In this paper we introduce a calibration procedure suitable for the validation of agent based models. Starting from the well-known financial model of Brock and Hommes 1998, we show how an appropriate calibration technique makes the model able to describe price time series.The calibration results show that the simplest version of the Brock and Hommes model, with two trader types, fundamentalists and trend-followers, well replicates the price series of four sub-sectoral banking indexes, representing different geographical areas. Moreover, we show how the parameter values of the calibrated model are important to analyse the trader behavior on the different investigated markets. JEL codes: C52; C63; G15.


Background
There is a general consensus on the management of femoral fractures in children younger than two years and adolescents older than sixteen years. The best treatment for patients younger than sixteen years of age is still debatable. Titanium Elastic Nails (TEN), is widely used with some evidence, nonetheless, we undertook a systematic meta-analysis to assess the efficacy of TEN compared to Spica cast for the management of femoral shaft fracture in children aged between 2 to 16 years old.

Methods
A computer literature search of PubMed, Scopus, Web of Science, CINAHL and Cochrane Central was conducted using relevant keywords. We included clinical trials and observational studies that compared TEN versus Spica cast; Records were screened for eligible studies and data were extracted and synthesized using Review Manager version 5.3 for Windows. Our search found 573 unique articles. After screening the abstract and relevant full text, 12 studies with a total of 1012 patients were suitable for the final analysis.

Results
In terms terms of union (in weeks), the reported effect sizes favoured the TEN group in two included studies only. Moreover, the overall standardized mean difference in sagittal (SMD -0.48, 95% CI [-0.70 to -0.26], P<0.001) and coronal angulations (SMD -0.66, 95% CI [-1.00 to -0.31], P<0.001) favored TEN fixation in management of femoral fractures younger than 16 years. The reported length of hospital stay was not consistent across studies. The overall risk ratio of malalignment (RR=0.39, 95% CI [0.27 to 0.57], P<0.001) favored the TEN as well as walking independently. Based on our analysis, TEN treatment is superior to traction and hip spica for femoral fractures in patients younger than 16 years old.

Conclusion
Based on our analysis we recommend the use of TEN fixation in management of pediatric femoral fractures in patients younger than 16 years.


The current European Union fisheries policy encourages improving handling practices to increase the survival of discards. Trawling on the Mediterranean upper slope often generates over 30% of discards of the total catch. Among other species, Nephrops norvegicus juveniles are abundantly returned to the sea, sometimes exceeding 40% of discarded biomass. N. norvegicus discard survival probability has been recently shown to be related to vitality on board and to vary seasonally, being especially low during the summer (0.06). Environmental characteristics (especially, high on-deck temperature in summer) make it necessary to improve vitality on board in order to increase discard survival. We therefore tested new discard handling methodologies for a Mediterranean mixed trawl fishery, with N. norvegicus as the target species. The results showed a survival rate on board higher than 0.8 resulting from vitality status improvements achieved by immersing N. norvegicus in cooled seawater on board during the catch selection and discard time. The implementation of this method would make an important contribution to more sustainable Mediterranean trawl fisheries.


With the increasingly serious energy and environmental problems, the R1234yf ejector refrigeration system (ERS) shows great development potential in the refrigeration industry due to its simplicity, low maintenance costs and environmentally friendly nature. However, poor ejector performance has always been the main bottleneck for system applications. In order to overcome this problem, this paper proposes a design method for R1234yf ejectors based on the gas dynamic method and optimizes the geometrical parameters including the area ratio (AR) and nozzle exit position (NXP) to improve its performance through the control variable optimization algorithms. Based on the validated simulation model, the results show that the entrainment ratio increases initially and then decreases with the increase in AR and NXP, respectively; the AR has a significant effect on the shock wave position in the mixing chamber and the NXP can directly influence the expansion state of motive fluid; the ejector performance increases by about 17% over the initial entrainment ratio by the control variable optimization algorithms. This work can guide the R1234yf ejector design and promote the development of the ERS with environmentally friendly working fluids.


Seed of Vigna unguiculata is commonly used as culinary in Bangladesh and many parts of the world. Besides this, seed of V. unguiculata possesses some medicinal values like being an antioxidant etc. In this study, seeds of V. unguiculata were used to determine the link between its total phenolic content and lipid lowering activity. Phytochemicals presents in the seeds were evaluated. Total phenolic content (TPC) was determined by using folin-ciocalteu method. High fat diet induced obese mice were used for anti-obesity and antihyperlipidemic test. Body weight gain, total cholesterol and triglyceride levels were analyzed. Preliminary phytochemical screening showed that amino acid, phenol, alkaloid and terpenes were very strongly present in cowpea seed, while carbohydrate, cardiac glycoside, was moderately present. The V. unguiculata seeds showed significant total phenolic content with a value of 119.716mg of GAE/gm equivalent. Cowpea seeds, with a dose of 400mg/kg body-weight, showed significant reduction in body weight gain when treated with fat diet compared with normal diet. Cowpea seeds are also capable of lowering the serum cholesterol (p < 0.01) and serum triglyceride level (p < 0.01) more significantly in high fat diet induced obesity. V. unguiculata seeds have a significantly high total phenolic content while the other phytochemicals are moderately present in them. It has anti-obesity activity that can interfere with serum cholesterol and triglyceride metabolism. So, it seems like a healthy diet for the management of obesity and other heart related disease.


This essay will explore racial dissonance and how it affects our thinking about race relations and social policy in America. The first part of this essay will examine the concept of race. Though we often think of race as delineating real characteristics that exist objectively, race is actually a socially created abstraction. In addition, how this abstraction changes over time will also be explored. This is another way of saying that "colored people" has been replaced by the term "black people." The difference between the two terms raises important questions about social policy. Next, this article explores the connection among racial terms, social change, and social policy. It will explore in broad terms what it means to be colored in America and how the Civil Rights Movement of the 50s and 60s replaced the term "colored" with the terms "African-American" and/or "Black." The essay seeks to answer the question of what is the difference between the terms and how does that difference shape race relations and social policy. Specifically, why is it difficult to formulate a social policy, such as affirmative action, and apply it to the needs of colored people, but less difficult if we apply it to black people?


: Neuropsychological dysfunction in children and adults with epilepsy is common and has several possible interrelated causes, including the underlying pathophysiology, possible cerebral pathology, the effects of subclinical discharges, sleep disorders, status epilepticus and drug therapy. Of these factors the effects of subclinical discharges and those of medication are potentially remediable. In up to 50% of patients with subclinical epileptiform EEG discharges, these are associated with transitory cognitive impairment. When the discharges are focal, the cognitive deficits usually reflect the normal neuropsychological functions of the affected brain region. Most antiepileptic drugs, with the exception of the benzodiazepines (which themselves adversely affect cognition) and lamotrigine, do not suppress inter-ictal discharges. Although well-designed clinical trials of the effects of antiepileptic drugs are difficult to perform, there is convincing evidence that phenobarbitone and phenytoin cause cognitive impairment. Drugs which control both the seizures and inter-ictal discharges should improve cognitive function, provided the drugs themselves do not have a cognitive penalty. Lamotrigine provides effective control of both overt and subclinical seizures, without adversely affecting cognition.


Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie occupies an undisputed position as a globally acknowledged new generation African writer. She has marveled in the field of fiction and non- fictional writings which bring her international fame. Being published in 2013, Americanah is her third novel which has won National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction. The editors, New York Times Book Review have chosen the novel as one of the best 10 books of the year 2013. The novel Americanah highlights the ways Adichie reclaims the identity and subjectivity of African natives irrespective of their acute poverty in a postcolonial society. Truly speaking, identity crisis is very much pivotal to any postcolonial society as it inherits varied economic, political, social, racial and cultural hierarchies due to colonialism and imperialism and racism. Adichie challenges the so-called beliefs regarding immigration and the immigrants' transcultural experiences in America.


The study was made on the role of ozone (O3) gas treatment on seeds of Lycopersicon esculentum cv. PKM1 (tomato) to release dormancy in advance. The experimental conditions followed a complete factorial design with 3 independent factors, i.e. A faster start of germination in T2 treatment (98% - 99%) was observed than in other treatments (T1, T3 and T4) compared to control seeds by measuring seedling growth rate on 5th day after treatment. Never the less a too long and high concentration of O3 treatment seemed to be penalizing on germination rate whereas low O3 concentration (T2) for a moderate time interval (20 min) seemed to be most beneficial. The treated seeds were stored, checked 1, 3, 6 months later and found that, the seeds have retained their accelerated germination efficiency. In particular 1T2 (1 month storage), 3T2 (3 month storage) had maximum germination rate among all the stored treated seeds, but 6T2 (6 month storage) didn't show sustained germination acceleration efficiency. Therefore it was found that when time prolongs, O3 treatment loss its effect steadily and the germination efficiency of all the treatments are more or less same at six months after treatment. It is hypothesized that the application of O3 acts as an important phenomenon in accelerating seed germination by breaking the dormancy in advance which is associated with reduced level of ABA in O3 treated seeds.


The intensity of the illumination is different in all countries due to geographical nature, proximity or distance from the equator and time zone, which will require from the designers to have more study about illumination in interior spaces. High different illumination will effect human eye and retina with severe damage, which might lead to vision loss after expose to large period of lighting might lead to injury of many different diseases. Therefore, designers should consider the lighting gradient (high/low-light in spaces) by studying how to use lighting designs to overcome this gradient. The Problem : The shortage in interior designer's study that appeared in the designs like high contrast illumination and its relationship with regional priority that impact on humans. Objectives : Reaching to specific criteria for regional priority. Arrange design study to provide a graduation between high/low-light spaces.  Methodology : analytical descriptive approach.    Results: The designer should provide a design study to identify the proper distribution of illumination intensity in different spaces. according to the activity of each space and users to achieve a comfortable sense for the eyes without any stress due to varying variations in the values of light surfaces, where the eye require a period of time to absorb and respond to the vision. When using a natural light in spaces the designer should study the long-term expose to UV radiation from the sun, as it might damage cornea and cause cataracts (white water). Therefore, must be installed suitable glass panel to control the natural illumination intensity or installed suitable curtains with transparency in the spaces. The lighting ratio between the activity space and around space should (not less than 10%). Even does not happen any temporary vision for a time up to a few seconds until the eye meets the new illumination conditions. The lighting systems contain different degrees of illumination that help the designer to control the illumination effect and provide proper distribution of illumination intensity in different spaces. Also, will help to save energy according to the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) system. In hot countries, the outside illumination intensity is high, when people moving from outside to inside spaces, the high different illumination intensity between spaces will affect the eye and retina with severe damage which might lead to vision loss after expose to large period of illumination. Also, might lead to injury of many different diseases. This case occurs as usual in the hotter countries.


Crohn's disease (CD) is a chronic and relapsing inflammatory condition that affects segments of the gastrointestinal tract. CD activity is determined by histological findings, particularly the density of neutrophils observed on Hematoxylin and Eosin stains (H&E) imaging. However, understanding the broader morphometry and local cell arrangement beyond cell counting and tissue morphology remains challenging. To address this, we characterize six distinct cell types from H&E images and develop a novel approach for the local spatial signature of each cell. Specifically, we create a 10-cell neighborhood matrix, representing neighboring cell arrangements for each individual cell. Utilizing t-SNE for non-linear spatial projection in scatter-plot and Kernel Density Estimation contour-plot formats, our study examines patterns of differences in the cellular environment associated with the odds ratio of spatial patterns between active CD and control groups. This analysis is based on data collected at the two research institutes. The findings reveal heterogeneous nearest-neighbor patterns, signifying distinct tendencies of cell clustering, with a particular focus on the rectum region. These variations underscore the impact of data heterogeneity on cell spatial arrangements in CD patients. Moreover, the spatial distribution disparities between the two research sites highlight the significance of collaborative efforts among healthcare organizations. All research analysis pipeline tools are available at https://github.com/MASILab/cellNN.


Objectives
Our aim was to develop a 24-hour recall program using open-source language that can be readily adapted for use on multiple platforms and in different settings.

Methods
We developed the Open Dietary Recall System (OpenDRS), a multi-pass, 24-hour recall survey using the XLSForm programming language. XLSForm operates in Microsoft Excel and is used by several free or subscription-based electronic survey platforms that deploy forms via Android devices or online. The first pass collects a brief list of foods consumed, the second pass collects descriptive details and added ingredients for each food, and the third pass collects portion size estimates. The final pass reviews the recorded data with the option to edit or add foods. The program references external food and ingredient lists in .csv format. These food and ingredient lists are customizable for each survey setting, can be coded to match nutrient composition or recipe tables, and can be amended over the course of a study. Questions or response options can be added or edited to fit study-specific data collection methods. Photos can be incorporated for food identification or portion size estimation. Two case studies from adaptations in Malawi and Haiti will be presented.

Results
OpenDRS was used to collect 24-hour dietary intake data among 6- to 15-month-old children in Malawi, for a randomized, controlled complementary feeding trial. The median number of foods reported was 6, and the median survey duration was 9 minutes. For a national nutrition survey of 6- to 59-month-old children and their caregivers in Haiti, the program was expanded to record recipe data and to capture caregiver and child intakes in one electronic survey form. Recipes reported during the caregiver's recall can be linked to the child's recall if both consumed the same mixed dish.

Conclusions
OpenDRS is an open-source 24-hour recall program which has been used in low- and middle-income countries. The XLSForm program for data collection and Stata code for data formatting will be made available to researchers conducting nutrition surveys via the Open Science Framework.

Funding Sources
The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and GAIN.


Private actors increasingly influence global governance and generate transnational rules and
regulations. By creating soft law, they adopt governance tasks that were traditionally in the
responsibility of sovereign states. These modes of "private governance" are quite disputed.
Some hope that by including private actors, democracy on a global level can be enhanced. Others
fear that private governance circumvents democratically legitimated governments and that
private regulation competes with national and international law. Thus, questions arise about
the legitimisation of private actors and about the democratic legitimacy of private governance.
This report explores whether private governance can be regarded as democratically legitimate.
As a background, it discusses global democracy gaps and possibilities to conceptualise
democratic legitimacy in relation to private regulation. The main part consists of a case study of
the Ethical Trading Initiative (ETI), a private alliance of companies, non‐governmental organisations
and trade unions promoting the implementation of supply chain codes of conduct to improve
labour standards. As a multi‐stakeholder initiative, ETI stands for a special form of private
governance characterised by the cooperation of different actors.
According to the analysis, ETI shows a relatively high degree of democratic legitimacy even
though critical points can be observed. On the whole, ETI as an example of private governance
neither poses a threat, nor can it fulfil all hopes in relation to global democracy. In a preliminary
conclusion, the author identifies factors that potentially influence the democratic legitimacy of
private governance, among others the organisational size, financial resources, the method of
operation and specific characteristics of the sector in which private governance operates.


Since 1997, the Georgia Environmental Protection Division has published a periodic report titled Georgia's Environment. That report has highlighted current issues or pressures affecting the major environmental media (air, water, and land) and presented data on a small number of indicators to illustrate trends related to those pressures. As part of a broader environmental indicators project, the scope of the report has been expanded to provide a more comprehensive presentation on the state of Georgia's environment, focusing on three primary objectives for environmental management. The revamped report is intended to serve a public outreach and information function, similar to that of the earlier publication. In addition, the 2006 report, along with related work on environmental indicators, is expected to also highlight emerging issues, potential policy needs, and critical data and information gaps. Development of the 2008 report started with a conceptual model that relates environmental conditions to major human activities that affect those conditions, followed by systematic identification of the indicators feasible to include in a comprehensive assessment of the state of Georgia's environment. This paper will present the basic outline of the 2008 report, discuss constraints imposed by data availability and current approaches to data collection, and summarize results for select indicators of the condition of Georgia's water resources.


HPL-UV residue analytical method for monosulfuron [N-[(4'-methyl) pyrimidin-2'yl]-2-nitrophenylsulfonyl urea] in soil and wheat was developed. Monosulfuron residues were recovered by solvent extraction, followed by liquid-liquid partition, and C18 cartrige clean-up. Excellent method recoveries ranging from 95%-104% for both fortified soil and wheat grain were obtained with coefficients of variation 1.5%-11.8%. The minimum detectable quantities in soil and wheat were both 4 ng, the limit of detection was 0.02 mg/kg. When monosulfuron was applied according to double dosage of maximum recommended use direction(120 g ai/hm2 of 10% monosulfuron wettable powder sprayed for once during development of wheat) in field studies conducted in Shandong Province and near Beijing, monosulfuron residues was not detected in soil and wheat samples collected 75 d after application. Laboratory soil degradation studies showed that monosulfuron degraded faster in acidic soil and strong alkaline soil than in neutral or weak alkaline soil. Half lives in Jiangxi soil, Shijiazhuang soil, Jiangsu soil and Heilongjiang soil were 41, 48, 87 and 84 d respectively. Monosulfuron residues dissipated rapidly in Shandong and Beijing field test sites with half-lives of less than 14 d.


Gel filtration, with Sephadex G-200, was utilized to obtain Friend virus (FV) from infected spleen homogenate. Highly infectious and immunologically active material was eluted as a large initial protein peak, whereas hemoglobin and other noninfectious materials were found in two subsequent peaks. Fractions that made up the first peak were reactive in serological tests with antiserum towards FV. Formalinized fractions from the first peak, when combined with Freund's complete adjuvant, were able to protect mice against subsequent FV challenge. Further purification of antigen was carried out by sucrose gradient ultracentrifugation.


The design and synthesis of porous materials for selective capture of CO2 in the presence of water vapor is of paramount importance in the context of practical separation of CO2 from the flue gas stream. Here, we report the synthesis and structural characterization of a photoresponsive fluorinated MOF {[Cd(bpee)(hfbba)]·EtOH}n (1) constructed by using 4,4'-(hexafluoroisopropylidene)bis(benzoic acid) (hfbba), Cd(NO3)2, and 1,2-bis(4-pyridyl)ethylene (bpee) as building units. Due to the presence of the fluoroalkyl -CF3 functionality, compound 1 exhibits superhydrophobicity, which is validated by both water vapor adsorption and contact angle measurements (152°). The parallel arrangement of the bpee linkers makes compound 1 a photoresponsive material that transforms to {[Cd2(rctt-tpcb)(hfbba)2]·2EtOH}n (rctt-tpcb = regio cis,trans,trans-tetrakis(4-pyridyl)cyclobutane; 1IR) after a [2 + 2] cycloaddition reaction. The photomodified framework 1IR exhibits increased uptake of CO2 in comparison to 1 under ambient conditions due to alteration of the pore surface that leads to additional weak electron donor-acceptor interactions with the -CF3 groups, as examined through periodic density functional theory calculations. The enhanced uptake is also aided by an expansion of the pore window, which contributes to increasing the rotational entropy of CO2, as demonstrated through force field based free energy calculations.


This study evaluated the awareness, access and utilization of electronic information resources by the academic staff of the Federal Polytechnic Ede. To achieve this aim, eight objectives and eight research questions were formulated to guide the study. The survey research design was adopted for the study while census sampling technique was employed. The population of the study comprised all the 402 academic staff of the Polytechnic. A structured questionnaire captioned Awareness, Access and Utilization of EIRs by Academic Staff Questionnaire (AAUEIRASQ) was used for data collection. The instrument was validated the researcher's senior colleagues to ensure its content and face validity. 374 copies of the questionnaire were administered in which 328 amounting to 87.7 % return rate were retrieved and found valid for analysis. Data obtained were analyzed using Mean and frequency table. The result of the study revealed among others that, there is a high and appreciable levels of awareness and accessibility of EIRs among the academic staff in the Polytechnic. However, the frequency of use of EIRs is low as a result of myriads of challenges such as poor internet connectivity, erratic power supply; inadequacy of EIRs in the library among others. It was therefore recommended among others that, the government and the Polytechnic management should endeavour to provide necessary infrastructure especially power supply and internet connectivity within the Polytechnic to enhance the use of EIRs by the academic staff.


Enterprise Social Networks (ESNs) are said to have the potential to significantly improve communication and collaboration between employees. However, utilization is still a problem in organizations, as participation is voluntary. Current research on Affordance theory in IS research suggests one reason being that users may not always recognize the opportunities for action and the potential outcome of the corresponding actualization. In our qualitative study in a medium-sized company, we investigate how experiencing offline networking with other ESN users will help to recognize online networking potentials, leading to an increased actualization of ESN affordances. In addition, we investigate the role of social bots (here: Lunch Roulette Bot), which provoke interaction by inviting users to meet other employees for lunch, therefore nudging users to experience certain actualizations like offline networking. We find that social bots can be more helpful than conventional one-to-many solicitations of the management and help increase human interaction in ESN.


Adnoc Drilling company on Monday announced it has signed a Sale and Purchase Agreement (SPA) to acquire an additional two premium offshore jack-up drilling units. The investment is central to the company's enterprising expansion strategy and forms part of its three-year guidance on capital expenditure. Adnoc Drilling's fast-tracked fleet expansion programme keeps the company firmly on its growth trajectory as it enables Adnoc's ambitious targets to deliver 5 million bpd production capacity and realise gas self-sufficiency for the UAE, while increasing the potential for greater shareholder returns. Abdulrahman Abdullah Al Seiari, Chief Executive Officer of Adnoc Drilling, commented, "We are extremely pleased to have completed the acquisition of these two premium rigs, which will further bolster our position as a regional drilling leader and complement our already high quality offshore jack-up fleet. This is another important step in our fast-paced expansion and growth programme, ensuring we meet increasing demand as we enable Adnoc's ambitious oil and gas production capacity growth as well as achieving gas self-sufficiency for the UAE. " He added that the new drilling units will join the Adnoc Drilling fleet and start operations in the third quarter 2022, enabling considerable revenue for Adnoc Drilling to the benefit of investors and the UAE. Since listing on the Abu Dhabi Securities Exchange in October 2021, Adnoc Drilling has expanded its fleet from 96 to 104 owned rigs, on March 31. This acquisition cements the company's position as the largest national drilling company in the Middle East by rig fleet size, with further plans for expansion supported by a significant capital expenditure programme. The two new drilling units, being acquired from Well Target Five Limited and Well Target Six Limited, are Gusto MSC design, premium independent leg cantilever rigs. AdnoC drILLIng has expanded its fleet from 96 to 104 owned rigs


Abstract 295[][1]

Genetic events mediating transformation from the pre-malignant monoclonal gammopathies (MG) to myeloma (MM) are unknown. Previous FISH analyses have highlighted that most genetic lesions typical of MM are already present in MGUS. However, the genetic abnormalities characteristic of each evolving stage of MG have not been elucidated.

To obtain a comprehensive genomic profile of MG cases from the early to the late stages we performed for the first time high resolution analysis on purified plasma cells from 20 MGUS, 20 Smoldering MM (SMM) and 34 MM by high density 6.0 SNP-array. Ten matched non-tumor DNA samples were also included in the analysis. We examined DNA copy number alterations (CNA), copy number neutral loss of heterozygosity (CNN-LOH) and the spectrum of minimally altered regions which could contain relevant genes. Moreover, visual inspection allowed us to detect intermediate situations which corresponded to imbalances present in minor populations (less than 50%) coexisting with the major diploid population.

CNA were identified in 69 (93%) of the 74 patients analyzed with a median of 8 imbalances per abnormal case. The only 5 cases with no CNA corresponded to asymptomatic entities. We observed a progressive increase in the incidence of genomic imbalances from MGUS (median, 5/case) to SMM (media, 7.5/case) to MM (median, 12/case) (P=0.006; MGUS vs MM). In particular, gains on 1q, 3p, 6p, 9p, 11q, 19, 21q together with losses on 1p, 16q and 22q may be important genetic events associated with MGUS-MM transition, as they were less frequent in MGUS than in MM (P<0.038). Otherwise, 11p+ and 4q- would be implicated in the transition from SMM to symptomatic disease, as they were lower in SMM compared to MM (P<0.038). Chromosomal gains were usually associated with gains and losses with losses with the exception of 1q gains that were significantly associated with losses.

The subclones analysis allowed us to illustrate that PC bearing CNA increased from MGUS to SMM and to MM. Thus, we observed at least one minor subclone (<50% of PC) carrying a CNA more frequently in MGUS (75% of cases with a median of 3.5 of subclones/case, range 1–12) than in SMM (30% of cases with a median of 1, range 1–19) and MM (56% of cases with a median of 1/case, range 1–16) (p=0.017, MGUS vs SMM+MM comparison). Moreover, the four abnormalities apparently exclusive of MM disease (+11q, +21q, -16q y -22q) were also found as minor subclone in MGUS samples, supporting the previous notion that karyotypic instability is initiated in MGUS ([Figure 1][2]).

![Figure 1][3]

Figure 1
Percentage of cases with CNAs as major and minor subclones

Overall, a total of 65 CNN-LOH were detected and 7 locus had a uniparental trisomy with a median number of genes of 188 per CNN-LOH. The frequency of CNN-LOH was higher in active MM as compared to the asymptomatic entities (MM, 53% vs SMM, 25% vs MGUS 25%; p=0.047). Most of the cases showed more than one region affected by this phenomenom. Of note, there were two identical interstitial CNN-LOH in one MGUS and one MM at 8q11.21-q11.23.

We identified 12 homozygous deletions (HZD) corresponding to 5 MGUS (25%), 1 SMM (5%) and 3 MM (9%) patients, some of them containing relevant genes such as PRAME, BIRC2, BIRC3, MMPs 7 and 20 . Interestingly, two couples of MGUS patients showed the same HZD at 2p22.3 and 8p11.23-p11.22. The latest contained only the gene ADAM 3A , whose function remains unknown, but its HZD has been recently reported in gliomas ([Figure 2][4]).

![Figure 2][3]

Figure 2
HZD at 8p11.23-p11.22 in two MGUS (CHAS software).

A strong association between genetic lesions and fragile sites (FRA) was also detected as more than one third of the focal-recurrent CNA and HZD, and more than a half of the minimal common regions and interstitial CNN-LOH overlapped with known FRA.

In summary, our study shows an evolving cytogenetic profile of increasing complexity from MGUS to SMM and to MM. However, although MM display more CNA and CNN-LOH than early steps, MGUS are as genetically aberrant as MM, and the transition from MGUS to MM is not associated to a particular chromosomal imbalance but rather to an expansion of altered clones already present in MGUS. The analysis of sequential samples from the same individual evolving from MGUS and SMM to active MM is essential to confirm these results. In addition, our study reveals new chromosomal regions involved in CNA, HZD and CNN-LOH. A comprehensive investigation of the genes contained in these regions may provide new insights in MM pathogenesis.

Disclosures: No relevant conflicts of interest to declare.

 [1]: #fn-2
 [2]: #F1
 [3]: pending:yes
 [4]: #F2


Abnormal uterine bleeding is a common clinical problem in adolescence but also a potentially difficult condition to treat. Furthermore, most diagnostic criteria and treatment algorithms were optimized for adults and not validated for adolescent population. Abnormal uterine bleeding may be associated with many conditions, including pregnancy, endocrine disorders, chronic diseases and congenital conditions. Using the menstrual cycle as an additional vital sign adds a powerful tool for the isolation of pathological conditions via the assessment of normal development. It is important for clinicians to have an understanding of bleeding patterns of adolescents, the ability to distinguish normal menstruation from abnormal one, and the skill to evaluate the young female patient appropriately. Routine evaluation should include a careful history, physical examination as indicated and permitted, and laboratory studies including a pregnancy test and a complete blood cell count. Quantifying the level of anemia and degree of bleeding along with managing expectations will provide basis for a more successful treatment plan that can almost always avoid surgical methods.


Nicotine is a pharmacologically active and addictive alkaloid component of the cigarette smoke, and its effects on male reproductive system and fertility are well documented. Influence of ascorbic acid on reproductive functions of male wistar rats exposed to nicotine was examined in this study. Thirty-two adult male rats of 180 ± 15 g weight were used and grouped into control, nicotine, ascorbic and nicotine with ascorbic acid. The drugs were orally administered for thirty-five days. Plasma levels of FSH, LH and testosterone were significantly reduced in nicotine exposed rats when compared with the control (p<0.05), both FSH and LH plasma levels were significantly increased in rats exposed to ascorbic acid (p<0.05) relative to the control, while ascorbic acid also increased the level of these hormone in nicotine treated group (p<0.05). The cytoarchitecture of the seminiferous tubule shows high level of degeneration in the nicotine only treated group and this was reversed in the ascorbic acid treated group. There was a significant decreased in sperm motility, counts, percentage viability and morphology (p<0.05) in nicotine treated group relative to the control, while there was a significant improvement in these sperm parameters in co-administered ascorbic acid with nicotine when compared with the rats treated with nicotine only. In conclusion, ascorbic acid supplement may suppress nicotine toxic effects on reproductive functions in male rats. Keywords:  Nicotine, ascorbic acid, FSH, LH, Testosterone, Sperm parameters


The hydrochloride salt form of promethazine, a phenothiazine derivative with antihistaminic, sedative and antiemetic properties. Promethazine hydrochloride selectively blocks peripheral H1 receptors thereby diminishing the effects of histamine on effector cells. Promethazine hydrochloride also blocks the central histaminergic receptors, thereby depressing the reticular system causing sedative and hypnotic effects. In addition, promethazine hydrochloride also has centrally acting anticholinergic properties and probably mediates nausea and vomiting by acting on the medullary chemoreceptive trigger zone.


This paper develops a model for cancer screening and cancer incidence data, accommodating the partially unobserved disease status, clustered data structures, general covariate effects, and dependence between exams. The true unobserved cancer and detection status of screening participants are treated as latent variables, and a Markov Chain Monte Carlo algorithm is used to estimate the Bayesian posterior distributions of the diagnostic error rates and disease prevalence. We show how the Bayesian approach can be used to draw inferences about screening exam properties and disease prevalence while allowing for the possibility of conditional dependence between two exams. The techniques are applied to the estimation of the diagnostic accuracy of mammography and clinical breast examination using data from the Ontario Breast Screening Program in Canada. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.


A study of 84 gastric biopsies taken from 42 adult patients revealed simple techniques for Gram stain and culture for Campylobacter pylori. In an initial study of 18 biopsies, Gram stains prepared from ground, diluted tissue were all negative for curved, gram-negative rods, whereas 13 of these specimens were positive for C. pylori by culture. The Gram stains for the remaining 66 biopsies were prepared by a rinse-imprint technique. In this group, there were 30 Gram stains positive for organisms resembling C. pylori and 32 positive cultures. By Gram-staining two sites, fundus and antrum, the sensitivity of the Gram stain for identifying a positive specimen increased from 91 to 100%. Gram stain may be the preferred technique for rapid diagnosis. When cultured, C. pylori was recovered most often on modified Thayer-Martin medium incubated microaerophilically at 35 degrees C. The presence of antibiotics in modified Thayer-Martin medium limited upper respiratory flora overgrowth, which was often present on nonselective media.


With the demographic challenges facing many European states, one would perhaps expect the state to invoke a biopolitical imperative to 'faire vivre', as Foucault termed it, and attempt to regulate birth rates. This expectation is too simple, however, as this article shows both theoretically and empirically. In order better to understand the possible counterweights to biopolitical concerns about the birth rate, the conceptual distinction between biopolitics and governmentality is useful. Scholarly debates about biopolitics and governmentality have been surprisingly silent on what constitutes the internal relationship between the two or how they may come into conflict. The article elaborates this conceptual distinction and demonstrates its relevance in a genealogy of how fertility treatment has been problematized in Danish assisted reproduction policy. Since access to IVF treatment does not appear to follow a biopolitical imperative to 'faire vivre', it is interesting to explore and compare how IVF treatment – and its doctors, patients, and children – has been problematized instead. In a variety of different ways, the biopolitical concern about the low birth rate has been overshadowed by concerns about how to govern. Either the new treatment has been problematized as an unnecessary cover for private or special interests, for instance doctors' illegitimate attempts to self-govern, or problematization has centered on prospective parents characterized as demanding or selfish. The interface between biopolitics and fertility treatment is thus only understandable with a view to problems of governing and the resulting tension between governmentality and the biopolitical imperative to 'faire vivre'.


Beneath the great state of Texas, there is water. Texas has nine major aquifers and 21 minor aquifers underlying the state. These aquifers are a vital water supply source in Texas, providing approximately 60 percent of the 16.1 million acre-feet of water used in the state annually.[2] These underground waters also sustain surface water flow in rivers across Texas; thus, they are integral to the health of watersheds throughout the state and the economies that depend on this water. When W.H. Auden wrote, "Water is the soul of the Earth," he must have been referring to groundwater.

In Texas, groundwater is regulated on the local level by groundwater conservation districts (GCDs), whose regulatory authority over subsurface aquifers is generally confined by county boundary lines rather than hydrogeological ones. In 1917 after devastating drought, voters approved the Conservation Amendment to the Texas Constitution, which provided the authority for the Texas Legislature to establish GCDs to conserve the state's groundwater resources.[3] Chapter 36 of the Texas Water Code governs the powers and duties of GCDs in Texas.

Texas landowners own the groundwater beneath their land as private property.[4] While a landowner is entitled to drill for and produce groundwater below the surface of his property, the Texas Supreme Court has held that he is subject to reasonable regulation through GCDs.[5] In GCD-managed areas, a landowner's right to pump groundwater is tempered by the Water Code's goals of protecting property rights in groundwater and the groundwater resource. Groundwater regulation ideally prevents one landowner from pumping to such an extent that nearby wells are impacted.

Not all areas of Texas, however, are controlled by a GCD. Approximately one-third of the surface area of Texas is not regulated by a GCD. These areas where a GCD does not exist are depicted on the map below as areas without color. Out of the 254 counties in the state, 174 counties are either fully or partially within a confirmed or unconfirmed GCD.[6] In unprotected areas, there is no regulatory authority to monitor the rate and amount of groundwater withdrawal, and the rule of capture permits landowners to pump unlimited amounts of groundwater, even if doing so dries up neighboring landowners' wells. Unregulated areas in Texas are the final frontier — the last remaining, lawless parts of the state where groundwater protection is nonexistent.

During a time of unparalleled pressure on groundwater resources across the state, the lack of groundwater protection in some areas of Texas is undermining important areas of law and policy — from property rights and natural resource protection, to groundwater management and regional water planning.


Background People with recurrent or drug-resistant TB require long courses of intramuscular injections. We evaluate a novel system in which patient-nominated lay carers were trained to deliver intramuscular injections to patients in their own homes. Methods A pragmatic, individually randomised non-inferiority trial was conducted at two hospitals in Malawi. Adults starting TB retreatment were recruited. Patients randomised to the intervention received home-based care from patient-nominated lay people trained to deliver intramuscular streptomycin. Patients receiving standard care were admitted to hospital for 2 months of streptomycin. The primary outcome was successful treatment (alive and on treatment) at the end of the intervention. Results Of 456 patients screened, 204 participants were randomised. The trial was terminated early due to futility. At the end of the intervention, 97/101 (96.0%) in the hospital arm were still alive and on treatment compared with 96/103 (93.2%) in the home-based arm (risk difference −0.03 (95% CI −0.09 to 0.03); p value 0.538). There were no differences in the proportion completing 8 months of anti-TB treatment; or the proportion experiencing 2-month sputum culture conversion. The mean cost of hospital-based management was US$1546.3 per person, compared to US$729.2 for home-based management. Home-based care reduced risk of catastrophic household costs by 84%. Conclusions Although this trial failed to meet target recruitment, the available data demonstrate that training patient-nominated lay people has potential to provide a feasible solution to the operational challenges associated with delivering long-term-injectable drugs to people with recurrent or drug-resistant TB in resource-limited settings, and substantially reduce costs. Further data under operational conditions are required. Trial registration number ISRCTN05815615.


The Posters program is an interactive forum for innovative ideas that are not yet fully polished, high-impact practical contributions, and offer a behind-the-scenes view of new commercial and artistic work, as well as cool "tricks" that solve challenging problems.

Contributors are expected to exhibit graphic displays of incremental, preliminary, partial, and innovative insights that are important but not fully developed. Posters are displayed throughout the conference days in a high-traffic area within the convention center. They will be organized in sessions by technical areas or thematic focus. Presenters will also discuss their work in scheduled sessions.

Find out what this platform for work-in-progress and thought-provoking ideas, techniques, and applications in technical research will offer at SIGGRAPH Asia 2013!


The main purpose of the article – to analyze legal problems related to the use of trademarks in cyberspace. The developments of cyberspace have given rise to an unprecedent economic and social changes, but they also have other side: the emergence of new legal problems. The author points to the unique features of cyberspace. The present work deals with some legal regulation problems of use of trademarks in cyberspace. A trademark is a way of distinguishing one person's product or service from that of another person. Trademarks protect the goodwill and reputation associated with a product or service. Unlike other forms of intellectual property, rights in trademarks arise only upon their use, rather that upon their creation. Trademarks are major commercial instruments that play an important role in the electronic market place. However, in cyberspace the trademark owner is faced by severe difficulties in controlling the legitimate use of his trademark. Because trademarks are so valuable it is inevitable that there will be disputes relating to their use in cyberspace. Trademarks are possibly more valuable in cyberspace that elsewhere. Disputes relating to cyberspace can be devided into several types. In the first part of the present article legal problems, related to trademarks are briefly discussed. The problems arises from the basic principles of trademark law and the nature of cyberspace. Beside other legal problems, this part undertakes a survey of trademark issues connected with the registration and use of domain names. For example, since two or more businesses may be using the same trademark in a legitimate manner, the issue arises as to which entity is entitled to use the trademark as a part of its internet address. Also, it is not clear whether the placement of a trademark on the internet is "use" for trademark purposes. A futher issuse is whether trademark use would be found to infridge rights in each jurisdiction from which a user may access the web site. Other legal problems, related to the use of trademark in cyberspace, are discussed too. In the second part the international experience and the experience of foreign states are studied in the field of use of trademarks in cyberspace. The author analyses application of international and foreign legal acts. Also decisions of foreign courts are studied. In the third part the provisions of Lithuanian laws related to use of trademarks in electronic form are studied. At the end of the present work the conclusions are presented.


Flattening filter-free radiation beams have higher dose rates that significantly increase the ion recombination rate in an ion chamber's volume and lower the signal read by the chamber-electrometer pair. The ion collection efficiency correction (Pion) accounts for the loss of signal and subsequently changes dosimetric quantities when applied. We seek to characterize the changes to the percent depth dose, tissue maximum ratio, relative dose factor, absolute dose calibration, off-axis ratio, and the field width. We measured Pion with the two-voltage technique and represented Pion as a linear function of the signal strength. This linear fit allows us to correct measurement sets when we have only gathered the high voltage signal and to correct derived quantities. The changes to dosimetric quantities can be up to 1.5%. Charge recombination significantly affects percent depth dose, tissue maximum ratio, and off-axis ratio, but has minimal impact on the relative dose factor, absolute dose calibration, and field width. PACS number: 87.55.N.


It has been well recognized that the impact of on-chip inductance on some critical nets, such as clock nets, is significant and cannot be ignored in delay modeling for these nets. However, the impact of on-chip inductance on signal nets in general is still not well understood. We present results of analyzing inductive effects on signal nets for ultradeep submicron technologies under the influence of power grid noise. The analysis is based on an Al-based 0.18-/spl mu/m CMOS process and a Cu-based 0.13-/spl mu/m CMOS process. The impact of on-chip inductance is shown to be insignificant if we assume a perfect power supply network around the interconnect routes. Otherwise, the impact of on-chip inductance can be significant. Furthermore, the results presented in this paper illustrate the impact of on-chip inductance one would expect from transitioning from an Al-based interconnect technology to a Cu-based interconnect technology. A heuristic method is proposed in the paper to account for the inductive coupling due to power grid noise in signal delay modeling and simulations.


This paper presents estimates for agricultural production data in areas currently in India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh from 1901/02 to 2001/02. A salient feature of these estimates is that they correspond to current international borders. The British Empire of India, which was broken up in 1947 (in the so-called "Partition" of the Indian subcontinent), covered areas of what are now India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh. Although a rich accumulation of statistical documents is available from the colonial period, there has been no rigorous attempt to compile statistics corresponding to the current borders during a period that includes years prior to 1947. This is because the Partition broke up the Empire of India not only at the provincial level (for which data are readily available) but also at the district or lower levels of administration. This paper is an attempt to fill this gap, focusing on production in crop farming in India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh. Since neither the states of Pakistan and Bangladesh nor the concept of such nations existed during the early decades of the twentieth century, this exercise is hypothetical to some extent. Nevertheless, because farming activities are carried out on the soil of a region irrespective of its political designation, the estimates presented in this paper could shed new light on agricultural development in the three countries over the long term.


Stilbenes are a group of phytoalexins that play an important role in grapevine (Vitis) basal immunity and can be induced by biotic and abiotic stresses. The levels of chlorophylls, the main pigments in plant cells, can also indicate the tolerance of plants to various stresses. Here, the response of different grapevine genotypes to UV‐C radiation treatment was tested and the abundance of chlorophyll in the Hoe29 and Ke53 genotypes was observed to increase significantly within 6 h of UV‐C treatment. Conversely, chlorophyll levels decreased markedly in the Augster Weiss and Muller–Thurgau genotypes. Furthermore, stilbene abundance increased substantially in the Hoe29, Ke53, Ke83 and Pinot Blanc genotypes, but increased only slightly in Augster Weiss and Muller–Thurgau. The expression of resveratrol synthase, which encodes a key enzyme in the stilbene synthesis pathway, increased in Hoe29, Ke53, Ke83 and Pinot Blanc following UV‐C treatment, in a manner consistent with stilbene accumulation. In addition, we observed that reactive oxygen species (ROS) provide a key trigger in physiological responses and changes in secondary metabolite contents. In summary, the results from this study support a link between ROS, chlorophyll levels and genetic diversity for stilbene abundance in different grape genotypes, providing insights into mechanisms for plant physiological and biochemical responses and adaptations to stress.


Abstract The article contains an analysis of the current state of the problem of retinopathy of prematurity (RP). Advances of international and Russian ophthalmology in understanding the pathogenesis, clinical presentation of both active and regressive RP, results of multicentre studies on RP treatment and prognosis were taken into consideration. There is a tendency towards a considerable change in the range of survived premature newborns and a growing need for development of new treatment approaches on the basis of pathogenetic studies. A wide range of RP outcomes, late complications, and concomitant pathology, which determine functional prognosis and quality of life in patients who have had RP, is discussed.


Ischemic cerebrovascular disease is one of the three deadly diseases. It is characterised by high mortality and high morbidity. Because of no effective treatments of recombinant tissue plasminogen activator (rt-PA) and neuroprotectant, there are more and more research focus on neurovascular unit (NVU), which is composed of brain microvascular endothelial cells (BMECs), neuron, astrocyte(AS) and so on. Cell–cell signaling and coupling between these different compartments form the basis for normal function and repair of brain injury. In this mini-review, we will describe the relationship of CMECs, neuron and AS.


This research is a results description conducted to describe the social problem at the Melekan Manten event and the role of Mudin in reducing the social problem at the Melekan Manten event through Khataman al-Qur'an. The research is carried out by going directly into the field to investigate phenomena that appear in the real-life context. The process is by constructing phenomena based on the  obtained data and critical evaluation based on relevant theories so that the essence of events can be found to be compared to other data and with relevant theories so that their validity, robustness and suitability can be tested and concluded. The study results concluded that the social problem in the Melekan Manten event in Delik and Kedungmaling, Mojokerto, namely playing cards, betting dice and dominoes, and drinking alcoholic beverages until drunk. The role of Mudin in reducing the ill behavior of the society is to implement da'wah management through a cultural approach. The role carried out is the role of community leader and spiritual leader to invite the youth to make Khataman al-Qur'an tradition at every Melekan Manten event.


AIMS: Impaired response to antiplatelet therapy in diabetic patients results in a higher incidence of drug-eluting stent thrombosis. This study determined the prevalence of high on-aspirin (AS) platelet reactivity in type 2 diabetic patients treated with percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) using the VerifyNow Aspirin Assay (VN) and platelet function analyzer PFA-100 (PFA-100) and analyzed the correlation between both methods. METHODS: Type 2 diabetic patients (100) with non-ST-elevation acute coronary syndrome who underwent PCI and Xience V drug-eluting stent implantation were included in this study. After PCI, platelet antiaggregation mediated by acetylsalicylic acid was assessed by VN and PFA-100. The degree of correlation and concordance was then determined. RESULTS: When assayed with VN, 7% of the patients were nonresponders to aspirin (aspirin reaction units >550), and when assayed with PFA-10, 41% were nonresponders (closure time <193 seconds). Of the patients, 4% were nonresponders to aspirin according to VN but were sensitive to aspirin according to PFA-100, and 38% were sensitive to aspirin according to VN and nonresponders according to PFA-100. Overall, 55% of the patients were aspirin-sensitive in both methods. The Spearman's coefficient between VN and PFA-100 results was r = 0.09 (P = 0.35). The kappa index value was 0.0062 (P = 0.91). CONCLUSIONS: There is no concordance or correlation between the VN and PFA-100 results. Therefore, the use of these analyses should be restricted to clinical research, which limits its application in clinical practice.


ABSTRACT The development of eco-trekking on the Kokoda Track, Papua New Guinea has used a community-based planning approach, Participatory Rural Appraisal (PRA), in developing community-based tourism (CBT). This approach involves local communities within the sustainable tourism planning process and honours and incorporates their knowledge and opinions. This paper examines the development and outcomes of CBT over a 10-year period since 2004. The findings suggest that stakeholder collaboration through the use of PRA and CBT can foster a sound capacity-building mechanism through the structures it creates as it provides a bottom-up approach which is enabling and meets the objectives of the stakeholders, particularly the communities that are engaged in the process. A key outcome of this process is a sustainable eco-trekking industry driven by the community, but working in partnership with tour operators and philanthropic giving. The paper also demonstrates the complexities, consequences and inevitable compromises in any outcome-based community approach which seeks to empower diverse stakeholder groups, and especially complex – and important – when working with indigenous peoples. The value of an effective, informed and relevant legal framework is noted, as is the need for the tapping into tour operators' experience as well as community experience.


PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to understand knowledge grafting through localized professionals in the internationalization of the firm. Knowledge grafting refers to firms increasing their knowledge stock by acquiring new staff, and while the concept is not new in studies on firms' internationalization, there is little understanding of the characteristics of the individuals carrying the knowledge, the types of knowledge grafted and how it contributes to a market entry process.Design/methodology/approachThe authors conducted an explorative study with a multiple-case research design and purposely selected five localized Swedish managers working for Russian subsidiaries of Swedish firms. Face-to-face interviews were conducted. The interviews were transcribed and analyzed based on three types of knowledge: general foreign market knowledge, social network knowledge and professional knowledge. The authors also considered both private and professional ties.FindingsThe findings show that characteristics of the localized professional and the firm can influence the type of knowledge grafted and how it is used. The findings also highlight the key role of the individual as knowledge carrier and show an alternative way to obtain knowledge in firm internationalization.Research limitations/implicationsThis study comes with limitations. Only Swedish firms entering Russia with wholly owned subsidiaries have been considered. Further studies comparing knowledge grafting with firms in different entry mode, varying stage of market entry, as well as other countries of origin can further enrich our understanding. Future studies can also focus on localized professionals to shed light on the knowledge transfer between them and other individuals within the firms and the potential impact of their departure on knowledge grafting.Practical implicationsInternationalizing firms should pay attention to the opportunity of grafting knowledge by appointing localized professionals already living in the market. Governmental agencies in the host county can be a valuable source for identifying foreign nationals of the same origin as the firm.Originality/valueTo the best of the authors' knowledge, this is the first study to focus on the individual level of knowledge grafting and to examine how localized professionals acquire knowledge to support firms in internationalization.


Introduction The most important risk factor for post-partum maternal infection is caesarean section (CS). High-sensitivity C-reactive protein (HS-CRP) accurately detects low concentrations of CRP as a predictor of inflammation in blood. This study evaluated the feasibility of measuring HS-CRP in amniotic fluid (AF) and maternal serum at CS. Methods This was a prospective observational study of women undergoing elective and emergency CS. AF was obtained at CS by direct needle aspiration from intact amnion. Samples were processed for HS-CRP, bacterial count and culture. Maternal serum CRP was measured before and 3 days after CS. Results Seventy-nine women undergoing CS participated. In 5 (6%), AF could not be analysed; it was either not obtained or could not be processed due to thick meconium. Of the remainder, 47% (35/74) women underwent elective and 53% (39/74) emergency CS. There was a significant difference in AF HS-CRP levels from elective versus emergency CS (median 68.6 ng.ml vs 192.3 ng.ml; p = 0.009). There was no difference in serum HS-CRP levels between elective and emergency CS. Almost 60% (44/74) of AF samples showed bacterial colonisation. There was no difference in AF or serum HS-CRP levels between patients with sterile amniotic fluid compared to those with bacterial colonisation. However serum HS-CRP levels were higher where AF samples at emergency CS showed bacterial growth (p = 0.03). Conclusion This study proves the feasibility of measuring HS-CRP in <1 ml amniotic fluid in both elective and emergency settings. AF HS-CRP levels were significantly higher in emergency compared to elective CS. However, analysis of HS-CRP was limited by AF consistency.


The management of health, safety, and environmental (HSE) aspects during production, manipulation, storage, incorporation, and disposal of carbon nanomaterials is the key factor for the development of a safe-by-design work based on nanotechnology. The almost endless possibility of functionalization, chemical interaction, and addition of nanomaterials into new products implies a new management approach of HSE. Low amount of reliable toxicity and ecotoxicity data of nanomaterials and nanomaterial composites is available. As complete exposure/ release assessments are a challenging task, recommendation for control measurements is still based on the precautionary point of view. There is an incomplete understanding of environmental fate- and time-related exposure, and of consumer- and worker-related risks and hazards. Control banding and risk evaluation matrix tools can be used to mitigate labor and environment impacts of carbon nanomaterials. This chapter presents new tools and methodologies for exposure assessment and risk evaluation of hazards used on HSE management system of carbon nanomaterials.


Gibbon ape leukaemia virus (GALV) was first isolated in the early 1970s after a number of gibbons that were housed at the SEATO research in Bangkok, Thailand, were diagnosed with lymphoid tumours including malignant lymphoma. It is a novel gamma retrovirus that has never been isolated from wild gibbons. It appears that GALV occurred as a result of a species jump from another as yet unidentified vertebrate host. The full sequence of GALV suggests that it is related loosely to murine leukaemia viruses and a number of rodent species from Southeast Asia have been suggested as possible hosts of the ancestor to GALV. However, no proviral sequence from any Southeast Asian verte brate has been so far isolated which could be a candidate virus. More recently, two closely related viruses have been found in koalas and a native Australian rat, the grassland melo mys ( Melomys burtoni ). These are koala retrovirus (KoRV) and Melomys burtoni retrovirus (MbRV). A number of theories have been published recently which endeavour to explain the origins of GALV and its relationship to other viruses including KoRV. Here, the his tory of GALV is documented and the strengths and weaknesses of current theories on the origin of this virus are discussed.


The grain size analysis plays a significant role in any geotechnical study. The grain size analysis, by means of sieving, is usually used for coarse material of particle size > 75 μm. For the fine material; the sedimentation methods are frequently adopted (e.g., hydrometers). Other methods also exist such as electron microscopy, digital image analysis and laser diffraction. The fine geomaterials commonly undergo agglomeration which makes the recognition of individual grain size using digital image analysis or electron microscopy challenging. To facilitate and enhance the grain-size analysis, this study was conducted using the Laser Diffraction System (LDS). Seven samples with different nature (composition and texture) and sources were analyzed by hydrometer and LDS. For LDS, various factors were studied such as air pressure, sonication, dilution, refractive index, and distribution method (volume or number). The results were compared qualitatively and quantitatively based on soil classification systems, fractal dimensions, and other parameters. Furthermore, this study provided a novel criterion to determine which LDS distribution method (volume or number) is to be used depending on the Liquid Limit. A combined sieve-LDS system is recommended to obtain the entire grain size distribution. It is concluded that the LDS is a viable technique that can replace the time-consuming hydrometer method to assess the grain-size distribution.


Background: Oral cavity squamous cell carcinoma (OSCC) is one of the most common cancers worldwide, and its incidence is still increasing. Approximately 50% of patients with OSCC die within 5 years after diagnosis, mostly ascribed to the fact that themajority of patients present advanced stages of OSCC at the time of diagnosis. Methods: To discover salivary biomarkers for ameliorating the detection of OSCC, herein, we developed a multiplexed bead-based platform to simultaneously detect auto-antibodies (auto-Abs) in salivary samples. Results: Compared with healthy individuals, the salivary levels of anti-p53, anti-survivin, anti-Hsp60, and anti-RPLP0 were significantly elevated in patients with OSCC. Noteworthily, the elevated levels of anti-p53, anti-survivin, and anti-Hsp60 were already observed in individuals with oral potentially malignant disorder. Moreover, the salivary levels of anti-p53, anti-survivin, anti-Hsp60, anti-RPLP0, and anti-CK8 were significantly elevated in patients with early-stage OSCC compared with those in healthy individuals. Most importantly, the use of a combined panel of salivary anti-p53, anti-survivin, anti-Hsp60, and anti-RPLP0 largely improves the detection of OSCC. Conclusion: Collectively, our results reveal that the salivary auto-Abs are effective OSCC biomarkers and the four-auto-Ab panel provides a novel and practicable approach for OSCC screening. Impact: This study provides the first evidence for the potential clinical application of salivary auto-Abs in OSCC diagnosis. Cancer Epidemiol Biomarkers Prev; 23(8); 1–10. 2014 AACR.


Here we studied the annealing induced shape transformation of 1D Cu2ZnSnS4 (CZTS) nanorods from nanospheres and nanocubes by simple sol-gel method without using any toxic chemicals or complicated vacuum based technology. X-ray diffraction pattern and Raman spectra reveal the formation of kesterite structure CZTS thin films. The energy dispersive X-ray analysis results indicate the presence of Cu, Zn, Sn, and S. The elemental distribution of all the CZTS samples was studied using elemental mapping. The Hall effect studies of the CZTS thin film composed of nanorods exhibits the lowest resistivity values which indicates efficient charge transfer for unidirectional structure. The obtained optical band gap energy of CZTS thin film is in the range of 1.46-1.54 eV, which is quite close to the optimum theoretical value required for solar cell applications.


This article introduces to political science a framework to analyze the content of visual material through unsupervised and semi-supervised methods. It details the implementation of a tool from the computer vision field, the Bag of Visual Words (BoVW), for the definition and extraction of "tokens" that allow researchers to build an Image-Visual Word Matrix which emulates the Document-Term matrix in text analysis. This reduction technique is the basis for several tools familiar to social scientists, such as topic models, that permit exploratory, and semi-supervised analysis of images. The framework has gains in transparency, interpretability, and inclusion of domain knowledge with respect to other deep learning techniques. I illustrate the scope of the BoVW by conducting a novel visual structural topic model which focuses substantively on the identification of visual frames from the pictures of the migrant caravan from Central America.


New Oxfam research shows that four pharmaceutical companies – Abbott, Johnson & Johnson, Merck and Pfizer – systematically hide their profits in overseas tax havens. They appear to deprive developing countries of more than $100m (around £80m) every year – money that is urgently needed to meet the health needs of people in these countries – while charging very high prices for their products. In the UK, these four companies may be underpaying around £125m of tax each year. These corporations also deploy massive lobbying operations to influence trade, tax and health policies in their favour and give their damaging behavior greater apparent legitimacy. Tax dodging, high prices and political influencing by pharmaceutical companies exacerbate the yawning gap between rich and poor, between men and women, and between advanced economies and developing ones.


Purpose

In the industry, there is always a demand to shorten the task completion durations to maximize the efficiency of the operation. This work focuses on making use of a special type of kinematic redundancy, macro–micro manipulation, to minimize the task completion duration. The purpose of this paper is to develop the most convenient trajectory planner to be integrated with industrial computerized numerical control (CNC) systems to resolve kinematic redundancy for task duration minimization.

Design/methodology/approach

A special type of kinematic redundancy is devised by using two kinematically different mechanisms that have different advantages, which are named as macro and micro mechanisms. In this case, the control design including the trajectory planning should be devised taking into account the distinct advantages of both mechanisms. A new trajectory planning algorithm is designed and used for the constructed planar laser-cutting machine, and some benchmark pieces are cut.

Findings

Offline method has practical limitations for employment in a real case scenario such as assuming infinite jerk limits for each axis motion. This limitation was removed by using an online trajectory generation technique. Experimental test results indicate that the online trajectory planning technique developed for the macro–micro mechanism to shorten the task duration was successful.

Practical implications

Although the new trajectory planning algorithm is implemented for a laser-cutting machine, it can also be used for other manufacturing systems that require higher acceleration and accuracy levels than the conventional machines. The new algorithm is compatible with the commercially available CNC systems.

Originality/value

In this work, a new approach to reducing the task duration for planar machining operations was introduced by making use of macro–micro manipulation concept. The core novelty of the work is devising trajectory planning algorithms to get the most efficiency in terms of acceleration limits from a macro–micro manipulation while making these algorithms deployable to most of the CNC systems.


Traditional analyses of nineteenth-century politics have assigned women a peripheral role. By adopting a broader interpretation of political participation, the author identifies how middle-class women were able to contribute to political affairs in the nineteenth century. Examining the contribution that women made to British political life in the period 1800-1870 stimulates debates about gender and politics, the nature of authority and the definition of political culture.

This volume examines female engagement in both traditional and unconventional political arenas, including female sociability, salons, child-rearing and education, health, consumption, religious reform and nationalism. Richardson focuses on middle-class women's social, cultural, intellectual and political authority, as implemented by a range of public figures and lesser-known campaigners. The activists discussed and their varying political, economic and religious backgrounds will demonstrate the significance of female interventions in shaping the political culture of the period and beyond.


Thailand would like to be a Hub Medical in this region. To prepare for this we need to prepare the staff in health care team, especially the nurses. Research shows that the English proficiency in Thailand is not good. It is 62nd in the world (English proficiency, 2016). This result is in line with the study of Kamonrat, et al. and her team found that the ability of English is lower than the standard. The researcher, while teaching Antenatal Care, observed that there were foreign clients. The nursing students cannot advise pregnant women in English although they understand everything in Thai. The other researcher at Suan Sunandha university Teeraporn Kitjarak was found that the study findings reveal following : . Seventy-six point four percent of the target students have fair English speaking ability. Fifteen point five percent of them have the excellent English speaking ability and eight point one percent of them have the poor English speaking ability. The factors that affected English speaking of the students were English learning strategies (X 13 ), habits in learning English language (X 12 ) and their grade averages (X 5 ) at the 0.05 levelEnglish of nursing skill must be improved during their studies. The researcher believes that they need more practice in using English especially in speaking.Maternal and Child II practicum is the subject that the researcher and her students worked at Klang, Taksin and Phanangkao Hospitals. The nursing students practiced with pregnant women but when they have to advise the foreign pregnant women, they find difficulty in dealing with them. They cannot teach them although the students know the contents in Thai. The researcher was trying to encourage the use of English language. The method that was used to train them in English was through pre and post conferences. In some instances, the researcher tried to talk to the foreign clients in English in front of the students and discuss things with them in English. Most of the students would like to speak but they are short of vocabulary to express their ideas.


Accurate knowledge of behavior is necessary to effectively manage the effects of human activities on wildlife, including vessel-based whale-watching. Yet, the wholly aquatic nature of cetaceans makes understanding their basic behavioral ecology quite challenging. An endangered population of killer whales faces several identified threats including prey availability and disturbance from vessels and sound. We used bio-logging tags that were temporally attached to individuals of the endangered Southern Resident killer whale population to more fully understand their subsurface behavior and to investigate vessel effects on behavior, including foraging behavior involving prey capture. We collected tag data over three field seasons in the waters surrounding the San Juan Islands, WA, United States, corresponding to the core summer area of the critical habitat of the population. Here, we used hidden Markov models to identify latent behavioral states that include characterization of different foraging states from sound and movement variables recorded by the multi-sensor tags. We tested a number of vessel variables (e.g., vessel counts, distance, and speed) on state transition probabilities, state occurrence and time spent within each behavioral state. Whales made fewer dives involving prey capture and spent less time in these dives when vessels had an average distance less than 400 yd (366 m). Additionally, we found both a sex and vessel distance effect on the state transition probabilities, suggesting that females and males respond differently to nearby vessels. Specifically, females were more likely to transition to a non-foraging state when vessels had an average distance less than 400 yd (366 m). A female's decision to forego foraging states due to the close proximity of vessels could have cascading effects on the ability to meet energetic requirements to support reproductive efforts. This is particularly concerning in an endangered population that is in decline. Our findings, suggesting that female killer whales are at greater risk to close approaches by vessels, highlight the importance of understanding sex-specific responses to disturbance. These findings can inform future management decisions seeking to preserve foraging opportunities and enhance recovery efforts relevant to many cetacean species, including vulnerable and endangered populations.


Now that we can retrieve sperm from dead men and egg-bearing ovarian tissue from dead women, parenthood after death is possible for virtually anyone. No agency or group monitors this practice, so the number of children born this way can only be guessed at (although sperm retrieved posthumously has been used at least once). No law in the United States formally bars posthumous retrieval and use of gametes, leaving the option open to survivors and clinicians. And medical organizations are largely silent on the technique. In 1997 the American Society for Reproductive Medicine said that a request of this kind need not be honored, but that advisory does not mean, of course, that it can never be honored. What standards of access and equity should apply in harvesting gametes? Whose requests for retrieval should be honored, if any? Are there risks to children that would outweigh the benefits of this kind of conception, and how would one know without evidence one way or the other? Are children produced this way entitled to the usual inheritance and social welfare benefits? Or does none of this matter, really? Some bioethicists have chastised their peers for chasing these questions. When the topic came up in an online bioethics discussion group, one participant called attention to it obscene, in light of global problems concerning health care, hunger, and homelessness. In a couple of commentaries in the British Medical Journal, the bioethicist Leigh Turner has argued that if we mapped bioethicists' activities onto morbidity and mortality from a global perspective, we would see surprising disparities between what the intellectual vanguard of bioethics is doing and what the real-world needs of most people are. In one way, the critics have it right. Disasters like the January 2005 tsunami across the Indian ocean can make the question of gamete harvesting look trivial. The media love drive-by ethics commentary, and some bioethicists have never missed a bandwagon. But, that said, there are pressing questions here with important legal and policy implications; how could bioethics not pay attention to them? And taking Turner's global perspective would ignore too much. The 1970s saw lots of ethical debate about parents withholding hydration and nutrition from newborns with severe disabilities. Measured against the needs of the world's children, that debate might be trivial, but without that inquiry, we would still be mired where we were three decades ago. Moreover, there is a way to bring these issues all together. Responding to natural disasters like the tsunami requires political advocacy more than philosophical or ethical analysis, but political advocacy can be improved by thinking about the ethics of biomedical innovations like cloning, in vitro fertilization and embryo transfer, gamete donation, surrogate motherhood, and the posthumous collection of gametes. These innovations all raise questions about human identity and relationships: What identities are possible for children born with their help, when connections to deceased parents are simply biological? Are we forging new opportunities for human intimacy and wellbeing or fracturing the dynamics essential to family life? These questions don't stop at the doors of the fertility clinics. Thinking about them and about how they can be altered by biomedical innovations can lead us on to other problems of global justice, which in turn can be thought about as issues of global health care relationships. What kind of relationships do we understand ourselves to be in with others, what responsibilities do we have toward others remote and unknown to us, and what moral ideas ought to guide us in building new relationships? What are our obligations to people in close relationships, and how do they compare with those we have to strangers? Let's not assume that the only heavy lifting to be done in bioethics is political rhetoric about world hunger and disease. The analysis, understanding, and protection of relationships ought to be the touchstone for the field, and it can provide a common framework with which we can confront the challenges not only of technological innovation, but also of ageold scourges and mass calamities. Timothy F. Murphy teaches medical ethics at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Gladys B. White teaches bioethics in the liberal studies program at Georgetown University. Dead Sperm Donors or World Hunger: Are Bioethicists Studying the Right Stuff?


Two stationary, partially polarized electromagnetic beams with equal degrees of polarization may exhibit completely different time evolutions of the instantaneous polarization state. In this work, we derive a statistical quantity that describes the rate at which the field intensity in the beam, on average, is redistributed between the beam's polarization state at any time and the state orthogonal to it. This method allows one to treat the dynamical properties of the polarization fluctuations both theoretically and experimentally. We demonstrate the method by applying it to important special cases, such as fields obeying Gaussian statistics, black-body radiation pencils and depolarized laser beams. We also prove that a geometric approach introduced earlier is closely connected with the present model.


The article investigates whether environmental regulations have affected productivity development and technological change in the European pulp and paper industry. A dynamic panel data approach is selected for analyzing a sample consisting of the pulp and paper industries in eight European countries. Industry total factor productivity for the period 1993–2009 is used as the dependent variable; it is explained by the intensities of environmental regulations for various types of pollutants, as well as by a number of other independent variables. The econometric results indicate that the regulation of nitrogen oxides is associated with productivity improvements with a one-year lag, whereas regulations regarding sulphur dioxide and carbon dioxide have not had any statistically significant impact. In line with the a priori expectations, the price of pulp is connected to a negative effect, while lagged R&D expenditures have had corresponding positive impacts. However, since stationary tests are asymptotic and the data series are quite short, strong conclusions regarding the actual causal effect of environmental policy could not be drawn. The results could therefore not be viewed as a proof of the so-called strong Porter hypothesis postulating that stringent well-designed environmental regulations increase productivity growth compared to a no-policy scenario.


Photoreforming of biomass to value-added chemicals and fuels is a chemical approach to extract photo-synthetically-trapped energy in complex biomolecules which otherwise disintegrate naturally in the environment. Designing precise photocatalytic materials that can selectively break the sturdy, nature-designed biomass with multiplex chemical composition/bonding and inaccessible sites is central to deploying this technology. Polymeric carbon nitride (CN) comprised of a 2D network of condensed hep-tazine/triazine (C 6 N 7 /C 3 N 3 ) core has shown great promise for photoreforming of biomass derivatives due to intriguing physicochemical and optical properties. This review comprehensively summarizes the state-of-the-art applications of CN-based photocatalysts for the conversion of lignocellulosic biomass derivatives. Various chemical and structural modi fi cations in CN structure such as doping, surface functionalization, hybridization entailing to higher selectivity and conversion have been discussed aiming at provid-ing valuable guidance for future CN-based materials design.


Over the last two decades, there has been a move towards standardization of educational norms, with, for instance, the UNESCO 4 pillars of learning (Delors 1996) and similar developments can be observed in Engineering Education. However, along with the establishment of shared objectives, the need to address the diversity of Engineering Education, to integrate different voices and perspectives and to adapt to local and global needs is also recognized. This tension between unity and diversity has long been a preoccupation of the SEFI community, although work on Intercultural or "global" competences remains relatively limited (Smith 2010, Van Maele et al 2013 ). At the same time, in recent years, many educators have pointed out the need to transform educational practices to accommodate the vast amount of knowledge which is readily available but which requires skills, such as critical, synthetic and analytical reasoning, to access, process, make sense of and accept or reject such information, along with increased communication, creative and networking competences across disciplinary and geographical borders (Pink, 2005; Wagner 2010; Serres 2012). In this increasingly changing and mobile world, the question of intercultural competences is at the core of the debate. In this plenary, which takes the form of an interdisciplinary and intercultural dialogue, we present our teaching and research model for Intercultural Management for Engineers. Firstly, we describe and analyse our two-tier pedagogical approach, which combines Intercultural Management and communication theories and experiential learning. Using a concept called "interity", developed by Demorgon (2010) and based on insights from the French philosopher and mathematician, Couturat, we encourage the students to negotiate a common frame of reference and action which enables students to gain first-hand experience of the realities of diversity management. Our main objective is to use the diversity represented by cultural and individual differences to produce new synergies. In the second part of the plenary, we focus on our Intercultural Management Competence Model (IMCM) which draws on 10 years' teaching and research focused on the identification, development, assessment and analysis of Intercultural Management competences. The model combines the five savoirs developed by Byram, Zarate et al. 1994, the cultural dimensions described in the Intercultural Management literature, Demorgon's multiperspectivist approach and insights gained from our interviews with practicing and student engineers in an international context . The starting point for our reflection is the dichotomy between the questions: When is an engineer not an engineer? and a comment made by a Spanish engineering student: " We all speak the same language we are all engineers".


In order to study possible effects of microwave electromagnetic (EM) fields on neuronal activity, a real-time exposure system was designed and fabricated. The structure is suitable for electrophysiological recording in brain slices, a widely used in vitro methodology for investigations on neuronal function. The EM features of the structure were characterized both numerically and experimentally. Results indicate that the system is slightly radiating and that its field configuration produces minimum coupling with laboratory equipment. To determine the device efficiency, numerical and experimental dosimetry was conducted. The system exhibits high efficiency, with uniform distribution of the E- and H-fields and the specific absorption rate (SAR) in the biological sample.


Rosuvastatin based novel indole derivatives designed as potential anti-cancer agents were synthesized via a newly developed ligand-free, simple, straightforward and inexpensive one-pot method. The methodology involved a Cu-catalyzed coupling-cyclization of a rosuvastatin based alkyne with o-iodoanilides in the presence of CuI and K2CO3 in PEG-400. Three of the synthesized compounds showed promising anti-proliferative activities against cancer cell lines and an increase of p21 mRNA expression and apoptotic effects in zebrafish embryos/larvae.


In this paper, a new spatio-temporal based approach is proposed which improves the speed and performance of temporal-based algorithms, conventional Least Mean Square (LMS), Normalized LMS (NLMS) and Variable Step-size LMS (VSLMS), by using the switched beam technique. In the proposed algorithm, first, DOA of the signal source is estimated by MUltiple SIgnal Classification (MUSIC) algorithm. In the second step, depending on the desired user's location, the closest beam of the switched beam system is selected and its predetermined weights are chosen as the initial values for the weight vector. Finally, LMS/NLMS/VSLMS algorithm is applied to initial weights and final weights are calculated. Simulation results show improved convergence and tracking speed and also a higher efficiency in data transmission through increasing the Signal to Interference plus Noise Ratio (SINR) as well as decreasing the Bit Error Rate (BER) and Mean Square Error (MSE), in a joint state. Moreover, Error Vector Magnitude (EVM) as a measure for distortion introduced by the proposed adaptive scheme on the received signal is evaluated for all LMS-based proposed algorithms which are approximately the same as that for conventional ones. In order to investigate the tracking capability of the proposed method, the system is assumed to be time varying and the desired signal location is considered once in the centre of the initial beam and once in the edge of the fixed beam. As depicted in simulation results, the proposed DOAbased methods offer beamforming with higher performance in both cases of the initial beam, centre as the best case and edge as the worst case, with respect to conventional ones. The MSE diagrams for this time varying system show an ideal response for DOA-based methods in the best case. Also, in the worst case, initial height of MSE is reduced and consequently the required iteration to converge is less than the conventional LMS/NLMS/VSLMS.


BACKGROUND
Fibrinolytic activity in cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) is activated in humans by different pathologic processes.

OBJECTIVES
To investigate fibrinolytic activity in the CSF of dogs with neurological disorders by measuring CSF D-dimer concentrations.

ANIMALS
One hundred and sixty-nine dogs with neurological disorders, 7 dogs with systemic inflammatory diseases without central nervous system involvement (SID), and 7 healthy Beagles were included in the study. Dogs with neurological disorders included 11 with steroid-responsive meningitis-arteritis (SRMA), 37 with other inflammatory neurological diseases (INF), 38 with neoplasia affecting the central nervous system (NEO), 28 with spinal compressive disorders (SCC), 15 with idiopathic epilepsy (IE), and 40 with noninflammatory neurological disorders (NON-INF).

METHODS
Prospective observational study. D-dimers and C-reactive protein (CRP) were simultaneously measured in paired CSF and blood samples.

RESULTS
D-dimers and CRP were detected in 79/183 (43%) and in 182/183 (99.5%) CSF samples, respectively. All dogs with IE, SID, and controls had undetectable concentrations of D-dimers in the CSF. CSF D-dimer concentrations were significantly (P < .001) higher in dogs with SRMA than in dogs with other diseases and controls. CSF CRP concentration in dogs with SRMA was significantly (P < .001) higher than in dogs of other groups and controls, except for the SID group. No correlation was found between blood and CSF D-dimer concentrations.

CONCLUSIONS AND CLINICAL IMPORTANCE
Intrathecal fibrinolytic activity seems to be activated in some canine neurological disorders, and it is high in severe meningeal inflammatory diseases. CSF D-dimer concentrations may be considered a diagnostic marker for SRMA.


This paper presents a VLSI architecture of QR decomposition for 4×4 MIMO-OFDM systems. A real-value decomposed MIMO system model is handled and thus the channel matrix to be processed is extended to the size of 8×8. Instead of direct factorization, a QR decomposition scheme by cascading one complex-value and one real-value Givens rotation stages is proposed, which can save 44% hardware complexity. Besides, the requirement of skewed inputs in the conventional QR-decomposition systolic array is eliminated and 36% of delay elements are removed. The real-value Givens rotation stage is also constructed in a form of a stacked triangular systolic array to match with the throughput of the complex-value one. Hardware sharing is considered to enhance the utilization. The proposed design is implemented in 0.18-μm CMOS technology with 152K gates. From measurement, the maximum operating frequency is 100 MHz. It generates QR decomposition results every four clock cycles and accomplishes continuous projection every clock cycle to support MIMO detection up to 2.4 Gb/s. The measured power consumption is 318.6 mW and 219.6 mW for QR decomposition and projection, respectively, at the highest operating frequency. From the comparison, our proposed design achieves the highest throughput with high efficiency.


Simulation and verification are two conventional techniques for the analysis of specifications of real-time systems. While simulation is relatively inexpensive in terms of execution time, it only validates the behavior of a system for one particular computation path. On the other hand, verification provides guarantees over the entire set of computation paths of a system, but is, in general, very expensive due to the state-space explosion problem. We introduce a new technique: simulation-verification combines the best of both worlds by synthesizing an intermediate analysis method. This method uses simulation to limit the generation of a computation graph to that set of computations consistent with the simulation. This limited computation graph, called a simulation-verification graph, can be one or more orders of magnitude smaller than the full computation graph. A tool, XSVT, is described which implements simulation-verification graphs. Three paradigms for using the new technique are proposed. The paper illustrates the application of the proposed technique via an example of a robot controller for a manufacturing assembly line.


BACKGROUND: The majority of pediatric patients with Graves' disease will ultimately require definitive therapy in the form of radioactive iodine (RAI) ablation or thyroidectomy. There are few studies that directly compare the efficacy and complication rates between RAI and thyroidectomy. We compared the relapse rate as well as the acute and long-term complications of RAI and total thyroidectomy among children and adolescents with Graves' disease treated at our center. METHODS: Medical records from 81 children and adolescents with a diagnosis of Graves' disease who received definitive therapy over a 12-year period were reviewed. RESULTS: Fifty one patients received RAI and 30 patients underwent thyroidectomy. The relapse rate was not significantly different between RAI and thyroidectomy (12.1% vs. 0.0%, p=0.28). There were no acute or long-term complications in the RAI group, but there were eight cases of hypoparathyroidism (two transient and six permanent) in the thyroidectomy group. None of the patients developed a recurrent laryngeal nerve injury. CONCLUSIONS: RAI is a safe and effective option for treatment of children and adolescents with Graves' disease. In light of the rate of permanent hypoparathyroidism seen at our center with thyroidectomy and previously published long-term safety of RAI, we recommend RAI as the first line treatment for children and adolescents with Graves' disease. For those centers performing thyroidectomies, we recommend that each center select 1-2 high-volume pediatric surgeons to perform all thyroid procedures, allowing individuals to increases case volume and potentially decrease long-term complications of thyroidectomy.