Background Previous research has suggested that intrauterine alcohol exposure is associated with a variety of adverse outcomes in offspring. However, few studies have investigated its association with offspring internalizing disorders in late adolescence. Methods Using data from the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children (ALSPAC), we investigated the associations of maternal drinking in pregnancy with offspring depression at age 18 and 24 (n = 13,480). We also examined partner drinking as a negative control for intrauterine exposure for comparison. Results Offspring of mothers that consumed any alcohol at 18 weeks gestation were at increased risk of having a diagnosis of depression (fully adjusted model: OR 1.17, 95% CI 1.02 to 1.34), but there was no clear evidence of association between partners' alcohol consumption at 18 weeks gestation during pregnancy and increased risk of offspring depression (fully adjusted model: OR 0.87, 95% CI 0.74 to 1.01). Postestimation tests found a positive difference between the association of maternal and partner alcohol use on offspring depression, showing a stronger association for maternal compared with partner alcohol use (OR 1.41, CI 1.07 to 1.84). Conclusions Maternal drinking in pregnancy was associated with increased risk of offspring depression at age 18. Residual confounding may explain this association, but the negative control comparison of paternal drinking provides some evidence that it may be causal, and this warrants further investigation.


ion from the domains of the actual and the empirical world to the transfactual mechanisms of the real world. This kind of thinking made Bhaskar talking about "transcendental realism" in his early writings, emphasising the crossing of the division between the empirical and the speculative activities of scientific works. The experienced world of events is not explainable in terms of the empirical facts, but they can be incorporated in non-experienced mechanisms incorporated in objects which may be within or outside our domain of investigation. In this study, relationships between the agents that are producer of development are classified based on critical realism into two categories and three levels: mechanisms or policies for tourism (the real) provides guidelines for the tourism industry as well as the agents and stakeholders (the actual). The instructions in different ways to produce different results have already been experienced in the cities (the empirical). Results and discussion This shows that Positivism Approches in the study of tourism inequlities in Iran ignore participation of stakeholders in urban policy and considers governmental power as a referee for several stakeholder groups and ignore great sociospatial forces. In this respect, these approaches ignore economic-political processes and structures and slures formal and informal relations between governmental and non-governmental actors to prepare urban tourism planning. Since such agents reflect dominant forms of economic and social inequalities and reproduce inequlity in nature of tourism spaces. To borrow useful ideas from three explanatory paradigms, it is clear that a comprehensive explanatory theory can be created that can simultaneously meet experimental, interpretational and structural requirements. With the proper combination of these three approaches, critical realism can achieve their merits based on the integration. The relation between the actors who produce results of development categories on the basis of critical realism: 1) mechanisms and policies of tourism in national level in tourism industry; 2) stakeholders in local level (Actual) who suggest agendas in defferent ways to produce various results. Cities play an intermediate role between wider national policies and their results in local level. There is close relations between tourism activities and geographical places in their historical background. Since 1977, tourism in Iran was changed to reflect decisions of authorities in cities on framework of government"s policies. Conclusion The plans and policies for national development (the real) has played considerable role in development procedure after and before Islamic Revolution in Iran. On the other hand, it needs to pay more serious attention to importance of participation (the actual) in nature of developmental plans that can be effective on life people. In this paper, development plans and policies are as an example of social mechanisms in realistic approach. We can discuss about the values of sustainable tourism with philosophical and epistemological assistance of tourism. This study is based on the idea that opportunity from policies of tourism development has the ability to maximize products and other needed elements to promote sustainable tourism. This can be concluded that the cities aspiring international destinations for cultural tourism should not neglect the quality of human capital and training, not only in the lower grades of the job market but also for tourist entrepreneurs and public and private managers. The desired pattern of inequality in the tourism industry for Iran's society is sustainable for critical tourism model and policy-making in this Framework.


Author(s): Ulrich, Beau | Advisor(s): Miller, Arthur | Abstract: Introduction: Proper diagnosis and treatment planning is essential to the outcome of orthodontic therapy with accurate diagnostic records being the pinnacle of that process. Previously, two-dimensional imagery has been the standard in analyzing or visualizing a patient for skeletal asymmetries but has numerous limiting factors. The limitations that two dimensional analyses face can be solved by the use of three-dimensional cone beam computed tomography (CBCT) when combined with an efficient and relevant analysis. The purpose of this study was to design a novel analysis of asymmetry utilizing CBCT that could be used in a standard orthodontic diagnostic analysis. Methods: CBCT images of 35 patients from the UCSF Orthodontic Clinic were used for development of the analysis. A pilot study with 5 patients having marked asymmetries was traced at 3 different time points to aid in landmark verification and assess reliability. A series of landmarks sharing commonalities with those used in two-dimensional cephalometric analysis were applied. A Pearson Correlation Coefficient with Bonferonni correction as well as a Bland-Altman test for reproducibility was applied for the three timepoints on five different patients to test intraobserver reliability. 10 patients with a molar Class I malocclusion, 10 patients with CII malocclusions, and 10 with CIII malocclusions were used to create a sample of patients with the applied orientation method and asymmetry analysis. Results: Landmark identification was found to be reproducible with only a weak statistical difference in landmark identification. No statistically significant differences were found between any landmarks and their different timepoint selections, particularly those points essential to the establishment of the analysis axis (pl.05). The index provided a quantitative assessment in three planes for both numerical and visual evidence of asymmetry. Conclusions: The Ulrich Orthodontic Asymmetry analysis, combined with reliable and reproducible landmark selection, allows for successful quantitative assessment of asymmetry identification in both 2-dimensional and 3-dimensional visualizations and may provide a standard diagnostic tool to be used with patients seeking orthodontic treatment.


IntroductionData linkages can produce rich data resources to address a variety of research topics. However, assessing linkage quality can be challenging given that there are many approaches and no clear best practices.
Objectives and ApproachThrough its Data Linkage Program, the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) links national survey data with vital and administrative records. A recent linkage of the National Hospital Care Survey data with the National Death Index employed a new linkage methodology, which included a first time approach for validating the results within the linkage algorithm.
ResultsThe new methodology includes two passes: a deterministic linkage, followed by a probabilistic approach based on the Fellegi-Sunter methodology. In the second pass, a key identifier, Social Security Number (SSN), was not used as a linkage variable but instead to determine link accuracy, when available on the patient record. A model was then built to predict link accuracy status according to the computed Fellegi-Sunter total pair weight and then used to estimate it for those patient records without an SSN. Results from this new approach were compared with results from prior linkage methodologies and generated higher match rates and lower error rates. The linkage methodology designed for this study is now being tested on other types of input data such as data from household surveys.
Conclusion/ImplicationsThe linkage approach may be incorporated into additional linkages conducted by NCHS. This talk will describe the input sources for this linkage, the methodology used, the error rate assessment and then discuss conclusions and implications for precision and efficiency.


Although in the German Empire the cities were major strongholds of political liberalism, this fact has until very recently attracted little attention from scholars preoccupied with the history of 'high politics' leading up to the two World Wars. This thesis is one of the first analyses of German liberalism at city level, and proceeds from the assumption that in a country with such a regionally and locally diverse political culture as Germany, this type of 'history from below' is a necessary precondition for any satisfactory understanding of the nature of German liberalism in general. Following the introduction, chapter two demonstrates that in Frankfurt, local government became politicised as early as the 1870s. Indeed, chapter three shows how the early experience of Frankfurt liberals in municipal politics was crucial as they defended themselves against emerging political groups during the following decades, particularly the Mittelstand and the SPD. The fourth chapter analyses the development of liberal attitudes towards municipal finance as a background to chapter five which uses the example of Frankfurt to demonstrate how crucial the issue of municipal finance was to the viability of local liberalism not just in theory, but also in practice. Chapter six considers the importance of education to local liberalism as it touched on a number of themes which were central to urban liberals' understanding of themselves, in particular the issues of local self-government and religion. The final chapter looks at the crucial area of social policy, to see to what extent local liberals were merely reactive, and to what extent they were innovative as they faced the new problems of urbanisation and industrialisation. The sophistication of liberal politics in local government, the only level of government where liberals were in the position of carrying out their policies, underlines the gravity of the problem which the lack of parliamentary government posed for liberals at the state and national level. Furthermore, the thesis points to a central dilemma, because, to be successful in Frankfurt and other regions, liberals had to respond to the particular culture at the local level, a requirement that was in direct contrast to the necessity of finding a coherent political consensus at the level of national and state politics. Even though at the local level the liberal capacity of responding to the social and political challenges of their rapidly changing environment has been proved beyond doubt, their policies, their rhetoric and their organisational lead could have only a very limited effect on German liberalism in general. The urban liberals' ideal of creating a more liberal society from 'the bottom up', through the cities, was undermined by the fact that the political future of German liberalism at the state and national level came to rest increasingly on its electoral appeal in the countryside, just at a time when urban liberal self-consciousness reached its peak.


IEEE 802.11 standard has achieved huge success in the past decade and is still under development to provide higher physical data rate and better quality of service (QoS). An important problem for the development and optimization of IEEE 802.11 networks is the modeling of the MAC layer channel access protocol. Although there are already many theoretic analysis for the 802.11 MAC protocol in the literature, most of the models focus on the saturated traffic and assume infinite buffer at the MAC layer. In this paper we develop a unified analytical model for IEEE 802.11 MAC protocol in ad hoc networks. The impacts of channel access parameters, traffic rate and buffer size at the MAC layer are modeled with the assistance of a generalized Markov chain and an M/G/1/K queue model. The performance of throughput, packet delivery delay and dropping probability can be achieved. Extensive simulations show the analytical model is highly accurate. From the analytical model it is shown that for practical buffer configuration (e.g. buffer size larger than one), we can maximize the total throughput and reduce the packet blocking probability (due to limited buffer size) and the average queuing delay to zero by effectively controlling the offered load. The average MAC layer service delay as well as its standard deviation, is also much lower than that in saturated conditions and has an upper bound. It is also observed that the optimal load is very close to the maximum achievable throughput regardless of the number of stations or buffer size. Moreover, the model is scalable for performance analysis of 802.11e in unsaturated conditions and 802.11 ad hoc networks with heterogenous traffic flows.


Understanding the culture and lifestyle choices of retirees has never been so crucial. The aging baby boom population bubble means that by 2030 eighteen percent of the U.S. will be 65 or over. The lifestyle decisions of these individuals will have far-reaching implications culturally, politically and economically. Since more women are living their post-retirement lives alone and in economically challenging situations, this paper examines the mobility of older women in the form of international retirement migration as a strategy to ameliorate levels of economic and general well-being. Historically people have retired abroad for various reasons, but current practices suggest that retiring permanently in a foreign country has become an increasingly popular aging strategy. Retiring abroad does not come without serious challenges, however, as the strains of navigating the aging process are interwoven with living in a foreign culture. Based on research done in Mexico, and southern France, this paper highlights the efforts put forth by aging women to avoid the well-trodden path of retirement before them and to forge a new path, choose a new homeland, and perhaps, reinvent themselves a bit along the way.


a structured environment of IT risk management can influence an improving the flexibility and adaptability of business processes and information technology, including information systems in a secure manner. As with all other technologies, the adoption of SOA involves risk. These risks often manifest themselves during an implementation of the SOA solution and arise mainly due to insufficient detail in the SOA project. In this paper, we present the main ideas about the impact of IT risks on the life cycle of the implementation of service-oriented architecture and how we could minimize these impacts by using a model of managing IT risks.


Since Mador et al. (1) published the first series of salvage radical prostatectomy (SRP), this procedure has been increasingly used in patients with radio-recurrent prostate cancer (PCa) (2). Nonetheless, radiotherapy-induced fibrosis and changes in periprostatic tissues associated with the delivery of a primary treatment make SRP a challenging procedure even in the hands of experienced surgeons. As such, SRP is frequently associated with detrimental perioperative outcomes as compared to primary open or minimally invasive prostatectomies (3). Recent studies suggest that the advantages associated with the robotic approach might play a major role in the context of SRP, where optical magnification and reduced bleeding would facilitate tissue manipulation and the ability to perform a watertight vesicourethral anastomosis (VUA) (4). Nevertheless, the rate of perioperative complications for this surgical procedure remains high even in men treated with minimally invasive surgery and more than one out of four of patients experience anastomotic leaks (5).


ABSTRACT Pseudomonas aeruginosa OprF forms 0.36-nS channels and, rarely, 2- to 5-nS channels in lipid bilayer membranes. We show that a protein comprising only the N-terminal 162-amino-acid domain of OprF formed the smaller, but not the larger, channels in lipid bilayers. Circular dichroism spectroscopy indicated that this protein folds into a β-sheet-rich structure, and three-dimensional comparative modeling revealed that it shares significant structural similarity with the amino terminus of the orthologous protein Escherichia coliOmpA, which has been shown to form a β-barrel. OprF and OmpA share only 15% identity in this domain, yet these results support the utility of modeling such widely divergent β-barrel domains in three dimensions in order to reveal similarities not readily apparent through primary sequence comparisons. The model is used to further hypothesize why porin activity differs for the N-terminal domains of OprF and OmpA.


The prevalence and incidence of advanced chronic kidney disease has grown progressively in most countries of the world. Hemodialysis is the most common treatment that replaces the renal function, and although it allows to replace the function of the kidney, the patients who undergo it can present numerous alterations that lead to a loss of functional physical capacity and a decrease in the quality of life related to health. It is unknown to what extent low physical activity, uremia and anemia determine the decrease in functional capacity of these patients. The functional tests most frequently used in the published literature are character-ized by their ease of application and their low cost, since they do not require large measuring instruments to quantify basic qualities in subjects with impaired or dysfunction of the renal system from the aerobic capacity, muscle performance and flexibility as axes within the kinetic wellbeing which is committed in the stay of the renal hemodialysis units.


In this study, the interaction effects of closely-spaced corrosion defects on the burst capacity of oil and gas pipelines under combined internal pressure and longitudinal compression are investigated by using parametric three-dimensional elasto-plastic finite element analyses. Full-scale burst tests reported in the literature are used to validate the finite element model. It is observed that the interaction effects of diagonally-spaced defects on the burst capacity is strongly related to the overlapping portion of the defect width or circumferential spacing between the two defects. The analysis results indicate that the strongest interaction between diagonally-spaced defects under combined loads occurs if the defects have zero circumferential separation. The interaction weakens as the defects are more and more overlapped or separated circumferentially. It is also observed that the interaction effect associated with longitudinally- or circumferentially-aligned, unequal-sized corrosion defects is negligible under the internal pressure only or combined loads.


BACKGROUND
Decompressive craniectomy has historically served as a salvage procedure to control intracranial pressure after severe traumatic brain injury. We assessed the safety and feasibility of performing craniectomy as the initial surgical intervention.

METHODS
Of 29 consecutive patients undergoing emergent decompression for severe traumatic brain injury with horizontal midline shift greater than explained by a removable hematoma, 17 had traditional craniotomy with or without brain resection and 12 underwent craniectomy.

RESULTS
The craniectomy group had lower Glasgow Coma Scale scores at surgery (median, 4 vs. 7; p = 0.04) and more severe radiographic injuries (using specific measures). Mortality, Glasgow Outcome Scale scores, Functional Independence Measures, and length of stay in both the acute care setting and the rehabilitation phase were similar between the surgical groups.

CONCLUSION
Despite more severe injury severity, patients undergoing initial craniectomy had outcomes similar to those undergoing traditional surgery. A randomized evaluation of the effect of early craniectomy on outcome is warranted.


Equation of state (EOS) insensitive relations, so-called universal relations, between the neutron star (NS) compactness, its multipolar tidal deformability coefficients, and between the tidal parameters for binary systems are essential to break degeneracies in gravitational wave data analysis. Here, we validate and recalibrate these universal relations using a large set of almost 2 million phenomenological EOSs that are consistent with current observations. In doing so, we extend universal relations to a larger region of the EOS parameter space, most notably to softer EOSs and larger compactnesses. We show that waveform models that neglect higher-than-leading-order tidal deformations of the NSs accumulate as much as $3.5$ radians of dephasing from $20\,{\rm Hz}$ to merger. We also perform a full Bayesian parameter estimation of the GW170817 data, and we compare the NS radius constraints produced using universal relations from the literature and the updated fits we propose here. We find that the new fits yield a NS radius that is smaller by about 500 meters. This difference is less than the statistical uncertainty on the radius at the signal-to-noise-ratio of GW170817, but it is significantly larger than the precision anticipated for next-generation detectors.


Albuminuria (UAlbV) can be reduced by converting-enzyme inhibitors (CEI), but the hormonal mechanism responsible for this effect has not previously been defined. Since CEI increase kinin activity as well as reduce angiotensin II (ANG II) activity, experiments were performed to determine the effect of isolated alterations in kinin and ANG II metabolism on UAlbV in rats with passive Heymann pephritis. Phosphoramidon was used to potentiate kinin activity without altering ANG II synthesis. Aprotinin was utilized in combination with the CEI, enalapril, to prevent the increase in kinin activity caused by CEI. UAlbV and the fractional renal clearance of albumin (FCAlb) decreased significantly after either phosphoramidon or enalapril, although only enalapril reduced blood pressure. Glomerular filtration rate (GFR) was not affected by either drug. Phosphoramidon did not affect plasma renin activity (PRA) or the pressor response to angiotensin I (ANG I), indicating that ANG II synthesis was not altered. Aprotinin prevented the reduction in UAlbV and FCAlb produced by CEI but not the hypotension, elevated PRA, or ANG I pressor blockade produced by CEI. Aprotinin alone had no effect on UAlbV, GFR, PRA, or blood pressure. UAlbV can be reduced by increasing kinin activity by a mechanism that is not dependent on suppression of ANG II activity or reduction in GFR or blood pressure. CEI may reduce proteinuria as a result of their action on the kallikrein-kinin system rather than on the renin-angiotensin system.


For decades, acclaimed author John Barth has strayed from his Monday-through-Thursday-morning routine of fiction-writing and dedicated Friday mornings to the muse of nonfiction. The result is "Final Fridays," his third essay collection, following "The Friday Book" (1984) and "Further Fridays" (1995). Sixteen years and six novels since his last volume of non-fiction, Barth delivers yet another remarkable work comprised of 27 insightful essays. With pieces covering everything from reading, writing, and the state of the art, to tributes to writer-friends and family members, this collection is witty and engaging throughout. Barth's "unaffected love of learning" ("San Francisco Examiner & Chronicle") and "joy in thinking that becomes contagious" ("Washington Post"), shine through in this third, and, with an implied question mark, final essay collection.


Background Breast cancer is a disease with many victims that is closely watched by the national breast cancer screening. There are multiple ways of treating breast cancer. In most cases patients undergo surgery and receive additional treatment in the form of radiotherapy, hormonalor chemotherapy, or regional radiotherapy. These treatments often lead to side effects, on the short or long term. Considering the high survival rate, long term effects can be identified. This study focuses on the pulmonary late effects of different breast cancer treatments. Patients and method This study's design is a retrospective cohort study, with data from the Netherlands Cancer Registry (NKR) and patient files in Medisch Spectrum Twente, where the patients were treated. These patients underwent breast cancer treatment between 1986 and 2007 and were followed for at least 10 years to be able to determine late effects. Three groups were made, where patients were included based on the treatment they received. This was breast conserving surgery combined with radiotherapy, with radiotherapy and hormonalor chemotherapy and with radiotherapy, regional radiotherapy and possible hormonalor chemotherapy. One-way ANOVA was used to compare baseline patient characteristics. Chi-squared tests were used to identify differences in comorbidities and late effects. Kaplan-Meier and Cox proportional hazard survival analyses were used to compare the groups' occurrence of late effects and to correct for factors that could influence outcomes. Results There were significant differences between the groups in prevalence of comorbidities and age of the patients at the date of surgery. Late pulmonary effects differed significantly between groups (p=0.001). For individual pulmonary late effects, only COPD differed significantly. Cox proportional hazard method showed that regional radiotherapy and smoking more than doubles the risk of late pulmonary events occurring Conclusion Pulmonary late effects differed significantly between groups and regional radiotherapy and smoking were found to substantially increase risk of pulmonary late events during follow-up.


ABSTRACT The Bender-Gestalt Test (BGT) has frequently been utilized as a measure of personality functioning and neuropsychological impairment. This article provides an overview of BGT's strengths and weaknesses, analyzes the test by standards of admissibility, and offers guidelines for its use in forensic testimony. The forensic psychologist must be cognizant of the Bender Gestalt Test's well documented (over 1,000 published studies) strengths and weaknesses, understand it's psychometric properties, and be familiar with the test's reliability and validity. For the past two decades the BGT has been found to be one of the top ten most frequently administered personality and neuropsychological measures.


Selective IgA deficiency (IgAD) is the most common primary genetic immune defect, with high prevalence in Western countries and relatively low prevalence in the East. The laboratory definition of IgAD is based on the measured serum component. However, the important manifestations of deficiency of IgA, the most prevalent of human antibodies, relate to the absence of secretory IgA, which covers a vast surface area of the human body. Diagnostic criteria by the International Union of Immunological Societies (IUIS) define IgAD as very low or absent levels of IgA (< 0.07 g/L) in a child older than 4 years of age. IgAD is asymptomatic in the majority but if symptoms do occur, these generally manifest with mild infections of the respiratory tract with encapsulated bacteria or intermittent diarrhoea with G.lamblia. Symptomatic patients should be investigated for deficient polysaccharide antibody responses, IgG subclass deficiency or allergies because of increased frequency of these conditions co-existing in these patients. IgAD also increases risk for autoimmunity and malignancies but surveillance guidelines are currently lacking. Treatment of IgAD includes reassurance of the asymptomatic patient, optimal control of allergies, prophylactic antibiotics and very rarely immunoglobulin replacement.


Urban sprawling and unplanned infrastructure development are devouring productive land. Bangladesh is basically an agro based economy. In our country, about 1% of agricultural land in each year is transferred to another use. If this process continues all of our agricultural land would diminish within 100 years. This terrible situation is very crucial for an agro-based economy. In this paper, an attempt has been made to illustrate the necessity of introducing the Urban Promotion Control Area (UCA) in preparing physical development plan in Bangladesh to save agricultural land. This idea is well practiced in Japanese city planning. Unplanned development of physical infrastructure, especially development of unplanned road is the main cause of urban sprawling into the valuable agricultural land. The awful encroachment into the agricultural land also may cause haphazard urbanization. This type of land use regulation may protect the unpleasant encroachment into the UCA land. Public investment in UCA for urban infrastructure development could be strictly prohibited, so that unplanned development would be restricted. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.3329/jbip.v2i0.9570 Journal of Bangladesh Institute of Planners Vol. 2, December 2009, pp. 98-106


Since 1987, in Kenya, through the National Housing Corporation (NHC), an arm of the central government that delivers affordable houses, the local government embarked on the redevelopment of Pumwani the oldest surviving affordable low income housing in Nairobi. Pumwani was started in 1923 and it targeted early African immigrants to Nairobi. Currently, the old Pumwani is home to some of the city's poorest dwellers majorities who depend on the informal sector for an income. Redevelopment was targeted at housing all the genuine dwellers. Instead delivery ended up with house types that were at first rejected by the beneficiaries. Although the new housing was slightly of an improved physical and spatial quality it was unaffordable. Beneficiaries were required to pay an average monthly rent of US$157 for up to eighteen years towards purchase of the new house. In the beginning, some of them had declined to take position of the newly built houses. To raise the basic rent majorities of those who have since moved in have opted to rent out some of the space. To date there is still standoff with some of the houses still unoccupied. Except during the period of social survey when the beneficiaries were brought in to supply the necessary information, the entire construction process was undertaken by NHC under a turnkey project. Among other factors the construction process was at fault for it raised the costs. Also, some of the basic housing needs were not effectively looked into. There was a housing mismatch.


Oral retinoids such as etretinate/acitretin are well established for the treatment of severe generalized psoriasis. They are particularly useful for the management of pustular and erythrodermic variants and plaque-type psoriasis because they act synergistically with many other topical antipsoriatic agents (corticosteroids, anthralin, tar, and phototherapies). Oral regimens are dose-dependent, and, if carefully administered, are manageable and tolerable. Long-term toxicity is rare; however, teratogenicity restricts the use of oral retinoids and requires close monitoring in females. In recent years, a topical agent, tazarotene, has been developed and added to the armamentarium of psoriasis therapy.


This paper argues that nationalism, and nationalistic activism in particular are being globalized. At least certain fringes of radical nationalist activists are organized as 'cellular systems' connected and mobilize-able on a global scale, giving birth to what I call 'global nationalistic activism'. New Right nationalistic movements around the world form a global activist network. Given this change in nationalist activism, I claim that we should abandon all 'methodological nationalism'. Methodological nationalism fails in arriving at a thorough understanding of the impact, scale and mobilization power of contemporary 'national(istic)' political activism. It inevitably will also contribute to the naturalization, or in emic terms the metapolitical goals, of global nationalist activists. The paradox is of course evident: global nationalism uses the scale-advantages, network effects and the benefits of cellular structures to fight for the (re)construction of the old 19th-century vertebrate system par excellence: the (blood and soil) nation. Nevertheless, this, I will show, is an indisputable empirical reality: the many local nationalistic battles are more and more embedded in globally operating digital infrastructures mobilizing militants from all corners of the world for nationalist causes at home. Digitalization has not only enabled the diaspora to fight for their nation from abroad, it has also mobilized non-nationals to fight (from abroad) alongside local nationalists for their nation. Nationalist activism in the 21st century, so goes my argument, has important global dimensions which are easily repatriated for national use. This forces us to adjust our understanding of locality, nationalism and our methodological apparatus.


David Clutterbuck has made tremendous contributions to both coaching and mentoring theory and practice over the past three decades. One of the pleasures of reading David Clutterbuck's work is that he communicates clearly without jargon, a tribute perhaps to his journalistic background. He captures what is known or believed about a topic at the time and is not afraid to say that things have changed or that his predictions have not yet come to pass. By articulating the conceptions of coaching and mentoring at a particular point in time, Clutterbuck allows us to recognise the changes that take place over time as well as the changes in different contexts, changes that can be almost imperceptible unless someone draws our attention to them. In this commentary, I will focus on the evolving definitions of mentoring that are explicit in Clutterbuck's work and consider the distinction between coaching and mentoring.


The molecular mass distribution of various metals was evaluated in cell lysates obtained from liver and brain of mice using size-exclusion chromatography (Superdex-75) with ICP-MS detection. Free-living mice Mus spretus were collected in polluted and non-polluted sites from Donana National Park (southwest Spain) and SEC(HPLC)-ICP-MS was used to generate element specific chromatograms for essential metals (Cu and Zn) as well as toxic metals and metalloids (Cd, As, Pb). Different molecular mass fractions containing Cu are remarkably abundant in liver from the specimens captured in the polluted area. The fraction of about 7 kDa is especially important since it matches with a metallothionein I standard. Zn and Cd chromatograms also show peaks with similar molecular mass, but lower intensity. Analogous chromatograms from the non-contaminated site show a considerable depletion of these metal-containing biomolecules possibly due to low contamination. Chromatograms from the liver of laboratory mice Mus musculus (genetically close to Mus spretus) were also obtained for comparison revealing a great similarity with non contaminated samples. On the other hand, metal profiles from brain extracts do not reflect significant differences between polluted and clean areas in comparison with those obtained from liver of Mus spretus. Finally, the daily in vivo subcutaneous administration of Cd aqueous solution to Mus musculus during 10 days resulted in great rise of a Cd-peak of 7 KDa in the extract from the liver extract that matches with the Cd-methallothionein standard. Other Cd-binding molecules with higher molecular mass are also bioinduced by Cd exposure that probably constitutes a protection mechanism against this toxic element. The application for the first time of this metallomic approach to free-living mouse Mus spretus provides promising results for environmental stress assessment.


We present a new distance estimation method for dust-continuum-identified molecular cloud clumps. Recent (sub-)millimeter Galactic plane surveys have cataloged tens of thousands of these objects, plausible precursors to stellar clusters, but detailed study of their physical properties requires robust distance determinations. We derive Bayesian distance probability density functions (DPDFs) for 770 objects from the Bolocam Galactic Plane Survey in the Galactic longitude range 7.°5 ⩽ ℓ ⩽ 65°. The DPDF formalism is based on kinematic distances, and uses any number of external data sets to place prior distance probabilities to resolve the kinematic distance ambiguity (KDA) for objects in the inner Galaxy. We present here priors related to the mid-infrared absorption of dust in dense molecular regions and the distribution of molecular gas in the Galactic disk. By assuming a numerical model of Galactic mid-infrared emission and simple radiative transfer, we match the morphology of (sub-)millimeter thermal dust emission with mid-infrared absorption to compute a prior DPDF for distance discrimination. Selecting objects first from (sub-)millimeter source catalogs avoids a bias towards the darkest infrared dark clouds (IRDCs) and extends the range of heliocentric distance probed by mid-infrared extinction and includes lower-contrast sources. We derive well-constrained KDA resolutions for 618 molecular cloud clumps, with approximately 15% placed at or beyond the tangent distance. Objects with mid-infrared contrast sufficient to be cataloged as IRDCs are generally placed at the near kinematic distance. Distance comparisons with Galactic Ring Survey KDA resolutions yield a 92% agreement. A face-on view of the Milky Way using resolved distances reveals sections of the Sagittarius and Scutum–Centaurus Arms. This KDA-resolution method for large catalogs of sources through the combination of (sub-)millimeter and mid-infrared observations of molecular cloud clumps is generally applicable to other dust-continuum Galactic plane surveys.


In this paper, hybrid electric vehicles and renewable energy resources are combined to consider as optimization objective to reduce the remission of greenhouse gas. Electric vehicles can provide assistance to the power grid abbreviated as V2G, which changes single interests of power suppliers under the traditional economic operation mode. The intermittence of renewable energy generation and random charging behaviour of electric vehicles owners needs stronger power grid regulation ability. In this paper, we design a dynamic economic dispatch model for smart grid, which contains the plug-in hybrid electric vehicles and renewable energy power resource. By minimizing of power generation costs including V2G service cost, the lowest charging cost of PHEV owners, least air pollution, and maximizing synthetic load ratio, the model contains four optimization objectives. To solve the multi-objective problem, NSGA-II as a popular method to deal with multi-objectives optimizations is employed. Under the premise of keeping up with the demand of power, dynamically adjust the charging/discharging time and power of plug-in hybrid electric vehicles to match the fluctuations of loads and renewable energy generation. In simulations, we applied this model and methods on a 10-generatingunit system. The simulation results show the rationality and validity of the proposed model.


This project has first tried apply the knowledge of social marketing to improving the adherence of asthmatics in China. The researcher has found 14 participants who are voluntary to take part in this project through the personal contact. Ages of all participants ranged from 20 to 40years and all participants provided the confirmed consent. In the main body, the author introduced and explained how the social marketing influence the patient adherence. In addition, the Health Beliefs Model was applied to this research and each component was associated with the research results. Finally, the researcher concluded social marketing knowledge would be an alternative method to increase the adherence of asthmatics in this case.


Abstract In 32 lakes, 19 watercourses and 11 estuaries located along the southern Baltic coast (NW Poland) taxa of Potomogeton and Stuckenia genera were determined on the basis of 981/0.1 m2 plant samples. Environmental factors affecting them were identified on the basis of 212 water samples and 272 sediment samples. Twenty-one Potamogeton taxa were found, including four hybrids and two Stuckenia species. Twenty-one pondweed species occurred in lakes, thirteen in watercourses and ten in estuaries. There were significant differences in environmental factors in particular types of water bodies (p<0.001) except for the content of organic and mineral matter and of humic acids in the sediment. There was a statistically significant difference (p<0.001) between the environmental factors affecting Potamogeton and Stuckenia, respectively, within each of the waterbody types studied. In lakes, Potamogeton occupied poorer habitats than Stuckenia, with lower conductivity, redox, PAR intensity, concentration of bicarbonates, calcium and chlorides and lower calcium content in the sediment. In watercourses, Potamogeton occurred in less coloured and less oxygenated waters than Stuckenia, but richer in CO2 and chlorides, better insolated and flowing faster. It also occupied less alkaline sediment, but of higher conductivity. In estuaries, Potamogeton occurred in waters with a relatively low concentration of chlorides and calcium than Stuckenia, lower pH and conductivity, but more coloured and, consequently, with lower PAR. C&RT analysis showed mineral concentration (Ca2+, Cl−, HCO3−) in the water, its conductivity, colour and flow to be the highest-ranking environmental factors affecting pondweeds.


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Current cognitive control accounts view goal-directed behavior as striking a balance between two antagonistic control demands: Stability, on the one hand, reflects a rigid, focused state of control and flexibility, while on the other, reflects a relaxed, distractible state, whereby goals can be rapidly updated to meet unexpected changes in demands. In the current study, we sought to test whether the avoidance of cognitive demand could motivate people to dynamically regulate control along the stability–flexibility continuum. In both cued (Experiment 1) and voluntary (Experiment 2) task-switching paradigms, we selectively associated either task-switches or task-repetitions with high cognitive demand (independent of task identity), and measured changes in performance in a following phase after the demand manipulation was removed. Contrasting performance with a control group, across both experiments, we found that selectively associating cognitive demand with task repetitions increased flexibility, but selectively associating cognitive demand with task switches failed to increase stability. The results of the current study provide novel evidence for avoidance-driven modulations of control regulation along the stability–flexibility continuum, while also highlighting some limitations in using task-switching paradigms to examine motivational influences on control adaptation. Data, analysis code, experiment code, and preprint available at osf.io/7rct9/.


Although coxsackie B viruses (CBVs) are known to cause viremia during acute infection, the role of the blood cells as a target for virus replication is poorly understood. We have analyzed the susceptibility of human peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs), granulocytes, bone marrow (BM) cells, and lymphoid cell lines to coxsackievirus B3 infection. Lymphoid cell lines with B- and T-cell characteristics (Raji and Molt-4, respectively) supported virus replication to high titers and virus protein synthesis was detected by metabolic labeling and immunoprecipitation. CBV3 synthesis in the U937 cell line with mononuclear phagocytic characteristics was very limited. The virus was able to infect a small proportion of leukocytes and BM cells, and intracellular virus antigens were detected by immunofluorescent staining. However, only a diminutive amount of infectious virus was produced in isolated PBMCs and granulocytes, and no virus protein synthesis was detected by metabolic labeling and immunoprecipitation in these cells.


Estimating the true mortality burden of COVID-19 for every country in the world is a difficult, but crucial, public health endeavor. Attributing deaths, direct or indirect, to COVID-19 is problematic. A more attainable target is the "excess deaths," the number of deaths in a particular period, relative to that expected during "normal times," and we develop a model for this endeavor. The excess mortality requires two numbers, the total deaths and the expected deaths, but the former is unavailable for many countries, and so modeling is required for such countries. The expected deaths are based on historic data, and we develop a model for producing estimates of these deaths for all countries. We allow for uncertainty in the modeled expected numbers when calculating the excess. The methods we describe were used to produce the World Health Organization (WHO) excess death estimates. To achieve both interpretability and transparency we developed a relatively simple overdispersed Poisson count framework within which the various data types can be modeled. We use data from countries with national monthly data to build a predictive log-linear regression model with time-varying coefficients for countries without data. For a number of countries, subnational data only are available, and we construct a multinomial model for such data, based on the assumption that the fractions of deaths in subregions remain approximately constant over time. Our inferential approach is Bayesian, with the covariate predictive model being implemented in the fast and accurate INLA software. The subnational modeling was carried out using MCMC in Stan. Based on our modeling, the point estimate for global excess mortality during 2020-2021 is 14.8 million, with a 95% credible interval of (13.2, 16.6) million.


In current business global society, every food industry company is making efforts to provide high quality of products and satisfaction to customers. Balancing the low cost but with high efficiency when undertaking cold chain logistics becomes competitiveness in business market. This thesis is mainly to study cold chain management in food logistics by a multiple case study on food industry. The purpose of the paper is to advance the understanding of the cold chain management in food industry, aim to find how an efficient way to combine the logistics cost and the effectiveness of cold chain logistics and the challenges of the cold chain logistics in food industry. In this multiple case study, qualitative method was used to describe findings. The data collected can be divided into two types, the primary data and the secondary data. Primary data indicates the face-to-face interview with the managers and employees working for customer service in the selected companies. The secondary data are resources from archives, websites and other printed materials. To improve the validity, related literature were reviewed by authors to find the research questions. The reliability can be guaranteed because the theory part of the thesis abstracted from the publications, which have been approved for many years. The authors give the overview and practice in cold chain logistics of the three case companies, also mention the challenges both in developing and developed countries. The study finds the way to improve the utilization in cold chain logistics, fill the gap of logistics in food industry and give some advices for food industry.


The Black Blocs made a spectacular entrance into the Movement for Global Justice on 30 November 1999 at the "Battle of Seattle," when they smashed the windows of McDonald's, Nike, Gap, and a few banks. In April 2009, almost ten years later, a Black Bloc is involved in skirmishes with police at Strasbourg during the NATO Summit. The aim of this article, which is largely based on interviews with militants, analyses of their discourses, and first-hand observations of demonstrations, is to identify how the Black Bloc tactic originated and spread, and to understand the political factors that led activists to adopt it. Three intrinsically political questions are addressed: (1) Who should determine the plan of action within a group of militants? (2) Who should determine the plan of action during a demonstration? (3) Who should determine the criteria to assess the effectiveness of the actions taken by a social movement and speak on its behalf? To answer these questions, the notion of "respect for a diversity of tactics" and the links between the Black Blocs and other militant organizations (both radical and reformist) as well as other blocs (the "Tute Bianche" or White Overalls and the Pink Blocs) are discussed.


Ferromagnetic, intermetallic compound Fe3Al exhibits DO3-type crystal structure. There are two non-equivalent types of iron with different chemical neighbourhood – (A,C) and B sublattices. As a consequence of the different nearest environments of the iron atoms at these sites the different electronic and magnetic properties connected with these positions are observed. The aim of our research is to investigate the influence of the local surrounding of the iron on its magnetic moment and hyperfine field in compound Fe3-xMnxAl where iron is substituted by manganese.


We develop a computational framework for simulating the coupled interaction of complex floating structures with large-scale ocean waves and atmospheric turbulent winds. The near-field approach features a partitioned fluid-structure interaction model (FSI) combining the curvilinear immersed boundary (CURVIB) method of Borazjani and Sotiropoulos (J. Comput. Phys. 2008) and the two-phase flow level set formulation of Kang and Sotiropoulos (Adv. in Water Res. 2012) and is capable of solving complex free-surface flows interacting non-linearly with complex real life floating structures. The near-field solver is coupled with a large-scale wave and wind model based on the two-fluid approach of Yang and Shen (J. Comput. Phys. 2011) which integrates a viscous Navier-Stokes solver with undulatory boundaries for the motion of the air and an efficient potential-flow based wave solver. The large-scale turbulent wind is incorporated from the far-field solver to the near-field solver by feeding into the latter inlet boundary conditions. The wave field is incorporated to the near-field solver by using the pressure-forcing method of Guo and Shen (J. Comput. Phys. 2009) which has been appropriately adapted to the level set method. The algorithm for coupling the two codes has been validated for a variety of wave cases including a broadband spectrum showing excellent agreement when compared to theoretical results. Finally, the capabilities of the numerical framework are demonstrated by carrying out large eddy simulation (LES) of a floating wind turbine interacting with realistic ocean wind and wave conditions.


We present a non-photo realistic rendering technique for interactive exploration of isosurfaces generated from remote volumetric data. Instead of relying on the conventional smooth shading technique to render the isosurfaces, a point-based technique is used to represent and render the isosurfaces in a remote client-server environment. The non-photo realistic nature of the proposed rendering method enables the server to transmit only the essential surface features, which substantially reduces the network traffic. The algorithm also utilizes frame coherence and efficiently encodes the isosurface configuration inside each voxel cell to further minimize the network overhead. Finally, our algorithm can adjust the point distributions using different illumination settings to adapt to different network speeds.


The Supreme Court's decision in Verizon v. FCC rests on two errant interpretations of the 1996 Telecommunications Act: First, the Act represents a new form of regulation rather than a deregulatory statute; Second, Congress intended that the playing field be tilted in favor of new entrants. Under the Chevron Doctrine, deference is given to the controlling federal agency if there is a "rational connection" between the regulations and statutory intent. The Court ruled that the FCC's implementation of the Act survives that scrutiny. This discussion contests that finding and argues that the FCC's regulations undermine the goals of the Act.


In this work, we formulate and study a data dissemination problem, which can be viewed as a generalization of the index coding problem and of the data exchange problem to networks with an arbitrary topology. We define r-solvable networks, in which data dissemination can be achieved in r > 0 communications rounds. We show that the optimum number of transmissions for any one-round communications scheme is given by the minimum rank of a certain constrained family of matrices. For a special case of this problem, called bipartite data dissemination problem, we present lower and upper graph-theoretic bounds on the optimum number of transmissions. For general r-solvable networks, we derive an upper bound on the minimum number of transmissions in any scheme with ≥ r rounds. We experimentally compare the obtained upper bound to a simple lower bound.


Background: Accounting of intangible assets have increased during the last years which have created a debate about if trademarks should be accounted as assets with the uncertainty of the value in mind. Valuation and accounting of trademarks are of interest for accountants and investors. These should be able toget information about the assets that are of importance for the company. A solid brand can be of great value for a company, which should be accounted for. Purpose: The purpose of this master is to examine the function of the brand in the different companies in the study and map the definitions that the different companies have of brands. We also want to describe and investigate how and why companies choose to present its brands and also investigate the reliability of the used methods of valuation. Accomplishment: To fulfil our purpose, the annual reports from the companies on the Stockholm Stock Exchange were studied. An inquiry was sent to complement the collected information. For further draught we interviewed a lender and a brand expert. Result: Companies define a brand from three different perspectives; marketing-, accounting- and legally perspectives. The companies definitions differ depending on which line of business they work. The most important functions of the brand also differ depending on which line of business they work, generally the companies bring out the distinction and the customer loyalty functions of the brand. Six of the 33 companies in the study has valuated their trademarks. These also have chosen to activate the obtained values. The fact that all companies that have valued its trademarks also activate them may have its reason in that they don´t see a relevance in just valuating the trademark for internal use. The methods of valuation the companies have used are the Cash-flow method, the cost- based method of valuation and the market-based method of valuation. In accounting of trademarks the companies bring out the precautionary principle and solely aquired trademarks are activated in accordance to RR15.


1,4-Dibromo-2-(bromomethyl)benzene and 1,3-dibromo-5-(bromomethyl)-benzene were used as initiators in the atom transfer radical polymerization of styrene in conjunction with CuBr/2,2'-bipyridine as a catalyst. The resulting polystyrene (PSt)-based macromonomers, possessing at one end a 2,5-dibromophenylene or 3,5-dibromophenylene moiety, were used in combination with 2,5-dihexylbenzene-1,4-diboronic acid for Suzuki coupling in the presence of Pd(PPh 3 ) 4 as a catalyst or with the system NiCl2/2,2'-bipyridine/triphenylphosphine/Zn for Yamamoto polymerization. Polyphenylenes (PPs) with PSt chains as substitution groups were obtained. The same macromonomers were used in Yamamoto copolycondensation reactions, in combination with a poly(e-caprolactone) (PCL) macromonomer, and this resulted in PPs with PSt/ PCL side chains. The obtained PPs had good solubility properties in common organic solvents at room temperature similar to those of the starting macromonomers. The new polymers were characterized with 1 H ( 13 C) NMR, IR, and gel permeation chromatography. The optical properties of the polymers were monitored with UV and fluorescence spectroscopy. The thermal behaviors of the macromonomers and final PPs were investigated with differential scanning calorimetry and compared. The morphology of PPs containing PSt and PCL blocks was characterized with atomic force microscopy, and a microphase-separated layered morphology was observed.


Covid-19 has spared no region of the world's Global South and Global North For obvious reasons, countries in the Global South are especially hard hit This includes MENA, as most of its countries and societies belong to the Global South The outcomes of perennial poverty, authori-tarianism, corruption, and other serious long-term deficiencies mean that this virus hit societies extremely ill-prepared to mobilize the tremendous efforts needed to counter not only the immediate but also the immense future challenges As long-term governance deficiencies and the new challenges emanating from COVID-19 are mutually reinforcing each other, find-ing and implementing sustainable solutions for the future becomes even more difficult – and more urgently needed This prospect cannot remain without implications for the whole Mediterranean region – and for Europe European-MENA partnerships are more needed than ever In order to be effective, these partnerships need to include many new stakeholders;they need to be based on trust and on the principle that responsibility for re-gional, national, and especially for human security has to be shared © 2020, Partnership for Peace Consortium of Defense Academies and Security Studies Institutes All rights reserved


A pseudo-traveling-wave resonator with magnetically tunable phase gradient of field distribution is investigated, and a new type of beam-steering antenna based on the resonator is experimentally demonstrated for the first time. It is a short-ended transmission-line resonator and is composed of a nonreciprocal phase-shift composite right/left-handed transmission line using a polycrystalline yttrium-iron-garnet rod. The resonator operates as zeroth-order resonator if there is no dc magnetic field, and the radiation beam directs to broadside. By increasing an externally applied dc magnetic field normal to the substrate, the effective dc magnetization in the ferrite increases under the unsaturated regime. The phase gradient of the field distribution along the resonator is then continuously increased. As a result, the radiation beam direction changes obliquely with respect to broadside. Continuous backfire-to-endfire beam steering with more than 40° was achieved with almost constant gain of 5 dBi. In addition, numerical simulation results show considerably high radiation efficiency of 85%-95%, and the measured beam angle and gain were found almost constant within the relative bandwidth of 2%.


Ten cases of terminal oral squamous cell carcinoma with hypercalcemia are presented to provide a perspective on palliative medicine. The initial primary site was the tongue in 6 patients and the gingiva in 4, including one case with delayed occurrence of multiple oral cancers (lower gingiva, tongue, and palate). There were 6 men and 4 women, with a mean age of 57.4 years (29-80 years). Serum calcium levels ranged from 10.8 to 17.1mg/dl (mean 13.05±2.07mg/dl). The serum parathyroid hormone-related protein level was above the normal range in 9 of the patients. Mean survival from the onset of hypercalcemia was 68.6 days (13-209 days), except for 1 patient who died on the day of diagnosis. The causes of death were respiratory failure in 8 patients and hemorrhage in 2 both of which are common causes of death in patients with oral cancer. There were no deaths due to kidney failure caused by hypercalcemia. For treatment, excluding the patient who died on the day of diagnosis, bisphosphonates were given at 2-week intervals. In patients who received palliative therapy against recurrence, delayed lymph node metastasis, or both bisphosphonate treatment improved the main symptoms, including nausea, vomiting, and anorexia. Furthermore, oral ingestion of food, feeding-tube nutrition, or both could be continued longer in the 7 patients (maximal survival: 209 days) who received palliative therapy than in the 3 who underwent aggressive treatment (radical neck dissection combined with high-dose radiation therapy. These latter patients had large areas of necrosis in the neck extending to the soft tissue or orofacial-neck lymphedema.)(mean survival: 13.7 days). Our findings in this series suggest that the survival time of patients with oral squamous cell carcinoma who have hypercalcemia depends on the aggressiveness of treatment, which is considered a cause of malnutrition, before the onset of hypercalcemia.


Recent evidence for neutrinos moving faster than light in free space is consistent
with earlier measurements of the speed of light in condensed media in wavelength
regions of anomalous dispersion. Both findings are widely assumed to be ruled
out theoretically because they would violate Einstein causality, that is, the
principle that the time-order of events must be the same for all observers. The
latter conclusion is based on the Lorentz transformation (LT) of special relativity
(SR). A review of the assumptions made in Einstein s original derivation of the
LT in 1905 shows that it is possible to avoid this conflict between theory and
experiment while still satisfying his two postulates of relativity. An amended
version of relativity theory is presented which is based on an alternative Lorentz
transformation (ALT) that remains consistent with Einstein's velocity addition
theorem (VT), which is compatible with super-luminal motion. At the same time,
it is argued that faster-than-c neutrinos must have null rest mass, the same as
photons, in order to satisfy other requirements of the original theory.


The World Wide Web provides a graphical interface that allows users to explore the multiple databases of information that are accessible on the Internet. In the field of neuroscience, several hundred sites contain potentially pertinent information. This article takes a critical look at those sites and offers recommendations to those seeking broad neuroscience resources as well as those desiring sites specialized for the developmental neurosciences.


IIH is a condition of raised intracranial pressure of unknown pathogenesis, which is most commonly seen in young overweight women. This study was designed to confirm and extend previous reports by our and other groups showing increased inflammatory cytokine expression in patients with IIH. We analyzed the concentrations of 14 cytokines (IL-1β, IL-2, IL-4, IL-6, IL-8, IL-10, IL-12p70, IL-17, IL-22, IL-23, IFNγ, TNFα, TGFβ, and osteopontin) in the serum and cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) of 17 patients with IIH and 53 patients with other neurological conditions. Patients with IIH had highly elevated IL-2, IL-4, IL-10, IL-17 and IFNγ in the CSF compared to patients with multiple sclerosis or non-organic/non-inflammatory neurological conditions. No significant differences were seen between serum cytokine levels in four patient groups (IIH - multiple sclerosis - inflammatory neurological conditions - non-organic/non-inflammatory neurological conditions) and there were no correlations between serum and CSF cytokine levels. In IIH, levels of IL-2, IL-8 and IL-17 were significantly higher in CSF than serum; levels of IL-1β, IL-4, IL-22, IFNγ and TNFα were significantly higher in serum than CSF. For most cytokines, the CSF/serum cytokine ratio was significantly higher than the CSF/serum albumin ratio, indicating intrathecal synthesis of these cytokines in IIH. We conclude that IIH is associated with elevated levels of IL-17 and IL-2 in the CSF, suggesting the involvement of these cytokines in disease pathogenesis.


AIM
Epidemiological data show that standard compression therapy for leg ulceration in chronic venous insufficiency (CVI) often fails to effectively improve patients' condition. This study assesses the contribution of Daflon 500 mg added to conventional therapy in the healing of hypostatic ulcers of CVI patients.

METHODS
Patients of about 65 years were included, with ulcers > or = 2 and > or = 10 cm diameter on 1 or 2 limbs, Doppler ankle/arm pressure index > 0.9, and no recent history of skin graft. Controls (n=68) remained on compression alone while the tested group (n=82) also received Daflon 500 mg 2 tablets/day during 6 months. Treatment could be stopped as soon as the reference ulcer appeared fully healed. Primary endpoints were the rate of healed ulcers and the time to complete healing assessed by planimetry/photography and clinical examination. Variations of the ulcer surface, appearance of the skin, and clinical symptoms of CVI were the secondary criteria.

RESULTS
Only 7% of Daflon 500 mg patients necessitated the full 6 month therapy. Whatever the lesion size, from W8 significantly more healed ulcers were observed under Daflon 500 mg (p=0.004), and the ulcer surface was more reduced (p=0.012). For large ulcers, the rate of healing was approximately 2-fold higher with Daflon 500 mg, and the percentage of ulcers healed before W24 was significantly higher (p=0.008). Heavy leg sensation was significantly improved by Daflon 500 mg from W4 (p < 0.05). No treatment-related side effects were reported and the acceptability was considered excellent by 85% of Daflon 500 mg patients.

CONCLUSION
Six months of Daflon 500 mg in addition to compression significantly improve some clinical symptoms and accelerate the healing process in patients with ulcerous complications of CVI, with a good acceptability.


Abstract : Predictions of atmospheric transmittance in desert aerosol environments using MODTRAN code diverge significantly from measured data. Good prediction of the desert particulate size distribution is required in order to predict atmospheric scattering and absorption parameters. It is also essential to the prediction of the aerosol atmospheric modulation transfer function which is often the dominant component of the overall atmospheric MTF. Recently an effort to predict statistics but not size distribution according to simple weather parameters has been made for coarse desert aerosols. A quantitative analysis of the desert particulate size distribution models was also performed. In this research, the size distribution parameters measured by optical counters are related to weather parameters. Known statistical and analytical models such as MODTRAN relate the size distribution parameters only to relative humidity for continental atmospheres. Although humidity has a significant role in the prediction of aerosol size statistics, other weather parameters are seen here to strongly influence also the size distribution parameters. Comparisons such as the above can be used to predict under which conditions the MODTRAN aerosol models have good or poor accuracy. It is also hoped that they will lead to improvements in MODTRAN, improving the accuracy of the humidity dependence as well as by incorporating other meteorological parameters into the MODTRAN prediction models.


We report the case of a 45 year old man with asymptomatic hepatic angiosarcoma after professional exposure to vinyl chloride. Diagnosis was made with annual ultrasound examination during a medical surveillance program. Two years after surgical resection and adjuvant chemotherapy, hepatic recurrence was treated with radiation therapy and chemoembolization. A complete response was observed. Peliosis hepatis, confirmed by liver biopsy, occurred secondarily. Eight years after initial diagnosis, the patient was asymptomatic without recurrence of angiosarcoma. The difficulty of diagnosis of angiosarcoma at an early stage, therapy modalities, and the relation between peliosis, fibrosis, and angiosarcoma are discussed.


Time in family businesses plays a crucial role, connecting past, present and future in a non-linear flux. Despite the centrality of time to change and the becoming of organisations, and of family businesses in particular, currently the research in this field primarily relies on variance theory. In this chapter, I aim to show the potential for process thinking and sensemaking in family business research to investigate how dynamic phenomena evolve over time. After having briefly introduced the process approach and its development, I review how it has been used in the family business field to cope with a wide range of phenomena as social capital, business failure and portfolio entrepreneurship. Family business is an idiosyncratic context for implementing process studies due to the relevance of time and of social actors' interaction. Process thinking may provide us with a better understanding of already studied phenomena analysed from a different perspective while also enabling the investigation of new areas evolving in time.


The precise knowledge of the positions of space debris objects and in particular of defunct satellites is fundamental for satellite operations. Several studies showed that it is possible to improve the accuracy of the orbit determination results by fusing different types of observables, i.e. classical astrometric positions and range measurements. Particularly promising in the space debris field are the ranges provided by a satellite laser ranging system. The factors that limit the applicability of the satellite laser ranging (SLR) techniques are the altitude of the target, the accuracy of the predicted ephemeris of the target, the energy of the laser pulse, and the laser field of view. In this paper we will show a way to overcome the mentioned challenges by using a night-tracking camera for the real time correction of the pointing of the SLR system (active tracking), and for the simultaneous acquisition of measurements used to improve the orbits and to study the attitude of the target. After presenting the basic functionalities, the performance of the night-tracking camera, and the procedure to acquire the measurements, we will also show the potential of this tool to allow improving orbits in real-time. This study is carried out for defunct or recently decommissioned satellites. Only real angular/laser measurements provided by the sensors of the Swiss Optical Ground Station and Geodynamics Observatory Zimmerwald (SwissOGS) owned by the Astronomical Institute of the University of Bern (AIUB) are used.


Salinity has a negative impact on growth and productivity of crops on agricultural lands. Since proline and salicylic acid are used by plants to cope with stress conditions, to test whether they can help olive plants to alleviate negative impacts of salt stress, an experiment was carried out by spraying proline (15 mM) and salicylic acid (0.25 mM) on the plants that subjected to two salinity levels (0 and 100 mM NaCl). Salinity caused an alteration in biomass partitioning; in such a way that shoot vegetative growth was more restricted by salinity than root vegetative growth. Root volume was increased in proline-sprayed plants while salinity caused a decline in the root volume. Salinity resulted in an increase in specific leaf area. Net photosynthesis, stomatal conductance and transpiration rate were decreased by salinity application in root medium. Peroxidase activity decreased in plants that subjected to salinity stress. However, application of proline resulted in improvement of vegetative growth in both control and salinity conditions. Increase in chlorophyll index was observed following proline application, while salinity caused a decline in chlorophyll index. In conclusion, salinity can cause deleterious effects on photosynthesis and vegetative growth of olive trees. Exogenous application of proline can help plants to cope with negative effects of salt stress on olive plants.


This paper describes the results of listening evaluations performed on various versions of a tenth order linear predictive coder (LPC-10) which transmits speech at 2400 bits/s and an adaptive predictive coder (APC/SQ) which operates at 9600 bits/s. The algorithms were tested under a variety of different conditions, including various combinations of input background noise, microphone characteristics, transmission channel error rates, and tandeming configurations. The algorithms were tested for intelligibility using the diagnostic rhyme test form four (DRT-IV), and for listener acceptability using the diagnostic acceptability measure (DAM). The tests were run with at least three different speakers for each condition in order to provide an indication of performance of the algorithms over a wide variety of environments.


The shape memory polymer (SMP) materials are able to change these shape in response to external stimulus such as stress, temperature, solvent, PH, magnetic, electricity or light. The above-mentioned methods are only to recover initial shape of the deformed SMP, could not give the SMP predeformation. In this paper, magnetic field gives the shape memory polymer composite (SMPC) pre-deformation was studied, through on and off of magnetic field the two-way activation of SMPC was achieved. Shape memory effect of shape memory composite in magnetic field was studied. The SMPC was filled by nickel powder, and the nickel powder was treated by silane coupling agent. The Tg of shape memory composite was measured by dynamic mechanical analyzer. The surface element of treated nickel powder was analysized with XPS. The results indicated that the shape of composite filled by untreated nickel powder did not change in the magnetic field, while the composite filled by treated nickel powder was drawn in the magnetic field. The tensile stretch was decrease with the increase of nickel powder content in the shape memory composite. The addition of silane coupling agent onto nickel powder surface was helpful for the dispersion of nickel in polymer.


In significant volumes of hazardous industrial discharges, inefficiencies and long-term measurements, in terms of environmental safety, are unacceptable – especially in the context of the potential impact of emergency situations. At the same time, modern means of automatic water measurement are of low accuracy and speed. They allow set quantitative indicators only, including the temperature, pH, flow rate, pressure, concentration of suspended particles, turbidity and total salt content, and a number of other parameters. Within the framework of the current research, the model is developed for assessing the risks of the operation of the respective industrial and natural phenomena. This model considers the energy efficiency criterion of electrotechnological water purification to form a quantitative picture of the potential emergence of emergency situations. The basis of model is built on the dependence of the water quality after processing of real industrial waste water from multipurpose objects. Data that meet the requirements of adequacy, with the further development of technological dependencies, is obtained due to creating the virtual measure of electrochemical water purification. The virtual measure consists of physical and mathematical blocks of technological processes simulation. Physical modeling includes electrolysis (pH correction, destruction, electrocoagulation, electro flotation), aeration, hydro-separation, and sorption filtration. Mathematical modeling is based on the filtration of the input signal, the correction of temperature influence by robust systems and the synthesis of the neural network for the formation of water quality dependencies after processing from the regime parameters. The software allows adapting the functioning of the virtual measure according to the criterion of energy efficiency. The data received in real time allows improve the scientific and technical bases of normative provision of water purification systems, including recommendations for the design of such the systems and further development of technological regulations for multipurpose objects.


Abstract Leafy head is an important agronomic trait that determines the yield and quality of Chinese cabbage. The molecular mechanism underlying heading in Chinese cabbage has been the focus of research, and wide leaves are a prerequisite for leafy head formation. In our study, two allelic leafy heading-deficient mutants (lhd1 and lhd2) with narrow leaf phenotypes were screened in an ethyl methanesulfonate mutagenized population from a heading Chinese cabbage double haploid line 'FT'. Genetic analysis revealed that the mutant trait was controlled by a recessive nuclear gene, which was found to be BraA10g000480.3C by MutMap and Kompetitive allele-specific PCR analyses. As BraA10g000480.3C was the ortholog of ANGUSTIFOLIA in Arabidopsis, which has been found to regulate leaf width by controlling cortical microtubule arrangement and pavement cell shape, we named it BrAN. BrAN in mutant lhd1 carried an SNP (G to A) on intron 2 that co-segregated with the mutant phenotype, and disrupted the exon-intron splice junction generating intron retention and a putative truncated protein. BrAN in mutant lhd2 carried an SNP (G to A) on exon 4 leading to a premature stop codon. The ectopic overexpression of BrAN restored normal leaf phenotype due to abnormal cortical microtubule arrangement and pavement cell shape in the Arabidopsis an-t1 mutant. However, transformation of Bran did not rescue the an-t1 phenotype. These results indicate that BrAN contributes to leafy head formation of Chinese cabbage.


MGRO J2019+37, within the Cygnus region, is a bright extended source revealed by Milagro at 12–35 TeV. This source is almost as bright as the Crab Nebula in the northern sky, but is not confirmed by ARGO-YBJ around the TeV scale. Up to now, no obvious counterpart at low energy wavelengths has been found. Hence, MGRO J2019+37 is a rather mysterious object and its VHE γ-ray emission mechanism is worth investigating. In this paper, a brief summary of the multi-wavelength observations from radio to γ-rays is presented. All the available data from XMM-Newton and INTEGRAL at X-ray, and Fermi-LAT at γ-ray bands, are used to get constraints on its emission flux at low energy wavelengths. Then, its possible counterparts and the VHE emission mechanism are discussed.


EMU is an efficient and scalable model to simulate bulk musculoskeletal motion with heterogenous materials. First, EMU requires no model reductions, or geometric coarsening, thereby producing results visually accurate when compared to an FEM simulation. Second, EMU is efficient and scales much better than state‐of‐the‐art FEM with the number of elements in the mesh, and is more easily parallelizable. Third, EMU can handle heterogeneously stiff meshes with an arbitrary constitutive model, thus allowing it to simulate soft muscles, stiff tendons and even stiffer bones all within one unified system. These three key characteristics of EMU enable us to efficiently orchestrate muscle activated skeletal movements. We demonstrate the efficacy of our approach via a number of examples with tendons, muscles, bones and joints.


Amphiphilic Janus particles are mixed with homogeneous binder particles with strong adhesion to create robust hydrophobic coatings through a unique self-stratification process. Intriguingly, Janus particles form a complete and densely packed monolayer with their hydrophobic sides orienting towards air, which effectively increases the water contact angle to ∼130°, while the hydrophilic sides sustain strong adhesion with the coating layer. The coating maintains its high contact angle even after solvent rinsing, whereas conventional coating completely breaks down. Experimental data and preliminary theoretical modeling suggest that the stratification are partially due to the strong adsorption of Janus particles at the water–air interface, although the detailed mechanisms require more thorough investigation. Remarkably, simply adding Janus particles renders a hydrophilic commercial primer coating surface hydrophobic and drastically reduces the surface tackiness. This cost-effective and commercially scalable method offers a convenient way to fabricate advanced structures at the interface and can be broadly applicable to many other colloidal systems.


Between 2003 and 2005, a total of 425 consecutive cases with a modified two-incision minimally invasive total hip arthroplasty (THA) were performed at our hospital. We analysed 225 cas-es with greater than 12 months follow-up clinically and radiographically. The mean operative time was 70 minutes. Patients could walk on crutches at 1.5 days and discontinued crutch use at an average of 3 weeks. Patients were able to walk upstairs without support at 4 weeks. Radiographic analysis showed the mean lateral opening angle and anteversion of the acetabular components were 43.0 and 17.3, and 97% of the femoral stems were in neutral alignment. There was no radiographic evidence of component migration or subsidence at the most recent follow-up. Therefore, from these early results, a modified two-incision THA was found to be an excellent surgical modality, which allows early rehabilitation and does not increase complications when compared to other MIS two-incision THA techniques.


Retinal effusions and cysts caused by the leakage of damaged macular vessels and choroid neovascularization are symptoms of many ophthalmic diseases. Optical coherence tomography (OCT), which provides clear 10-layer cross-sectional images of the retina, is widely used to screen various ophthalmic diseases. A large number of researchers have carried out relevant studies on deep learning technology to realize the semantic segmentation of lesion areas, such as effusion on OCT images, and achieved good results. However, in this field, problems of the low contrast of the lesion area and unevenness of lesion size limit the accuracy of the deep learning semantic segmentation model. In this paper, we propose a boundary multi-scale multi-task OCT segmentation network (BMM-Net) for these two challenges to segment the retinal edema area, subretinal fluid, and pigment epithelial detachment in OCT images. We propose a boundary extraction module, a multi-scale information perception module, and a classification module to capture accurate position and semantic information and collaboratively extract meaningful features. We train and verify on the AI Challenger competition dataset. The average Dice coefficient of the three lesion areas is 3.058% higher than the most commonly used model in the field of medical image segmentation and reaches 0.8222.


We have performed microscopic calculations of the Rayleigh scattering cross section for arbitrary metallic single-walled carbon nanotubes. The focus of our investigations lies on excitonic effects and their influence on the characteristic features in a Rayleigh scattering spectrum. Our approach is based on density-matrix theory including tight-binding energies, the carrier-light coupling as well as the carrier-carrier interaction. Due to the refractive-index contribution to the scattering cross section, we observe characteristic features in Rayleigh spectra, such as a strong deviation from the Lorentz peak shape and the larger oscillator strength of the lower-lying transition ${M}_{ii}^{\ensuremath{-}}$ in the double-peaked structure, independently of the chiral angle and the diameter of the investigated nanotubes. We observe excitonic binding energies in the range of 60--80 meV for metallic nanotubes with diameters of 1.5--2.5 nm. The overlap of the excitonic transition with the close-by continuum has a significant influence on the peak shape and a minor influence on the peak intensity ratios. The presented results are in good agreement with recent experimental data.


The aim of this study was to determine the effect of the concentration of organic PPC plant hormones lead to the growth of seedlings of aloes and searching for the best concentration for the growth of seedlings of aloes. This research has been led in the Plant Laboratory, Faculty of Agriculture, University of Riau, Pekanbaru. This study was conducted over four months from May 2015 until the month of August 2015.This study was conducted experiments using completely randomized design (CRD), which consists of 4 treatments ie: without granting PPC organic (P0), the concentration of PPC organic 1 ml / liter of water (P1), concentration PPC organic 2 ml / liter of water (P2) and the concentration of organic PPC 3 ml / liter of water (P3). In this study there were 4 treatments consists of three replicates so that there are 12 experimental units. Each unit contained three seedlings are planted in polybags and two seedlings were sampled.The parameters measured were plant height (cm), number of leaves (pieces), stem diameter (cm), large whole leaf per plant (cm2), fresh weight canopy (g), the weight of wet roots (gram), heavy wet leaves ( gram), shoot dry weight (grams), root dry weight (grams), leaf dry weight (grams). The significant difference (HSD) at 5% was used for mean separations. Based on the research granting PPC organic against aloes seeds can be concluded that the concentration PPC organic 2 ml / l of water showed the highest growth in the number of leaves, stem diameter, leaf area per plant, the weight of the wet canopy, wet weight root, fresh weight of leaves, dry weight canopy, root dry weight and leaf dry weight aloes seeds than other treatments, but the treatment of PPC at each concentration effect no significant effect on plant height. Keywords : seed aloes, growth, PPC organic


ABSTRACT One of the great questions for scholars of international relations and economics concerns the relationship between the World Trade Organization (WTO) and the natural environment. Does membership in the multilateral trade regime constrain environmental regulation and increase the environmental burden of national economies? Do countries pay a heavy environmental price for trade liberalization? Although this question has been debated extensively, there is little statistical evidence to contribute the debate. We provide a comprehensive statistical analysis of the environmental effects of joining the multilateral trade regime. We collected data on a variety of environmental policies, institutions, and outcomes that should be influenced by the General Agreementon Tariffs and Trade (GATT)/WTO membership if the predictions of environmental pessimists or optimists are valid. A wide range of statistical models designed to identify the causal effect of the GATT/WTO on the environmental indicators shows that joining the GATT/WTO does not have negative effects on environmental quality.


The aim of the present study was to compare mental performance and hardiness of rural university students with urban university students in Shahid Chamran University of Ahwaz. This study had causal-comparative design. Samples were chosen randomly from 159 students (88 urban students and 71 rural students). Data were obtained from General Health Questionnaire (GHQ) and Psychological Hardiness Inventory (AHI). SPSS16 software was used to analyze the data. Descriptive and inferential analysis (t-test for independent groups) was conducted. Findings showed that there was no significant difference in two major variables (GHQ and AHI) between urban and rural students. The results of this study indicate that the people place of residence affect the severity of depression and somatic symptoms in rural and urban students.


Is the editorial fiction a possible challenge to Sir Philip Sidney's famous defence of the poets? Predicated on an assertion-based definition of lying, this paper discusses two historically consecutive versions of this phenomenon: A closer analysis of Gérard Genette's category of the disavowing authentic authorial preface reveals that Genette's arguments cannot defend editorial fictions written by 'author-editors' against accusations of lying. Rather, this first version of editorial fictions occasionally embodies lies for which the authors are to be held accountable. Editorial fictions written by 'character-editors', in contrast, do not meet the conditions of the assertion-based account of lying with the result that, in this case, neither the author nor the 'character-editor' can be accused of lying.


The opportunistic pathogen Acinetobacter baumannii is able to grow on carnitine. The genes encoding the pathway for carnitine degradation to the intermediate malic acid are known but the transporter mediating carnitine uptake remained to be identified. The open reading frame HMPREF0010_01347 (aci01347) of Acinetobacter baumannii is annotated as a gene encoding a potential transporter of the betaine/choline/carnitine transporter (BCCT) family. To study the physiological function of Aci01347, the gene was deleted from A. baumannii ATCC 19606. The mutant was no longer able to grow on carnitine as sole carbon and energy source demonstrating the importance of this transporter for carnitine metabolism. Aci01347 was produced in Escherichia coli MKH13, a strain devoid of any compatible solute transporter, and the recombinant E. coli MKH13 strain was found to take up carnitine in an energy‐dependent fashion. Aci01347 also transported choline, a compound known to be accumulated under osmotic stress. Choline transport was osmolarity‐independent which is consistent with the absence of an extended C‐terminus found in osmo‐activated BCCT. We propose that the Aci01347 is the carnitine transporter mediating the first step in the growth of A. baumannii on carnitine.


The context in which academic libraries operate is fast evolving, and the current COVID pandemic has underscored the new demands on libraries to reinvent themselves and their scholarship role. The library's role has always been focused on scholarly dissemination and preservation, more recently by archiving their faculty work on mirror sites known as academic repositories. Libraries connect scholarship and users by offering the space for users to come and use the archived knowledge. However, if historically their role was to collect and provide secure access to sources, that role is in the midst of radical transformations.

In our age of the Internet, the connection between knowledge and library users has become more complex. First, users have formed attachments to print or digital knowledge according to the type of reading they engage in, moving fluidly from one to the other. In that respect, as James M. Donovan has recently explained, the library space remains an intrinsic facilitator of a type of academic reading. Second, when knowledge is accessed digitally, the flow of content becomes decentralized. Instead of expecting their needs to be found in the library, users seek out resources wherever they may be stored, anywhere on the planet. More interestingly, technology enables users to develop a different connection to the digital content, creating it while accessing it, from the mere "likes" or "dislikes" to virtual annotations through reader comments, for instance. Either way, libraries are seeing their passive intermediary role dissipate: even when shelving knowledge, as this article advocates, libraries may choose to become engaged in new ways as active participants in the scholarship enterprise.

After reviewing the background against which these challenges have appeared, we suggest that libraries define for themselves a more active role within scholarship production, which we define to include publication, distribution, access, and the process of scholarship impact assessment. The argument rests on the practical considerations of business organization. It is simply good business for law schools to curate the output of faculty scholarship, and many already do it through faculty repositories. Given that foundation, it seems logical for the library, as the institution which already manages those repositories, and which supports the students' law reviews and journals in numerous ways, to step up and manage the full range of scholarship publication. This library management of student-edited scholarship production could cover all its aspects, excluding editorial publication decision and manuscript editing, from training and assisting to gather sources for cite checks, adding journal content to institutional platforms, administering technology services, and advising on copyright.

Another reason for supporting a more active role for libraries in the scholarly enterprise rests on the flaws of the current academic ranking of scholarship. Without human input, no automated system—including the newly-promoted Hein database—can meaningfully contextualize the value of a citation. For instance, only librarians can find the equivalent (if any) of scholarship cited and reviewed in the NEW YORKER or the NEW YORK REVIEW OF BOOKS among scholarship cited in another law journal or review article, or calibrate the value of an article citation in a court decision. To the extent there is agreement that quantifying scholarship citation impact requires human expertise, then we argue for librarian expertise.


Elucidating the functional consequence of molecular defects underlying genetic diseases enables appropriate design of therapeutic options. Treatment of cystic fibrosis (CF) is an exemplar of this paradigm as the development of CFTR modulator therapies has allowed for targeted and effective treatment of individuals harboring specific genetic variants. However, the mechanism of these drugs limits effectiveness to particular classes of variants that allow production of CFTR protein. Thus, assessment of the molecular mechanism of individual variants is imperative for proper assignment of these precision therapies. This is particularly important when considering variants that affect pre-mRNA splicing, thus limiting success of the existing protein-targeted therapies. Variants affecting splicing can occur throughout exons and introns and the complexity of the process of splicing lends itself to a variety of outcomes, both at the RNA and protein levels, further complicating assessment of disease liability and modulator response. To investigate the scope of this challenge, we evaluated splicing and downstream effects of 52 naturally occurring CFTR variants (exonic = 15, intronic = 37). Expression of constructs containing select CFTR intronic sequences and complete CFTR exonic sequences in cell line models allowed for assessment of RNA and protein-level effects on an allele by allele basis. Characterization of primary nasal epithelial cells obtained from individuals harboring splice variants corroborated in vitro data. Notably, we identified exonic variants that result in complete missplicing and thus a lack of modulator response (e.g. c.2908G>A, c.523A>G), as well as intronic variants that respond to modulators due to the presence of residual normally spliced transcript (e.g. c.4242+2T>C, c.3717+40A>G). Overall, our data reveals diverse molecular outcomes amongst both exonic and intronic variants emphasizing the need to delineate RNA, protein, and functional effects of each variant in order to accurately assign precision therapies.


A capillary porous liquid tin limiter (TLL) was exposed as a plasma-facing component (PFC) in the Frascati Tokamak Upgrade. The TLL was progressively inserted deeper into the scrape-off-layer, very close to the last closed magnetic surface (<0.5 cm). Spectroscopic measurements, a fast IR camera, and Langmuir probes monitored the evolution of tin emission, tin surface temperature, and heat loads on the limiter. The surface temperature rose up to 1700 °C in the hottest limiter region, a value for which tin evaporation is very high. Heat loads in excess of 18 MW m−2 were withstood by the TLL. Numerical simulations performed with the ANSYS code were in agreement with the experimental data, taking into account the heat load deposition profile on the TLL. As long as the surface temperature of the tin limiter is below 1300 °C, the main tin production mechanism is sputtering and the presence of such impurity in the discharge is negligible. When evaporation becomes dominant beyond 1300 °C, tin is the main impurity present in the plasma. Nevertheless, the concentration of tin is on the order of 5  ×  10−4 of the electronic density, and no degradation in plasma performance has been observed. These results are an important experimental confirmation of the possibility to use liquid metals as a PFC solution to the power exhaust for a fusion power plant.


The substructure of a single grain in an electron backscatter diffraction (EBSD) data map is studied, focusing on the influence of the grain boundary configuration on the misorientation to the average grain orientation of data points close to the grain boundary. For most grain boundary segments a certain degree of linking between the misorientations to the average orientation of the grain exists and large deviations from the average orientation of the grain are observed close to the triple junctions of the boundary segments. Changes of the misorientation over one boundary segment are analysed and possible explanations for these variations are discussed. It is suggested that the variations of the misorientation over the boundary segment can be attributed to the requirements of stress equilibrium and strain compatibility. Also the tendency of the grain boundary to lower its surface energy might have a significant influence on the misorientation profile and therefore on the subdivision behaviour of the grains.