The paper describes the realization, poetics and direct Deception of Andrzej Kondratiuk's film Hydrozagadka (1971). In the sixties Kondratiuk created mostly short forms gravitating towards irony, grotesque, provocative happenings, games with conventions. Therefore, the formula of his cinematic debut in 1970, Dziura w ziemi, was surprising, as it referred to propagandist drama constructing the positive socialist hero, even if filtrated by subjective sensitivity. Hydrozagadka can be interpreted as distancing from the debut, with its parody of Polish positive hero and socialist mass culture created in the collage style. The subject of parody was the new type of villain-chasing socialist superhero promoted at time. The main protagonist, As (performed by Jozef Nowak, actor associated with roles of communists "believer") has the features of Superman but communist consciousness. Simultaneously, the film is – nolens volens – a parody of comic-strip stories "made in USA": their paper heroes, childish fantasy, improbable plots, simplified psychology and axiology, banal humanism and intrusive didacticism. This fusion of both traditions is marked by genre hybrid emphasized by the director and typical for a large portion of Polish counterparts of genre cinema of the time, in which it was difficult to combine the ideological requirements with the imperatives of entertainment.


In connection with the drastically changed the human environment, including in connection with pollution by mutagenic and teratogenic factors of different origin, the majority of the population, including in Ukraine, is posed in different living conditions in comparison with previous generations. The recognizance of epigenetic impacts and the possibility of their inheritance significantly increased the role of environmental factors in ensuring human health of both present andfuture generations. There has been proposed the system of assessment of the status and reproduction of the genofond of the population consisting of: assessment of the level of natality, determination of the proportion of persons of optimal reproductive age and children, calculation of the frequency and risk of congenital malformations, spontaneous abortions of the first trimester of gestation, infertile marriages, as well as identification ofpriority risk factors offormation of pathology, analysis of anthropometric parameters of newborns and comparison them with data characterizing the previous generation. The work of the system is based on existing statistical databases, it requires qualitative level diagnostics and the accounting of congenital malformations, as well as creation registries of congenital malformations, spontaneous abortions and infertile marriages.


Recently, many existing partially blind signature scheme based on a single hard problem such as factoring, discrete logarithm, residuosity or elliptic curve discrete logarithm problems. However sooner or later these systems will become broken and vulnerable, if the factoring or discrete logarithms problems are cracked. This paper proposes a secured partially blind signature scheme based on factoring (FAC) problem and elliptic curve discrete logarithms (ECDL) problem. As the proposed scheme is focused on factoring and ECDLP hard problems, it has a solid structure and will totally leave the intruder bemused because it is very unlikely to solve the two hard problems simultaneously. In order to assess the security level of the proposed scheme a performance analysis has been conducted. Results have proved that the proposed scheme effectively deals with the partial blindness, randomization, unlinkability and unforgeability properties. Apart from this we have also investigated the computation cost of the proposed scheme. The new proposed scheme is robust and it is difficult for the malevolent attacks to break our scheme. . Keywords—Cryptography; Partially Blind Signature; Factoring; Elliptic Curve Discrete Logarithms.


In August 1992, a Russian-Dutch expedition organized by the Arctic and Antarctic Research Institute in St. Petersburg, Russia and the Arctic Centre of the University of Groningen, The Netherlands surveyed the site of the house of Novaya Zemlya in which the Dutch explorer Willem Barentsz and his crew spent the winter of 1596-97. This survey made it clear that the plundering of the site had been so profound that an excavation would be useless. Comparison of the results of the 1992 survey with the observations made by Elling Carlsen, who discovered the site in 1971, showed that it is improbable that all the remaining objects are still in situ. However, the field study and the supplementary historical research nevertheless cast some new light onto interesting aspects of this notable event in the history of the discovery of the region around the North Pole. The visit to the site made clear that the house was built on a peninsula, and not on the shore of a bay as had been thought up to now. The immediate surroundings turned out to be flat, and not hilly as historical illustrations sugested. It was also evident that these illustrations usually show a mirror image of the house. The house appears to have been constructed in the log cabin manner, with beams which slotted into each other at the corners. The objects found in 1992 made it clear that much handiwork was done during the wintering. The bone material informed us about the diet of the winterers, which consisted of salted beef and fox meat. Key words: Arctic, Russia, Barents Sea, Novaya Zemlya, expeditions, Willem Barentsz, wintering, northeastern passage


BACKGROUND
Damage of tissues by mechanical injury and inflammation is followed by reaction of the regional lymphoid tissue, lymphatics, and lymph nodes. In our previous lymphoscintigraphic studies, we showed that closed fractures of a lower limb cause reaction of the local lymphoid tissue. There was dilation of lymphatics draining the site of the fracture and enlargement of inguinal lymph nodes. These changes persisted even after clinical healing of the fracture. In the long-lasting nonhealing fractures, the lymphoscintigraphic pictures were different. The draining lymphatics became obliterated, and the lymph nodes disappeared.

METHODS
In this study, we tried to correlate the lymphoscintigraphic images, reflecting the immune events at the fracture site, with the immunohistochemical observations of the biopsy specimens obtained during corrective operations from the healing and nonhealing fracture gaps. Thirty-eight patients with closed fracture of the tibia without traumatic skin changes were studied.

RESULTS
We confirmed that closed tibial fracture evokes response of the regional lymphatic system. Normal fracture healing with immune cell infiltrates and foci of ossification was accompanied by dilated lymphatics and enlarged lymph nodes. Prolonged nonhealing fracture with lack of cellular reaction in the gap proceeded with decreased mass of lymph nodes.

CONCLUSION
This study provides evidence for existence of a functional axis between wound of bone and surrounding soft tissue and the local lymphatic (immune) system. We hypothesize that the fast healing is regulated by influx into the wound of lymph node regulatory cells, whereas prolonged healing causes gradual exhaustion of the regional lymph node functional elements, and reciprocally impairment in sending regulatory cells to the fracture gap.


On August 13, 2004, a United States Marine Corps helicopter crashed on the campus of Okinawa International University. The helicopter crash and the resulting U.S. military investigation served to reinvigorate pent up resentment and anger towards the U.S. military presence in Okinawa, threatening to destabilize the long standing relationship between the two nations. This Note discusses the U.S.-Japan Status of Forces Agreement which, among other things, apportions jurisdictional authority over off-base U.S. military accidents that occur on Okinawa. This Note argues that the U.S.-Japan Status of Forces Agreement (U.S.-Japan SOFA) should be a reciprocal agreement and that the United States should amend the Agreed Minutes of the U.S.-Japan SOFA to allow for a joint effort in investigating and securing off-base military accident sites. Altering the U.S.Japan SOFA will be a substantial step in demonstrating that the United States views Japan as an equal partner in the effort to encourage peace and prosperity in the Asian hemisphere.


Path searching is a central step in static timing analysis (STA). State-of-the-art algorithms need to generate path deviations for hundreds of thousands of paths, which becomes the runtime bottleneck of STA. Accelerating path searching is a challenging task due to the complex and iterative path generating process. In this work, we propose a novel path searching algorithm that has asymptotically lower runtime complexity than the state-of-the-art. We precompute the path deviations using mergeable heap and apply a group of deviations to a path in near-constant time. We prove our algorithm has a runtime complexity of $O(n\log n+k\log k)$ which is asymptotically smaller than the state-of-the-art $O(nk)$. Experimental results show that our algorithm is up to $60\times$ faster compared to OpenTimer and $1.8\times$ compared to the leading path search algorithm based on suffix forest.


Date Presented 4/21/2018
 The study results did not support the measurement equivalence of the adapted Chinese Leisure Satisfaction Scale between schizophrenia and general populations. Developing a measure of leisure satisfaction for the schizophrenia population should be considered.
 Primary Author and Speaker: Lin-Jye Huang
 Additional Authors and Speakers: Fu-Chang Hu, Chinyu Wu, Yi-Hong Yang, Shu-Chun Lee, Hsu-Chang Huang, Chun-Yi Yu, Kuan-Yu Lai


This study explores whether characteristics of the collaboration structure in software development teams affect development learning rates, with a secondary goal of testing product complexity as a moderator. We develop suitable hypotheses under the theoretical lens of cognitive load theory. The empirical study uses archival data on an ordinary least squares model to find significant associations between collaboration structure, product complexity and the learning rates exhibited by 230 development teams producing open source software. Results show two distinct subgroups of projects: The first subgroup exhibits an average 78% learning rate, and the other subgroup "unlearned", i.e., productivity deteriorated over time instead of improved. In the learning subgroup, collaboration network density negatively impacted learning, while product complexity interacted with collaboration network centralisation and boundary spanning activity. In the unlearning subgroup, only network density impacted learning rates and no moderating effects were found. Practical implications and future opportunities for research are discussed.


In computer vision, pre-training models based on largescale supervised learning have been proven effective over the past few years. However, existing works mostly focus on learning from individual task with single data source (e.g., ImageNet for classification or COCO for detection). This restricted form limits their generalizability and usability due to the lack of vast semantic information from various tasks and data sources. Here, we demonstrate that jointly learning from heterogeneous tasks and multiple data sources contributes to universal visual representation, leading to better transferring results of various downstream tasks. Thus, learning how to bridge the gaps among different tasks and data sources is the key, but it still remains an open question. In this work, we propose a representation learning framework called X-Learner, which learns the universal feature of multiple vision tasks supervised by various sources, with expansion and squeeze stage: 1) Expansion Stage: X-Learner learns the task-specific feature to alleviate task interference and enrich the representation by reconciliation layer. 2) Squeeze Stage: X-Learner condenses the model to a reasonable size and learns the universal and generalizable representation for various tasks transferring. Extensive experiments demonstrate that X-Learner achieves strong performance on different tasks without extra annotations, modalities and computational costs compared to existing representation learning methods. Notably, a single X-Learner model shows remarkable gains of 3.0%, 3.3% and 1.8% over current pretrained models on 12 downstream datasets for classification, object detection and semantic segmentation.


Molybdenum carbide is one of candidates which can replace platinum for the application of hydrogen evolution reaction (HER). In previous studies, different synthesis methods were used to prepare multi-phases molybdenum carbide particles. However, these processes required high temperature annealing. In this thesis, the effect of microwave-assisted solvothermal (MWSV) reaction on the phase evolution of molybdenum carbide is studied. MWSV method is a combination of solvothermal reaction and microwave heating. The most advantage is vigorous agitation of molecules and internal heating, which can largely reduce reaction time. Highly crystalline Mo2C is obtained by annealing resultants of MWSV at low temperature. A change in precursor compositions during MWSV has a significant impact on the crystal structure of final products. HER test shows that MWSV grown Mo2C particles have an ability of proton reduction when low electric potential is applied.


We present an analysis of the impact of bars and bulges on the radial distributions of the different types of supernovae (SNe) in the stellar discs of host galaxies with various morphologies. We use a well-defined sample of 500 nearby (< 100 Mpc) SNe and their low-inclined (i < 60 deg) and morphologically non-disturbed S0-Sm host galaxies from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. We find that in Sa-Sm galaxies, all core-collapse (CC) and vast majority of SNe Ia belong to the disc, rather than the bulge component. The radial distribution of SNe Ia in S0-S0/a galaxies is inconsistent with their distribution in Sa-Sm hosts, which is probably due to the contribution of the outer bulge SNe Ia in S0-S0/a galaxies. In Sa-Sbc galaxies, the radial distribution of CC SNe in barred hosts is inconsistent with that in unbarred ones, while the distributions of SNe Ia are not significantly different. At the same time, the radial distributions of both types of SNe in Sc-Sm galaxies are not affected by bars. We propose that the additional mechanism shaping the distributions of Type Ia and CC SNe can be explained within the framework of substantial suppression of massive star formation in the radial range swept by strong bars, particularly in early-type spirals. The radial distribution of CC SNe in unbarred Sa-Sbc galaxies is more centrally peaked and inconsistent with that in unbarred Sc-Sm hosts, while the distribution of SNe Ia in unbarred galaxies is not affected by host morphology. These results can be explained by the distinct distributions of massive stars in the discs of early- and late-type spirals.


A hyperthermia thermometry system using an ultrasound nonlinear effect caused by superposed pulses was developed. A feasibility study was made to obtain temperature mapping of tissue phantoms and of anesthetized pigs heated by an ultrasound applicator. The thermometry system consists of a mechanical sector scanner and a mainframe with a color monitor. The distribution of the temperature rise is calculated within one minute, and displayed on the monitor together with an ultrasound B-mode image. Experimental results show that a reasonable temperature rise mapping was obtained in both objects, agreeing to within 2 degrees C with the data obtained by thermocouples located in the phantom.<<ETX>>


Between 1890 and 1898 Erik Satie lived at 6 rue Cortot: 'in a wardrobe'. Satie was a collector […]. After his death his wardrobe was found to contain 84 handkerchiefs besides 12 identical velvet suits and dozens of umbrellas.
Trois morceaux en forme de poire […] three pieces in the form of a pear. The title of a piano piece in seven parts by Erik Satie. Satie composed this piece in response to Debussy's criticism that his works lacked a 'sense of form'. What exactly did Debussy mean by this? Where and what actually was this scene of formlessness?
The first part of the Paper will advance some possible reasoning behind Debussy's comments. Was Debussy questioning Satie's attitude to what Heidegger [in The Origin of the Work of Art] would term the 'thingly' element of the Work of Art, or more precisely – the relationship between 'things' and the 'thing in itself'?
Heidegger's contemplation of 'Form' and his writings on 'tools', 'material' and 'art', and the section dealing with the Temple provides an interesting locus in which to discus Debussy's comments.
The second section gives some ideas of how I reinterpreted this argument to produce a series of visual works inspired by another of Satie's works, Furniture Music – Musique d' ameublement, a piece of music that was not to be listened to.
Milhaud later recounted: 'It was no use Satie shouting: "Talk for heaven's sake! Move around! Don't listen!" They kept quiet. They listened. The whole thing went wrong.'


The first published reports by Loffler of the syndrome of pulmonary infiltration with eosinophilia in 19321and again in 19362described a mild, frequently asymptomatic, self-limited illness. Subsequent European reports confirmed his observations. The affected patients were found frequently to have helminthic infestations, bronchial asthma, allergic rhinitis, angioneurotic edema, or eczema. This syndrome has been described in the American literature with increasing frequency over the past 10 years. In this country more attention has been paid to the syndrome as a manifestation of hypersensitivity to a wide variety of drugs. A review of the literature reveals no published reports of this syndrome occurring in patients during the postpartum period. With the exception of the recent report of Eldridge,3little or no attention has been paid to the abnormalities of pulmonary function tests occurring with the syndrome. This report will describe the case of a 22-year-old white woman


ABSTRACT While scholars have reflected on the roles played by psychology in tourism studies, there has been only limited exploration of the contributions of this discipline to tourism doctoral research. The aim of this study is to examine how psychology features in tourism-focused doctoral dissertations completed in the United States (US), Canada, Australia and New Zealand from 1974 to 2013. A content analysis was conducted on the 359 tourism doctoral theses identified during that four-decade period as drawing directly on theory informed by psychology and/or employing psychological concepts. The results indicate that motivation/destination choice, tourist behaviour/experiences, and attitudes/satisfaction are the most prevalent conceptual themes studied and expectancy-value theory the most frequently-invoked theory by psychology-informed doctoral research in tourism. Although collectively drawing on a wide range of methods throughout this period, an increase in the use of mixed and qualitative methodologies in recent decades was evident. This paper adds to a suite of studies exploring the scholarly contributions and trends in the application of psychology to the study of tourism. It serves to highlight gaps and avenues for further research, including the need for a more strategic and documented approach to the selection and application of psychology-informed theory, theoretical frameworks and models.


A retrospective study of 6 cases of Stafne's static cavities is presented in a review of 1536 cases of maxillary cysts. We have found an incidence 4:2 for men. All cases have been detected casually. The sialography show a relationship between cavities and the submaxillary gland. The treatment was surgical in four cases and conservative in two.


The effect of copper (Cu) addition on the grain growth behavior of austenite was investigated in a low carbon steel and a Cu bearing low carbon steel. Cu addition to the steel does not affect the nucleation rate of reversed austenite on heating in the martensitic structure but markedly retards the grain growth of the austenite during holding at 1173K (austenitization). As a result, the grain size of austenite in the Cu bearing steel becomes about one-third times smaller than that in the base steel after austenitization for 14.4ks. TEM observations in the Cu bearing steel revealed that Cu particles precipitated during aging treatment had completely dissolved in 1.2ks of austenitization. Therefore, the retardation of grain growth of austenite can not be explained by the grain boundary pinning effect of Cu particles but by the dragging effect of Cu atoms in the austenitic solid solution.


Caches are known to consume a large part of total microprocessor energy. Traditionally, voltage scaling has been used to reduce both dynamic and leakage power in caches. However, aggressive voltage reduction causes process-variation-induced failures in cache SRAM arrays, thus compromising cache reliability. We present MultiCopy Cache (MC2), a new cache architecture that achieves significant reduction in energy consumption through aggressive voltage scaling while maintaining high error resilience (reliability) by exploiting multiple copies of each data item in the cache. Unlike many previous approaches, MC2 does not require any error map characterization and therefore is responsive to changing operating conditions (e.g., Vdd noise, temperature, and leakage) of the cache. MC2 also incurs significantly lower overheads compared to other ECC-based caches. Our experimental results on embedded benchmarks demonstrate that MC2 achieves up to 60% reduction in energy and energy-delay product (EDP) with only 3.5% reduction in IPC and no appreciable area overhead.


Social Capital contributes to the development of professions as well as communities, especially in small scale urban settings with a dense interlocking social structure. Within industry-based communities, a strong Social Capital Network acts as a basis for transactions between enterprises, which strongly ties into the drivers that constitute many of today's community/alternative currency initiatives. Furniture enterprises in Damietta form the main economic base of the city, with majority of residents working in furniture-related activities, passing down their businesses through generations. This paper examines the impact of Social Capital on the nature of this industry's value chain and extent of its influence on business patterns and transactions as a driving force towards an unspoken alternative currency. This is achieved though examining Damietta's existing spatial, social and business patterns, which arise and influence the city's socio-economic industry dynamics. The paper aims at provoking arguments on geographical scale and lifestyle patterns being instrumental in the formulation of a local system of transactions based on Social Capital. The paper builds on the work of Putnam, Wallman and Porter, using interviews and GIS spatial mapping to investigate the connection between Social Capital measures (trust, networks and norms), local furniture industry value chain and socio-spatial living and working patterns in Damietta. The results reveal spatial and social connections that exhibit how Social Capital in Damietta's Furniture industry drives an unspoken currency between enterprises in the city.


Evaluation of the Potential of Natural Biodegradable Polymers (Echinochloa Colonum Starch) and its Derivatives in Aqueous Coating of Hydrophilic Drugs
The two starch derivatives viz. acetyl starch and Carboxymethylated starch (CMS) were prepared in the laboratory. These derivatives and starch evaluated for their film forming and coating properties. The Metformin Hydrochloride, Acetyl Salicylic Acid, Ascorbic Acid were selected as model drugs as they are moisture sensitive for the preparation of core tablets. The prepared core tablets were coated with Echinochloa colonum pure starch, its acetyl and carboxy methyalted derivative. Physical properties viz., microscopy, swelling capacity, bulk density, tapped density, packing fraction of Echinochloa colonum were better than its other derivatives. Amylase content and film characteristics of pure starch were better. The coated tablets were evaluated for mechanical and chemical properties. It was observed that Carboxymethylated starch of Echinochloa colonum successfully sustained the drug release above 10 hours with excellent mechanical and chemical properties.


An investigation has been carried out on the stoichiometry, optical and electrical properties of chromium oxide thin films prepared under various deposition powers using RF magnetron sputtering technique. The elemental and chemical composition of the prepared films were characterised by energy dispersive x-ray (EDX) analysis, Raman spectroscopy and Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR). The wettability and surface energies of the thin films were investigated with a goniometer. The four-point electrical probe method was used to determine the electrical resistivity of the films while the optical properties of the films were measured with a spectrophotometer. The coatings were found to be mainly C r 2 O 3 phase based on the dominance of A1g and Eg symmetric modes in the Raman investigations and the Eu vibration mode in the FTIR measurements. The RF powers used during the deposition process were found to have played a vital role in the formation of Cr 2 O 3 rich films. It was observed that higher deposition power facilitated both the dislodging of more chromium atoms from the target and dissociation of oxygen used during the deposition process. The wettability results show that the thin films are hydrophilic and interact well with water and this behaviour is linked to the contribution of the polar component to the total surface energy. Optical transmittance values exceeding 70% were obtained for the films prepared at a lower RF power. The resistivity values varied from 0.061 Ω cm to 0.152 Ω cm for the deposited chromium oxide films. The variation in the electrical resistivity and the optical transmittance of the films with RF power indicate that these film properties can be altered or tuned to suit specific applications e.g. as transparent conducting oxide (TCO) for optoelectronic devices and other similar applications.


The majority of young American children regularly spend time in nonparental care settings. Such arrangements are associated with their experiences of common childhood illnesses. Why this linkage exists, how it varies across the socioeconomic spectrum, and whether it has implications for how parents arrange care are all important theoretical and policy issues. In this study, therefore, we applied a fixed-effects design within structural equation modeling to data from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development (n = 1,364). Results revealed that children were sick more often when cared for in a center and had more peer exposure in their primary care settings, although this latter association was observed only among children of the least educated mothers. Net of such factors, children in multiple arrangements did not experience more illness, but illnesses tended to decrease subsequent peer exposure as parents changed children's care arrangements.


Future broadband access networks are expected to cover large service areas while fulfilling high bandwidth request on a per-user basis. The rapidly increasing traffic demand is also driven by the growing popularity of mobile data services, which is placing high-capacity requirement on the backhaul. Due to advances in wavelength division multiplexing (WDM) technology, WDM based architectures have been considered as promising candidates for next generation optical access, such as WDM passive optical network (PON), and hybrid WDM/time division multiplexing (TDM) PON. Meanwhile, resilience technique will play a more prominent role in emerging access networks due to their significantly increased capacity and coverage compared to the current deployments. Therefore, efficient resiliency mechanisms are highly required to enable uninterrupted network operation where a certain level of reliability performance can be guaranteed. In this work, we first evaluate reliability performance of each segment of next generation optical access networks and then identify the most important part for protection. A particular attention is paid to the reduction of failure impact.


An integrated CAD system for the automated design of digital signal-processing (DSP) circuits for audio and telecommunication applications is described. The system uses as unique input a symbolic description of algorithm. This representation is translated into an actual layout using a two-step process. First, the symbolic input is mapped into the target architecture, which consists basically of a set of concurrent processors and dedicated I/O circuitry. The resulting hardware configuration is compiled into a layout description through a full exploitation of the hierarchy and the modularity of the architecture, calling consecutively a tiler, a floorplanner, and a global placement and routing tool. All these layout generation tools are able to support a wide range of technologies. The provision of a dedicated register transfer level simulator allows for the efficient debugging and algorithmic checking of the real-time operating signal-processing algorithms. The efficiency and the usefulness of this design methodology has been demonstrated by multiple examples. Experiments have shown that the use of these techniques can reduce the complete design process to a few months.


When designing, undertaking and presenting research, there are many decisions to be taken by a researcher. This paper explores the author's experiences and reflections in respect of some of those decision points. The paper is based on a central narrative thread in the author's dissertation for their Master's degree - an action research study to develop and use a new perception-themed coaching approach. These practitioner-researcher insights, which shed light on the dissertation process, could be considered useful for fellow coaches and mentors when planning, undertaking and presenting their own research, as well as for tutors supporting dissertation students.


We develop a Bayesian learning method for robust principal component analysis where the main task is to estimate a low-rank matrix from noisy and outlier contaminated measurements. To promote low-rank, we use a structured Gaussian prior that induces correlations among column vectors as well as row vectors of the matrix under estimation. In our method, the noise and outliers are modeled by a combined noise model. The method is evaluated and compared to other methods using synthetic data as well as data from the MovieLens 100Kdataset. Comparisons show that the method empirically provides a significant performance improvement over existing methods.


In this paper I use data on all generic drug approvals granted from 1984- 1994 to examine whether heterogeneity among potential generic entrants can be used to predict which firms will choose to enter a particular market. The findings suggest that a firm's portfolio characteristics, namely, its previous experience with a drug or therapy reduces the cost of preparing an ANDA and increases the probability of entry. A subsidiary's parent's experience is not generally significant in predicting entry of the subsidiary. Firms also prefer entering markets that are similar, in terms of revenue and sales to hospitals, to markets already in their portfolios. On both scientific and marketing dimensions evidence shows that firms are specializing. I explore several different ways of constructing the set of potential entrants and find the results are not affected by methodological variation. Standard IO theory suggests that profits per entrant will decline in the number of entrants. Previous research has found that generic prices depend on the number of generic entrants, and the results presented here show that the total number of entrants increases with the size of the market (revenue). These findings imply that generic firms face a negative competition externality which makes their expectations about who else might be planning to enter any given market important in the entry decision. The limited evidence on entrant beliefs supports this conjecture as do several features of a regulatory upheaval when firms began entering different markets than they had in the past.


A systematic comparison between 1,3-difluorobenzene, 1,3-dichlorobenzene, and 1,3-dibromobenzene did not reveal major differences in their behavior towards strong bases such as lithium diisopropylamide or lithium 2,2,6,6-tetramethylpiperidide. Thus, all 2,6-dihalobenzoic acids are directly accessible by consecutive treatment with a suitable base and dry ice. In contrast, (2,6-dichlorophenyl)- and (2,6-bromophenyl)triethylsilane undergo deprotonation at the 5-position (affording the 4-carboxy derivs. and the 3,5-dihalobenzoic acids after deprotection), whereas the 1,3-difluoro analog is known to react at the 4-position. The 2,4-dihalobenzoic acids were selectively prepd. from either the silanes by bromination at the 4-position, metalation and carboxylation of the neighboring position, followed by desilylation and debromination or the 1,3-dihalo-2-iodobenzenes by base-promoted migration of iodine to the 4-position followed by iodine/magnesium permutation and subsequent carboxylation. [on SciFinder (R)]


Athletes involved in contact sports are habitually exposed to skeletal-muscle damage in their training and performance environments. This often leads to exercise-induced muscle damage (EIMD) resulting from repeated eccentric and/or high-intensity exercise and to impact-induced muscle damage (IIMD) resulting from collisions with opponents and the playing surface. While EIMD has been an area of extensive investigation, IIMD has received comparatively little research, with the magnitude and time frame of alterations following IIMD not presently well understood. It is currently thought that EIMD results from an overload of mechanical stress that causes ultrastructural damage to the cellular membrane constituents. Damage leads to compromised ability to produce force, which manifests immediately and persists for up to 14 d following exercise exposure. IIMD has been implicated in attenuated neuromuscular performance and recovery and in inflammatory processes, although the underlying course over time remains unclear. Exposure to EIMD leads to an adaptation to subsequent exposures, a phenomenon known as the repeated-bout effect. An analogous adaptation has been suggested to occur following IIMD; however, to date, this contention remains equivocal. While a considerable body of research has explored the efficacy of recovery strategies following EIMD, strategies promoting recovery from IIMD are limited to investigations using animal contusion models. Strategies such as cryotherapy and antioxidant supplementation that focus on attenuating the secondary inflammatory response may provide additional benefit in IIMD and are explored herein. Further research is required to first establish a model of generating IIMD and then explore broader areas around IIMD in athletic populations.


An approach for incorporating the heat transfer and elastic deformation effects into dynamic coefficient calculation is presented. A global analysis method is used, which finds the equilibrium pad till angles at each eccentricity position and includes cross-film variable viscosity, heat transfer effects in the lubricant, elastic deformation, heat conduction effects in the pads, and elastic deformation effect in the pivots. Deflection modes are used to approximate deformation of the top surface of the pads. The dynamic coefficients of a single pad are calculated at the equilibrium state of the bearing, based on numerical perturbation with respect to the bearing degrees of freedom. These include journal position, pad rotation, pivot deformation, and modal coordinates. The stiffness and damping coefficients are calculated and show very good agreement with experimental and numerical results from the existing literature


Aims To reduce neonatal mortality rates in two district hospitals in Southern Ethiopia with a package of staff training and infrastructure improvement. A training course in essential neonatal care and resuscitation was provided alongside equipping and refurbishing a new neonatal unit with locally built and sustainable equipment in two seperate locations. Methods For 11 months during 2012, two paediatric trainees from the UK completed the Voluntary Services Overseas Fellowship in Ethiopia. They were based at two rural hospitals in Southern Ethiopia; Yirgalem General Hospital serving a population of over 3 million with an initial neonatal mortality rate of 22.5%, and Nigist Eleni Mohammed Memorial Hospital (NEMMH) serving a population of over 1.5 million people with an initial neonatal mortality rate of 20.4%. At both hospitals there was no specific provision for neonates prior to intervention. The intervention consisted of a training course in essential neonatal care including neonatal resuscitation for all staff involved in neonatal care following the training of trainers method. This was partnered with the establishment of a separate room for neonates providing respiratory support, phototherapy, feeding support, infection control and treatment of sepsis and adequate thermal control including Kangaroo Mother Care using materials designed and built locally and a layout that maximised the space available but took into account low staffing and monitoring levels. The plan at Yirgalem was implemented over a 6 month period from July 2012 until January 2013 and cost 10,500 US$. After implementing the project at Yirgalem the same model was applied to NEMMH with training, refurbishment and equipment provision completed over a month period at a cost of 6,715 US$. Results The interventions led to a subsequent reduction in neonatal mortality rates over the next 3 months with a reduction to 7.54% at Yirgalem and 6.7% at NEMMH. Conclusion The aim of this paper is to provide insight into developing a low cost, high impact, sustainable solution to the challenges of neonatal care in a resource poor setting.


This year marks the twentieth year of the UNDP-World Bank Water and Sanitation Program. The author traces the developments in the water and sanitation sector since the program's inception in 1978, and analyzes how the program has affected by these developments. The case study represents an attempt to describe in parallel the evolution of the program and the evolution of international thinking concerning water and sanitation during the 20 years of the program's existence.


Environmental Health Criteria 157, Hydroquinone by International Programme on Chemical Safety IPCS. Published by World Health Organization, 1994. 178pp. Sw fr 27. Paperback. ISBN: 92 4 157157 8 About hydroquinone there is nothing esoteric. Manufactured on quite a large scale it is used extensively as a reducing agent, an antioxidant, in the production of agrochemicals and polymers and in cosmetics and medical preparations. It is neither bio-persistent, nor bio-accumalative. There is quite an extensive toxicity data base upon it, pointing to nephrotoxicity. In man, ingestion of single, large doses (3-12g) has been accompanied by dramatic and fatal effects, although 500 mg per day taken by volunteers for 20weeks resulted in no obvious pathological changes. Dermally, hydroquinone brings about depigmentation and has been used specifically for this purpose. For anyone concerned with the possible environmental hazards of this


This monograph addresses the hypotheses that preschool children benefit most strongly when early care and education (ECE) is at or above a threshold of quality, has specific quality features, and/or is of longer duration. These issues are pivotal in recent policies designed to improve the quality of ECE, especially for children from low-income families. Evidence of quality thresholds in which ECE quality has stronger impacts in settings with moderate to high levels of quality than in settings with low quality would inform policy initiatives in which monetary incentives or consequences are allocated to ECE settings based on their level of quality. Evidence that specific features of quality, such as quality of teacher-child interactions and of literacy and mathematics instruction, are predictors of gains in child outcomes could help inform quality improvement efforts. Evidence that more time spent in center-based ECE or in instruction in specific content areas predict larger gains among preschoolers could be useful in designing public preschool programs such as Head Start or prekindergarten. Secondary data analyses of eight large studies of preschool children in center-based ECE were conducted. Analyses focused on quality thresholds and quality features examined the extent to which three types of quality measures predicted gains in children's language, literacy, mathematics, and social skills. The measures comprised (1) global quality measures that provide an overall or global rating of quality, focusing on interactions as well as on physical features of the environment, activities, and routines; (2) interaction-specific measures that focus in depth on the quality of interactions between teachers and children with respect to instructional and emotional support; and (3) domain-specific measures that focus on the quality of instruction and stimulation in specific content areas such as early language and literacy. The goal was to provide replicated analyses with data from several projects in order to address each question. Multilevel analyses that controlled for entry skills were conducted, and results were combined by using meta-analysis, nonlinear and nonparametric analyses, and propensity score analyses. With respect to thresholds, the analyses suggest that increases in the quality of instruction are related to larger gains in language and literacy outcomes, but only in higher quality classrooms. Results point to stronger associations between quality and child outcomes in higher versus lower quality classrooms for measures of the instructional quality of teacher-child interactions and of the quality of specific activities thought to promote early literacy, such as teaching phonemic skills and book reading. In addition, the items focusing on quality of interactions on the global measure also predicted acquisition of language and social skills in higher but not in lower quality classrooms. With respect to quality features, interaction-specific and especially domain-specific measures of quality remained significant predictors of child outcomes, whereas global measures of quality were never significant positive predictors, when both global and more specific measures of quality were included simultaneously in analyses. There is thus consistent evidence that more specific measures of quality are better predictors of child outcomes. With respect to dosage, several approaches were used in operationalizing both the cumulative and current dosage of children's exposure to ECE. Propensity score analyses that included baseline scores on outcomes to control for selection into larger dosages suggested that children with two as opposed to one year of Head Start had stronger vocabulary and literacy skills both immediately upon exit from Head Start and at the end of kindergarten. Fewer absences and more observed time spent on instruction were associated with stronger gains in literacy and mathematics skills. Finally, findings revealed that more time spent on instruction in classrooms with higher overall quality was particularly important to the development of mathematics skills. No other replicated evidence of quality by quantity interactions emerged.


This paper uses a multidimensional approach to measure the level of poverty in Nigeria and its distribution across zones and states. It examines the contribution of wellbeing indicators to average poverty and offers a tool to assist at various stages of project planning. The study finds the following: (i) Poverty in Nigeria is high, averaging52 percent, whether defined by income or by a combination of income and nonincome factors. This could be explained by the structure of growth and by the lack of pro-poor spending policies. (ii) Three geopolitical zones in the north–North East, North West, and North Central–account for most of Nigeria's poverty. (iii) Higher average deprivation in some states could be explained by variations in service delivery. (iv) State-level variations in average deprivation are the greatest in education, dwelling, energy, and toilet facilities. Conversely, average deprivation is the highest but variations across states the lowest in employment, income, sanitation, and access to water. This implies that a combination of both state and federal poverty reduction policies are required. (v) Households attach more weight to education, energy, and employment, implying that interventions in these areas could significantly reduce poverty in Nigeria. JEL classification: I31, I32, I38


Production standards nowadays are continuously increasing. Therefore there is a call for thorough understanding of production processes and new methods of process control. One of these new methods of process control is by making use of a model based control scheme.

The goal of this work is to build a detailed, accurate and fast model of a bending process, which can be used for model-based control.

The bending process of interest is the plastic deformation of a 3mm steel flap to an angle of 50�. This flap is part of a demonstrator product especially designed for the MEGaFiT (Manufacturing Error-free Goods at First Time) project in which the University of Twente en Philips cooperate closely.

Finite Element (FE) modeling is used to model the bending process. The output of the FE-model is a force curve similar to the force curve as measured in the bending process.

Proper Orthogonal Decomposition (POD) is used to reduce the result space from a series of FE analysis. Using a Radial Basis Function (RBF) a meta model is fit through this reduced result space.

With an average wall time of 0.03 s, the build PODRBF-model is fast enough to be used in an inverse analysis on which a model based control scheme can be designed. The PODRBF-model is detailed and accurate enough to estimate 3 parameters with 10% accuracy.


Men who have sex with men (MSM) are at increased risk of human papillomavirus (HPV) infection and related disease. There are two licensed HPV vaccines against the high-risk HPV types, HPV16/18, one of which, the quadrivalent vaccine, additionally targets low-risk HPV types (HPV6/11). MSM will not benefit from the UK's school-based HPV vaccine programme targeting girls. Sexual Health clinics (SHC) are the most feasible setting for vaccinating MSM. This thesis aimed to inform the policy decision on whether to vaccinate MSM attending SHCs in the UK by estimating underlying epidemiological parameters: HPV exposure in the MSM population attending SHCs, expected vaccine coverage and the effect of HPV16 vaccination on anal cancer incidence. A cross-sectional survey of 522 MSM was conducted at a SHC. Specimens (anal and external genital swabs, urine, oral rinse and serum) were tested for HPV and demographic, behavioural and clinical information was collected (HPV-MSM-MMC study). A static deterministic cohort model was developed of HPV16 infection and anal cancer in SHC-attending MSM. A substantial burden of HPV infection in MSM could be prevented at SHCs: a third of HPV-MSM-MMC participants were infected with ≥1 quadrivalent-vaccine HPV types yet none with all four. Therefore all had potential to benefit, at least partially, from vaccination. An additional third had evidence of prior exposure (seropositive or history of anogenital warts) to quadrivalent-vaccine types and a final third had no evidence of exposure. A targeted HPV vaccine programme at SHCs would result in ≥50% coverage of the UK's MSM population. Vaccination at SHCs would efficiently interrupt HPV transmission because SHC-attenders represent MSM at high risk of HPV infection. Vaccination against HPV16 was predicted to substantially reduce anal cancer incidence, even without the effect of herd immunity. This thesis provides strong evidence for HPV vaccine effectiveness using a programme targeting MSM attending SHCs.


The pituitary growth hormone (GH) from various vertebrate species could be purified from crude pituitary extracts by a single-step HPLC using a reverse-phase C18 column. The same procedure was also useful for peptide mapping of proteins. Pharmacokinetic analysis of porcine GH revealed that it circulated in plasma with a half-life of 2 h and that most injected GH was confined to blood and probably lymph, with a total body clearance of porcine GH around 8 ± 3 mL h−1 kg−1. Several GH have been sequenced by using cloning of their cDNA. The comparative analysis of these cDNA reveals the conserved structural characteristics for all vertebrate GH: 1. There are 2 disulfide bonds in the single polypeptide chain of the GH molecule which are supposedly necessary to maintain the native conformation of the hormone. 2. The invariant residues are predominantly located within the α-helices which are also necessary to maintain the structural integrity but may not be required for species specificity. 3. The putative signal peptides of various GH deduced from the cDNA sequences show the general consensus pattern of hydrophobicity but exhibit no obvious sequence homology. These characteristics are in agreement with other signal peptides of most secretory proteins. A high-level expression of porcine GH in E. coli was achieved by using some combination of promoter and transcriptional terminator. The expressed 22-kDa GH was immunoreactive to the specific GH antibody and showed expected partial N-terminal amino-acid sequence.


Dry powder inhaler (DPI) formulations are usually comprised of a mixture of micronised active pharmaceutical ingredient (API) with aerodynamic diameter 1-5 m to allow deposition in the lower airways, and a coarse (~70 micron) excipient, typically \(\alpha\)-lactose monohydrate, used to aid the handling, metering and dosing of the formulation. These components are usually combined in a secondary manufacturing process such as high shear blending (HSB), which is used primarily to distribute the cohesive drug particles throughout the bulk excipient to create a chemically homogeneous formulation.
This thesis explores the use of HSB to produce mimic DPI formulations and assesses the effect of different blending and storage regimes on various physicochemical properties of such powders. A novel fluidised bed elutriation (FBE) technique was developed to test the ability of fine mimic drug particles to separate from coarse particles in such formulations, along with conventional air jet sieve (AJS) and Next Generation Impactor (NGI) studies. Results showed that, generally, blending regimes were seen to have little effect on the in vitro performance of these mimic formulations, with extended storage at high humidity having a more profound effect on the separation of fine particles. Tests on the performance of formulations using the FBE technique showed that fluidisation performance alone is insufficient to identify blending-induced changes; however, analysis of the fine elutriated fraction has shown subtle changes in the populations of particles due to HSB. Notable differences were observed between the mimic cohesive and adhesive drugs, indicating the ability of these tests to identify formulations with different adhesive properties. In addition, a study to determine the specific energy input (SEI) required to achieve chemical homogeneity suggested that extended high shear blending beyond a given energy input may only alter the size distribution of the formulation, and not improve homogeneity, thus having implications for the manufacture of such products.


Studies on broadband diffusion are just beginning to emerge and exploratory in nature. Progress has been made to develop conceptual models to understand diffusion and adoption of broadband from the consumer perspective. However in order to test the conceptual model of broadband diffusion, a reliable survey instrument is yet to be developed and validated. Therefore, the aim of this research in progress paper is to perform content validity and pre-test a survey instrument. The objectives of this paper are: first, to ' identify' constructs and their respective items that adequately cover relevant dimensions of factors that affects consumers in the domain of broadband diffusion; second, to 'determine' whether the identified constructs and respective items sufficiently cover relevant dimensions of the factors affecting consumers in the domain of broadband diffusion; and third, to conduct a ' pre-test' on resulting survey instruments in order to obtain feedback for improvements before finalising the questionnaire. Initial items for each construct were identified from both technology adoption literature and exploratory studies on broadband adoption. Validation of the identified items was then performed employing variations of a quantitative approach to content validity. The findings obtained from content validation are then presented and discussed thereafter. Finally, the paper is concluded by emphasising the limitations of content validation and setting the future research direction towards investigating broadband diffusion in the household context.


AIM: To analyze the data from Tianjin Cancer Registry of morality due to colon cancer from 1981 to 2000 in Tianjin,China.METHODS: Tumors diagnosed in this study were coded according to ICD-9. Mortality rates were calculated by sex and calendar year of diagnosis.RESULTS: Seventy point four percent of colon cancer deaths occurred in the age group of 55-79 years and the mortality rate reached its peak in the age group of 75-80 years.The average age at death was 64.10 years. An ascending trend was observed in the mean age of death due to colon cancer from 1981 through 2000. However, as for the sex ratio, there was no clear trend exhibited. During 1981-2000, the total number of deaths was 2147, 1041males and 1106 females. The mean mortality rate of colon cancer was 3.04/100 000. The mortality caused by colon cancer ascended from 1981 to 2000.CONCLUSION: The epidenic trend of colon cancer in Tianjin and its risk factors and prevention should be studied further.


Rifampicin is one of the major drugs used on its own and also in combination to treat numerous infections sustained by methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA). In Italy, rifampicin resistance (RIF-R) is increasing in multidrug-resistant-MRSA isolates (16.4%), with respect to Europe (5.7%). In our study, the relationship between clones, rpoB mutations, and susceptibility profiles in 50 RIF-R MRSA isolated from hospitalized patients was evaluated. Antimicrobial susceptibility testing was performed by the broth microdilution method. Isolates were typed by MLST/SCCmec/spa-typing. The rpoB gene was analyzed by PCR and sequence analysis. RIF-R isolates were 60% heterogeneous vancomycin-intermediate S. aureus (hVISA) and 22% daptomycin nonsusceptible and belonged to the major MRSA clones: ST228-SCCmec I (44%), ST8-SCCmec IV (18%), ST239-SCCmec III (16%), ST5-SCCmec II (14%), and ST22-SCCmec IVh (4%). Thirteen diverse RpoB amino acid substitutions were identified. Half of the strains harbored the H481N substitution, conferring low-level resistance. Different single mutations at the equivalent locus (H481D; H481Y) or in other loci, and multiple mutations conferred high-level resistance. In conclusion, this study investigated the nature of RIF-R in Italy among RIF-R-MRSA strains, finding a prevalence of ST228, strongly associated with reduced susceptibility to glycopeptides (hVISA). The spread of RIF-R strains in clinical settings represents a serious threat, due to their complex resistance nature even to new anti-Gram-positive drugs, making these infections particularly difficult to treat.


Hydraulic fracturing (HF) and hydraulic testing of pre-existing fractures (HTPF) are efficient hydraulic methods in order to determine the in-situ stress of rock mass. Generally, the minimum (Sh) and maximum (SH) horizontal principal stresses are measured by hydraulic methods; the vertical stress (SV) is calculated by the weight of the overburden layers. In this work, 37 HF and HTPF tests are conducted in a meta-sandstone, which has about 10% inter-layer phyllite. The artesian circumstance, considerable gap between the drilling and hydraulic tests in the long borehole, no underground access tunnel to rock cavern at the early stages of projects, and a simplified hypothesis theory of HF are the main challenges and limitations of the HF/HTPF measurements. Due to the instability in the long borehole, the drill rig type and borehole length are revised; also TV logger is added to the process of selection of the test's deep. The HF/HTPF data is sequentially analyzed by the classic and inversion methods in order to achieve an optimum number of hydraulic tests. Besides, The SH magnitude in the inversion method is lower than the classic method; the relevant geological data and the faulting plan analysis lead to validate the SH and Sh magnitudes and the azimuths obtained by the classic method. The measured SH and Sh magnitudes are 7-17 MPa and 4-11 MPa, respectively; the calculated vertical stress magnitude is 6-14 MPa at the test locations. Indeed, the stress state is (SH > SV > Sh), and SH azimuth range is 56-93 degrees.


Background: The nutrition and epidemiologic transition is characterised by changes in diet and activity patterns, leading to the development of a double burden of malnutrition. At the household level this often manifests as an overweight mother and underweight child. However, child and adolescent overweight and obesity also appear to be on the rise in transitional countries, although it is not well studied. Parent and child overweight are associated, and overweight children have a greater risk of becoming overweight adults. Understanding why these two extremes of child malnutrition occur in households with an overweight mother is necessary for policy and programmes to target both effectively. Methods: This study examined Young Lives data on 256 adolescents with overweight (BMI>23kg/m) or obese mothers (BMI>27kg/m) from India. Child weight status was determined using BMI-for-age z-scores based on the 2007 WHO reference median. The aim was to identify independent predictors of child overand underweight in two categories of dual burden households: 61(23.8%) underweight child/overweight mother (U/O) households, 21(8.2%) overweight child/overweight mother (O/O) households. The reference category was 174(68.0%) normal weight child/overweight mother (N/O) households. Bivariate analysis was used to examine associations between child, parent and household-level indicators and household nutrition status. Polychotomous logistic regression techniques were employed to identify independent predictors of U/O and O/O households compared to the reference N/O households. Results: After controlling for nutritional and sociodemographic variables, several indicators emerged as being significant. Households were less likely to be U/O compared to N/O if: the child was female (OR=0.35, p<0.01) or post-pubertal (OR=0.26, p<0.01) or BCG immunised (a proxy for care practice) (OR=0.44, p<0.05), or the maternal support network was larger (OR=0.20, p<0.05). Households were also less likely to be O/O compared to N/O if the child was female (OR=0.23, p<0.05). Relative risk of O/O was increased if the child was postpubertal (OR=3.47, p<0.05) or if the child had a moderate diet diversity (OR=4.97, p<0.1). Conclusion: Both U/O and O/O double burden households are present in this sample. Longitudinal data suggests underand overweight among children in this cohort are both increasing. Indicators for either type of household imply that social and physiological factors may be involved, but more research is required to better define these pathways. In the meantime, nutrition intervention programmes must recognise the existence of both extremes of malnutrition at population and household level, and incorporate this into their targeting strategies in order to manage the dual burden of malnutrition effectively.


Well tuned Large-Vocabulary Continuous Speech Recognition (LVCSR) has been shown to generally be more effective than vocabulary-independent techniques for ranked retrieval of spoken content when one or the other approach is used alone. Tuning LVCSR systems to a topic domain can be costly, however, and the experiments in this paper show that Out-Of-Vocabulary (OOV) query terms can significantly reduce retrieval effectiveness when that tuning is not performed. Further experiments demonstrate, however, that retrieval effectiveness for queries with OOV terms can be substantially improved by combining evidence from LVCSR with additional evidence from vocabulary-independent Ranked Utterance Retrieval (RUR). The combination is performed by using relevance judgments from held-out topics to learn generic (i.e., topic-independent), smooth, non-decreasing transformations from LVCSR and RUR system scores to probabilities of topical relevance. Evaluated using a CLEF collection that includes topics, spontaneous conversational speech audio, and relevance judgments, the system recovers 57% of the mean uninterpolated average precision that could have been obtained through LVCSR domain tuning for very short queries (or 41% for longer queries).


This investigation deals with the property characterization of polymeric composites from abundantly available and renewable jute fibers. The aim of this article is to explore the possibility of using carpet waste jute yarn for value added fiber-reinforced composite materials and to investigate the physical and mechanical properties of these low-cost composites. Jute yarn was treated with 25 wt% NaOH solution to improve fiber—matrix interface. NaOH-treated jute yarn was crimpier, bulkier, more hairy, and flexible. The investigation of the mechanical properties of composites was performed as a function of yarn type, reinforcement form, matrix type, alkali treatment, and fiber content. For this purpose, the tensile, flexural and charpy impact tests were performed. It was found that composite samples from alkali treated reinforcement had better mechanical properties based on the investigated parameters. SEM analyses showed that alkali treatment improves bonding across the fiber—matrix interface. Jute—epoxy composites showed better tensile and flexural strength in comparison to jute—polyester composites, whereas impact strength of epoxy matrix composites were almost half that of polyester matrix composites. Composites from double ply jute yarns showed better flexural strength. Taking into account the reinforcement form, jute composites from random reinforcement form showed higher tensile strength and modulus. The study strongly suggests that the jute fiber waste-reinforced polymer composite materials are quite capable to serve as a potential cost effective, technologically viable, and attractive substitute to the conventional glass fiber composites.


Background: Worldwide cervical cancer ranks as a major health problem for women. The cervical carcinoma is preceded by premalignant dysplastic changes in normal squamous epithelial layer which is called as cervical intraepithelial neoplasia (CIN). Aim: The aim of the study is to assess the utility of Ki-67 labeling index (LI) in grading of CIN. Objectives: The objective of the study is to identify potential corelation between histomorphological grading and Ki-67 LI of CIN. Materials and Methods: The present study was carried out as an observational type of study. The study was carried out from August 1, 2016, to July 31, 2018, in the Department of Pathology in co-ordination with the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, Jawaharlal Nehru Medical College, Sawangi (M), Wardha, Maharashtra. A total of 82 specimens which include cervical biopsies and hysterectomy specimen formed a part of the present study, of which 59 cases were prospective and remaining 23 cases considered were retrospective. Results: Tumor cell proliferation as measured by Ki-67 proliferative marker shows a linear correlation with histopathological grading of cervical dysplasia as per the WHO classification. With increasing grades of CIN, Ki-67 LI also increases. Conclusion: It can be stated that to determine the grades of cervical dysplasia, Ki-67 antigen should be used as an adjunct with histopathological grading which remains as the "Gold Standard."


Zinc deficiency in neonates is a common finding in the developing world. The serum zinc level of neonates is affected by the gestational age at delivery, maternal serum zinc level, maternal serum albumin concentration, medications, conditions leading to decreased absorption of ingested zinc as well as increased loss from the body. Zinc deficiency in neonates has been suggested to be related to poor growth, hyperbilirubinemia, seizures, necrotizing enterocolitis, retinopathy of prematurity and bronchopulmonary dysplasia by some investigators. Three hundred and thirty mother-neonate pairs who met the inclusion criteria were consecutively recruited; one hundred and eighty (54.5%) of the neonates were males while 150(45.5%) were females. Serum zinc was assayed using Flame Atomic Absorption Spectrophotometer (AAS).The normal range for serum zinc is 9.9-21.4µmol/l (equivalent to 64.7-139.9µg/dl) for cord blood and 7.6-10.7µmol/l(equivalent to 49.9-69.9µg/dl) for maternal blood.For the purpose of this study, cord serum zinc less than 64.7µg/dl and maternal serum zinc less than49.9µg/dl were considered low. The cord serum zinc levels of neonates was normal in 51.5% of cases but low in 48.5% of cases.There was a significant positive association between cord blood serum zincand maternal serum zinc however cord serum zinc level was not significantly associated withbirth weight, length, gender and socioeconomic status. In conclusion from this study included that the prevalence of hypozincemia was high in neonates delivered at FMC Owerri, maternal serum zinc is a strong factor influencing cord serum zinc and that low cord serum zinc is commoner among Low Birth Weight (LBW) neonates, female neonates, neonates from low socioeconomic class families and in neonates whose mothers took little of zinc-rich foods in pregnancy. This study therefore recommends improved maternal nutrition in pregnancy especially with zinc-rich foods and to give zinc supplements to pregnant mothers during antenatal care visits.


The permanence of the genocide definition1 over more than five decades is remarkable considering how much criticism has been directed against it since the adoption of the Genocide Convention in 1948.2 The existence of a stable internationally agreed definition of genocide presents indubitable advantages, particularly if compared with the lasting uncertainties in the definition of other international crimes, such as crimes against humanity. However, the genocide definition is also characterised by a number of problematic aspects and unresolved interpretative questions, some of which have been addressed in the decisions of the ad hoc Tribunals for the Former Yugoslavia and for Rwanda.3 Divergent approaches to the mens rea requirement, to the definition of the four protected groups against whom genocide can be committed, or to the identification of acts that constitute genocide had been confined to an exclusively academic ambit until not long ago, but can now be determinative of an acquittal or conviction. With the exception of one decision by the ICTY,4 all other judgments on genocide have come from the ICTR, in whose custody are some of the most prominent members of the interim government and of the militias accused of having organised and carried out the 1994 Rwandan genocide.5


The paper deals with EFL and presents different theoretical and practical ways in language learning, that is learning new vocabulary. In the beginning it examines the two different ways of learning a foreign language, that is incidental (language acquisition) and intentional (language learning). Subsequently, it examines which is more important in language learning, grammar, or vocabulary and why. The central part of the paper focuses on ways of teaching and learning new vocabulary and the four key points in learning new vocabulary, which are exposure, repetition and multiple encounter, multisensory learning and learning stages. The paper describes the theoretical background for the four key points and tips on how to implement them. The paper argues that vocabulary trumps grammar in foreign language learning and that the four key points described in the paper are crucial in facilitating vocabulary learning. The paper is in terms of methodology theoretical in nature and uses the descriptive research method as it describes previous findings on the topic and comparative research method when comparing professional and scientific findings of different authors. The paper is also based on the author's personal work and activities in the classroom in her 20 years of teaching English.


GERMANYBONN-- One of the thorniest issues on the slate of Germany's new research and education minister, Edelgard Bulmahn, is what to do about Munich Technical University's planned neutron source, a research reactor dubbed FRM-II, now under construction in the Munich suburb of Garching. Many members of Bulmahn's Social Democrat/Green Party coalition government oppose FRM-II's design because it will use highly enriched, or "bomb-grade," uranium fuel. Bulmahn has put the reactor's fate in the hands of an "expert group" of physicists, nonproliferation experts, and government officials, which will reveal its decision this summer.


Differences in production of two putative virulence factors of Candida albicans, phospholipase and proteinase, were determined for a large panel of clinical C. albicans isolates (n = 186) obtained from the European SENTRY programme. Seventy-two per cent of isolates produced detectable amounts of phospholipase and 95 % of isolates produced detectable amounts of proteinase. There was no clear correlation between the results of the phospholipase and proteinase assays and the geographical distribution of the isolates. However, isolates that originated from respiratory infections produced significantly higher amounts of phospholipase than isolates obtained from blood, the urinary tract or wounds/skin/soft tissue and also appeared to produce more proteinase. These virulent isolates involved in respiratory infections may originate from the oral cavity. Whether these results are caused by selection for these highly virulent isolates remains to be resolved.


1. Measurements of pyruvate carboxylase, mitochondrial phosphoenolpyruvate carboxykinase (GTP), hexose bisphosphatase and glucose 6-phosphatase in developing sheep liver showed substantial activities of all enzymes in the foetus, especially towards the end of gestation. Cytosol phosphoenolpyruvate carboxykinase (GTP) in livers of mid-term foetuses was only 10% of the activity at birth. 2. All enzymes except pyruvate carboxylase showed 1.5-2-fold increases after birth. 3. Gluconeogenesis form [14C]actate could not be detected in chronically cannulated sheep foetuses at any developmental stage and was not initiated by the infusion of adrenaline or glucagon. 4. An active pathway of gluconeogenesis was evident in vivo within 2 min after natural birth or within 4 min after Caesarian delivery of term lambs, and was delayed in prematurely delivered lambs until breathing was established and the blood fully oxygenated. 5. It is proposed that oxygen availability initiates gluconeogenesis in the newborn lamb.


This position paper takes the first step to attempt to present the initial characterization of HCI research in China. We discuss the current streams and methodologies of Chinese HCI research based on two well-known HCI theories: Micro/Marco-HCI and the Three Paradigms of HCI. We evaluate the discussion with a survey of Chinese publications at CHI 2019, which shows HCI research in China has less attention to Macro-HCI topics and the third paradigms of HCI (Phenomenologically situated Interaction). We then propose future HCI research directions such as paying more attention to Macro-HCI topics and third paradigm of HCI, combining research methodologies from multiple HCI paradigms, including emergent users who have less access to technology, and addressing the cultural dimensions in order to provide better technical solutions and support.


The effect of harvester operator tree selection or prior tree marking in thinning operations on satisfactory results and performance has been widely discussed. In harvester operator tree selection, the machine operator decides on the fly which trees are selected to remain or cut. The objective of the study was to analyze the effect of prior tree marking, thinning method and topping diameter on harvester performance in low-diameter thinning operations. The entire thinning operation was captured using video technology. Overall, 2.36 ha divided into 48 plots with 5202 trees were thinned with an average diameter at breast height (dbh) over bark for all plots of between 12.5 and 14.7 cm. In total, 3122 trees were harvested, resulting in 60% removal of stem number over all plots. The harvester achieved a mean productivity of 7.38 m PMH with 1.48 m PMH SEM, with stem volume having the major influence on harvesting productivity. Prior tree marking, topping and thinning method did not significantly affect productivity. Without prior tree marking by the foresters, harvesting removal was shifted toward lower diameters. Within the unmarked plots, 7.0% of the residual trees were damaged compared with 3.2% in marked plots.30–130–1


While machine learning is rapidly being developed and deployed in health settings such as influenza prediction, there are critical challenges in using data from one environment to predict in another due to variability in features. Even within disease labels there can be differences (e.g. "fever" may mean something different reported in a doctor's office versus in an online app). Moreover, models are often built on passive, observational data which contain different distributions of population subgroups (e.g. men or women). Thus, there are two forms of instability between environments in this observational transport problem. We first harness substantive knowledge from health research to conceptualize the underlying causal structure of this problem in a health outcome prediction task. Based on sources of stability in the model and the task, we posit that we can combine environment and population information in a novel population-aware hierarchical Bayesian domain adaptation framework that harnesses multiple invariant components through population attributes when needed. We study the conditions under which invariant learning fails, leading to reliance on the environment-specific attributes. Experimental results for an influenza prediction task on four datasets gathered from different contexts show the model can improve prediction in the case of largely unlabelled target data from a new environment and different constituent population, by harnessing both environment and population invariant information. This work represents a novel, principled way to address a critical challenge by blending domain (health) knowledge and algorithmic innovation. The proposed approach will have significant impact in many social settings wherein who the data comes from and how it was generated, matters.


We present an approach to the analysis and optimization of heterogeneous distributed embedded systems for hard real-time applications. The systems are heterogeneous not only in terms of hardware components, but also in terms of communication protocols and scheduling policies. When several scheduling policies share a resource, they are organized in a hierarchy. In this paper, we address design problems that are characteristic to such hierarchically scheduled systems: assignment of scheduling policies to tasks, mapping of tasks to hardware components, and the scheduling of the activities. We present algorithms for solving these problems. Our heuristics are able to find schedulable implementations under limited resources, achieving an efficient utilization of the system.


By PECVD deposition technology, we mainly investigated the influence of PRF (radio frequency power) on glass/steel-based intrinsic amorphous/microcrystalline silicon thin film prepared at 300°C. We study the crystallization ratio, grain size of the silicon thin film specially. The results reveal that the crystallization ratio and grain size of the silicon thin film changed along with RF power. The silicon thin film crystallization ratio and grain size changed sharply when PRF =70 W. On this work we think ideal μc-Si:H can be obtained at PRF= 70 W and in the suitable experimental conditions.


Polymer prodrugs can considerably improve the treatment of tumors with multidrug resistance, often caused by overexpression of P-glycoprotein (P-gp). Here, we present the effect of the N-(2-hydroxypropyl) methacrylamide-based polymer conjugate with P-gp inhibitor ritonavir (RIT) on the increase of free doxorubicin (DOX) and polymer-bound DOX cytotoxicity in the human neuroblastoma 4 cell line and its resistant clones to different cytostatics. The increase in cytotoxicity after polymer–RIT conjugate pretreatment was higher for the lines overexpressing P-gp and less pronounced for those with decreased P-gp levels. Moreover, the effect of polymer conjugate containing inhibitor and DOX on the same polymer chain was lower than that of two individual polymer conjugates used sequentially. In conclusion, the polymer–RIT conjugate can significantly increase the cytotoxicity of free DOX and polymer–DOX conjugates in cells with various multidrug resistance origins and can thus be considered a suitable therapeutic enhancer of polymer prodrugs.


Within the frame of the ongoing 7th Framework European Project DREAM, this article presents a synthesis of Cenaero, DLR, and Onera's joint effort to demonstrate the aerodynamic and acoustic optimization potential of a contra-rotating open rotor. Within WP 3.2 led by Snecma, the objective was to maximize the propellers efficiency at top-of-climb conditions and to minimize the noise emission at take-off focusing on interaction noise while fulfilling the thrust and torque split specifications at both operating points. These objectives were successfully met by the development and exploitation of efficient multi-objective three-dimensional Reynolds-averaged Navier–Stokes (RANS)-based surrogate-assisted optimization strategies. In order to assess the aerodynamic and acoustic characteristics of both baseline and optimized geometries, coupled unsteady RANS (URANS) simulation and farfield prediction based on an integral Ffowcs Williams–Hawkings approach were then carried out. The results demonstrate that although the acoustic criterion driving the optimization process did not lead to an improvement of the noise characteristics over the whole directivity range, it may be regarded as a cost-effective way to incorporate noise-related aspects into the design intent.


The letter proposes a new family of simple topologies of single-phase PWM ac-ac converters with a minimal number of switches: voltage-fed Z-source converter and current-fed Z-source converter. By PWM duty-ratio control, they become "solid-state transformers" with a continuously variable turns ratio. All the proposed ac-ac converters in this paper employ only two switches. Compared to the existing PWM ac-ac converter circuits, they have unique features: providing a larger range of output ac voltage with buck-boost, reversing or maintaining phase angle, reducing in-rush and harmonic current, and improving reliability. The operating principle and control method of the proposed topologies are presented. Analysis, simulation, and experimental results are given using the voltage-fed Z-source ac-ac converter as an example. The analysis can be easily extended to other converters of the proposed family. The proposed converters could be used in voltage regulation, power regulation, and so on.


Professional commitment (PC) refers to the attachments that individuals form to their profession. While prior accounting literature has examined only one dimension of PC, research outside accounting has established that there are three distinct dimensions to PC (Hall et al. 2005). In this paper we test the validity of Meyer et al.'s (1993) three‐component model of PC among a sample of public accountants. Given that the majority of studies of accountants' PC have used the Professional Commitment Questionnaire (PCQ), we also assess whether the PCQ is a measure of a specific dimension of PC, affective PC. The results of our confirmatory factor analyses and tests of reliability and validity provide support for three separate dimensions of public accountants' PC. Our tests also indicate that the PCQ scale is a measure of affective PC. The implications of our results on interpreting prior research and for considering future research on accountants' PC are presented.


Candida albicans is known to cause infections ranging from superficial and systemic in immunocompromised person. In this study, we explored that the antifungal action of Methylene blue (MB) is mediated through mitochondrial dysfunction and disruption of redox and membrane homeostasis against C. albicans. We demonstrated that MB displayed its antifungal potential against C. albicans and two clinical isolates tested. We also showed that MB is effective against two non- albicans species as well. Notably, the antifungal effect of MB seems to be independent of the major drug efflux pumps transporter activity. We explored that MB treated Candida cells were sensitive on non-fermentable carbon source leading us to propose that MB inhibits mitochondria. This sensitive phenotype was reinforced with the fact that sensitivity of Candida cells to MB could be rescued upon the supplementation of ascorbic acid, an antioxidant. This clearly suggests that disturbances in redox status are linked with MB action. We further demonstrated that Candida cells were susceptible to membrane perturbing agent viz. SDS which was additionally confirmed by transmission electron micrographs showing disruption of membrane integrity. Moreover, the ergosterol levels were significantly decreased by 66% suggesting lipid compositional changes due to MB. Furthermore, we could demonstrate that MB inhibits the yeast to hyphal transition in C. albicans which is one of the major virulence attribute in most of the hyphal inducing conditions. Taken together, the data generated from present study clearly establishes MB as promising antifungal agent that could be efficiently employed in strategies to treat Candida infections.


ABSTRACT Aim: Ensuring correct and complete source data in clinical trials is of outmost importance. Journal audits in the Dept. of Oncology revealed that source data were not always complete and thus the need to identify specific areas and extent of deficiencies. Methods: Coupling of data from patient's clinical records and electronic medicine ordering records with findings by research nurse at point of CRF data entry, thereby identifying areas with missing or erroneous data. A questionnaire was developed. Results: From June to September 2013, 382 patient visits were examined. 187 of these had at least one or more deficiency which corresponds to 49% of the total registrations. Of these, deficiencies regarding Adverse Events (AE) are the most common (77%). For AEs, deficiencies were found in three main groups: Omissions in completing forms registering AEs per patient/visit: 39.6%; omission to register relationship to IMP: 37.4%; omitting start/stop dates: 21.2%. Of the 278 AE registrations with error/omissions there were 26 potentially significant errors which correspond to 10.7% of the registrations. Significant errors: should have led to dose modification, essential for patient safety or should have triggered a medical treatment/examination). Most deficiencies (57%) were found in investigator initiated trials and 5 doctors of 55 were linked to 39% of deficient registrations. Conclusions: A review of source data in clinical protocols revealed one or more deficiency in approximately half of all registrations. The findings were not satisfactory from an efficacy and quality point of view, but it did not have major effect on the trial conduction when monitored by external audit. Several causes could explain the findings: insufficient documentation tools; lack of time to perform protocol requirements, poor understanding of GCP in clinical trials etc.. Multi-targeted interventions will be planned to improve the production/efficacy, pending further analyses. The conducted survey is an important tool to improve efficacy and quality. Disclosure: All authors have declared no conflicts of interest.


This article examines the racialization of informational labor in machinima about Chinese player workers in the massively multiplayer online role playing game World of Warcraft. Such fan-produced video content extends the representational space of the game and produces overtly racist narrative space to attach to a narrative that, while carefully avoiding explicit references to racism or racial conflict in our world, is premised upon a racial war in an imaginary world—the World of Azeroth. This profiling activity is part of a larger biometric turn initiated by digital culture's informationalization of the body and illustrates the problematics of informationalized capitalism. If late capitalism is characterized by the requirement for subjects to be possessive individuals, to make claims to citizenship based on ownership of property, then player workers are unnatural subjects in that they are unable to obtain avatarial self-possession. The painful paradox of this dynamic lies in the ways that it mirrors the dispossession of information workers in the Fourth Worlds engendered by ongoing processes of globalization. As long as Asian "farmers" are figured as unwanted guest workers within the culture of MMOs, user-produced extensions of MMO-space like machinima will most likely continue to depict Asian culture as threatening to the beauty and desirability of shared virtual space in the World of Warcraft.


Proteins play the most dynamic and diverse roles among all the biomacromolecules in living organisms. With the fast development in biotechnology, protein gains more and more interests for a wide range of applications, such as biochemical synthesis, sensing, environmental protection and medical applications. However, the vulnerable nature of proteins has hindered their boarder applications. Developing vectors and stabilizers that help to more effectively deliver protein therapeutics or stabilize proteins has been an essential theme of the field.In this dissertation, novel strategies have been developed for protein delivery by a method of in-situ free-radical polymerization or by a self-assembling/ crosslinking approach. Protein nanocapsules made from the in-situ polymerization method were also used building blocks to synthesize protein composites with dramatically enhanced stability. This dissertation research consist with four topics outlined below: 1. Organophosphorus hydrolase (OPH) nanocapsules were synthesized by in-situ free-radical polymerization with enhanced activity and stability. These nanocapsules are highly potent for decontamination, as well as in vivo detoxification of organophosphorus as prophylactics or antidotes. 2. Protein nanocapsules made by the in-situ polymerization technique were used as building blocks to synthesize protein-silica composites through a sol-gel process. The microenvironment around the proteins was engineered through judicious choices of the polymer monomers and the silica precursors, enabling the synthesis robust enzyme composites with high activity for various industry applications.3. Protein nanocapsules were synthesized by assembling the proteins with self-crosslinking cell penetrating polymer (SCP). Self-crosslinking by disulfide-bond formation within the SCP leads to the formation of robust protein nanocapsules with highly retained activity. These nanocapsules were able to be effectively internalized by cells without significant cytotoxicity, and the protein cargo could be effectively released upon exposure to glutathione that break down the disulfide bonds.4. Protein nanocapsules with zwitterionic shells were synthesized by a self-assembling approach. The zwitterionic shells protected the nanocapsules from being uptake by macrophages, while such shells could be detached once exposing to a low pH environment. This approach provides a suitable platform towards protein therapeutics with prolonged circulation time with ability of being delivered into the cells.Overall, this dissertation work provides novel strategies toward better protein-delivery vectors, as well as composites with better protein stability and activity, for a broad range of applications.


Ligand–receptor interactions are responsible for adaptation and robustness of all cellular life to most chemical external stimuli, and are mediated by cellular networks whose structure appears to be highly conserved among different organisms. Although many ligand–receptor networks exhibit a common structure, the dynamic response to variations in the ligand concentration can be vastly different from network to network. This suggests that certain parameters of the network have evolved by nature to provide appropriate performance and robustness characteristics for different situations. We investigate the system's response in the cases of low and and high concentrations of external cAMP, corresponding to two distinct stages of the Dictyostelium life cycle. Our analysis reveals highly robust responses from the ligand‐bound receptor kinetics for low ligand concentration, and such high levels of robustness are likely to be required from each individual Dictyostelium cell to survive this stage of its life cycle. We show that overshoot is prohibited by the structure of network regardless of the kinetic constants values, and the particular values chosen in the original model are shown to lead to a critically damped response. On the other hand, for high ligand concentrations an extreme reduction in the magnitude of the network response to external signals is observed, and this may be responsible for the completely different physiological behaviour of the organism as groups of up to 105 Dictyostelium cells aggregate to form a slug. The receptor–ligand interaction networks may have evolved to provide an optimal trade‐off between maximizing the speed of response and prohibiting overshoot as it follows external oscillatory signals. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.


In written dialog, discourse participants need to justify claims they make, to convince the reader the claim is true and/or relevant to the discourse. This paper presents a new task (with an associated corpus), namely detecting such justifications. We investigate the nature of such justifications, and observe that the justifications themselves often contain discourse structure. We therefore develop a method to detect the existence of certain types of discourse relations, which helps us classify whether a segment is a justification or not. Our task is novel, and our work is novel in that it uses a large set of connectives (which we call indicators), and in that it uses a large set of discourse relations, without choosing among them.


The research interests address a need for knowledge regarding the importance of 'acts of caring' for a caritative approach when performing tasks in the care of the elderly. The overall aim of the research was to deepen the understanding of ethics and describe the actions and habits that are important in the 'acts of caring' for both patients and caregivers in relation to the caritative nursing and ethics of care relevant to the caritative care theory. The design of the study design is based on and from a human-scientific perspective and founded on a hermeneutic tradition based on Gadamer's philosophy. Data was collected partly from qualitative interviews with patients and caregivers and partly from a questionnaire for caregivers. The interviews were carried out in several home healthcare contexts. The data has been analysed and interpreted by means of qualitative content analysis. The result shows that the caregiver's caring and non-caring deeds have significance for caregiving and this is manifested in the caregiver's attitude, consciously or unconsciously. And it also shows that repetition results in either good habits or bad habits. With caritative ethics of care, good habits appear that alleviate suffering and promote health in an 'act of caring'. Bad habits, which lead to bad deeds, have no place in the ethics of care and nursing theory, because a non-caring deed cannot create an 'act of caring'. All forms of caring deeds and good habits can be connected to the character traits, virtues and moral integrity of the caregiver, and intertwine in such a way that the good habits of care may arise from another good habit or lead to a new good habit.


Context. Umbral Dots (UDs) are thought to be manifestations of magnetoconvection in sunspot umbrae. Recent advances in their theoretical description point to the need for a thorough study of their properties and evolution based on data with the highest currently achievable resolution. Aims. Our UD analysis aims to provide parameters such as lifetimes, diameters, horizontal velocities, and peak intensities, as well as the evolution of selected parameters. Methods. We present a 106-min TiO (705.7 nm) time series of high spatial and temporal resolution that contains thousands of UDs in the umbra of a mature sunspot in the active region NOAA 10667 at μ  = 0.95. The data were acquired with the 1-m Swedish Solar Telescope (SST) on La Palma. With the help of a multilevel tracking (MLT) algorithm the sizes, brightnesses, and trajectories of 12 836 umbral dots were found and extensively analyzed. The MLT allows UDs with very low contrast to be reliably identified. Results. Inside the umbra we determine a UD filling factor of 11%. The histogram of UD lifetimes is monotonic, i.e. a UD does not have a typical lifetime. Three quarters of the UDs lived for less than 150 s and showed no or little motion. The histogram of the UD diameters exhibits a maximum at 225 km, i.e. most of the UDs are spatially resolved. UDs display a typical horizontal velocity of 420 m s -1 and a typical peak intensity of 51% of the mean intensity of the quiet photosphere, making them on average 20% brighter than the local umbral background. Almost all mobile UDs (large birth-death distance) were born close to the umbra-penumbra boundary, move towards the umbral center, and are brighter than average. Notably bright and mobile UDs were also observed along a prominent UD chain, both ends of which are located at the umbra-penumbra boundary. Their motion started primarily at either of the ends of the chain, continued along the chain, and ended near the chain's center. We observed the splitting and merging of UDs and the temporal succession of both. For the first time the evolution of brightness, size, and horizontal speed of a typical UD could be determined in a statistically significant way. Considerable differences between the evolution of central and peripheral UDs are found, which point to a difference in origin.


Abstract Campylobacter is a major foodborne pathogen and is commonly present in food producing animals. This pathogenic organism is highly adaptable and has become increasingly resistant to various antibiotics. Recently, both the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the World Health Organization have designated antibiotic-resistant Campylobacter as a serious threat to public health. For the past decade, multiple mechanisms conferring resistance to clinically important antibiotics have been described in Campylobacter, and new resistance mechanisms constantly emerge in the pathogen. Some of the recent examples include the erm(B) gene conferring macrolide resistance, the cfr(C) genes mediating resistance to florfenicol and other antimicrobials, and a functionally enhanced variant of the multidrug resistance efflux pump, CmeABC. The continued emergence of new resistance mechanisms illustrates the extraordinary adaptability of Campylobacter to antibiotic selection pressure and demonstrate the need for innovative strategies to control antibiotic-resistant Campylobacter. In this review, we will briefly summarize the trends of antibiotic resistance in Campylobacter and discuss the mechanisms of resistance to antibiotics used for animal production and important for clinical therapy in humans. A special emphasis will be given to the newly discovered antibiotic resistance.


This review discusses the use of parameters of prostaglandin metabolism as criteria of human body resistance to adverse environmental effects. The paper presents observations indicating involvement of prostaglandins in responses to stress, hypoxia and ischemia. It is shown that the primary response to such effects as ionizing radiation, microwave radiation, noise, vibration, exercise, microgravity is usually characterized by increases in the concentration of most prostaglandins in organs and tissues. Development of extreme states and diseases leads to dysbalance of major prostaglandins. Knowledge of the changes involved may help improve diagnostic approaches and reliable use of prostaglandin-based drugs, their activators and inhibitors for therapeutic purposes.