The physical compatibility of caspofungin acetate injection with selected other drugs during simulated Y-site coadministration was evaluated by visual observation and turbidity measurement. Five-milliliter samples of caspofungin acetate 0.7 mg/mL in 0.9% sodium chloride injection were combined with 5 mL of 67 other drugs including antineoplastics,analgesics, anti-infectives, and supportive care drugs, undiluted or diluted in 0.9% sodium chloride injection or 5% dextrose injection, and with a parenteral nutrition admixture. Visual examinations were performed with the unaided eye in normal laboratory fluorescent light and with a Tyndall beam (high-intensity monodirectional light beam) to enhance visualization of small particles and low-level turbidity. The turbidity of each sample was measured as well. The sample mixtures were evaluated immediately and at 1 and 4 hours after preparation. Nineteen of the drugs tested and the parenteral nutrition admixture were incompatible with caspofungin acetate 0.7 mg/mL during the 4-hour observation period. The remaining drugs were compatible for at least 4 hours. Gross precipitation or turbidity changes visible in normal diffuse room light with the unaided eye occurred with 18 drugs and with the parenteral nutrition admixture. Microprecipitation of particulates not visible with the unaided eye occurred with cytarabine. The measured turbidity of the caspofungin acetate control solutions and the compatible test samples remained essentially unchanged throughout the observation period. In combination with caspofungin acetate, 48 drugs and a parenteral nutrition admixture were considered to be physically compatible. In contrast, 19 drugs with the parenteral nutrition admixture exhibited frank precipitation or microparticulate formation within 4 hours and should not be simultaneously administered via Y-site with caspofungin acetate.


Gender role strain (GRS) has been shown to be associated with psychological health of men. However, research has focused on White, middle-class, heterosexual males in the U.S. Studies on how this phenomenon occurs in Asian male groups, in their countries of origin, are limited. In this study, the research by Rubio and Green (2009) was replicated and built on; the GRS and psychological health of 205 Filipino heterosexual and gay men in the Philippines were evaluated. Analyses indicate that the GRS of Filipino gay men in the Philippines is not significantly different from heterosexual men, and that the GRS of Filipino gay men in the Philippines correlates significantly with their depression, global anxiety, stress and social anxiety. Implications for mental health practice, social policy, and future research are presented.


Porous SiC ceramics with high porosity and high strength were fabricated by gelcasting, with tert-butyl alcohol (TBA) as solvent, acrylamide (AM) as monomer, and in-situ reaction bonding with a-Al2O3 as sintering additive. SiC suspension with 10 vol% solid loading was successfully solidified by gel-casting to form high strength green body. The results showed that the compressive strength of the porous SiC ceramics increased with sintering temperature from 1300 to 1450°C, but porosity had little change, due to formation of more volume of cristobalite and mullite phases on the surface of SiC grains, accompanied by a large volume expansion effect. Very narrow single-peak distributions with about 2 mm median pore diameter could be found for the porous SiC ceramics. The porosity and compressive strength of the porous SiC ceramics sintered at 1450°C were 71.21 % and 12.14 MPa, respectively.


A feedforward system for direct carrier modulation transmitters is proposed and experimental results are presented. The advantage of this architecture over the conventional one using a feedforward amplifier is that the overall distortion resulting from the modulator is also reduced. The feedforward structure needs a reference signal to compare and cancel distortions: this is achieved using a second modulator which is operated at very low input level to obtain a signal with a negligible distortion. The 16-QAM simulation results suggest that the effect of LO feedthrough which can deteriorate the signal quality is also reduced. Experimental results on a 900 MHz feedforward transmitter with 16-QAM signal show that adjacent channel interference is reduced by as much as 15 dB.


Maximum incorporation of the label after administration of 14C-bicarbonate to free pyrimidine nucleotides begins by the 60th minute. Radioactivity of cytidine nucleotides at all time points is four-eight times as low as that of uridine nucleotides. 2-14C-orotic acid is incorporated into acid-soluble nucleotides and RNA of the liver and spleen tissues. 60 min after administration of the isotope 20% of radioactivity was found in the liver and 0.3% in the spleen, in both tissues radioactivity of RNA is 20% of 14C-radioactivity in the acid-soluble fraction. The formation rate for cytidine nucleotides from uridine ones in the liver and spleen tissues is low, about 2-6% of uridine nucleotides radioactivity is found in them only, that may be due to a low activity of CTP-synthetase. The content of cytidine nucleotides in these organs is three-life times as low as compared to uridine nucleotides.


The ever-growing amount of data produced by and in today's smart cities offers significant potential for novel applications created by city stakeholders as well as third parties. Current smart city application models mostly assume that data is exclusively managed by and bound to its original application and location.We argue that smart city datamust not be constrained to such data silos so that future smart city applications can seamlessly access and integrate data frommultiple sources across multiple cities. In this paper, we present a methodology and toolset to model available smart city data sources and enable efficient, distributed data access in smart city environments. We introduce a modeling abstraction to describe the structure and relevant properties, such as security and compliance constraints, of smart city data sources along with independently accessible subsets in a technology-agnostic way. Based on this abstraction, we present a middleware toolset for efficient and seamless data access through autonomous relocation of relevant subsets of available data sources to improve Quality of Service for smart city applications based on a configurable mechanism. We evaluate our approach using a case study in the context of a distributed city infrastructure decision support system and show that selective relocation of data subsets can significantly reduce application response times. Subjects Distributed and Parallel Computing, Software Engineering


For decades, analysis of concentrations of elements in bullet lead have been used in the United States to link defendants to crimes in which fragments of bullets have been recovered. In response to mounting criticism of the practice, the FBI commissioned the National Academy of Science to review the Bureau's procedures for making these measurements and drawing inferences from them. The Academy's report confirms the validity of the instrumentation but identifies weaknesses in the statistical methods for declaring matches and for describing the significance of these matches. It also concludes that courts correctly could apply existing legal doctrine to uphold testimony that a match makes it more probable (by an unspecified amount) that the defendant is the source of the fragments. The article questions the committee's legal reasoning with regard to the probative value of the evidence and its conclusion as to the admissibility of the evidence under the scientific-validity standard articulated in Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals, Inc. It also raises a question as to whether and how blue-ribbon scientific committees studying forms of scientific evidence should offer explicit legal opinions on admissibility.


Abstract Two rain events at Matanuska Glacier illustrate how subglacial drainage system development and snowpack conditions affect hydrologic response at the terminus. On 21 and 22 September 1995, over 56 mm of rain fell in the basin during a period usually characterized by much drier conditions. This event caused an 8-fold increase in discharge and a 47-fold increase in suspended-sediment concentration. Peak suspended-sediment concentration exceeded 20 kg m —3, suggesting rapid evacuation of stored sediment. While water discharge returned to its pre-storm level nine days after the rain ceased, suspended- sediment concentrations took about 20 days to return to pre-storm levels. These observations suggest that the storm influx late in the melt season probably forced subglacial water into a more distributed system. In addition, subglacially transported sediments were supplemented to an unknown degree by the influx of storm-eroded sediments off hillslopes and from tributary drainage basins. A storm on 6 and 7 June 1997, dropped 28 mm of rain on the basin demonstrating the effects of meltwater retention in the snowpack and englacial and subglacial storage early in the melt season. Streamflow before the storm event was increasing gradually owing to warming temperatures; however, discharge during the storm and the following week increased only slightly. Suspended-sediment concentrations increased only a small amount, suggesting the drainage system was not yet well developed, and much of the run off occurred across the relatively clean surface of the glacier or through englacial channels.


The main aim of this paper is to measure the consequences of terrorist activities on capital flows of the developed countries. Capital flows are interpreted as FDI inflows and outflows. The methodology is based on the dynamic panel data models (System-2 step-GMM estimator) using a sample of 36 developed countries all over the world from 2000 to 2016. The key results indicate that the terrorist incidents have different impact on capital flows of the developed countries compared to impacts of economic and institutional variables. All the variables used in the paper show the level of their impact on capital flows. The results indicate that terrorist activities weaken economic activity of a country, while minimising capital flows in certain situations. The recommendations and proposals are given based on the results of research.


A significant number of studies suggest that engagement with music, in its different forms, can play an important role in terms of health and well-being for a diverse range of people, including older adults. Research focusing on the impact of these activities on the practitioners, namely
 the musicians carrying out the interventions, is at a more preliminary stage. This study investigated how tertiary-level music students experienced group music making with residents in nursing homes. A music team delivered ten weekly music sessions in four nursing homes, focusing on singing,
 rhythm-based activities with percussion instruments and listening to short, live performances. The team was composed of an experienced workshop leader, a researcher and nine student musicians enrolled in an elective seminar. Qualitative data were collected from the students through semi-structured
 interviews and oral diaries and analysed using thematic analysis. The results show that the overall experience had a positive impact on students in both professional and personal dimensions. The findings are discussed using the lenses of mutual recovery and the PERMA model of well-being.


Abstract On February 26, 2012, George Zimmerman, a man of White American and Peruvian descent, shot and killed Trayvon Martin, a Black teenager who was walking back to the home where he was a guest in Sanford, Florida. For many, Trayvon Martin is this generation's Emmett Till, the fourteen-year-old Black boy who was lynched in Mississippi in 1955 for whistling in a White woman's presence. In fact, several scholars have highlighted similarities between the Till and Martin tragedies. One unexplored commonality is the manner in which defense counsel in both the Till and Martin trials used the trope of protecting White womanhood to get the jurors to psychologically identify and empathize with the defendants. Employing Multidimensional Masculinities Theory, this essay seeks to expose the role that the protection of White womanhood (and thus the preservation of White manhood) played in the killings of Till and Martin and in each of their killers' defense strategies at trial. It does so by offering a history of lynching; explaining how White men demonstrated their ownership of White women and their dominance over Blacks by using violence against Black men who threatened the social order; and revealing how the defense attorneys in both the Till and Martin cases manipulated and employed the narrative of the White male protector of White women to facilitate acquittals for their clients. In so doing, it analyzes the transcript from the Till trial, a transcript previously believed to be lost forever until the FBI discovered the transcript upon its re-opening and investigation of the Till murder and released the transcript in 2006. Finally, utilizing excerpts from the trial transcript in the Martin case, this essay reveals how the trope of protecting White womanhood shaped the outcome in the Martin case, even though the stock narrative of needing White female protection from purportedly dangerous Black men was not at all related to the claims about Martin or charges against Zimmerman. In so doing, this essay reveals (1) how White womanhood has been abstracted to encompass not only a specific woman in an incident and to include not only a "man's" home, but also to include broader spaces like gated communities, and (2) how that reality, coupled with the way that civil rights laws have made it harder for White men to bully Black men and the way that feminism has made it harder to subordinate women, has produced a new masculine anxiety for White men.


Geckos have extraordinary wall-climbing ability because of the millions of hairs with micro/nano fibrillar structures on their feet. Mimicking gecko's feet is of scientific and engineering importance for development of physical adhesion materials and devices. The design of gecko-inspired physical adhesives seems to be geometry dominated. In this study, Finite Element Method (FEM) has been used to analyse the vertical peel-off force of polyporpylene (PP) nanofibres having different fibre dimensions, inclining angels and contact areas on a flat glass substrate. It has been found that the main parameters affecting the frictional adhesion are fibre diameter and fibre aspect ratio, the inclining angle between the fibre and the substrate surface, and the intimate contact areas. Our analysis has shown that PP nanofibres with a diameter of less than 200nm can generate less peel-off force than fibres of larger diameters, indicating more stable adhesion with the glass substrate for thinner fibres. A bent fibre with more intimate contact area can bear more shear force than a straight fibre with less contact area. Also, under the same shear loading, fibres with an inclining angle of less than 30° provide a low peel off force.


Effects of surrounding climate give temperature variations in both time and space for concrete structures. The associated thermal strains may give rise to stresses and cracking due to external or internal restraint. This will affect the performance of the structure. It is therefore important to analyze the temperature variations and the extreme situations that can occur. To predict the dynamic thermal conditions in concrete structures a finite element model has been developed. The ability of the model to describe various boundary conditions such as solar radiation, outgoing long-wave radiation and convection correctly is investigated in this paper. Field temperature measurements in a concrete slab placed outdoor are used for the validation. The necessary climatic input data for the model were obtained from measurements in the vicinity of the slab. The results show that the model can describe the effects from different climatic factors in extreme situations with good accuracy and is well suited to use in further studies. (Less)


In 1967, Gordon Tullock asked why firms do not spend more on campaign contributions, despite the large rents that could be generated from political activities. We suggest in this paper that part of the puzzle could come from the fact that one important type of political activity has been neglected by the literature which focuses on campaign contributions or political connections. We call this neglected activity "asset freezing": situations in which firms delay lay-offs or invest in specific technologies to support local politicians' re-election objectives. In doing so, firms bear a potentially significant cost as they do not use a portion of their economic assets in the most efficient or productive way. The purpose of this paper is to provide a first theoretical exploration of this phenomenon. Building on the literature on corporate political resources, we argue that a firm's economic assets can be evaluated based on their degree of "political freezability," which depends on the flexibility of their use and on their value for policy-makers. We then develop a simple model in which financial contributions and freezing assets are alternative options for a firm willing to lawfully influence public policy-making, and derive some of our initial hypotheses more formally.


The novel revolves about a woman named Cut Nyak Dhien, who is often called "Cut Nyak". She is a prominent noble lady in Aceh. Her first husband Teuku Ibrahim Lamnga died in the battlefield, the Acehnese call him "Syahid", because he fought in the war with the Dutch Colonials to defend his homeland of Islam. After her husband was martyred in the war with the Dutch, Cut Nyak Dhien remarried with Teuku Umar Djohan Pahlawan. Furthermore, her second husband, Teuku Umar, was also killed by the Dutch. The death of her two beloved husbands added to her hatred to the Dutch Colonials. For Cut Nyak, the Dutch not only had seized her homeland, but also degraded the dignity of the Acehnese, and harassed her religion. The problem of this research is what nationalism values are contained in Cut Nyak Dhien novel, written by M.H. Skelely Lulofs. The source of data of this research is Cut Nyak Dhien novel, written by M.H. Skelely Lulofs. It was published by Bamboo Community in 2007, which consists of 369 pages. The descriptive qualitative method was used for the purpose of this study. Data collection technique was conducted by analyzing the values of nationalism in Cut Nyak Dhien novel written by M.H. Skelely Lulofs. The results of data analysis shows that there are many nationalism values contained in Cut Nyak Dhien novel which are useful for people's lives such as the citizenship value, romantic value, cultural value, state value and religious value.


Stream ciphers are cryptographic primitives that are used to ensure the privacy of a message that is sent over a digital communication channel. In this thesis we will present new cryptanalytic results for several stream ciphers. The thesis provides a general introduction to cryptology, explains the basic concepts, gives an overview of various cryptographic primitives and discusses a number of different attack models. The first new attack given is a linear correlation attack in the form of a distinguishing attack. In this attack a specific class of weak feedback polynomials for LFSRs is identified. If the feedback polynomial is of a particular form the attack will be efficient. Two new distinguishing attacks are given on classical stream cipher constructions, namely the filter generator and the irregularly clocked filter generator. It is also demonstrated how these attacks can be applied to modern constructions. A key recovery attack is described for LILI-128 and a distinguishing attack for LILI-II is given. The European network of excellence, called eSTREAM, is an effort to find new efficient and secure stream ciphers. We analyze a number of the eSTREAM candidates. Firstly, distinguishing attacks are described for the candidate Dragon and a family of candidates called Pomaranch. Secondly, we describe resynchronization attacks on eSTREAM candidates. A general square root resynchronization attack which can be used to recover parts of a message is given. The attack is demonstrated on the candidates LEX and Pomaranch. A chosen IV distinguishing attack is then presented which can be used to evaluate the initialization procedure of stream ciphers. The technique is demonstrated on four candidates: Grain, Trivium, Decim and LEX. (Less)


An adaptive beamforming algorithm that enhances the quality of the signal recorded by a microphone array is presented. The system described here attenuates the interference from spatially scattered sources while preserving the desired signal quality in the speech frequency range. A novel method for defining additional constraints within the adaptation process and performing beamforming in parallel across several frequency bands achieves undistorted recording even with slight errors in localizing the speaker. Moreover, a tracking algorithm is developed which adjusts the beamformer parameters while keeping its wideband characteristics and the interference reducing capabilities. Simulation results show nearly optimal improvement of speech quality in various noisy environments. The algorithm is modified to perform in a real environment by introducing two modes of adaptation that switch according to the speaker activity. The implementation of this modified system demonstrates signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) gain close to that of the original simulated system. It is robust to localization errors and non-ideal environmental effects.


OBJECTIVE
Disparities in childhood obesity necessitate identification of risk-protective and risk- augmenting factors for young children experiencing socioeconomic adversity born with perinatal risk. Temperamental reactivity is a biological marker of susceptibility to environmental characteristics. This study tested whether temperamental reactivity moderated the relation between socioeconomic risk and children's body mass index (BMI).

METHOD
This study examined 100 Head Start preschoolers (Mage = 4.07 years, SD = 0.56) with perinatal risk, defined as preterm birth (PT, <37 weeks gestation) or low birth weight (LBW, <2500g). Anthropometric measurements were collected from children and parents. Parents completed questionnaires on family level demographics and household food insecurity to create a cumulative socioeconomic risk variable. Parents also completed the Children's Behavior Questionnaire to assess preschoolers' temperamental reactivity.

RESULTS
Results supported a differential susceptibility hypothesis such that preschoolers' temperamental reactivity significantly moderated the relation between socioeconomic risk and child BMI z-score (BMIz). Higher BMIz was observed in highly reactive children exposed to higher socioeconomic risk. Alternatively, lower exposure to socioeconomic risk was related to lower BMIz for highly reactive children.

CONCLUSIONS
Findings suggest that highly reactive PT/LBW preschoolers are differentially susceptible to early socioeconomic adversity in a for better or for worse manner regarding BMIz. Thus, consideration of temperament as a marker of biological sensitivity to context may be necessary to inform obesity prevention for PT/LBW preschoolers from low-income families. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).


For many business managers, dealing with financial figures can be the most difficult part of the job. Now the busy professional can gain a working knowledge of finance, and understand how the numbers relate to decisions they must make every day. "The McGraw-Hill 36-hour Course in Finance for Non-Financial Managers" is a complete guide to all the essentials of financial reporting and budgeting. It features self-tests at the end of each chapter so readers can make sure they've mastered each basic concept before proceeding to the next, and a "final exam" is presented at the end of the book. Whether putting together a budget, trying to make sense of a financial statement, or keeping score of sales, readers will find clear and easy-to-read guidance to the financial ideas and applications that matter most in the business world. In addition, an imaginary case study is introduced at the start of the book and continued through succeeding chapters. The growth and development of this true-to-life company serves as an enlightening - and often amusing - illustration of everything from cost of sales, to equipment depreciation, to overhead expenses, to balance sheets.


Early P nutrition in corn (Zea mays L.) is important for early growth and arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF) may help juvenile corn plants access soil P. The role of AMF colonization in manured soils and the impact of AMF on the need for starter P is not well known. This study was designed to assess the response of corn with contrasting levels of AMF colonization to low rates of starter P under inputs of broadcast liquid dairy manure or N and P fertilizer. The study was conducted on a high-P-testing soil in south-coastal British Columbia. Contrasting AMF colonization was achieved by growing corn either after corn or after fallow. Both AMF colonization and starter P improve early growth and, to a lesser extent, final harvest even on a relatively high P soil receiving a heavy application of P as broadcast liquid dairy manure or fertilizer. The effects of AMF colonization and starter P were additive, so both contribute to maximum yield. Our study suggests that practices favoring AMF colonization will help juvenile corn plants take up P. While strategically placed low rates of starter P were beneficial for juvenile plants, these treatments were less effective than conventional sidebanding at 30 kg P ha -1 because the effect did not carry forward to final harvest, even in corn that was well colonized by AMF. Therefore, better nutrient strategies and AMF colonization are needed to ensure that corn crops will gain sufficient P with minimum starter mineral fertilizer on manured soils.


The fully convolutional network (FCN) with an encoder-decoder architecture has been the standard paradigm for semantic segmentation. The encoder-decoder architecture utilizes an encoder to capture multilevel feature maps, which are incorporated into the final prediction by a decoder. As the context is crucial for precise segmentation, tremendous effort has been made to extract such information in an intelligent fashion, including employing dilated/atrous convolutions or inserting attention modules. However, these endeavors are all based on the FCN architecture with ResNet or other backbones, which cannot fully exploit the context from the theoretical concept. By contrast, we introduce the Swin Transformer as the backbone to extract the context information and design a novel decoder of densely connected feature aggregation module (DCFAM) to restore the resolution and produce the segmentation map. The experimental results on two remotely sensed semantic segmentation datasets demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed scheme.


Can a textbook titled as this one is possibly be of value to anyone other than a specialist in radiology? This question is answered affirmatively after reading only several of its 64 chapters. This two-volume work is a well-written perceptive compilation of important information that could be composed in such form only by authors with extensive experience in the clinical practice of radiology, pathology, and gastroenterology. The editors of this second edition have made modifications in the organization of the text, have increased photographic documentation, and included pertinent current information on the range of gastrointestinal, hepatobiliary, pancreatic, and peritoneal disorders. The subjects are arranged in anatomical sequence from pharynx to colon with supporting sections on general considerations, special procedures, pediatric roentgenology, infectious and vascular diseases, and combined roentgenologic and endoscopic procedures. The final two chapters, appropriately, have been written by gastroenterologists to review the role of roentgenologic methods in management


A tie-down system was developed for use with Iowa's steel H-section temporary barrier. For this system, the original barrier connection detail was modified in order to simplify barrier attachment to one another as well as to more easily accommodate deviations in horizontal and vertical alignment. At each barrier joint, two steel shear plates were positioned within an opening on the adjacent barrier section and held in place with two steel drop pins. Four steel angle brackets were welded to the barrier's base at every joint in order to allow for the barriers to be rigidly attached to the concrete bridge deck using drop-in anchors. Two full-scale vehicle crash tests, using 3/4-ton pickup trucks, were performed on the steel H-section barrier system. Due to vehicle snag and subsequent vehicle rollover, the first test was unsuccessful. Following minor design modifications, the barrier system was retested. The second test was successfully conducted on the tied-down steel H-barrier system which safely redirected the pickup truck. The tests were conducted and reported in accordance with the requirements specified in the National Cooperative Highway Research Program (NCHRP) Report No. 350, "Recommended Procedures for the Safety Performance Evaluation of Highway Features." The safety performance of the tie-down system for use with Iowa's steel H-section temporary barrier was determined to be acceptable according to the Test Level 3 (TL-3) evaluation criteria specified in NCHRP Report No. 350.


All Chinese medicinal substances have a special property (cold, hot, warm or cool) according to the theories of Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM). Processing of Chinese Materia Medica ( pao zhi ) is always applied to modify the property according to clinical needs in TCM. The purpose of this paper was to evaluate the processing effects on the property of Rhizoma Coptidis (RC). The wine-processed RC (WPRC, with less cold property in TCM) and bile-processed RC (BPRC, with colder property in TCM) were prepared, the level of 5-hydroxytryptamine (5-HT) of rats was determined by fluorescence spectrophotometry and the morphology of rats' brain tissue was analyzed by immunohistochemistry. Compared to crude RC treated group, the distribution of 5-HT-immunopositive neurons and cell staining in the brainstem raphe nuclei were remarkably denser and deeper in BPRC treated group, while the distribution of 5-HT-immunopositive neurons was sparse and the cell staining was lighter in WPRC group. The work provided a meaningful way in the research of processing effect on properties of Chinese medicinal substances.


Sweden's population doubled in size between 1750 and 1850 despite a century of stagnating per capita incomes and real wages, which has led many historians to attribute the population explosion to the introduction of the potato. This article provides the first systematic evidence on the potato's contribution to Swedish living standards and population growth. Potatoes at least doubled output per acre, and welfare ratios that account for potato consumption imply that they raised living standards significantly for labourers. Estimates that exploit regional differences in the suitability of land for cultivating potatoes further show that cities, counties, and rural parishes with more land suitable for potato cultivation experienced a sharp relative acceleration in population growth as the potato spread in the early nineteenth century. An expansion of the population was mainly driven by relative increases in fertility and, consistent with Malthusian predictions, there was no long-run impact on per capita incomes. According to these estimates, the introduction and spread of the potato can account for one-tenth of population growth between 1800 and 1850, thus suggesting that it was an important catalyst for the Swedish population explosion. (Less)


A rational design of sulfur host is the key to conquering the"polysulfide shuttle effects" by accelerating the polysulfide conversion. Since the process involves solid-liquid-solid multistep phase transitions, purposely-engineered heterostructure catalysts with various active regions for catalyzing conversion steps correspondingly are beneficial to promote the overall conversion process. However, the functionalities of the materials surface and interface in heterostructure catalysts remain unclear. In this work, an Mo2 C/MoC catalyst with abundant Mo2 C surface-interface-MoC surface tri-active-region is developed by in situ converting the MoZn-metal organic framework. The experimental and simulation studies demonstrate the interface can catch long-chain polysulfides and promote their conversion. Instead, the Mo2 C and MoC tend to accommodate the short-chain polysulfide and accelerate their conversion and the Li2 S dissociation. Benefitting from the high catalytic ability, the Li-S battery assembled with the Mo2 C/MoC-S cathode shows more discrete redox reactions and delivers a high initial capacity of 1603.6 mAh g-1 at 1 C charging-discharging rate, which is over twofolds of the one assembled using individual hosts, and 80.4% capacity can be maintained after 1000 cycles at 3 C rate. This work has demonstrated a novel synergy between the interface and material surface, which will help the future design of high-performance Li-S batteries.


This paper presents a new approach, based on the Case-Based Reasoning technique, which is useful to enhance Intelligent Tutoring Systems with learning abilities. Case-Based Reasoning is a recent paradigm for problem solving that has an inherent learning capability. So we integrate a Case-Based Instructional Planner within existing Intelligent Tutoring Systems (ITS) to enhance the pedagogical component with learning capabilities. In this way, the enhanced tutors combine the Case-Based Instructional Planner with a more conventional one in order to obtain a robust hybrid instructional planner. Thus, the resulting ITSs become self-improving systems that exhibit two kinds of learning: learning from memorisation and learning from their own experiences. In this paper a framework for developing case-based instructional planners together with a hybrid approach for connecting such planners to existing ITSs are presented. The methodology to perform that integration is also described. Finally, the results of the formative evaluation of a hybrid self-improving instructional planner using simulated students are pointed out.


The application of geospatial analysis is a need to respond to the increasing number of social conflicts caused by the existence of public places of worships (PPW) in Indonesia. This conflict eventually becomes endemic among Indonesian cross-cultural society. Even though the government has produced a regulation-like policy namely SKB 2006 to manage the establishment of PPW, its contribution to avoiding or reducing the conflicts is in question. Researchers notice that the policy is misused in some incidents to even trigger the conflict. It is due to the presence of people participation defined in SKB 2006 particularly to determine the legalization of PPW. Currently there is no exact foundation used by the government to precisely measure the status of PPW, hence the decision to permit or reject any proposal to establish PPW is determined by the acceptance of surrounding society which in many occasions becomes the cause of the conflict. Therefore the government needs to regain control over the existence of PPW since these types of buildings are public facilities used by people in cross-cultural society. The research is to provide accurate information regarding the existence of PPW and the impact of their presence using geospatial analysis. The objective is to analyze the interaction between PPW and its surrounding objects. The analysis is based on PPW coverage, overlapping and blank spot area. A case study has been conducted to analyze the existence of PPW at Cemorokandang village, a part of Malang city in the province of East Java. The application highlights the issue of overwhelming PPW in the location of analysis.


The seminal studies by Allcott and Mullainathan (2010), Allcott (2011), and Allcott and Rogers (2014) show that social comparison-based home energy reports (HER) are a cost-effective climate policy intervention in the US. Our paper demonstrates the context-dependency of this result. In most industrialized countries, average electricity consumption and carbon intensity are well below US levels. Consequently, HER interventions can only become cost-effective if treatment effect sizes are substantially higher. For Germany, we provide evidence from a large-scale randomized controlled trial that effect sizes are in fact considerably lower than in the US. We conclude by illustrating that targeting highly responsive subgroups is crucial to reach cost-effectiveness and by identifying the few countries in which HER are promising policy instruments.


Containment is a frequently advocated strategic objective for countering plant invasions. It is commonly perceived that it is the valid fall-back option when eradication has failed or is deemed impossible with the available resources. We reviewed management and research literature on containment. The lack of a clear, universally accepted definition of containment is problematic and containment practice is not well aligned with the limited research literature. Vague and inconsistent use of the term, poorly developed relationships between management practice and the ecological drivers of invasion, and frequent failure to specify appropriately scaled spatial configurations in management strategies make it difficult to evaluate containment as a strategy, generally or in specific cases. Management strategies rarely provide the basis for effective and efficient containment programs and this may reflect a lack of under-pinning scientific principles. We recommend that containment be defined as 'deliberate action taken to prevent establishment and reproduction of a species beyond a predefined area' and suggest that containment efforts should focus on individual infestations or populations but simultaneously cover all infestations or populations that are separated from one another by habitat suitable for the species. Containment units should be rigorously defined but the inevitability of breaches of these containment units, due to the stochastic nature of dispersal, implies that containment generally requires a capacity for local eradication (extirpation). This means that many infestations are no more amenable to containment than to eradication. The measures we propose would improve assessment of the feasibility and success of containment strategies.


This paper contains the study about design and vibration analysis for automobile gearbox element shaft with gear using Finite Element Analysis (FEA). Analysis include the study of equivalent stress and displacement response of the component. The threedimensional finite element model is constructed in ANSYS. The model is meshed and the boundary conditions with external loads are applied in ANSYS workbench. With the help of ANSYS software we find out the total deformation, equivalent stress which is response for noise and vibration of shaft with gear mounting.


Batch Normalization (BN) and its variants has been extensively studied for neural nets in various computer vision tasks, but relatively little work has been dedicated to studying the effect of BN in continual learning. To that end, we develop a new update patch for BN, particularly tailored for the exemplar-based class-incremental learning (CIL). The main issue of BN in CIL is the imbalance of training data between current and past tasks in a mini-batch, which makes the empirical mean and variance as well as the learnable affine transformation parameters of BN heavily biased toward the current task - contributing to the forgetting of past tasks. While one of the recent BN variants has been developed for" online" CIL; in which the training is done with a single epoch, we show that their method does not necessarily bring gains for "offline" CIL, in which a model is trained with multiple epochs on the imbalanced training data. The main reason for the ineffectiveness of their method lies in not fully addressing the data imbalance issue, especially in computing the gradients for learning the affine transformation parameters of BN. Accordingly, our new hyperparameter-free variant, dubbed as Task-Balanced BN (TBBN), is proposed to more correctly resolve the imbalance issue by making a horizontally-concatenated task-balanced batch using both reshape and repeat operations during training. Based on our experiments on class incremental learning of CIFAR-100, ImageNet-100, and five dissimilar task datasets, we demonstrate that our TBBN, which works exactly the same as the vanilla BN in the inference time, is easily applicable to most existing exemplar-based offline CIL algorithms and consistently outperforms other BN variants.


We propose a simple approach for simultaneous optical half-adder and half-subtracter using a single-slot waveguide that offers tight light confinement and enhanced nonlinearity. By exploiting the parametric depletion effect of twin degenerate four-wave mixing processes in the slot waveguide, we simulate 160-Gbit/s half-adder (A + B) and half-subtracter (A - B, B - A) and characterize the operation performance in terms of quality Q factor, extinction ratio ER, and eye opening EO. Two different nonlinear materials are considered as the slot region for comparison. One is silicon-nanocrystal (Si-nc) with Kerr nonlinear index of refraction (n2) of 4.8 ×10-17 m2/W and two-photon absorption (TPA) coefficient (βTPA) of 7 ×10-11 m/W at 1550 nm, and the other is a specific polydiacetylene, poly-[2,4 hexadiyne -1,6 diol-bis-( p -toluene sulfonate)] (PTS) with n2 = 6.25 ×10-17 m2/W and βTPA ≈ 0 at 1550 nm. PTS slot waveguide features superior performance of half-adder and half-subtracter compared with Si-nc slot waveguide under the same waveguide length and input signal power. Moreover, we study the performance dependence on the waveguide length and input power, providing an easy-to-follow theoretical basis for achieving the desired performance of half-adder and half-subtracter.


title SUMMARY /title Between the thirties and forties of this century, drawing on a number of studies of perception and phenomena of sensory illusion, the neurophysiologist Viktor von Weizsacker developed a conception of organic matter which was fundamentally different to the physiological and biological tradition of his time. For this reason, his theory of the Gestaltkreis required a profound revision of the methodological and conceptual instruments to be used in the study of man, and of the organism more generally. The organic entity is not a comparible object to the entities of physics, and its analysis cannot be subjected to the same criteria and methods of that science. This being is properly termed a biological act, a dynamic reality whose structure is circular and cannot be divided into different phases connected by means of causal relationships. Organic processes involve a particular relationship between the biological entity and its environment, and as a consequence it is impossible to remove it from its context. Instead, it is necessary to evaluate the spatial and temporal positions in which it is located in new, non-objective terms. Weizscker's conception, sensitive to the movement of neovitalism (to which he was nonetheless firmly opposed) and to ideas typical of Romantic science, is essentially opposed to the legacy of mechanism, in the name of a biology as the science of a peculiar object, of which one cannot ignore the subjective component.


. Estimating accurate 3D locations of objects from monocular images is a challenging problem because of lacking depth. Previous work shows that utilizing the object's keypoint projection constraints to estimate multiple depth candidates boosts the detection performance. However, the existing methods can only utilize vertical edges as projection constraints for depth estimation. So these methods only use a small number of projection constraints and produce insufficient depth candidates, leading to inaccurate depth estimation. In this paper, we propose a method that utilizes dense projection constraints from edges of any direction. In this way, we employ much more projection constraints and produce considerable depth candidates. Besides, we present a graph matching weighting module to merge the depth candidates. The proposed method DCD (Densely Constrained Detector) achieves state-of-the-art performance on the KITTI and WOD benchmarks. Code is released at https://github.com/BraveGroup/DCD .


Because specular reflection is view-dependent, shiny surfaces behave radically differently from matte, textured surfaces when viewed with two eyes. As a result, specular reflections pose substantial problems for binocular stereopsis. Here we use a combination of computer graphics and geometrical analysis to characterize the key respects in which specular stereo differs from standard stereo, to identify how and why the human visual system fails to reconstruct depths correctly from specular reflections. We describe rendering of stereoscopic images of specular surfaces in which the disparity information can be varied parametrically and independently of monocular appearance. Using the generated surfaces and images, we explain how stereo correspondence can be established with known and unknown surface geometry. We show that even with known geometry, stereo matching for specular surfaces is nontrivial because points in one eye may have zero, one, or multiple matches in the other eye. Matching features typically yield skew (nonintersecting) rays, leading to substantial ortho-epipolar components to the disparities, which makes deriving depth values from matches nontrivial. We suggest that the human visual system may base its depth estimates solely on the epipolar components of disparities while treating the ortho-epipolar components as a measure of the underlying reliability of the disparity signals. Reconstructing virtual surfaces according to these principles reveals that they are piece-wise smooth with very large discontinuities close to inflection points on the physical surface. Together, these distinctive characteristics lead to cues that the visual system could use to diagnose specular reflections from binocular information.


This article reports the first study of possible emissions of axions from power reactors using Primakoff and Compton conversions as the detection mechanisms. The expected experimental signatures are mono-energetic lines produced by their Primakoff or Compton conversions at a high-purity germanium (HPGe) detector. No evidence of axion emissions were observed and constraints on axion couplings versus axion mass within the framework of invisible axion models were placed. This experimental approach provides a unique probe for axion mass at the keV-MeV range not accessible to the other techniques.


Procedural knowledge is used by experts for complex system control. In this article, the notion of a complex sys- tem is taken in a broad sense. It might be a patient cured by a physician specialist, a biotechnological device, a department of some business enterprise etc. The GLIF model was designed in collaboration of American universities for the formaliza - tion of medical guidelines, but it can be used for formal representation of any procedural knowledge. The main objective of the GLIF model was to enable computer processing and comparing of medical guidelines. In this, article also a more sophisticated use of procedural knowledge representation by the means of the GLIF model is proposed. The provided data about expert actions are stored into the database, the formalized knowledge represented by the GLIF model can be used for building up sophisticated reminder systems that warn the user if he decides to make an impropriate action. Different kinds of warnings in the reminder system are proposed and their properties are discussed. At the end, also the possibility of using the GLIF model for decision support is discussed.


Abstract This study is a replication of an existing large study (N = 507) on the surface-based morphometric correlates of five-factor model (FFM) personality traits. The same methods were used as the original study in another large sample drawn from the same population (N = 597) with results then being aggregated from both samples (N = 1104), providing the largest investigation into the neuroanatomical correlates of FFM personality traits to date. Clusters of association between brain morphometry and each FFM trait are reported. For neuroticism, agreeableness, openness and conscientiousness clusters of association were found in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex for at least one morphometric index. Morphometry in various other regions was also associated with each personality trait. While some regions found in the original study were confirmed in the replication and full samples, others were not, highlighting the importance of replicating even high-quality, well-powered studies. Effect sizes were very similar in the replication and whole samples as those found in the original study. As a whole, the current results provide the strongest evidence to date on the neuroanatomical correlates of personality and highlights challenges in using this approach to understanding the neural correlates of personality.


A new halophytic species, Scorzonera tuzgoluensis A. Duran, B. Dogan & S. Makbul sp. nov. (Asteraceae), is described and illustrated from Tuz Lake, central Anatolia, Turkey. The new species grows in salt marshes, is endemic (confined to central Anatolia) and closely related to Scorzonera parviflora Jacq. and S. elata Boiss. The diagnostic morphological characters of these similar taxa are discussed. The ecology, biogeography and conservation status of the new species are also presented. The geographic distribution of the new species and related species is mapped.


Introduction T helper (Th)17 cells, a newly identified subset of Th cells, are major mediators of inflammation-associated disease and have a reciprocal developmental relationship with the immunosuppressive T regulatory (Treg) cells, which actively restrain the inflammatory response. The present work was designed to study the balance between Th17 cells and Treg cells in patients with chronic hepatitis C (CHC) in relation to disease activity and severity of hepatic fibrosis. Methods Twenty patients with treatment-naive CHC and 20 healthy subjects were included in the study. The Th cells, Th17 cells and Treg cell subsets in fresh whole blood samples were identified as CD3+CD4+, CD4+IL17A+ and CD4+CD25+FoxP3+ cells respectively using flow cytometry and expressed as percentages of total lymphocytic count. Serum IL17 levels were measured using solid phase sandwich enzyme linked immunosorbant assay kit. Liver biopsies from patients with CHC were examined to assess histological activity grade and fibrosis stage according to METAVIR scoring system. Liver-infiltrating CD4+ (Th cells), IL17A+ cells (Th17 cells) and FoxP3+ cells (Treg cells) were detected by immunohistochemical staining and their proportions were determined as ratios of infiltrating CD4+ Th cells. Results Patients with CHC showed significant increases in the percentage of Th17 cells, Th17 cells/FoxP3+Treg cells ratio in peripheral blood and serum IL17 levels and a significant decrease in the percentage of circulating FoxP3+Treg cells compared with healthy subjects (p<0.01). The percentages of peripheral blood CD4+ Th cells were not statistically different between the two groups (p=0.284). The proportions of liver-infiltrating IL17A+ cells and FoxP3+ cells of the total intrahepatic CD4+ cell population were inversely correlated and showed positive correlations with the percentages of circulating Th17 cells and FoxP3+ Treg cells respectively in patients with CHC (p<0.05). The METAVIR necroinflammation grade and fibrosis stage [but not serum HCV RNA levels] were directly correlated with the proportion of intrahepatic IL17A+ cells and IL17A+ cells/FoxP3+ cells ratio and serum IL17 levels and were inversely correlated with the proportion of liver-infiltrating FoxP3+ cells (p<0.05). Conclusion In patients with CHC, the CD4+ Th cell phenotype is skewed towards the IL17 producing-Th phenotype. The imbalance between Th17 and Foxp3+ Treg cells plays an important role in disease progression and hepatic fibrosis in CHC. Competing interests None declared.


Abstract : The cultural heritage of the area traversed by the Tennessee - Tombigbee Waterway between Gainesville, Alabama, and Paden, Mississippi, in historic times has been examined in geographical perspective. Settlement patterns are related to four physiographic divisions; Fall Line Hills, Black Belt Prairie, Pontotoc Hills, Ripley Cuesta, and Tombigbee Terraces. Settlement patterns are also defined in terms of three cultural traditions; Euro-American (Upland South and Lowland South), Black, and American Indian. The characteristic locations and structure of specific material culture forms are described. Transportation activities assessed include roads, forts, ferries, bridges, landings and railroads. Agricultural activities discussed include Upland South farmsteads, Lowland South farmsteads, and rural Afro-American settlement patterns. Central place activities analyzed are county seats, port towns, railroad towns and rural hamlets. Industrial activities treated are cotton ginning, cotton compressing, milling, metal working and brick making. The study concludes with a statistical analysis of site types and an evaluation of predictive site models. The narrative is supported by numerous maps and tables, and an extensive bibliography of documentary, published and map sources. (Author)


We analyzed glycemic control and insulin usage patterns of 14 preschoolers and 14 adolescents on continuous subcutaneous insulin infusion (CSII) matched for sex to determine how CSII therapy for type 1 diabetes mellitus (DM1) differs in preschoolers as compared to adolescents. Average hemoglobin A(1c) was lower in the adolescents. The percent of insulin delivered as the basal rate was the same in both groups; however, during the hours after midnight the preschoolers needed a much lower basal rate per kg body weight. There were also significant differences in insulin sensitivity and insulin/carbohydrate ratios. The number of basal rates, number of boluses, and percent of insulin administered as the basal rate were not different between groups. This is the first report of discrete differences in insulin usage patterns for preschoolers and adolescents on insulin pumps. Reasons for these dissimilarities include differences in hormone production, insulin absorption, frequency of food intake, and glycemic targets. Recognizing these variations is essential for safe and efficacious use of CSII in preschoolers with DM1.


EUROSTAT's website dedicates a new section to experimental statistics. They report the adoption of new data sources and methods in an effort to expand and improve the way official statistics responds to their users' needs. The initial release, dated June 2017, includes three products, compiled from new data sources and methods: one is about Food price monitoring, the second about Labour market transitions, and the third about World Heritage Sites. Statistics on UNESCO World Heritage Sites result from a Big Data project using Wikipedia as a source, with Wikipedia articles associated to each site and the total number of page views taken as a measure of popularity of the sites or a measure of «cultural consumption» of world heritage. The experiment is particularly interesting in the light of scarcity of first-hand data collections in the cultural domain at the EU level. In this article, the characteristics of the experimental cultural statistics are briefly considered, as well as its possible future developments.


The non-convex nature of the loss landscape of deep neural networks (DNN) lends them the intuition that over the course of training, stochastic optimization algorithms explore different regions of the loss surface by entering and escaping many local minima due to the noise induced by mini-batches. But is this really the case? This question couples the geometry of the DNN loss landscape with how stochastic optimization algorithms like SGD interact with it during training. Answering this question may help us qualitatively understand the dynamics of deep neural network optimization. We show evidence through qualitative and quantitative experiments that mini-batch SGD rarely crosses barriers during DNN optimization. As we show, the mini-batch induced noise helps SGD explore different regions of the loss surface using a seemingly different mechanism. To complement this finding, we also investigate the qualitative reason behind the slowing down of this exploration when using larger batch-sizes. We show this happens because gradients from larger batch-sizes align more with the top eigenvectors of the Hessian, which makes SGD oscillate in the proximity of the parameter initialization, thus preventing exploration.


Fast cut back (FCB) thermal power units can be used as blackstart units to boot up the power system restoration after a blackout event in the power grid without hydropower units. On the basis of analyzing the important role of FCB units in restoring a power system, the optimal location and capacities of FCB units are determined using the particle swarm optimization (PSO) algorithm for minimizing the system restoration time with some constraints such as units' characteristics and lines' charging time. The simulation results of the New England 10-unit 39-bus power system prove that reasonable location of FCB units based on the optimization method proposed can significantly reduce the system restoration time.


ABSTRACT In line with recent reports of extended-spectrum beta-lactamases (ESBLs) in Escherichia coli isolates of highly virulent serotypes, such as O104:H4, we investigated the distribution of phylogroups (A, B1, B2, D) and virulence factor (VF)-encoding genes in 204 ESBL-producing E. coli isolates from diarrheic cattle. ESBL genes, VFs, and phylogroups were identified by PCR and a commercial DNA array (Alere, France). ESBL genes belonged mostly to the CTX-M-1 (65.7%) and CTX-M-9 (27.0%) groups, whereas those of the CTX-M-2 and TEM groups were much less represented (3.9% and 3.4%, respectively). One ESBL isolate was stx 1 and eae positive and belonged to a major enterohemorrhagic E. coli (EHEC) serotype (O111:H8). Two other isolates were eae positive but stx negative; one of these had serotype O26:H11. ESBL isolates belonged mainly to phylogroup A (55.4%) and, to lesser extents, to phylogroups D (25.5%) and B1 (15.6%), whereas B2 strains were quasi-absent (1/204). The number of VFs was significantly higher in phylogroup B1 than in phylogroups A (P = 0.04) and D (P = 0.02). Almost all of the VFs detected were found in CTX-M-1 isolates, whereas only 64.3% and 33.3% of them were found in CTX-M-9 and CTX-M-2 isolates, respectively. These results indicated that the widespread dissemination of the bla CTX-M genes within the E. coli population from cattle still spared the subpopulation of EHEC/Shiga-toxigenic E. coli (STEC) isolates. In contrast to other reports on non-ESBL-producing isolates from domestic animals, B1 was not the main phylogroup identified. However, B1 was found to be the most virulent phylogroup, suggesting host-specific distribution of virulence determinants among phylogenetic groups.


This paper proposes an optimization based method of planning reactive power control for electric transmission systems to endow them with the capability of being reconfigured to a secure configuration under a list of contingencies. The overall objective function is to minimize the installation cost of new controls such as mechanically switched capacitors, while satisfying the requirements of voltage stability margin and voltage magnitude under a contingency list. The backward/forward search algorithm with linear complexity is used to select candidate locations for switched capacitors. Optimal locations and amounts of new switch controls are obtained by solving a sequence of mixed integer programming problems. The modified New England 39-bus system and a North American power system with 6358 buses are adopted to illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed method.


The normalized transfer function of an elliptical annular aperture for incoherent illumination is derived. The relationship between the formulation developed here and a problem occurring in the diffraction from apertures illuminated with partially coherent radiation is shown. Results are discussed in terms of spatial-filtering concepts, with emphasis on the behavior of the cutoff frequency and the passband characteristics in the spatial-frequency plane.The effect of the aperture ellipticity for arbitrary annulus width is to introduce an asymmetry in the behavior of the cutoff frequency. The presence of a central obstruction, for arbitrary ellipticity, emphasizes the high-frequency transmission, with the region of emphasis dependent upon the angular orientation in the frequency plane.


Ultrastructual observations on an unusual gonadal stromal tumor of the testis in a 4-year-old boy with gynecomastia revealed that the tumor cells lacked the abundant smooth endoplasmic reticulum usually found in neoplastic and nonneoplastic Sertoli and Leydig cells. The cells were rich in cytoplasmic microfilaments, with localized dense areas of the type seen in smooth muscle cells as well as intracytoplasmic lipid droplets. It is concluded that the tumor cells show important similarities to the immature fusiform interstitial cells and the peritubular contractile cells present in the normal testis.


In this paper, a new high speed control circuit is proposed which will act as a critical path for the data which will go from input to output to improve the performance of wave pipelining circuits The wave pipelining is a method of high performance circuit designs which implements pipelining in logic without the use of intermediate registers. Wave pipelining has been widely used in the past few years with a great deal of significant features in technology and applications. It has the ability to improve speed, efficiency, economy in every aspect which it presents. Wave pipelining is being used in wide range of applications like digital filters, network routers, multipliers, fast convolvers, MODEMs, image processing, control systems, radars and many others. In previous work, the operating speed of the wave-pipelined circuit can be increased by the following three tasks: adjustment of the clock period, clock skew and equalization of path delays. The path-delay equalization task can be done theoretically, but the real challenge is to accomplish it in the presence of various different delays. So, the main objective of this paper is to solve the path delay equalization problem by inserting the control circuit in wave pipelined based circuit which will act as critical path for the data that moves from input to output. The proposed technique is evaluated for DSP applications by designing 4tap FIR filter using Distributed arithmetic algorithm (DAA). Then comparison of this design is done with 4-tap FIR filter designs using conventional pipelining and non pipelining. The synthesis and simulation results based on Xilinx ISE Navigator 12.3 shows that wave pipelined DAA based filter is faster by a factor of 1.43 compared to non pipelined one and the conventional pipelined filter is faster than non pipelined by factor of 1.61 but at the cost of increased logic utilization by 200 %. So, the wave-pipelined DA filters designed with the proposed control circuit can operate at higher frequency than that of non-pipelined but less than that of pipelined. The gain in speed in pipelined compared to that of wavepipelined is at the cost of increased area and more dissipated power. When latency is considered, wavepipelined design filters with the proposed scheme are having the lowest latency among three schemes designed. Keywords—control circuit, DAA, wave pipelining, FIR, critical path


Purpose : To determine whether the methanol extract of Polyopes affinis (MEPA) down-regulates the expression of pro-inflammatory mediators in lipopolysaccharide (LPS)-stimulated BV2 microglial cells. Methods : The production of nitric oxide (NO) and prostaglandin E2 (PGE2) was measured by the Griess reagents and enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA), respectively. Expression levels of mRNA and protein in LPS-stimulated BV2 microglial cells were assessed by reverse transcription-polymerase (RT-PCR) and Western blot analysis. Activation of nuclear factor-eB (NF-eB) was detected by electrophoretic mobility shift assay (EMSA). Results : MEPA inhibited the expression of LPS-induced pro-inflammatory mediators, NO and PGE2, as well as their respective genes, iNOS and COX-2, at both protein and mRNA levels, without any accompanying cytotoxicity. Moreover, treatment with MEPA significantly suppressed the LPS-induced DNA-binding activity of NF-eB, which is known as a main transcription factor for the regulation of proinflammatory genes, as well as the nuclear translocation of its subunit p65 and p50, by degrading IeBa. MEPA increased Akt dephosphorylation which leads to suppression of the DNA-binding activity of NF-kB in LPS-stimulated BV2 microglial cells and suppressed phosphorylation of ERK and JNK, which are involved in the mitogen-activated protein kinase (MAPK) signaling pathway for regulating proinflammatory genes. Conclusion : Our results indicate that MEPA down-regulates  pro-inflammatory mediators such as NO and PGE2 by suppressing Akt-dependent NF-eB activity as well as phosphorylation of ERK and JNK in LPS-stimulated BV2 microglial cells. Keywords : Polyopes affinis, Nitric oxide, Prostaglandin E2, Nuclear factor-kB


In this work, we have carried out a stereological and ultrastructural study in order to verify the action of pirenzepine on regenerating parietal cells. We have used a control group and operated or nonoperated groups treated with 1, 5 and 25 mg/kg/day pirenzepine. In operated groups an ulcer was provoked by cauterization with a metallic plate in the gastric fundus. Parietal cells in operated groups showed mitochondria with altered crests, a fine granular matrix and a large number of tubulo-vesicles. The comparative stereological analysis demonstrates a generalized decrease in the mitochondria, canaliculi and lysosomal volume density, and an increase in the tubulo-vesicle volume density. Changes detected in these cellular structures would originate a decrease in the production of HCl [correction of ClH].


In this work, the corrosion behavior of three Fe-Mn-Si-Cr-Ni–(Co) shape memory stainless steels (SMSS) in aggressive environments was characterized. The electrochemical corrosion behavior in 0.5 M H2SO4 solution was obtained by potentiodynamic polarization, linear polarization, potential decay curves, electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS), and MottSchottky analyses. Localized corrosion resistance was evaluated by potentiodynamic polarization measurements in 3.5% NaCl solution. The corrosion performance in highly oxidizing environments was evaluated based on immersion tests in boiling HNO3 solution. The passive film composition was analyzed by X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS). The test results were compared with that of a type 304 (SS 304) austenitic stainless steel. The three SMSSs exhibited a passive behavior in 0.5 M H2SO4 solution; however, their anodic behavior in the active dissolution region was markedly different. The passive current densities of the SMSSs were similar to that of SS 304, although the critical anodic current required for passivation was higher. The corrosion rate of the SMSSs in 0.5 M H2SO4 solution was much higher than that of SS 304. It was observed that the amount of Cr and Mn plays an important role in the corrosion behavior of SMSS. The XPS analyses indicated substantial Si content (in the chemical form of a silicate) in the anodic passive films formed on SMSS. Mott-Schottky analyses suggested that the Si acts as a dopant in the films, making them less defective and thicker than the films formed on SS 304. Due to their high manganese content, SMSSs are highly prone to pitting corrosion in chloride environments. SMSSs exhibit better corrosion resistance than SS 304 in highly oxidizing environments.


The characterization of process mineralogy of surface ore of graphite has been investigated by optical microscope and chemical analysis. The results show that content of metal minerals is little, the valuable mineral are graphite, the main gangue minerals are quartz, sericite, feldspar, white mica and so on. It is adverse to monomer dissociation of graphite because of the dissemination size of the gaphite is middle and fine, and content of fine particle is more. Gangue mineral of sericite and white mica are more, they are similar form of flake or scaly, to graphite, and easy to clay and adhesion on the surface of graphite, so flotation of the graphite is affected seriously. It is likely to influence on the flotability of graphite for graphite crystal occurs bending deformation and this changes arrangement distance of the crystal inside atomic under the action of stress.


Plant diseases caused by necrotrophic fungal pathogens cause considerable damage to crop cultivars worldwide. Traditional approaches to control fungal diseases are confined to breeding plant resistance or the application of fungicides. The use of fungicides represents a major cost to crop production and poses a number of environmental concerns. For many necrotrophic fungi there are no known sources of natural resistance that can be used in plant breeding.

Necrotrophic fungi produce an array of enzymes, which degrade the plant cell wall. Cell wall-degrading enzymes, particularly pectic enzymes, are a major cause of pathogenesis by necrotrophic fungal pathogens. Engineering plants for resistance to necrotrophic fungi is therefore a viable option for control of fungal diseases and may be achieved by transforming plants with genes that can inhibit the fungal pectic enzymes. Antibodies are known to possess enzyme inhibitory properties. Genes for such antibodies could be cloned and might be a good source of genes for engineering resistance. The aim of this study was to develop a novel approach to engineer resistance to fungal pathogens by cloning recombinant genes for antibodies against fungal pectinase enzymes.

Investigations were performed using Rhizoctonia solani as a model necrotrophic fungal pathogen. Anti-fungal antibody production in mice was induced by inoculation of mice with R. solani extracellular enzyme preparation. Antibody production was observed using an enzyme linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) and western blot assay. Immunoglobulin G (IgG) was purified from pooled mice sera by affinity column chromatography and used in enzyme inhibition assays. Purified IgG from the antigen immunised mice inhibited the activity of polygalacturonase (PG), cellulase, and chitin synthase from R. solani. No inhibition of PG and cellulase was observed with control IgG from the control-antigen (culture media protein) immunised mice. Mice with high affinity antisera were identified by ELISA and used for cloning the antibody genes.

Reverse-transcriptase polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) was used to amplify the VL and VH genes from the spleen messenger RNA (mRNA) of mice. A PCR assembly process was used to link these amplified VL and VH genes randomly together for expression as single chain variable fragment (ScFv) of antibody genes. The assembled genes were cloned into the pCANTAB 5E vector and transformed into E. coli TGI. A library of recombinant phage displaying the cloned antibody bound to the M13 gill protein was produced and panned against the fungal antigen. One hundred and ninety two antigen binding clones were isolated by affinity chromatography against R. solani antigen. Recombinant phage were transformed into E. coli HB2151 for soluble ScFv antibody production. The identified (positive) clones were screened for soluble antibody secretion. Antibody accumulation was examined in the culture supernatant, periplasmic extract, and whole cell extract. Most of the antibodies were found in the supernatant. Optimum conditions for antibody production involved a 48h incubation period at 16°C. Two clones that showed stable antibody production were selected for testing the effect of soluble antibody on enzyme activity. Two clones were selected for the stable antibody production during repeat culturing. ScFv gene structures of those two clones (B1 and B4) were determined by DNA sequencing.

The effect of these B1 and B4 soluble antibodies on various enzymes was investigated: pectic enzymes of exo-polygalacturonase (exo-PG); endo-polygalacturonase (endo-PG); pectin lyase (PNL); cell maceration enzymes of Rhizoctonia solani, Fusariwn solani, Botrytis cinerea, Sclerotinia sclerotiorum, Ascochyta fabei, Colletotrichum gloeosporoides, Leptosphaeria maculans, and Phytophthora cinnamomi; and a commercially available pectinase from Aspergillus niger. With the exception of A. fabei, and C. gloeosporides, all the fungal exo-PG enzymes were inhibited by both B1 and B4. The antibodies (both B1 and B4) inhibited the endo-PG enzyme activity of F. solani, B. cinerea, S. sclerotiorum, and A. fabei, but not C. gloeosporides or the commercial enzyme from A. niger. B1 and B4 also inhibited the cell maceration enzymes of F. solani, B. cinerea, S. sclerotiorum, A. fabei, and C. gloeosporides. Only the PNL enzyme activity of B. cinerea, and S. sclerotiorum was inhibited. However, the inhibitory effect of these antibodies was different for each enzyme. When the antibodies bound strongly to the enzyme there was strong inhibition of the enzyme, and when there was weak binding partial or uninhibition was observed. Western blot analysis of the fungal enzymes with B1 and B4 antibodies confirmed these results.


Marketing strategies addressing underserved African American wine customers' needs that also positively impact producers' and retailers' clientele was the impetus for this exploratory, qualitative paper. African Americans demonstrate a thirst to elevate their education about and be more involved in the wine industry as evidenced by the proliferation of African American wine-tasting groups designed to help educate and expose their membership to a variety of wines. Moreover, compared to the average adult, African-American wine drinkers are 241% more likely to have spent $20 or more on a bottle of store bought wine (Arbitron, 2005). Despite African Americans' representation as one of the fastest growing ethnic minority segments in the U.S., wine industry strategies don't appear to connect with this market segment. Like Alice in Wonderland, we characterize this phenomenon by suggesting this market segment is 'peering through the looking glass'. Three focus groups were conducted to specify possible targeted media strategies as well as to identify attitudes and opinions that influence this segment's wine purchasing and consumption behaviors. Industry strategies were suggested that would appear to benefit producers, retailers, and this customer segment. The results of the research will be used to inform a quantitative instrument in order to generalize findings beyond the context of the exploratory setting.


The Northern Environmental Education Development (NEED) project was a transnational geo-education resource development initiative cooperated by four European countries: Ireland, Finland, Norway, and Iceland. NEED supported the development of novel geological information resources, and the establishment of geoeducation networks in the four project regions. An analysis of the national geography and science curriculum in each region was conducted. This analysis identifi ed which geographic learning skills were common to each curriculum. The development of innovative geographic information system (GIS) resources to help support the development of geographic skills was considered a potentially valuable outcome of the NEED project. Google Earth was chosen as the technology with which to develop and serve the GIS information and learning resources. The resultant Google Earth learning resources provide free access to geoscientifi c information about the project regions for educators and students. While the development of these learning resources represents an important step in providing locally relevant geo-educational resources, further research is necessary to determine the pedagogical effectiveness of the learning content.


Considering the importance of e-learning in medical education, the designation and initiation of new teaching methods is significant. Hence, the aim of this study was to compare two different teaching methods; traditional and weblog-based teaching (WBT) by group discussion. This quasi-experimental study was conducted on 114 students of nutritional science who selected the course unit of "food service managing". In the first semester, 6-7 section was hold traditionally. Then, WBT was done off-line by the instructor. Data collection was carried out through researcher-made exit poll questionnaire and pre-test and post-test questionnaire too. For comparing intra and inter group differences, Paired sample T test and Student T test was used, respectively. Based on the pre-test results, neither scores was statistically different between groups (P>0.05). Moreover, the mean of attitude and practice scores in post-test were significantly higher in the WBT method (P=0.032 and P=0.017, respectively). However, no significant difference was found in scores of knowledge between two teaching methods (P=0.078). Therefore, the usage of web-sites and weblogs seems beneficial opportunity for e-learning that can improve educational level;awhile raised culture level and computer knowledge level is recommended necessary to use this method.


: Experiments were conducted on dogs to study the effect of heparin, obsidan, and rheogluman on the rate of lymph flow from the thoracic duct and the lymph coagulation potential in acute myocardial infarction. Rheoglumin produced the most marked lymph stimulating effect. The effect of heparin and partly that of rheogluman on lymph coagulability is mediated.


Abstract Gaming has the potential to support the development of young people's capabilities in social responsibility (SR) and, at the same time, represents a threat of developing undesired behaviour patterns. Successful integration of gaming in the lives of young people requires a systemic approach, which, to the best of our knowledge, hasn't been provided in the literature. We provide insight into this issue. In this paper, multiple methods are used. To elaborate the backgrounds on the gaming's effects and social behaviour, the literature is analysed. To assess the state-of-the art of young people characteristics, their pressing social challenges and gaming evaluation reports are analysed. The synthesis is provided and placed in the context with social responsibility properties using system dynamics. Gaming concepts, appropriate for education for SR, and relationships between young people's challenges and the players in the gaming environment in SR terms are proposed. Currently, the loop of games development is negatively propelled by the short-term games demand. We propose effective feedback loops, linking young people and their social environment, using a SR tool set to provide demands to the game providers. The experience will support the games developers to design socially constructive games, aiming to develop the desired skills and competencies in social transformation processes of young people toward SR. The proposed model provides merely an overview model, designed by the literature review and state-of-the-art analysis. To fully understand the games' effects on young people, a more detailed analysis is required.


Stool samples were collected and examined for soil-transmitted helminthic and protozoal infection in the first grade of three primary schools, located on Pulau Panggang and Pulau Pramuka, which are parts of a group of islands not far from the north coast of Jakarta. The stool examinations were part of activities during a control program on soil-transmitted helminthic infections. The schools have never participated with control programs on soil-transmitted helminthiases. For the examination of the samples a semi-quantitative Kato thick smear method was used and the direct smear with a 2% iodine solution. Four intestinal helminth species and five protozoa species were found in a total of 101 stool samples. Ascaris and Trichuris infections were found in 68.8% or more. Hookworm infection was only found in one school (2.9%). Eggs of Hymenolepis nana were detected in one sample. Cysts of Entamoeba histolytica and Entamoeba coli were both found in 5.0% of the samples, whereas Endolimax nana was recovered from 2.0% of the samples. High prevalence rates were detected for Blastocystis hominis (36.0%) and for Giardia lamblia it was 30.0%. Most of the Ascaris infections were categorized as light infections at School I (69.0%) and not a single heavy infection were found in this school. In School II and III most of the infections were moderate i.e. respectively 51.4 and 81.8%. Also in Schools II and III heavy infections were detected, respectively 11.4 and 5.8%. Fertilized Ascaris eggs were detected in 93.1%, 100% and 95.5% at School I, II and III respectively. As a whole among 86 positive samples 96.5% were recorded as samples with fertilized eggs, whereas 3.5% contained unfertilized eggs. The high prevalences of Ascaris and Trichuris infections in this area could be expected due to the low level of environmental hygiene and sanitation. Among the protozoal infections B. hominis and G. lamblia were the dominant species.


Stream habitat is characterized in the U.S. Geological Survey's National Water-Quality Assessment Program as part of an integrated physical, chemical, and biological assessment of the Nation's water quality. The goal of stream habitat characterization is to relate habitat to other physical, chemical, and biological factors to describe water-quality conditions. To accomplish this goal, environmental settings are described at sites selected for water-quality assessment. In addition, spatial and temporal patterns in habitat are examined at local, regional, and national levels. Although habitat characterization is an important component of a number of Federal, State, and local water-quality assessment programs, no current set of habitat evaluation procedures meets the objectives of the habitat assessment component of the National Water-Quality Assessment Program. Evaluation of stream habitat is based on a spatially hierarchical framework that incorporates habitat data at basin, segment, reach, and microhabitat scales. This framework provides a basis for national consistency in collection techniques while allowing flexibility in habitat assessment within individual study units. Procedures are described for collecting habitat data at basin and stream segment scales that include use of geographic information system data bases, maps, and aerial photographs. Data collected at the stream reach scale include more than 34 riparian and instream habitat characteristics evaluated during onetime site visits, and surveys of the channel and riparian area during repeated sampling.


In Montreal, Canada, accidents affecting child pedestrians (5 to 14 years old) remained almost constant from 1994 to 1999 despite the great amount of prevention measures. Moreover, the elementary public school environment has been barely taken into account by past and present research on factors affecting the risk of accident even though children attend school most weekdays. We argue here, therefore, that the integration of the local environment into the spatial analysis of child pedestrian accidents could help to reduce them. Accordingly, we have integrated socio-economic and environmental data into a geographic information system in order to perform a geographically weighted regression and results demonstrate that the average network distance separating accident and closest school is less than 500 meters, thereby confirming a relationship of proximity between these two locations. Results also demonstrate the relevance of adding a spatial dimension to the regression model by suggesting that prevention initiatives should take into account the particular nature of each neighbourhood so that more relevant risk factors can be targeted.


As in other higher eukaryotes, DNA methylation in plants is predominantly found at deoxycytosine residues, while deoxyadenosine residues are not methylated at significant levels. 6mdA methylation has been successfully introduced into yeast and Drosophila via expression of a heterologous methyltransferase, but similar attempts in tobacco had, up until now, proved unsuccessful despite the correct expression of a methyltransferase construct. It was unclear whether this result reflected the failure of heterologous methyltransferases to enter the nucleus, or whether 6mdA methylation, which has been shown to interfere with promoter activity, was toxic for plants. Here we show that 6mdA methylation can be successfully introduced into transgenic tobacco plants via expression of the bacterial dam enzyme. The efficiency of 6mdA methylation was directly proportional to expression levels of the dam construct, and methylation of all GATC sites was observed in a highly expressing line. Increasing expression levels of the enzyme in different plants correlated with increasingly abnormal phenotypes affecting leaf pigmentation, apical dominance, and leaf and floral structure. Whilst introduction of dam-specific methylation does not cause any developmental abnormalities in yeast or Drosophila, our data suggest that methylation of deoxyadenine residues in plants interferes with the expression of genes involved in leaf and floral development.


This paper analyses the relationship between monthly observations on farm level and retail level prices of three meats, seven fresh vegetables, five fresh fruits, eggs and cereals over the 1970's. A priori reasoning and results of Sim's casuality tests suggest that in most cases changes in farm prices cause changes in retail prices rather than the reverse or a simultaneous relationship. Markup price relationships are estimated. Most of the variation of retail prices is explained by the current farm price, lagged farm prices, a wage variable, and last period's retail price of a substitute product.


Specialized and advanced psychiatric nursing practice is an innovative concept in the health care service in Hong Kong. A clear definition of the role and practice of psychiatric clinical nurse specialists (CNS) is important for the development of expert psychiatric nursing practice but is still in a formative stage. A qualitative exploratory study was conducted to identify the psychiatric CNS's perceptions of their role and to compare their perceptions with those of their clinical psychiatric nurse colleagues. The main themes emerging from interviews, observations, and personal diary data were compared and condensed. Eight CNSs and 24 clinical nurse colleagues from acute care and community psychiatric nursing units voluntarily participated in the study. A four-component framework, including clinical practice, organization, education, and professional role, was adopted from nursing literature and used for categorization. The findings showed similarities of role perceptions in the clinical practice, organization, and education components between the CNSs and their nursing colleagues. Differences in role perceptions, concerns about inadequate knowledge and autonomy, and limitations in professional role are discussed.


Objectives To evaluate the impact of Charlson's Comorbidity Index (CCI) in overall survival of advanced epithelial ovarian cancer. Methods We retrospectively analyzed a series of 82 patients with advanced epithelial ovarian cancer (Stages IIIA-IV) from 2009 to 2015. Clinical and pathological variables were extracted from medical-records. Patients were categorized according to CCI in 3 groups: low (0–1), intermediate (2–3) and high (≥4). Results The median age was 57 years and 62(78.5%) were high-grade serous tumors. Forty-five (54.9%) cases had primary cytoreductive surgery, 33(40.2%) interval cytoreduction and 4(4.9%) staging surgery. Five (6%) patients had stages IIIA-IIIB tumors, 64(78%) stage IIIC and 13(15.8%) stage IV. Sixty-one (75.3%) cases had no residual disease after cytoreduction and 10(12.3%) residual disease ≤1cm. The median Surgical Complexity Score (SCS) was 6 (0–15) and 11 cases (14.7%) had major complications (NCI grade ≥3), including 3(3.6%) deaths within 30 days after surgery. The CCI were low, intermediate and high in 38(46.9%), 36(44.4%) and 7(8.6%) cases, respectively. Notably, CCI was not related to major complications (p=0.3). The median OS and PFS were 70.5 and 20.2 months. The median OS for patients with low, intermediate and high CCIs were 91.8, 51.6 and 38.9 months, respectively (p=0.11). However, CCI impacted PFS, as median PFS for patients with low, intermediate and high CCIs were 32.1, 16.2 and 13.4 months, respectively (p=0.004). Moreover, major complications negatively impacted OS compared to minor complications (91.8 vs.22.1; p=0.002), but not PFS (20.2 vs.22.2; p=0.71). Conclusions Our data suggest that higher CCI negatively impacted PFS in advanced ovarian cancer.


Ginger (Zingiber officinale Rosc.) is an economically important and valuable spice crop around the world. It is used as food, spice, condiment, and medicine. A considerable extent of genetic diversity in ginger occurs in the Western Ghats and North-Eastern India. However, genetic diversity studies at the molecular level in ginger is limited due to limited availability of genetic and genomic information. In the present study, for the first time, we have identified and validated expressed sequence tag (EST)-simple sequence repeat (SSR) markers from ginger. We obtained 16,790 EST-SSR loci from 78987 unigenes, and 4597 SSR loci in the predicted 76929 coding sequences from RNA-Seq assembled contigs of ginger through Illumina paired-end sequencing. Gene ontology results indicate that the unigenes with SSR loci participate in various biological processes such as metabolism, growth, and development in ginger. One hundred and twenty-five primer pairs were designed from unigenes and coding sequences. These primers were tested for PCR optimization, characterization, and amplification and identified 12 novel EST-SSR markers. Twelve flanking polymorphic EST-SSR primers were validated using 48 ginger genotypes representing North-Eastern India and different eco-geographical adaptations by PCR amplification and allele sizing through capillary electrophoresis. Twelve EST-SSR primers generated a total of 111 alleles with an average of 9.25 alleles per locus and allele sizes ranging between 115-189bp. This study implies that the SSR markers designed from transcriptome sequences provides ample EST-SSR resources, which are helpful for genetic diversity analysis of Zingiberaceae species and molecular verification of ginger genotypes.


In this paper we present the results of MCM trials using a Biosonar system mounted on the AUV (autonomous underwater vehicle) REMUS 100. The trials were run in Lochearnhead in Scotland. Two mine-like objects were put on the seafloor. The first one was a aluminium cylinder (150 cm long and 40 cm diameter) and the second object was a truncated cone shaped aluminium shell (Manta mine like target). The REMUS 100 was equipped with a standard Marine Sonics sidescan sonar. The Biosonar payload was in a side-looking configuration. Data were gathered using both sensors simultaneously. A first set of runs covered the delimited search area using lawnmower pattern. The AUV then returned to the interesting detected objects and reacquired them following a dolphin-like spiral to obtain further data giving a range of views of the objects. The data supplied have demonstrated that the wideband sonar system is very effective at identifying seafloor objects.


: Every 7 out of 1000 live births experience Persistent pulmonary hypertension (PPHN). The rate of deaths is high but is reduced to around 15% with the use of inhalation of nitric oxide, surfactant and ventilation of the high frequency type. Selective decrease in the pulmonary vascular resistance is achieved with Sildenafil, which is a phosphodiesterase inhibitor of kind. The best to treat neonates suffering from hypertension of the pulmonary type is inhalation of nitric oxide including vasodilator of the pulmonary type. Sildenafil taken orally is a good prospective solution to the problem but it hasn't been methodically assessed in babies with PPHN. Material & Methods : All patients who fulfilled the inclusion criteria and visited to department of pediatrics, Ziauddin University Hospital, Karachi were included in the study. Informed consent was taken from parents / guardian after explaining the procedure, risks and benefits of the study. Sildenafil tablet (50 mg) was crushed and reconstituted with distilled water and then stored in a plastic container in a refrigerator at 5°C. Oral sildenafil was given as per study protocol with a starting dose of 0.5 mg/kg/dose and increased by 0.5 mg/kg/dose to a maximum of 2 mg/kg/dose after assessing every 6 h if non-responsive. OI, oxygen saturations (SpO), alveolar-arterial oxygen gradient (A-aDO2), a/A ratio, and SOPI (for non-invasive ventilated babies) were monitored serially every 6 hours. Results : Mean ± SD of gestational age was 38.5±8.39 with C.I (37.4 to 39.5) weeks. Mean ± SD of birth weight was 3215±348 with C.I (3172.8 to 3257.1) grams. Efficacy of oral sildenafil was noted in 208 (78.78%) patents while 56 (21.22%) was found to be non-effective (P-value<0.001*). Conclusion: It is to be concluded that the efficacy of oral sildenafil in maintenance of persistent pulmonary hypertension was found to be effective and underscores the need for a large, controlled trial.


Objective: To evaluate the prevalence, awareness, treatment and control of hypertension and risk factors in communities of Changchun in Jilin province of China. Methods: A multistage cluster sampling method was used to investigate the prevalence of hypertensionin. The survey contained a standard questionare, biochemical tests and physical examinations. Logistic regression analysis was used to identify risk factors of hypertension. Results: Of 2175 (male = 1129) subjects, the overall prevalence of hypertension is 44.46% in communities of Changchun in China, the awareness, treatment and the control is 22.34%, 16.65%, 0.83%, respectively. For male, the prevalence, awareness, treatment and control is, respectively, 24.05%, 9.93%, 7.34% and 0.10%; And for female is 20.41%, 12.41%, 9.30% and 0.72%. The overweight and obese people has a higher prevalence (P < 0.001), awareness (P = 0.003), and treatment (P < 0.001) of hypertension, but no significance in control. People with high-salt diet has a higher prevalence (P < 0.001) than people with low-salt diet; And there are no significance for people with more meat, vegetables, sweet diet or between white-collar and blue-collar. In a binary logistic regression, old age, drink, high-salt diet, central obesity, family history of hypertension, DM and dyslipidemia were associated with increased odds of the hypertension, and the odd ratio is 1.06, 1.51, 1.39, 2.47, 1.78, 1.50 and 1.63, respectively. but no significance differernce with physical activity, monthly income, high carbohydrate intake and education. Conclusion: The prevalence of hypertension is high in in communities of Changchun in Jilin province than the southern China. but the awareness, treatment especially control is lower than the other areas.


Abstract: The Sanandaj-Sirjan Zone is a metamorphic-magmatic belt, associated with the Zagros Orogen and part of the Alpine-Himalayan orogenic system in Iran. Stratigraphic, metamorphic, magmatic, and tectonic evidence presented here indicates that the Sanandaj-Sirjan Zone, the Central Iranian Microcontinent, and the North West Iranian Plate were a part of the Arabian plate until the Late Permian, when they separated during the opening of the Neotethys. Later subduction of the Neotethys oceanic crust beneath the Sanandaj-Sirjan Zone resulted in the complete closure of the Paleotethys Ocean in the Early Upper Triassic. The following extensional regime (related to slab roll-back) caused separation of the Sanandaj-Sirjan block, Central Iran Microcontinent, and North West Iranian Plate during the Upper Triassic to Lower Jurassic. The separation of these continental blocks caused sedimentation differences during that time. The North Tabriz and Nain-Baft Faults are probably the boundary between the Sanandaj-Sirjan Zone and Central Iran. The basin between the Sanandaj-Sirjan Zone and the Central Iranian block (the Iranian Microcontinent and North West Iranian Plate) closed in the Late Cretaceous. After that, these terranes experienced similar geological evolution, especially from the Oligocene to the Miocene.