Long term supporting schemes for photovoltaic (PV) system installation have led to accommodating large numbers of PV systems within load pockets in distribution grids. High penetrations of PV systems can cause new technical challenges, such as voltage rise due to reverse power flow during light load and high PV generation conditions. Therefore, new strategies are required to address the associated challenges.Moreover, due to these changes in distribution grids, a different response behavior of the distribution grid on the transmission side can be expected. Hence, a new equivalent model of distribution grids with high penetration of PV systems is needed to be addressed for future power system studies.The thesis contributions lie in three parts. The first part of the thesis copes with the PV modelling. A non-proprietary PV model of a three-phase, single stage PV system is developed in PSCAD/EMTDC and PowerFactory. Threedifferent reactive power regulation strategies are incorporated into the models and their behavior are investigated in both simulation platforms using a distribution system with PV systems.In the second part of the thesis, the voltage rise problem is remedied by use of reactive power. On the other hand, considering large numbers of PV systems in grids, unnecessary reactive power consumption by PV systems first increases total line losses, and second it may also jeopardize the stability of the network in the case of contingencies in conventional power plants, which supply reactive power. Thus, this thesis investigates and develops the novel schemes to reduce reactive power flows while still keeping voltage within designated limits via three different approaches:decentralized voltage control to the pre-defined set-pointsdeveloping a coordinated active power dependent (APD) voltage regulation Q(P)using local signalsdeveloping a multi-objective coordinated droop-based voltage (DBV) regulation Q(V) using local signals In the third part of the thesis, furthermore, a gray-box load modeling is used to develop a new static equivalent model of a complex distribution grid with large numbers of PV systems embedded with voltage support schemes. In the proposed model, variations of voltage at the connection point simulate variations of the model's active and reactive power. This model can simply be integrated intoload-flow programs and replace the complex distribution grid, while still keepingthe overall accuracy high.The thesis results, in conclusion, demonstrate: i) using rms-based simulations in PowerFactory can provide us with quite similar results using the time domain instantaneous values in PSCAD platform; ii) decentralized voltage control to specific set-points through the PV systems in the distribution grid is fundamentally impossible dueto the high level voltage control interaction and directionality among the PV systems; iii) the proposed APD method can regulate the voltage under the steady-state voltagelimit and consume less total reactive power in contrast to the standard characteristicCosφ(P)proposed by German Grid Codes; iv) the proposed optimized DBV method can directly address voltage and successfully regulate it to the upper steady-state voltage limit by causing minimum reactive power consumption as well as line losses; v) it is beneficial to address PV systems as a separate entity in the equivalencing of distribution grids with high density of PV systems.


BACKGROUND
In the past five years we experienced 9 fatigued disabled children who were intermittently or persistently absent from school.

PATIENTS
They had been suspected to be burdened with psychosomatic disorders, having orthostatic hypotension, postural tachycardia, or other autonomic dysfunction symptoms.

RESULTS
Investigating the cause of moderate orthostatic proteinuria in some of them, we found by chance severe typical nutcracker phenomenon (NC), which was present in all 9 children complaining of chronic fatigue.

CONCLUSION
Their symptoms filled the criteria of chronic fatigue syndrome or idiopathic chronic fatigue (CFS/CF). An association between severe NC and autonomic dysfunction symptoms in children with CFS/CF has been presented.


Old age is associated with an enhanced susceptibility to stroke and poor recovery from brain injury, but the cellular processes underlying these phenomena are only recently coming to light. Potential mechanisms include changes in brain plasticity-promoting factors, unregulated expression of neurotoxic factors, or differences in the generation of scar tissue that impedes the formation of new axons and blood vessels in the infarcted region. Behaviorally, aged rats are more severely impaired by stroke than are young rats, and they also show diminished functional recovery. Infarct volume does not differ significantly in young and aged animals, but critical differences are apparent in the cytological response to stroke, most notably an age-related acceleration of the establishment of the glial scar. The early infarct in older rats is associated with a premature accumulation of BrdU-positive microglia and astrocytes, persistence of activated oligodendrocytes, a high incidence of neuronal degeneration, and accelerated apoptosis. Regeneration-associated mechanisms in the rat brain are active throughout life, albeit at lower levels in the aged animals. However; after stroke in aged rats, neuroepithelial marker-positive cells emanating largely from capillaries did not make a significant contribution to neurogenesis in the infarcted cortex of aged animals. Furthermore, the expression of plasticity-associated proteins, such as MAP1B, was delayed in aged rats. Tissue recovery was further delayed by the upregulation of Nogo, ephrin-A5 and MAG, which exert a powerful negative effect on axonal sprouting in the aged peri-infarct cortex, and by an age-related increase in the amount of the neurotoxic C-terminal fragment of the beta-amyloid precursor protein (betaAPP) at 2 wks post-stroke. Our findings indicate that the aged brain has the capability to mount a cytoproliferative response to injury, but the timing of the cellular and genetic response to cerebral insult is dysregulated in aged animals, thereby further compromising functional recovery. Elucidating the molecular basis of this phenomenon in the aging brain could yield novel approaches to neurorestoration following stroke or head injury in the elderly.


A Seventy-one-year-old man presented with icterus and malaise. A computed tomography scan showed a tissue mass in the head of the pancreas with compression and dilation of the common bile duct. The patient underwent endoscopic retrograde cholangiopancreatography, a metal stent was placed in the common bile duct and a pancreatoduodenectomy was planned. At operation invasion in the portal vein was observed. On-site histopathology of the tissue revealed only inflammation and no cancer cells. It was therefore decided to perform a gastroenterostomy instead. As autoimmune pancreatitis was suspected, treatment with corticosteroids was started, but did not result in a reduction of tissue mass. After a few months, the patient developed venous thrombosis in the portal and superior mesenteric veins, with colorectal varicose veins and episodes of bleeding. The patient died of excessive weight loss due to mesenteric venous thrombosis. Post-mortem histopathological examination of the soft tissue mass of the head of the pancreas showed signet ring cell carcinoma.


A frame-rate conversion (FRC) scheme for increasing the frame-rate of multi-view video for reducing motion blur in hold-type displays is proposed. In order to obtain high quality inter-frames, the proposed method utilizes 3D motion models relying on the 3D scene information extractable from multiview video. First of all, independently moving objects (IMOs) are segmented by using a depth-based object segmentation method. Then, interest points on IMOs are obtained via scale invariant feature transform (SIFT). Estimating 3D rotation and translation matrices of moving rigid objects by the help of SIFT features between successive frames; 3D scene is reconstructed at any desired time instant. Inter-frames for the desired view of the multi-view set are rendered by projecting the reconstructed 3D scene on this view. Simulation results reveal that, by utilizing true 3D object trajectory, the proposed method interpolates frames with increased quality compared to some conventional techniques.


The role of entrepreneurship in job creation and unemployment reduction is well established by prior studies. Hence, one of the ways to address the unemployment issue among young graduates in Malaysia is to explore how entrepreneurial intention could be embraced into the broader context of the country's education system. Empirical research found that prior studies on entrepreneurship education in Malaysia tends to focus on reviewing educational policies, issue and challenges. The concept of the entrepreneurial intention determinants beyond entrepreneurial education remains ambiguous. Hence, this study advances the discussion in entrepreneurship education by reviewing determinants for entrepreneurial intention from holistic perspective by integrating Model of Personality Traits and the theory of planned behavior (TPB). Five determinants for entrepreneurial intention are identified from literature review, which are entrepreneurship attitude, subjective norm, behavior control, entrepreneurship education and personality traits. The study is quantitative based, 360 questionnaires were distributed to the undergraduates from three faculties of a public university in Malaysia, with 199 responded. Data was analyzed via Pearson correlation and ANOVA analysis. Finding from the study suggested all the five entrepreneurial determinants are significantly correlated with entrepreneurial intention, and there is no significant difference on entrepreneurial intention based on faculty. However, one of the remarkable finding is Entrepreneurship Education is viewed as determinant with the lowest correlation coefficient with entrepreneurial intention. The implication of this finding is perhaps the content of entrepreneurial education shall emphasize on cultivating students' entrepreneurial attitude, behavioral and personality rather than the theoretical part of entrepreneurial and entrepreneurship.


We examine rigidity phenomena for representations of amenable operator algebras which have an ideal of compact operators. We establish that a generalized version of Kadison's conjecture on completely bounded homomorphisms holds for the algebra if the associated quotient is abelian. We also prove that injective completely bounded representations of the algebra are similar to complete isometries. The main motivating example for these investigations is the recent construction of Choi, Farah and Ozawa of an amenable operator algebra that is not similar to a $C^*$-algebra, and we show how it fits into our framework. All of our results hold in the presence of the total reduction property, a property weaker than amenability.


Increase of foodborne diseases has promulgated the development of new natural food additive with high extraction yield to eliminate food pathogenic organisms. One such possibility is the use of plant product as antibacterial agents with non-conventional method to enhance the yield. In this study, cinnamon leaves (Cinnamomum zeylanicum Blume) were subjected to ultrasonic assisted extraction (UAE) using response surface methodology (RSM) to optimise extraction yield and total phenolic contents. The effect of two independent factors, extraction temperature (x1: 25-40°C) and extraction time (x2: 15-45 minutes) were investigated. Optimum extraction yield and total phenolic contents of cinnamon leaves were 27.49 ± 1.59% and 3987 ± 79.10 mg GAE/g which were closely as predicted using RSM (28.34%, 4048 mg GAE/g), respectively. The optimum condition of extraction yield (40°C and 45 minutes) showed the maximum zone of inhibition against all tested foodborne pathogens (7.33 ± 0.50 to 13.22 ± 0.44 mm), whereas optimum condition of total phenolic contents (33°C and 31 minutes) showed the lowest zone inhibition (6.78 ± 0.67 mm to 11.67 ± 1.41 mm). The minimal inhibitory concentration (MIC) values range from 97.65 to 6250.00 μg/mL and minimal bactericidal concentration (MBC) values from 6.25 to 50.00 mg/mL. These results indicated that UAE method is excellent in producing significantly the highest of extraction yield, total phenolic contents and act as a potential natural antibacterial agent even using low extraction temperature and short time.


Implicit contextual factors mean that the boundary between causal and non-causal explanation is not as neat as one might hope: as the phenomenon to be explained is given descriptions with varying degrees of granularity, the nature of the favored explanation alternates between causal and non-causal. While it is not surprising that different descriptions of the same phenomenon should favor different explanations, it is puzzling why re-describing the phenomenon should make any difference for the causal nature of the favored explanation. I argue that this is a problem for the ontic framework of causal and non-causal explanation, and instead propose a pragmatic-modal account of causal and non-causal explanation. This account has the added advantage of dissolving several important disagreements concerning the status of non-causal explanation.


Configurational averaging technique is adopted via lattice statics approach to obtain the thermodynamic and structural properties of ZSM-5 containing various impurity content. Different Si:Al:Fe and Si:Al:P ratios within o-ZSM-5 and m-ZSM-5 frameworks have been studied. The results show that the third type of atom (Fe or P) incorporated to aluminosilicate ZSM-5 plays an important role on the structural stability of zeolite. It is indicated that the lattice enthalpy of aluminosilicate ZSM-5 is highered when doping with Fe, but it is lowered when doping with P. It is found that for o-ZSM-5 doped by Al/Fe and Al/P, the values of  bond lengths, as well as  and  bond angles, are close to those for siliceous o-ZSM-5. However, for m-ZSM-5 doped by Al/Fe and Al/P, the values of  are slightly longer whereas  and  are smaller compared with those for siliceous m-ZSM-5.


Prior to the introduction of Haemophilus influenzae type b (Hib) conjugate vaccines, Hib was the leading cause of bacterial meningitis in children under five years of age worldwide. In countries that have adopted Hib vaccination schedules, invasive disease has reduced markedly. Oro-naso pharyngeal carriage is recognized as the most significant source of infection. Hib carriage is significantly associated with poverty, such as overcrowding, poor ventilation in houses, lack of running water, and high smoking rates. Additionally, many Indigenous minority groups report high rates of Hib carriage. A resurgence of Hib disease among Alaskan children in the 1990s, lead to a change in approach to eliminate Hib disease and carriage in high-risk populations. This new approach identifies strategies for eliminating Hib disease focusing on the reservoirs of colonization within families and communities. Monitoring Hib carriage continues to offer an early warning system, whereby intervention could prevent invasive disease resurgence.


BACKGROUND
Ductal lavage has the potential to detect cancer by sampling breast epithelium in asymptomatic high-risk women. To assess the utility of ductal lavage as a cancer diagnostic test, we investigated the association between ductal lavage cytologic findings and histologic findings in women with known breast cancer undergoing mastectomy.

METHODS
Ductal lavage was performed in the operating room before mastectomy on 44 breasts from 32 women with known cancer and on eight breasts from seven women undergoing prophylactic mastectomy, two with occult malignancy. If the ductal lavage sample from one or more ducts contained enough epithelial cells for a cytologic diagnosis, lavaged ducts were injected with a mixture of colored dye, gelatin, and a radiographic contrast compound after mastectomy, and breast tissue was radiographed and sectioned. Histologic findings in ducts with and without dye were recorded. Associations between cytologic results and histologic results were examined by univariate and multivariable analyses.

RESULTS
At least one duct was lavaged in 36 breasts (mean = 1.4 ducts per breast); all histologic and cytologic procedures were completed in 28 breasts and in 39 ducts. Markedly atypical or malignant cytology was found in five cancer-containing breasts. In 39 ducts with complete cytologic and histologic data and when marked atypia or malignant cells defined a positive cytologic test, sensitivity was 43% (95% confidence interval [CI] = 23% to 72%), specificity was 96% (95% CI = 86% to 100%), and accuracy was 77% (95% CI = 63% to 89%). When mild or marked atypia or malignant cells defined a positive cytologic test, sensitivity was 79% (95% CI = 57% to 96%), specificity was 64% (95% CI = 46% to 83%), and accuracy was 69% (95% CI = 55% to 83%). When all 31 cytologically evaluable breasts were analyzed, sensitivity was 17% (95% CI = 7% to 35%), specificity was 100% (95% CI = 5% to 100%), and accuracy was 19% (95% CI = 9% to 38%).

CONCLUSION
In breasts with cancer, ductal lavage appears to have low sensitivity and high specificity for cancer detection, possibly because cancer-containing ducts fail to yield fluid or have benign or mildly atypical cytology.


William Souder On a Farther Shore: The Life and Legacy of Rachel Carson New York: Crown Publishing, 2012Reviewed by Howard A. DoughtyInnovation in the public sector, the private sector and even in the personal lives of individuals is a rather meaningless concept in itself, for it begs the deeper question: "Innovation for what?" Change itself, or change merely for the sake of change raise but do not address profound issues of morality and ethics. Change requires us to think about the consequences of innovation and the kind of social relations that particular modifications of our principles and practices are apt to promote. Failure to consider such matters is, I believe, a prelude to nihilism.Now, of course, not everyone would agree with my premise. Marx and Engels (1848), for instance, well understood the pattern of economic development that he witnessed and its sustaining "bourgeois" morality of which he heartily disapproved. He wrote perceptively about the urge to "constant revolution of production" under industrial capitalism and he sometimes appeared to feel a measure of sadness or, perhaps, sentimental nostalgia for the way of life it shattered on the path to full-bore modernity. He understood that the result of capitalist innovation was the destruction of traditional beliefs and patterns of behaviour: "all that is solid melts into air," he said, and "all that is holy is profaned." Of course, on reflection, Marx also thought that this devastation of tradition was a price worth paying in order to allow capitalism to fulfill its historical role. For Marx, the hideous conditions of the industrial revolution did not betoken nihilism, but a social catharsis that would be redemptive in the end.Then, about a century later, economists like Joseph A. Schumpeter (1942, pp. 82-85) took a decidedly different view. They embraced the notion of "creative destruction" or, in its milder form, "planned obsolescence." Perpetual change in the name of progress was heralded as a sign of a healthy capitalist economy. Today, the disposable culture is seen nowhere better than in the obsession with the newest sorts of information technology. No sooner is a fashionable new communications technology purchased than it is rendered obsolete by the next flashy toy. And, in all of this frantic and frenetic impulse to skate along the cutting edge of novelty, not only is growth considered good, but so is self-justifying change and its chief motivating factor, greed.Only when people like Donella and Dennis Meadows used clever computer models to explain that there were actual Limits to Growth (1972), when Gregory Bateson spoke of taking the first tentative Steps to an Ecology of Mind (1972) proclaiming that both official Communism and official Capitalism were equally "monstrous," when E. F. Schumacher provided a mantra for tree-huggers and aspirant Luddites by announcing that Small Is Beautiful (1973) and when Stewart Brand launched his Whole Earth Catalog did a forceful "change of consciousness" question and seem momentarily to threaten the robust assumptions of modern economics and the apparent inevitability of technological innovation.These early, striking symbols of what Charles Reich had hopefully called The Greening of America (1970) were not, however, the first of their kind. They did not make the initial foray into the public mind with a coherent expression of an alternative vision of a technologically mediated future in which modern society would fulfill the Biblical injunction to exercise "dominion" over the Earth. They were the second wave of contrarians up against a colossal political economy and an equally tremendous justificatory ideology. Their lineage dates back at least to Mary Shelley's Frankenstein and any number of dystopian novels of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and, of course, their opposite utopian fictions of the same era. They were nonetheless extraordinary in their ability to interrogate explicitly the "megatrends" our society seemed incapable of keeping under control. …


Background: Obstructive jaundice is one of the most common symptoms which can be caused by both malignant and benign hepato-biliary-pancreatic diseases. The differences and the differential diagnostic roles of the serum CA19-9, total bilirubin (TBIL) and especially, the ratio of CA19-9 to TBIL in these patients have not been well elucidated. This study compared the differences and the differential diagnostic roles of the increase-folds of the serum CA19-9, TBIL and the ratio of increase-folds of CA19-9 to increase-folds of TBIL in 508 cases of malignant (MOJ) and benign (BOJ) obstructive jaundice patients. Methods: Totally, 508 cases of obstructive jaundice patients with pathological results were retrospectively enrolled. 342 cases were MOJ, including gallbladder adenocarcinoma, extrahepatic cholangiocarcinoma, periampullar adenocarcinoma and pancreatic adenocarcinoma.The other 166 cases were BOJ, including cholelithiasis, primary sclerosing cholangitis (PSC), IgG4 related sclerosing cholangitis (IRSD), inflammatory stricture of bile duct, and adenoma. The data of the increase-folds of serum CA19-9, TBIL and the ratio of increase-folds of CA19-9 to increase-folds of TBIL was collected and analyzed. The ROC (receiver operating characteristic) curve was adopted to determine the optimal cutoff value to evaluate their differential diagnostic roles. Results: The CA19-9 was elevated in 94.15% of the MOJ, compared to 67.10% in BOJ (P<0.0001). The increase-folds of the CA19-9 (76.52±15.04 vs 3.55±0.41, P< 0.0001) and the increase-folds of TBIL (7.10±0.25 vs 5.95±0.36, P=0.0034) and the ratio (14.96±5.05 vs 0.79±0.93, P=0.0026) in MOJ were significantly higher than BOJ. The ROC curves indicated that the TBIL showed minimal differential diagnostic power (AUC=0.590), the increase-folds of CA19-9 and the ratio showed stronger differential diagnostic power (AUC=0.815 and AUC=0.889, respectively). The optimal value of the increase-folds of serum CA19-9 and the ratio for differential diagnosis was 4.5 and 0.88, respectively. Further, the combination of the increase-folds of serum CA19-9 and the ratio could increase the specificity and accuracy of the diagnosis of MOJ. Conclusion: The serum CA19-9, TBIL and the ratio in MOJ and BOJ are significantly different. The ratio of the increase-folds of CA19-9 to increase-folds of TBIL has stronger differential diagnostic roles than the increase-folds of CA19-9 or TBIL alone. The combination of the increase-folds of the CA19-9 and the ratio can further improve the specificity and accuracy of the diagnosis of MOJ.


Curve fitting, or interpolation algorithm is core technology for Computer Numerical Control (CNC) systems. A saddle-shaped curve is formed by intersection of two tubes. The trajectory interpolation of saddle-shaped curve is usually carried out through approximating the curve as segments of straight line for automated CNC welding/cutting. This paper proposes a new saddle curve curve fitting algorithm for automated welding/cutting system with non-Cartesian coordinate system. Simulation of the direct curve fitting algorithm has demonstrated that the algorithm has high curve interpolation precision and high feedrate stability.


Abstract. This paper compares several feature detectors applied to imagery from an unmanned aerial vehicle to find the best detection algorithm when applied to datasets that vary in translation and have little or no image overlap. Metrics of inliers and reconstruction accuracy of feature detectors are considered with respect to three-dimensional reconstruction results. The image matching results are tested experimentally, and an approach to detecting false matches is outlined. Results showed that although the detectors varied in the number of keypoints generated, a large number of inliers does not necessarily translate into more points in the final point cloud reconstruction and that the process of comparing a large quantity of redundant keypoints may outweigh the advantage of having the extra points. The results also showed that despite the development of keypoint detectors and descriptors, none of them consistently demonstrated a substantial improvement in the quality of structure from motion reconstruction when applied to a wide range of disparate urban and rural images.


The decline in popularity of New Public Management worldwide reinvigorated the search for a new paradigm in the field of public administration. Several alternatives to New Public Management, such as the New Governance and Public Value paradigms, have gained prominence in recent years. Despite tensions among these paradigms, exceptional challenges for public administration teaching programs exist. Xun Wu and Jingwei He of the National University of Singapore compiled data on public administration and management courses from 48 top master of public administration degree programs in China and the United States. This essay analyzes how competing paradigms influenced the selection of course content and pedagogical foci in professional training curricula. The authors conclude that in order to take advantage of an unprecedented opportunity provided by the rapid, global expansion of professional education in public administration, there is an urgent need to find a synthesized theoretical framework.


Objective: Our study aimed to estimate postoperative bleeding risk in older adults taking clopidogrel before gastrointestinal (GI) surgery, to aid surgeons in decisions regarding clopigogrel cessation. Summary Background Data: Balancing risks of postoperative bleeding associated with continued clopidogrel use and those associated with cessation is difficult for GI surgeons. Methods: Using 100% Texas Medicare Claims Data from 2006 to 2011, we identified patients undergoing emergent GI surgery. We propensity score matched patients on clopidogrel before surgery to patients not on clopidogrel. Using conditional logistic regression, we compared risks of bleeding events at 1-month postdischarge between groups, adjusting for bleeding risk factors. Results: In total, 1240 patients undergoing emergent GI surgery while treated with clopidogrel were matched to emergency GI surgery patients not treated with clopidogrel. The only significant preoperative differences between groups were higher percent of clopidogrel-treated patients with congestive heart failure, cholecystectomy, and lower percent of clopidogrel-treated patients with colectomy. Mean age was 76.91 (±7.06) and 76.70 (±7.05) years (P = 0.47), and 63.84% and 59.41% of operations were cholecystectomy, in the clopidogrel and nonclopidogrel groups (P = 0.18). In multivariable analyses adjusting for Elixhauser index, hyperlipidemia, confounding drugs, and surgery type, odds ratio for bleeding within 30 days of discharge in those exposed to clopidogrel compared with those not exposed was 1.60 (95% confidence interval, 1.08–2.38), with raw rates of bleeding 6.85% and 4.84%. Conclusions: Clopidogrel use in older adults through the preoperative period of GI surgery does not significantly increase bleeding events in the month after surgery.


ObjectiveThe experience of pain is believed to be influenced by psychologic and genetic factors. A previous study suggested pain catastrophizing and catechol-O-methyltransferase (COMT) genotype influenced clinical pain ratings for patients seeking operative treatment of shoulder pain. This study investigated whether these same psychologic and genetic factors predicted responses to induced shoulder pain. MethodsParticipants (n=63) completed self-report questionnaires and had COMT genotype determined before performing a standardized fatigue protocol to induce delayed onset muscle soreness. Then, shoulder pain ratings, self-report of upper-extremity disability ratings, and muscle torque production were reassessed 24, 48, and 72 hours later. ResultsThis cohort consisted of 35 women and 28 men, with a mean age of 20.9 years (SD=1.7). The frequency of COMT diplotypes was 42 with "high COMT enzyme activity" (low pain sensitivity group) and 21 with "low COMT enzyme activity" (average pain sensitivity/high pain sensitivity group). A hierarchical regression model indicated that an interaction between pain catastrophizing and COMT diplotype was the strongest unique predictor of 72-hour pain ratings. The same interaction was not predictive of self-report of disability or muscle torque production at 72 hours. The pain catastrophizing×COMT diplotype interaction indicated that participants with high pain catastrophizing and low COMT enzyme activity (average pain sensitivity/high pain sensitivity group) were more likely (relative risk=3.5, P=0.025) to have elevated pain intensity ratings (40/100 or higher). DiscussionThese findings from an experimental model converge with those from a surgical cohort and provide additional evidence that the presence of elevated pain catastrophizing and COMT diplotype indicative of low COMT enzyme activity have the potential to increase the risk of developing chronic pain syndromes.


It has passed about twenty years since clinical information are stored electronically as a hospital information system since 1980's. Stored data include from accounting information to laboratory data and even patient records are now started to be accumulated: in other words, a hospital cannot function without the information system, where almost all the pieces of medical information are stored as multimedia databases. In this paper, we applied temporal data mining and exploratory data analysis techniques to hospital management data. The results show several interesting results, which suggests that the reuse of stored data will give a powerful tool for hospial management.


The present study determined the long-term effect of bilateral dissection of the vagi nerves on the in vitro mechanical performance of the aortic wall. Eight healthy pigs were subjected to bilateral vagotomy, regarded as parasympathetic denervation, and ten pigs were shamoperated. Animals were euthanized three months later, and the aortic arch was excised. Tensile testing showed that the aortic wall after parasympathetic denervation was stiffer under low and physiologic, but not under high stresses. The effect of parasympathectomy on aortic function, thus, merits further clinical investigation.


Effective frameworks for the assessment of student outcomes are vital to the success of a technical higher-educationprogram. While ensuring the accuracy of the student outcomes assessment usually translates to employing complicatedsetups, thoughtful abstraction can lead to the desired reliability of assessment with great simplicity. In this paper, aminimalistic framework for the assessment of student outcomes is proposed. The proposed framework is based on seniordesign experiences of undergraduate computer engineering students. Senior design experiences provide unique opportu-nities for students to demonstrate their abilities, skills, and experiences that are attained throughout a Bachelor ofEngineering program. The proposed framework is based on capstone design projects and a selection of senior designcourses of complementary nature. The learning outcomes of the proposed selection of courses are carefully designed tomap to all student outcomes. The proposed minimalistic assessment framework leads to results that are only marginallydifferent from those based on a large bouquet of courses ranging from sophomore to senior years of study and thusdemonstrates its reliability. The effectiveness of the proposed framework is supported by evaluative and comparativestatistical analysis of student outcomes assessments within a multi-year case-study.


Objectives: This work proposes a feature extraction procedure named as Global Neighbour Preserving Local Ternary Co-occurrence Pattern (GNPLTCoP) in the Content Based Image Retrieval (CBIR) Task for ultrasound kidney images retrieval. Methods/Analysis: The proposed GNPLTCoP feature finds the local pattern based on the co-occurrence of first order derivatives in ternary fashion from radius 1 and radius 2 neighbourhoods of the center pixel in a small 3X3 square region. Then the pattern is classified into two in order to integrate the global information. The classification is based on the correlation between the global and local region mean intensities. Findings: The Performance of GNPLTCoP is compared with the Ternary co-occurrence Pattern (LTCoP) as it computes the co-occurrence of first order derivatives. The LTCoP considers the co-occurrence of 8 pixels in the radius 1 neighbourhood with the 8 pixel candidates in the radius 2 neighbourhood. Among the 16 pixels in the radius 2 neighbourhood, 8 pixels are used and 8 pixels information are left in the LTCoP computation. This problem is addressed in the computation of GNPLTCoP. The proposed GNPLTCoP feature is different from the LTCoP by means of considering the pixel candidates of radius 2 neighbourhood and adding in the global information. The pixel candidates of radius 2 neighbourhood are replaced by the mean value of itself and its two neighbours to preserve the neighbour pixels information. This work employs GNPLTCoP feature as a feature extraction procedure in image retrieval system consists of database of ultrasound kidney images. The performance of GNPLTCoP is compared with LTP and LTCoP. The discriminative power of GNPLTCoP is substantiated through Precision and Recall measures. Conclusion/Application: The proposed GNPLTCoP can be applied as the feature extraction procedure for other types of medical images and pattern recognition applications.


We propose and investigate a deterministic traveling wave model for the progress of epidemic routing in disconnected mobile ad hoc networks. In epidemic routing, broadcast or unicast is achieved by exploiting mobility: message-carrying nodes "infect" non message-carrying nodes when they come within communication range of them. Early probabilistic analyses of epidemic routing follow a "well-mixed" model which ignores the spatial distribution of the infected nodes, and hence do not provide good performance estimates unless the node density is very low. More recent work has pointed out that the infection exhibits wave-like characteristics, but does not provide a detailed model of the wave propagation. In this paper, we model message propagation using a reaction-diffusion partial differential equation that has a traveling wave solution, and show that the performance predictions made by the model closely match simulations in regimes where the well- mixed model breaks down. In particular, we show that well-mixed models are generally overly optimistic in regard to the scaling of the message delivery delay with problem parameters such as communication range, node density, and total area. In contrast to prior work, our model provides insight into the spatial distribution of the "infection," and reveals that the performance is sensitive to the geometry of the deployment region, not just its area.


To the Editor.— The association of benign increased intracranial pressure with nitrofurantoin therapy is reportedly unusual. Recently we examined a 23-year-old woman who complained of intermittent headache, drowsiness, photophobia, and diplopia, which occurred early during a ten-day treatment of cystitis with a nitrofurantoin preparation (Macrodantin, 50 mg four times daily). She was obese, and cyclic hypermenorrhea had recurred for several years. She was not taking vitamins or any other medications. Examination revealed an obese woman with bilateral papilledema, scattered retinal hemorrhages, bilateral abducens nerve pareses, and no focal neurologic findings. Blood pressure was 160/90 mm Hg. Computerized tomographic scan with and without enhancement demonstrated a small symmetric lateral ventricular system. The cerebral spinal fluid was less than 330 mm H2O in pressure and contained 96 mg/100 ml of sugar, 16 mg/100 ml of protein, two lymphocytes, and one RBC. The patient was treated with dexamethasone (Decadron) and experienced


Given the narrow scope of primary teachers' knowledge and use of children's literature identified in Phase I of Teachers as Readers (2006–2007), the core goal of the Phase II project was to improve teachers' knowledge and experience of such literature in order to help them increase children's motivation and enthusiasm for reading, especially those less successful in literacy. The year-long Phase II project, Teachers as Readers: Building Communities of Readers, which was undertaken in five Local Authorities (LAs) in England, also sought to build new relationships with parents and families and to explore the concept of a "Reading Teacher (RT): a teacher who reads and a reader who teaches". The research design was multilayered; involving data collection at individual, school and LA levels, and using a range of quantitative and qualitative data research methods and tools. This paper provides an overview of the Phase II research. It suggests that teachers need support if they are to develop children's reading for pleasure, and enhance their involvement as socially engaged and self-motivated readers.

See also:
Collins, F. and Safford, K. (2008) 'The right book to the right child at the right time': primary teacher knowledge of children's literature in Changing English Vol 15 No 4 pp 415-422 ISSN 1358-684X, Online ISSN: 1469-3585

Safford, K. (2008) Reading in the middle years: the rights of the reader in Books for Keeps No 170 May 2008 pp 6-8

Safford K., O–Sullivan. O. and Barrs. M.(2004) Boys on the Margin: promoting boys' literacy learning at Key Stage 2 London: CLPE ISBN 1872267-40-8


Polymorphic typechecking algorithms efficiently locate type errors in programs, but users find error reporting from such algorithms hard to comprehend. We are investigating the development of a new polymorphic type checker that reports type errors in a more understandable form. Here we present the results of experiments into human checking of both correct and incorrect polymorphic typed programs, and briefly discuss their implications for our proposed new checker.


Nowadays, the development of electric vehicles (EVs) is encouraged in China to address the issues about the energy security and the environment. In this study, the impacts of some crucial factors on the total charging load are investigated, such as the charging rate of the charging infrastructures, the battery capacity, the preference of the charging behavior and the penetration level of the charging infrastructures in public places. A methodology is presented to estimate the charging load which needs a sample consisting of the charging schedules of a great number of EVs. As the sample isn't available at present, a real-world travel dataset of conventional vehicles is taken advantage of to generate the sample by simulating EVs considering the factors mentioned above. Thereby, the estimations of the charging load corresponding to the different values of the factors are attained, which is used for investigating the impacts of these factors in turn. Some conclusions are: 1) the charging rate of the charging infrastructures in public places has a small impact on the charging load; 2) although the larger battery capacity leads to the larger power demand, the increment is minor; 3) the preference of the charging behavior of the owners influences the charging load significantly.


BACKGROUND: A new portable spirometer, the Spirophone, has been developed that records a subject's blow and can then transmit all the data by telephone to a receiving centre for analysis and comment. Tests of this device were undertaken to determine its accuracy and reliability. METHODS: The performance of the Spirophone was tested using computer generated wave forms, by delivering blows from calibrated syringes at different flows, and by comparing subjects' blows with those recorded with a commercial spirometer. RESULTS: Using computer generated wave forms all lung function indices were accurate to within 1% and blows delivered from calibrating syringes were accurate to within 5%. When subjects performed repeated forced vital capacity (FVC) manoeuvres there were no significant differences between lung function indices recorded with the Spirophone and with a commercial spirometer. With the Spirophone and commercial spirometer in series the FVC and forced expiratory volume in one second (FEV1) were within 5% of each other in nine out of 10 healthy subjects. CONCLUSION: The Spirophone recorded maximal forced expiratory manoeuvres with acceptable accuracy, reliability, and reproducibility, and this system offers the ability to monitor a patient's lung function at a centre remote from the patient.


Teenage pregnancy is a major public health problem worldwide. Studies shows that teenage mothers are more likely to experience pregnancy-related complications compared to normal age mothers. This study was conducted to find the associated factors of teenage pregnancy. Hospital based case-control study was adopted among teenage mothers (15-19 years) and non-teenage (20-29 years) postnatal mothers admitted in two medical college teaching hospitals of Pokhara. Systematic random sampling was used to select the respondents. Study sample comprises 432 respondents with 216 cases and 216 controls. The data was collected by using structured interview schedule and collected data were entered in MS excel with validated command and analyzed with SPSS 16 version. The study resulted that teenage pregnancy was associated with disadvantaged ethnicity (AOR: 2.02, 95% CI: 1.14-3.56) agriculture (AOR: 5.37, 95% CI: 1.86-15.49) and labour (AOR: 6.22, 95% CI: 2.56-15.11) family occupation, lower education (AOR: 2.57, 95% CI: 1.39-4.76), nonworking status of women (AOR: 2.87, 95% CI: 1.60-5.14), unplanned pregnancy (AOR: 1.79, 95% CI: 1.101-3.21), incomplete immunization (AOR: 2.32, 95% CI: 1.11-4.84) and preterm gestational age (AOR: 3.23, 95% CI: 1.46-7.15).It is recommended to design and implement health education interventions especially for disadvantaged groups and people with low socio economic to reduce teenage pregnancy; to emphasize on providing opportunities for higher education, employment and empowerment and increasing utilization of family planning and maternal health services among teenagers.
Key words: Teenage pregnancy, associated factors, case control study, outcomes, adolescents


This paper seeks to extend existing theories of spontaneous order in politics to a new theory of spontaneous order in jurisdictions. Under certain conditions the various kinds of jurisdictional changes — citizen mobility and migration, but also external and internal re-bordering, and secession and integration — constitute spontaneous orders. Personal secession and non-territorial governance are parsed as potential mechanisms of jurisdictional change, and some implications of technological change are discussed. Following the knowledge problem critique of attempts to replicate market allocations with central planning, rational constructivist planning of jurisdictional orders succumbs to 'the knowledge problem of the nation-state.' Spontaneously ordered political jurisdictions are the general solution to the knowledge problem of the nation-state. I argue that when citizens seek out each other to form political jurisdictions irrespective of location, the jurisdictional order in the resulting non-territorial polycentric democracy is a spontaneous order and potentially curative of the knowledge problem of the nation-state.


The concentration of CO, in air sampled above a sugar beet crop was measured during July, August, and early September 1966 at Scottsbluff, Nebr. During July the mean daytime concentration decreased from 310 ppm to 283 ppm as the leaf area index increased from 0.8 to 4.0. Only small deviations from the mean daytime Concentration of 283 ppm occurred during the remainder of the season. The mean nocturnal concentration during this period was 320 ppm and was more variable than the daytime concentration. The daily amplitude of concentration averaged 70 ppm and was as great at times as 100 ppm. Regression analysis revealed strong negative correlation between COZ concentration and mean wind speed during the night. Mean concentration was independent of mean temperature, mean incident radiation, and predominant wind direction. During each day the concentration remained constant between 1% hr after sunrise and 1 hr before sunset except for a few cases. These were associated with incident radiation below 0.2 cal cm-2 min-1 and/or wind speeds at 25 cm above the crop of less than 0.3 m sec-l or more than 3 m sec-I. Evidence is presented that the concentrations reported here are at least partially dependent on the flux to and from the sugar beet crop.


The Résif project, which started in 2008, aims at gathering under a common research infrastructure the French seismological, Global Navigation Satellite Systems and gravimeter permanent networks, as well as the mobile instrument pools. A central part of Résif is its seismological information system, Système d'Information de Résif (Résif-SI) (started in 2012), which is in charge of collecting, validating, archiving, and distributing seismological data and metadata from seven national centers. Résif-SI follows a distributed architecture, in which the six data collection and validation centers (A-nodes) send validated data and metadata to a national data center (Résif Data Center [Résif-DC]), which is the central point for data archiving and distribution. Résif-SI is based on international standard formats and protocols, and is fully integrated into European and international data exchange systems (European Integrated Data Archive, European Plate Observing System [EPOS], Incorporated Research Institutions for Seismology, International Federation of Digital Seismograph Networks). In this article, we present the organization of Résif-SI, the technical details of its implementation, and the catalog of services provided to the end users. The article is aimed both at seismologists, who want to discover and use Résif data, and at data center operators, who might be interested in the technical choices made in the implementation of Résif-SI. We believe that Résif-SI can be a model for other countries facing the problem of integrating different organizations into a centralized seismological information system.


This work studies the effect of PE-g-MA compatibilizer on mechanical thermal and morphological properties of high density polyethylene (HDPE)/titanium dioxide (TiO2) nanocomposites. The HDPE/TiO2 nanocomposites with and without PE-g-MA compatibilizer were prepared by melt mixing technique in a twin screw extruder. The results found that Young's Modulus of HDPE/TiO2 nanocomposites increased with increasing TiO2 contents. The addition of PE-g-MA compatibilizer had no significant effect on the tensile strength and stress at break of HDPE/TiO2 nanocomposites. The decomposition temperatures of HDPE/TiO2 nanocomposites before and after adding PE-g-MA compatibilizer increased with increasing TiO2 contents. The dispersion of TiO2 nanoparticles in HDPE matrix was observed by scanning electron microscope (SEM). The dispersion of nanoparticles in HDPE matrix with PE-g-MA compatibilizer was relatively good, only a few aggregates exited.


(1) The authors would like to thank David Gee for helping to prepare the manuscript. 'There was a strange stillness. The birds for example — where had they gone? Many people spoke about them, puzzled and disturbed. The feeding stations in the backyards were deserted. The few birds seen anywhere were moribund: they trembled violently and could not fly. It was a spring without voices ... only silence lay over the fields and woods and marsh.' The book Silent Spring by Rachel Carson is mainly about the impacts of chemicals (in particular in particular dichlorodiphenyltrichlorethane also known as DDT) on the environment and human health. Indeed, the close association between humans and birds remains very apt. Representing the only two warm‑blooded groups of life on Earth, mammals and birds share the same environments and threats. Carson's claim that she lived in 'an era dominated by industry, in which the right to make a dollar at whatever cost is seldom challenged' still resonates strongly with the problems that societies face all over the world. One chapter heading, 'The obligation to endure', derived from the French biologist and philosopher Jean Rostand's famous observation that, 'the obligation to endure gives us the right to know'. United States President John F. Kennedy responded to the challenge posed by Carson by investigating DDT, leading to its complete ban in the US. The ban was followed by a range of institutions and regulations concerned with environmental issues in the US and elsewhere, driven by public demand for knowledge and protection. DDT was the primary tool used in the first global malaria eradication programme during the 1950s and 1960s. The insecticide is sprayed on the inner walls and ceilings of houses. Malaria has been successfully eliminated from many regions but remains endemic in large parts of the world. DDT remains one of the 12 insecticides — and the only organochlorine compound — currently recommended by the World Health Organization (WHO), and under the Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants, countries may continue to use DDT. Global annual use of DDT for disease vector control is estimated at more than 5 000 tonnes. It is clear that the social conscience awakened by Rachel Carson 50 years ago gave momentum to a groundswell of actions and interventions that are slowly but steadily making inroads at myriad levels. Chapter 17 of her book, 'The other road' reminds the reader of …


Abstract Purpose: Quantification of the physical activity levels using pedometers and accelerometers in children and adolescents with mobility limitations has recently allowed researchers and practitioners to track real-life outcomes of new interventions in this particular population. Questions remain concerning the reliability of ambulatory activity monitoring in functionally challenged youth. The purpose of the analysis, therefore, was to document the minimal number of days required to reliably estimate ambulatory activity levels in children with arthrogryposis. Methods: Thirteen boys and girls with arthrogryposis (average age 10.9 years) completed stepping activity monitoring using a two-dimensional accelerometer over a period of up to 15 consecutive days. Generalizability theory was applied to identify sources of variance in daily step counts (generalizability study, G study) and to determine the number of days necessary to obtain a reliable coefficient of ≥0.80 (decision study, D study). Results: G study results showed that intra-individual variability was larger (58.4% of total variance) than inter-individual variability (28.7% of total variance). D study indicated that 9 days of monitoring was required to reach a stable measure of ambulatory activity. Conclusions: Due to relatively greater variability in step counts across days of the week, a longer monitoring period was required for youth with arthrogryposis. Implication for Rehabilitation Large proportion of variance in daily step counts was attributable to unidentifiable sources of variance, suggesting further exploration of factors that influence on the walking activity in youth with arthrogryposis. Step activity monitoring of youth with arthrogryposis should occur over a 9-day period to reliably capture their habitual level of ambulation. Rehabilitation programs aimed to promote increased stepping in youth with arthrogryposis which can utilize the findings of the present study to appropriately track their effectiveness.


We describe a method implemented for the recognition of Syriac handwriting from historical manuscripts. The Syriac language has been a neglected area for handwriting recognition research, yet is interesting because the preponderance of scribe-written manuscripts offers a challenging yet tractable medium for OCR research between the extremes of typewritten text and free handwriting. Like Arabic, Syriac is written in a cursive form from right-to-left, and letter shape depends on the position within the word. The method described does not need to find character strokes or contours. Both whole words and character shapes were used in recognition experiments. After segmentation using a novel probabilistic method, features of these shapes are found that tolerate variation in formation and image quality. Each shape is recognised individually using a discriminative support vector machine with 10-fold cross-validation. We describe experiments using a variety of segmentation methods and combinations of features on characters and words. Images from scribe-written historical manuscripts are used, and the recognition results are compared with those for images taken from clearer 19th century typeset documents. Recognition rates vary from 61-100%, depending on the algorithms used and the size and source of the data set.


High hepatic extraction drugs--such as phenacetin, methylprednisolone, and cyclosporine--exhibit an increased bioavailability after acute spinal cord injury (SCI) due to an impaired clearance. For these drugs, metabolic clearance depends on hepatic blood flow. Thus, it is possible that pharmacokinetic alterations can be reversed by increasing liver perfusion. Therefore, we evaluated the effect of L-arginine, a nitric oxide precursor, on the pharmacokinetics of a prototype drug with high hepatic extraction, and on hepatic microvascular blood flow (MVBF) after acute SCI. Pharmacokinetics of i.v. phenacetin was studied in rats 24 h after a severe T-5 spinal cord contusion; animals being pretreated with L-arginine 100 mg/kg i.v. or vehicle. MVBF was assessed under similar experimental conditions using laser Doppler flowmetry. SCI significantly altered phenacetin pharmacokinetics. Clearance was significantly reduced, resulting in a prolonged half-life and an increase in bioavailability, while volume of distribution was decreased. Pharmacokinetic alterations were reversed when injured rats were pretreated with L -arginine. It was also observed that L-arginine significantly increased hepatic MVBF in injured rats, notwithstanding it exhibited a limited effect on sham-injured animals. Our data hence suggest that L-arginine is able to reverse SCI-induced alterations in phenacetin pharmacokinetics due to an impaired hepatic MVBF, likely by increased nitric oxide synthesis leading to vasodilation. Further studies are warranted to examine the potential usefulness of nitric oxide supplementation in a clinical setting.


ABSTRACT Background: Dietary intake of antioxidants such as vitamins C and E protect against oxidative stress, and may also be associated with altered DNA methylation patterns. Methods: We meta-analysed epigenome-wide association study (EWAS) results from 11,866 participants across eight population-based cohorts to evaluate the association between self-reported dietary and supplemental intake of vitamins C and E with DNA methylation. EWAS were adjusted for age, sex, BMI, caloric intake, blood cell type proportion, smoking status, alcohol consumption, and technical covariates. Significant results of the meta-analysis were subsequently evaluated in gene set enrichment analysis (GSEA) and expression quantitative trait methylation (eQTM) analysis. Results: In meta-analysis, methylation at 4,656 CpG sites was significantly associated with vitamin C intake at FDR ≤ 0.05. The most significant CpG sites associated with vitamin C (at FDR ≤ 0.01) were enriched for pathways associated with systems development and cell signalling in GSEA, and were associated with downstream expression of genes enriched in the immune response in eQTM analysis. Furthermore, methylation at 160 CpG sites was significantly associated with vitamin E intake at FDR ≤ 0.05, but GSEA and eQTM analysis of the top most significant CpG sites associated with vitamin E did not identify significant enrichment of any biological pathways investigated. Conclusions: We identified significant associations of many CpG sites with vitamin C and E intake, and our results suggest that vitamin C intake may be associated with systems development and the immune response.


A technique is introduced for the theoretical prediction of electronic spectra of lanthanide complexes by replacing the metal ion by a point charge with the ligands held in their positions as determined by the SMLC/AM1, and by computing the theoretical spectra via the intermediate neglect of differential overlap/spectroscopic-configuration interaction (INDO/S-CI). As a test case, we report the absorption spectrum of tris(picolinate-N-oxide)(2,2′: 6′,2″-terpyridine) of EuIII complex which has been synthesized in our laboratory. The predicted absorption spectra (complex and free ligands) compare well with the UV region experimental data. Moreover, the computed triplet energy levels display transitions near 470 and 560 nm which are due to the N-oxide and which may be relevant for the luminescence.


Territorially-based participative analytical methodologies taking the environmental question and work into consideration are essential for effective primary health care. The study analyzed work and environment-related processes in the primary health care area and their repercussions on the health of workers and the community in a rural city in Ceara, whose economy is based on agriculture for export,. It sought to redeem the area and the proposal of actions focused on health needs by the social subjects through the making of social, environmental and work-related maps in workshops within the framework of action research. Examining the situation from a critical perspective, based on social participation and social determination of the health-disease process with regard to the relations between production, environment and health, was the most important step in the participative map-making process, with the qualitative material interpreted in light of discourse analysis. The process helped identify the health needs, the redemption of the area, strengthened the cooperation between sectors and the tie between the health of the worker and that of the environment, and represented an advance towards the eradication of the causes of poor primary health care services.


The context of this work is vision-based motion planning for humanoid robots in an unknown environment. We present an efficient combination of on-line 3D environment modeling and motion planning methods for humanoid robots (e.g whole body motion and walking ) in non-static environment. To construct the model of the environment, we rely on 3D occupancy grid that is updated incrementally by stereo vision. As the dimension of configuration space is high for humanoid robots, a roadmap based method is used for motion planning. However, as the environment is not static, it is necessary to update the roadmap after receiving new visual information. In other words, the nodes and edges which are in collision, based on the new update of the environment, must be erased. Moreover, preliminary steps are necessary for considering the environment as a non-static model. As we construct the model incrementally by vision, several thousands points would appear in each update of the model. Therefore, updating the roadmap raises algorithmic complexity issues. Our approach is an extension of a recent idea to cope with the problem. After presenting the approach, we implement our method by planning a collision-free motion in a 3D occupancy grid model generated by HRP2 based on stereo vision. As the robot navigates in the environment, it receives updated information through its on-board cameras and refreshes the 3D model of the environment incrementally. Conventionally, the 3D model can be composed of up to millions of voxel. If the statuses of some voxels change, our method uses these changes to update the last roadmap locally. This updated roadmap is then reused for further motion planning. We evaluate our algorithm by measuring processing time and memory usage in each step and compare them with its descendant.


Reproductive cycles are determined from samples taken at regular intervals over a period of time related to the assumed periodicity of the breeding cycle. Fiscal, ship time and sampling constraints have made this almost impossible at deep-sea vents and seeps, but there is an accumulating mass of data that cast light on these processes. It is becoming apparent that most reproductive processes are phylogenetically conservative, even in extreme vent and seep habitats. Reproductive patterns of species occurring at vents and seeps are not dissimilar to those of species from the same phyla found in non-chemosynthetic environments. The demographic structure of most vent and seep animals is undescribed and the maximum ages and growth rates are not known. We know little about how the gametogenic cycle is initiated, though there is a growing body of data on the size at first reproduction. Gametogenic biology has been described from seasonal samples for only one organism from vent/seep environments. For other species, the pattern of gametogenesis has been described from serendipitous samples that allow determination of reproductive effort, but such samples reveal little about energy partitioning during the gametogenic process. Some notable adaptations have been described in mature gametes, including modified sperm. Spawning has been observed for a number of species both in situ and in vitro. Knowledge of the larvae of vent/seep organisms has been derived from laboratory fertilizations, from field collections over vent and seep areas and, for molluscs, from protoconch or prodissoconch size and shape. Larval dispersal has been perhaps the most intractable aspect of reproduction. Because the length of larval life is known for only a single seep organism and no vent organism, we cannot infer dispersal distance from a knowledge of current velocities. Modelling has been used to assess the maximum larval distance that allows effective migration between vent sectors. An indirect approach has been to estimate gene flow within, and between, vent sites using DNA sequencing and electrophoretic techniques. Although data are still equivocal, there are indications of considerable mixing among populations within and between vent sectors of the same ridge. Our knowledge of reproductive biology in vent and seep organisms remains fragmentary, but with molecular and biochemical techniques, emerging larval culture techniques, and increased sampling effort, the pieces of the jigsaw will eventually form an overall picture.


Incidence was studied of risk factors (RF) in 669 patients with stage I and II hypertensive disease (as per WHO classification). There has been developed a risk-factor HD module. The prevailing RFs among HD patients include meteorolability, hereditary predisposition, hyperlipidemia, blood hypercoagulation, surplus body mass, hypodynamia, mental/nervous overstrain, consumption of salt going up, smoking, hyperglycemia, alcoholic liquor abuse, with n = 485 (72.5%), 417 (62.3%), 360 (53.8%), 335 (50.1%), 324 (48.4%0), 218 (32.6%), 166 (24.8%), 144 (21.5%), 84 (12.6%), 39 (5.8%), 8 (1.2%) respectively. A pathogenetic relation was found between RFs and HD clinical pattern determined by the RFs number and aggressiveness. The "mutual aggravation" phenomenon has been disclosed, its main point being to the effect that if a HD patient has several RFs, these would create certain conditions for development of each of them through affecting each other in a negative way.


The complete amino acid sequence of dihydrofolate reductase from an amethopterin-resistant strain of Lactobacillus casei has been determined by sequence analysis of peptides produced by cleavage with cyanogen bromide, trypsin, staphylococcal protease, and myxobacter protease. Comparison of this sequence with those of reductases from other bacterial sources shows that the enzymes are homologous. The Lactobacillus casei reductase sequences shows a 29% sequence identity with that of the Escherichia coli enzyme and a 34% identity with the sequence of the enzyme from Streptococcus faecium. The NH2-terminal 68 residues of the L. casei reductase show a 54% sequence identity with that of the enzyme from S. faecium.


Effects of the current (38 Pa) and an elevated (74 Pa) CO, partial pressure on root and shoot areas, hiomass ,accumulation and daily net COj exchange were determined for Optmtia flcus-indica (L.) Miller, a highly productive Crassulacean acid metabolism species cultivated worldwide. Plants were grown in environmentally controlled rooms for 18 weeks in pots of three soil volumes (2 600, 6500 and 26 000 cno^), the smallest of which was intended to restrict root growth. For plants in the medium-sized soil volume, basal cladodes tended to be thicker and areas of main and lateral roots tended to he greater as the CO, level was doubled. Daughter cladodes tended to be initiated sooner at the current compared with the elevated CO2 level but lota! areas were similar hy 10 weeks. At 10 weeks, daily net COj uptake for the three soil volumes averaged 24% higher for plants growing under elevated compared with current CO, levels, but at 18 weeks only 3% enhancement in uptake occurred. Dry weight gain was enhanced 24% by elevated CO, during the first 10 weeks but only 8% over 18 weeks. Increasing the soil volume 10-fold led to a greater stimulation of daily net CO, uptake and biomass production than did doubling the CO, level. At 18 weeks, root biomass doubled and shoot biomass nearly doubled as the soil volume was increased ! 0-fold; the effects of soil volume tended to he greater for elevated CO2. The amount of cladode nitrogen per unit dry weight decreased as the CO2 level was raised and increased as soil volume increased, the latter suggesting that the effects of soil volume could be due to nitrogen limitations.


In this paper, we consider OFDM channel estimation in the presence of frequency offset and phase noise. In the literatures, most channel estimation methods assume perfect frequency synchronization and the knowledge of channel statistics. Phase noise and residual frequency offset cause inter-carrier interference (ICI), which consequently impairs the accuracy of channel estimation. The lack of knowledge of channel statistics can make channel estimation much harder. To resolve these problems, we propose with the aid of cyclic prefix (CP) based frequency offset estimation statistics-independent channel estimation. We iteratively search for the most likely channel impulse response (CIR) length, and use it not only for the optimum compensation of frequency offset, but also for finding the optimum window to filter the least square (LS) channel estimate which further suppress the effects of ICI and noise. The proposed scheme is compared with conventional methods for both non-interpolation and interpolation cases. Numerical results are presented to illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed scheme.


The nature of the dynamics of nonverbal interactions is of considerable interest to the study of human communication and future human-computer interaction. Facial expressions constitute an important source of nonverbal social signals. Whereas most studies have focused on the facial expressions of isolated individuals, the aim of this study is to explore the coupling dynamics of facial expressions in social dyadic interactions. Using a special experimental set-up, the frontal facial dynamics of pairs of socially interacting persons were measured and analyzed simultaneously. We introduce the use of convergent cross mapping, a method originating from dynamical systems theory, to assess the causal coupling of the dyadic facial-expression dynamics. The results reveal the presence of bidirectional causal couplings of the facial dynamics. We conclude that convergent cross mapping yields encouraging results in establishing evidence for causal behavioral interactions.


SERVICE solutions are typically comprised of rather complex and continuously evolving service-oriented systems. While such systems may be under the sole control of an individual organizational unit, more often than not, they are deployed in interorganizational environments, must comply with various corporate and/or governmental governance regulations, and much more. Security and, in particular, privacy and trust are major concerns in almost all facets of such service solutions. In order to enable individual services or collections of services to easily interact, integrate, or be composed, it is often necessary to establish, manage, maintain, adapt, and enforce various service-level agreements, privacy policies, and/or rules across service and/or organizational boundaries. These tasks become only more challenging during the life-cycle of an evolving service solution. In this Special Issue on Enforcement and Management in Services Computing, we present seven high quality research articles on enforcement and management issues that are prevalent in current and emerging service solutions with a particular focus on privacy, security, trust, provenance, service solution (design and delivery) management, and service solution integration. Following the 2009 IEEE Asia-Pacific Services Computing Conference (APSCC) in Singapore, we launched an open call for submissions to this special issue of the IEEE Transactions on Services Computing. We received more than 30 submissions; the following seven articles were selected through a rigorous review process:


Using a representative sample of Italian investors, we estimate the risk associated with social security benefits by eliciting for each individual the subjective distribution of the replacement rate as a summary indicator of social security wealth. Pension risk varies across individuals in a way that is consistent with what one can expect a priori, due to observable heterogeneity in information sets and in the way that people with different characteristics are affected by current pension schemes. In particular, individuals a long way from retirement and who thus face more career uncertainty report more subjective pension risk. We also find that individuals who report higher pension risk are more likely to enroll in pension funds and health insurance plans.


Extracting temporal relations (e.g., before, after, concurrent) among events is crucial to natural language understanding. Previous studies mainly rely on neural networks to learn effective features or manual-crafted linguis-tic features for temporal relation extraction, which usually fail when the context between two events is complex or wide. Inspired by the examination of available temporal relation annotations and human-like cognitive pro-cedures, we propose a new Temporal Graph Transformer network to (1) explicitly find the connection between two events from a syntactic graph constructed from one or two continuous sentences, and (2) automatically locate the most indicative temporal cues from the path of the two event mentions as well as their surrounding concepts in the syntactic graph with a new temporal-oriented attention mechanism. Experiments on MATRES and TB-Dense datasets show that our approach signif-icantly outperforms previous state-of-the-art methods on both end-to-end temporal relation extraction and temporal relation classification.


What kind of object is a quantum state? Is it an object that encodes an exponentially growing amount of information (in the size of the system) or more akin to a probability distribution? It turns out that these questions are sensitive to what we do with the information. For example, Holevo's bound tells us that n qubits only encode n bits of classical information but for certain communication complexity tasks there is an exponential separation between quantum and classical resources. Instead of just contrasting quantum and classical physics, we can place both within a broad landscape of physical theories and ask how non-quantum (and non-classical) theories are different from, or more powerful than quantum theory. For example, in communication complexity, certain (non-quantum) theories can trivialise all communication complexity tasks. In recent work [C. M. Lee and M. J. Hoban, Proc. Royal Soc. A 472 (2190), 2016], we showed that the immense power of the information content of states in general (non-quantum) physical theories is not limited to communication complexity. We showed that, in general physical theories, states can be taken as "advice" for computers in these theories and this advice allows the computers to easily solve any decision problem. Aaronson has highlighted the close connection between quantum communication complexity and quantum computations that take quantum advice, and our work gives further indications that this is a very general connection. In this work, we review the results in our previous work and discuss the intricate relationship between communication complexity and computers taking advice for general theories.


This paper presents a novel navigation architecture for automated car-like vehicles in urban environments. Motion safety is a critical issue in such environments given that they are partially known and highly dynamic with moving objects (other vehicles, pedestrians...). The main feature of the navigation architecture proposed is its ability to make safe motion decisions in real-time, thus taking into account the harsh constraints imposed by the type of environments considered. The architecture is based upon an efficient publish/subscribe-based middleware system that allows modularity in design and the easy integration of the key functional components required for autonomous navigation: perception, localization, mapping, real-time motion planning and motion tracking. After an overall presentation of the architecture and its main modules, the paper focuses on the ``motion'' components of the architecture. Experimental results carried out on both a simulation platform and a Cycab vehicle in a parking environment are presented.


The research aims to determine the effect of application some concentration of paclobutrazol and to obtain the best concentration on the growth and yield of tomato with one main branch pruned. The research was conducted experimentally by using Completely Randomized Design with treatment of application some concentration of paclobutrazol (K) consist of four levels that is: K0 : without application of paclobutrazol (control), K1 : 300 ppm, K2 : 600 ppm and K3 : 900 ppm. Data were examined using analysis of variance and mean separations with Duncan's New Multiple Range Test at the 5% level.The results showed that the application of paclobutrazol on tomato plants by pruning the main branches can inhibit plant height and accelerate age appear first interest and does not make a difference by being deprived of paclobutrazol on the parameters of stem diameter, number of flowers per plant, the age of the first harvest, the amount of fruit per plant, weight of fruits per plant and fruit diameter.


Today's industrial robots are designed to be able to execute versatile tasks like a human. When deploying the robots to production lines, however, they only need to perform well for a narrowly defined task. A natural question to ask is whether the robots can tailor themselves for different working conditions. This dissertation focuses on developing learning and optimization algorithms that allow robots to achieve higher overall performance for a particular application. The difficulties of this work arise from the facts that 1) most robots have no end-effector sensors, 2) high robot precision and productivity may compromise the robot service life, and 3) robot trajectories in a single application may variate. In regards to these issues, this dissertation proposes a probabilistic approach to optimize the robot models. The approach solves various parameter learning problems in sensor-limited robots by Bayesian inference. Additionally, a trajectory optimization algorithm is introduced to minimize the robot life cost along a robot path. This dissertation also presents policy learning methods that can mimic the standard iterative learning controller for a group of robot motion. Experimental results on FANUC industrial manipulators show that the proposed methods effectively adjust the control policies for different tasks and make the robots outperform the traditional ones. In addition, they perform comparably to the commercial solutions while having the advantage of not requiring an additional learning action every time when the trajectory is changed. A number of subspace learning based Q-filters are also introduced for removing the undesired effects during the learning process. All algorithms are designed to meet industrial needs such as light computation. Thus, they can be integrated into commercially available robots without special hardware and software requirements.


to the degree to which it meets the customer's needs andexpectations. Dissatisfaction with the quality of building projectshas been widely reported in recent times. There are indicationsthat there may be some relationship between the procurementmethod used and customer satisfaction with the delivered product.In particular, traditional competitive bid contracting may havean adverse impact on quality in some circumstances. To shedsome light on reported industry attitudes, a survey of constructionprofessionals in the Sydney metropolitan area was undertaken.The respondents demonstrate mixed views on the effectivenessof the competitive tender system on quality project outcomes. Tosome extent contractors' attitudes may be determined by theirpreferred current mode of operation. However, some supportis expressed for the contention that quality of outcome can bereduced by an overly cost driven contractor selection process. Inparticular, when economic pressures cause bidders to reduce thetime allocated for the tender process, an inaccurate and unreliablebid may win. This makes it very diffi cult for the reliable contractorto remain profi table. A move to value-based rather than cost-basedprocurement may assist industry performance and customersatisfaction.


Objective: Little is known about whether large-scale environmental changes, such as those seen with urbanization, are differentially associated with SBP versus DBP, and whether those changes vary by birth cohort. Methods: We used data from the China Health and Nutrition Survey, a population-based cohort study of Chinese adults (n = 18 754 aged 18–70 years), seen a maximum of seven times from 1991 to 2009. We used hierarchical multivariable linear models to simultaneously estimate SBP and DBP as correlated outcomes over time, accounting for their physiologic, time-varying correlation. Main exposure variables were urbanicity, age, and birth cohort. Over 18 years of modernization, median SBP and DBP increased by 10 and 7 mmHg, respectively. Results: Our hierarchical model results suggest greater temporal increases in SBP and particularly DBP at lower versus higher urbanicity. At the same chronological age, for a 10-year difference in birth cohort (i.e. born in 1980s versus 1970s), the adjusted mean DBP was approximately 3 mmHg higher for the later birth cohort (P < 0.001). Pulse pressure (calculated as model-predicted SBP minus DBP) was also higher at low versus high urbanicity. Conclusions: These results suggest increased susceptibility of DBP (and thus peripheral vascular resistance) to environmental change, particularly in younger Chinese adults. Because DBP more strongly predicts cardiovascular disease risk in younger adulthood, hypertension-related health burden in China may increase over time.


In recent years, the world has witnessed the rise of multiple specific digital technologies, including online trade platforms, robotics, artificial intelligence (AI), 3D printing, cloud computing, blockchain, and financial technology (fintech). These digital technologies are fundamentally transforming the ways that firms and individualsas both workers and consumerscommunicate, search, trade, and invest. They are also substantially changing how governments design and implement trade and investment policies and programs and, in so doing, how they interact with firms, individuals, and each other. This paper reviews the growing empirical literature on the trade, investment, and broader development effects of the adoption of specific digital technologies. It also describes the policy applications of these technologies and discusses the incipient empirical literature on the impacts thereof. Based on this review, it identifies several open questions and avenues of future research that may be useful for deepening our understanding of digital technologies and their policy implications.


A wide variation of people with an impairment or disability requires a "special care den- tistry" once their general manifestations directly act in the oral cavity. This target public is inserted into the following categories: neuromotor disability, sensory disability, mental disorder, infecto-contagious diseases, chronic systemic diseases, and systemic conditions. Among the several oral illnesses found in these groups, periodontal diseases have been the most frequent, becoming a major challenge for the dental practitioners. Thus, we described the microbiological, histopathological, and clinical features of periodontal diseases in each "special health care needs" group. Advances in "Omic" technologies have suggested the application of molecular biology methods to assess the genomics (genes), proteomics (proteins), transcriptomics (mRNA), and metabolomics (metabolites) aspects of periodontal diseases. These researches aim to promote a better understanding of the mechanisms involved in the pathogenesis and in the identification of new bio markers of periodontal diseases that help in diagnosis of periodontal diseases and in tis- sue responses after treatments of gingivitis and periodontitis. As an alternative therapy, some bioactive materials and photobiomodulation may be indicated once they strongly stimulate the periodontal tissue regeneration, attenuate the inflammatory processes, and/ or promote the reconstruction of the microstructure of the periodontium.


Cloud service providers may face the problem of how to price infrastructure services and how this pricing may impact the resource utilization. One aspect of this problem is how Cloud service providers would decide to accept or reject requests for services when the resources for offering these services become scarce. A decision support policy called Customized Bid-Price Policy (CBPP) is proposed in this paper to decide efficiently, when a large number of services or complex services can be offered over a finite time horizon. This heuristic outperforms well-known policies, if bid prices cannot be updated frequently during incoming requests and an automated update of bid prices is required to achieve more accurate decisions. Since CBPP approximates the revenue offline before the requests occur, it has a low runtime compared to other approaches during the online phase. The performance is examined via simulation and the pre-eminence of CBPP is statistically proven.


Different techniques have been proposed for combining GPS and inertial sensor information, and recent published findings seem to indicate that primary-means integrity availability is achievable with standard 2 nmi/h (95 percent) inertial sensor performance. This paper investigates and quantifies the different inertial effects that contribute to enhanced integrity of the integrated GPS/inertial system, such as coasting or Schuler feedback. A Kalman filter-based integration scheme that preserves the integrity information in an optimal fashion is presented and used to quantify integrity performance. This paper also proposes an approximate model, incorporating the main inertial effects contributing to integrity, that can be used to calculate the achievable horizontal protection level (HPL) at any geographical location and time. This model is used to estimate the availability of fault detection for an integrated GPS/inertial system. In addition, the paper compares the availability of fault detection for the GPS/inertial system with that for other augmentations to provide trade-off information.


The paper focuses on the ways in which medical discourses of HIV transmission risk, personal bodily meanings and reproductive decision-making are re-negotiated within the context of sero-different relationships, in which one partner is known to be HIV-positive. Eighteen in-depth interviews were conducted with 10 individuals in Northern Ireland during 2008–2009. Drawing on an embodied sociological approach, the findings show that physical pleasure, love, commitment, a desire to conceive without medical interventions and a dislike of condoms within regular ongoing relationships, shaped individuals' sense of biological risk. In addition, the subjective logic that a partner had not previously become infected through unprotected sex prior to knowledge of HIV status and the added security of an undetectable viral load significantly impacted upon women's and, especially, men's decisions to have unprotected sex in order to conceive. The findings speak to the importance of reframing public health campaigns and clinical counselling discourses on HIV risk transmission to acknowledge how couples negotiate this risk, alongside pleasure and commitment within ongoing relationships.


This book brings together original, state-of-the-art historical research from several continents and examines how mainly local peasant societies responded to colonial pressures to produce a range of different commodities. It shows how they were able to subvert these processes and establish viable alternative livelihoods. In particular, it introduces the fresh concept of the 'anti-commodity', to indicate local, sustainable forms of production steeped in values other than simply economic ones. The book will appeal to readers eager to find out more about the histories of some familiar items of everyday consumption such as rice, cotton, sugar and tobacco, as well as to those with a keen interest in the histories of African, Asian and Caribbean societies. Finally, it offers new directions in both historical and contemporary research on the continents beyond Europe.


Innovation is a hybrid concept that has evolved over time and adapts itself to changing condition. It plays a major role in the growth and economic competitiveness of firms, and consequently, firms invest in innovation to build knowledge and thus increase competitive advantage. Front end of innovation (FEI) projects, and in particular technology development projects, are therefore a fundamental component of innovation and a crucial factor in developing new competitive advantage. To effectively and objectively manage and evaluate these early-stage technology projects, which are by nature uncertain, a number of firms deploy some form of stage gate processes, utilizing strategic decision criteria. Via a descriptive scoping literature review, we identify 46 articles, which contain 473 uniquely identified strategic selection criteria that can fit in nine categories. We find that technical feasibility is the most frequently occurring unique selection criteria, whereas the market category is the largest category by size of unique individual criteria with 23.3% of the share total. In this research, we contribute to the on-going discussion about early-stage technology projects and their effective evaluation using strategic technology selection criteria. The summary of criteria provided with definitions may serve as guidelines for technology and innovation managers.


The analysis of water quality characteristics provides valuable information useful in water resources management. This study assessed the quality of water samples from Ife North Local Government Area, Southwestern Nigeria, with a view to establishing their suitability for irrigation purpose. A total of 52 water samples were collected and analyzed during the dry season for the major cations (sodium, calcium, magnesium and potassium), anions (chloride, sulphate and bicarbonate), and physico-chemical parameters (temperature, pH, total dissolved salts and electrical conductivity). Based on these analyses, irrigation quality parameters such as sodium adsorption ratio (SAR), percentage of sodium (Na%), magnesium hazard (MH), permeability index (PI), residual sodium carbonate (RSC) and Kelly's ratio (KR) were computed. The electrical conductivity of the water samples varied from 78.00 to 1041.00 µS/cm with a mean value of 443.83 µS/cm and the total dissolved solids varied from 0.10 to 1.17 mg/l with an average value 0.44 mg/l. The salinity hazard result shows no degree of restriction on the use of the water for irrigation. Sodium concentration in the samples varied from 2.40 to 31.80 mg/l with an average value of 14.13 mg/l, indicating no degree of restriction for sensitive crops on the use of the water for irrigation. Based on the US salinity diagram, the water samples are predominantly of the C2-S1 class representing 57.69% of the total number of samples followed by C1-S1 and C3S1 classes at 28.85% and 13.46% of the samples, respectively; hence all the samples are suitable for irrigation. The Na% varied from 4.94% to 50.44% with a mean value of 25.42%, indicating no degree of restriction on the use of the water for irrigation. The obtained Cl - ion concentration varied from 0.2 meq/l to 4.43 meq/l with a mean value of 1.74 meq/l representing slight to moderate degree of restriction on the use of this water in irrigation. The MH values range from 0.04% to 61.70% (with a mean value of 21.69%); only one sample has a value above the acceptable limit of 50%. Using the PI, 24 water samples fell under Class 1 and the remaining 28 samples fell under Class 2; therefore, the water samples are suitable for irrigation. The calculated RSC values varied from -1.37 to 0.21meq/l with a mean value of -0.52 meq/l, thus making the water suitable for irrigation purpose. The KR values for the study area are all less than 1, except one value, and therefore the water in the study area is suitable for irrigation purpose. In general, the water samples in the study area are suitable for irrigation purpose. Keywords: salinity hazard, Kelly's ratio, basement complex, irrigation farming, alkaline soil, Ipetumodu


Adsorption-crosslinking is one of the immobilization methods to improve the reusability of lipase. It requires amino groups to reduce cross-link immobilization risk so that lipase–support interaction increases and the immobilization is attainable. Also, the amino group on the support is expected to increase lipase performance. This study aimed to analyze the effect of amino group addition on immobilized Aspergillus niger lipase by the adsorption-crosslinking using MP-64 macroporous anion resin and XAD-7HP macroporous nonionic resin that has been treated with chitosan. The chitosan-coated resin was characterized by Fourier transform infrared spectrometry (FTIR) and scanning electron microscope (SEM). Lipase immobilization was carried out by adding 10 ml lipase solution containing 0.75 g resins and shaken at 25°C for 150 rpm. Adsorption was achieved for 4 h, followed by cross-linking separately (adding 0.5% (v/v) glutaraldehyde and re-reacting for 20 min). Lipase activity was measured with the titrimetric of olive oil emulsion; mixed with Aspergillus niger lipase, emulsion, and a buffer solution (pH 6.5, ionic strength of 0.7); and incubated for 30 min at 37°C. The effect of amino-functional groups was investigated based on lipase loading and lipase activity. The best lipase loading and lipase activity of 83.79% and 29.41 U/g support were achieved in the adsorption-crosslinking using MP-64 resin coated with chitosan. After four cycles, biodiesel synthesis was maintained at 70.61% of the initial yield. These results indicated that chitosan as an affordable and readily available source of amino groups could be used to modify support for Aspergillus niger lipase immobilization.


Selective carbon–carbon and carbon–heteroatom bond cleavage was achieved in a one reaction system. With this strategy a novel Pd/Cu-catalyzed aerobic oxidative oxosulfonation of olefins with DMSO has been developed. Preliminary mechanistic investigations indicated that CO/O2 assisted the bond cleavage and the leaving groups from the starting materials were trapped by O2 and underwent a hydroxylation process.


Brothers In the Kitchen (BiTk), is a site-specific live-documentary performed with an audience inside a fully operational restaurant. The triumvirate of story, performance, and audience is used to create an interactive and immersive documentary experience incorporating oral storytelling, poetry, dance, music, archival materials and television— all performed live. BiTk is the story of the uprising, exodus and survival of Tamil Sri Lankan citizens who fled a brutal civil war and sought refuge in Canada. The ethnic conflict, between the Buddhist Sinhala majority and the Hindu Tamil minority, sparked a mass exodus following the deadly riots of Black July in 1983. Subsequently, a staggering 300,000 Tamils found asylum in Canada. Soon an inordinate number of them began work as cooks and dishwashers in many Canadian restaurants. This live documentary is performed thirty years after the arrival of the first boatload of Tamil refugees, found adrift off the coast of Newfoundland, in 1986.


To better understand the relationship between subsurface seasonal deoxygenation and acidification in the Yellow Sea and northern East China Sea (ECS), we examined carbonate system parameters and dissolved oxygen (DO) of seven field surveys conducted in 2017–2018, spanning all four seasons. Low pHT values of 7.71–7.80 and critically low aragonite saturation state (Ωarag) values of 1.07–1.40 along with undersaturated DO of mostly higher than 150 μmol O2 kg–1 occurred in the Yellow Sea Cold Water Mass area in summer and autumn, while hypoxic DO values of 49–63 μmol O2 kg–1 and extremely low pHT values of 7.68–7.74 as well as critically low Ωarag values of 1.21–1.39 were observed in the northern ECS in July 2018. At the beginning of warm-season stratification formation, the cold Yellow Sea waters had much higher DO but lower Ωarag values than those in relatively warmer ECS waters, while yearly initial pHT values rarely exhibited differences between the two coastal seas. During warm seasons, the central Yellow Sea accumulated respiration products beneath the thermocline in summer and autumn, while the northern ECS bottom waters preserved them only in summer. This study highlights fundamental roles of wintertime carbon dioxide (CO2) solubility along a north-to-south latitude gradient in the coastal acidification development. In comparison with the relatively low-latitude northern ECS subject to seasonal hypoxia, relatively high-latitude Yellow Sea exhibits higher CO2 solubility in winter and longer respiration-product accumulations in warm seasons, leading to lower Ωarag in the central Yellow Sea than those in the northern ECS. However, the present-day central Yellow Sea is free from hypoxia.


The potential of contrast enhanced digital subtraction echocardiography to demonstrate and quantitate myocardial perfusion was evaluated in 36 patients undergoing routine coronary arteriography or angioplasty. In 24 technically successful studies, multiple cross sectional echocardiographic images, obtained before and after intracoronary (sonicated contrast) injection, were stored by high speed, real time data transfer to an on line minicomputer. Subsequent digital subtraction processing of the stored image data provided composite images in which the distribution of myocardial perfusion was easily seen. Quantitative analysis of peak enhanced myocardial grey level and washout half time successfully differentiated between myocardial segments in which angiography had suggested normal, reduced, and grossly impaired or absent perfusion. The results suggest that this new method of digital image capture and quantitative processing has substantial advantages over previous off line qualitative techniques. It is likely to be of considerable value for routine coronary arteriography, angioplasty, and coronary thrombolysis.


TACRED is one of the largest, most widely used crowdsourced datasets in Relation Extraction (RE). But, even with recent advances in unsupervised pre-training and knowledge enhanced neural RE, models still show a high error rate. In this paper, we investigate the questions: Have we reached a performance ceiling or is there still room for improvement? And how do crowd annotations, dataset, and models contribute to this error rate? To answer these questions, we first validate the most challenging 5K examples in the development and test sets using trained annotators. We find that label errors account for 8% absolute F1 test error, and that more than 50% of the examples need to be relabeled. On the relabeled test set the average F1 score of a large baseline model set improves from 62.1 to 70.1. After validation, we analyze misclassifications on the challenging instances, categorize them into linguistically motivated error groups, and verify the resulting error hypotheses on three state-of-the-art RE models. We show that two groups of ambiguous relations are responsible for most of the remaining errors and that models may adopt shallow heuristics on the dataset when entities are not masked.