shoulders. If being employed is construed as having employable skills, then the state can only invest in training those skills and, after the education is over, if there are still unemployed people, it means it is their fault they were unemployable. A current debate concerns whether the labour market is too regulated or unregulated; this debate should benefit from taking into account the construction of 'employability' through the educational policies in the BP. Others have argued that by constructing the set of employable skills as a response to the demands of today's labour market, this leaves the future employees incapable of meeting the changed demands in tomorrow's labour market. Some argue that the labour market's demands cannot be predicted in principle, and therefore people should construct their life around life-long learning, discarding old skills and gaining new ones as they age. However, this model is oblivious to the fact that a future of the labour market may be dominated by automation, as argued by Luciano Floridi. Employment in sectors of the economy that we today think of as important may not be where the jobs will be created tomorrow. What will it mean in the future for people to have a fulfilling and purposeful life when employment will be reduced to just a few hours a week? We need to remain open to the possibility that the good life of the future will not be the (self-)employed life, the active and mobile model proposed now by the EU. People will need to be active in other fields, not strictly related to bread-winning. Other capacities will need to be used in order to make use of one's time, and these capacities are now dropped from education in order to construct the employable European citizen. The Bologna ideal of education is more perishable than what first meets the eye. It is connected with a certain view of what it means to be employable, of what the future labour market's needs will be, and its time dimension is quite narrow. In order to face the challenges of the future labour markets, as BP had claimed it prepares its students to do, one needs a wider understanding of what it means to have a good life. One way of defending the humanities is to claim that it is equivalent to defending a plurality of educational purposes, the right to build one's life based on an education that is not submitted to the political goals of the day, ultimately the right to have a dissenting voice and a different perspective on life.The main finding of this study was to show that, before deciding what type of education society needs, we need to understand who we are educating through our universities. Taking a stance on "who should we educate?" is prior to being able to judge educational policies. This decision requires a previous justification that requires arguments taken from the field of social justice: Who needs to be educated and who has the right to be educated? Furthermore, we have seen that all answers we have examined to the question underlying educational policies, i.e. 'who is being educated?', were linked at some level with the citizenship issue. By defining who is a full citizen, an answer to the question who had the right to a humanistic education was implicitly answered. Nussbaum's project to universalise the definition of democratic citizenship would ensure a basis for providing humanistic education for all. Such a line of arguing would provide humanities to the well-regarded status they had starting from the Renaissance times, but this time not as a device for exclusion, but inclusion for all. We have tried to show that, by defending the humanities, one defends the idea of a plurality of educational purposes, the right to build one's life based on an education that is not submitted to the political goals of the day, ultimately the right to have a dissenting voice and a different perspective on life. By defending humanities, one defends the true 'usefulness' of education, namely its potential for constructing democratic citizenship for all.


Nabumetone is a novel nonsteroidal antiinflammatory drug (NSAID) with a unique pharmacologic profile. It is nonacidic and demonstrates minimal prostaglandin synthesis inhibition. Because it is nonacidic, nabumetone cannot dissociate in the stomach after oral administration. In contrast, acidic NSAID (active cyclooxygenase inhibitors) can dissociate and concentrate by "ion trapping" in the gastric mucosa, inhibit prostaglandin synthesis and, therefore, cause topically induced erosive mucosal damage. After absorption, nabumetone is converted by first pass metabolism to the active metabolite, 6-methoxy-2-naphthylacetic acid (6MNA), an effective inhibitor of prostaglandin synthesis. 6MNA is hepatically, not renally, cleared and differs from other NSAID because it does not undergo enterohepatic circulation in animals or man. This is thought to contribute to its apparent lack of severe gastrointestinal irritancy. The pharmacologic profile of nabumetone can be summarized in terms of the very large "therapeutic ratio" in comparison with other NSAID.


Despite the high international consensus on the enormous potential of the Belt and Road Initiative for reconfiguring international relations in Eurasia and beyond, and the consequent attention raised by this strategy throughout the world, there are still many unanswered questions. The present paper analyzes the case studies of the Yuxinou (渝新欧) and the Yixinou (义新欧) railway lines to tackle three debates surrounding this initiative: its scope, whether this is a merely economic scheme or also has a geostrategic dimension; its actors, underlining the coordinated action of Chinese central and local authorities; and its implications on EU-China relations, with emphasis on trade imbalances and the consolidation of global value chains. Both secondary and primary sources have been used in this paper, including interviews with relevant officials, business people, and scholars from China, Germany, and Spain.


Between John Cabot's discoveries in the New World and the turn of the new millennium lay five hundred years of a remarkable English and American choral music tradition. The body of choral literature on which this tradition feasts is much
like an iceberg: most of us only experience its tip during a lifetime. If we think carefully about this picture, two primary factors determine how much repertoire each of us is able to perform as a choral singer. First, we must have ample opportunities to sing choral music. Since most choral directors maintain an active and ongoing search for good choral singers, finding an excellent choir in which to sing should not present a problem. Beyond that negligible hurdle then, one must have the skill to learn music quickly and accurately, by note, rather than by rote. Without facile sight-singing skills, the unsophisticated singer is relegated to the slow and tedious process of learning music by imitation. How can such a singer ever hope to plumb the depths of fascinating and meaningful choral literature and to attempt that which is challenging?


From the perspective of competitors, competition may be modeled as a prisoner's dilemma. Setting the monopoly price is cooperation, undercutting is defection. Jointly, competitors are better off if both are faithful to a cartel. Individually, profit is highest if only the competitor(s) is (are) loyal to the cartel. Yet collusion inflicts harm on the opposite market side and, through the deadweight loss, on society at large. Moreover, almost all legal orders combat cartels. Through the threat with antitrust intervention, gains from cooperation are uncertain. In the field, both qualifications combine. To prevent participants from using their world knowledge about antitrust, we experimentally test them on a neutral matrix game, with either a negative externality on a third participant, uncertainty about gains from cooperation, or both. Uncertainty dampens cooperation, though only slightly. Surprisingly, externalities are immaterial. If we control for beliefs, they even foster cooperation. If we combine both qualifications and do not control for beliefs, we only find an uncertainty effect. If we add beliefs as a control variable, we only find that externalities enhance cooperation, even if gains from collusion are uncertain. Hence the fact that the dilemma of oligopolists is socially embedded matters less than one might have expected.


This study was conducted to evaluate the impact of natural gastrointestinal parasitic infection on growth and economics production of Sudan Desert sheep. Forty-eight naturally infected lambs were divided into 2 groups of 24lambs each. One group was treated for internal parasites while the other was left naturally infected. Each group was then divided into two groups according to age (old two years and young milk teeth) and dietary energy level (high and low). The design ended up with eight groups of 6 individuals each which were The design ended up with eight groups of 6 individuals each which were old treated high energy (OTHE), old infected high energy (OIHE), old treated low energy (OTLE), old infected low energy (OILE), young treated high energy (YTHE),young infected high energy (YIHE), young treated low energy (YTLE) and young infected low energy (YILE). They were then fattened for 60 days during which feedlot performance, mortality rate, purchase prices, sales and margins were calculated. The growth parameters as average daily gain and final body showed significantly (P< 0.001) high differences among treatments. Margin percent of sales of (OTHE) was 23.80% while (OILE) lost 40% of their total cost. Although (YTHE) ranked second in term of performance, but they achieved the best profit which was 5.7% more than the profit of (OTHE) because of less dry matter consumption. The number of sold lambs for (OILE) and (YILE) decreased by 50% due to mortality. Total margin of (OTHE) was 98.08 $, while (OIHE) was sold for 36.36% less profit. The former group gained 82.81% more profit than (OTLE). Although older treated lambs gained more weight than younger ones but economically younger lambs were more profitable. Total sales revenue of (OTHE) was 510 $ with 19.2% total margin, while the total sales revenue of (YTHE) was 480 $ achieving 24.9% total margin.


Using the general formalism of structure functions (SF`s), the polarization effects in the rare radiative decay of polarized {ital b} quarks, {ital b}{r_arrow}{ital s}{gamma}{ital g}, are analyzed. Parametrizing the matrix element for the decay {ital b}{r_arrow}{ital s}{gamma}{ital g} in terms of weak magnetic moments, which describe the transitions {ital b}{r_arrow}{ital s}{gamma} and {ital b}{r_arrow}{ital sg}, we find exact expressions for the SF`s which are valid for a wide class of models for the FCNC`s. We demonstrated that the different asymmetries in this decay are very sensitive to the model of FCNC`s. The numerical calculations (with and without QCD corrections) show that asymmetry in {ital b}{r_arrow}{gamma}({ital sg}) is large in absolute value and its energy dependence is very sensitive to the choice of model. We also analyze the relative importance of different contributions to the asymmetry in {ital b}{r_arrow}{gamma}({ital sg}).


One of the rate-limiting steps in protein folding has been shown to be the cis-trans isomerization of proline residues, which is catalyzed by a range of peptidylprolylcis-trans isomerases. To characterize the interaction between model peptides and the periplasmic peptidylprolylcis-trans isomerase SurA from E. coli, we employed a chemical cross-linking strategy that has been used previously to elucidate the interaction of substrates with other folding catalysts. The interaction between purified SurA and model peptides was significant in that it showed saturation and was abolished by denaturation of SurA; however the interaction was independent of the presence of proline residues in the model peptides. From results obtained by limited proteolysis we conclude that an N-terminal fragment of SurA, comprising 150 amino acids that do not contain the active sites involved in the peptidylprolyl cis-transisomerization, is essential for the binding of peptides by SurA. This was confirmed by probing the interaction of the model peptide with the recombinant N-terminal fragment, expressed in Escherichia coli. Hence we propose that, similar to protein disulfide isomerase and other folding catalysts, SurA exhibits a modular architecture composed of a substrate binding domain and distinct catalytically active domains.