UNLABELLED
It has been reported in practice that the application of lower-body negative pressure (LBNP) to elite athletes during periods of intense training can help aid recovery.

PURPOSE
To examine the effects of LBNP on biochemical, pain, and performance parameters during a 5-d recovery period after a damaging plyometric-exercise bout.

DESIGN
Randomized controlled study.

METHODS
24 healthy young female adults were randomly allocated into 2 groups. Before and 1, 24, 48, and 96 h after the damaging exercise for hamstrings (50 drop jumps and 50 leg curls), participants underwent a series of tests (blood samples, pain sensation, countermovement jump, maximal isometric torque production, maximal explosive isometric torque production, and 10-m sprint). After the damaging exercise, the experimental group was exposed to intermittent LBNP therapy daily for 60 min.

RESULTS
There was a statistically significant interaction (P<.05) between the experimental and control groups for maximal strength, explosive strength, pain sensation, and vertical jumps (maximal power and force). No statistically significant interaction was present for the biochemical markers, jump height, and 100-m sprint.

CONCLUSIONS
LBNP therapy could improve recovery by limiting the loss in muscle strength and power and limiting the presence of pain.


Epidemiological studies based on cervical cytopathology have aroused widespread interest since it was realized that they could be a useful tool for measuring the effectiveness of screening programs and defining practical measures for the prevention of invasive neoplasms and deaths. In the present article, published evidence from screening programs, cohort investigations and case-control studies is reviewed, and possibilities for further analyses and applications are discussed. In particular, when estimates of the relative protections conveyed by Pap smear from various case-control studies conducted on different populations and using different criteria of selection were pooled, a surprisingly close concordance emerged, with overall risk estimates of invasive cervical cancer of 0.42 for women reporting one smear, and of 0.20 for two or more smears in the past. This protection appeared to be long-lasting in a considerable proportion of cases, since the major determinant of invasive cancer risk was the number of previous smears rather than the interval since last smear, and a noticeable residual effect was evident even more than 10 years after the last smear. Besides providing a measure of the effectiveness of cytological screening and helping define the optimal frequency of screening using the limited resources available, case-control studies should permit accurate estimates of the sensitivity of the test and quantify the probability of transition and the duration of various stages of the neoplastic process, i.e., permit a better understanding of the natural history of the disease.


The framework allows comprehensive and consistent measurement and classification of U.S. domestic support to 2015 under different assumptions. Projections of future U.S. domestic support patterns are made with estimates published in the USDA Agricultural Baseline Projections. We also use information from the OECD, FAPRI, NASS, and our own estimates. We present key elements and an overview of our analytical framework, assumptions of a baseline scenario, and some analytical results and observations arising from our analysis. The baseline scenario extends the classification of programs in WTO notifications to 2015. The framework consists of 65 spreadsheets, which are grouped into 4 analytical stages: calculation of program estimates by commodity; calculation of product-specific aggregate measurement of support by commodity; estimates of major U.S. agricultural programs; and estimates for WTO boxes and the overall value of production. The main results of the baseline scenario suggest that the United States would be able to maintain its Uruguay Round commitments under relatively optimistic USDA Baseline assumptions. Because the U.S. overall value of production is projected to increase by almost 40% from 2002 to 2015, de minimis allowances will rise to US$26 billion by 2015. The framework allows us to calculate possible U.S. domestic support expenditures under alternative assumptions about rules and commitments resulting from the Doha negotiations, such as reductions in de minimis percentages, commitments on Total AMS and overall support. This enables us to better understand implications for WTO negotiations.


Solberg's The Double Day (1976), although produced in English, is recognized as the first Latin American feminist documentary. In it, Solberg, by interviewing women from (principally) Argentina, Mexico, and Bolivia, and discussing with them their work lives, demonstrates the nature of the 'double day' by which women work a full shift outside the home and then work a second shift as principal homemakers. Solberg's approach is to homologize the experience of women in societies at such differing socio-political stages as Argentina and Bolivia, and what the documentary gains in the rhetorical emphasis on a common workload is diluted by the failure to recognize important political and economic differences between Latin American societies. Nevertheless, the documentary importance of Solberg's work cannot be diminished: at a time when international feminism was just beginning to overcome the tendency to look at women's lives beyond the models of Anglo-European capitalism, Solberg's inaugural interpretation of women's work in Latin America is an important launching point for Latin American feminism.


The United States utilities started preparing for external events that could lead to a loss of all ac power in the 1980's, when the Station Blackout (SBO) rulemaking was first introduced by the United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission (USNRC). Following the events at the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant on March 11, 2011, the USNRC established a senior-level agency task force referred to as the Near-Term Task Force (NTTF). The NTTF was tasked with conducting a systematic, methodical review of Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) regulations and processes to determine if the agency should make additional improvements to these programs in light of the events at Fukushima Dai-ichi. As a result of this review, the NTTF developed a comprehensive set of recommendations, documented in SECY-11-0093, "Near-Term Report and Recommendations for Agency Actions Following the Events in Japan," dated July 12, 2011. Documentation of the staff's efforts is contained in SECY-11-0124, "Recommended Actions to be Taken without Delay from the Near-Term Task Force Report," dated September 9, 2011, and SECY-11-0137, "Prioritization of Recommended Actions to be Taken in Response to Fukushima Lessons Learned," dated October 3, 2011.To satisfy some of the NRC's recommendations, the industry described its proposal for a Diverse and Flexible Mitigation Capability (FLEX), as documented in Nuclear Energy Institute's (NEI) letter, dated December 16, 2011 (Agencywide Documents Access and Management System (ADAMS) Accession No. ML11353A008). FLEX was proposed as a strategy to fulfill the key safety functions of core cooling, containment integrity, and spent fuel cooling.The events at Fukushima Dai-ichi highlight the possibility that extreme natural phenomena could challenge the prevention, mitigation and emergency preparedness defense-in-depth layers. At Fukushima, limitations in time and unpredictable conditions associated with the accident significantly challenged attempts by the responders to preclude core damage and containment failure. During the events in Fukushima, the challenges faced by the operators were beyond any faced previously at a commercial nuclear reactor. NRC Order 12-049 (Ref. 1) and NRC Interim Staff Guidance JLD-ISG-2012-01 (Ref. 6) provided additional requirements to mitigate beyond-design-basis external events. These additional requirements impose guidance and strategies to be available if the loss of power, motive force and normal access to the ultimate heat sink to prevent fuel damage in the reactor and spent fuel pool affected all units at a site simultaneously.The NEI submitted document NEI 12-06, "Diverse and Flexible Coping Strategies (FLEX) Implementation Guide" in August 2012 (ADAMS Accession No. ML12242A378) to provide specifications for the nuclear power industry in the development, implementation, and maintenance of guidance and strategies in response to NRC Order EA-12-049.The US utilities are currently proposing modifications to their plants that will follow specifications provided in NEI 12-06. This paper presents some of the NEI 12-06 requirements and some of the proposed modifications proposed by the US utilities.Copyright © 2014 by ASME


Reading Victorian literature and science in tandem, Victorian Literature, Energy, and the Ecological Imagination investigates how the concept of energy was fictionalized - both mystified and demystified - during the rise of a new resource-intensive industrial and economic order. The first extended study of a burgeoning area of critical interest of increasing importance to twenty-first-century scholarship, it anchors its investigation at the very roots of the energy problem, in a period that first articulated questions about sustainability, the limits to growth, and the implications of energy pollution for the entire global environment. With chapters on Charles Dickens, John Ruskin, Robert Louis Stevenson, Joseph Conrad and H. G. Wells, Allen MacDuffie discusses the representation of urban environments in the literary imaginary, and how those texts helped reveal the gap between cultural fantasies of unbounded energy generation, and the material limits imposed by nature.


The question of how venture capitalists assess the unique characteristics of potential ventures lies at the basis of all venture investing. Yet the data on human versus purely statistical prediction models is troubling, often indicating that humans are poor decision makers in the face of uncertainty. This article looks at over 500 potential new ventures, each reviewed by skilled engineers with some business background. From a list of 37 criteria, four were found to be statistically significant: expected profitability; development risk; functional performance; and IP protection. The rate of accuracy of the skilled predictors was surprisingly high.


Evolution of a Bose-condensed gas in one-dimensional optical lattices is investigated in the presence of a potential barrier created by a far-off resonant laser beam. After the magnetic trap and optical lattices are switched off, by using the propagator method, the analytical result of the evolution of the density distribution of the Bose-condensed gas is given. In particular, the collision between the condensate and the potential barrier is shown in this paper.


In adult bony tissues the matrix in which the bone cells are embedded appears as a clear homogeneous mass, giving no visible indication of the large amounts of calcium carbonate and phosphate which are contained in it, although these salts form two thirds of its mass. The only visible evidence of the presence of these salts is to be found in newly forming, very rapidly growing bone in the fetus, where discrete particles, or separate granules, have been recognized. Adult bony tissues show only homogeneous fused masses. The organic basis of the matrix consists of fibers formed by the bone cells, similar to those of white fibrous tissue. In bones preformed in cartilage, the cartilage is destroyed at the advancing edge of the bony growth and replaced by these fibers, which, immediately on their formation, begin to show a deposition of calcium salts in the form of very fine, minute


The Azirine/Oxazolone Method in Peptide Chemistry: Synthesis of Tripeptide Models
Tripeptides 5, containing an alpha,alpha-disubstituted alpha-amino acid and ethyl p-aminobenzoate, were synthesized in high yield by application of the azirine/oxazolone method (Table 2). In this versatile approach for the incorporation of disubstituted residues into the peptide chain, N-protected peptides or amino acids are coupled with 2,2-dialkyl-3-amino-2H-azirines and, after the selective hydrolysis of the newly formed C-terminal amide bond, further condensed with amino components via in situ generated oxazole-5(4H)-ones in the presence of additives (Scheme 1). A comparison with conventional procedures clearly demonstrates the advantages of this new method that works equally well with beta-branched, cyclic, or acyclic disubstituted amino acids.


Greater financial integration and central bank policy initiatives in major developed markets have made cross-asset return correlations more important, highlighting the interest in broad measures of market-wide sentiment. Using an extensive array of institutional behavioral metrics across asset classes from State Street Associates, we find evidence that suggests market-wide sentiment varies with, and can be forecasted by, broad aggregates across many indicators of institutional investor flows. The number and breadth of these institutional flow measures encourage aggregation into a more manageable set of elements. To this end, we condense this information into what we call a Behavioral Risk Scorecard (BRS), a concise measure of behavior that captures trading sentiment using State Street Associates' broad information set.


This essay considers the "descriptive turn" in literary studies from the vantage point of poetics, arguing that the history of Western poetry, from the Greeks to the present, offers through the category of epideixis a theory and practice of description that illuminates some of the methodological impasses of contemporary literary studies. Epideixis, a basic mode of pointing or linguistic ostension, confers value, often by way of praise or blame, without trying to persuade its audience with the practical immediacy of political or forensic rhetoric. Drawing on the ordinary language philosophy of Ludwig Wittgenstein and Stanley Cavell, the essay suggests that praise constitutes a philosophically rigorous alternative to critique. This argument is exemplified via the work of Mark Doty, a contemporary poet of description-as-praise.


High youth pregnancy and sexually transmitted infection (STI) rates in New Zealand are an under-researched health concern, particularly among ethnic minority communities. Conflicting sexuality messages from home and dominant cultures may make negotiating a sexual standpoint problematic for immigrant adolescents. An understanding of cultural minorities' constructions of sexuality and influences affecting their decision-making would aid the development of culturally applicable sexuality education. This thesis discusses research with New Zealand Filipino women, with an aim to investigate how immigrant women make sense of sexuality in the context of intimate relationships. For the first study, six focus group interviews, involving 33 New Zealand Filipino adolescent women, discussed individual and cultural interpretations of sexuality, safer sex and womanhood. A discursive analysis examined patterns of agreement and conflict in the young women's talk to reveal how they used and resisted cultural discourses of heterosexuality. Contradictions often arose as they shifted between dominant Western and Filipino messages about sexual safety and appropriate feminine behaviour. Principal constructions of women and sexuality that came out of the talk, and how these constructions promote or restrict sexual behaviours, are discussed. The second study, twenty-six individual interviews with New Zealand Filipino adolescent girls and their immigrant Filipino mothers, explored how immigrant women construct life narratives to make sense of their sexual selves. Interviews focused around individuals' personal stories of intimate relationships, heterosexuality, romance, sexual education, womanhood, and adjustment to the interface between New Zealand and Filipino portrayals of sexuality. Thematic and narrative analyses explored areas of agreement and dispute within and across the women's stories, as they took up different identities as mothers, daughters, girlfriends, Filipinas, and New Zealanders. Thematic analysis of the daughters' interviews examined key patterns in the young women's constructions of first sexual experiences, including explanations of first sex, the gap between expectations and experiences, sexual safety, and perceptions of their partners. One young woman's story was focused on in a more comprehensive study of how sexual, feminine and cultural identities are constructed and reconstructed through narrative. After an overview of the themes from the mothers' interviews, three mothers' narratives were discussed in relation to their constructions of sexual selves as they learned about, experienced, and taught their daughters about sexuality. Links found between mother and daughter narratives likely signify the passing of cultural stories of feminine sexuality through the generations. Many contradictions were apparent in the adolescents' talk, as girls worked to develop and explain a sense of self that moved between subject positions offered by the heterosexuality discourses of their new migrant context and their Filipino heritage. How young Filipinas' sexual stories recycle and resist the talk of their mothers and cultural contexts is discussed, as well as how cultural identities influence sexual practices. The thesis also reflects upon the appropriateness of discursive research for allowing cultural expression among marginalised populations.


Energy landscape theory has developed into a dominant view of protein folding, and also provides insights into protein function and conformational changes. One tenant of energy landscape theory is the existence of a folding funnel which gives proteins multiple routes of folding. The principle of minimal frustration is an aspect of funnel theory that supposes energetic traps are very small on the landscape compared to the overall basin. GFP is a unique [Beta]-barrel protein used for fluorescent labeling, as it requires no cofactors and becomes fluorescent by an autocatalytic reaction of its own backbone. Here, we study the unique folding of GFP using a combination of theoretical and experimental techniques, and study an observed hysteresis in folding equilibrium-type experiments. Proline residues in the barrel lid are found to be a novel requirement for chromophore formation, in addition to previously known catalytic residues. In the absence of the chromophore, hysteresis is abolished, suggesting that protein function causes landscape roughness. Theoretical work points to a unique funneled energy landscape of GFP containing two basins, with the extra basin representing a loosely-packed intermediate {Niso} where the final strand is slow to pack into the barrel, forming the locked, native form {Nnat}. Collapse into the {Niso} basin occurs on a minute timescale, while the configurational search between {Niso} and {Nnat} occurs over months. As a typical equilibrium experiment is observed over days, between these two timescales, and hysteresis is observed. Further experimental characterization of the {Niso} intermediate shows a structure with heterogeneity in the lid of the barrel, which is evidence of the predicted loose structure. In addition, changes in the chromophore are visible, consistent with changes in chromophore flexibility or isomerization. Due to the bulky chromophore, final packing of the barrel is problematic, with the final step in folding dominated by the configurational search, and potential mispacking of the barrel. During refolding, a threshold of stability is required to capture the native structure. During unfolding, random fluctuations in the barrel may lead to repacking of the chromophore, creating a less stable protein, which immediately unfolds under hysteretic conditions, causing the hysteresis observed


Nitrogen-15 enriched ammonium sulphate was applied to micro-plots in a field in which two leguminous (white clover and peas) and two non-leguminous (ryegrass and winter wheat) crops were grown to produce 15N-labelled crop residues and roots during 1993/94. Nitrogen benefits and recovery of crop residue-N, root-N and residual fertilizer-N by three succeeding winter wheat crops were studied. Each crop residue was subjected to four different residue management treatments (ploughed, rotary hoed, mulched or burned) before the first sequential wheat crop (1994/95) was sown, followed by the second (1995/96) and third wheat crops (1996/97), in each of which residues of the previous wheat crop were removed and all plots were ploughed uniformly before sowing. Grain yields of the first sequential wheat crop followed the order: white clover > peas > ryegrass > wheat. The mulched treatment produced significantly lower grain yield than those of other treatments. In the first sequential wheat crop, leguminous and non-leguminous residues supplied between 29–57% and 6–10% of wheat N accumulated respectively and these decreased with successive sequential crops. Rotary hoed treatment reduced N benefits of white clover residue-N while no significant differences in N benefits occurred between residue management treatments in non-leguminous residues. On average, the first wheat crop recovered between 29–37% of leguminous and 11–13% of non-leguminous crop residues-N. Corresponding values for root plus residual fertilizer-N were between 5–19% and 2–3%, respectively. Management treatments produced similar effects to those of N benefits. On average, between 5 to 8% of crop residue-N plus root and residual fertilizer-N was recovered by each of the second and third sequential wheat crops from leguminous residues compared to 2 to 4% from non-leguminous residues. The N recoveries tended to be higher under mulched treatments especially under leguminous than non-leguminous residues for the second sequential wheat crop but were variable for the third sequential wheat crop. Relatively higher proportions of leguminous residue-N were unaccounted in ploughed and rotary hoed treatments compared with those of mulched and burned treatments. In non-leguminous residue-N, higher unaccounted residue-N occurred under burned (33–44%) compared with other treatments (20–27%).


The lack of appropriate pediatric formulations is a worldwide problem
Pharmaceutical companies manufacture special preparations for paediatric patients mainly if the products are likely to be marketable and will generate profit for the manufacturer .The range of doses used may be wide for paediatric patients, because of the
developmental changes that occur during a child lifetime. Suitable dosage forms formulated in much different strength by including harmless excipients would be needed to medicate children of different ages. Therefore, extemporaneously prepared products
are still required to ensure that accurate doses and suitable dosage forms. The present
study aimed to investigate physical and chemical stabilities, content uniformities and
microbiological stability of extemporaneously prepared spironolactone oral suspensions
to be used in newborns and infants, prepared extemporaneously in Saudi hospitals from
spironolactone tablets. The stability of spironolactone in suspensions prepared
extemporaneously by four Saudi hospitals at Aseer region and those prepared in the
pharmaceutical laboratory were studied. Also Spironolactone oral powders and capsules
were prepared by mixing crushed and carefully ground spironolactone tablets and the
geometric amounts of either lactose or microcrystalline cellulose to achieve a final
spironolactone concentration of 1.0 mg/unit. The resulting powder was divided into
portions in powder papers or capsule shells. At intervals up to thirty five days. The
suspensions were visually inspected for color and odor change precipitation,
sedimentation and rheological properties.Also the suspensions were tested for changes in
pH, as well as for microbial growth. The powders and capsules were assayed at interval
up to 6months. Samples were assayed for spironolactone content by a reproducible and
validated stability-indicating Spectrophotometric method. During the first 14 days of
storage, mean spironolactone concentrations in all suspensions were >90% of the initial
concentrations. After 30 days only one suspension remained stable, with >90% of the
initial spironolactone concentration. Suspensions pH remained unchanged throughout the
period of test and there were no changes in physical appearance. Also counts of bacteria
and fungi remained within acceptable limits within 35 days. Only one spironolactone
suspensions (1 mg/ml) was found to fulfill the expiry date (one month) stated in the
labels. The content uniformities of spironolactone powders and capsules complied with the test specifications. The content of spironolactone theoretical content 1.0 mg was 0.92 ± 0.03 mg in powders. Oral powders and capsules filled with the powder of crushed tables were stable for up to 6months and were faster to prepare and upon comparing the quality, do represent an alternative to oral liquids.


Two main mechanisms may buffer ecosystem functions despite biodiversity loss. First, multiple species could share similar ecological roles, thus providing functional redundancy. Second, species may respond differently to environmental change (response diversity). However, ecosystem function would be best protected when functionally redundant species also show response diversity. This linkage has not been studied directly, so we investigated whether native and exotic pollinator species with similar traits (functional redundancy) differed in abundance (response diversity) across an agricultural intensification gradient. Exotic pollinator species contributed most positive responses, which partially stabilized overall abundance of the pollinator community. However, although some functionally redundant species exhibited response diversity, this was not consistent across functional groups and aggregate abundances within each functional group were rarely stabilized. This shows functional redundancy and response diversity do not always operate in concert. Hence, despite exotic species becoming increasingly dominant in human-modified systems, they cannot replace the functional composition of native species.


Two patients developed subdural tension pneumocephalus after undergoing posterior fossa surgery performed in the sitting position. The mechanism for entry of air into the intracranial compartment is analogous to the entry of air into an inverted soda-pop bottle. As the fluid pours out, air bubbles to the top of the container. We have thus referred to this as the "inverted pop-bottle syndrome." Computerized tomography provided prompt diagnosis and confirmed brain displacement. Twist-drill aspiration of the air resulted in improvement in both patients, although one patient subsequently died from an intracerebellar hemorrhage. Tension pneumocephalus appears to be another potential complication of posterior fossa surgery in the sitting position. This condition is easily diagnosed and treated, and should be considered whenever a patient fails to recover as expected following posterior fossa surgery.


Between late 1795 and late 1796, Wordsworth was known to have suffered a sudden and deep depression. Recollecting the ferocious onslaught of that debilitating experience years later in the song of his life, Wordsworth himself would hauntingly summarize it as "the crisis of that strong disease" and "the soul's last and lowest ebb" (1850 Prelude XI. 307, 308).[1] At the time of the event, he was living in his cherished English countryside. He had with him then his beloved sister Dorothy Wordsworth. He had also already made acquaintance with his soulmate Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Against the backdrop of these seemingly auspicious circumstances, what is so interesting and instructive about this surprisingly severe and sustained personal trauma is not only how Wordsworth contracted it and then survived it, but also how the sequence of crisis and recovery helps to reveal a recurrent pattern in his thought and a crucial connection between radical politics and his greatest poetry in the late 1790s and the early 1800s. Wordsworth was never a politician nor an activist, but he did often intend to fight passionately and publicly for the things he believed in. Upon hearing Richard Watson's expression of horror and outrage at the execution of King Louis XVI in 1793, for instance, he quickly dashed off the fiery Letter to the Bishop of Llandaff, both defending and celebrating the deliberate exercise of violence by the French people against their former imperial rulers. While wandering lonely in the west country of England later in the same year, he also quickly conceptualized and subsequently composed Salisbury Plain, dramatizing not only the abject suffering of the rural poor but also the analogical need of English society for reform and even revolution. In their compositional context, both of these works seem to have emanated directly from Wordsworth's experiences in France in the previous year. In particular, two memories seem to have had a deep and lasting impact. First, there was the scene of those young French Army volunteers leaving their families and marching to war for "patriot love / And self-devotion, and terrestrial hope / Encouraged with a martyr's confidence" (Prelude IX. 278-80). Then, there was the occasion of his French friend Michel Beaupuy vowing to fight for the "hunger-bitten girl" (Prelude IX. 512). In both situations, there was a certain grand heroism mingled with and enhanced by a certain self-sacrificial gesture. Just as the chivalry of Beaupuy "meshed with Wordsworth's personal response to suffering and realized their objectives as 'philosophical warriors' with the force of sudden revelation" (Roe 58), so did the patriotism of the young French soldiers impress upon his mind "like arguments from Heaven" (Prelude IX. 289) the justification of the French Revolution as "the cause, not simply of a people struggling to be free, but of mankind" (Moorman, Early Years 221). The heroic desires of Beaupuy and other patriots, however, ultimately did not do much good for the French Revolution. Similarly, Wordsworth's attempt at political activism also proved to be futile. His flaming patricidal letter never came off the press, and his poem of political protest also did not see the light of day either in its entirety or in its original form in his own life time. Before he left France in late 1792, he had foreseen the coming of difficulties for the revolution and he had for a while contemplated the possibility of staying with his Girondin friends through thick and thin, but his intention was soon vitiated by the banal circumstance of his own "absolute want / Of funds for [his] support" (Prelude X. 190-91). After he returned to England, he also planned in 1794 to launch a radical journal of literature and politics so as to help "the multitude walk[ing] in darkness" by putting "in each man's hand a lantern to guide him" (qtd. in Moorman, Early Years 254), but that activist project similarly failed to even get off the ground for the same trite reason of economics. …


The integration of information systems represents one of the most urgent priorities of a regional healthcare authority in order to meet its clinical, organizational and managerial needs. Current practice shows that the most promising approach to achieve a regional healthcare information system (RHIS) is to use a health level 7 (HL7) message-based communication system implemented by an asynchronous common communication infrastructure between healthcare sites. The RHIS is a complete and integrated information system at a regional level that comprises all types of healthcare levels, that includes interoperability issues, that covers most of the needed components, and that is able to work efficiently in a secure wide area network to ensure data privacy and confidentiality. Another important feature of the proposed solution is that it creates an interoperability framework that can be replicated from one healthcare institution to another. In that sense, common interoperability messages can be used to interconnect heterogeneous information systems. In response to this strategy, more than 10 different consortiums have submitted proposals to the Greek government and the proposed interoperability' framework seems to be widely accepted as a solution to enhance information and communication technologies developments in the healthcare sector in Greece.


Elevation beamforming and Full Dimension MIMO (FD-MIMO) has been an active area of research and standardization in 3GPP LTE-Advanced. In an FD-MIMO system, a base station with 2-dimensional (2D) active array supports multi-user joint elevation and azimuth beamforming (a.k.a. 3D beamfoming), which results in much higher cell capacity compared to conventional systems. Recent study has shown that with these new FD-MIMO technologies, we can achieve promising 3-5× gain in both cell capacity as well as cell-edge throughput. In this paper, we will provide a brief summary of recent 3GPP activities, including the recently completed 3D channel model, ongoing study on FD-MIMO scenarios, antenna/RF (radio frequency) transceiver architectures, as well as potential network performance benefits. In addition, we also discuss some methods for reducing CSI (channel state information) feedback overhead and ensuring efficient operation of large size FD-MIMO for both TDD and FDD systems.


e16113 Background: Thyroid gland is an uncommon site for metastases from clear cell renal cell carcinoma (CCRCC) and literature is scarce. Due to the variable and often long lag time before development of metastases in patients with CCRCC, thyroid nodules may be misdiagnosed initially as benign. This systematic review aims at a better understanding of the nature of these metastases. Methods: A bibliographic search was performed using PubMed (1990-2019), key words being "renal cell carcinoma, thyroid, kidney cancer, clear cell." 147 cases were analyzed. The patient's characteristics assessed were: age, sex, stage, size of metastases, lag time, diagnostic modality, initial symptoms, treatment and outcome in last documented follow up. Binary logistic regression, spearman and ANOVA were performed to identify differences between the existing variables. Results: The mean age (±SE) was 64± (10) years in males and 64 (±11) in females. The mean lag time to diagnosis of thyroid metastasis was 8.7 (±6.3) years. Gender distribution of the patients was 46.3% male, 52.4% female. There was a weak correlation between lag time and size of metastases, not statistically significant. Size of metastases was significantly higher in symptomatic patients (6.06±3.51cm) compared to those with painless mass (4.6±0.29cm) and asymptomatic ones (3.93±1.99cm) (p = 0.03). Fine Needle Aspiration (FNA) was diagnostic in 29.4% of cases, 47.1% were non diagnostic. Most patients (80.3%) underwent thyroid surgery. At 1 year follow up, 55.6% of patients operated were alive versus 35.3% who did not have surgery, though this was not statistically significant (p = 0.1). Conclusions: A larger size of thyroid metastasis was more likely to present with symptomatology. A high index of suspicion is warranted when evaluating thyroid nodules in CCRCC patients. There was no significant difference in outcome between patients who underwent surgery and those who did not. With the wider use of immune check-point and tyrosine kinase inhibitors in metastatic CCRCC, surgery may eventually be reserved only for palliative purposes.


The Markowitz model has two problematic tendencies; unintuitive portfolios and portfolios with high transaction costs. The Black-Litterman model was made as an improvement of the Markowitz model. It uses a Bayesian approach to combine the views of the investor with the equilibrium portfolio. The main purpose of the model is to create intuitive portfolios and limit the transaction costs. With the computer power available today, the implementation of mathematical models are an important issue. Using the programming language R, I will in this thesis look at possible ways of implementing the Black-Litterman model. Todays investment firms have different ways of expressing their views on future asset performance. A common method is to use a scorecard. It is interesting to see how the scorecards properties make simplifying conditions to the Black-Litterman model. By using both existing R packages and self-made R code, the Black and Litterman model is applied to the R language to find the best approach.


In this article, the authors review the use of interest rate derivatives in securitization transactions for hedging and yield enhancement. Three types of interest rate derivatives commonly used in securitizations are interest rate swaps, interest rate caps, and interest rate corridors. Because these derivatives are over-the-counter or dealer products, not exchange-traded products, they expose the trust to counterparty risk. The authors discuss how counterparty risk is managed in securitizations, including the use of a rating trigger and methods for determining swap termination payments.


Obtaining reliably high compaction characteristics and low SVI values has enormous economic consequences on activated sludge plant design and operation. Now that use of selectors has become more common for achieving low SVI values, the assessment of the full-scale performance characteristics of activated sludge plants incorporating selectors has high value for the design and operation of future plants. Treatment plant effluent quality is seldom analyzed solely on an average basis and the impact peak events have on effluent quality must be considered in design and operation. Descriptive statistics should also be used to assess selector performance, so that the influence of infrequently occurring values on plant design and operation can be assessed. The performance of 21 activated sludge plants incorporating selectors was evaluated. All the selector plants for which post installation data were available showed that the operating SVI values were significantly improved. One plant studied in detail showed that final effluent quality was significantly better after the selector installation. As a group, activated sludge plants with anaerobic selectors outperform those with anoxic selectors. Dissolved oxygen control is just as important in activated sludge plants with selectors as in conventional activated sludge plants.


Alkylating agents are simple and reactive molecules that are commonly used in many and diverse fields, such as organic synthesis, medicine, and agriculture. Some highly reactive alkylating species are also being used as blister chemical warfare agents. The detection and identification of alkylating agent is not a trivial issue because of their high reactivity and simple structure. Here, a novel polythiophene derivative that is capable of reacting with alkylating agents is reported, along with its application in direct electrical sensing of alkylators using an organic field‐effect transistor, OFET, device. Upon reacting with alkylators, the OFET containing the new polythiophene analogue as its channel becomes conductive, and the gate effect is lost; this is in marked contrast to the response of the OFET to "innocent" vapors, such as alcohols and acetone. By following the drain–source current under gate bias, one can easily follow the processes of absorption of the analyte to the polythiophene channel and their subsequent reaction.


The use of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) for natural resource applications has increased considerably in recent years due to their greater availability, the miniaturization of sensors, and the ability to deploy a UAV relatively quickly and repeatedly at low altitudes. We examine in this paper the potential of using a small UAV for rangeland inventory, assessment and monitoring. Imagery with a ground resolved distance of 8 cm was acquired over a 290 ha site in southwestern Idaho. We developed a semiautomated orthorectification procedure suitable for handling large numbers of small-footprint UAV images. The geometric accuracy of the orthorectified image mosaics ranged from 1.5 m to 2 m. We used object-based hierarchical image analysis to classify imagery of plots measured concurrently on the ground using standard rangeland monitoring procedures. Correlations between imageand ground-based estimates of percent cover resulted in r-squared values ranging from 0.86 to 0.98. Time estimates indicated a greater efficiency for the image-based method compared to ground measurements. The overall classification accuracies for the two image mosaics were 83 percent and 88 percent. Even under the current limitations of operating a UAV in the National Airspace, the results of this study show that UAVs can be used successfully to obtain imagery for rangeland monitoring, and that the remote sensing approach can either complement or replace some ground-based measurements. We discuss details of the UAV mission, image processing and analysis, and accuracy assessment.


Sjögren's syndrome (SS) patients manifest inflammation in salivary glands (SG) and evidence of intrinsic activation in the salivary gland epithelial cells (SGEC). Recent evidence from this laboratory has indicated that the aberrant exposure of SGEC of SS patients to necrotic debris may be a major cause of inflammatory reactions via activation of inflammasome. Thrombospondin (TSP-1) is a matricellular glycoprotein with proinflammatory, antiangiogenic and proapoptotic properties. It was originally characterised as an α-granule glycoprotein in platelets, although can be synthesised and released by a variety of cell types, including epithelial cells. Herein, we assessed the expression of TSP-1 in cultured ductal SGEC lines obtained from SS patients and controls. We also sought to investigate the effect of necrotic cell debris (NEC) on mRNA synthesis and release of TSP-1, in healthy epithelium. SS patients (n=14) displayed significant upregulation of TSP-1 mRNA levels in cultured SGEC compared to controls (n=10, p=0.0005), that correlated with the severity of histopathologic lesions (tarpley score of respective SG tissue biopsy) (Kruskal-Wallis test, p=0.001). SS-SGEC (n=16) were also found to secrete constitutively more TSP-1 and IL-1β in their culture supernatants, compared to non-SS SGEC (n=15) (p=0.0001 and p=0.06, respectively). There was a positive correlation among the constitutively expressed levels of TSP-1 and IL-1β (Spearman's r=0.66 for mRNA and r=0.41 for protein). Treatment of healthy SGEC lines (n=4) with NEC led to induction of TSP-1 and IL-1β mRNA (2.1-fold and 2-fold increase, respectively), as well as protein in culture supernatants (3.0-fold and 2.5-fold increase, respectively) (for all comparisons, p<0.05), that were abrogated upon pre-treatment of NEC with DNase1. Finally, immunohistochemistry analysis in SG revealed the overexpression of TSP-1 and IL-β, mainly in epithelial structures (both ductal and acinar cells) of SS patients, compared to non-SS controls. Preliminary results suggest for the first time that SGEC from SS patients manifest increased TSP-1 and IL-1β levels that correlate with severe lymphocytic infiltrates in SG. Chronic exposure to necrotic cells debris may hold a key pathogenetic role in the tissue inflammatory reactions of SS patients and may also explain the 'intrinsic activation status' that characterises the epithelia of these patients.


The purpose of this essay is to examine the experience of appreciation to media entertainment as a unique audience response that can be differentiated from enjoyment. To those ends, the first section provides a conceptualization of appreciation in which we outline how we are using the term and how it is distinct from questions of emotional valence. The second section discusses the types of entertainment portrayals and depictions that we believe are most likely to elicit feelings of appreciation. Here, we suggest that appreciation is most evident for meaningful portrayals that focus on human virtue and that inspire audiences to contemplate questions concerning life's purpose. In the final section we consider the affective and cognitive components of appreciation, arguing that mixed-affective responses (rather than bi-polar conceptualizations of affective valence) better capture the experience of appreciation and its accompanying feelings states such as inspiration, awe, and tenderness.


Background: Repetition occurs plentifully in normal conversation, but empirical studies of the pragmatic use of repetition are rare and pragmatic repetition, defined as verbal repetition in conversational use, in disordered language has not been systematically investigated. Applying a method of analysis that was piloted utilising normal discourse, discourse samples from persons with left and right brain damaged were examined for incidence and charcteristics of repetition. Aims: The purpose of this exploratory study was to examine verbal repetition following cerebral hemispheric damage. From previous studies of hemispheric influences on communicative competence, it was hypothesised that unilateral damage would affect verbal repetition differently. Following earlier results for hemispheric effects on proportion of formulaic expressions, overall more verbal repetition was predicted in persons with left hemisphere damage than those with right hemisphere damage or healthy speakers. Furthermore, previous studies led to a prediction of more repetition of formulaic (than novel, propositional) expressions following left hemisphere damage than the other two study groups. We explored whether characteristics and functions of repetition, developed as part of a new method for quantifying repetition in spontaneous speech, differed systematically between groups. Methods & Procedures: Transcripts of discourse by persons diagnosed with a single cerebral vascular accident and from age- and education-comparable healthy control (HC) participants were analysed. A method was developed for quantifying verbal repetition and identifying five factors, specifically localness (immediate, delayed, or distant), preservation of the original target (identical or altered), source (self or other), grammatical unit of speech (word, phrase, clause, or sentence), and phrase type (formulaic or novel), and three functions (maintaining form, enhancing content, and socialisation). Outcomes & Results: Results revealed significantly higher use of repetition by left hemisphere (28%) than right hemisphere-damaged (RHD) participants (19%) or the HC group (18%). The proportion of formulaic expression repeated by the left hemisphere group was significantly higher (57%) than the right hemisphere group (30%). Fewer repetitions were used by the left hemisphere group (25%) for the function of enhancing the content of talk as compared to the HC group (40%), whereas the RHD group used the least repetition for socialisation (15%). Conclusions: Pragmatic repetition is to be distinguished from rote repetition (on command) in aphasia diagnosis and from pathological repetition behaviours, including perseveration, following brain damage. The method described here allows for the measurement of pragmatic repetition and its characteristics in normal and disordered language. The findings support previous results for pragmatic and formulaic language behaviours in these populations. This study provides new information on the roles of repetition in normal conversation and on the impact of neurological damage on this function. Identification and measurement of repetition will inform perspectives on evaluation and rehabilitation of conversational speech.


There is strong evidence from previous research that a discount for U.S. private companies exists relative to their publicly traded peers. Because such a discount has substantial influence on the valuation of private companies, which are the main legal corporate form in Europe, in this study the authors analyze how European private companies are valued in comparison to their European publicly traded peers and find that a discount of around 5% exists for eurozone private companies. This is lower than the potential costs for an IPO, and supports our theory that a listing gives the owner a valuable option of selling minority stakes into the stock market. We also find that, when using the acquisition approach, size and profitability have no significant influence on the private company discount.


Vascular endothelial cell (EC) injury by lipopolysaccharides (LPS) plays a major role in the pathogenesis of gram-negative bacterial sepsis and endotoxic shock. The studies described here were performed to define further the molecular mechanisms involved in the EC responses to LPS. We showed that serum was required for LPS-mediated cytotoxicity for bovine brain microvessel, pulmonary, and aortic ECs and that anti-human CD14 antibodies completely blocked LPS-mediated cytotoxicity for ECs in the presence of human serum. The addition of a recombinant soluble form of human CD14 to serum-free medium restored the LPS-mediated cytotoxicity, whereas the addition of LPS binding protein (LBP), a serum protein that potentiates LPS-induced responses to monocytes, had no effect. A similar dependency on serum or recombinant soluble CD14 (under serum-free conditions) was observed for LPS-induced secretion of interleukin-6 by human umbilical vein ECs. These findings indicate that soluble CD14 is required for LPS-mediated EC responses independently of LPB, suggesting that serum soluble CD14 represents a naturally occurring agonist for EC responses to LPS.


Fluorescence microscopy has undergone a dramatic evolution over the past two decades with development of super-resolution far-field microscopy methods that break the light diffraction limited resolution of conventional microscopy, offering unprecedented opportunity to interrogate cellular processes at the nanoscale. However, these methods make special demands of the luminescent agents used for contrast and development of probes suited to super-resolution fluorescent methods is still relatively in its infancy. In spite of their many photophysical advantages, metal complex luminophores have not yet been considered as probes in this regard, where to date, only organic fluorophores have been applied. Here, we report the first examples of metal complex luminophores applied as probes for use in stimulated emission depletion (STED) microscopy. Exemplified with endoplasmic reticulum and nuclear targeting complexes we demonstrate that luminescent Ru(II) polypyridyl complexes can, through signal peptide targeting, be precisely and selectively delivered to key cell organelles without the need for membrane permeabilization, to give high quality STED images of these organelles. Detailed features of the tubular ER structure are revealed and in the case of the nuclear targeting probe we exploit the molecular light switch properties of a dipyrido[3,2-a:20,30-c]phenazine containing complex which emits only on DNA/RNA binding to give outstanding STED contrast and resolution of the chromosomes within the nucleus. Comparing performance with a member of the AlexaFluor family commonly recommended for STED, we find that the performance of the ruthenium complexes is superior across both CW and gated STED microscopy methods in terms of image resolution and photostability. The large Stokes shifts of the Ru probes permit excellent matching of the stimulating depletion laser with their emission whilst avoiding anti-Stokes excitation. Their long lifetimes make them particularly amenable to gated STED, giving a much wider window for gating than traditional probes. Our findings indicate that ruthenium polypyridyl peptide targeted probes are a powerful new partner to STED microscopy, opening up new approaches to probe design for STED microscopy.


This article contributes to the analysis and transparency of the practical processes of interdisciplinary exhibition-making. It identifies the academic discourse on interdisciplinarity as having the potential to provide a meaningful input to the formation of theory on temporary exhibition-making. The subject of enquiry is a recent case study from Germany. It investigates the relationships and decision-making processes that underpinned the production of the interdisciplinary exhibition Weather Report – About Weather Culture and Climate Science (Bundeskunsthalle, Bonn, 2017/18), which combined curatorial perspectives from the fields of art, cultural history and science. It traces the curatorial process, from forming an interdisciplinary team and negotiating conceptual ideas and methods, to object choices, interpretation and exhibition design. I argue that the complexity of interdisciplinary exhibition-making calls for a more precise and practice-oriented application of what is an often generalized notion of interdisciplinarity. By discerning between multi-, inter- and transdisciplinarity, and understanding the three terms as offering different qualities of interaction and integration, I suggest using these terms as a finer vocabulary for a detailed description and analysis of the practical processes of collaborative exhibition-making. Taking interdisciplinarity seriously also inevitably leads to the question of institutional consequences.


A special event organised by Manchester University as part of their London based programme of events at the RSA, London. They invited alumni and guest speakers to join a panel debate on the question of the responsible artist: should an artist, the work they create and their actions hold a moral responsibility for their audiences and wider society?

The panel included alumna and actress Jessica Knappet (star of Channel 4 comedy Drifters), Professor James Thompson from The University of Manchester (founder of the www.inplaceofwar.net project), alumnus and composer Olly Fox and contemporary artist Anneke Pettican (from the international artist collective Brass Art www.brassart.org.uk).

 They were joined by 100+ guests. The event reached thousands outside of the venue across the Twittersphere through lively social media chatter.


Questions: Is light availability the main factor driving forest dynamics in Pyrenean sub-alpine forests? Do pines and firs differ in growth, mortality and morphological response to low light availability? Can differences in shade tolerance affect predictions of future biome changes in Pyrenean sub-alpine forests in the absence of thermal limitation?

Location: Montane–sub-alpine ecotones of the Eastern Pyrenees (NE Spain).

Methods: We evaluated morphological plasticity, survival and growth response of saplings of Scots pine, mountain pine and silver fir to light availability in a mixed forest ecotone. For each species, we selected 100 living and 50 dead saplings and measured size, crown morphology and light availability. A wood disk at root collar was then removed for every sapling, and models relating growth and mortality to light were obtained.

Results: Fir had the lowest mortality rate (<0.1) for any given light condition. Pines had comparable responses to light availability, although in deep shade Scots pine risked higher mortality (0.35) than mountain pine (0.19). Pines and fir developed opposing strategies to light deprivation: fir employed a conservative strategy based on sacrificing height growth, whereas pines enhanced height growth to escape from shade, but at the expense of higher mortality risk. Scots pine showed higher plasticity than mountain pine for all architectural and morphological traits analysed, having higher adaptive capacity to a changing environment.

Conclusions: Our results support the prediction of future biome changes in Pyrenean sub-alpine forests as silver fir and Scots pine may find appropriate conditions for colonizing mountain pine-dominated stands due to land-use change-related forest densification and climate warming-related temperature increases, respectively.


The purpose of this study was to quantify the free-circulating plasma HER-2 DNA (cfHER-2 DNA) and to assess the ability of analysis to discriminate between patients with primary breast cancer and healthy controls in order to detect metastatic recurrence in comparison with serum HER-2 protein and also HER-2 gene amplification. The study population consisted of 100 patients with primary breast cancer and 50 healthy female donors. An additional 22 patients with metastases were subsequently included. cfHER-2 DNA was quantified with a quantitative PCR method together with a reference gene. Results: Using a cut-off of 2.5 for the ratio of the cfHER-2 DNA/reference gene, three (of 15) tissue HER-2-positive patients had a ratio >2.5 prior to the detection of metastatic disease. In the post-metastatic/pre-chemotherapy setting, 11 (of 23) tissue HER-2-positive patients with metastases had a ratio >2.5. There was no difference between absolute preoperative cfHER-2 DNA values for patients with primary breast cancer and those for healthy controls. There was no difference between cfHER-2 DNA values taken within nine months of development of the metastatic disease and the levels in patients without metastases, but there was a significant difference in the corresponding serum HER-2 protein levels in the tissue HER-2-positive patient group. Conclusion: Amplified HER-2 DNA can be detected in plasma when using a ratio between cfHER-2 DNA and a reference gene. cfHER-2 DNA could not be used to discriminate between patients with primary breast cancer and healthy controls, and could not predict the development of metastatic disease.


User ratings on items are noisy in real-world recommender systems, which raises challenges to matrix approximation (MA)-based collaborative filtering (CF) algorithms — the learned models will be easily biased to the noisy training data and yield low generalization performance. This paper proposes a noise-resilient matrix approximation (NORMA) method, which can achieve less biased matrix approximation and thus more accurate collaborative filtering. In NORMA, an adaptive weighting strategy is proposed to decrease the gradient updates of noisy ratings, so that the learned MA models will be less prone to the noisy ratings. Theoretical analyses show that NORMA can achieve better generalization performance than standard matrix approximation methods. Experimental studies on real-world datasets demonstrate that NORMA can outperform state-of-the-art matrix approximation-based collaborative filtering methods in recommendation accuracy.


Introduction Occlusion of the basilar artery (BA) has a poor prognosis. We evaluated technical considerations and complications associated with reopening subacute to chronically occluded BAs. Methods Duration of BA occlusion before revascularization, symptoms and medical management before treatment, and postprocedural antiplatelet regimen and anticoagulation protocols of 10 patients were analyzed. All patients underwent attempted Gateway angioplasty followed by Wingspan stenting (Boston Scientific, Fremont, California, USA). Results 10 patients, including seven men and three women, were treated from 2004 to the present. They ranged in age from 29 to 80 years with a mean of 62. The median time between onset of symptoms to treatment ranged from 4 to 150 days (mean 50 days). Recanalization was successful in 8/10 patients. Immediately following the procedure, seven patients were either improved or stable, and three were worse. Of these three, two died of procedure related complications and one suffered a mild brainstem stroke from which she has made a substantial recovery. A third patient died in a delayed fashion of unrelated causes. Three subacute complications occurred. These included: one acute thrombosis of the stent requiring emergent repeat angioplasty, one symptomatic basilar dissection requiring placement of a second stent 1 week after the original procedure and one mild recurrent stroke after delayed stent occlusion. Of the seven surviving patients, five are improved or stable. The other two patients are mentioned above and suffered a mild brainstem procedurally related stroke and the other a delayed stroke as a result of re-occlusion. Conclusion With current endovascular techniques, recanalization of the subacute and chronically occluded basilar artery is feasible. The procedure carries substantial risks and should be reserved for patients with medically refractory symptoms. Careful postprocedural medical management and radiographic follow-up are warranted do prevent in-stent restenosis.


The present work aims to prepare a CuO/monoclinic-BiVO4 (m-BiVO4) composite with large surface area for enhanced photocatalytic performance. Nano-sized m-BiVO4 photocatalysts with a large BET surface area (10 m2 g−1) were first synthesized by a mechanochemical high energy ball milling approach. To further improve the photo-efficiency, 2–10 at% of a p-type CuO co-catalyst was introduced to the surface of BiVO4 by impregnation to constitute the heterostructured composite. The physicochemical properties of the as-prepared composite were characterized by X-ray diffraction, X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy, transmission electron microscopy, UV-vis diffuse reflectance spectroscopy, photoluminescence and surface photovoltage responses. The composite exhibited much higher photocurrents in photoelectrochemical (PEC) tests and faster photocatalytic degradation of rhodamine B upon visible light irradiation in comparison with pristine BiVO4, appearing as a promising visible light active photocatalyst suitable for environmental remediation. The improved PEC and photocatalytic properties can be attributed to the simultaneous enhancement on photon absorption and charge separation. The band structure and possible charge transfer process of the CuO/BiVO4 composite were also elucidated to explain the enhanced photo-activities.


: During the first four months of 2003, the survey laboratory of the Federal District (LACEN Laboratory of Virology), Brasilia, Brazil, isolated ten strains of dengue virus serotype 3, five of them autochthonous, and the remaining ones from cases imported from Tocantins, Goias and Bahia States. The virus isolations were performed in C6/36 cell culture inoculated with total blood collected between the 1st and the 5th days after the onset of the symptoms. The age of the patients varied from 26 to 59 years old. The strains were typed as DEN-3 by indirect immunofluorescence assay using serotype-specific monoclonal antibodies. Viral RNAs were extracted from total blood using the trizol method. The nested RT-PCR method detected DNA products of 290 bp, confirming the serotype identifications. The introduction of DEN-3 in Brazil and especially in the Federal District represents a serious threat, since most people are susceptible to this serotype and many have already been infected by serotypes DEN-1 or DEN-2, thus increasing the risk of epidemic of more severe forms of the disease. The use of a fast and reliable method for continuous monitoring of the circulation of this serotype is of primary importance for the prevention and control of future epidemics.


Two Riemannian manifolds are called eigenvalue equivalent when their sets of eigenvalues of the Laplace-Beltrami operator are eq ual (ignoring multiplicities). They are (primitive) length equivalent when the sets of lengths of their (primitive) closed geodesics are equal. We give a gene ral construction of eigenvalue equivalent and primitive length equivalent R iemannian manifolds. For example we show that every finite volume hyperboli c n–manifold has pairs of eigenvalue equivalent finite covers of arbitrar ily large volume ratio. We also show the analogous result for primitive lengt h equivalence.


We present a model of the homogeneous nucleation and growth of vacancy and interstitial loops in irradiated hcp metals, which allows one to find the size distribution function, the dose dependence of the mean parameters of the dislocation system, and to describe effects due to temperature, material parameters, and initial microstructure. The model is based on a hierarchy of coupled ordinary differential equations. The first two equations are the rate equations for vacancy and interstitial concentrations. Other equations describe random walks of interstitial and vacancy clusters in a size space, i.e., the time dependence of loop densities. As an input, the model contains the capture efficiencies of point defects by loops, which depend self-consistently on the loop size and dislocation density. We have considered two possible scenarios depending on the point defect dilatation volume ratio: (i) dislocation bias for interstitial atoms and (ii) dislocation bias for vacancies. The model results are qualitatively consistent with experimental observations of a coexistence of interstitial and vacancy dislocation loops on the same habit planes in Zr and other hcp metals. The temperature dependence of the resulting loop size distributions depends strongly on the material properties and the initial microstructure.


The production of iturin A by Bacillus subtilis was studied with respect to the composition of the culture medium. Increasing phosphate concentrations did not modify the antibiotic yield. Fructose, sucrose and mannitol were better carbon sources than glucose for antibiotic production. The nature of the nitrogen source was an important factor in the production of antibiotic. Among the amino acids which are components of iturin A, L-asparagine was the best substrate for the biosynthesis of iturin A; L-glutamine and L-serine were rather poor substrates while L-proline and D-tyrosine gave no antibiotic. Ammonium salts permitted good synthesis of antibiotic but the addition of calcium ions to the culture medium inhibited the excretion of antibiotic from the cells.


The Cold War sent shivers down the spines of ordinary people, with the world holding its breath and confronting the spectre of nuclear armageddon. In our A level OCR series we cover all the main areas of study as follows: The situation in 1941,The impact of WWII, The start of the Cold War 1945-47, Soviet Expansion and reaction of USA to increased tension, Conflicts over Germany and the creation of NATO, The USSR and Eastern Europe in the 1950s and 1960s, Germany after division ,Development of the Cold War, Attempts at peace and a new Cold War, USSR in crisis, Eastern Europe's role in ending the Cold War, and the end of the Cold War itself. The series is written by Dr Mark Hurst from Lancaster University and Head of Humanities, Richard Macfarlane.


Detailed biostratigraphic and lithostratigraphic analyses from a new isolation basin at Ardtoe, northwest Scotland, provide interpretations of tendencies of sea-level movement and environmental changes during the time period from the early Lateglacial Interstadial to the early Holocene. Microfossil analyses record the gradual transition of the isolation basin from a marine basin to a freshwater lake within an area of isostatic uplift (the basin isolation contact is dated 12,040 ± 110BP). The new data, correlated with previously published data from isolation basins at Rumach and Loch nan Eala, provide evidence for a continuous fall in relative sea level in northwest Scotland from the early Late glacial Interstadial to the early Holocene. This conflicts with previously published reconstructions of relative sealevel changes from a number of areas in Scotland which show rapid falls and rises during the last glacial-interglacial transition. Trends similar to those predicted by geophysical (numerical) models are inferred from these new data. Palynological, foraminiferal and dinoflagellate cyst stratigraphy link the oceanic record of major climate and oceanic circulation changes to the terrestrial biostratigraphic record. Movement of the oceanic Polar Front, west and north, during a period of relative climatic amelioration within the early-mid Lateglacial Interstadial and a corresponding change in the position of the North Atlantic Current may be inferred from the dinoflagellate cyst record.


The diminution of measurement uncertainty to an acceptable level and the preservation of experimental spatial resolution are highly desirable in many real-world applications of Brillouin optical time domain analysis (BOTDA) sensors. In practical applications of such sensors, the measurement uncertainty essentially relies upon the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) of the experimental Brillouin gain spectra (BGSs) obtained throughout the sensing fiber. The improvement of such SNR using improper signal denoising techniques alters the experimental spatial resolution of the BOTDA sensors. In this paper, the use of non-local means filter (NLMF) and anisotropic diffusion filter (ADF) is experimentally demonstrated to enhance the uncertainty in the measurement of temperature using BOTDA sensors. For this purpose, the BGSs along a 41 km fiber are collected by averaging several numbers of BOTDA-traces from BOTDA hardware setup. Such BGSs are first denoised by employing NLMF and ADF to improve the measurement SNR. The Brillouin frequency shifts (BFSs) of denoised BGSs are then extracted via curve fitting technique (CFT). The BFS distribution is finally mapped to temperature distribution depending on the known BFS-temperature relationship of the sensing fiber. The robustness of the used filters is analyzed rigorously in terms of SNRs of BGSs, uncertainty in temperature extraction, spatial resolution and runtime in signal processing. The results indicate that the utilization of NLMF and ADF can enhance the SNRs of BGSs up to the maximum of 15.64 dB and 13.53 dB, respectively. Consequently, the uncertainties in the temperature extraction can be reduced up to the maximum of 52.63% and 57.31% for using NLMF and ADF, respectively. Moreover, both NLMF and ADF can preserve the experimental spatial resolution of the BOTDA sensors and include insignificant runtime to CFT. Thus, NLMF and ADF can be considered as robust signal denoising techniques for highly accurate and spatial resolution preserved BOTDA sensors.
DUJASE Vol. 7 (2) 31-38, 2022 (July)


This purpose of this paper was to assess the impact of contract farming on household income. The study used primary data collected using a structured questionnaire from a random sample of 98 smallholder tobacco farmers in Makoni district of Zimbabwe. The study found that despite contract farmers selling on average 1.6 times the number of bales sold by non-contract farmers, they only realised an average income that was 1.4 times higher than that realised by non-contract farmers. The study also found that tobacco farming is the major source of livelihood for farmers in Makoni district contributing on average 73% of the households' annual income. Using a Tobit regression model, the study found that being a contract farmer does not have a significant effect on the share of tobacco income to total household income. The factors that significantly and positively influence the share of tobacco income to total household income are gender of the farmer, access to extension on tobacco production and marketing, being a full-time farmer, total cropping area, farmer having attained at least secondary education and individual land tenure. The study recommends that government and tobacco contracting merchants must further strengthen extension support to tobacco growing farmers especially women farmers to increase household incomes and sustain rural livelihoods. Further, there is need to review and upgrade the current master farmer training programme curriculum to include specialised tobacco good farming practices for farmers located in tobacco producing regions.


BACKGROUND
The emergence of drug-resistant bacteria in clinical practice has propelled a concerted effort to find new classes of antibiotics that will circumvent current modes of resistance. We previously described a set of imidazopyridine antibacterial leads that contain a core composed of benzimidazole and a central phthalic acid linker. These compounds showed potent antibacterial properties against a wide range of Gram-positive and Gram-negative bacteria. In this respect, we conducted a systematic exploration of new disubstituted imidazole functionalities on quinoline 4-position as the central linker, to determine the factors that direct the potent antibacterial activity. We found that some of the newly synthesized compounds possessed more potent activity compared to currently available medications. The newly synthesized compounds were screened against several clinical isolates and Staphylococcus aureus, including the methicillinresistant (MRSA) and the methicillin-sensitive (MSAA).

METHODS
The goal of this work is to undertake rigorous testing of new hybrid scaffolds of quinoline flanked by diaryl imidazoles and their structure-activity against a range of bacterial strains. Described herein is the account of the modification of the central linker region, the imidazole functionality, and substituents at the 4-position of the quinoline, and their effect on the antibacterial potency of the resulting derivatives. Our efforts here have been driven by previous reports on the applications of Pfitzinger cyclization protocol. This complexity-generating reaction transforms a relatively simple substrate, into a more complex products with the potential for diversification via functionalization of the resultant acid.

RESULTS
We identified compounds that possess potent and broad-spectrum antibacterial activities against clinical isolates and drug resistant strains. Structure-Activity relationships of these compounds were further explored to determine the crucial structural features needed to enhance their antibacterial activity. In this respect, it was found that, hydrophobic and electron-withdrawing moieties, such as halogens, were required on each end of the isoquinoline-based bisaryl imidazole hybrid motifs to produce broad-spectrum activity against the tested strains. Thus, molecules containing halophenyl or pyridyl arms were found more potent than molecules containing thiophene and/or electron-releasing groups on the phenyl arms, which showed much less antibacterial activity against the tested strains.

CONCLUSION
In summary, 4-(4,5-diphenyl-1H-imidazol-2-yl)-2-phenylquinoline systems can be assembled efficiently through the Pfitzinger ring expansion- condensation strategy. This approach appears to hold considerable synthetic utility. The particular value of such a synthetic route resides on the conciseness and efficiency through which imidazo-quinoline construction can be synthesized from structurally simple and accessible acetophenone precursors.


Molecular dynamics simulations are performed to investigate heterogeneous dynamics in amorphous glassy materials under oscillatory shear strain. We consider three-dimensional binary Lennard-Jones mixture well below the glass transition temperature. The structural relaxation and dynamical heterogeneity are quantified by means of the self-overlap order parameter and the dynamic susceptibility. We found that at sufficiently small strain amplitudes, the mean square displacement exhibits a broad subdiffusive plateau and the system undergoes nearly reversible deformation over about 10(4) cycles. Upon increasing strain amplitude, the transition to the diffusive regime occurs at shorter time intervals and the relaxation process involves intermittent bursts of large particle displacements. The detailed analysis of particle hopping dynamics and the dynamic susceptibility indicates that mobile particles aggregate into clusters whose sizes increase at larger strain amplitudes. Finally, the correlation between particle mobilities in consecutive time intervals demonstrates that dynamic facilitation becomes increasingly pronounced at larger strain amplitudes.


We describe three ongoing projects involving different First Peoples' languages of Canada (Cree/nehiyawewin, Dene Sųline, and Nakoda/Stoney) that centre around the recording, transcription, compilation, and analysis of spontaneous oral language use––some narrative, some conversation––using freely available, Unicode-savvy corpus software (in this case, AntConc [Anthony 2014]) and little to no up- front annotation or translation into English. Because these languages are all polysynthetic, lemmatization and POS tagging are either unachievable or excessively time-draining and indeterminate activities. Nevertheless, corpus creation can still continue apace and reap huge benefits using the most basic of corpus tools. These projects are consonant with a growing ethos in language documentation circles that advocate for the value of corpus development alongside more traditional documentary activities (cf. McEnery & Ostler 2000, Woodbury 2003, Crowley 2007, Cox 2011, Mosel 2014, Vinogradov 2016). Each corpus is at a different stage of development, yet we hope to persuade community-based colleagues of the enormous benefits that ensue from the deliberate creation and use of a corpus of naturally occurring language data for language analysis and teaching. Direct benefits include ready-to-hand word lists; authentic sample utterances for exemplifying dictionaries, phrasebooks, and grammatical sketches; and a conscientious focus on recording many speakers across different demographic categories, discursive situations, and registers in order to achieve a broad range of usage conditions. A focus on wide and balanced sampling clearly strengthens the data pool from which analyses can follow. But it also results in a closer connection by speakers/learners to important and recurring phenomena in their language rather than to descriptions of phenomena that may have emerged through bilingual situations with a handful of speakers under the direct control of non-speaking linguists (who may have been guided by theoretical concerns unrelated to actual language use). Our demonstration corpora vary in size and composition, but each is already useful in revealing frequency, collocational, and distributional information about lexical items and morphosyntactic devices that may have received scant prior attention. We discuss the basics of corpus creation from scratch, the role of strategic metadata and file-naming practices, and illustrate the types of immediately interpretable analyses that standard corpus tools can provide with monolingual, untagged transcripts. Best of all, once the central principles and logistics of corpus creation are mastered, the corpus can grow in a natural and incremental way, involving an expanding group of participants. Ultimately, a broadly sampled corpus can provide a solid empirical basis for the study of lexico-syntactic phenomena, not to mention a lasting, reusable, and shareable record of actual language use. References Anthony, L. 2014. AntConc (Version 3.4.1m) [Computer Software]. Tokyo: Waseda University. Available from http://www.laurenceanthony.net/. Cox, C. 2011. Corpus linguistics and language documentation: Challenges for collaboration. In Newman, J., R. H. Baayen, & S. Rice (eds.), Corpus-Based Studies in Language Use, Language Learning, and Language Documentation, 239-264. Amsterdam: Brill. Crowley, T. 2007. Field Linguistics: A Beginner's Guide. Oxford: Oxford University Press. McEnery, T. & N. Ostler. 2000. A new agenda for corpus linguistics––working with all of the world's languages. Literary and Linguistic Computing 15 (4): 403-420. Mosel, U. 2014. Corpus linguistic and documentary approaches in writing a grammar of a previously undescribed language. Language Documentation and Conservation 8: 135-157. Vinogradov, I. 2016. Linguistic corpora of understudied languages: Do they make sense? Kanina 40(1): 127-141. Woodbury, T. 2003. Defining documentary linguistics. Language Documentation and Description 1(1): 35-51.


The article makes use of the notion of security as a heuristic device providing a descriptive and normative conceptual framework for the purposes of interpreting the events associated with Brexit. It claims that security can be identified as a meta-constitutional rationale of the European project. In particular, two discourses of power (security and fundamental rights) have been constitutive of the process of European polity-building, although they are characterised by ambiguities and contradictions. Brexit, and in particular the complex issues relating to free movement and citizenship rights, confirms such contradictions and enables us to consider more carefully the nature of the EU polity and the reasons underpinning its development. In other words, security emerges at the same time as an opportunity for growth and as a threat for the European project. The article suggests that, in order to safeguard EU integration, a move from a self-referential to a heterarchical form of security is necessary.


We propose a novel method that renders point clouds as if they are surfaces. The proposed method is differentiable and requires no scene-specific optimization. This unique capability enables, out-of-the-box, surface normal estimation, rendering room-scale point clouds, inverse rendering, and ray tracing with global illumination. Unlike existing work that focuses on converting point clouds to other representations—e.g., surfaces or implicit functions—our key idea is to directly infer the intersection of a light ray with the underlying surface represented by the given point cloud. Specifically, we train a set transformer that, given a small number of local neighbor points along a light ray, provides the intersection point, the surface normal, and the material blending weights, which are used to render the outcome of this light ray. Localizing the problem into small neighborhoods enables us to train a model with only 48 meshes and apply it to unseen point clouds. Our model achieves higher estimation accuracy than state-of-the-art surface reconstruction and point-cloud rendering methods on three test sets. When applied to room-scale point clouds, without any scene-specific optimization, the model achieves competitive quality with the state-of-the-art novel-view rendering methods. Moreover, we demonstrate ability to render and manipulate Lidar-scanned point clouds such as lighting control and object insertion.


Analysis of 17 Y chromosomal STR loci in a population sample of 400 unrelated male living in the middle and south of Iraq was done to evaluate allele frequencies and gene diversity for each Y-STR locus of the Y filer™ PCR amplification kit. The seventeen loci include DYS635, DYS437, DYS448, DYS456, DYS458, YGATA H4, DYS389I, DYS389II, DYS19, DYS391, DYS438, DYS390, DYS439, DYS392, DYS393, DYS385a and DYS385b. Total DNA from blood cells was extracted using the FTA™ paper DNA extraction. A total of 361 unique haplotypes were identified among the four hundred individuals studied. The DYS385b had the highest diversity (GD = 0.8392), while loci DYS392 had the lowest (D = 0.2695).

 Key words: Allele frequency, gene diversity, Iraq, Y filer™.


More and more network teaching activities make the visual design of multimedia courseware become more and more important. As the main means and tools of auxiliary teaching, multimedia courseware carries a large amount of information, and because of the important influence of color on the audience's attention, recognition, pleasure and other aspects, it is particularly important to choose the right color and collocation of courseware. This paper discusses the influence of different combinations of courseware background color and text color on audience satisfaction in multimedia network teaching. In this experiment, 56 undergraduates were tested by scale, and the hue, lightness, purity and text color of background color were taken as experimental variables. Firstly, taking the hue of the background color as the independent variable, the experiments are carried out when the text color is black and white respectively. Then, in accordance with the same method, the purity and brightness of background color were taken as independent variables respectively, and the experimental data were analyzed by one-way ANOVA, fitting curve, paired sample T test and other methods. The results showed that :(1) different background colors had significant influence on viewers' satisfaction (P< 0.05), and due to different text colors (black and white), audience satisfaction is different. Among them, when the text color is black, under different hue background, the audience's satisfaction is ranked from high to the bottom: orange, yellow-green, green, blue-green; When the text color is white, blue, bluish purple are preferred. In addition, the greater the difference between background color and text color, the clearer the visual presentation of content and the higher the satisfaction (P< 0.05). (2) Under the change of brightness of different background colors, viewers' satisfaction also showed significant difference (P< 0.05), the higher the brightness of background color, the higher the satisfaction degree, showing an exponential relationship basically. (3) There was no significant difference in viewer satisfaction between different background colors (P> 0.05). The result of this study, through the data, provides the basis for the color design of network multimedia courseware, which is beneficial to improve the learning experience of the audience in the network teaching.


Intermittent renewable energy is becoming increasingly popular, as storing stationary and mobile energy remains a critical focus of attention. Although electricity cannot be stored on any scale, it can be converted to other kinds of energies that can be stored and then reconverted to electricity on demand. Such energy storage systems can be based on batteries, supercapacitors, flywheels, thermal modules, compressed air, and hydro storage. This survey article explores several aspects of energy storage. First, we define the primary difficulties and goals associated with energy storage. Second, we discuss several strategies employed for energy storage and the criteria used to identify the most appropriate technology. In addition, we address the current issues and limitations of energy storage approaches. Third, we shed light on the battery technologies, which are most frequently used in a wide range of applications for energy storage. The usage and types of batteries are described alongside their market shares and social and environmental aspects. Moreover, the recent advances in battery state estimation and cell-balancing mechanisms are reviewed.


In the realm of multi-modal visual recognition, the reliability of the data acquisition system is often a concern due to the increased complexity of the sensors. One of the major issues is the accidental loss of one or more sensing channels, which poses a major challenge to current learning systems. In this paper, we examine one of these specific missing data problems, where we have a main modality/view along with an auxiliary modality/view present in the training data, but merely the main modality/view in the test data. To effectively leverage the auxiliary information to train a stronger classifier, we propose a collaborative auxiliary learning framework based on a new discriminative canonical correlation analysis. This framework reveals a common semantic space shared across both modalities/views through enforcing a series of nonlinear projections. Such projections automatically embed the discriminative cues hidden in both modalities/views into the common space, and better visual recognition is thus achieved on the test data. The efficacy of our proposed auxiliary learning approach is demonstrated through four challenging visual recognition tasks with different kinds of auxiliary information.


Papaya plants contain many substances called papain, papain protease effect can kill larvae of Aedes aegypti. This study aimed to determine the effect of papaya leaves extracts (Carica papaya Linn) against Aedes aegypti larvae mortality. The research method was a quasi-experimental research design with Non-Equivalent Control Group. The concentration levels were 6.25%, 12.5%, 25%, 50%, 100%, and controls (CMC-Na) with 4 times replication. The Probit Analysis test results showed Lethal concentration (LC50) of papaya leaves extract (Carica papaya Linn) against Aedes aegypti larvae mortality was to 24.46% and the effective time is 22 hours. It is concluded that any different concentrations of papaya (Carica papaya Linn) leaves extract have effect on Aedes aegypti larvae mortality (p <0.05), the time depth of papaya leaves extract have effect on Aedes aegypti larvae mortality (p <0.05), the average number of Aedes aegypti larvae mortality for 24-hours in each concentration are concentration of 6.25% as much as 4.75 larvae, 12.5% concentration as much as 8 larvae, a concentration of 25% as much as 12 larvae, 50% concentration of 14.5 larvae, concentration 100% as much as 19 larvae and control as much as 1.25 larvae. The recommended suggestion is to conduct a phytochemical test to determine the active substances contained in papaya (Carica papaya Linn) leaves extract and to know the concentration of active substances in the extract.


The Victorian Environmental Assessment Council is conducting an investigation into the management of the public land River Red Gum Forests of the Murray River Valley in Victoria. In this paper the authors apply the results of an earlier Choice Modelling exercise commissioned by VEAC to estimate the non-use values of the forests. A Benefit Cost Analysis of VEAC's draft recommendations included assessment of the market and non market values associated with different River Red Gum forest management strategies. It is concluded that the use of water for environmental flows is competitive with its use for irrigation. Other economic values associated with timber harvesting, grazing and duck hunting are small in comparison with the water values.


'Full employment', for so long considered an unreachable relic of a bygone age, is back on the agenda. That it is once again part of economic and political debates is testament to the UK's remarkably strong employment performance in recent years. A record-high employment rate is something few people would have thought possible this soon after the most sustained economic downturn in living memory. Expectations of what may be possible are shifting, and the question of how much further we might expect to go is increasing in relevance. It is in this context that the Chancellor has committed to full employment as an ambition for the government, targeting the highest employment rate of G7 economies and a 2 million employment increase within this parliament under this banner. Welcome though such ambition is, with no universally-agreed definition of full employment and no further detail on the government's approach at present, it is not clear just what these targets represent, who they benefit, or how they should be achieved. This report – the conclusion of a nine-month investigation into full employment by the Resolution Foundation – addresses these questions. It sets out a vision of further employment growth on the road to full employment that delivers the strongest social and economic benefits, and it provides policy directions for how we might get there.


Abstract The aim of the research is to analyze utilization of internet marketing in promoting the prominent agriculture products in order to increase investment in the Province of Gorontalo, and the shortcoming in utilizing internet marketing. The source informant of this research consisted of related officials in the Agriculture and Food Security Department and the Investment Board of the Province of Gorontalo, the website administrator and some agriculture businessman. The data collected through a deep interview, observation upon the website content and the Customer Relationship Management from the marketing communication view. The result shows that the internet marketing utilization by the Agriculture and Food Security Department of the Province of Gorontalo has not been fully utilized because the content that managed by the website administrator contains information that considered not important by the customer (visitor) so that the decision making process is difficult to take. However, by the interactive facility that is part of the CRM, this mater can be minimized by the administrator by creating two-way communication. Beside that, by managing a good relationship with the prospective investor as well as the existing investor that run their investment through CRM, this thing can contribute in increasing investment value in the Province of Gorontalo. From this research also found that the shortcoming in utilizing internet marketing is more to the short of the website administrator knowledge about the website content that considered valuable to the web user. The website administrator still not capable in understanding the need of the web user.


The United States experienced a dramatic decline in interpersonal violence rates between the early 1990s and mid-2000s. This decline, however, was much steeper in urban and suburban relative to rural areas. Prior research showed changing demographic composition can account for a substantial amount of change in inequality in victimization rates. We employed National Crime Victimization Survey data and counterfactual modeling to determine if changes in demographic composition—including proportion of population young, unmarried, male, unemployed, and in several income groups—of urban, suburban, and rural areas were partially responsible for changes between 1993 and 2005 in (1) area-specific aggravated assault victimization rates and (2) urban–suburban, urban–rural, and suburban–rural victimization rate ratios. Results showed changes in individual demographic characteristics played a very minor role in changes in area-specific assault rates. The one exception was income, which explained a substantial amount of change in victimization rates across all three areas. Changes in demographic composition explained a greater amount of change in rural relative to urban and suburban victimization rates. Changes in demographic composition across these three area types were also responsible for a small proportion of the large changes in the urban–rural and suburban–rural victimization rate ratios over time.


It is proposed that the learning of many tasks by the cerebrum is based on using a very few fundamental techniques for organizing information. It is argued that this is made possible by the prevalence in the world of a particular kind of redundancy, which is characterized by a 'Fundamental Hypothesis'. This hypothesisis used to found a theory of the basic operations which, it is proposed, are carried out by the cerebral neocortex. They involve the use of past experience to form so-called 'classificatory units' with which to interpret subsequent experience. Such classificatory units are imagined to be created whenever either something occurs frequently in the brain's experience, or enough redundancy appears in the form of clusters of slightly differing inputs. A(non-Bayesian) information theoretic account is given of the diagnosis of an input as an instance of an existing classificatory unit, and of the interpretation as such of an incompletely specified input. Neural models are devised to implement the two operations of diagnosis and interpretation, and it is found that the performance of the second is an automatic consequence of the model's ability to perform the first. The discovery and formation of new classificatory units is discussed within the context of these neural models. It is shown how a climbing fibre input (of the kind described by Cajal) to the correct cell can cause that cell to perform a mountain-climbing operation in an underlying probability space, that will lead it to respond to a class of events for which it is appropriate to code. This is called the 'spatial recognizer effect'. The structure of the cerebral neocortex is reviewed in the light of the model which the theory establishes. It is found that many elements in the cortex have a natural identification with elements in the model. This enables many predictions, with specified degrees of firmness, to be made concerning the connexions and synapses of the following cortical cells and fibres: Martinotti cells; cerebral granule cells; pyramidal cells of layers III, V and II; short axon cells of all layers, especially I, IV and VI; cerebral climbing fibres and those cells of the cortex which give rise to them; cerebral basket cells; fusiform cells of layers VI and VII. It is shown that if rather little information about the classificatory units to be formed has been coded genetically, it may be necessary to use a technique called codon formation to organize structure in a suitable way to represent a new unit. It is shown that under certain conditions, it is necessary to carry out a part of this organization during sleep. A prediction is made about the effect of sleep on learning of a certain kind.


In both 2006 and 2007 a large operating room fire occurred in the Netherlands. One patient died as a result of a sudden intense flash fire caused by a leaking oxygen connection. Smaller operating room fires can cause severe burn injuries and inhalation trauma in patients. An oxygen-enriched atmosphere is an important causative factor in most surgical fires. Inflammable substances and ignition sources, such as a diathermic knife or laser, may be present in the operating theatre and environs. The combination of these 3 components (fuel, oxygen and ignition) increases the risk of operation room fires. Prevention and control of this hazard depends on removal of one or more of the 3 components.