Purpose: Due to the aging population, dementia is an increasingly growing societal issue. Consequently, informal caregivers are forced to provide care in the home over a longer period of time. Especially with dementia, disturbed sleep patterns are often a tipping point for moving a person into an elder care facility. To address this challenge, a high-intensity, bluish light that suppresses melatonin is introduced into the home environment. This light potentially regulates the day-night rhythm1. This type of intervention has been used in elder care facilities; but in this study we introduce a light fixture that is suitable for the home environment, the VitalLight (Figure 1). There is evidence that such light interventions can slow the cognitive deterioration of dementia2, making it especially interesting to pursue in this context. Dynamics are added to the lamp so that it provides activating light throughout the day (when needed) and regular lighting in the evening. Method: To evaluate the VitalLight, it was placed for two weeks in the real-life home environments of eleven elderly with early to mid-stage dementia. The subjective sleep quality was measured with a questionnaire, which was an adaptation based on the Karolinska sleep diary3 and the Pittsburg Sleep Quality Index4. The questionnaire was administered at three points in time: as a baseline at the start and after the first and second week. Results & Discussion: The results show the subjective assessment of sleep quality over a period of two weeks (Figure 2). Based on these results, there was no significant improvement in the sleep-wake cycle. Nevertheless, based on the averages, a trend line is apparent with an upward trend of the mean sleep quality over two weeks. In conclusion, more research in a longitudinal setup is necessary to gather more data. A possible limitation is that the effect of melatonin suppression needs more time, and another limitation is the lack of a control group. Moreover, a combination of qualitative with quantitative measurements may provide more conclusive results. Furthermore, some people may be unresponsive to melatonin suppression, causing a bias in the mean results.


In cellular-based public safety networks, user equipments (UEs) located in coverage area of active cells are able to act as relay UEs (RUEs). These RUEs provide cellular services to isolated UEs (IUEs). Due to mobility of both an IUE and a RUE, a link between them may be disconnected. Thus, it is necessary to newly establish a link between the IUE and another RUE. Unfortunately, it may cause that packets sent by previous RUE to be lost during the link re-establishment procedure. An efficient sidelink re-establishment procedure is proposed to reduce link re-establishment set-up delay. The performance of the proposed method compared with the conventional scheme used in 3rd Generation Partnership Project is evaluated. The proposed scheme shows better performance than the conventional scheme in terms of signalling overhead and set-up delay for sidelink re-establishment.


In this Masters Thesis Project, two Code Smells, four Anti-Patterns and four types of Design Principle violations have been examined. We developed a detection program called the Anti-Pattern Scanner. This scanner has been used in an empirical evaluation where five open-source Java projects have been examined and scanned for these pattern problems. The results are that the examined problems generally do occur in software systems. The problems are estimated to be inconvenient to software development, depending on the strength of their presence. Based on the Anti-Pattern Scanner and the results from this evaluation, suggestions for follow-up studies are offered.


This paper presents results of a study whose objective is to show if there is an interest to use the superconducting magnetic storage (SMES) and the global control to improve the inter-area oscillations stability. Geometric measures of controllability and observability are used for input/output selection. The linearized model of a two areas four generators power system obtained by using SDYN software is used in this work. Effects, on the input/output pairs selection, of the excitation systems, the power how and the SMES sites on the network are highlighted. It appears that the power flow influences the measurements choice in comparison with the excitation system which has an impact on control signal selection. For all the studied cases, the results obtained show that the global control is well suited to solve the problem of inter-area oscillations stabilization.


Linker histones are involved in chromatin higher-order structure and gene regulation. We have successfully achieved partial phosphorylation of linker histones in chicken erythrocyte soluble chromatin with CDK2, as indicated by HPCE, MALDI-TOF and Tandem MS. We have studied the effects of linker histone partial phosphorylation on secondary structure and chromatin condensation. Infrared spectroscopy analysis showed a gradual increase of β-structure in the phosphorylated samples, concomitant to a decrease in α-helix/turns, with increasing linker histone phosphorylation. This conformational change could act as the first step in the phosphorylation-induced effects on chromatin condensation. A decrease of the sedimentation rate through sucrose gradients of the phosphorylated samples was observed, indicating a global relaxation of the 30-nm fiber following linker histone phosphorylation. Analysis of specific genes, combining nuclease digestion and qPCR, showed that phosphorylated samples were more accessible than unphosphorylated samples, suggesting local chromatin relaxation. Chromatin aggregation was induced by MgCl2 and analyzed by dynamic light scattering (DLS). Phosphorylated chromatin had lower percentages in volume of aggregated molecules and the aggregates had smaller hydrodynamic diameter than unphosphorylated chromatin, indicating that linker histone phosphorylation impaired chromatin aggregation. These findings provide new insights into the effects of linker histone phosphorylation in chromatin condensation.


no experience in DCS had difficulty in identifying the ICA correctly in a significant proportion of cases. Amongst correctly identified arteries there was considerable interobserver variation in the interpretation of the images and the untrained clinicians made errors in interpreting abnormalities in 5062% of the arteries even when they identified the arteries correctly. It is likely that similar problems may occur in other departments and hospitals, so until clinicians have a greater experience of DCS, hard copies of images should not be routinely provided. It appears that correct interpretation of duplex images require extra training.' SAMAN GUNATILAKE PETER SANDERCOCK JIM SLATTERY Department of Clinical Neurosciences, Western General Hospital, Edinburgh EH4 2XU, UK


The growing number of vehicles on the roads coupled with inefficient road operations have generated traffic congestion. Consequently, traffic congestion increase trip time and indirectly contributes to poor quality of life and environmental pollution. Therefore, alleviating traffic congestion, especially in urban networks, is crucial and requires efficient traffic management and control. Recently, macroscopic operational scheme has become the preferred method for monitoring and mitigating traffic congestion due its simplicity in modeling complex large-scale cities and low computational effort. The schemes are based on parsimonious models known as Macroscopic or Network Fundamental Diagram (MFD or NFD) which provides an aggregated model of urban traffic dynamics, linking network circulating flow and average density. This thesis deals with an open problems associated with two main applications of NFD in transportation networks, namely: 1) Traffic monitoring and 2) Traffic flow control. Two parts of the thesis concentrates on each application separately.

The implementation of NFD in perimeter control strategy requires an accurate estimation of NFD where its measurements are reflected from sensors located at appropriate locations in the network. First part of the thesis elaborates a new approach for studying sensor selection for the development of operational or sparse-measurement NFD, with less number of sensor and associated measurements. An information-theoretic based framework is proposed for the optimal sensor selection across a transport network to assist an efficient model selection and construction of sparse-measurement NFD. For the optimal sensor selection, a generalised set covering integer programming (GIP) is developed. Under this framework, several tools to assess GIP solutions are uitilised. First, a correlation between variables is introduced as a ''distance'' metric rather than spatial distance to provide sufficient coverage and information accuracy. Second, the optimal cost of GIP problem is used to determine minimum number of sensors. Third, the relative entropy or Kullback-Leibler divergence is used to measure the dissimilarity between probability mass functions corresponding to different solutions of the GIP program. The proposed framework is evaluated with experimental loop-detector data of one week from central business district with fifty-eight sensors. Results reveal that the obtained sparse-measurement diagrams from the selected models adequately preserve the shape and the main features similar to a full-measurement diagram. Specifically, the coverage level of 24% of the network demonstrated the effectiveness of GIP framework. Simulation results also disclose the Kullback-Liebler divergence as more generic and reliable metric of information loss. Such framework can be of great importance towards a cost-effective sensors installation and maintenance whilst improving the estimation of NFD for better monitoring and control strategy.

Second part of the thesis discusses the traffic flow control problem involving single input flow distribution from perimeter control strategy towards number of gated links at the periphery of the network. It if often assumed that input flow ordered by perimeter control strategy should be equally distributed to a number of candidate junctions. There has not been considerable research into limited storage capacity/different geometric characteristics at gated links as well as equity properties for driver. A control scheme for the multi-gated perimeter flow control (MGC) problem is developed. The scheme determines optimally distributed input flows for a number of gates located at the periphery of a protected network area. A parsimonious model is employed to describe the traffic dynamics of the protected network. To describe traffic dynamics outside of the protected area, the basic state space model is augmented with additional state variables for the queues at store-and-forward origin links of the periphery. The perimeter traffic flow control problem is formulated as a convex optimal control problem with constrained control and state variables. For the application of the proposed scheme in real time, the optimal control problem may be embedded in a rolling-horizon scheme using the current state of the whole system as the initial state as well as predicted demand flows at origin/entrance links. This part also offers flow allocation policies for single-region network without considering entrance link dynamics namely capacity-based flow allocation policy and optimisation-based flow allocation policy. Simulation results are carried for a protected network area of downtown San Francisco with fifteen gates of different geometric characteristics. Results demonstrate the efficiency and equity properties of the MGC approach to better manage excessive queues outside of the protected network area and optimally distribute the input flows. The MGC outperforms the other approaches in terms of serving more trips in protected network as well as shorter queues at gated links. Such framework is particularly of interest to city managers because the optimal flow distribution may influence the network throughput hence serves maximum number of network users.


The power output and heat rate (or efficiency) of a combined cycle power plant are expressed in the Power Industry at a specified set of "reference conditions". Some of these reference conditions pertain to the test boundary (eg. ambient air temperature, barometric pressure etc.) while some others pertain to the operating condition (eg. baseload, evaporative cooler status, etc.) within the plant boundary. The process of measuring the actual thermal performance of a combined cycle plant involves conducting a test wherein the plant is operated at the pre-determined set of operating conditions that enable minimizing deviations from the "reference conditions". It is a well-known fact that despite all efforts made during such a test, the actual boundary and operating conditions that prevail at the time of the test will not necessarily be identical to the pre-defined set of "reference conditions". Hence, in order to evaluate the performance levels of the plant, one of the essential steps in the testing process is to "correct" the measured power output and heat consumption (or heat rate) for differences that persist between the actual test conditions and the corresponding set of "reference conditions". This "correction" can be performed by using either a correction curve-based approach or a model-based approach.When a correction curve-based approach is used, the effects of the boundary conditions on the relevant performance parameter (output, heat consumption or heat rate) can be depicted as an additive correction term or as a multiplicative correction term. As such, the corrections to the boundary conditions can be applied as either a) additive or b) multiplicative or c) a combination of additive and multiplicative referred to as "hybrid". The prevailing industry code for testing combined cycle power plants, ASME PTC 46, has adopted the "hybrid" method while the codes for testing individual equipment (such as PTC 22, PTC 6.2, PTC 6) have adopted either the additive philosophy or the multiplicative philosophy or a "hybrid" philosophy similar to PTC 46.The purpose of this paper is to present the outcome of a study that compares the three different correction methods utilizing the correction curve approach for a combined cycle power plant. The studies were based on thermodynamic simulations performed on different plant configurations. A key result will be the quantification of the errors associated with the different methods, which are primarily a function of the ability of the different methods to inherently capture the interactions between the various boundary parameters in the correction process and are a representation of the uncertainty associated with the particular correction method. Furthermore, the paper will introduce a new calculation method and provide recommendations that will help improve the accuracies of test results.© 2015 ASME


Problem. The act of worship has not been the central focus of the Seventh-day Adventist church. An evangelistic priority has reduced its worship periods to mostly didactic acts, often leaving believers unsatisfied in their desires to worship. Structural deficiencies are evident in the neglect of liturgical and ritualistic matters. The problem is compounded in that the educative forces inherent in liturgical, ritualistic expressions are not well understood. Purpose. The purpose of this study was to analyze the nature of liturgy and ritual in order to better understand their contribution and potential as religious education and their impact upon worship. It explored the probable sources of the prevailing prejudice against liturgy in Adventism and noted the relationship between ritual and culture within the church. Method. This research is a philosophical study in which documentary research has been included to support the line of argument pursued. Findings. Catechesis, liturgy, and ritual must be combined in order to present a balance in worship form. This is necessitated because the brain has the potential of processing experience through two interpretive modes. Catechesis appeals to the cognitive left hemisphere of the brain, while liturgy--order, ritual, and ceremonial--appeals to the affective right hemisphere. Resistance to liturgy and right-hemispheric emphasis is apparent in Adventism. This is partly the result of prevailing attitudes in society which prize left-brain-oriented learning, and partly because of the continuing traditions of nineteenth-century revivalism. The relationship between culture and ritual undoubtedly affects the church and a better understanding of this relationship upon language and the arts--notably music--will allow for a holistic approach to worship. Conclusions. The Seventh-day Adventist church may retain a strong catechetical emphasis and still allow a more informed participation in its rites. New rites may need to be developed, or old ones reformed, to facilitate worship and learning. Religious educators must become aware of the hemispheric preference of their pupils and plan educational experiences accordingly. A holistic approach to liturgy should prove more satisfying to all worshippers.


In this paper I analyse the diagnostic process in relation to bacterial sore throat and how this disease comes into being, or how it is enacted, at two Swedish health centres. The empirical data analysed consist of interviews with nurses and general practioners as well as observations at the health centres. The concept of enactment implies that disease is relationally constituted in and through relations between human and non-human actors. In the paper the relations between health care personnel, bodies, symptoms, instruments, bacteria and other actors are investigated, and I discuss how different enactments of bacterial sore throat come to being depending on how these relations are organized. When doing this the clinical gaze - the diagnosing gaze that interpret signs of an underlying pathology on the patients body – is explored and in relation to the empirical material this gaze is investigated, that is, how it is employed and how it is established in relation to a number of human and non-human actors.


Clinical symptoms, endoscopic findings and radiographic features of a polypoid villous adenoma of the stomach are described. A working classificaiton of gastric epithelial polyps and a table of differential diagnoses are presented. The clinical significance of this lesion is discussed.


The antiretroviral tenofovir, used alone or in combination, greatly reduces the risk of becoming infected with HIV through vaginal sex, show the results from two new studies in Africa of the concept known as pre-exposure prophylaxis.

The findings, released at a 13 July telephone news conference, confirm and expand on results announced last autumn of a similar trial in men who have sex with men ( BMJ 2010;341:c6737, doi:10.1136/bmj.c6737).

The first study, the tenofovir disoproxil fumarate 2 (TDF2) study, enrolled 1219 heterosexual men and women in Botswana who weren't infected with HIV and randomised them to take either the combination treatment of tenofovir with emtricitabine (marketed as Truvada) or placebo. They also received counselling on prevention and treatment of HIV and other sexually transmitted infections.

There was "a 62.6% reduction in the risk of HIV infection" among those receiving …


In this paper, we propose a general approach to derive runtime enforcement implementations for multiagent systems, called shields, from temporal logical specifications. Each agent of the multi-agent system is monitored, and if needed corrected, by the shield, such that a global specification is always satisfied. The different ways of how a shield can interfere with each agent in the system in case of an error introduces the need for quantitative objectives. This work is the first to discuss the shield synthesis problem with quantitative objectives. We provide several cost functions that are utilized in the multi-agent setting and provide methods for the synthesis of cost-optimal shields and fair shields, under the given assumptions on the multi-agent system. We demonstrate the applicability of our approach via a detailed case study on UAV mission planning for warehouse logistics and simulating the shielded multi-agent system on ROS/Gazebo.


Background The diagnosis of infectious diseases has been hampered by reliance on microbial culture. Cultures take several days to return a result and organisms frequently fail to grow. In critically ill patients this leads to the use of empiric, broad-spectrum antimicrobials and mitigates against stewardship. Methods Single ICU observational cohort study with contemporaneous comparator group. We developed and implemented a TaqMan array card (TAC) covering 52 respiratory pathogens in ventilated patients undergoing bronchoscopic investigation for suspected pneumonia. The time to result was compared against conventional culture, and sensitivity compared to conventional microbiology and metagenomic sequencing. We observed the clinician decisions in response to array results, comparing antibiotic free days (AFD) between the study cohort and comparator group. Findings 95 patients were enrolled with 71 forming the comparator group. TAC returned results 61 hours (IQR 42-90) faster than culture. The test had an overall sensitivity of 93% (95% CI 88-97%) compared to a combined standard of conventional culture and metagenomic sequencing, with 100% sensitivity for most individual organisms. In 54% of cases the TAC results altered clinical management, with 62% of changes leading to de-escalation, 30% to an increase in spectrum, and investigations for alternative diagnoses in 9%. There was a significant difference in the distribution of AFDs with more AFDs in the TAC group (p=0.02). Interpretation Implementation of a customised syndromic diagnostic for pneumonia led to faster results, with high sensitivity and measurable impact on clinical decision making. Funding Addenbrookes Charitable Trust, Wellcome Trust and Cambridge NIHR BRC


CONTEXT.—
The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved immune checkpoint inhibitor therapy for patients with advanced solid tumors that have DNA mismatch repair defects or high levels of microsatellite instability; however, the FDA provided no guidance on which specific clinical assays should be used to determine mismatch repair status.

OBJECTIVE.—
To develop an evidence-based guideline to identify the optimal clinical laboratory test to identify defects in DNA mismatch repair in patients with solid tumor malignancies who are being considered for immune checkpoint inhibitor therapy.

DESIGN.—
The College of American Pathologists convened an expert panel to perform a systematic review of the literature and develop recommendations. Using the National Academy of Medicine-endorsed Grading of Recommendations Assessment, Development and Evaluation approach, the recommendations were derived from available evidence, strength of that evidence, open comment feedback, and expert panel consensus. Mismatch repair immunohistochemistry, microsatellite instability derived from both polymerase chain reaction and next-generation sequencing, and tumor mutation burden derived from large panel next-generation sequencing were within scope.

RESULTS.—
Six recommendations and 3 good practice statements were developed. More evidence and evidence of higher quality were identified for colorectal cancer and other cancers of the gastrointestinal (GI) tract than for cancers arising outside the GI tract.

CONCLUSIONS.—
An optimal assay depends on cancer type. For most cancer types outside of the GI tract and the endometrium, there was insufficient published evidence to recommend a specific clinical assay. Absent published evidence, immunohistochemistry is an acceptable approach readily available in most clinical laboratories.


The quantitative estimation of regional cardiac deformation from three-dimensional (3-D) image sequences has important clinical implications for the assessment of viability in the heart wall. We present here a generic methodology for estimating soft tissue deformation which integrates image-derived information with biomechanical models, and apply it to the problem of cardiac deformation estimation. The method is image modality independent. The images are segmented interactively and then initial correspondence is established using a shape-tracking approach. A dense motion field is then estimated using a transversely isotropic, linear-elastic model, which accounts for the muscle fiber directions in the left ventricle. The dense motion field is in turn used to calculate the deformation of the heart wall in terms of strain in cardiac specific directions. The strains obtained using this approach in open-chest dogs before and after coronary occlusion, exhibit a high correlation with strains produced in the same animals using implanted markers. Further, they show good agreement with previously published results in the literature. This proposed method provides quantitative regional 3-D estimates of heart deformation.


Aims: To assess the clinical efficacy and safety of administration of a low dosage of cardio-selective β- receptor blocker in treating Acute Exacerbation of Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (AECOPD) complicated with right cardiac failure.
Methods: In total, 100 AECOPD patients were randomly assigned into the experimental (n=50) and control groups (n=50). Patients in the control group received standard treatment according to the Global Initiative for Chronic Obstructive Lung Disease (GOLD, 2013 edition). Based upon conventional therapy, those in the experimental group received oral administration of metoprolol tartrate tablets. All patients were followed up for 1 year.
Results: The Forced Expiratory Volume in one second (FEV1) did not significantly differ between two groups (both P>0.05). Prior to the treatment, no statistical significance was observed in heart rate between two groups (P>0.05), whereas heart rate in the experimental group was significantly improved (P 0.05). In the experimental group, 3 patients (6.3%) suffered from adverse events, and 4 (8.4%) in the control group (P>0.05). In the experimental group, the frequency of acute exacerbation, mortality rate and NT-proBNP level were significantly lower than those in the control group (all P 0.05).
Conclusion: Use of a low-dose cardio-selective β-receptor blocker can effectively alleviate AECOPD complicated with right heart failure, improve heart function and decrease the frequency of acute exacerbation. No severe adverse events are noted after administration of cardio-selective β-receptor blocker.


This thesis examines the experiences of mature women students who return to learning after a number of years out of the education system. It is a qualitative study based on
loosely structured in-depth interviews with forty nine women attending college or university on a variety of courses in and around a northern city. The research, set within a theoretical framework of patriarchy, began as an exploration
of the barriers which mature women meet when they return to education. These issues were very real in the women's lives, though they did not necessarily conceptualise them as barriers. In addition though, the appreciative, ethnographic style of research which I adopted enabled the women to tell their own stories, and totally unexpected data emerged. Around half of the students told me of painful experiences in their lives, either past or present. These stories became the central theme of the research and are presented in the main empirical chapter, largely in the women's own words.
The central analytical question became 'what are the links, if any, between the women's experiences and their return to education?' I found from the research that this group of
women were gaining far more from education than just paper qualifications. They talked of factors such as increasing confidence, an improved self-image, independence and fulfillment and I have made connections, which are drawn out throughout the main part of the thesis, between these factors, education and the trauma in the women's lives.
The results were then used to examine the value of patriarchy as an illuminating framework for the women's experiences. In general, the women's stories are supportive of this perspective but they also highlight areas where there appears to be little research or discussion in the existing literature on patriarchy. These areas include
psychological violence, the guilt feelings of the students, the control of women by other women and finally and perhaps most importantly, the agency which the women have shown in their determination to take some control over at least a part of their lives. Overall, it seems that whatever theft story, this group of students are using education as a vehicle to transform theft lives both socially and psychologically.


Most audio editing tools offer limited capabilities for browsing and editing large collections of files. Moreover working with many audio files tends to clutter the limited screen space of a desktop monitor. In this paper we describe MARSYAS3D, a prototype audio browser and editor for large audio collections. A variety of 2D and 3D graphics interfaces for working with collections and/or individual files have been developed. Many of these interfaces are informed by automatic content-based audio analysis tools. Although MARSYAS3D can be used with a desktop monitor it has been specifically designed as an application for the Princeton Scalable Display Wall project. The current Display Wall system has an 8 x 18-foot rear projection screen with a resolution of 4096 x 1536 pixels. For sound a custom-made 16-speaker surround system is used. The users interact with the Wall using a variety of input methods. This immersive display allows for visual and aural presentation of detailed information for browsing and editing large audio collections and supports natural interactive collaborations among multiple simultaneous users.


Terrestrial organic matter (t-OM) has been recognized as an important cross-boundary subsidy to aquatic ecosystems. However, recent evidence has shown that t-OM contributes little to promote secondary production in lakes because it is a low-quality food for aquatic consumers. To resolve this conflict, we performed a field experiment using leaf litter as t-OM. In the experiment, we monitored zooplankton biomass in enclosures with and without addition of leaf litter under shaded and unshaded conditions and assessed food web changes with stable isotope analyses. We then examined whether or not leaf litter indeed stimulates lake secondary production and, if it does, which food chain, the detritus-originated food chain ("brown" food chain) or the algae-originated food chain ("green" food chain), contributes more to this increase. Analyses with stable isotopes showed the importance of t-OM in supporting secondary production under ambient lake conditions. However, the addition of the leaf litter increased the zooplankton biomass under unshaded conditions but not under shaded conditions. We found that phosphorus was leached from leaf litter at much faster rate than organic carbon and nitrogen despite its low content in the leaf litter. These results showed that leaf litter stimulated the increase in zooplankton biomass mainly through the green food chain rather than the brown food chain because the leaf litter supplied limiting nutrients (i.e., phosphorus) for primary producers.Our results indicate that the functional stoichiometry of the subsidized organic matter plays a crucial role in determining the relative importance of brown and green food chains in promoting production at higher trophic levels in recipient ecosystems.


A simple construction of an orthonormal basis starting with a so-called mother wavelet, together with an efficient implementation gained the wavelet decomposition easy acceptance and generated a great research interest in its applications. An orthonormal basis may not, however, always be a suitable representation of a signal, particularly when time (or space) invariance is a required property. The conventional way around this problem is to use a redundant decomposition. We address the time-invariance problem for orthonormal wavelet transforms and propose an extension to wavelet packet decompositions. We show that it,is possible to achieve time invariance and preserve the orthonormality. We subsequently propose an efficient approach to obtain such a decomposition. We demonstrate the importance of our method by considering some application examples in signal reconstruction and time delay estimation.


Bi-stable structure can be stable in both its extended and coiled forms. As a novel deployable structure, it shows a broad application prospect in the field of aeronautics and civil engineering, etc. Considered two cylindrical shells having the same flattening configurations, they can be closely bound together by applying external forces. And the corresponding double-layered cylindrical shell model is proposed. Expressions for the bending and stretching strain energies of the cylindrical shells are presented. Calculations show that total strain energy has two local minimal values, which reveals that the double-layered cylindrical shell has its bi-stability. The corresponding rolled-up radii are thus determined.


Magnetic thinfilms, either granular or multilayed, are essential components for the design of magnetic devices. In order to design magnetic material for specific application, it is necessary to understand the influence of preparation process and preparation materials on the resulting parameter such as grain size and magnetic structure. Magnetic domain structure is responsible for the magnetic behavior of ferromagnetic material. Magnetic domains are the regions having uniform magnetization. There are different energies acting in a magnetic system. Domain structure always has its origin in the possibility of lowering the energy of the system by going from a saturated configuration with magnetic energy to a domain configuration with a lower energy. Magnetic force microscope technique provides the internal structure of domain walls and the spin distributions within domains as well as the general feature of the domain structure.During MFM measurement, there are two forces acting on the tip: magnetic and Vander waal's forces. Hence in MFM, the signal contains both information of surface topography and surface magnetic property generated by Vander Waal's and magnetic forces respectively. MFM can image domain structure in various recording media, materials, and superconductor or,increasingly, small particles, all with sub 100 nm special resolutions. In this work we prepare the Cu, Co and Ni thin films with Co-Cu alloy and Ni-Cu alloy thin film by electrodeposition method at different deposition potential and concentration of electrolyte at 25°C Films are characterized by XRD, SEM, and MFM. Scahifker and Hills model was used for study of nucleation and growth phenomena for electrochemically deposited thin film by cyclic voltammetry and chronoamperometry.Different deposition potentials were selected for the deposition for all the films. To set the deposition potential in all the systems Cyclic Voltammetry is done. The thickness of films lies in the range of 300-400 nm. The phases of the deposits are confirmed by the XRD analysis. As the deposition potential increases the crystallite size of the deposits decreases which is also confirmed by the morphological analysis by SEM. Magnetic domain structure and topography is analyzed by MFM. The topographic figure indicates the presence of aggregates of different sizes on the electrode surface. The films contain two distinct areas, one plane and the other with random fluctuations. The plane regions are assumed to have no contribution to the phase shift of the tip, remarked as non-magnetic phase. As Cu concentration decreases in the alloy solution, the domains are larger in size.


The synergistic interaction of fructose and magnesium (Mg) deficiency on kidney calcification was compared in male and female rats. Male and female weanling rats were divided into four dietary groups: fructose or starch, with or without Mg. Rats were fed their respective diets for 9 weeks, and 24 h urine was collected to measure urinary output, pH, Mg, calcium (Ca), and oxalic acid. Rats were fasted overnight. After decapitation, blood was collected immediately, and kidneys were removed to determine their Mg and Ca content. Dietary fructose significantly increased kidney Ca in female rats fed deficient or adequate Mg diet and in male rats fed Mg-deficient diet only; the greatest kidney calcification occurred in female rats fed Mg-deficient diet (P less than 0.0001). Even in starch groups female rats fed the Mg-deficient diet showed some kidney Ca accumulation. The synergistic interaction of fructose and magnesium deficiency on nephrocalcinosis was significantly greater in female than in male rats. Low urinary output, optimal pH 6.8 for calcium phosphate precipitation, hypercalcaemia, hypercalciuria, hypomagnesuria, and low ratio of urinary Mg to Ca may independently or multifactorially contribute to nephrocalcinosis. The possible mechanism of this interaction is discussed.


A simple ball‐milling method is used to synthesize a tin oxide‐silicon carbide/few‐layer graphene core‐shell structure in which nanometer‐sized SnO2 particles are uniformly dispersed on a supporting SiC core and encapsulated with few‐layer graphene coatings by in situ mechanical peeling. The SnO2‐SiC/G nanocomposite material delivers a high reversible capacity of 810 mA h g−1 and 83% capacity retention over 150 charge/discharge cycles between 1.5 and 0.01 V at a rate of 0.1 A g−1. A high reversible capacity of 425 mA h g−1 also can be obtained at a rate of 2 A g−1. When discharged (Li extraction) to a higher potential at 3.0 V (vs. Li/Li+), the SnO2‐SiC/G nanocomposite material delivers a reversible capacity of 1451 mA h g−1 (based on the SnO2 mass), which corresponds to 97% of the expected theoretical capacity (1494 mA h g−1, 8.4 equivalent of lithium per SnO2), and exhibits good cyclability. This result suggests that the core‐shell nanostructure can achieve a completely reversible transformation from Li4.4Sn to SnO2 during discharging (i.e., Li extraction by dealloying and a reversible conversion reaction, generating 8.4 electrons). This suggests that simple mechanical milling can be a powerful approach to improve the stability of high‐performance electrode materials involving structural conversion and transformation.


A stack of corrugated containers subjected to over-the-road vibrations behaves like a distributed spring-mass system. Severe stack vibrations can crush the bottom container, fatigue the product cushioning, and damage the product. Laboratory tests were conducted to characterize the spring-mass system response to vibration by using a force plate combined with a single accelerometer. By using the force plate, only two data acquisition channels are needed to measure the driving acceleration and response force beneath a container stack. The acceleration and force data become input to a model that reduces the stack to an equivalent single-degree-of-freedom system and identifies its properties. The merits of alternate stacking patterns and interior packaging can then be quantified in terms of their generalized mass, stiffness, and damping and the effect of these properties on the stack response. Cushioning vibration characteristics are determined for flexible product-container interactions. Container designs can be improved based on understanding the physics of transportation vibrations.


Background:Severe malaria (SM) remains a major global health problem causing ~275,000 pediatric deaths annually, worldwide. Continuous, non-invasive monitoring of peripheral perfusion can help detect abnormalities in systemic circulation, a common problem in critically ill patients, and can improve outcomes in children hospitalized with SM. Perfusion index (PI), an indicator of peripheral perfusion measured using a point-of-care pulse oximeter, is the ratio of pulsatile blood flow to static blood in peripheral tissue.
Objective: To investigate the role of PI as an indicator of adverse outcomes including mortality in children hospitalized with SM.
Methods: We measured PI in a prospective cohort study of 600 children <5 years of age with 5 different clinical manifestations of SM, and 120 healthy community children (CC) at two hospitals in Uganda. PI was measured at 6-hr intervals during hospitalization using a Masimo Rad 57 pulse oximeter.
Results: Children with SM had significantly lower admission PI values (1.2 [IQR: 0.58, 2.2] compared to CC (2.8 [1.7, 4.3], p<0.001). Children with SM manifesting as respiratory distress syndrome or severe malarial anemia had lower median PI compared to other manifestations including cerebral malaria, the deadliest form of SM in children. In children with SM, a log decrease in admission PI was associated with 2.7 higher odds of in-hospital mortality (p=0.01). A log reduction in PI was also associated with in-hospital clinical complications associated with SM, including circulatory shock, deep acidotic breathing and acidosis, hypoglycemia, and severe anemia (all P<0.03). In survivors of SM, there were no significant associations between PI and cognitive outcomes at 12-month follow-up.
Conclusion: The role of PI as an indicator of mortality in children with SM and the use of point-of-care tools for continuous monitoring of PI warrants further investigation in the management of SM to prevent or reduce the incidence of adverse outcomes.


Prolonged survival and durable responses in several late-stage cancers such as melanoma and lung cancer have been made possible with the use of immune checkpoint inhibitors targeting the programmed cell-death protein 1 (PD-1) or its ligand PD-L1. While it is prudent to focus on the unprecedented and durable clinical responses, there are subsets of cancer patients that do not respond to immunotherapies or respond early and then relapse later. Many pathways of resistance have been characterized, and more continue to be uncovered. To overcome the development of resistance, an in-depth investigation is necessary to identify alternative immune receptors and signals with the overarching goal of expanding treatment options for those with demonstrated resistance to PD1 checkpoint immunotherapy. In this mini-review, we will discuss the mechanisms by which tumors exhibit resistance to anti-PD-1/PD-L1 immunotherapy and explore strategies to overcome such resistances.


The Student-Centered Activities for Large Enrollment University Physics (SCALE-UP) project at North Carolina State University (NCSU) is developing a curriculum to promote learning through in-class group activities in introductory physics classes up to 100 students. We are currently in Phase II of the project using a specially designed multimedia classroom for 54 students to teach the introductory physics course for engineering majors. This is an intermediate step to the full SCALE-UP classes (99 students) that will be taught in Fall 2000 when the larger classroom is completed. Both classrooms are designed to encourage students to work in groups of three, provide each group with to a laptop computer that has access to the Internet, and allow instructors to interact with each student group. Traditional lecture and laboratory are replaced with an integrated approach using active-learning cooperative group activities. The project is investigating several aspects of instruction including classroom design, classroom management, and curriculum materials. The curriculum materials include adaptation of researchbased/informed activities from the literature to the SCALE-UP classroom and development of new activities. This talk will focus on the evaluation of the project, in particular, evaluating whether students are achieving the learning objectives for the curriculum. Several of the course learning objectives overlap the ABET 2000 criteria including: learning to work well in groups (teamwork), communicating effectively, being able to apply knowledge of mathematics and physics to new situations, and conducting, analyzing and interpreting experiments in addition to building a functional understanding of the course content. Evaluation methods of the SCALE-UP classes taught during the 1998-2000 school years include concept tests, individual and group exams, peer evaluation, and focus group interviews. The results show that students are building a better understanding of the main physics concepts, are more successful at solving problems, and are generally on-task and communicating well during group activities.


Our laboratory has been investigating the cancer inhibitory potential of cranberry proanthocyanidins (C-PAC) against esophageal adenocarcinoma (EAC), a cancer characterized by rapidly rising incident rates and poor survival (18% 5-year survival rate for all stages combined). Utilizing a panel of validated human esophageal cancer cell lines and OE19 xenograft bearing mice, our laboratory reported that C-PAC activates autophagic cell machinery leading to caspase-independent cancer cell death, yet linked to bile acid sensitivity. Reflux of bile and stomach acid into the lower esophagus is considered the major risk factor for progression to EAC. Building on our initial research, we next investigated mechanisms by which C-PAC inhibits reflux-induced EAC with a focus on gut microbiome alterations and modulation of bile acid metabolites. Bile acids undergo secondary metabolism in the intestinal tract, but have not been evaluated in this context. We utilized the rat surgical esophagogastroduodenal anastomosis (EGDA) model for reflux-induced EAC. EGDA+ and non-surgical Sprague Dawley rats were treated with water or C-PAC (650 µg/rat/day) for 25 or 40 weeks and assessed for cancer progression via extensive histopathological characterization. Additionally, at 40 weeks, fecal microbiome profiling was investigated and metabolic profiling conducted on esophageal, liver and fecal samples. Methods included 16s rRNA sequencing of rat fecal DNA, paired end sequencing on Illumina MiSeq and data analysis using Qiime and the R packages phyloseq, and edgeR to assess C-PAC-induced microbiome changes. For metabolite profiling homogenized esophagi, liver and fecal samples were extracted in methanol and characterized by Reverse Phase Ultra high Performance Liquid Chromatography-Tandem Mass Spectrometry RP/UPLC-MS/MS, followed by metabolite identification based on Metabolon's library of authenticated standards. Study results support that C-PAC significantly inhibits the formation of EAC with concomitant restoration of the gut microbial profile, i.e., the bacterial profile shifted toward increased favorable Gram+ Firmicutes and away from inflammatory-linked Gram negative Bacteroidetes. In addition, C-PAC treatment significantly reduced primary and secondary bile acid metabolite levels in the esophagus of reflux/EGDA+ rats. Other metabolites significantly reduced by C-PAC included a number of pro-inflammatory Eicosanoids. In summary, these results support that (1) reflux-induced microbial impairment correlates with the stimulation of bile acid metabolism, and (2) C-PAC mitigates reflux-induced inflammation and injury in the esophagus in association with EAC inhibition. Future research with C-PAC in patients with gastroesophageal reflux disease should include assessments of bile acid metabolites and bacterial profiles as potential cancer-inhibitory mechanisms. Citation Format: Katherine M. Weh, Nita H. Salzman, Amy B. Howell, Jennifer L. Clarke, Bridget A. Tripp, Laura A. Kresty. Cranberry proanthocyanidins reverse microbial dysbiosis and inhibit bile acid metabolism in association with esophageal cancer prevention [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the American Association for Cancer Research Annual Meeting 2017; 2017 Apr 1-5; Washington, DC. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2017;77(13 Suppl):Abstract nr 5250. doi:10.1158/1538-7445.AM2017-5250


Lum suggests that there should be a common surgical curriculum across the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) countries: a commendable initiative, but one with significant challenges and risks: (1) The ASEAN Mutual Recognition Arrangement on medical practitioners' agreement could well improve the quality of surgical care in many ASEAN nations, and recognizes that surgical training programmes should meet the specific needs of the community. However, the scope and depth of surgical practice (actual or desired) may differ across ASEAN countries. They range from those with sophisticated first world surgical capacity to others with poorly resourced and predominantly rural surgical services. A single curriculum may not be equally relevant or appropriate to each nation. (2) Criteria for foreign medical graduates (IMGs) to practise medicine across the ASEAN countries include a common curriculum and common standards for each specialty (for which Lum has proposed an ASEAN Board of Surgery as a vehicle to oversee this), but this would work only if these standards reached the minimum requirements of the most advanced ASEAN countries. (3) A common surgical qualification transferable across countries has merit. But this carries with it risk of losing many of the most valuable surgeons from the poorest countries who are attracted by better prospects (quality of life and remuneration) elsewhere or are head-hunted for their actual expertise. This compounds the crisis of surgical workforce in the poorer donor country. (4) As the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons has discovered when determining the comparability of IMGs wishing to work in Australia and New Zealand, the tools used to assess surgical competence are imprecise. Defining standards across the broad range of surgical competence (both technical and non-technical) is challenging. Lum deserves credit for bringing this important issue to our attention, and as an Australasian College, we may well learn from these initiatives of our ASEAN neighbours.


Alan McPherson. Yankee No!: Anti-Americanism in U.S.-Latin American Relations. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2003. 257pp.Michele Zebich-Knos and Heather N. Nicol, eds. Foreign Policy toward Cuba: Isolation or Engagement. Lanham, Md: Lexington Books, 2005, 285pp.Over the past two years, ten new books have examined Cuban and American diplomatic relations since the beginning of the Cuban republic in 1898. The stimulus for such an outpouring of interest comes from Cuba's solo flight into independence following the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1990 and the withdrawal of economic support in 1992. All eyes turned on Castro's government expecting to witness the sympathetic demise of Moscow's satellite. The island weathered a terrible economic blow, but the government remained in place. In 1994 and 1998, Washington attached severe measures to the blockade intended to finish off the crippled economy, but still Castro governed. Now, the world awaits the announcement that the old caudillo has been removed from power through death. With mortal blows aimed at the heart of the Cuban regime, scholars are considering the past and the future of relations between the United States and Cuba, nations that never ended the Cold War over a decade and a half ago. Two books in particular raise the matter of U.S. foreign policy strategy that has failed to attain cooperation and peace in the region and with Cuba. Each book approaches the issue differently, and thus read together, they expand our view of how policy has been delivered and, at this juncture, how it might be redrawn to bring different results.In the edited compilation Foreign Policy toward Cuba: Isolation or Engagement, sixteen authors (historians, political scientists, Latin Studies professors, and a sociologist) present thirteen essays on the state of foreign relations between the United States, Canada, and Mexico and the CARI-COM nations of the Caribbean and Cuba. Through these essays, the editors set out to illustrate "how one small island can provoke such an enduring foreign-policy response rooted in the Cold War but still intact today" (xi). As a result, this collection is highly focused on the United States' policies toward Cuba and the essayists' criticisms of such policy. Of great consternation to them is the inability of the United States to understand that, in the post-Cold War world, strategies concerning Cuba need revisions that allow for cooperation despite Fidel Castro's longevity in office.Three common themes that arise in these essays are the ineffective, outmoded foreign policy levied toward Cuba since the end of the Cold War, the emphasis placed on Cuba as a domestic rather than foreign policy imperative for the United States, and the composition of the exile community that has generated this view of Cuba as a domestic issue. Taking the United States to task for its isolation of Cuba, Lana Wylie lauds the Canadian foreign policy of constructive engagement as the correct means by which to deal with Cuba and Castro, while Peter McKenna and John M. Kirk see Canadian-Cuban relations in a different light, observing a fluctuation in the liberal nature of Canadian policy corresponding to the politics of the prime minister. Michele ZebichKnos asserts that the Cuban issue has become a domestic issue in the United States as well, given the desire of George W. Bush to transfer his moral agenda to issues dealing with Castro, whereas Soraya Castro Marino suggests that, by overlooking Cuba as an international issue and an ally in the War on Terror, the United States misses the chance to create a bilateral, cooperative relationship. However, according to Guillermo Grenier, Sung-Chang Chun, and Hugh Gladwin the exile community's political influence, whether real or imagined, defines the U.S. government's response to Cuban issues. These essayists' view the reflexive response of U.S. politicians to the Cuban community's requests and its ideology as a barrier to change in foreign relations toward Cuba, but they contend that the community is far from being the homogeneous political group it is believed to be by the U. …


PURPOSE
To report a novel technique for arteriovenous fistula (AVF) closure in side-to-side fistulas.

MATERIALS AND METHODS
One hundred and sixty-two patients with side-to-side AVFs, who were candidates for AVF closure, were randomly divided into two groups: group A (84 patients) who underwent AVF ligature and group B (78 patients) who underwent AVF closure using transvenous endovenorrhaphy technique. Both procedures were conducted by the same surgical team. The patients were followed up for 6 months.

RESULTS
Of 124 patients with proximal AVFs, 65 (52%) subjects underwent ligation and 59 (42%) transvenous endovenorrhaphy. Of 38 patients with distal AVFs, half underwent ligation and for the remainder, transvenous endovenorrhaphy was done. Failure of AVF closure was detected in 28 (17%) patients; 25 (89.28%) were in group A and 3 (10.71%) were in group B. All of these recurrences were successfully treated by transvenous endovenorrhaphy technique.

CONCLUSION
We claim that significant lower failure rate of transvenous endovenorrhaphy makes it the technique of choice, especially for side-to-side AVFs.


This report presents tables and charts for use in determining the characteristics of tapered wings. Theoretical factors are given from which the following characteristics of tapered wings may be found: the span lift distribution, the induced-angle-of attack distribution, the lift-curve slope, the angle of zero lift, the induced drag, the aerodynamic-center position, and the pitching moment about the aerodynamic center.


Pattern recognition predictive models have become an important tool for analysis of neuroimaging data and answering important questions from clinical and cognitive neuroscience. Regardless of the application, the most commonly used method to quantify model performance is to calculate prediction accuracy, i.e. the proportion of correctly classified samples. While simple and intuitive, other performance measures are often more appropriate with respect to many common goals of neuroimaging pattern recognition studies. In this paper, we will review alternative performance measures and focus on their interpretation and practical aspects of model evaluation. Specifically, we will focus on 4 families of performance measures: 1) categorical performance measures such as accuracy, 2) rank based performance measures such as the area under the curve, 3) probabilistic performance measures based on quadratic error such as Brier score, and 4) probabilistic performance measures based on information criteria such as logarithmic score. We will examine their statistical properties in various settings using simulated data and real neuroimaging data derived from public datasets. Results showed that accuracy had the worst performance with respect to statistical power, detecting model improvement, selecting informative features and reliability of results. Therefore in most cases, it should not be used to make statistical inference about model performance. Accuracy should also be avoided for evaluating utility of clinical models, because it does not take into account clinically relevant information, such as relative cost of false-positive and false-negative misclassification or calibration of probabilistic predictions. We recommend alternative evaluation criteria with respect to the goals of a specific machine learning model.


In principle, evolutionary outcomes could be largely predicted if all of the relevant physicochemical variants of a particular protein function under selection were known and integrated into an appropriate physiological model. We have tested this principle by generating a family of variants of the tetracycline resistance protein TetX2 and identified the physicochemical properties most correlated with organismal fitness. Surprisingly, small changes in the Km(MCN), less than twofold, were sufficient to produce highly successful adaptive mutants over clinically relevant drug concentrations. We then built a quantitative model directly relating the in vitro physicochemical properties of the mutant enzymes to the growth rates of bacteria carrying a single chromosomal copy of the tet(X2) variants over a wide range of minocycline (MCN) concentrations. Importantly, this model allows the prediction of enzymatic properties directly from cellular growth rates as well as the physicochemical-fitness landscape of TetX2. Using experimental evolution and deep sequencing to monitor the allelic frequencies of the seven most biochemically efficient TetX2 mutants in 10 independently evolving populations, we showed that the model correctly predicted the success of the two most beneficial variants tet(X2)T280A and tet(X2)N371I. The structure of the most efficient variant, TetX2T280A, in complex with MCN at 2.7 Å resolution suggests an indirect effect on enzyme kinetics. Taken together, these findings support an important role for readily accessible small steps in protein evolution that can, in turn, greatly increase the fitness of an organism during natural selection.


Hypothalamic pathways involved in the regulation of energy balance have not been widely studied in ruminants to date. Here, we used in situ hybridisation to study the gene expression of a number of leptin-sensitive receptors and neuropeptides in the ovine hypothalamus. Gene expression was first localised for cocaineand amphetamine-regulated transcript (CART) and agoutirelated peptide (AGRP). We then examined in adult male castrated sheep the effects of acute negative energy balance induced by a 4-day fast on the amounts of these mRNAs and those for leptin receptor (OB-Rb), neuropeptide Y (NPY) and pro-opiomelanocortin (POMC). CART mRNA was localised in the arcuate nucleus (ARC), paraventricular nucleus, median eminence and ventromedial hypothalamic nucleus, and extensive co-localisation with POMC mRNA was demonstrated in the ARC. AGRP mRNA was localised in the ARC. Fasting up-regulated gene expression for OB-Rb and for the orexigenic neuropeptides NPY and AGRP in the ARC. There was a trend towards down-regulation of gene expression for the anorexigenic neuropeptide CART and no effect on POMC in the ARC, although these results are inconclusive. The presence or absence of oestradiol-containing subcutaneous implants did not influence gene expression or the effects of fasting. The hypothalamic changes were consistent with responses to the observed reduction in circulation leptin and suggest that the peripheral feedback and central mechanisms for restoring the energy balance may be largely conserved across monogastric and


On the night of March 21st, 2006, a 27 year-old man, Thanakorn Pakdeepol, took a hammer and smashed the image of the Hindu deity Brahma - whom the Thai call Thao Maha Phrom - near the Erawan hotel in Bangkok. The destruction took place just before the political crisis centering on Thaksin Shinawatra, the prime minister, reached a climax with the subsequently-discredited election of 2 April 2006. Because the shrine had long been the most significant non-Buddhist shrine in Bangkok, its destruction immediately led both anti- and pro-Thaksin supporters to interpret the act as an omen. In this paper I use the story of the destruction of the Erawan shrine, which I believe can be seen as a watershed event in the crisis surrounding Thaksin. It is also part of the story of the role of the occult in Thaksin's loss of power in the coup of 19 September 2006.


This thesis presents a study on performance analysis and optimal design of heat exchangers and heat exchanger networks. The study includes an experimental investigation of steam condensation in plate heat exchangers, optimal design of plate heat exchangers and plate-fin heat exchangers, and optimization of heat exchanger networks. In the experimental investigation of steam condensation in plate heat exchangers, seven different plate heat exchangers were tested. Based on the experimental data, correlations for predicting heat transfer coefficients and pressure drops have been obtained with satisfactory accuracy. In addition, a calculation procedure in a stepwise fashion for two-phase applications has been developed. A thermal-hydraulic model for plate heat exchangers has been derived. It represents the relationship between heat transfer, pressure drop and exchanger area, and gives the possibility to predict heat transfer coefficients from pressure drops. It is used in the optimal design of plate heat exchangers as well as the optimization of heat exchanger networks using the pinch technology. In all these designs, the plate pattern is optimized for the most common chevron-type plate heat exchangers. Both multi-stream plate heat exchangers and multi-stream plate-fin heat exchangers have been considered. They are important in the optimization of heat exchanger networks because they can reduce both cost and complexity of the network. A design methodology for multi-stream plate-fin heat exchangers has been developed, and the thermal performance of different multi-stream plate heat exchangers has been analyzed and compared. In the investigation of flexibility analysis for heat exchanger networks, the detailed simulation is employed to obtain the steady responses to the disturbances of supply temperatures, flow rates, fouling, etc. The possible candidates for canceling out the disturbance influences are provided through "downstream paths" analysis. Less surface margin, corresponding to less conservative fouling factors, is also studied. This is achieved through trade-off optimization. A case study was conducted at a Swedish pulp and paper mill, Stora Enso Fine Paper at Nymolla. The studied design methods were applied to a heat recovery system at the mill. It was found that the current situation is not energy-efficient, and significant improvement can be achieved through some retrofit measures with a short payback period. In addition, the flexibility analysis shows that up to 12.6% of the total heat transfer surface can be saved due to less conservative fouling factors. (Less)


The Malaysian government has invested heavily to encourage modal shift from private vehicles to public transport, as severe problems arises from the usage of the former mode. The need of understanding human psychological factor toward transport modal shift has gained much interest from public transportation researchers, especially in rapidly-urbanised area such as Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. This study aims to identify the socio-demographics and attitude characteristics of travellers that are "easy-toreach" and "hard-to-reach" based on their attitudes toward travelling. This is achieved by fulfilling the objectives which include an investigation into the key attitudinal factors and its relationship with the willingness to use transit, and the determination of market segments and positions in KL transit market. A questionnaire survey was designed and randomly distributed to travellers within Kuala Lumpur , Malaysia. Total response was 366 respondents. The study has found that six key attitudes are present within the thirty two attitudinal variables. Conclusion made from Structures Equation Modelling (SEM) analysis shows that Sensitivity to Safety & Privacy, Sensitivity to Stress & Comfort and Need for Fixed Schedule was significant in influencing travellers to use transit. Based on the loadings and level of significant, Sensitivity to Safety and Sensitivity to Stress & Comfort was chosen to construct the market segments, together with the dependent factor (Willingness to Use Transit). Eight segments were constructed and examined to identify the socio-demographics and attitude characteristics, and fifteen combination of market position was analysed . It is found that easy-to-reach segment consist of travellers who are least sensitive to safety and privacy, least sensitive to stress and comfort yet show the lowest willingness to use transit. It has the least desire for productivity and reliability, not sensitive to time and the most flexible with travel schedule. On the other hand, the hard-to-reach travellers have the highest sensitivity to safety and privacy, very high sensitivity to stress and comfort but show the highest willingness to use transit. It also has the highest desire for productivity and reliability, are the most sensitive to time and highest in the need for fixed schedule.


Crohn's disease (CD) and ulcerative colitis (UC) are characterized by intestinal inflammation and increased extracellular matrix (ECM) remodeling, which are key pathophysiological mechanisms in patients with IBD and highly related to mucosal damage. Alterations in intestinal ECM turnover as well as macrophage and neutrophil activity may be reflected by secreted products that are released into the systemic circulation. In this study, we aimed to investigate associations between serum biomarkers of neutrophil activity (serum calprotectin) and collagen degradation (mucosal damage), and disease activity in patients with IBD.

 Serological biomarkers of collagen formation (PRO-C3, PRO-C4, PRO-C6), matrix metalloproteinase (MMP)-mediated collagen degradation (C1M, C3M, C4M, C4G, C6Ma3) and intestinal inflammation (VICM [macrophage activity], human neutrophil elastase-derived fragment of calprotectin (CPa9-HNE [serum calprotectin, neutrophil activity]) were measured using Protein FingerPrint assay (PFA) technology in 100 patients with IBD (CD: n=44; UC: n=56). Biochemical disease activity was assessed using C-reactive protein (CRP) levels and available faecal calprotectin (FCal) levels. Endoscopic disease activity was determined using the Simple Endoscopic Score for CD (SES-CD) and Mayo endoscopic subscore for UC.

 C1M strongly associated with elevated CRP levels (defined as >5mg/L, P<0.001) in patients with IBD and significantly associated with faecal calprotectin levels in patients with UC (Spearman's ρ=0.75, P<0.001). In patients with CD, C1M reasonably discriminated between patients with mild and moderate-to-severe endoscopic disease activity (AUC=0.73, P=0.01), whereas this discrimination was more subtle in patients with UC (AUC=0.68, P=0.08). CPa9-HNE levels were significantly increased in patients with elevated CRP levels (P=0.002 for both CD and UC) and associated best with faecal calprotectin levels in patients with CD compared with UC (CD: ρ=0.43, P=0.06; UC: ρ=0.20, P=0.45). Finally, CPa9-HNE levels were able to discriminate between mild and moderate-to-severe endoscopic disease activity in patients with CD (AUC=0.75, P<0.01).

 C1M and CPa9-HNE levels associate with biochemical (CRP, FCal) and endoscopic disease activity in patients IBD, where C1M demonstrated higher accuracy in UC and CPa9-HNE appeared to be more useful in CD in this cohort. Therefore, C1M and CPa9-HNE could serve as surrogate biomarkers for the assessment of disease activity in patients with UC and CD, respectively. Our results should be validated in additional prospective, larger patient cohorts to corroborate these findings.


Asparagine-linked (N-linked) protein glycosylation is one of the most abundant types of post-translational modification, occurring in all domains of life. The central enzyme in N-linked glycosylation is the oligosaccharyltransferase (OST), which catalyzes the covalent attachment of preassembled glycans to specific asparagine residues in target proteins. Whereas in higher eukaryotes the OST is comprised of eight different membrane proteins of which the catalytic subunit is STT3, in kinetoplastids and prokaryotes the OST is a monomeric enzyme bearing homology to STT3. Given their relative simplicity, these single-subunit OSTs (ssOSTs) have emerged as important targets for mechanistic dissection of poorly understood aspects of N-glycosylation and at the same time hold great potential for the biosynthesis of custom glycoproteins. To take advantage of this utility, this chapter describes a multipronged approach for studying and engineering ssOSTs that integrates in vivo screening technology with in vitro characterization methods, thereby creating a versatile and readily-adaptable pipeline for virtually any ssOST of interest. Abbreviations NLG N-linked protein glycosylation ssOST single-subunit oligosaccharyltransferases glycoSNAP glycosylation of secreted N-linked acceptor proteins CFPS cell-free protein synthesis IVG in vitro glycosylation LLOs lipid-linked oligosaccharides POPC 1-palmitoyl-2-oleoyl-sn-glycero-3-phosphocholine


Medical negligence is a topic in tort law which has been widely discussed as good, affordable healthcare, is greatly related to a nation's proof of its valiant efforts to attain a developed nation from a developing status by providing state of the art health care available and affordable, to all levels of society. As a penalty in medical negligence, damages are met out to punish errant members of the medical fraternity by way of legal judgements in a court of law. In some circumstances members of the medical fraternity may also have their medical licenses suspended or revoked. Annually, medical negligence's claim rates are inherently high and are expected to rise in tandem with patients' awareness of their medical rights. Complication arises when the plaintiff in a medical negligence law suit face difficulties in trying to prove that the negligence really did occur. In obtaining access to medical records after a purported civil malpractice accusation, obstruction of justice is rife. They arise when blurred lines cross between obligation of doctor-patient confidentiality and the need to disclose patient's medical records in order to securely obtain accurate sworn testimony of other medical practitioners. It is on the shoulders of the plaintiff, which in most medical malpractice law suits, rests on the patient (patients to the defendant doctors), to prove on a balance of probabilities that the breach of the duty of care did occur and from that breach, negligence had emerged, bringing about the claimed harm resulting in inherent damages suffered. High cost of litigation is also a common effect in medical malpractice law suits. This inevitably raises the insurance premium costs of all medical professionals, in general. These factors serve as impediments towards the plaintiff in obtaining justice. Hence, this paper will try to analyse the causes that has led to some of these problems. Also what will be the undesired effect caused by the difficulties in trying to prove that a medical malpractice has indeed occurred? The initial hypothesis to the matter is that it will cause negative effects to the livelihood of a patient's life and seriously hider access to medical care. This paper will however only be focusing on one popular but ill-favouredeffect that is greatly deliberated on when medical negligence is discussed, which is defensive medicine. Defensive medicine is actually a reaction culminating from the fear of medical malpractice lawsuits by medical practitioners. Fear of facing or being taken action upon, has caused them to take necessary safe steps which is to practice defensive medicine to avoid such risk.


The formation of a wide beam is found necessary for a clinical application of a fast electron beam. A method of formation using thin dispersion foils is the most common one. An electromagnetic method of formation has been worked out, and dose distributions of fast electrons formed by this method have been compared in the tissue equivalent medium with those formed with the help of dispersion foils. The effect of some of the individual units of the forming device in these two methods of formation has been assessed. The experiment was conducted on medical beta-trons B-15 and B-5M-25 manufactured in the USSR. The depth dose distributions of fast electrons along the beam central axis in the electromagnetic formation for electrons with an energy of 7-24 MEV, field 8 X 10 cm and DSS = 90 cm are presented. It has been established that the beam intensity in the electromagnetic formation is higher than in the utilization of dispersion foils. Depth dose distribution is better in the electromagnetic formation than in the utilization of dispersion foils.


This forum presents three different perspectives on the eighth volume in the Harvard Cold War Studies Book Series, The Cold War after Stalin's Death: A Missed Opportunity for Peace? edited by Klaus Larres and Kenneth Osgood. The fifteen contributors to the book discuss changes and continuities in the international environment during the first few years after the death of Josif Stalin, seeking to focus on whether there was a chance during that period to end the Cold War. The book covers U.S.-Soviet relations in depth but also deals with numerous other European and Asian countries. Three distinguished scholars offer their assessments of The Cold War after Stalin's Death and explore some of the major issues raised by the contributors to the volume.


In this paper a compact switched-beam antenna is proposed. The antenna is composed of a four-element antenna array based on L-shaped quarter-wavelength slot antenna elements. Such an antenna element is a planar structure and presents a directional radiation pattern in the azimuth plane. Its maximum radiation direction is toward near the direction of the open end of the slot. As a result, the open ends of the four slot antennas are arranged toward 0, pi/2, pi, and 3pi/2 , respectively. The statuses of these antennas are controlled by some diodes. Consequently, by carefully controlling the diodes, an antenna with several switchable patterns can be achieved. To prove the concept, a 2.4-2.5 GHz switched-beam antenna for WLAN applications is designed and implemented. Its size is 52 mm in square. The antenna possesses eight directional patterns and many nearly omnidirectional patterns in the azimuth plane. The experiment results fully demonstrate the performance of the proposed design. The envelope correlations and the characteristics of the designed antenna are also discussed. Due to the compact size and low manufacture cost, such a design can be a promising solution for digital home applications to overcome multipath problems and increase the transmission data rate.


At our university in the UK the Professional Doctorate in Human and Health Sciences has recently welcomed its third group of multi-professional practitioners; they exhibit the recognizable enthusiasm, excitement and slight apprehension observed in most students on the first day of 'school'. What these particular students see throughout the application process, induction and course handbook reflect several years of focused perseverance based on the original course leader's vision and resolution of challenges within the university's network, and experience obtained after two years of implementing the programme. A subsequent course leader has been given the responsibility of building upon the existing foundations and sets out to develop the second phase.


PURPOSE
To retrospectively compare the safety and efficacy of lower dose mitomycin C (MMC) (0.002%) to that of the standard dose (0.02%) in eyes treated with photorefractive keratectomy (PRK) for myopia.

METHODS
The clinical efficacy of 95 eyes receiving myopic PRK with a standard concentration of MMC (0.02%) is sequentially compared to 126 eyes receiving low dose MMC (0.002%). The topical exposure times for MMC varied between 30 seconds and 2 minutes in both groups, and direct contralateral eye comparison of these two exposure times was analyzed in a prospective subset of 39 patients from among the low dose group. Patients were examined preoperatively and postoperatively at 1, 3, 6-9, and 9-12 months. Haze, visual acuity, and efficacy ratio outcomes were analyzed.

RESULTS
The preoperative findings were overall statistically similar, except for higher spherical equivalent refractive error (P = .007) and best spectacle-corrected visual acuity (P = .007) in the standard MMC group. Postoperatively, haze levels ranged from 0 to 4+. With multivariable analysis, significantly less haze was noted among the standard dose MMC eyes for high myopia and higher ablation depth at all postoperative time points. In contrast, the haze levels were statistically similar for moderate myopia and lower ablation depths at the latter postoperative time points. The subset of contralateral eyes randomly receiving low dose MMC (0.002%) at either 30 seconds or 2 minutes exposure showed no significant difference in haze between these exposure times.

CONCLUSIONS
The standard concentration of topical MMC (0.02%) is more effective than low dose MMC (0.002%) in preventing postoperative haze following surface ablation for myopia > or = -6.00 D and deeper ablation depth > or = 75 microm. However, for moderate myopia and shallow depth, low dosing appears to be equally effective. The duration of MMC exposure appears to be less important than its concentration.


PURPOSE
The stability of i.v. acetaminophen beyond the manufacturer-recommended usage limit of six hours for opened vials was evaluated.

METHODS
Intravenous acetaminophen (10 mg/mL) was obtained. Three identical samples of 100 mg (10 mL in a 10-mL syringe), 250 mg (25 mL in a 30-mL syringe), 500 mg (50 mL in a 60-mL syringe), 250 mg (25 mL in the original vial), and 900 mg (90 mL in original vial) were prepared. A 0.5-mL volume of each sample was withdrawn, diluted with mobile phase to an expected concentration of 50 μg/mL, and assayed in duplicate using high-performance liquid chromatography immediately after preparation and at 24, 48, 72, and 84 hours. The samples were visually inspected for any change in color, and pH was assessed at each time of analysis. The stability of the solutions was determined by calculating the percentage of the initial acetaminophen concentration remaining at each test hour. Stability was defined as the retention of at least 90% of the initial acetaminophen concentration.

RESULTS
At least 99% of the initial concentration of acetaminophen remained in the original vials and polypropylene syringes throughout the 84-hour study period. There were no detectable changes in color, pH, visible microbial growth, or visible drug precipitation.

CONCLUSION
Intravenous acetaminophen (10 mg/mL) was physically and chemically stable in a range of volumes for up to 84 hours in the opened vials and in polypropylene syringes at room temperature.


Pancreatic cancer is one of the most challenging cancer types in clinical treatment worldwide. This study aimed to understand the tumorigenesis mechanism and explore potential therapeutic targets for patients with pancreatic cancer. Single-cell data and expression profiles of pancreatic cancer samples and normal tissues from multiple databases were included. Comprehensive bioinformatics analyses were applied to clarify tumor microenvironment and identify key genes involved in cancer development. Immense difference of cell types was shown between tumor and normal samples. Four cell types (B cell_1, B cell_2, cancer cell_3, and CD1C+_B dendritic cell_3) were screened to be significantly associated with prognosis. Three ligand–receptor pairs, including CD74-MIF, CD74-COPA, and CD74-APP, greatly contributed to tumorigenesis. High expression of BUB1 (BUB1 Mitotic Checkpoint Serine/Threonine Kinase) was closely correlated with worse prognosis. CD1C+_B dendritic cell_3 played a key role in tumorigenesis and cancer progression possibly through CD74-MIF. BUB1 can serve as a prognostic biomarker and a therapeutic target for patients with pancreatic cancer. The study provided a novel insight into studying the molecular mechanism of pancreatic cancer development and proposed a potential strategy for exploiting new drugs.


Ecological data often show temporal, spatial, hierarchical (random effects), or phylogenetic structure. Modern statistical approaches are increasingly accounting for such dependencies. However, when performing cross-validation, these structures are regularly ignored, resulting in serious underestimation of predictive error. One cause for the poor performance of uncorrected (random) cross-validation, noted often by modellers, are dependence structures in the data that persist as dependence structures in model residuals, violating the assumption of independence. Even more concerning, because often overlooked, is that structured data also provides ample opportunity for overfitting with non-causal predictors. This problem can persist even if remedies such as autoregressive models, generalized least squares, or mixed models are used. Block cross-validation, where data are split strategically rather than randomly, can address these issues. However, the blocking strategy must be carefully considered. Blocking in space, time, random effects or phylogenetic distance, while accounting for dependencies in the data, may also unwittingly induce extrapolations by restricting the ranges or combinations of predictor variables available for model training, thus overestimating interpolation errors. On the other hand, deliberate blocking in predictor space may also improve error estimates when extrapolation is the modelling goal. Here, we review the ecological literature on non-random and blocked cross-validation approaches. We also provide a series of simulations and case studies, in which we show that, for all instances tested, block cross-validation is nearly universally more appropriate than random cross-validation if the goal is predicting to new data or predictor space, or for selecting causal predictors. We recommend that block cross-validation be used wherever dependence structures exist in a dataset, even if no correlation structure is visible in the fitted model residuals, or if the fitted models account for such correlations.


Emotions are communicated through the prosody of speech. Are such expressions perceived categorically or rather in a multidimensional space without clear foci? The former alternative is in line with longstanding views about the existence of some basic emotions. Recent reports present evidence that facial expressions are perceived categorically [de Gelder etal ., Cognit. Emotion (in press)]. To explore this issue for auditory speech, a continuum between happiness and fear was created by varying pitch excursion, pitch height, and duration of an utterance via PSOLA. Categoricity of perception for auditory expressions was examined in (a) an auditory‐only presentation and (b) an auditory–visual condition of simultaneous presentation of the auditory stimuli and facial expressions corresponding to the either of the two expressions. In the auditory‐only conditions a clear CP phenomenon is observed. In the bimodal conditions the visual information modulates the perception of the speech emotion. The latter phenomen...


This thesis deals with the studies on the Cooperative Teleoperation Systems. The literature on cooperative teleoperation did not take into account
control architectures composed of pairs of wave-based bilateral teleoperators operating in
a shared environment. In this work The author two cooperative
control schemes based on wave variables by considering two pairs of single-master/single-slave devices collaborating to carry out operations in a shared remote environment are proposed. Such
architectures have been validated both with simulations and experimental tests.
Ch. 2 introduces a description of the two control architectures proposed and presents some
simulation results where the cooperative teleoperation systems evolve in free space and in
contact with a stiff wall.
In the Ch. 3 some experimental results which confirm the positive results of the control
schemes are illustred. Such results have been achieved by using a prototype custom built
at Laboratory of Automaiton and Robotics of University of Bologna, which is also illustrated in this chapter.
In Ch. 4 the problem of defining proper tools and procedures for an analysis, and possibly a comparison, of the performances of cooperative teleoperation systems is addressed.
In particular, a novel generalization of criteria adopted for classical (i.e. one master-one slave) teleoperators is presented and illustrated on the basis of the force-position and the
position-position cooperative control schemes proposed in Ch. 2, both from a transparency
and stability point of view, and by assuming a null time delay in the communication channel.


With a variety of local feature attribution methods being proposed in recent years, follow-up work suggested several evaluation strategies. To assess the attribution quality across different attribution techniques, the most popular among these evaluation strategies in the image domain use pixel perturbations. However, recent advances discovered that different evaluation strategies produce conflicting rankings of attribution methods and can be prohibitively expensive to compute. In this work, we present an information-theoretic analysis of evaluation strategies based on pixel perturbations. Our findings reveal that the results are strongly affected by information leakage through the shape of the removed pixels as opposed to their actual values. Using our theoretical insights, we propose a novel evaluation framework termed Remove and Debias (ROAD) which offers two contributions: First, it mitigates the impact of the confounders, which entails higher consistency among evaluation strategies. Second, ROAD does not require the computationally expensive retraining step and saves up to 99% in computational costs compared to the state-of-the-art. We release our source code at https://github.com/tleemann/road_evaluation.


Electric Vehicles (EV) and Plug-in Hybrid Electric Vehicles (PHEV) have a limited share of the current market. However, it is widely expected that the situation will change in the near future and the penetration of battery-operated vehicles will increase significantly. This paper addresses the impact of the mass operation and electricity consumption of EVs and PHEVs on the distribution utility and more specifically on distribution transformers. The charging effect of various types of EV batteries on the life of distribution transformers is analyzed. A typical annual base-load on the distribution transformer is considered and compared with different battery charging load scenarios. Simulation results show that distributing the load profile of the battery charging helps to decrease the distribution transformer loss of life. In addition, power management of the EV and PHEV battery charging and the interface with the Smart-Grid is explained.


Tianeptine is an atypical tricyclic antidepressant that is prescribed mainly for the treatment of depression and anxiety disorder. There have been scattered reported cases of tianeptine dependence and abuse in the literature. We report the case of a 32-year-old gentleman with resistant major depressive disorder that was initially successfully treated with Tianeptine. When his depression relapse due to work-related issue, he step-up his dosages without supervision. He developed tolerance and withdrawal to tianeptine making it difficult for him to stop without help. This case highlights the possibility of tianeptine abuse to its high tolerability and easy access for purchase.  Please click PDF below to download the full paper...


This article proposes a wide-area backup protection (WABP) method for transmission systems using sparse synchronized/unsynchronized PMU measurements. The method is aimed at addressing practical challenges such as temporary loss of the time-synchronization signal (LTSS), sparse PMU coverage, and communication failures and latencies. A linear and computationally efficient formulation is proposed to identify the faulted line in near real-time based on the superimposed-circuit concept. An index is proposed that quantifies the mismatch degrees between the expected and observed superimposed phasors without requiring full network observability. The method can work well with unsynchronized measurements without imposing a significant computational burden. This is achieved by canceling out the effect of angle drifts caused by LTSS from the equations. Since no matrix inversion is involved, sparse PMU measurements do not result in singularity, and thus, the unsolvability of the equations. A technique is proposed to assess the feasibility of faulted-line identification by a given set of PMUs. Being robust against measurement and parameter errors, the method performs well with PMUs of different reporting rates regardless of the fault distance, type, and resistance. More than 200,000 simulations conducted on the IEEE 39-bus test system verify the effectiveness of the proposed WABP method.


Composite materials are being tailored successfully by engineers to acquire the desired mechanical properties in one/more directions by mixing two or more materials, due to their wide applications in various technological situations. One of the sub-class of such materials known as functionally graded materials (FGMs), is recently invented in 1984. Usually, FGMs are made from a mixture of ceramics and metals. The ceramic phase offers thermal barrier effects and protect the metal from corrosion and oxidation while metallic constituent strengths the structure and prevents material failure. The study for free axisymmetric vibrations of functionally graded thin/thick circular plates subjected to non-linear temperature distribution has been presented. The top and bottom surfaces of the plate are under uniform thermal environment. The mechanical properties of the plate material are assumed to be temperature-dependent. The equations for thermo-elastic equilibrium as well as axisymmetric motion have been derived using Hamilton's principle. Employing approximate methods, the numerical values of thermal displacements from thermo-elastic equilibrium equation and frequencies from the equation of motion for the lowest three modes of vibration have been computed for clamped and simply-supported plates. The effect of the temperature difference at the surfaces together with other constraints on the frequencies has been investigated. For the validity of present considerations and the technique, frequency parameter has been compared for some special cases with published results obtained from other approximate methods.


Unsupervised domain adaptation (UDA) amounts to assigning class labels to the unlabeled instances of a dataset from a target domain, using labeled instances of a dataset from a related source domain. In this paper we propose to cast this problem in a game-theoretic setting as a non-cooperative game and introduce a fully automatized iterative algorithm for UDA based on graph transduction games (GTG). The main advantages of this approach are its principled foundation, guaranteed termination of the iterative algorithms to a Nash equilibrium (which corresponds to a consistent labeling condition) and soft labels quantifying uncertainty of the label assignment process. We also investigate the beneficial effect of using pseudo-labels from linear classifiers to initialize the iterative process. The performance of the resulting methods is assessed on publicly available object recognition benchmark datasets involving both shallow and deep features. Results of experiments demonstrate the suitability of the proposed game-theoretic approach for solving UDA tasks.


Articular cartilage from thirteen patients with rheumatoid arthritis was studied by both light and electron microscopy using recently developed staining techniques for proteoglycan. Normally proteoglycan is concentrated about active chondrocytes, but in the cartilage from these patients it was found to be diminished about most of the chondrocytes while it was increased around a few. Fragmentation of collagen and phagocytosis of the fragments by chondrocytes were also noted. This dissolution of collagen was associated with loss of proteoglycan in the matrix.
These findings are consistent with the variable nature of the rheumatoid destructive process and appear to be morphological reflections of biochemical changes which formerly were thought to occur in this disease only at the cartilage-pannus junction.


We study light-induced deformation of azobenzene elastomers which can display liquid-crystalline (LC) order. It is shown that photomechanical behavior of azobenzene elastomers is determined by the strength of the LC interactions, which is proportional to the density of rodlike azobenzene chromophores. At weak LC interactions, a uniaxial order and uniaxial deformation of azobenzene elastomers along the polarization vector of the light E is observed. At strong LC interactions, the light is able to induce a phase transition from the uniaxial to the biaxial state, with two axes being related to the vector E and to a preferable alignment of the chromophores in the plane perpendicular to E. The phase transition can be of either the first or the second order. Azobenzene elastomers can demonstrate elongation or contraction along the polarization vector E, depending on the orientation distribution of chromophores around the main chains of network strands. The results of the theory are in a qualitative agreement with experiments and computer simulations, which demonstrate biaxial ordering in azo-containing polymers.


The internal structure and cross-sectional geometry of fiber-like poly(3-hexylthiophene)-based block copolymer micelles has been determined using small- and wide-angle X-ray scattering (SAXS and WAXS, respectively) techniques alongside electron and atomic force microscopies. WAXS of concentrated micellar solutions demonstrated that the block copolymers form crystalline-core micelles in solvents selective for the corona-forming block. Furthermore, by generating macroscopic fibers from micellar solutions, it was possible to align the micelles and discern the type and orientation of the unit cell within the core. Using the unit cell information gained from the wide-angle measurements, in conjunction with the structural insights gained from the microscopy techniques, it was possible to form a complete picture of the cross-sectional geometry of the micelles, whereby the polymer chains lie perpendicular to the long axis of the micelle core and do not undergo chain folding. Finally, this information was used to ...


Taking care of a person with a physical disability can become a challenge for caregivers as they must combine the task of caring with their personal and daily needs. The aim of this study was to assess the impact that taking care of a person who needs support has on caregivers and to analyze certain characteristics they present, such as self-esteem and resilience. To that end, a bibliographic review was carried out from 1985, when the first article of taking care of a person who needs support was published, to 2020 (inclusive), in the databases of Web of Science (WoS), Scopus, Pubmed, Eric, Psycinfo, and Embase. The search yielded a total of (n = 37) articles subject to review, following the guidelines established in the PRISMA declaration. The results show that caregiving was highly overburdening and negatively affected the physical condition and the psychological and mental states of caregivers. In addition, certain psychological characteristics present in caregivers such as having high self-esteem and being resilient were found to act as protective factors against the caregiving burden.


Renewed calls for identifying other variables and validating previous models that account for the complex interplay of mechanisms that are activated in the writing process have been made.  In response to this call, the study investigates whether text production processes (idea generation, idea encoding, idea/text revision, and idea transcription) mediate the effect of topic knowledge, linguistic knowledge, writing approach, and writing experience on writing performance. Writer's performance was measured by timed essays, while the psycholinguistic and linguistic variables were measured by scales and tests. Results yielded by Structural Equations Modeling indicate that topic knowledge and linguistic knowledge have direct effects on writing performance and indirect effects on writing performance through text production process. Writing approach and writing experience do not directly affect writing performance, but they indirectly affect writing performance through text production processes. Keywords: writing proficiency; cognitive process; ESL writing; L2 writing performance