Abstract. Tree species classification at individual tree level is a challenging problem in forest management. Deep learning, a cutting-edge technology evolved from Artificial Intelligence, was seen to outperform other techniques when it comes to complex problems such as image classification. In this work, we present a novel method to classify forest tree species through high resolution RGB images acquired with a simple consumer grade camera mounted on a UAV platform using Residual Neural Networks. We used UAV RGB images acquired over three years that varied in numerous acquisition parameters such as season, time, illumination and angle to train the neural network. To begin with, we have experimented with limited data towards the identification of two pine species namely red pine and white pine from the rest of the species. We performed two experiments, first with the images from all three acquisition years and the second with images from only one acquisition year. In the first experiment, we obtained 80% classification accuracy when the trained network was tested on a distinct set of images and in the second experiment, we obtained 51% classification accuracy. As a part of this work, a novel dataset of high-resolution labelled tree species is generated that can be used to conduct further studies involving deep neural networks in forestry.


Introduction: Phenazines are nitrogen-containing heterocyclic molecules produced by fluorescent Pseudomonas. These compounds have broad-spectrum antibiotic properties including antimicrobial activity against phytopathogenic fungi and pathogenic bacteria. Several mechanisms of action have been proposed, including inhibition of DNA replication, uncoupling of electron, transport and energy production, and disruption of normal membrane functions resulting in the generation of toxic intracellular oxygen species. Methods: Production of antimicrobial metabolites in vitro was assayed in NBY supplemented with glucose to a final concentration of 2%. Results: Extracts of supernatants from liquid cultures completely inhibited phytopathogenic fungi when incorporated into agar culture at a rateof 20 and 40 μg/ml, this crude extracts was active against all tested fungi. In a disc assay, extracts equivalent to 20 μg gave zones of inhibition of 15 mm and 25 mm for the Gram positive bacteria Bacillus subtilis and Paracoccus paratrophus, respectively with disc diffusion technique. The purified extracts were analyzed by UV spectroscopy and GC/MS.


The practice of biblical exegesis underwent a dramatic metamorphosis in the first half of the sixteenth century in Europe. This evolution was brought about by the convergence of several factors including: 1) The development of humanism; 2) An emphasis on literacy, and the quest for a vernacular Bible; 3) The invention of moveable type; 4) The publication of critical texts of the Old and New Testaments in the original Greek and Hebrew; and 5) The general atmosphere of change and progress which characterized the period. In England this hermeneutical revolution was accelerated by the public lectures of John Colet at Oxford University in the late 1490's. Colet's desire for a simplicity of meaning, in sharp contrast to traditional interpretation, made his addresses on the Pauline letters truly unique. One of those influenced by the Englishman was the young humanist Desiderius Erasmus. Wedding his love for the "New Learning" with Colet's approach, Erasmus, although maintaining allegorical interpretation as a means by which to reconcile the Old and New Testaments, made a massive impact upon exegesis through his critical text of the Greek New Testament, and his annotations and paraphrases on the same. The first major English Protestant exegete to influence his homeland was William Tyndale. Although deeply influenced by Luther in his early works, Tyndale's great capacity for linguistic analysis allowed him to develop more independence in later years. In the half decade prior to his execution in 1536, Tyndale's theological opinions, especially his theology of the conditionalcovenant, had a profound influence upon his exegesis. The final section of this research surveys the writings of six leading Anglican reformers: John Bale, John Bradford, Thomas Cranmer, John Hooper, Hugh Latimer, and Nicholas Ridley. Although quite able to do serious systematic exegesis, these men devoted the lion's share of their time and energy to the urgent practical needs of the English Reformation under King Edward VI. Nevertheless, they did make some advances on the interpretation of figurative passages in the New Testament, due to a prolongec4 debate over the meaning of passages relating to the eucharist question. The one area of real development was in apocalyptic interpretation. John Bale's commentary on Revelation proved to be a very influential synthesis of medieval and modern approaches to the Apocalypse and set a "historicist" pattern for future British interpreters of the book. I declare that the research found herein is mine, and that this thesis is the work of my own hand. I have followed the advice of my supervisors as to appropriate content, and I have made minor stylistic alterations as suggested by various proofreaders.


This article examines patients with schizophrenia and controls to determine whether asymmetry and anteroposterior (AP) gradient of cerebral blood flow (CBF) are related to duration of illness, and whether they are themselves correlated. CBF was measured with the t~3xenon inhalation technique in 108 patients and 108 age-matched and gender-matched controls while the subjects were at rest. Two sets of analyses were performed. The first analyses indicated AP-gradient to be reduced in patients, and hemispheric asymmetry scores to be different from controls only in the temporal area. The second set of analyses were based on two groups of 27 patients, selected to represent extremes on duration of illness (less than 5 and greater than 12 years) and equal numbers of age-matched and gender-matched controls. These analyses revealed patients of both short and long duration of illness to have significantly greater temporal asymmetry, whereas only long-duration patients had significant AP-graaient relative to both controls and short-duration patients. Regression analyses from each data set found AP-gradient to be related to duration of illness, whereas temporal asymmetry was not, temporal asymmetry and AP-gradient were not correlated. These results suggest AP-gradient and temporal asymmetry may reflect independent processes.


Poly(ADP‐ribose) polymerases (PARPs) play important roles in various biological processes, including DNA repair, transcriptional regulation, mitosis, and RNA processing. PARP inhibitors are in clinical trials for treating human cancers. Understanding the biological function of PARPs will be important to fully realize the therapeutic potential of PARP inhibitors. We have developed a clickable analog of nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide (NAD) that can be used for in‐gel visualization, affinity purification, and identification of substrate proteins of PARPs. The protocols in this article describe a general procedure to label substrate proteins of PARPs using the clickable NAD analog. Curr. Protoc. Chem. Biol. 4:19‐34 © 2012 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.


The majority of simple fractures of the radial head are stable, even when displaced 2 mm. Articular fragmentation and comminution can be seen in stable fracture patterns and are not absolute indications for operative treatment. Preservation and/or restoration of radiocapitellar contact is critical to coronal plane and longitudinal stability of the elbow and forearm. Partial and complete articular fractures of the radial head should be differentiated. Important fracture characteristics impacting treatment include fragment number, fragment size (percentage of articular disc), fragment comminution, fragment stability, displacement and corresponding block to motion, osteopenia, articular impaction, radiocapitellar malalignment, and radial neck and metaphyseal comminution and/or bone loss. Open reduction and internal fixation of displaced radial head fractures should only be attempted when anatomic reduction, restoration of articular congruity, and initiation of early motion can be achieved. If these goals are not obtainable, open reduction and internal fixation may lead to early fixation failure, nonunion, and loss of elbow and forearm motion and stability. Radial head replacement is preferred for displaced radial head fractures with more than three fragments, unstable partial articular fractures in which stable fixation cannot be achieved, and fractures occurring in association with complex elbow injury patterns if stable fixation cannot be ensured.


A well-known DNA-damaging agent and carcinogen, ionizing radiation (IR) can also exert detrimental effects in cells not directly exposed to it, through "non-targeted effects" (NTE). Whilst NTE are known to contribute to radiation-induced damage, their mechanism of induction and propagation remains incompletely understood. To investigate the possible role of lysosomes, key subcellular organelles, in NTE we used acridine orange uptake and relocation methods to monitor lysosomal permeability in irradiated and bystander human fibroblasts. As a potential mediator of lysosomal changes, oxidative stress was measured using the H2DCFDA assay for total reactive oxygen species (ROS). IR was found to induce significant lysosomal permeability in the first hour post irradiation, with reduced permeability persisting up to 24 hours. This occurred in conjunction with an increase in ROS in directly irradiated cells, in contrast with a decrease in ROS in bystander cells. Based on these observations we constructed a simple mathematical model of ROS-induced lysosomal damage, based on a bistable mechanism where a sufficiently strong IR insult can shift a cell from a 'low ROS, high lysosome' to a 'high ROS, low lysosome' state. This has profound cellular implications in radiation response and advances our understanding for the sub-cellular involvement in non-targeted effects.


With the rapid development of mobility services, e-hailing service have been highly prevalent and e-hailing travel has become a part of daily life in many cities in China. At the same time, travelers' mode choice behaviors have been influenced to some degree by different factors, and in this paper, a web-based retrospective survey initially conducted in Shanghai, China is used to analyze the extent to which various factors are influencing mode choice behaviors. Then, a multinomial-logit-based mode choice model is developed to incorporate the e-hailing auto mode as a new travel mode for non-work trips. The developed model can help to identify influential factors and quantify their impact on mode choice probabilities. The developed model involves a variety of explanatory variables including e-hailing/taxi fare, bus travel time, rail station access/egress distance, trip distance, car in-vehicle travel time as well as travelers' socioeconomic and demographic characteristics, etc. The model indicates that the e-hailing fare, travel companions and some travelers' characteristics (e.g., age, income, etc.) are significant factors influencing the choice of e-hailing mode. The alternative-specific constant in the e-hailing utility equation is adjusted to match the observed market share of the e-hailing mode. Based on the developed model, elasticities of LOS attributes are computed and discussed. The research methods used in this paper have the potential to be applied to investigate travel behavior changes under the influence of emerging travel modes. The research findings can aid in evaluating policies to manage e-hailing services and improve their levels of services.


The frequent blocking of the irradiated volume in intensity modulated radiation therapy (IMRT) makes the head-scatter fraction of the incident photon fluence more significant than that in conventional therapy with open fields. On the other hand, certain collimator configurations block scatter photons directed to a given observation point while allowing primary photons to be transmitted. The `anomalous blocking' makes the primary field a poor indicator of the scatter fluence. Since large MU-to-cGy ratios in IMRT can magnify head-scatter uncertainties, it becomes necessary to accurately model both the effective scatter source and the collimator structure that limits the scatter reaching the irradiated volume. First we obtain a dual-source model, using a Taylor series expansion to derive the effective scatter source distribution from the data measured for the Elekta SL20 linac equipped with a multi-leaf collimator (MLC). Then, using a raytracing algorithm, we calculate the transmission of scatter rays from the effective scatter source plane to points in the patient plane. The method can account for the anomalous blocking of scatter by the MLC leaves and the back-up diaphragms. For a variety of collimator settings tested, the calculations agree with measurements to an accuracy of 0.002Ψ10×10, where Ψ10×10 is the total (primary + scatter) photon fluence of an open 10×10 cm2 field for the same MU delivered. Although the significance of collimator structure in IMRT depends strongly on fields shapes employed for the delivery, potential cumulative errors on the order of a few per cent can be avoided in fluence calculations if the proposed method is used.


Orthodontic planning for patients with agenesis of lateral incisors should include extremely relevant esthetic and functional considerations so that a satisfactory clinical result is achieved. Both space closure and space opening and maintenance have advantages and disadvantages that should be evaluated according to the patient's individual characteristics. Some of the important factors that affect planning are the skeletal pattern, the type of malocclusion and the color and shape of canines. This study reports on the treatment of a patients with Class I malocclusion and agenesis of lateral incisors, overjet, decreased overbite, and a tendency to open bite and crossbite. The clinical approach included palatal expansion followed by space closure using extraoral anchorage. This case was presented to the Committee of the Brazilian Board of Orthodontics and Facial Orthopedics (BBO) in the Free Case category as part of the requisites to obtain the BBO Diploma.


Multifilamentary Nb3Sn-based superconducting composites manufactured by an internal-tin method have been studied by transmission (TEM) and scanning (SEM) electron microscopy. The main goal of this study is to reveal the effect of diffusion annealing regimes as well as the external diameter of the wires on the structure of nanocrystalline Nb3Sn layers (average grain size, grain size distribution, layer thickness, amount of Sn, etc.). It is demonstrated that multistep diffusion annealing results in quite a complete transformation of Nb filaments into Nb3Sn though some amount of the residual Nb remains in the filaments center. With an external diameter decrease the superconducting layers structure has been found to refine and get somewhat more uniform. An additional high-temperature annealing results in marked growth of Nb3Sn grain sizes and their scattering in sizes, which may negatively affect the current-carrying capacity of a wire.


In response to student feedback the IT Monitors programme was established in 2007 to provide a novel approach to enhance IT support in the RCSI library. This project entailed a peer to peer support programme with monitors drawn from the undergraduate Medical School. The programme was subsequently expanded in 2008 and IT Monitors were renamed ELFs (Electronic Library Facilitators) with a competitive application process open to the Schools of Physiotherapy and Pharmacy and Medicine. The role of these student facilitators was to be available outside of normal working hours to provide IT support and peer to peer support in using electronic information resources available through the library. Training was provided by the IT Department and Library. ELFs were recruited and paid by the Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences and over two years their role developed significantly.The RCSI Student Selected Component is a module where medical students select faculty advertised research projects to be completed over a six week period. This was used as a means to evaluate the ELF programme. An evaluation of the innovative, peer to peer service delivered by ELFs in the library made the project unique in terms of immediate practical application to student and library services. It also offered an effective means of evaluating the programme thereby combining the teaching and learning of research skills to produce a report with recommendations for the future of the ELF programme. The student led evaluation used interview and survey methodologies. The conclusions were that the ELF service was valued amongst the student body. Constructive suggestions for improvement were made most important of which was promotion to increase awareness of the service amongst the student body. This project presents an innovative way in which Faculty and students work together to enhance the educational experience of the students at RCSI.


Phonological systems of the Balkan languages do not correspond to the Balkan language union borders, which can be explained by the difference between "intensive" (morphosyntactic) and "extensive" (phonological) language unions. In this case, we are dealing with the entrance of the Balkan languages into a wide transitional zone, stretching along the borders of East and Central Europe, and with the coinciding of their phonological systems with the system of Slavic languages known as vowel and consonant types. The same classification into two phonological systems exists in the Balkans too, and between them there are also two transitional borderlines. As known, the mediopalatal order of the "Macedonian" type [k', g', n', ľ] (q, gj, nj, l) has been generalized in both the standard Albanian language and most of the Albanian dialects. Albanian [k', g', n', ľ] are, just like their Macedonian counterparts, semi-emancipated palatal correlates of basic [k, g, n, l], as proved by examples of their positional dephonologization and dialectal hardening /n'/ > /n/ [n%], when followed by front vowels. Both semi-soft [n%] and typically Albanian lateral opposition [l-ŀ] confirm a palatal correlation of these phonemes existing also in the neighboring Serbian dialects. Albanian has undoubtedly affected the rise of these features, be it through an unilateral influence or merely through supporting different phonological development in these old-shtokavian dialects. On the other hand, the same could be said for the affrication of palatovelars [k', g'] > [c, ʒ(], which except in south-west region between Ishmi and Shkumbin, Elbasan and Tirana is present in all other branches of the Ghegian dialect. Wide distribution of this phenomenon excludes the possibility of one-sided Serbian influence while its character – reduction of palatovelars [k', g'] (q, gj) and affricates [c, ʒ(] (c, xh) to one semi-soft affricate pair – has a typological and structural parallel in the Timok region [c, ʒ(] (ч-џ) and reveals a transitional character of this phenomenon, which is undoubtedly related to the phonological system governing the Serbian language. It is well known that, the simplification of palatal pairs was a reciprocal process and it spread to the neighboring Serbian dialects. This simplification is a strong indicator of transitional character of this zone which stretches between semi-emancipated palatal order [k', g'], governing the greater part of the Albanian language territory, and the emancipated palatal order [c, ʒ(] (ћ, ђ), characterizing the Serbian phonological system.


ABSTRACT Measurements of Residual Magnetic Field RMF (the tangential component parallel to the load direction) were taken on the surface of P91 steel plate samples (X10CrMoVNb9-1) subjected to periodic pulsating tensile cyclic loads with the use of flux-gate and magneto impedance sensors, and preliminary measurement results are compiled and analyzed. The study investigates how the microstructure and load cycle parameters affect the RMF changes due to stress variations. Each combination of parameters: microstructure and load cycle corresponds to the characteristic variability pattern of magnetization and its maximum and minimum values.


An automated hollow cylinder torsional (HCT) shear device has been commissioned at Carleton University to enable research on stress rotation and partial drainage. The design incorporates elements to arrest undesirable runaway strains and enable the capture of post peak strain softening in different directions, and the ability to closely follow prescribed loading paths. This device is capable of applying both static and cyclic loading under stress and displacement controlled loading modes. This is one of the first HCT devices built specifically to study the partially drained response of soils under three dimensional loading. Test results demonstrating various capabilities of this device, and the level of confidence in the measurements are presented in this paper. The presented results highlight the importance of drainage boundary conditions, and principal stress rotation on liquefaction susceptibility. The partial drainage condition in soils reveals that a small expansive volumetric deformation due to unfavorable drainage boundary conditions can trigger strain softening and flow in soils that may be stable and strain hardening under undrained loading. Tests along different total stress paths under three-dimensional generalized loading show that the uniqueness of undrained effective stress path can be extended to generalized three dimensional loading.


The 50-km RegCM was used to dynamically downscale ECMWF operational and experimental seasonal integrations over the southern Europe/Mediterranean area. For operational seasonal forecasts, a major disadvantage was found to be a relative scarcity of ECMWF archived data available for downscaling: too few upper-air levels at 12-hour frequency. Also, downscaling of the whole ensemble (40 members) may not always be practical; this implies designing an algorithm to select sub-ensembles. For experimental integrations (from the ENSEMBLES project), the input for downscaling was much better, but the size of ensembles (9 members) could be considered too small. When compared against gridded CRU data, an overall better representation of T2m and precipitation was obtained in RegCM. Although objective skill scores indicate no clear winner, RegCM tends to be better for higher thresholds (severe events) and over the mountains.


Livers from Lewis rats fed with 7% alcohol for 5 weeks were used for transplantation. Reduced sized (50%) livers or whole livers were transplanted into normal DA recipients, which, in this strain combination, survive indefinitely when the donor has not been fed alcohol. However, none of the rats survived a whole fatty liver transplant while six of seven recipients of reduced sized alcoholic liver grafts survived long term. SDF‐1 and HGF were significantly increased in reduced size liver grafts compared to whole liver grafts. Lineage‐negative Thy‐1+CXCR4+CD133+ stem cells were significantly increased in the peripheral blood and in allografts after reduced size fatty liver transplantation. In contrast, there were meager increases in cells reactive with anti Thy‐1, CXCR4 and CD133 in peripheral blood and allografts in whole alcoholic liver recipients. The provision of plerixafor, a stem cell mobilizer, salvaged 5 of 10 whole fatty liver grafts. Conversely, blocking SDF‐1 activity with neutralizing antibodies diminished stem cell recruitment and four of five reduced sized fatty liver recipients died. Thus chemokine insufficiency was associated with transplant failure of whole grafts, which was overcome by the increased regenerative requirements promoted by the small grafts and mediated by SDF‐1 resulting in stem cell influx.


: Q fever is more common in our country than is usually thought, as shown by the diagnostic incidence curve, which approached an exponential rather than lineal function. Sixty cases were diagnosed between 1985 and October 1989. The disease predominated in middle aged males. The suspect epidemiologic contacts did not have any significance. Q fever was more frequent during autumn. Its usual clinical presentation was pneumonia (75%), commonly associated with a flu-like syndrome. Liver was commonly involved (66.6%), although in a mild degree. One of the patients had chronic Q fever, with granulomatous and hepatic, but not endocardial, involvement. The diagnosis was based on seroconversion detected by indirect immunofluorescence. As a rule, the course of the disease was favorable independently from therapy.


The paper presents an analytical discussion of how to improve the energy efficiency of the steam cushion system operation for a Thermal Energy Storage (TES) tank. The EU's green deal 2050 target policy requires an increase in the energy efficiency of energy production and use, as well as an increase in the share of renewable energy in the overall energy production balance. The use of energy-efficient TES is considered as one of the most important technologies to achieve the objectives of this EU policy. The analyses presented in the paper of energy-efficient operation of steam cushion (SC) systems were carried out by using operational data received from three District Heating Systems (DHSs) that supply heat and electricity to one of the largest cities in Poland and are equipped with the TES systems. These three analyzed TESs differ in capacities from 12,800 to 30,400 m3, tank diameters from 21 to 30 m and shell height from 37 to 48.2 m. The main purpose of using a steam cushion system in the TES tank is to protect the water stored in it against the absorption of oxygen from the surrounding atmospheric air through the surge chamber and safety valves located on the roof of the tank. The technical solutions presented here for the upper orifice for charging and discharging hot water into/from the tank and the suction pipe for circulating water allow to us achieve significant energy savings in the steam cushion systems. Both the upper orifice and the end of suction pipe are movable through the use of pontoons. Thanks to the use of this technical solution, a stable insulating water layer is created above the upper orifice in the upper part of the TES tank, where convective and turbulent transport of heat from the steam cushion space to the hot water stored in the tank is significantly limited. Ultimately, this reduces the heat flux by approximately 90% when compared to the classic technical solutions of steam cushion systems in TES tanks, i.e., for the upper orifice and circulation water pipe. The simplified analysis presented in the paper and comparison of its results with experimental data for heat flow from the steam cushion space to hot water stored in the upper part of the TES tank fully confirms the usefulness of the heat-flow models used.


Ciliary motility is crucial for the development and health of many organisms. Motility depends on the coordinated activity of multiple dynein motors arranged in a precise pattern on the outer doublet microtubules. Although significant progress has been made in elucidating the composition and organization of the dyneins, a comprehensive understanding of dynein regulation is lacking. Here, we focus on two conserved signaling complexes located at the base of the radial spokes. These include the I1/f inner dynein arm associated with radial spoke 1 and the calmodulin- and spoke-associated complex and the nexin-dynein regulatory complex associated with radial spoke 2. Current research is focused on understanding how these two axonemal hubs coordinate and regulate the dynein motors and ciliary motility.


As natural regeneration and direct sowing have been considered difficult, planting was adopted as a solution to attenuate the decline of cork oak forest. However, Tunisian planted cork oaks showed a troublesome phenomenon characterized by the presence of creeping plants which has a negative influence on height growth and cork production. This study aimed to estimate, for the first time in Tunisia, the percent of creeping cork oaks among those planted between 1995 and 2008 and to make a diagnosis in order to propose solutions to this problem. The percentage of creeping plants was determined in 2014 within 35 plots installed in 13 perimeters, situated in northern Tunisia. Crown diameter and total height were measured for the whole plants. Moreover, the creeping plants were were distinghished and inventoried in categories according to shoot ramification. The average survival rate, estimated at 55±30%, varied between 0% and 100% depending on perimeter. The average percentage of creeping plants reached 82% ranging between 0 and 100%, which reflects the extent of this phenomenon. Furthermore, 64.3% of creeping plants were classified in category I (1 main stem) where as 12.41% and 23.29% were classified in categories II (2 ramifications) and III (3 or more ramifications), respectively. The percent of creeping plants was negatively correlated to altitude and positively correlated to soil hardnes; indicateing high grazing and low possibility for plants to grow.


Rice (Oryza sativa L.) plants respond to variations in photoperiod. The prediction of flowering time of photoperiod-sensitive rice plants is important for crop management. The objective of this study was to analyze the photoperiod sensitivity of rice plants under natural photoperiod and constant air temperature, and to derive a simple model to predict flowering time under these conditions. Rice cultivars were sown at 2-wk intervals during 1 yr in a greenhouse maintained at a constant air temperature. The number of days required from emergence to flowering was constant for rice plants sown between August and February, while those sown between March and July required more time. On the basis of these results, the authors derived an equation describing the cumulative water temperature over the time required for flowering as a function of photoperiod [f(P)] and sowing date. The form of f(P) was calculated using nonparametric methods. The value of f(P) was almost zero when the photoperiod was shorter than the critical photoperiod (P 0 ) ; when the photoperiod was longer, however, the value of f(P) increased proportionally. The function was simplified to represent the effective photoperiod. The equations of this model were able to analyze quantitatively the photoperiod sensitivity of rice plants, and the observed flowering time was accurately estimated.


Animals and fungi produce cholesterol and ergosterol, respectively, while plants produce the phytosterols stigmasterol, campesterol, and β‐sitosterol in various combinations. The recent sequencing of many algal genomes allows the detailed reconstruction of the sterol metabolic pathways. Here, we characterized sterol synthesis in two sequenced Chlorella spp., the free‐living C. sorokiniana, and symbiotic C. variabilis NC64A. Chlamydomonas reinhardtii was included as an internal control and Coccomyxa subellipsoidea as a plant‐like outlier. We found that ergosterol was the major sterol produced by Chlorella spp. and C. reinhardtii, while C. subellipsoidea produced the three phytosterols found in plants. In silico analysis of the C. variabilis NC64A, C. sorokiniana, and C. subellipsoidea genomes identified 22 homologs of sterol biosynthetic genes from Arabidopsis thaliana, Saccharomyces cerevisiae, and C. reinhardtii. The presence of CAS1, CPI1, and HYD1 in the four algal genomes suggests the higher plant cycloartenol branch for sterol biosynthesis, confirming that algae and fungi use different pathways for ergosterol synthesis. Phylogenetic analysis for 40 oxidosqualene cyclases (OSCs) showed that the nine algal OSCs clustered with the cycloartenol cyclases, rather than the lanosterol cyclases, with the OSC for C. subellipsoidea positioned in between the higher plants and the eight other algae. With regard to why C. subellipsoidea produced phytosterols instead of ergosterol, we identified 22 differentially conserved positions where C. subellipsoidea CAS and A. thaliana CAS1 have one amino acid while the three ergosterol producing algae have another. Together, these results emphasize the position of the unicellular algae as an evolutionary transition point for sterols.


OBJECTIVE
Our goal was to establish the role of VOR - vestibular ocular reflex - in predicting cerebral death in comatose patients.

PATIENTS AND METHODS
Prognosis study based on three concurrent cohorts of comatose patients of known etiology followed until the ultimate outcomes: recovery, vegetative state or death. Sixty comatose patients (Glasgow scale 8 or less) with known causes were studied: 49 males and 11 females; 7 to 83 years old. The cold water vestibular stimulation was performed at the bedside by irrigation with 0o Celsius saline in the external auditory canal during one minute. The reflex was considered present when both eyes deviated toward the stimulated side (19 patients group 1); present but abnormal for irregular unconjugated eye movements (11 patients group 2) or absent (30 patients, group 3).

RESULTS
Group 1 had total recovery in 42%, partial recovery in 37% and cerebral death in 21%. These results were 9%, 18% and 73% for group 2, respectively and group 3 had 100% cerebral death. The difference was statistically significant between groups 1 and 2, 3 (p<0,05 Fischer exact test and X2 test).

CONCLUSION
Absence of VOR predicted 100% of cerebral death and VOR present normal predicted 21% of cerebral death in the comatose patients we studied.


The paper presents a simulation model of a hypothetical stand-alone energy system based just on renewable sources (solar irradiance and micro-hydro power) integrated with a system for the production of hydrogen (electrolyzer, storage and PEMFC). Such a system has been designed to supply the electricity needs of a residential user (a small residential building in a isolated village of a valley of the Alps in Italy) during a complete year of operation, without integration of traditional energy devices based on fossil fuels. A simulation in the Matlab environment has been developed to determine the energy performance of this system during a complete year of operation. The simulation of the operation of the system has been made on an hourly basis as a succession of steady states. The technical feasibility of the system will be evaluated, through the analysis of some variables (e.g. the production and consumption of electricity along the year by the different components, the production, storage and utilisation of hydrogen, etc.). The analysis will show that in a complete year nearly the 50% of the electrical load required from the final user will be given by the PEMFC, even if the micro-hydro turbine and the PV array produce a very high amount of energy. Moreover, the electricity produced by the PEMFC is the 38.5% of the input electric energy sent to the electrolyzer; this value indicates the mean annual efficiency of the conversion chain of the production and utilization of hydrogen inside this plant.Copyright © 2002 by ASME


The mode of abscisic acid (ABA) action, and its relations to drought adaptive responses in particular, has been a captivating area of plant hormone research for much over a decade. The hormone triggers stomatal closure to limit water loss through transpiration, as well as mobilizes a battery of genes that presumably serve to protect the cells from the ensuing oxidative damage in prolonged stress. The signaling network orchestrating these various responses is, however, highly complex. This review summarizes several significant advances made within the last few years. The biosynthetic pathway of the hormone is now almost completely elucidated, with the latest identification of the ABA4 gene encoding a neoxanthin synthase, which seems essential for de novo ABA biosynthesis during water stress. This leads to the interesting question on how ABA is then delivered to perception sites. In this respect, regulated transport has attracted renewed focus by the unexpected finding of a shoot-to-root translocation of ABA during drought response, and at the cellular level, by the identification of a beta-galactosidase that releases biologically active ABA from inactive ABA-glucose ester. Surprising candidate ABA receptors were also identified in the form of the Flowering Time Control Protein A (FCA) and the Chloroplastic Magnesium Protoporphyrin-IX Chelatase H subunit (CHLH) in chloroplast-nucleus communication, both of which have been shown to bind ABA in vitro. On the other hand, the protein(s) corresponding to the physiologically detectable cell-surface ABA receptor(s) is (are) still not known with certainty. Genetic and physiological studies based on the guard cell have reinforced the central importance of reversible phosphorylation in modulating rapid ABA responses. Sucrose Non-Fermenting Related Kinases (SnRK), Calcium-Dependent Protein Kinases (CDPK), Protein Phosphatases (PP) of the 2C and 2A classes figure as prominent regulators in this single-cell model. Identifying their direct in vivo targets of regulation, which may include H(+)-ATPases, ion channels, 14-3-3 proteins and transcription factors, will logically be the next major challenge. Emerging evidence also implicates ABA as a repressor of innate immune response, as hinted by the highly similar roster of genes elicited by certain pathogens and ABA. Undoubtedly, the most astonishing revelation is that ABA is not restricted to plants and mosses, but overwhelming evidence now indicates that it also exists in metazoans ranging from the most primitive to the most advance on the evolution scale (sponges to humans). In metazoans, ABA has healing properties, and plays protective roles against both environmental and pathogen related injuries. These cross-kingdom comparisons have shed light on the surprising ancient origin of ABA and its attendant mechanisms of signal transduction.


AIM
To study the influences of ginsenosides Rb1 and Rg1 (active components of the total saponins of Panax ginseng) on the brains against ischemia-reperfusion injury.

METHODS
Rat focal cerebral ischemia was induced by reversible middle cerebral artery occlusion (MCAO) without craniectomy. The influences of ginsenoside Rb1 and Rg1 on infarct size (IS), neurologic deficit (ND) and the contents of calcium and potassium in the infarct were observed.

RESULTS
In a 2-h ischemia, Rb1 10-40 mg.kg-1 i.v. 30 min before MCAO decreased IS by 20%-49% and ND score from 5.1 to 4.1-2.3, and inhibited Ca accumulation and K loss by 22%-50% and 18-37%, respectively; Rb1 10-40 mg.kg-1 i.v. immediately after MCA was recanalized decreased IS by 12%-35% and ND score from 5.2 to 4.3-3.3, and inhibited Ca accumulation and K loss by 10%-40% and 17%-30%, respectively. In permanent ischemia, Rb1 40 mg.kg-1 i.v. reduced IS, ND, Ca accumulation and K loss. However, Rg1 40 mg.kg-1 i.v. did not show effect on both permanent and 2-h MCAO.

CONCLUSIONS
Rb1 protected brain from ischemic and reperfusion injuries.


PURPOSE
Hemorrhagic cystitis (HC) after bone marrow transplantation (BMT) has been ascribed to cyclophosphamide metabolites. HC has also been associated with excretion of the BK type of polyomavirus. The relative contributions of cyclophosphamide metabolites and BK virus in the development of HC following BMT are unknown.

PATIENTS AND METHODS
We conducted a randomized trial to compare mesna with forced diuresis for prophylaxis against HC in 147 BMT recipients. We studied the association of BK virus with HC in 95 consecutive BMT recipients by prospectively monitoring urinary excretion of BK virus using polymerase chain reaction amplification of viral gene sequences.

RESULTS
HC occurred in 37 of 147 (25.2%) transplant recipients. The incidence of HC was similar in patients given mesna (26.8%, 19 of 71) or forced diuresis (23.7%, 18 of 76), and in recipients of allogeneic (27.2%, 18 of 64) or autologous marrow (22.9%, 19 of 83). The incidence of HC was unrelated to primary disease, preparative regimen, or occurrence of graft-versus-host disease (GVHD). Excretion of BK virus was demonstrated in 50 of 95 patients (52.6%); 38 patients (40%) had persistent BK viruria (> or = two consecutive positive samples). HC occurred in 19 of 38 patients (50%) with persistent BK viruria, in one of 12 (8.3%) with only a single urine sample positive for BK virus, and in none of 45 who did not excrete BK virus (P < .0001). Shedding of BK virus also had a strong temporal correlation with onset of HC (r = .95).

CONCLUSION
Mesna and forced diuresis are equally effective in abrogating the urothelial toxicity of preparative regimens for BMT. Since HC after BMT is virtually always associated with persistent BK viruria, strategies aimed at the prevention or elimination of viruria in BK seropositive recipients are warranted.


HDL provides atheroprotection by facilitating cholesterol efflex from lipid-laden macrophages in the vessel wall. In vitro studies have suggested impaired efflux capacity of HDL following inflammatory changes. We assessed the impact of acute severe sepsis and mild chronic inflammatory disease on the efflux capacity of HDL. We hypothesize that a more severe inflammatory state leads to stronger impaired cholesterol efflux capacity. Using lipid-laden THP1 cells and fibroblasts we were able to show that efflux capacity of HDL from both patients with severe sepsis or with Crohn's disease (active or in remission), either isolated using density gradient ultracentrifugation or using apoB precipitation, was not impaired. Yet plasma levels of HDL cholesterol and apoA-I were markedly lower in patients with sepsis. Based on the current observations we conclude that inflammatory disease does not interfere with the capacity of HDL to mediate cholesterol efflux. Our findings do not lend support to the biological relevance of HDL function changes in vitro.


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Parasitic root-knot nematodes transform the host's vascular cells into permanent feeding giant cells (GCs) to withdraw nutrients from the host plants. GCs are multinucleated metabolically active cells with distinctive cell wall structures; however, the genetic regulation of GC formation is largely unknown. In this study, the functions of the Arabidopsis thaliana transcription factor PUCHI during GC development were investigated. PUCHI expression was shown to be induced in early developing galls, suggesting the importance of the PUCHI gene in gall formation. Despite the puchi mutant not differing significantly from the wild type in nematode invasion and reproduction rates, puchi GC cell walls appeared to be thicker and lobate when compared to the wild type, while the cell membrane sometimes formed invaginations. In three-dimensional (3D) reconstructions of puchi GCs, they appeared to be more irregularly shaped than those in the wild type, with noticeable cell-surface protrusions and folds. Interestingly, the loss-of-function mutant of 3-KETOACYL-COA SYNTHASE 1 showed GC morphology and cell wall defects similar to those of the puchi mutant, suggesting that PUCHI may regulate GC development via very long chain fatty acid synthesis.


We provide a systematic quantitative description of spin polarization in armchair and zigzag graphene nanoribbons (GNRs) in a perpendicular magnetic field. We first address spinless electrons within the Hartree approximation, studying the evolution of the magnetoband structure and formation of the compressible strips. We discuss the potential profile and the density distribution near the edges and the difference and similarities between armchair and zigzag edges. Accounting for the Zeeman interaction and describing the spin effects via the Hubbard term, we study the spin-resolved subband structure and relate the spin polarization of the system at hand to the formation of the compressible strips for the case of spinless electrons. At high magnetic field the calculated effective g factor varies around a value of andlt; g*andgt; approximate to 2.25 for armchair GNRs and andlt; g*andgt; approximate to 3 for zigzag GNRs. An important finding is that in zigzag GNRs the zero-energy mode remains pinned to the Fermi energy and becomes fully spin polarized for all magnetic fields, which, in turn, leads to a strong spin polarization of the electron density near the zigzag edge. Because of this the effective g factor in zigzag GNRs is strongly enhanced at low fields reaching values up to g* approximate to 30. This is in contrast to armchair GNRs, where the effective g factor at low field is close to its bare value, g = 2.


Abstract Aim To investigate the diversity and specificity of the determinants of immigrant caregivers' adherence to child primary care (CPC) health recommendations. Background Immigrant caregiver's adherence to CPC health recommendations is of utmost importance to minimize their children's health-related vulnerabilities. Some research has been conducted on the determinants of immigrants' access to health services, but much less is known about the determinants of their adherence to health professionals' recommendations once they get there, especially in a primary health care context. This study contributes to bridge these gaps. Methods Interviews and focus groups were conducted, with immigrant and non-immigrant caregivers living in Portugal (n=35), from heterogeneous socioeconomic backgrounds. Focus group and individual interview scripts were developed to explore caregivers' understanding and use of CPC services and, particularly, their adherence to CPC recommendations. A socio-demographic questionnaire was also administered. Qualitative data were analyzed using a grounded theory methodology. Findings 'Adherence to CPC health recommendations' is a core and multidimensional concept. Several determinants were identified at individual, interpersonal, organizational and structural levels. Some determinants were highlighted both by immigrant and non-immigrant caregivers: valuing children's health, usefulness of recommendations, perceived health-care professionals' competence, central role of vaccination in CPC and caregivers' socio-economic conditions. Other determinants were specifically mentioned by immigrant caregivers: expectations about traditional versus pharmacological treatments, cultural mismatches in children's care practices, perceived quality of Portuguese CPC services versus CPC from countries of origin. These results provide innovative theoretical and empirical contributions to the field of primary health care and, particularly, to immigrant caregivers' adherence behaviors. Implications for research on treatment adherence in primary care contexts, the development of interventions that promote caregivers' adherence to CPC health recommendations and for child protection will be discussed.


The 5th Antiviral Drug Discovery and Development Summit provided an up-to-date snapshot of the ongoing developments in the area. The topics covered ranged from updates on recently launched drugs (Kaletra), Fuzeon) and new investigational inhibitors (T-1249, Reverset, UK-427857, L-870810, PA-457, remofovir, VX-950), to the discovery of new antiviral targets and advances in technologies that may provide the substrate for the next generation of therapeutics. It is apparent from the range of presentations that much of today's efforts are focused on developing new classes of HIV inhibitors (gp41, integrase), while there is also considerable progress in hepatitis C, where a number of inhibitors have or should reach proof-of-concept studies in the coming months. Here we provide the highlights of this meeting, with particular emphasis on the new developments in HIV and hepatitis C virus.


While 4G is speeding up its steps toward global markets, 5G has initiated its full development to satisfy an increasing demand on mobile data traffic and big data bandwidth. Centralized data processing, collaborative radio, real-time cloud infrastructure, and cloud radio access network (C-RAN), along with their excellent advantages are being sought by more and more operators to meet end-user requirements. As a promising mobile wireless network architecture, compared with traditional RAN, C-RAN has incomparable advantages in terms of low power consumption, reduced base station (BS) numbers, and economic capital and operating expenditure. It can also improve network capacity and BS utilization rate. Recently, C-RAN security has aroused special attention and concern. However, the literature still lacks an overall review on it in order to guide current and future research. In this paper, we first overview the architecture, deployment scenarios, and special characteristics of C-RAN. We then provide a thorough review on the existing security studies in the field of C-RAN based on its three logic layers and corresponding security threats and attacks. Particularly, we discuss whether the current literature can satisfy the expected security requirements in C-RAN. Based on this, we indicate open research issues and propose future research trends.


The use of generic formulation of therapeutic agents may allow a significant reduction of costs for patients and the National Health Services. This is particularly true for drugs used in prolonged therapies such as topiramate which is effective in the treatment of epilepsy, migraine, alcohol abuse and psychiatric conditions. The purposes of this study were: 1) evaluate Topiramate (50 mg) release in vitro from a generic (Sincronil) and the reference formulation (Topamax); 2) compare the above mentioned generic and reference formulations in bioavailability studies in healthy volunteers. Dissolution tests in vitro showed that more than 95% of the active principle was released within 15 minutes both from the reference and the generic formulation. No difference in release kinetics was found between the two topiramate preparations. In vivo pharmacokinetic data were obtained by administering 1 tablet containing 50 mg of topiramate of each of the two formulations to 28 healthy volunteers under fasting conditions, using a randomized, single-dose, open-label, 2-way crossover design. The treatment phases were separated by a washout period of 21 days. The maximum concentration reached in plasma (Cmax) for the reference and the generic formulation, were 946 ± 308 and 849 ± 247 (ng/mL) and the area under the curve (AUC0-t) were 35,900 ± 7800 and 34,300 ± 8100 (ng·h/mL) respectively. The data indicate that the rate and extent of absorption of the reference or generic 50 mg topiramate formulation are not significantly different and suggest that the therapeutic effects of the two preparations do not significantly differ.


Extreme climate events, either being linked to dry spells or extreme precipitation, are of major concern in Africa, a region in which the economy and population are highly vulnerable to climate hazards. However, recent trends in climate events are not often documented in this poorly surveyed continent. This study makes use of a large set of daily rain gauge data covering Southern West Africa (extending from 10° W to 10° E and from 4° N to 12° N) from 1950 to 2014. The evolution of the number and the intensity of daily rainfall events, especially the most extremes, were analyzed at the annual and seasonal scales. During the first rainy season (April–July), mean annual rainfall is observed to have a minor trend due to less frequent but more intense rainfall mainly along the coast of Southern West Africa (SWA) over the last two decades. The north–south seasonal changes exhibit an increase in mean annual rainfall over the last decade during the second rainy season (September–November) linked by both an increase in the frequency of occurrence of rainy days as well as an increase in the mean intensity and extreme events over the last decade. The study also provides evidence of a disparity that exists between the west and east of SWA, with the east recording a stronger increase in the mean intensity of wet days and extreme rainfall during the second rainy season (September–November).


The purpose of this study was to evaluate adaptive daily planning for cervical cancer patients who underwent high‐dose‐rate intracavitary brachytherapy (HDR‐BT) using comprehensive interfractional organ motion measurements. This study included 22 cervical cancer patients who underwent 5 fractions of HDR‐BT. Regions of interest (ROIs) including high‐risk clinical tumor volume (HR‐CTV) and organs at risk (OARs) were manually contoured on daily CT images. All patients were clinically treated with adaptive daily plans (ADP), which involved ROI delineation and dose optimization at each treatment fraction. Single treatment plans (SP) were retrospectively generated by applying the first treatment fraction's dwell times adjusted for decay and dwell positions of the applicator to subsequent treatment fractions. Various existing similarity metrics were calculated for the ROIs to quantify interfractional organ variations. A novel similarity (JRARM) score was established, which combined both volumetric overlap metrics (DSC, JSC, and RVD) and distance metrics (ASD, MSD, and RMSD). Linear regression was performed to determine a relationship between interfractional organ variations of various similarity metrics and D2cc variations from both plans. Wilcoxon signed‐rank tests were used to assess ADP and SP by comparing EQD2D2cc(α/β=3) for OARs. For interfractional organ variations, the sigmoid demonstrated the greatest variations based on the JRARM, DSC, and RMSD metrics. Comparisons between paired ROIs showed differences in metrics at each treatment fraction. RVD, MSD, and RMSD were found to be significantly correlated to D2cc variations for bladder and sigmoid. The comparison between plans found ADP provided lower EQD2 D2cc of OARs than SP. Specifically, the sigmoid demonstrated statistically significant dose variations (p=0.015). Substantial interfractional organ motion occurs during HDR‐BT based on comprehensive measurements and may significantly affect D2cc of OARs. Adaptive daily planning provides improved dose sparing for OARs compared to single planning with the extent of sparing being different among OARs. PACS number(s): 87.55.D, 87.55.de, 87.55.kh, 87.57.nj


Background 54 million deaths occurred worldwide and about one third was due to infectious diseases in developing countries and among children, globally. Infectious diseases are important causes of mortality and morbidity in children and have particular concern in paediatrics' wards. Distinguishing the features and subtypes of infectious diseases could facilitate avoiding advanced interventions, therefore, we aimed to investigate infectious disorders in hospitalised children in Rasht/ Iran. Materials and methods This is a descriptive cross-sectional study which was conducted on 1 months to 14 years old hospitalised children in north part of Iran, Rasht. data were gathered through a checklist which assessed age, sex, place of inhabitants, season of admission, duration of hospitalisation and final diagnosis. Descriptive statistics such as mean, standard deviation, frequency, maximum and minimum were used to report the results by SPSSv16 software. Results During the study, 4676 hospitalised children were admitted and 29% reported infectious disorders. 83.2% of infected patients were children aged less than 5 years. The mean duration of hospitalisation for infectious disease was 5 ± 4/6 ??days. Results demonstrated that infectious diseases were more frequent in male, winter and urban residents. Also, Respiratory tract and gastrointestinal infections showed the highest frequencies which were 40.1% and 37.2%, respectively. Bacterial pneumonia was the most frequent infection among respiratory tract infections (30.1%). Conclusion Since, recent studies regarding to infectious diseases could be used for national planning and medical requirements' preparation, it seems that periodical assessment of these diseases is mandatory.


Neuregulin-1 (NRG1) plays a crucial role in axoglial signaling during the development of the peripheral nervous system, but its importance in adulthood after peripheral nerve injury remains unclear. We used single-neuron labeling with inducible Cre-mediated knock-out animals, which enabled visualization of a subset of adult myelinated sensory and motoneurons neurons in which Nrg1 was inducibly mutated by tamoxifen treatment. In uninjured mice, NRG1-deficient axons and the associated myelin sheath were normal, and the neuromuscular junction demonstrated normal apposition of presynaptic and postsynaptic components. After sciatic nerve crush, NRG1 ablation resulted in severe defects in remyelination: axons were either hypomyelinated or had no myelin sheath. NRG1-deficient axons were also found to regenerate at a slower rate. After nerve injury, the neuromuscular junction was reinnervated, but excess terminal sprouting was observed. Juxtacrine Neuregulin-1 signaling is therefore dispensable for maintenance of the myelin sheath in adult animals but has a key role in reparative processes after nerve injury.


Public insurance is commonly assimilated with redistributive tools mobilized by the welfare state in the pursuit of an egalitarian ideal. This view contains some truth, since the result of insurance, at a given moment, is the redistribution of resources from the lucky to unlucky. However, Joseph Heath (among other political theorists) considers that the principle of efficiency provides a better normative explanation and justification of public insurance than the egalitarian account. According to this view, the fact that the state is involved in the provision of specific insurance (primarily health and unemployment insurance and pensions) is explained and justified by the greater efficiency of the state, in comparison with markets, in addressing market failures such as moral hazard or adverse selection. Our argument is that while insurance, intrinsically and idealistically, may diverge from a re-distributive scheme, it is nevertheless difficult to deny that insurance has nothing to do with equality. More precisely, we argue that insurance may be understood as an egalitarian tool if our understanding of equality is broadened to include relational equality. Our paper aims to briefly recap the debates surrounding public insurance as a redistributive tool, advancing the idea that public insurance may be a relational egalitarian tool. It then presents a number of relational arguments in favor of the involvement of the state in the pro-vision of specific forms of insurance, arguments that have been overlooked given the domination of luck egalitarian approaches in these debates.


Relying on the huge group velocity dispersion available in photonic crystal (PC) waveguides, we observe the formation of both Bragg grating solitons and gap solitons in nonlinear PC waveguides in numerical experiments. Also, we indicate the potential applications of optical solitons in optical limiting, optical delay, and pulse compression and the feasibility of observing optical solitons in practical experiments.


The value of using social media is being increasingly recognised among the academic community. Blogging has been identified by some researchers as a means of reaching a non-academic audience and in order to increase research citations. However, there is little research exploring this method of communication within specific disciplines. This study, therefore, explored UK psychologists' views and experiences of blogging using an online survey, of both blog writers and non-blog writers. In addition, the study sought to determine whether those who identified as blog writers when they completed the survey, and who consented to a content analysis of their posts, were still posting regularly 12 months later. The majority of the blog writers said that they wrote blogs as a means of expressing themselves and their research. Content analysis reflected the survey findings, with research as the most common category for posts, but we identified that the intended audience for such posts appeared to be other academics. Interestingly, 37% of blog writers had stopped regularly posting at the point where posts were analysed, 12 months after the survey. Moreover, despite positive attitudes and subjective norms about blogging across the sample, we also identified that respondents who were non-blog writers were reluctant to blog because they worried that their contribution may not be valued, or that they did not have the time. These findings highlight that there is work to do in order to convince psychologists to engage – and to continue doing so – with this medium of communication.


Introduction. Ocular disorders are useful in the characterisation of the different types of spinocerebellar ataxias (SCA); pigmentary retinitis is an alteration that is specifically associated to SCA type 7 and is characterised by night blindness, sensitivity to glare and progressive narrowing of the visual field. Case report. A 34-year-old woman with clinical symptoms of progressive ataxia and visual impairment secondary to pigmentary retinitis. The patient had a personal history with an autosomal dominant pattern of a similar disorder in her father and paternal grandmother. In the genetic study she presented a triplet expansion in the SCA type 2 gene. Conclusions. Although pigmentary retinitis belongs to the SCA type 7 phenotype, our patient presented this retinal disorder, as in other cases of SCA type 2. A genetic study for SCA type 2 must therefore be conducted in patients with a degenerative ataxic clinical picture and who present evidence of pigmentary retinitis.


OF DISSERTATION A POSTERIORI ERROR ESTIMATES FOR SURFACE FINITE ELEMENT METHODS Problems involving the solution of partial differential equations over surfaces appear in many engineering and scientific applications. Some of those applications include crystal growth, fluid mechanics and computer graphics. Many times analytic solutions to such problems are not available. Numerical algorithms, such as Finite Element Methods, are used in practice to find approximate solutions in those cases. In this work we present L and pointwise a posteriori error estimates for Adaptive Surface Finite Elements solving the Laplace-Beltrami equation −△Γu = f . The two sources of errors for Surface Finite Elements are a Galerkin error, and a geometric error that comes from replacing the original surface by a computational mesh. A posteriori error estimates on flat domains only have a Galerkin component. We use residual type error estimators to measure the Galerkin error. The geometric component of our error estimate becomes zero if we consider flat domains, but otherwise has the same order as the residual one. This is different from the available energy norm based error estimates on surfaces, where the importance of the geometric components diminishes asymptotically as the mesh is refined. We use our results to implement an Adaptive Surface Finite Element Method. An important tool for proving a posteriori error bounds for non smooth functions is the Scott-Zhang interpolant. A refined version of a standard Scott-Zhang interpolation bound is also proved during our analysis. This local version only requires the interpolated function to be in a Sobolev space defined over an element T instead of an element patch containing T . In the last section we extend our elliptic results to get estimates for the surface heat equation ut −△Γu = f using the elliptic reconstruction technique.


: Overall ninety-seven male subjects suffering from stage-II alcoholism were studied for effects of verapamil on pathologic drawing toward alcohol. The above drug proved to be very effective in the treatment of alcoholism, which fact might be accounted for by certain confunction of membrane depolarization in the release of dopamine.


The aim of this paper is to establish a result on a family of congruences arising from the Fermat quotient: this result has an interesting application to the Fermat problem. For over 150 years the Fermat problem has been divided into two cases; the First Case being the assertion that for each odd prime p, has no solution in non-zero integers x, y, z. Kummer's work on ideal numbers led, in 1847, to the complete solution of the Fermat problem for regular primes.


Recently, large pre-trained language models, such as BERT, have reached state-of-the-art performance in many natural language processing tasks, but for many languages, including Estonian, BERT models are not yet available. However, there exist several multilingual BERT models that can handle multiple languages simultaneously and that have been trained also on Estonian data. In this paper, we evaluate four multilingual models---multilingual BERT, multilingual distilled BERT, XLM and XLM-RoBERTa---on several NLP tasks including POS and morphological tagging, NER and text classification. Our aim is to establish a comparison between these multilingual BERT models and the existing baseline neural models for these tasks. Our results show that multilingual BERT models can generalise well on different Estonian NLP tasks outperforming all baselines models for POS and morphological tagging and text classification, and reaching the comparable level with the best baseline for NER, with XLM-RoBERTa achieving the highest results compared with other multilingual models.


To our knowledge, we describe the first reported case of paradoxical embolization via a patent foramen ovale (PFO) in an adult with moderately severe cystic fibrosis (CF) and advanced lung disease. Fluctuating neurologic symptoms and signs suggestive of cerebrovascular disease in an adult patient with advanced CF may be due to paradoxical embolization via a PFO. The possibility of a PFO should be considered before placement of a totally implantable venous access device to avert unnecessary risk of stroke in CF patients. Further study is needed to determine whether the use of a totally implantable venous access device increases the risk of paradoxical embolization in adult CF patients with a PFO.


In an effort to overcome the limitations of small target detection in complex urban scene, complementary data sets are combined to provide additional insight about a particular scene. This paper presents a method based on shape/spectral integration (SSI) decision level fusion algorithm to improve the detection of vehicles in semi and deep shadow areas. A four steps process combines high resolution LIDAR and hyperspectral data to classify shadow areas, segment vehicles in LIDAR data, detect spectral anomalies and improves vehicle detection. The SSI decision level fusion algorithm was shown to outperform detection using a single data set and the utility of shape information was shown to be a way to enhance spectral target detection in complex urban scenes.


Background: Little is known about the burden of stroke in sub-Saharan Africa that may increase with the ongoing demographic and socioeconomic transition. This study aims to assess the prevalence of stroke, its related disability rate and consequences in the quality of daily life in an urban door- to-door survey in Cotonou, Benin. Methods: A three-phase door-to-door study was performed in two districts of Cotonou with a broad range of socioeconomic income. A population of 15,155 individuals aged ≧15 years was evaluated. The first phase consisted in screening of stroke in the population using the modified WHO questionnaire, the second phase included the medical evaluation of all suspected cases, and in the third phase the diagnosis of stroke was confirmed by CT scan evaluation. Results: Out of 15,155 subjects, 321 cases were identified as possible stroke cases. The diagnosis was confirmed in 70 cases. The crude prevalence of stroke was thus estimated to be 4.6/1,000 (8.7/1,000 and 7.7/1,000 adjusted to the WHO and SEGI World Population). The mean age of the patients at onset was 56 ± 13 years. Sixty percent of stroke survivors had a Rankin score ≧2, and CT scan was found abnormal in 90.0% of them. Conclusion: The stroke prevalence in urban areas of Cotonou is higher than that reported in other sub-Saharan countries, and the majority of stroke survivors present with good functional recovery and without severe disability in their everyday life.


Signatures are widely used as a form of personal authentication. Despite ubiquity in deployment, individual signatures are relatively easy to forge, especially when only the static 'pictorial' outcome of the signature is considered at verification time. In this study, we explore opinions on signature usage for verification purposes, and how individuals rate a particular third-party signature in terms of ease of forgeability and their own ability to forge. We examine responses with respect to an individual's experience of the forgeability/complexity of their own signature. Our study shows that past experience does not generally have an effect on perceived signature complexity nor the perceived effectiveness of an individual to themselves forge a signature. In assessing forgeability, most subjects cite the overall signature complexity and distinguishing features in reaching this decision. Furthermore, our research indicates that individuals typically vary their signature according to the scenario but generally little effort into the production of the signature.


BACKGROUND
 Impactability modeling promises to help solve the nationwide crisis in caring for high-need high-cost patients by matching specific case management programs with patients using a "benefit" or "impactability" score, but there are limitations in tailoring each model to a specific program and population.

 OBJECTIVE
 We evaluated the impact on Medicare ACO savings from developing a benefit score for patients enrolled in an historic case management program, then prospectively implementing the score and evaluating the results in a new case management program.

 METHODS
 We conducted a longitudinal cohort study of 76,140 patients in a Medicare ACO with multiple before-and-after measures of the outcome using linked electronic health records and Medicare claims data from 2012 to 2019. There were 489 patients in the historic case management program and 1,550 matched comparison patients; 830 patients in the new program with 2,368 matched comparisons. The historic program targeted high-risk patients and assigned a centrally-located registered nurse and social worker to each patient. The new program targets high- and moderate-risk patients and assigns a nurse physically located in a primary care clinic. Our primary outcomes were any unplanned hospital events (admissions, observation stays, and ED visits), count of event-days, and Medicare payments.

 RESULTS
 In the historic program, as expected, high-benefit patients enrolled in case management had fewer events, fewer event-days, and an average $1.15 million reduction in Medicare payments per 100 patients over the subsequent year when compared to matched comparisons. For the new program, high-benefit high-risk patients enrolled in case management had fewer events, while high-benefit moderate-risk patients enrolled in case management did not differ from matched comparisons.

 CONCLUSIONS
 Although there was evidence that a benefit score could be extended to a new case management program for similar (i.e., high-risk) patients, there was no evidence that it could be extended to a moderate-risk population. Extending a score to a new program and population should include evaluation of program outcomes within key subgroups. With the increased attention to value-based care, policy makers and measure developers should consider ways to incorporate impactability modeling into program design and evaluation.

 CLINICALTRIAL
 N/A


The expression of growth factors in ophthalmic pterygium and phenotypically normal conjunctiva was examined and correlated with the clinical findings. Fifteen specimens of ophthalmic pterygia and 8 specimens of phenotypically normal conjunctiva were examined. Total RNA was extracted from all specimens and mRNA levels for transforming growth factor (TGFB1), vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGFA), basic fibroblast growth factor (FGF2), epidermal growth factor (EGF) and insulin-like growth factor (IGF1) were measured using real-time reverse-transcription PCR (qRT-PCR). Differences in the expression of these factors between pterygium and conjunctival specimens were examined, as well as correlations between RNA levels and clinical parameters. mRNA levels for VEGFA and FGF2 were significantly higher in pterygium, compared with conjunctival specimens, whereas the respective differences for other factors examined were statistically not significant. The mRNA levels for VEGFA and FGF2 were also significantly higher in recurrent compared with primary pterygium. Correlations between the mRNA levels and other clinical parameters were statistically not significant for the growth factors examined. The higher levels of FGF2 or VEGFA mRNA in pterygium imply that these factors may be involved in the pathogenesis or clinical behavior of the pterygium, including postoperative recurrence. VEGFA expression may have potential for use in the selective treatment of pterygium with anti-VEGFA agents.


Background: The tremendous global health burden related to COVID-19 means that identifying determinants of COVID-19 severity is important for prevention and intervention. We aimed to explore long-term exposure to ambient air pollution as a potential contributor to COVID-19 severity, given its known impact on the respiratory system. Methods: We used a cohort of all people with confirmed SARS-CoV-2 infection, aged 20 years and older and not residing in a long-term care facility in Ontario, Canada, during 2020. We evaluated the association between long-term exposure to fine particulate matter (PM2.5), nitrogen dioxide (NO2) and ground-level ozone (O3), and risk of COVID-19-related hospital admission, intensive care unit (ICU) admission and death. We ascertained individuals' long-term exposures to each air pollutant based on their residence from 2015 to 2019. We used logistic regression and adjusted for confounders and selection bias using various individual and contextual covariates obtained through data linkage. Results: Among the 151 105 people with confirmed SARS-CoV-2 infection in Ontario in 2020, we observed 8630 hospital admissions, 1912 ICU admissions and 2137 deaths related to COVID-19. For each interquartile range increase in exposure to PM2.5 (1.70 μg/m3), we estimated odds ratios of 1.06 (95% confidence interval [CI] 1.01–1.12), 1.09 (95% CI 0.98–1.21) and 1.00 (95% CI 0.90–1.11) for hospital admission, ICU admission and death, respectively. Estimates were smaller for NO2. We also estimated odds ratios of 1.15 (95% CI 1.06–1.23), 1.30 (95% CI 1.12–1.50) and 1.18 (95% CI 1.02–1.36) per interquartile range increase of 5.14 ppb in O3 for hospital admission, ICU admission and death, respectively. Interpretation: Chronic exposure to air pollution may contribute to severe outcomes after SARS-CoV-2 infection, particularly exposure to O3.


Abstract. Comprehensive catalogues of ancient sunspot and auroral observations from East Asia are used to identify possible intense historical geomagnetic storms in the interval 210 BC-AD 1918. There are about 270 entries in the sunspot catalogue and about 1150 entries in the auroral catalogue. Special databases have been constructed in which the scientific information in these two catalogues is placed in specified fields. For the purposes of this study, an historical geomagnetic storm is defined in terms of an auroral observation that is apparently associated with a particular sunspot observation, in the sense that the auroral observation occurred within several days of the sunspot observation. More precisely, a selection criterion is formulated for the automatic identification of such geomagnetic storms, using the oriental records stored in the sunspot and auroral databases. The selection criterion is based on specific assumptions about the duration of sunspot visibility with the unaided eye, the likely range of heliographic longitudes of an energetic solar feature, and the likely range of transit times for ejected solar plasma to travel from the Sun to the Earth. This selection criterion results in the identification of nineteen putative historical geomagnetic storms, although two of these storms are spurious in the sense that there are two examples of a single sunspot observation being associated with two different auroral observations separated by more than half a (synodic) solar rotation period. The literary and scientific reliabilities of the East Asian sunspot and auroral records that define the nineteen historical geomagnetic storms are discussed in detail in a set of appendices. A possible time sequence of events is presented for each geomagnetic storm, including possible dates for both the central meridian passage of the sunspot and the occurrence of the energetic solar feature, as well as likely transit times for the ejected solar plasma. European telescopic sunspot drawings from the seventeenth century are also used to assess the credibility of some of the later historical geomagnetic storms defined solely by the East Asian sunspot and auroral records. These drawings cast doubt on a few of the associations between sunspot and auroral observations based entirely on the oriental records, at least to the extent that the occidental drawings provide a more realistic date for central meridian passage of the sunspot actually associated with a particular auroral observation. Nevertheless, on those occasions for which European sunspot drawings are available, the dates of all the pertinent East Asian sunspot and auroral observations are corroborated, apart from just one Chinese sunspot observation. The ancient historical observations of sunspots and aurorae are discussed briefly in terms of modern observations of great geomagnetic storms.


Cellular niches in adult tissue can harbour dysregulated microenvironments that become the driving force behind disease progression. The major environmental change when metastatic cells arrive in the bone is the destruction of mineralized type I collagen matrix. Once metastatic niches establish in bone, the invading tumour cells initiate a vicious cycle of osteolytic lesion formation via the dysregulation of paracrine signals and uncoupling of normal bone resorption and production. Here we report that the collagen receptor Endo180 (CD280, MRC2, uPARAP) participates in collagen deposition by primary human osteoblasts during de novo osteoid formation. This newly recognized function of Endo180 was suppressed in osteoblasts following heterotypic direct cell–cell contact in co‐culture with prostate tumour cells. Reciprocal Endo180 up‐regulation in osteolytic prostate tumour cells (PC3 and DU145) followed their direct contact with osteoblasts and promoted de novo collagen internalization, which is a previously characterized function of the constitutively recycling Endo180 receptor. The osteoblastic suppression and tumour cell‐associated enhancement of Endo180 expression were equally sustained in these direct co‐cultures. These findings are the first to demonstrate that increased tumour cell participation in collagen degradation and decreased collagen formation by osteoblasts in the osteolytic microenvironment are linked to the divergent regulation of a collagen‐binding receptor. Immunohistochemical analysis of core biopsies from bone metastasis revealed higher levels of Endo180 expression in tumour cell foci than cells in the surrounding stroma. Additional experiments in prostate cell–osteoblast co‐cultures indicate that divergent regulation of Endo180 is the result of dysregulated TGFβ1 signalling. The findings of this study provide a rationale for targeting collagen remodelling by Endo180 in bone metastases and other collagen matrix pathologies. Copyright © 2011 Pathological Society of Great Britain and Ireland. Published by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.


The pulmonary vein (PV) constricts to hypoxia however little is known about the underlying mechanisms. Hypoxic PV constriction is proposed to recruit upstream capillary beds and optimise gas exchange in healthy humans and may play a role in high altitude pulmonary oedema. The PV is also intrinsic to disease states including pulmonary hypertension and pulmonary veno-occlusive disease. Blood vessel culture can be a powerful tool to enable assessment of the impact of environmental factors on vessel function and as a disease model. However culture conditions alone affect vessel contractility; the effect of culture conditions on PV function remained to be established. The aim of this project was to investigate hypoxic responses of porcine PVs including the impact of maintenance in culture. Maintenance of PVs in culture conditions for 24 hours increased contraction to hypoxia and inhibited hypoxic relaxation post-contraction. These changes to PV hypoxic responses were thought to result from endothelial dysfunction. However, the endothelial nitric oxide synthase inhibitor L-NAME inhibited PV hypoxic contraction and enhanced relaxation. The impact of K+ channel inhibitors on hypoxic contraction was also investigated. Penitrem A, 4AP, DPO-1, ZnCl2 and glyburide had no significant effect however TEA and BDM inhibited the hypoxic contraction. This suggested that TASK, KV1.5, BKCa and KATP do not play a role in the mechanism of hypoxic pulmonary venoconstriction however KV channels containing KV2.1 I± subunits may modulate the response. Results with L-NAME suggested endothelial dysfunction may not fully account for the change in PV function after exposure to culture. Therefore the impact of PV maintenance in culture was further explored using an isolated PV smooth muscle cell (PVSMC) model. Maintenance of PVs in culture conditions had minimal impact on morphology and electrical properties of PVSMCs. Notably, resting membrane potential and hypoxia-induced depolarisation were not significantly different. Based on the findings of this study, the endothelium in PVs appears to a) play a major role in modulation of the hypoxic response b) be sensitive to short-term exposure to culture conditions. K+ channels appear to play a minor role in PV hypoxic contraction and SMCs isolated from PVs maintained in culture conditions have similar morphological and electrophysiological characteristics to freshly isolated PVSMCs. Taking all this into account, endothelial regulation of contractility should be a key focus for future PV research.


Teacher research has emerged in the last decade as a potential source for improving education. Teachers, who work with students daily, have a unique perspective on educational problems. Practitioner, or action, research is defined as trying out ideas in practice to increase knowledge about curriculum, teaching, and learning. Unlike traditional research that has uniform, external' guidelines, action research is frequently localized and has limited applicability. The results of action research usually are not published or shared widely. Reviewing literature on action research is complicated by its broad definition and by the variability of research. In the futere, action research may become a viable tool for educational research, help transform teachers into political actors, and be quantitatively and qualitatively measured over time. This review of action-research literature uses three criteria to determine if documents are included: the term "action research" must be used, the action-research concept must be developed if not explicitly stated, and any type of practitioner-centered research in a school setting must be mentioned. The paper includes five sections: a history of action research, the action-research concept, a theoretical rationale, practical issues in implementation, and, in an appendix, types and categories of action research. (Contains 106 references.) OPT) *********************************************************************** Reproductions supplied by EDRS are the best that can be made from the original document. ********************************************************k************** A REVIEW OF WRITING ON ACTION RESEARCH (1944-PRESENT) Jean A. King M. Peg Lonnquist CARET College of Education University of Minnesota


Deep neural networks (DNNs) have been proven to be powerful models for acoustic scene classification tasks. State-of-the-art DNNs have millions of connections and are computationally intensive, making them difficult to deploy on systems with limited resources. With a focus on acoustic scene classification, we describe a new learnable module, the simulated Fourier transform module, which allows deep neural networks to implement the discrete Fourier transform operation 8x faster on a graphics processing unit (GPU). We frame the signal processing procedure as an adaptive machine learning problem and introduce learnable parameters in the module to facilitate fast adaptation for the complex and variable acoustic signal. This module gives neural networks the ability to model audio signals from raw waveforms, without extra fast Fourier transform and filter bank patches. Then, we use the temporal transformer module, which has been previously published, to alleviate the information loss caused by the simulated Fourier transform module. These techniques can be integrated into an existing fully connected neural network (FCNN), convolutional neural network (CNN), or recurrent neural network (RNN) models. We evaluate the proposed strategy using four acoustic scene datasets (LITIS Rouen, DCASE2016, DCASE2017, and DCASE2018) as target tasks. We show that the proposed approach significantly outperforms the vanilla FCNN, CNN, and RNN approach on both efficiency and performance. For instance, the proposed approach can reduce inference time by 8x while reducing the classification error on LITIS Rouen dataset from 3.21% to 1.81%.


Capturing word meaning is one of the challenges of natural language processing (NLP). Formal models of meaning such as semantic networks of words or concepts are knowledge repositories used in a variety of applications. To be effectively used, these networks have to be large or, at least, adapted to specific domains. Our main goal is to contribute practically to the research on semantic networks learning models by covering different aspects of the task. We propose a novel probabilistic model for learning semantic networks that expands existing semantic networks taking into accounts both corpus-extracted evidences and the structure of the generated semantic networks. The model exploits structural properties of target relations such as transitivity during learning. Our model presents some innovations in estimating the probabilities. We then propose two extensions of our probabilistic model: a model for learning from a generic domain that can be exploited to extract new information in a specific domain and an incremental ontology learning system that puts human validations in the learning loop.


Unbuffered latches are often used in high-performance designs with custom timing flows. Adding these circuits to a standard library enables improved designs without blowing the library size. We observe a high potential frequency gain (up to 16%) for smaller power consumption. Accurate models for static timing analysis are required to reach a good point on the safety to performance trade-off. We are proposing a complete modeling methodology that can fit in a standard timing analysis flow. An accurate n-model is presented for the input impedance of an unbuffered latch with less than 2% error. We also present a new setup criteria required for these latches. We also show that more advanced waveform models are required to model the output. A Weibull waveform model proves to be effective in this case.


This paper explores alternative methods in which an urban walkability score may be determined. Walk Score is a popular urban accessibility index which determines the walkability of a neighbourhood or specific address by measuring the proximity of the location to nearby services and amenities. Traditional walkability scores, such as Walk Score, are limited because of their inability to vary the importance of being in proximity to certain services and amenities. Multi-criteria decision analysis (MCDA) techniques, specifically simple additive weighting (SAW) and ordered weighted averaging (OWA), provide a geographic approach to determining the walkability of an area and allow users to determine the weights of importance of all services and amenities. MCDA-based walkability scores were calculated and compared to one another and to Walk Score. Both SAW and OWA methods created similar walkability indexes for dissemination areas throughout Toronto. However, the MCDA results could not be directly compared to Walk Score, as there was a significant difference between the value ranges of the scores. Thus, the 140 Toronto neighbourhoods were ranked from most to least walkable for the MCDA-based methods and Walk Score, based upon each method's respective scores. Upon comparison, it was evident that both Walk Score's methodology and the MCDA-based methodologies resulted in similar outcomes of walkability rankings for Toronto neighbourhoods


This study researched the effects of chicken meat extract on blood glucose and insulin level, membrane glucose transporter-4 (GLUT4), and tyrosine phosphorylation of insulin receptor substrate-1 (IRS-1) in type 2 diabetic KKAy mice and GK rats. Eight-week-old KKAy mice and GK rats and euglycemic control animals, C57BL/6J mice and Wistar rats, were orally administered a liquid commercial chicken meat extract, BRAND'S Essence of Chicken (BEC), for up to 8 weeks. BEC (1.5 ml/kg) had no effect on blood insulin levels, but significantly lessened the hyperglycemia in the diabetic animals. In the BEC-treated diabetic animals, insulin induced a significant increase in plasma membrane GLUT4 and cytosolic tyrosine-phosphorylated IRS-1, indicating that it attenuates insulin resistance. The present findings are the first demonstration of the hypoglycemic action of a dietary protein, and they lend credence to the reported benefits of using chicken meat as a source of protein in the dietary management of diabetic individuals.


This paper highlights the benefits of a community-based approach (see Czaykowska-Higgins, 2009; Vallejos, 2014) in a language documentation project in the Dene community of Deline, Canada. It describes the collaborative efforts of a community researcher and an outside linguist to develop joint research interests and ground them with other community members in the specific cultural setting in order to benefit all parties. We first outline our project and the factors that contributed to the success of our research approach, focusing on an inter-generational workshop. We then introduce our results and demonstrate how the setup of the research brought forward crucial insights to the specific knowledge of place in Dene. After identifying with elders of the community historically and culturally important geographic locations, including the traditional name attached to each location, we learned from the elders the stories behind the name of each location. The deeper meanings of these stories are known to people who lived on the land but are often unknown to younger generations. We developed a methodology bringing together elders and younger generations in an inter-generational workshop and actively engaging both in the research process in order to contribute to capacity building in language documentation and revitalization. The workshop was facilitated by a community researcher and held in Dene to enable the documentation of interactional patterns and communicative practices. At the same time the outside linguist trained youth participants in language documentation methodology (eg. multi-media recording, Google Earth), which they were able to perform independently by the end of the workshop. Since many of the younger generation are not fluent in Dene, English summaries were given throughout the workshop. These summaries allowed the younger generation to follow the content of the stories while also witnessing cultural protocols. Despite the challenges of the language barrier, the presence of the younger generation highly contributed to the motivation of the elders.
 In analyzing the complex relationships between an outside researcher and community researchers from diverse generations and backgrounds as well as among community researchers we conclude that it was the research set up and the reciprocal relationships, as well as the observation of cultural protocols that proved to be crucial in the production and analysis of natural, reliable and validated language materials. In giving concrete examples and reflecting the challenges of our approach this paper contributes to the theory of developing effective research approaches that engage citizen scientists from various backgrounds.
 Bibliography Czaykowska-Higgins, Ewa. 2009. Research Models, Community Engagement, and Linguistic Fieldwork: Reflections on Working within Canadian Indigenous Communities. Language Documentation and Conservation 3 (1). 15-50. [http://hdl.handle.net/10125/4423]
 Vallejos, Rosa. 2014. Integrating Language Documentation, Language Preservation, and Linguistic Research: Working with the Kokamas from the Amazon. Language Documentation and Conservation 8. 38-65. [http://hdl.handle.net/10125/4609]


This article attempted to examine how the evolution of land tenure system in north and central Ethiopia historically resulted in unequal resource accesses as far as gender relations are concerned. The article is an outcome of historical research and the researcher has employed a qualitative research method. Accordingly, written historical documents related to the study were consulted carefully and important secondary sources were also referred to. Having analyzed the historical evolution of land tenure system, the study also tried to indicate that the question of access to land had not only been an economic issue, but also a political and cultural one at the state level for many centuries. As this study unraveled, in Ethiopia for at least two millennia, both the acquisition and inheritance of land had been highly patriarchal because the state mobilized the military who usually happened to be men to expand its territory. Hence, land was occupied and defended mostly by men. As the usual habit of the patriarchal system elsewhere, the claim to possession of land was based on belonging to a descent line of an original father who happened to be the first to occupy the land. Since unlike men, women usually did not get the chance to participate at the line of military confrontations that were launched for territorial expansions and land acquisitions, they were deprived of the right to land access. Consequently, this land tenure system in the 13 to 20 century Ethiopia resulted in the creation of a deep rooted gender biased socio-political structure that denied women the access to important economic, political and social privileges.


In 2010 the Douglas Macmillan Hospice was successful in receiving a government grant to build an eco-friendly environment which houses three separate independent living units. We were keen to develop on the fundamental aspect of total holistic care, which, for many palliative care patients means good nursing care. The aspiration was to move away from the traditional model of care, to a model which delivers choice to the patient, offering a quality service which develops methods of reaching out to patients with a more rapid access, in line with the End of Life Strategy. The aim was to provide an alternative place of care for a variety of patients. We sought to provide excellent end of life care, if it was the patients' choice not to die at home, respite for carers, transitional care for young adults and also excellent rehabilitation to encourage independent living as a step down from the in-patient unit. The innovation was driven on several aspects; we wanted the unit to be nurse-led. We were able to utilise the community palliative care team who were already qualified as independent nurse prescribers, to manage any symptom issues and undertake clinical nursing tasks. The Healthcare Support workers would expand their role through education and training to support the patients to self medicate and to be a second checker for controlled drug administration. Our team of volunteer's would undergo training and education to support the Healthcare Support workers to provide basic personal care. The units are due to open in April 2011. We hope to offer quality individualised care for patients and their family which will meet a local need and be a unique service promoting the hospice philosophy. We plan to evaluate through capturing user views and clinical audit.