Additional bacteriophages were obtained from pooled sewage samples for the genus Levinea. On the basis of plaque morphology and host specificity, three different phages were isolated and purified by serial single-plaque isolations. Cross-neutralization tests were performed on each of the new phage isolates as well as on three previously reported Levinea phages using homologous and heterologous antisera. The data indicated no serological relatedness among the six phages and, therefore, three additional serological groups were established. The phages were designated DM-41, DM-51, and DM-61. Electron micrographs revealed that DM-41 and DM-51 possess a contractile tail whereas DM-61 has a short, noncontractile tail. The phages contained double-stranded deoxyribonucleic acid as determined by the acridine orange-fluorescent staining technique. The value of the phages for use in defining Levinea species and determining relatedness between levineae and the genus Citrobacter is discussed.


PURPOSE
Using MR imaging, we assessed the signal, size, and enhancing characteristics of the cervical cord in patients in whom radiation myelopathy developed after radiotherapy for nasopharyngeal carcinoma.

PATIENTS AND METHODS
Ten patients, 3 men and 7 women, aged from 32 to 77 years, were included. MR imaging was performed 1 to 53 months after clinical manifestations of myelopathy.

RESULTS
Two cases showed atrophy of the cervical cord without abnormal signal intensity; in the others, a long segment of the cervical cord demonstrated low signal intensity on T1-weighted images and high signal intensity on T2- or T2*-weighted images. Some of these cases also showed swelling of the cord. Focal enhancement at C1-C2 area after intravenous administration of Gd-DTPA was seen in four cases.

CONCLUSIONS
There is a correlation between the time of MR imaging after onset of symptoms and MR findings. When MR scans were obtained more than 3 years after onset of symptoms, atrophy of the cervical cord was noted without abnormal signal intensity. When MR was performed less than 8 months after onset of symptoms, a long segment of the cervical cord demonstrated abnormal signal intensity with or without associated swelling of the cord and focal enhancement.


Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) remains among the neoplastic diseases with the most unfavorable prognosis. Historically, systemic treatments for HCC have been scarce. In particular, sorafenib was the only registered drug for the treatment of unresectable HCC until 2017. Last year, regorafenib was approved by the global regulatory agencies as second-line therapy. Since then, further randomized, controlled trials have been successful in this patient population. This paper deals with the most recent data concerning cabozantinib and ramucirumab, the two drugs that have recently demonstrated efficacy in phase III, randomized, controlled trials in HCC patients who failed previous treatment with sorafenib.


My grandfather was a general practitioner in a small town in the USA in the mid-20th century. His medical team consisted of himself and a nurse (who was also my grandmother). He even served as his own pharmacist. In stark contrast, the team in my primary care practice consists of my physician partners, several trainees, nurses, medical assistants, referral coordinators, pharmacists, the subspecialists and their teams, home health nurses and therapists, and more. Such large and disconnected teams can provide comprehensive care for complex and chronic illnesses, but when they malfunction, they can harm patients.1

Teams are larger and more dispersed in time and space, and there are now many more types of teams. They vary from teams whose members repeatedly work together over many years (eg, highly specialised cardiac surgery teams) to teams that are formed quickly and temporarily to resuscitate a patient. Teams are also formed for quality improvement (QI) projects, and they may work together for a few months or a few years. Unfortunately, education for healthcare professionals in most parts of the world still assumes that healthcare teams are like those during my grandfather's time. Professional school and continuing education curricula have not been updated to teach the skills needed to work effectively in these varied teams.

To fill this gap, team training programmes that address teamwork and communication for healthcare providers are increasing in number, becoming more heterogeneous and being evaluated more frequently.2 Here I propose three general approaches that have been developed to improve teamwork in healthcare, and I discuss their strengths, weaknesses and which of their aspects require further research (table 1). Finally, I suggest that these approaches complement one another, and by purposefully exposing care givers to them during their training and careers, we can eventually improve teamwork and patient …


Considering the challenges and threats currently facing water management and the exacerbation of uncertainty by climate change, the need for flexible yet robust and legitimate environmental regulation is evident. The European Union took a novel approach toward sustainable water resource management with the passage of the EU Water Framework Directive in 2000. The Directive promotes sustainable water use through long-term protection of available water resources, progressively reduces discharges of hazardous substances in ground and surface waters, and mitigates the effects of floods and droughts. The lofty goal of achieving good status of all waters requires strong adaptive capacity, given the large amounts of uncertainty in water management. Striking the right balance between flexibility in local implementation and robust and enforceable standards is essential to promoting adaptive capacity in water governance, yet achieving these goals simultaneously poses unique difficulty. Applied resilience science reveals a conceptual framework for analyzing the adaptive capacity of governance structures that includes multiple overlapping levels of control or coordination, information flow horizontally and vertically, meaningful public participation, local capacity building, authority to respond to changed circumstances, and robust monitoring, system feedback, and enforcement. Analyzing the Directive through the lens of resilience science, we highlight key elements of modern European water management and their contribution to the resilience of the system and conclude that the potential lack of enforcement and adequate feedback of monitoring results does not promote managing for resilience. However, the scale-appropriate governance aspects of the EU approach promotes adaptive capacity by enabling vertical and horizontal information flow, building local capacity, and delegating control at multiple relevant scales.


We performed Monte Carlo and molecular dynamics simulations to investigate the interlayer structure of a uranyl-substituted smectite clay. Our clay model is a dioctahedral montmorillonite with negative charge sites in the octahedral sheet only. We simulated a wide range of interlayer water content (0 mg H2O/g clay — 260 mg H2O/g clay), but we were particularly interested in the two-layer hydrate that has been the focus of recent X-ray absorption experiments. Our simulation results for the two-layer hydrate of uranyl-montmorillonite yield a water content of 160 mg H2O/g clay and a layer spacing of 14.66 Å. Except at extremely low water content, uranyl cations are oriented nearly parallel to the surface normal in an outer-sphere complex. The first coordination shell consists of five water molecules with an average U-O distance of 2.45 Å, in good agreement with experimental data. At low water content, the cations can assume a perpendicular orientation to include surface oxygen atoms in the first coordination shell. Our molecular dynamics results show that ${\rm{U}}{{\rm{O}}_2}\left( {{{\rm{H}}_2}{\rm{O}}} \right)_5^{2 + }$UO2(H2O)52+ complexes translate within the clay pore through a jump diffusion process, and that first-shell water molecules are exchangeable and interchangeable.


Nonlinear electrodynamics, QED included, is considered against the Lorentz-noninvariant external field background, treated as an anisotropic medium. Hamiltonian formalism is applied to electromagnetic excitations over the background, and entities of electrodynamics of media, such as field inductions and intensities, are made sense of in terms of canonical variables. Both conserved and nonconserved generators of space-time translations and rotations are defined on the phase space, and their Hamiltonian equations of motion and Dirac bracket relations, different from the Poincaré algebra, are established. Nonsymmetric, but–in return–gauge-invariant, energy-momentum tensor suggests a canonical momentum density other than the Poynting vector. A photon magnetic moment is found to govern the evolution of the photon angular momentum. It is determined by the antisymmetric part of the energy-momentum tensor.


The effect of operating conditions on the hydrocarbon yield distribution during Fischer–Tropsch synthesis (FTS) in a microchannel reactor was studied. A power law-based kinetic model was developed for the first time in microchannel and fixed bed reactors for FTS reactions. The activation energy calculated was 90.16 kJ mol−1 and 106.17 kJ mol−1 in the microchannel reactor and fixed bed reactor, respectively. In a single pass run, the CO conversion obtained in the microchannel reactor was more than 92%, while it was 70% in the fixed bed reactor over the same catalyst. The concentration and temperature profile are predicted in both fixed bed and microchannel reactors. As expected, there was no axial concentration gradient observed in the microchannel reactor. Under adiabatic conditions, kinetic and thermodynamic study simulations showed an increase in reactor temperature from 598 K to 639 K in the microchannel reactor and 598 K to 607 K in the fixed bed reactor. The heat produced per unit volume of the microchannel reactor is higher due to a higher rate of the reaction compared to that in the fixed bed reactor.


This paper proposes a distributed power control algorithm that uses power levels of both current and previous iterations for power update. The algorithm is developed by applying the successive overrelaxation method to the power control problem. The gain from such a second-order algorithm is in faster convergence. Convergence analysis of the algorithm in case of feasible systems is provided in this paper. Using the distributed constrained power control (DCPC) as a reference algorithm, we carried out computational experiments on a DS-CDMA system. The results indicate that our algorithm significantly enhances the convergence speed of power control. A practical version of the proposed algorithm is provided and compared with the bang-bang type algorithm used in the IS-95 and the WCDMA systems. The results show that our algorithm also has a high potential for increasing the radio network capacity. Our analysis assumes that the system is feasible in the sense that we can support every active user by an optimal power control. When the system becomes infeasible because of high traffic load, it calls for other actions such as transmitter removal, which is beyond the scope of the present paper.


This article explores the impact of the existing property rights regime over land and water on the sustainable and equitable management and use of these resources, in the context of changing irrigation practices in a paddy-growing area in the south-eastern part of the Palakkad district in Kerala, India. Since land rights determine rights to water in the area, the article discusses the changing rights regime over land, primarily after the implementation of land reforms in 1970. It shows how the implementation of land reforms and nationalization of private forests have paid little attention to the ecological context in which redistribution was taking place. As a result, while an agricultural-cum- forested landscape was divided into privately owned and government owned parcels, the ecological relationships between these different land use categories were ignored. In the same vein, land and water were treated as separate entities, with redistribution of land rights overlooking the distribution of water rights. The compartmentalized view of resources coupled with the consolidation of the private property regime has resulted in a situation where landowners exploit the resource without any consideration for its ecological characteristics and inter-resource linkages. The failure to view land and water in integration has precipitated inequitable access and unsustainable use of water. In addition, the availability of external water supplies and the introduction of energised pumping facilitate the enclosure of water within privately owned land parcels. The article concludes that a re-envisioning of rights to resources within the concerned ecological context is necessary if sustainable and equitable resource use and management are to be achieved


Aspergillus fumigatus infections are associated with a high mortality rate for immunocompromised patients. The complement system is considered to be important in protection against this fungus, yet the course of activation is unclear. The aim of this study was to unravel the role of the classical, lectin, and alternative pathways under both immunocompetent and immunocompromised conditions to provide a relevant dual-perspective on the response against A. fumigatus. Conidia (spores) from a clinical isolate of A. fumigatus were combined with various human serum types (including serum deficient of various complement components and serum from umbilical cord blood). We also combined this with inhibitors against C1q, mannose-binding lectin (MBL), and ficolin-2 before complement activation products and phagocytosis were detected by flow cytometry. Our results showed that alternative pathway amplified complement on A. fumigatus, but required classical and/or lectin pathway for initiation. In normal human serum, this initiation came primarily from the classical pathway. However, with a dysfunctional classical pathway (C1q-deficient serum), lectin pathway activated complement and mediated opsonophagocytosis through MBL. To model the antibody-decline in a compromised immune system, we used serum from normal umbilical cords and found MBL to be the key complement initiator. In another set of experiments, serum from patients with different kinds of immunoglobulin insufficiencies showed that the MBL lectin pathway contribution was highest in the samples with the lowest IgG/IgM binding. In conclusion, lectin pathway appears to be the primary route of complement activation in the absence of anti-A. fumigatus antibodies, whereas in a balanced immune state classical pathway is the main activator. This suggests a crucial role for the lectin pathway in innate immune protection against A. fumigatus in immunocompromised patients.


Motivation: Many drug combinations are routinely assessed to identify synergistic interactions in the attempt to develop novel treatment strategies. Appropriate software is required to analyze the results of these studies. Results: We present Combenefit, new free software tool that enables the visualization, analysis and quantification of drug combination effects in terms of synergy and/or antagonism. Data from combinations assays can be processed using classical Synergy models (Loewe, Bliss, HSA), as single experiments or in batch for High Throughput Screens. This user-friendly tool provides laboratory scientists with an easy and systematic way to analyze their data. The companion package provides bioinformaticians with critical implementations of routines enabling the processing of combination data. Availability and Implementation: Combenefit is provided as a Matlab package but also as standalone software for Windows (http://sourceforge.net/projects/combenefit/). Contact: firstname.lastname@example.com Supplementary information: Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics online.


Background: Carbapenemase-producing Enterobacteriaceae (CPE) has become a significant problem in terms of public health and clinical outcome. Objective: To assess the epidemiology, treatment and mortality in patients with infection due to CPE. Material and Methods: A retrospective analysis of 163 patients with CPE infection was carried out in a university hospital from July 2013 to October 2015. Results: A total of 163 patients were included over the study period. Klebsiella pneumoniae was isolated in 95.1% of cases, and most of carbapenemases belonged to the OXA-48 group (93.0%). Acquisition was nosocomial in 124 cases (77.0%), healthcare-associated in 30 (18.6%), and 7 cases (4.3%) were community-acquired. The most frequent infections identified in this study were urinary tract (48.4%) and respiratory (19.5%) infections. Approximately half of the patients received antibiotic monotherapy. The 30-day mortality rate was 23.3%. Multivariate analysis revealed that the presence of septic shock at diagnosis (OR 4.2; IC 95% 1.5-11) was independently associated with an increase in death during the first month, unable to identify association with inappropriate antibiotic treatment. Discussion: Further studies are needed to clarify whether antibiotic treatment of EPC infections should be combined or if monotherapy might be sufficient in mild infections.


As globalization penetrates the realm of democracy, the internationalization of the institution of parliament, as the epitome of popular representation in liberal democracies - continues to be largely ignored by key studies in international law, constitutional law and global governance. This article seeks to place international parliamentarism on the radar of legal scholarship, reassess the value that representative democracy has in the globalized world, and demonstrate that understanding parliaments as purely domestic institutions immune from international integrative forces is no longer tenable. This article argues that international interparliamentary relations do not occur merely within isolated forums but can and do de facto evolve in layers of overlapping forums whenever circumstances allow it. To capture this phenomenon, the article conceptualizes multilayered international parliamentarism as developing in webs of linkages between the same parliamentary institutions in various bilateral and multilateral frameworks regarding the same region. This represents the most complex form of parliamentarism in contemporary global affairs. To demonstrate this, the article conducts an in-depth case study of relations between the parliaments of the EU and Brazil and examines the reaction of the Brazilian and supranational regional Latin American parliaments to the EU Returns Directive. The analysis shows that the traditional, inward-looking role of parliaments is gradually changing under the pressure of transnational policy challenges. Increased international contacts among parliaments accentuate their deliberative functions and create new avenues for parliamentary input in international affairs. This kind of interaction fosters the "diplomatic" actorship of parliaments in foreign affairs in a concerted attempt to counterbalance intergovernmental and transgovernmental ways of doing politics and making law.


Abstract Complete agricultural trade liberalization between the United States and the European Union is examined with respect to the agricultural sector. A static, partial equilibrium model, distinguishing among the European Union, the United States, and a politically passive rest of the world, is used to simulate agricultural free trade. The results of this research reveal how European Union and United States adoption of free trade affects domestic and world prices, production, consumption, self-sufficiency, and welfare.


The questions Shakespeare's Sonnets ask and the questions they invite are, from a critical perspective, innumerable and often unanswerable. The questions can be as fundamental, though nevertheless perplexing and imperative, as whether the sonnets constitute a sequence as they exist in manuscript today. Moreover, often scholars debate what questions should be asked or are even valuable to ask; for example, criticism that searches for the "real" young man and Dark Lady seeks to find autobiographical facts or experiences within a literary piece that is not required to provide such information, although its existence as a lyric piece certainly provokes such questions. Similarly, that the text provides a story that may in fact be, but not necessarily is, autobiographical incites doubt. When examining the sonnets, however, in terms of storytelling in combination with the lyric voice and the idea of performance (ever so crucial to Shakespeare), a narrative emerges that reveals a sequence. In analyzing the sonnets as a sequence, it is crucial to incorporate a variety of critical approaches to the sonnets as such, including traditional formalist, feminist, and queer theory readings. While recent criticism has addressed an interpretation of the sonnets as a story, although not necessarily a self-contained story that ties up (or should tie up) all loose ends, the criticism does not address the idea of storytelling in tandem with the lyric snapshots of poetic performance that Shakespeare provides. Often the criticism treats the three concepts as exclusive. If there is a narrative, the poems cannot be lyrics, and if there is a sequence, they cannot be individual performances. Yet, by examining specific sonnets throughout the collection (as ordered by Thomas Thorpe), as instances of a drama that unfolds between the characters of the speaker, the young man, the Dark Lady, and others (Time, the rival poet, etc.), and as dramatic lyrics that are further instances of Shakespearean performance, the story of Shakespeare's Sonnets reveals a sequence of poems illuminating, questioning, and demonstrating the power of love to weaken, but ultimately strengthen, humanity through the power of poetry.


This study investigates the expansion patterns of Canadian firms towards emerging markets. A unique large‐scale longitudinal (1997–2004) dataset which includes 2600 Canadian exporters is constructed by linking multiple administrative databases at Statistics Canada. Our results suggest traditional sequential exporting patterns do not apply to all Canadian exporters. Since 2001, there has been an increasing trend among a new generation of exporters to target emerging markets as their initial export destination; and both macroeconomic and firm‐specific factors seem to account for this development. Compared with foreign‐controlled firms, Canadian‐controlled firms are less likely to export to the emerging markets. In order to successfully expand into emerging markets, Canadian firms have had to improve their productivity and reduce their labor costs.


Dial locks are commonly used to secure a person's items. Commercially available dial locks often use four or five wheels of letters, allowing a user to select a word as a combination. In order to evaluate the security of these locks, we create a game, with an instance created by the lock designer, and played by a lock owner and a thief. In the game, the lock owner chooses a word as a combination, and the thief creates a brute force strategy to try all possible combinations that yield words until the combination is found. To accomplish the task, the thief will solve a version of the Probabilistic Travelling Salesman Problem (PTSP) by creating an a priori tour through all the words a lock can create. The goal for the game designer, then, is to create a lock configuration that maximizes the expected length of the best possible PTSP tour. This paper describes a Genetic Algorithm (GA) approach to design a near-optimal game, i.e. a lock configuration that makes it as difficult for the thief to crack. An analysis of the output of the GA shows that the locks that the system creates are significantly more secure than both commercial locks, in the context of this game.


The presented paper considers low cycle fatigue of the grade 45 steel under symmetric (= -1.0) and asymmetric (= -0.75; -0.5) stress limited torsion. It was defined, that the material is cyclically stable, because the hysteresis loop width during symmetric and asymmetric loading cycles is constant. Under the symmetric cyclic loading, the plastic strain is not accumulated, i.e. qua-sistatic damage does not occur, whereas under the asym-metric loading the accumulation of plastic strain takes place. The analytical dependences were proposed to calcu-late the fatigue life under asymmetric loadings, taking into account the fatigue and quasi-static damage due to accu-mulated plastic strain. It was determined, that quasistatic damage increases, while loading level increases and results at the middle levels decrease of the fatigue life from = = 2840 to = 1830 (τrτrcNcNτ=1.60; = -0.75) and from = 9050 to = 5010 (τrcNcNτ= 1.60; = -0.5).


Sheet‐layered lamination stacks found in electric motors as rotor and stator are a challenging task in structural mechanics due to their special design. The manufacturing process determines the nature of the microstructure resulting in the presence of bonding varnish or frictional contact between the individual metal sheets. For the latter case, a penalty method in normal and tangential direction can be used to capture the contact interactions of single plates. In combination with homogenization techniques, a transversely isotropic surrogate material model with a corresponding strain energy density can be identified. In this paper, the focus lies on the influence of the penalty parameters on the elastic quantities of the constitutive equation.


The early suppression of disease activity during the first 2 years in rheumatoid arthritis (RA) has been reported to be exclusively important to prevent joint destruction and functional decline. Since single disease-modifying antirheumatic drugs(DMARDs) therapy is still disappointing, many rheumatologists today advocated a more aggressive approach using combinations of classic DMARDs. Many clinical trials on combination therapy have been reported and most studies of combination therapy focused on the efficacy of a treatment strategy. Therefore, the possible synergistic action of combination of drugs has not been demonstrated. Among combination of therapy of classical DMARDs, only few trials demonstrated the efficacy of combination therapy. The incidence of adverse effects among 341 RA patients was investigated by our department. The incidence of adverse effect in combination therapy revealed 36.4% which was not statistically different from that in monotherapy(33.6%, p = 0.41). The recent studies on combination therapy on classical DMARDs are not encouraging, however, the combination therapy for patients with early RA, drugs utilizing immunosuppressant, biologics and other newly developed drugs will still have a chance to expect a potent efficacy for RA.


This research explores two polarised occupations; entrepreneurs and PhD research students. It exposes similarities and differences between them which specifically defuse the species premise that all entrepreneurs are different and often portrayed as superior to the rest of society and that they, entrepreneurs, are diametrically opposed to PhD research students in the objectives of their work and ultimate intentions for that work. An explorative, interpretive approach is taken which helps illuminate how people understand, interpret and employ their self identity to qualify the practices of both entrepreneurship and PhDship. This methodology enabled exploration of perceptions of self and role in a small sample of people of different age, gender, class, ethnicity and economic standing of two externally polarised occupational groups. This approach permits a compare and contrast of both similarity and differences between these two roles. Qualitative interviews were conducted with six entrepreneurs and six current PhD students from two North West of England research-led universities in a multitude of disciplines and industrial sectors. Numerous existing studies have compared entrepreneurs to managers, to leaders and more recently to business students. Other studies have aimed to ascertain why some people become an entrepreneur as oppose to a salaried employee. To date, no previous research that I am aware of considers doctoral researchers in the same way, that is, as individuals making a contribution to society that is of social, economic and intellectual benefit by furthering knowledge and innovation.The findings from this research show that there are overwhelming similarities between these two occupations in both their practical processes and their sense of self. In fact, there are more differences within the two occupations than between them. It is suggested that identification of individual purpose may prove a valuable determinate of whether people select either of these occupations for socioeconomic reasons or for socioemotional ones. The contribution this research and its findings make is in the recognition of the different purposes individuals express as their primary reason for engaging in either PhD research work or venture formation. This recognition helps expand our understanding beyond the existing opportunity-necessity or push-pull hypothesis to demonstrate a more sophisticated intention based form of inquiry. Individuals in both occupations are subsequently sub categorised as conformists, alterpreneurs, changemakers or vocationalists. Conformists aim to meet perceived social expectations of them; Alterpreneurs are those who buy-a-job; Changemakers intend to improve or fix a self identified problem; Vocationalists intend to develop their skill and expertise in their chosen field.


Duplex calcia coating method where firstly fine calcia was coated on wax pattern and then fine calcia reinforced silica fiber was coated on the fine calcia coated wax pattern, that is, duplex calcia coating method, was applied for making mold. The surface of Ti-29Nb-13Ta-4.6Zr cast using the duplex calcia coating method show very fine metallic lust. The thickness of alpha case formed on the surface of Ti-29Nb-13Ta-4.6Zr is much thinner comparing with the case where the commercial magnesia mold for casting conventional titanium and its alloys for dental applications is used. The duplex calcia coating method is highly expected to be put into practical use for dental precision casting of Ti-29Nb-13Ta-4.6Zr. The dental crown of Ti-29Nb-13Ta-4.6Zr is successfully fabricated using duplex calcia coating method.


Wax esters are the esters of primary long-chain fatty alcohols and long-chain fatty acids in various combinations, including different chain length and a variety of desaturation degrees. Wax esters cover a wide range of chemical and physical properties, therefore are interesting for many industrial applications. 18:1/18:1 is the most favorable wax ester species for the lubrication purpose. To establish a heterologous pathway for wax ester biosynthesis in plants, only two enzymes are necessary, a FAR and a WS. In previous studies, the introduction of FARs and WSs form different organisms into the seeds of C. sativa resulted in the accumulation of wax esters, but the yields of wax esters as well as the levels of 18:1/18:1 were still low for industrial applications. Attempts of producing higher yields of wax esters, and especially promoting the formation of 18:1/18:1 in seeds of C. sativa for industrial purpose were conducted, and several approaches were tried in the present study.
In opposition to the previous studies that always focus on the eukaryotic WSs, the abilities of a bifunctional WS/DGAT enzyme from A. baylyi ADP1 and several WSs from M. aquaeolei VT8 were tested in the present study. An enzyme from M. aquaeolei VT8 was identified as a novel WS by both in vivo and in vitro assays. Co-expression of bacterial-type WSs with MaFAR in seeds of A. thaliana did not resulted in big amounts of wax esters. However, the compositions of the wax esters produced by the bacterial-type WSs was more favorable for lubrication. The optimization of a bacterial-type WS led to increased levels of wax esters, but the resulting yields were still lower than in the MaFAR/ScWS lines that were obtained in a previous experiment. The co-localization of MaFAR together with ScWS to the ER was not able to increase the yields of wax esters in seeds of A. thaliana, while led to obvious alternations in the compositions of wax esters. This work provides better insights into the enzymatic characteristics and the substrate specificities of several wax ester production enzymes.
The attempt to down-regulate CsDGAT1 neither block the last step of TAG biosynthesis nor further promote the biosynthesis of wax esters in seeds of C. sativa. Whereas, co-expression of amiDGAT1 with MaFAR and ScWS unexpectedly altered the compositions of TAGs and wax esters in seeds of C. sativa. Expression of MaFAR with ScWS in a high oleic acid C. sativa background by crossing the MaFAR/ScWS lines with an Atfad3/Csfad2/Csfae1 line did not affect the yields of wax esters, whilst led to the accumulation of 18:1/18:1 up to 40 mol% of all wax ester molecular species. This study suggested the importance of acy-CoA pool for tailoring the compositions of wax esters, and also showed that the biosynthesis of valuable chemical stocks at a big amount in plant seeds is still a challenge.


The thesis examines Serbian conspiracy culture at the time of the NATO bombing of
Yugoslavia in the spring of 1999. During the war, conspiratorial themes became a regular
occurrence in Serbian mainstream media, as well as in pronouncements by the Serbian
political establishment. For the most part, conspiratorial explanations focused on the
machinations of transnational elite organisations such as the Bilderberg group or, more
generally, on the conspiracy of 'the West'. However, conspiratorial accounts of the war
occasionally invoked themes which were previously deemed to be beyond the boundaries of
acceptable opinion, such as the allusion to a Jewish conspiracy or to the esoteric and occult
aspects of the alleged plot.
The thesis outlines the history of conspiracy theories in Serbia and critically reviews
psychological approaches to understanding the nature of conspiracy theories. It suggests that
the study of conspiratorial discourse requires the exploration of the rhetorical and
argumentative structure of specific conspiratorial explanations, while paying special attention
to the historical and ideological context within which these explanations are situated.
The thesis is largely based upon the examination of the coverage of the war in the Serbian
press. Recorded conversations with two well-known Serbian conspiracy theorists are also
analysed. The study suggest that conspiratorial interpretations of the war drew upon a
longstanding conspiracy tradition of explanation which has a strong anti-semitic legacy and is
rooted in right-wing Christian ideology. Analytic chapters explore the discursive and
ideological dynamics by which the anti-semitic and mystical aspects of the conspiracy
tradition emerged briefly in Serbian mainstream media and political discourse. The thesis
concludes by examining the status of conspiracy theories in Serbia in the aftermath of the
political changes in October 2000.


State-of-the-art architecture description languages have been successfully used to model application-specific programmable architectures limited to particular control schemes. In this paper, we introduce a language and methodology that provide a framework for constructing and simulating a wider range of architectures. The framework exploits the fact that designers are often only concerned with data paths, not the instruction set and control. In the framework, each processing element is described in a structural language that only requires the specification of the data path and constraints on how it can be used. From such a description, the supported operations of the processing element are automatically extracted and a controller is generated. Various architectures are then realized by composing the processing elements. Furthermore, hardware descriptions and bit-true cycle-accurate simulators are automatically generated. Results show that our simulators are up to an order of magnitude faster than other reported simulators of this type and two orders of magnitude faster than equivalent Verilog simulations.


The distribution of collagen type IV, fibronectin and elastin in the flexor digitorum tendons and in the perichondrium of staged human embryos and fetal hand (from 6 to 12 weeks of gestation) has been studied to analyse the immunohistochemical features of the human hand during the first trimester of pregnancy. At 6 weeks in the transverse sections of the fingers there is no evidence of the presence of collagen type IV and elastin which remain absent even in the controls of 9, 11 and 12 weeks. On the contrary from 6 weeks of intrauterine life the fibronectin is widely distributed with thickening above all in the perichondrium and in the subjacent portion of the cartilaginous model of the bone. At 9 weeks a high positivity is detected not only along the perichondrium but even into the extra-cellular matrix of every mesenchymal cell. At 11 and 12 weeks the perichondrium is always positive but a high positivity is now present along the flexor tendons and their related sheaths that show a high grade of differentiation. To sum up, the absence of the collagen type IV into the flexor and extensor tendons is understandable because it isn't a fibrillar collagen. More difficult is to understand the absence of the elastin (component of the mature tendons) until the 12th week. On the contrary the presence of the fibronectin, a structural glycoprotein, proof of active morphogenesis of mesenchvmal cells, earlier in the perichondrium and cartilaginous sketch and later in the flexor tendons and their sheaths indicates that probably among the cells of mesenchymal origin the perichondrium with the cartilaginous model of the bone come before and perhaps orient the differentiation of the other components of the human hand.


The COVID-19 pandemic affects all age groups but follows a more mortal trajectory in patients with preexisting conditions such as immune deficiency, chronic lung disease, diabetes, and cardiovascular problems. Hence, HIV-positive patients with immune deficiency are at risk, therefore, these patients need to have continuous access to treatment during the pandemic. The number of defined COVID-19 positive HIV patients is very limited even though there are approximately 37.9 million HIV-positive patients globally. Therefore, we decided to publish this study reporting an HIV patient treated for COVID-19 in our clinic.


A highly technological Yel-2 hybrid cell clone was isolated. The clone produces monoclonal antibodies to protein E of the yellow fever virus (Dakar strain). The Yel-2 hybridoma was cloned by the method of limiting dilutions. By the data of indirect immunofluorescence the titre of the specific antibodies reached 1:128 in the culture fluid and 1:10240 in the ascitic fluid. The Yel-2 antibodies had no cross reactions with forest-spring encephalitis, Dengue 2 and Dengue 4 viruses. In the hemagglutination inhibition test the activity of the Yel-2 ascitic preparations was observed at a dilution of 1:50000 while the complement fixation test did not reveal it. Administration of the Yel-2 cells into the abdominal cavity of mice BALB/c induced development of ascitic tumors in 97 per cent of pristane-sensitized mice and in 90 per cent of nonsensitized mice. The hybridoma was successfully transplanted from mouse to mouse (more than 20 passages during the observation period) and maintained high constant levels of specific antibody secretion. The high ascite forming capacity of the Yel-2 hybridoma provided decreasing of the cell dose administered to the mice from 10(7) to 10(4) cells per mouse.


Much work on the demographics of social media platforms such as Twitter has focused on the properties of individuals, such as gender or age. However, because credible detectors for organization accounts do not exist, these and future large-scale studies of human behavior on social media can be contaminated by the presence of accounts belonging to organizations. We analyze organizations on Twitter to assess their distinct behavioral characteristics and determine what types of organizations are active. We first create a dataset of manually classified accounts from a representative sample of Twitter and then introduce a classifier to distinguish between organizational and personal accounts. In addition, we find that although organizations make up less than 10% of the accounts, they are significantly more connected, with an order of magnitude more friends and followers.


Background: Intermediate care units (IMCUs) are heterogeneous in design and operation, which makes comparative effectiveness studies challenging. A generalizable outcome prediction model could improve such comparisons. However, little is known about the performance of critical care outcome prediction models in the intermediate care setting. The purpose of this study is to evaluate the performance of the Acute Physiology and Chronic Health Evaluation version II (APACHE II), Simplified Acute Physiology Score version II (SAPS II) and version 3 (SAPS 3), and Mortality Probability Model version III (MPM0III) in patients admitted to a well-characterized IMCU. Materials and Methods: In the IMCU of an academic medical center (July to December 2012), the discrimination and calibration of each outcome prediction model were evaluated using the area under the receiver–operating characteristic and Hosmer-Lemeshow goodness-of-fit test, respectively. Standardized mortality ratios (SMRs) were also calculated. Results: The cohort included data from 628 unique IMCU admissions with an inpatient mortality rate of 8.3%. All models exhibited good discrimination, but only the SAPS II and MPM0III were well calibrated. While the APACHE II and SAPS 3 both markedly overestimated mortality, the SMR for the SAPS II and MPM0III were 0.91 and 0.91, respectively. Conclusions: The SAPS II and MPM0III exhibited good discrimination and calibration, with slight overestimation of mortality. Each model should be further evaluated in multicenter studies of patients in the intermediate care setting.


Femtosecond transient absorption (TA) is used to investigate population dynamics of electronic states in CdTe/CdSe core/shell nanocrystals (NCs) with varying CdSe shell coverage. Upon CdSe shell growth, the CdTe/CdSe NCs show a gradual evolution of surface passivation toward a quasi-type-II charge separation regime. Our results indicate that ultrafast electron transfer (ET) through the interface of CdTe/CdSe NCs becomes measurable as the CdSe shell approaches the quasi-type-II regime which we experimentally determined to be at 0.4 nm (shell) for a 3.4 nm CdTe core. This work reports the first measurement using femtosecond TA to study the electronic states in CdTe/CdSe NCs and spectroscopically observe the evolution of an ultrafast charge transfer (CT) in such a core/shell system. Time-resolved photoluminescence (PL) spectroscopy is used to study the radiative lifetimes of the CdTe/CdSe NCs. One monolayer CdSe coverage leads to longer-lived PL, which is red-shifted by 140 nm compared to the CdTe core PL. I...


In the summer of 2011, Anders Behring Breivik committed a terrorist attack in Norway in which 77 people were killed, and at least 319 more were injured. This paper analyses several aspects of the deadliest attack on European soil since World War II, primarily the psychological background of this crime and its legal implications. The paper consists of three sections. The first section presents the comparative and legal basics of criminal insanity that is necessary in order to understand the sections that follow. The second section deals with the perpetrator's psychological profile and the great debate that had ensued due to the contradicting reports of the Norwegian experts. The last section of the paper summarises the essence of the previous two sections while presenting a comparative procedural analysis of hypothetical trials in select jurisdictions. This paper is based on a comparative analysis of legal norms that aims to highlight the high complexity of the issue. The Breivik case has been selected as an ideal example because, on the one hand, it has created a number of contradicting opinions within its domestic legal system while, on the other hand, its universal nature makes it suitable for a more complex comparative analysis.


The Last Days of Europe: Epitaph for an Old Continent Walter Laqueur St. Martin's Press, 2007 It is significant that Walter Laqueur has joined the growing chorus now pointing to the extraordinary demographic transformation occurring in Europe. He has long been prominent among modern European historians, this being at least his twenty-second book. He speaks of Europe's "political class" and says that it has just recently become conscious of the threat to Europe's existence (not as a place, certainly, but as a civilization anything like what the world has known in the past). The significance of Laqueur's book is that that political class may be willing to listen to him, whereas it has not been open to the alarums expressed, even so long ago as 1973, by the likes of Jean Raspail in The Camp of the Saints. That is, they will listen to Laqueur if they have themselves come to a point where his recitation of a number of untoward facts about demographic swamping is not itself too "politically incorrect" for them to tolerate. The title The Last Days of Europe is consistent with Laqueur's view that the tipping point of demographic change has passed, so that Europe's "existential crisis" is by this time "irreversible." A combination of Europeans' long-declining birthrate, their aging as a population (which itself accelerates the decline in the birthrate), the influx of tens of millions of Muslims and other immigrants, and the much higher birthrate of those immigrants - all of this will within a generation or two put the erstwhile "natives" in the minority. Any hope that the immigrants will "assimilate" and become Europeans-as-such is a dim one, he thinks, both because the immigrants as a whole, while not wishing to return to their home countries, do not wish to assimilate and because as they become a majority they will be inclined to insist that the indigenous Europeans assimilate to them. He gives some telling facts about the failure of the native European population to reproduce itself. It may surprise us that "the birthrate has been falling for the last 150 years." In the nineteenth century, the average number of children per family was five, but this "fell below the reproduction rate (2.2) in the major European countries before the outbreak of World War I" [emphasis added]. Russia provides a salient example of the decline, with its population of 145 million shrinking by two percent per year. Laqueur speculates about the causes of Europe's failure to replicate itself. They include some factors that are too recent to explain the long-term trend, even though they may contribute to the fall in recent decades: the birth control pill, many women's turning toward careers, the lower place now given to marriage as an institution, and the aging of the population. One that he suggests that may go back as far as a century and a half is "the desire for enjoyment," which translates into a wish not to be "tied down" with children. We might add that 150 years ago a much larger portion of the population was engaged in agriculture. The long-term secular trend toward urbanization could well provide the setting for the other causes. What Laqueur recites about the vast immigrant influx into Europe explores the second dimension of the demographic swamping. There are at present approximately 1.6 million Muslims in Britain, most of them from Pakistan and Bangladesh. 80,000 Pakistanis live in Bradford, for example, a city of 470,000. Of these 80,000, about half have been born in the United Kingdom. The bulk of the immigrants have not come from the educated classes of their home countries, but instead from the poorer, largely uneducated population. They stay to themselves, living in low-income households and rarely intermarrying with Britons, preferring to import spouses. And it has recently been announced that the British government will finance the immigration of Moslem Iraqis, and their families, who were employed as interpreters and aides by the British troops who were sent to Iraq in an attempt to maintain order in that country. …


tumours with specific clinical characteristics. Materials and methods: We selected two groups of patients from our archive (PP: poor prognosis vs GP: good prognosis). RNA was extracted from liquid nitrogen-stored tissues and small pools constructed by mixing equal amounts of total RNA from the same number of cases. Pooled RNA from PP and GP tumours were then analysed on cDNA microarrays containing 9,182 probes for known human genes (Incyte Genomics) using the double-fluorochrome Cy3/Cy5 technique. 16 genes were found significantly overexpressed (more than two-fold) in PP versus GP RNA pools. Results: About 20 genes were found overexpressed in GP as compared to PP RNA pools. Among these unbalanced genes, many are correlated with clinical aggressiveness, whereas some are undescribed to date. Further data will be presented about the characterization of these genes pursued on new tumour samples by quantitative real-time fluorogenic RT-PCR and about newRNA tested using oligonucleotide and cDNA microarrays containing new sets of probes. Conclusion: It has been proposed that the gene expression profile will be much more effective than any single marker to identify and classify tumours with specific clinical characteristics.


PURPOSE
The purpose of this study was to provide RT3 accelerometer thresholds to distinguish nonambulation from ambulation, as well as distinguish between low, moderate, and vigorous intensity ambulation in Chinese children.

METHODS
Thirty-five 8- to 12-yr-olds completed a laboratory-based experiment to calibrate the RT3 device across a range of intensities. Oxygen uptake during sedentary tasks and ambulation was aligned, with corresponding RT3 output, to one of four intensity categories (sedentary, < 2 METs; low, > or = 2 but < 3 METs; moderate, > or = 3 but < 6; and vigorous, > or = 6). Threshold values were derived using receiver operator curves to distinguish the sedentary from low intensity, low from moderate intensity, and moderate from vigorous intensity. These were confirmed in an independent sample of 46 similarly aged children.

RESULTS
RT3 movement counts increased in a linear manner with scaled oxygen uptake from stationary to vigorous movement (r(2) = 0.83). The ROC-derived thresholds showed a good ability to discriminate between nonambulatory and ambulatory tasks, as well as distinguish between low, moderate, and vigorous ambulation (sensitivity values of 87-100% and specificity values of 97-100%). ROC analyses in the independent sample showed sensitivity and specificity values ranging from 72 to 98%, indicating that the thresholds provided an accurate distinction between the four intensity categories. A Cohen's kappa of kappa = 0.92 confirmed that the lower threshold had near-perfect agreement with the independent sample, whereas the moderate-intensity and vigorous-intensity thresholds showed good agreement with the independent sample (kappa = 0.63 and 0.65, respectively).

CONCLUSION
The RT3 accelerometer provides an acceptable marker of both sedentary and ambulatory behavior in Chinese children.


Objective: To test the hypothesis that body mass index (BMI) is a factor associated with passing a voiding trial after midurethral sling procedures for stress urinary incontinence (SUI). Study Design: The medical records of 136 consecutive patients who underwent placement of either tension-free vaginal tape (TVT) or transobturator tape (TOT) for SUI during a 1-year period (September 1, 2007 to August 31, 2008) were retrospectively reviewed. Variables assessed were BMI, age, and passing or failing a postoperative urinary voiding trial. Patients with concomitant pelvic organ prolapse surgeries were not included in this analysis. Results: Sixty-seven patients underwent TVT, whereas 69 had TOT procedures. In the TVT group, 30 patients (42%) were unable to void immediately postoperatively compared with 11 patients (16%) in the TOT group (P = 0.0003). The mean (SD) age and BMI of patients who failed or passed voiding trials was 58.6 (12.0) years and 28.0 (4.9) kg/m2 or 53.5 (12.3) years and 29.8 (5.7) kg/m2, respectively. Of 38 patients who did not pass a voiding trial on the day of the procedure, 31 (82%) passed on postoperative day 1, and all patients had passed a voiding trial by postoperative day 11. The mean (SD) BMI for 7 patients who did not pass voiding trial by postoperative day 1 was 28.3 (5.2) kg/m2. Conclusions: Women with higher BMIs were more likely to pass voiding trials after midurethral sling procedures. Patients who had TOT placement had greater success passing a postprocedure voiding trial than did patients who had TVT placement.


Abstract. The impact of a debris flow on a structure can have disastrous effects because of the enormous destructive potential of this type of phenomenon. Although the introduction of risk mitigation structures such as the Sabo Dam, the filter dam and more recently flexible barriers is usual, there are very few methods that are universally recognized for the safe design of such structures. This study presents the results of experimental tests, conducted with the use of a specifically created flume, in order to obtain detailed knowledge of the mechanical aspects, and to analyze the dynamics of the impact of a debris flow on different types of structures. The analyses of the tests, together with the calculation of the thrust caused by the flow, have made it possible to analyze the dynamics of the impact, which has shown differing effects, on the basis of the type of barrier that has been installed.


PURPOSE
To evaluate implant and patient characteristics in a prospective clinical study involving immediate fixed restoration of delayed placement of dental implants.

MATERIALS AND METHODS
Patients diagnosed with generalized chronic periodontitis and previously treated were accepted into the study when they expressed a wish to receive immediate restoration of dental implants. Treatment planning and implant placement were computer assisted, using computerized tomography, planning software, and a surgical template. Patients received abutments and cemented provisional prostheses no later than 72 hours following implant surgery. Patients were followed at 2 and 4 weeks, and 3, 6, and 12 months.

RESULTS
Eighteen patients were accepted and completed the study, ages ranged from 34 to 69 years (mean 54.5±8.5 years). Five patients (27.8%) were smokers (2.5 to 60 pack years). Fifty implants were placed, ranging between 1 to 8 implants per patient. Median implant length was 13 mm (range, 10 to 13 mm) and median implant diameter was 3.75 mm (range, 3.75 to 5 mm). Mean insertion torque was 43 NCm±6.2 SD (range 30 to 50 NCm). Mean implant stability quotient was 71±11 (range 37 to 85). One implant in a patient who smoked and three implants in another patient who smoked failed for a total of four failed implants. At 12 months, the overall survival rate was 92% (100% and 73% among nonsmokers and smokers, respectively).

CONCLUSIONS
The survival of immediately restored dental implants in periodontally treated patients is greater than 90%. Smokers with a past history of chronic periodontitis seem to have a lower implant survival rate.


This study tests whether changes in licensed nurse staffing led to changes in patient safety, using the natural experiment of 2004 California implementation of minimum staffing ratios. We calculated counts of six patient safety outcomes from California Patient Discharge Data from 2000 through 2006, using the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality Patient Safety Indicators (PSI) software. For patients experiencing nonmortality-related PSIs, we measured mean lengths of stay. We estimated differencein-difference equations of changes in PSIs using Poisson models and calculated the marginal impact of nurse staffing on outcomes from fixed-effect Poisson regressions. Licensed nurse staffing increased in the postregulation period, except for hospitals in the highest quartile of preregulation staffing. Growth in registered nurse staffing was associated with improvement for only one PSI and reduced length of stay for one PSI. Higher registered nurse staffing per patient day had a limited impact on adverse events in California hospitals.


Cytochrome P450 1A1 (CYP1A1) and 1B1 (CYP1B1) catalyze the oxidative metabolism of 17 -estradiol (E2) to catechol estrogens (2-OHE2 and 4-OHE2) and estrogen quinones, which may lead to DNA damage. Catechol-O-methyltransferase catalyzes the methylation of catechol estrogens to methoxyestrogens (2-MeOE2, 2-OH-3-MeOE2, and 4-MeOE2), which simultaneously lowers the potential for DNA damage and increases the concentration of 2-MeOE2, an antiproliferative metabolite. In this study, we showed that CYP1A1 and CYP1B1 recognized as substrates both the parent hormone E2 and the methoxyestrogens. Using purified recombinant enzymes, we demonstrated that CYP1A1 and CYP1B1 Odemethylated the methoxyestrogens to catechol estrogens according to Michaelis-Menten kinetics. Both CYP1A1 and CYP1B1 demethylated 2-MeOE2 and 2-OH-3-MeOE2 to 2-OHE2, whereas CYP1B1 additionally demethylated 4-MeOE2 to 4-OHE2. Because the P450-mediated oxidation of E2 and the O-demethylation of methoxyestrogens both yielded identical catechol estrogens as products, we used deuterated E2 (E2-d4), unlabeled methoxyestrogens, and gas chromatography/mass spectrometry to examine both reactions simultaneously. Kinetic analysis revealed that methoxyestrogens acted as noncompetitive inhibitors of E2 oxidation with Ki ranging from 27 to 153 M. For both enzymes, the order of inhibition by methoxyestrogens was 2-OH-3-MeOE2 > 2-MeOE2 > 4-MeOE2. Thus, methoxyestrogens exert feedback inhibition on CYP1A1and CYP1B1mediated oxidative estrogen metabolism, thereby reducing the potential for estrogen-induced DNA damage.


The filter minimizes the mean-square error between the sampled input to the decision device and the corresponding transmitted symbols. It is shown that the structure of this optimal receiving filter corresponds to a bank of matched filters, each followed by a linear transversal filter. Applications of this theory cover nonlinear channels with memory, linearly or nonlinearly modulated signals, and disturbances other than Gaussian noise (e.g. interference from other data sources). >


Drug resistance has been associated with resistance to NK‐ and LAK‐cell‐mediated cytotoxicity. We evaluated this issue in human cell lines, using multiple myeloma cells (8226) and 2 multi‐drug‐resistant (MDR) sublines selected using doxorubicin (8226/Dox40) and mitoxantrone (8226/MR40). In parallel, we studied the human breast carcinoma cell line series MCF7, MCF7/D40 and MCF7/Mitox. Unlike the sensitive parental cell lines, all 4 sublines display MDR‐patterns of resistance, with the P‐glycoprotein pump (P‐170) detected only in the doxorubicin‐selected sublines. Flow cytometric and immunocytochemical analyses showed expression of cellular adhesion molecules ICAM‐1 and LFA‐3, and MHC‐Class‐1 (MCF7/D40 only), to be decreased in the doxorubicin‐selected MDR‐sublines, whereas expression of CD56 (Leu 19) was strongly up‐regulated in 8226/Dox40. Lysis of P‐170‐positive MDR tumor cells by NK or LAK cells was, however, unaffected by these alterations, suggesting redundancy in effector: target‐cell adhesion pathways. Mitoxantrone‐selected tumor cells did not display P‐170, nor did they show altered expression of cellular adhesion molecules. Their susceptibility to NK or LAK cytolysis was also unimpaired as compared to the parental cell lines. Clinically, these results imply that immunotherapeutic modalities aiming at increased natural killer functions deserve full consideration even in patients who have become refractory to further cytostatic drug treatment.


The official tie-in to The Return of the King, in which actor Andy Serkis relates how he and the team of animators brought Tolkien's character Gollum to life. Film-making history was made when, in The Two Towers, an actor's performance and digital animation were seamlessly integrated to create the world's first totally lifelike animated character. Now Andy Serkis tells his own story about how a three-week commission to provide a voiceover for Gollum grew into a four-year commitment to breathe life and soul into The Lord of the Rings' most challenging screen performance. Fully illustrated with more than 100 exclusive behind-the-scenes photos and drawings from The Return of the King and The Two Towers, and with contributions from the many designers and animators who brought Gollum to life, this book examines the transition to the big screen of one of Tolkien's most popular characters from The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings.


Aluminum matrix composites containing of 10, 20 and 30 vol% TiB2 particles were compacted by underwater and direct shock wave consolidation methods. SEM and Optical Microscopic examination, hardness and bending strength measurements were used to characterize the samples. It is observed that there were different distributions of TiB2 particles in recovered compacts by each method. In the direct method, the distribution of TiB2 particles at the center and at the periphery of the sample was different whereas in the underwater method there was a uniform microstructure in the sample. The microhardness of the compacts increased with increasing TiB2 particle volume fraction in both methods. The results showed highest bending strength for the composite containing 20 vol% TiB2 particles.


The History Project is part of the WWW VL - World Wide Web Virtual Library, a collection of subject related Websites maintained by institutions throughout the world, each administering a different subject. The project is now managed by a independent committee made up of maintainers of various subject areas. For more information on the project, go to [http://vlib.org/AboutVL.html], for more information on the History Network Project, go to [http://vlib.iue.it/history/about/about.html]


The Egyptian Islamist ideologue Sayyid Qutb (1906-1966) is a founding figure of modern Sunni militancy. The West knows Sayyid Qutb through the prism of his Milestones, the 1964 manifesto urging a Qur'anic revolution against illegitimate Muslim regimes. However, it was Qutb's commanding Qur'anic interpretation, In the Shade of the Qur'an, which provided the rich lodestone for Milestones. In the Muslim world, moderates and militants alike have found sanctuary In the Shade of the Qur'an, making it a unique work that cannot be ignored. Offered below is a detailed analysis of Qutb's work, focused primarily on juz amma (the last thirtieth) of the Qur'an, which is considered the key entree for Muslims who seek a return to faith. Sensitive yet uncompromising, In the Shade of the Qur'an adroitly rehearses at a personal and political level the combat between a pristine Islam and all other profane systems, with the final objective of establishing a supreme Islamic order.


This paper will show how the transfer of public leisure facilities to management led by volunteers (Findlay-King et al, 2017) has transformed services, with improved performance in usage, income and expenditure. This paper uses data collected from interviews with key personnel (volunteers, managers and local authority officers) at 8 sport facilities to explore the management of facilities transferred to volunteer led community groups, in response to local authority funding cuts. The findings are explored in relation to social enterprise literature and in particular Simmons (2008) positive review of the social entrepreneurial benefits of the large leisure trusts in the early '00s and Reid's (2003) similar appraisal of 'third way' management of services. Whilst running costs have been cut by attention to detail, the service has also become more sensitive and flexible to meet the needs of the local community. Volunteers are their own marketing information system, with roots in that community. The politics of these enterprises can reveal limitations and problems, for example the redundancy, or less favourable conditions, of paid employees; and the marginalisation of some classes from volunteer and customer groups. Nevertheless, the positive outcomes of volunteer led management can reduce costs and enhance quality; driven partly by the need to attain sustainability; economically and in terms of becoming regarded as an asset created by the community as well as consumed by it. Thus they retain many of the advantages of the first wave of leisure trusts established in the 1990's but at a smaller scale.Findlay-King, L., Nicholls, G, Forbes, D. & Macfadyen, G. (2017) 'Localism and the Big Society: the asset transfer of leisure centres and libraries – fighting closures or empowering communities?' Leisure Studies 0:0, 1-13.Reid, G. (2003) 'Charitable trusts: municipal leisure's "third way'?' Managing Leisure 8:4, 171-183.Simmons, R. (2008) 'Harnessing Social Enterprise for Local Public Services.' Public Policy and Administration 23:3, 278-301.


The increasing demand for a satisfactory combination of energy–power features in supercapacitors has triggered considerable research efforts dedicated to the development of high-efficiency energy storage devices. In our study, highly cross-linked porous carbon microspheres were prepared via the carbonization of as-prepared polymer spheres followed by a KOH activation process. The resultant products exhibited a high maximum specific surface area (3065.6 m2 g−1), rich nitrogen and oxygen doping (22.3 wt%) and a significant volume fraction of mesopores/macropores (37.91%). The optimal electrode presents the highest specific capacitance of 290 F g−1 and superior cycling stability with 96% retention after 3000 cycles in an aqueous 2 M KOH electrolyte. Moreover, the assembled asymmetric supercapacitor device based on Co0.9Mn0.1 arrays as the positive electrode achieves a specific capacitance of 105.43 F g−1 and an energy density of 134.9 W h kg−1 at a power density of 2879.8 W kg−1. Interestingly, the device can illuminate an LED for 30 min, demonstrating the promising application potential in high-performance devices related to energy storage.


SUMMARY: Bacillus circulans WL-12 1,3-β-D-glucanases are extracellular enzymes subject to catabolite repression by glucose and synthesized after the depletion of this sugar. Utilization of other complex carbon sources (1,3-β-D-glucan from baker's yeast, laminarin or xylan) resulted in a 3-to 4-fold increase in the formation of these enzymes, suggesting that they are derepressible and inducible. Under induction conditions four different enzymes were detected by isoelectric focusing that were numbered I, II, III and IV, according to their isoelectric points (3-7, 4-6, 5-5 and 6-5 respectively). Glucanase II was inducible whereas I, III and IV were both derepressible and inducible. In addition, the synthesis of glucanase II was blocked by cyclic AMP. The four enzyme forms displayed an endo- attack on laminarin and yielded similar products, but differed in some physico-chemical parameters such as molecular weight, K
m and lytic activity.


Introduction: This study explored the utility and attitude towards medical learning applications (MLA) among undergraduate students (general medicine) in Cluj-Napoca and the use of these apps in finding solutions to five case-based medical scenarios. Materials and methods: A crosssectional design using an online survey was conducted between June 8th and July 19th, 2019. The English/Romanian students were personally invited to participate in the survey via social media platforms (Facebook/WhatsApp student groups). A three-section questionnaire was developed to anonymously collect demographic data, study habits and the answers to the five case-based medical scenarios. Results: Ninety-three students between the age of 19 and 50 (75% younger than 25 years, 54.5% males) participated. Most of the responding students (81.7%) were in the clinical years of study and studied up to 3 hours per day (67.7%). The use of at least one MLA was reported by 54.8%, while 18.3% of these use MLA ≥2 hours per day. The MLA were mainly used for studying throughout the semester (70.1%), 29.9% used MLA only for their exam preparation. The top-three MLA were 'Amboss' (34/88), 'Medscape' (10/88) and 'Dr. Najeeb Lectures' (7/88). In most of the cases the students paid for the MLA (62.7%). The maximum obtainable score (6 points) in the clinical cases was reached only by 3 students without significant differences either between the scores of those students who used or not used resources to find the case solutions (Mann-Whitney test P=0.594, median of correct answers = 3 for both groups), or in the scores of those who used or did not use MLA for learning (P=0.788, median of correct answers = 3 for both groups). Conclusion: More than half of the participating students used MLA but this is not reflected in the number of correctly answered clinical cases.


In recent years, place recognition techniques have been extensively studied in the domain of robotic mapping, referred to as appearance-based mapping. Nonetheless, the majority of these methods focus the challenges of place recognition in offline or supervised scenarios, which in certain conditions, e.g., unknown environments, is infeasible. In this paper, we address the challenges of online place recognition and demonstrate the general applicability of our approach in versatile environments. To this end, a modified growing self-organizing network of neurons is proposed, which incrementally adapts itself to learn the topology of the perceptual space formed by gist features. Given a query image and the network state at any time instant, the expected activity of the network is estimated using a proposed Bayesian framework, and the current place is categorized as familiar or novel. Exhaustive experiments on 11 challenging sequences signify the strength of our algorithm for a reliable and real-time place recognition on routes as large as 18  km. Compared to many state-of-the-art approaches, our method does not need offline training or environment-specific parameter tuning.


Background Technology has been developed to verify medicines by incorporating barcode verification technology within an electronic medicines-administration system (eMAR barcode) to prevent serious medicines errors during administration of medicines. Purpose To evaluate the implementation of an electronic system of validation and control of cytostatic drug administration using barcodes and an electronic medicines-administration system (eMAR). Materials and Methods To identify patients we used barcoded wristbands and we acquired PDAs as eMAR, which were connected to the e-prescribing programme by the hospital WIFI. After having received the medicine sent from the Pharmacy Department, the nurse scans the barcodes printed on the patient's wristband, then drug information about the medicines to be administered appears on the screen of the PDA (patient data, route, speed and time of administration, sequence order, components, and number of administrations). After scanning the barcode on the patient's wristband the nurse scans the barcode on the medicine labels of cytostatic drugs. If the dose being scanned corresponds to a pharmacist-approved medicines order and the patient is due for this dose, administration is automatically documented. However, if the dose does not correspond to a valid order, the application issues a warning. Every action performed with PDAs is recorded in the database. Results During the first year since its introduction, this system has been used in 709 oncology-haematological and rheumatologic patients (24.8% haematology, 49.1% oncology, 22.6% rheumatology patients), 3995 medicine orders have been scanned (22.2% haematology, 60.2% oncology, 17.6% rheumatology) and 11435 doses identified (12.3% haematology, 80.8% oncology, 6.9% rheumatology). 99.7% of the doses identified with this system were administered while the remaining 0.3% were not administered to patients due to the occurrence of several adverse reactions. Variables validated by the scan were: patient, drug administration sequence, start and end times. Possible errors detected: incorrect order of administration, drug already administered and drug selected that does not belong to the scanned patient. During the study period we detected 2 cases of selected drug that did not belongs to scanned patient. The system issued a warning that prevented the wrong drug being administered to the patient, probably the worst error with cytostatic drugs administration. Conclusions The implementation of barcode medicines verification technology embedded in an eMAR in a day hospital acted as an additional safety net in medicines administration and patient safety. This system also improved treatment efficiency and achieved greater interdisciplinary collaboration. No conflict of interest.


In this talk, I present the different PDE models to describe the evolution of the density of the population of voles, which are particularly monitored in Eastern France for many years. The first model consists of a scalar PDE depending on time, age, and space supplemented with a non-local boundary condition. The flux is linear with a constant coefficient in the direction of age but contains a non-local term in the directions of space. Moreover, the equation contains a second order term in the spatial variables only. Existence and stability of weak entropy solutions for this model are demonstrated by using, respectively, the Panov's theorem of the multidimensional compensated and a doubling of the variables type argument. Next, inspired by a Multi Agent model proposed by Marilleau-Lang-Giraudoux, where the spatial dynamics of juveniles is decoupled from local evolution in each plot, a directed graph is introduced where its nodes are the plots. In each node, the evolution of the colony is described by a transport equation with two variables, time and age, and the movements of dispersion, in space, are represented by the passages from one node to the other. The numerical simulations of this approach reproduce the qualitative characteristics of the spatial dynamics observed in nature. Furthermore, concerning the interaction between voles and its predators, I introduce a predator-prey system consisting of a hyperbolic equation for predators and a parabolic-hyperbolic equation for preys, where the prey's equation is analogous to the first model of the vole populations. The drift term in the predators' equation depends nonlocally on the density of prey and the two equations are also coupled via classical source terms of Lotka-Volterra type. The proof of existence of entropy admissible solution is based on compensated compactness technique and Helly theorem. Uniqueness and stability are obtained by doubling of variables method. In the last part, I will present the models describing the evolution and interaction of the salmonella pathogens in the gut of farm animals. An ODE model for the evolution of the pathogen concentration is constructed. In the case of a large population of the bacterium, a PDE model is considered. Existence and uniqueness of the solutions are obtained by using the theory of strongly continuous semigroups. The convergence to a stationary state and many numerical simulations are also studied.


Abstract As a complement to life histories authored by many researchers of Maya bones, this study narrates death histories. The latter entails detection of perimortem and postmortem changes to decedents' bodies, followed by translation of these changes' encoded meanings. Biographical analysis of body parts and the buildings in which they are situated facilitates such an endeavor. Past investigations of partibility have focused on protracted processing of noble and royal bodies as a means to reconstitute decedents' identities. Commoners' burials, however, have received far less attention. Consequently, it is difficult to determine if partible practices differ according to or transcend social class. To address this lacuna, a multiscalar frame is applied to a burial sample comprised of decedents from varied social settings in the Three Rivers region, northwestern Belize. Identification of widely shared practices related to the becoming and venerating of ancestors offers a springboard for examining particulars within patterns. Scaling down, commoner burials unearthed at the minor center RB-11 are summarized and special attention is paid to the death history of Individual 71. This decedent's intentionally fragmented body reflects general thinking about ancestors as partible and dividual persons. Yet, certain attributes of Individual 71's burial are unique to the sample as a whole, which demonstrates how social class, circumstance, and individual life history are also instrumental in the reformation of ancestorhood.


High-intensity focused ultrasound was employed to seal lens capsular tears in a rabbit model. Ultrasound therapy was applied either contiguously, thereby completely covering the tear, or in a discrete exposure pattern around the tear. Both methods prevented the formation of a generalised cataract. This was in contrast to results observed in a group of control (untreated) animals which all developed generalised lens opacities. Each control animal also developed a local lens opacity at the site of the capsular tear, as did half the animals treated with the discrete pattern. No animal treated with contiguous exposures developed any local or generalised traumatic-type cataract other than the small lens opacity immediately produced by the treatment. These treatment cataracts would not constitute a significant impediment to vision so long as they did not fall on the visual axis.


A reliable technique is introduced to detect aerodynamic instability of compressors based on wavelet features and hidden Markov model (HMM). A single sensor is sufficient for stall warning if the position of the sensor is carefully selected. The method involves obtaining high-response pressure signal near the rotor tip close to the leading edge. Rotating instabilities band wavelet features are then extracted and trained for the HMM; using data under normal operating conditions, the performance index (PI) is calculated. Unsteady behaviors in prestall processes are discussed and casing wall pressure maps are implemented to explore the mechanism of tip leakage vortex (TLV), which are helpful in explaining the various PI results from different feature selections and probe locations. Experimental results show that the trend indices of PI suitably characterize the compressor aerodynamic instability in subsonic operation.


Posthumanism is used as a collective term to understand "any discursive or bodily configuration that displaces the human, humanism, and the humanities" (Halberstam and Livingston 1995:vii, emphasis added). There are compelling reasons for introducing posthumanism to consumer research. Consumer research often theorises technology as an externalised instrument that the human creates, uses, and controls. In the 21st century we are beginning to realise that, far from being a mere tool, technology is the centre of critical thought about culture and about nature. It has recently been suggested that marketing and consumer research now need to think about technology in a manner which reflects its ubiquity, its deeper symbolic and aesthetic dimensions, and the ways in which it can radically change humanness and human-centred approaches to researching the world. Posthumanism is fundamental to theorising humanness in an era that is witnessing the complexification of new technologies. To follow a posthuman mode of thinking will lead to important ethical and metaphysical insights.

Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.


The Clinico-epidemological characteristics of two confirmed cases of poliomyelitis detected by Acute Flaccid Paralysis (AFP) surveillance in Osun State of Nigeria after almost 6 years of the last confirmed case in the State was reported to provide information for formulating possible aetiological hypothesis and to adequately respond to preventing future occurrences.
The major findings in the assessments of these cases supported the laboratory diagnosis of Wild Poliovirus (WPV). Though the 2 cases occurred around the same time, there is no epidemiology linkage in terms of districts of occurrence and persons affected.
The widespread transmission of the virus in the Northern part of Nigeria, low routine immunization coverage, poor cold chain system and absence of supplemental immunization activities (SIA) in the State and the affected localities ( a year before the occurrences of the disease) coupled with social and environmental factors that favour transmission were some suggested for the occurrences of the disease. Keywords : Poliomyelitis; clinico-epidemological; assessments Nigerian Journal of Health and Biomedical Sciences Vol. 7 (2) 2008: pp. 66-69


Software's ability to adapt at run-time to changing user needs, system intrusions or faults, changing operational environment, and resource variability has been proposed as a means to cope with the complexity of today's softwareintensive systems. Such self-adaptive systems can configure and reconfigure themselves, augment their functionality, continually optimize themselves, protect themselves, and recover themselves, while keeping most of their complexity hidden from the user and administrator. In this paper, we present research road map for software engineering of selfadaptive systems focusing on four views, which we identify as essential: requirements, modelling, engineering, and assurances.


Cross-domain sentiment classification aims to leverage useful information in a source domain to help do sentiment classification in a target domain that has no or little supervised information. Existing cross-domain sentiment classification methods cannot automatically capture non-pivots, i.e., the domain-specific sentiment words, and pivots, i.e., the domain-shared sentiment words, simultaneously. In order to solve this problem, we propose a Hierarchical Attention Transfer Network (HATN) for cross-domain sentiment classification. The proposed HATN provides a hierarchical attention transfer mechanism which can transfer attentions for emotions across domains by automatically capturing pivots and non-pivots. Besides, the hierarchy of the attention mechanism mirrors the hierarchical structure of documents, which can help locate the pivots and non-pivots better. The proposed HATN consists of two hierarchical attention networks, with one named P-net aiming to find the pivots and the other named NP-net aligning the non-pivots by using the pivots as a bridge. Specifically, P-net firstly conducts individual attention learning to provide positive and negative pivots for NP-net. Then, P-net and NP-net conduct joint attention learning such that the HATN can simultaneously capture pivots and non-pivots and realize transferring attentions for emotions across domains. Experiments on the Amazon review dataset demonstrate the effectiveness of HATN.


Riley's Wetlands of the Hudson Bay Lowland: An Ontario Overview is a comprehensive catalogue of the ecological variation across one of the largest wetland complexes in the world. Undertaking a regional assessment of wetland variation that includes insight into the environmental factors regulating the variation is a formidable task, considering the remoteness, inaccessibility and harsh working conditions of the Hudson Bay Lowland. This compilation of 30 years of field data is not only essential, but timely, given that there are new resource developments (Whittington and Price 2013) and rapidly changing climate conditions (Rühland et al. 2013) in the Lowland. The book is divided into five main sections that build off of one another, which are followed by a chapter outlining a wetland classification scheme for the region, and several data archives. The "Regional Overview" chapter does an excellent job of contextualizing the major habitats, geology and climate of the Lowland. It goes further to describe the global importance of the region as a carbon store, albeit using mostly older references, and speculates on how climate warming could impact the ecological functioning of wetlands in the region. The "Regional Wetland Variability" chapter first defines the term "wetland" and then describes the history of its classification, which is important because of the changing approach to classification over the time in which the field data were collected. The chapter ends with a useful description of the six main wetland formations that occur in the region. It was thoughtful to add a tidbit on the origin of the names given to each formation, and a field key (Appendix A). The "Sampling Methods" chapter documents, with transparency, how and where field data were collected. Included was an example of the data collection sheets used, and a wonderful map (Fig. 5) that depicts the location of all wetlands visited over the 18 years of field work. Although summary data from each sampled wetland are given in Appendix C, making it an important catalogue, it would have been helpful to also include their approximate geographic location. Summary data from all sampled wetlands are presented in the "Environmental Variability" chapter. Variations in plant communities that occur across the Lowland are depicted with multivariate ordinations, and are related to environmental variables. The types of analyses presented are simple, yet effective for showing broadscale patterns. The provision of key indicator plant species for the different wetland formations should prove handy to those conducting future work in the region. The chapter was not overly technical, and is thus appropriate for an environmental assessment and land use planning audience. Researchers should also be able to use these data, as scientific names of all plant species are provided. The first four chapters culminate in one entitled "Wetland Succession," which provides a broad-scale description of both temporal and lateral wetland succession of the Lowland. The strength of this chapter is that it offers a hypothesis of how the region is likely to evolve as it continues to grow in areal extent as it isostatically rebounds. Throughout the book, there are numerous colour photographs, which not only enhance its appeal but are critical in helping the reader visualize the complexity and remoteness of the landscape. There are, however, a few things missing from the book that would have been nice to see. For example, most of the work cited was completed more than a decade ago, despite there being a flurry of research activity in the region in the last few years. Also, I found it a bit odd that scientific names were used for plant species, but that wildlife are referred to exclusively by their common names. Overall, though, the Wetlands of the Hudson Bay Lowland: An Ontario Overview is an excellent sourcebook for anyone looking for natural resource knowledge of the Hudson Bay Lowland. It is a valuable manual that provides essential information that should be used to support sound environmental assessments and informed land use planning decisions in the North.


"CAPM In Depth: Certified Associate in Project Management Study Guide for the CAPM Exam" provides a cohesive, concise, yet comprehensive approach to the topics covered by the CAPM exam. With a laser-sharp focus on the CAPM exam, it goes beyond just being an exam cram. No prior knowledge of project management is assumed. The material is presented in a logical learning sequence: Each section builds upon previous sections, and each chapter builds on previous chapters. All concepts, simple and complex, are defined and explained when they appear for the first time. There is no hopping from topic to topic and no jargon without explanation. As a result, although the primary purpose of the book is to help the reader pass the CAPM exam, it will also serve as a good reference after the exam.


This paper represents a modest initial attempt to assess the involvement of the banking sector in the development of the rural sector in Romania during this country's first year as an EU member state. In theory, there should be at least two main reasons to make the rural sector an interesting proposition from the banks' perspective: the beginning of the disbursement of European funds, under the Common Agricultural Policy (CA.P.), and the remittances of Romanians working abroad, the majority of which come from the rural sector. In practice, however, this interest has failed, so far, to materialize: the banks have increased very marginally (or even decreased) their presence in the countryside. One aspect worth considering at this stage is, therefore, if the banking infrastructure has the characteristics of a public service, whether the state should sustain a (non-profit oriented) bank to supply the much needed services, until the private sector funds it worthwhile to get fully involved in activities that today are not very profitable. The paper is organized as follows: the first chapter looks at the supply of banking services, the second chapter tries to assess potential demand for such services and the final chapter draws some conclusions.


Some US politicians have called for trade agreements to be linked to labor and environmental standards. Few realize, however, that one such trade deal already exists. In January 1999, Cambodia and the United States signed an agreement that allowed Cambodia to export more textiles only if its factories complied with international labor laws. Five years later, this unique trade pact has had significant success. After Cambodia's civil war ended in 1991, foreign investors began opening garment factories throughout the nation. They were attracted by cheap labor, low taxes, and the unusual rules governing the world textile trade--specifically, upper limits that the United States and other developed nations set on the amount of textiles that they import from different individual countries. Unable to export more garments from traditional producers like China, investors jostled for their share of Cambodia's quota. Conditions in Cambodia's garment factories were dire. Workers had to pay fees to middlemen in order to obtain jobs and were then kept in debt bondage. Forced overtime, illegal pay deductions, and child labor were commonplace. Additionally, many workers did not earn the Cambodian minimum wage of US$40 a month. Labor unions not linked to the ruling Cambodian People's Party (CPP) were stifled. The Cambodian Labor Code, passed in 1996, was supposed to prevent all of this, but the law was impossible to enforce. Labor inspectors were paid miserably low salaries and made their living on bribes instead. Furthermore, the CPP leadership dominated the industry and had no incentive to launch crackdowns itself. In 1999, the United States negotiated its novel trade deal with Cambodia. Under the agreement, Cambodia's textile export quota would be increased by up to 14 percent a year (later raised to 18 percent) if it was found to be in "substantial compliance" with international and Cambodian labor law. The UN-sponsored International Labor Organization (ILO) would send inspection teams to factories, interview workers and employers, and compile the results. The United States would evaluate the ILO's findings and decide if and how much to raise the quota. Businessmen feared that Cambodian labor unions would become too powerful and unruly, and indeed there were large strikes in the summer of 2000. Tensions waned, however, and textile manufacturers were not scared off. From 1999 to 2003, garment exports rose from US$600 million to US$1.5 billion, and the number of garment workers tripled to 235,000. With Cambodia's real GDP at roughly US$4 billion, this is a tremendous increase. …


This document was produced under project PTDC/ASP-AGR/30154/2017 (POCI-01-0145FEDER-030154) of the COMPETE 2020 program, co-financed by the FEDER and the European Union. The authors acknowledge also to Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT, Portugal), and FEDER-COMPETEQREN-EU for financial support to the research centres CQ/UM (UID/QUI/00686/2019) and CFUM (UID/FIS/04650/2019). The NMR spectrometer Bruker Avance III 400 is part of the National NMR Network and was purchased within the framework of the National Program for Scientific Re-equipment, contract REDE/1517/RMN/2005 with funds from POCI 2010 (FEDER) and FCT.


Hurricanes can cause severe property damage and casualties in coastal regions. Diesel fuel plays a crucial role in hurricane disaster relief. It is important to optimize fuel supply chain operations so that emergency demand for diesel can be mitigated in a timely manner. However, it can be challenging to estimate demand for fuel and make informed proactive and reactive decisions in the distribution process, accounting for the hurricane's path and severity. We develop predictive and prescriptive models to guide diesel fuel supply chain operations for hurricane disaster relief. We construct a model for estimating diesel fuel demand from historical weather forecasts and power outage data. This predictive model feeds into a prescriptive stochastic programming model implemented in a rolling-horizon fashion to dispatch tank trucks. This datadriven optimization tool provides a framework for decision support in preparation for approaching hurricanes, and our numerical results provide insights regarding key aspects of operations.


Loading rate is an important parameter of running gait as it is commonly associated with increased risk of injury. In this paper we show, that most of the research related to calculating loading rate values from ground reaction force data cannot be directly compared, as the absolute loading rate values and the related first impact peak location and height are highly dependent on the filtering method used, cut-off frequency selected as well as loading rate calculation method selected. The results are based on running trial data from non-forefoot striking long distance runners gathered by the authors.


Although basketball games have received broad attention, the forms of game reports and webcast are purely content-based cross-media: texts, videos, snapshots, and performance figures. Analytical narrations of games that seek to compose a complete game from heterogeneous datasets are challenging for general media producers because such a composition is time-consuming and heavily depends on domain experts. In particular, an appropriate analytical commentary of basketball games requires two factors, namely, rich context and domain knowledge, which includes game events, player locations, player profiles, and team profiles, among others. This type of analytical commentary elicits a timely and effective basketball game data visualization made up of different sources of media. Existing visualizations of basketball games mainly profile a particular aspect of the game. Therefore, this paper presents an expressive visualization scheme that comprehensively illustrates NBA games with three levels of details: a season level, a game level, and a session level. We reorganize a basketball game as a sequence of sessions to depict the game states and heated confrontations. We design and implement a live system that integrates multimedia NBA datasets: play-by-play text data, box score data, game video data, and action area data. We demonstrate the effectiveness of this scheme with case studies and user feedbacks.


Introduction: For decades, Aeromonas daca has often been mistaken for Aeromonas hydrophila by phenotypic identification systems and shows obvious characteristics of virulence. To our knowledge, a total of two English-language studies with relatively complete data were retrieved.Case presentation: The patient, a 26-year-old male with no underlying disease, was admitted to our hospital for 3 days because of cough, expectoration and shortness of breath. According to blood and lavage fluid cultures and next-generation sequencing (NGS), the patient was diagnosed with an A. daca infection. He soon deteriorated to a critical condition complicated with septic shock and died after active rescue treatment.Conclusions: A. daca infection is lethal, and an accurate taxonomy can improve our understanding of the epidemiological distribution and virulence potential of this human pathogen. Third-generation cephalosporins and carbapenems should be used cautiously in the treatment of severe A. daca infection, and the best regimen is cefepime or fluoroquinolones.


Marginal MAP is a key task in Bayesian inference and decision-making. It is known to be very difficult in general, particularly because the evaluation of each MAP assignment requires solving an internal summation problem. In this paper, we propose a best-first search algorithm that provides anytime upper bounds for marginal MAP in graphical models. It folds the computation of external maximization and internal summation into an AND/OR tree search framework, and solves them simultaneously using a unified best-first search algorithm. The algorithm avoids some unnecessary computation of summation sub-problems associated with MAP assignments, and thus yields significant time savings. Furthermore, our algorithm is able to operate within limited memory. Empirical evaluation on three challenging benchmarks demonstrates that our unified best-first search algorithm using pre-compiled variational heuristics often provides tighter anytime upper bounds compared to those state-of-the-art baselines.