We consider the problem of deploying wireless sensors in a three dimensional space to achieve a desired degree of coverage, while minimizing the number of sensors placed. Typical sensor deployment scenarios impose constraints on possible locations of the sensors, and on the desired coverage, but currently there is no unified way to handle these constraints in optimizing the number of sensors placed. We present a novel approach called discretization which allows us to cast the sensor deployment problem as a discrete optimization problem, and hence apply well-understood and flexible discrete optimization techniques for sensor deployment. Our results show that this approach yields solutions that nearly minimize the number of sensors used, while providing a high degree of coverage. Further, unlike typical approaches to sensor deployment, where 3D coverage is significantly more complex than 2D coverage, discretization is equally easy to apply for 2D as well as 3D coverage.


From 2009-2015, REALPAC collected monthly energy usage and building characteristics for over 500 buildings in the 20 by '15 Energy Benchmarking Survey (REALPAC, 2009). While preliminary analysis had been completed on this dataset, this research undertook an in-depth statistical analysis of the data to identify trends and important variables. Eight machine learning algorithms were employed to predict energy usage as a function of previous energy use and select physical features. The dataset did not possess the appropriate variables to predict such usage accurately. Characteristics such as building system efficiency, construction assemblies, condition, compactness, and window to wall ratio are thus recommended for inclusion in future data-gathering initiatives.

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Until recently, adrenal masses came to clinical attention either from local symptoms due to massive enlargement or from manifestations of excess hormone production. During the last year, an adrenal mass was identified as an incidental finding in nine patients undergoing abdominal computed tomographic (CT) scanning for unrelated problems. These five men and four women ranged in age from 41 to 73 years. Eight were hypertensive. After the CT scan, each was evaluated for catecholamine or steroid hypersecretion. Only one had clearly elevated urinary vanillylmandelic acid, metanephrine, and catecholamine levels. Equivocal evidence of catecholamine excess was seen in five patients who had slight elevation of one urinary metabolite or of plasma epinephrine or norepinephrine levels. Three patients had no evidence of medullary or cortical hyperfunction on repeated testing. Eight patients were good operative risks and underwent unilateral adrenalectomy without complication. Masses ranging in size from 1 to 4 cm were found in each. These included four cortical adenomas, two adrenal cysts, one adrenal lipoma, and one pheochromocytoma. The pheochromocytoma occurred in the patient with strong biochemical evidence of disease. With wider application of CT imaging, increasing numbers of asymptomatic adrenal masses will be detected. Care in interpreting the clinical significance of these masses and caution in recommending treatment are required. (JAMA1982;248:701-704)


Learned helplessness is a maladaptive response to uncontrollable stress characterized by impaired motor escape responses, reduced motivation and learning deficits. There are important individual differences in the likelihood of becoming helpless following exposure to uncontrollable stress but little is known about the neural mechanisms underlying these individual differences. Here we used structural MRI to measure gray and white matter in individuals with chronic pain, a population at high risk for helplessness due to prolonged exposure to a poorly controlled stressor (pain). Given that self‐reported helplessness is predictive of treatment outcomes in chronic pain, understanding such differences might provide valuable clinical insight. We found that the magnitude of self‐reported helplessness correlated with cortical thickness in the supplementary motor area (SMA) and midcingulate cortex, regions implicated in cognitive aspects of motor behavior. We then examined the white matter connectivity of these regions and found that fractional anisotropy of connected white matter tracts along the corticospinal tract was associated with helplessness and mediated the relationship between SMA cortical thickness and helplessness. These data provide novel evidence that links individual differences in the motor output pathway with perceived helplessness over a chronic and poorly controlled stressor.


Floating dosage forms are emerging as a promising novel dosage forms. Floating dosage forms can be prepared as tablets, capsules by incorporating suitable excipients as well by adding certain gas-generating agents, which in turn give the buoyancy to the dosage form in gastrointestinal fluids. The various excipients such as poloxamer 188, carbopol 934P, hydroxypropylmethylcellulose, polyethylene glycol 6000, beta-cyclodextrin, polyvinyl acetate, purified shellac, Eudragit RS, or polymethyl methacrylate, alginate beads and casein-gelatin beads in combination provide buoyancy to the dosage form. The degree of drug embedded in dosage form determines its release. The hydrated layer slowly releases the drug from the dosage form by diffusion. Due to the hydrated gel layer, floating dosage forms can remain afloat in stomach for 6-8 h and release the active pharmaceutical ingredients for extended period of time in gastric environment. These systems have more flexibility in dosage design than conventional dosage form. For the optimization of the drug release pattern in vivo, floating devices such as InteliSite capsule can be used as it provides noninvasive determination of drug absorption and bioavailability at specific sites by gamma scintigraphy. This review summarizes various techniques adopted in the development of floating dosage forms, in vitro and in vivo studies to evaluate the performance and application of floating dosage forms.


BACKGROUND
Quadruple therapy appears to be more effective than standard triple therapy in the management of patients with Helicobacter pylori infection who harbor drug-resistant organisms. No data are available on the relative efficacies of triple and quadruple drug regimens from India.

METHODS
Consecutive patients with peptic ulcer and H. pylori infection were randomized to receive lansoprazole 30 mg twice daily along with either amoxycillin (500 mg four times daily) and clarithromycin (500 mg twice a day) (Group A), or tri-potassium dicitrato bismuthate (120 mg four times daily), metronidazole (400 mg thrice daily) and tetracycline (500 mg 4 times daily) (Group B) for 10 days. Presence of H. pylori infection was looked for using an in-house urease test and histology before starting treatment, and 30 days after completion of treatment.

RESULTS
Twenty-nine of 35 patients in Group A and 24 of 33 in Group B had eradication of infection (82.8% and 72.7% by intention-to-treat analysis, and 87.9% and 85.7% by per protocol analysis, respectively; p = ns). Side-effects occurred in 4 (12%) and 5 (18%) patients in Groups A and B, respectively (p = ns); discontinuation of drugs was required in two patients in group B.

CONCLUSIONS
Quadruple therapy for initial treatment of H. pylori infection does not offer any advantage over standard triple therapy in Indian patients.


The Primary Care Capacity Project (PCCP), implemented by the Louisiana Public Health Institute, systematically and rigorously applied qualitative methodologies beyond simple interviews and focus groups to develop the project areas of focus, evaluate clinical transformation interventions in selected heath centers along the Gulf Coast, and provide data and support to foster ongoing quality improvement approaches. Qualitative methodologies were utilized for formative, implementation, and summative evaluation. During the early formative stages of PCCP, community prioritization meetings were conducted in Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Florida, in which key stakeholders were asked to brainstorm and prioritize major health issues and recommendations in their communities. Findings from these meetings were then used to inform PCCP clinic funding and other community priorities. During project implementation, dyadic interviews were facilitated around specific PCCP areas of focus. These dyadic interviews were valuable in that they uncovered stories, successes, and challenges of clinical transformation. Moreover, they promoted peer-to-peer learning among diverse health centers. The relationships between interview participants are likely to continue past the grant period and further promote innovation and efficiency. Finally case studies were conducted to inform actionable recommendations tailored to each health center. These data also provided value add back to the health centers as they used the information to guide programming and quality improvement efforts. Qualitative methods are critical tools for public health practitioners to support project planning and improvement as well as community change.


This paper investigates the effects of ATIS (Advanced Traveler Information Systems) accuracy on drivers' compliance with descriptive information and route choice behavior. The approach adopted here examines drivers' compliance with ATIS and the subsequent route choice using a nested logit model. Compliance is modeled as a binary logit model which is then used as an upper branch to the route choice process. Stated Preference (SP) methods are used to collect data on drivers' behavior. The questionnaire incorporated the factors affecting drivers' perception of information accuracy such as travel time error average and variability. The results showed that not only does ATIS accuracy affect drivers' compliance, but it also has an impact on the reliability of each route. Attitudes toward risk were also found important in the decision making process.


I. INTRODUCTION It is traditional that British and Canadian appeal courts render many judgments orally, in open court. Although this format may seem foreign to American judges and jurists, it is a practical and efficient tool for rendering decisions and disposing of cases. The American legal system would fare well to consider the advantages of oral judgments. II. HISTORY Oral judgments are not foreign to the American legal system. They are the traditional common-law way to render judgment. Virtually all of the English court decisions commonly referred to in law school are reports of oral judgments. (1) Many are not even verbatim reports. (2) Until recent years, most English reasons for judgment, even long important ones, were delivered orally in court. (3) Although some were drafted in writing first, many were extempore. (4) Early American law reports contain oral appellate judgments. (5) In its early years, the Supreme Court of the United States received only oral argument without written briefs, and it appears to have given oral judgments. (6) Eventually, however, American appeal courts began to offer more and more written judgments, until oral judgments became almost extinct. Isolated modern attempts to reintroduce oral judgments into a few American appellate courts have not taken root. (7) But the glories of American appellate practice are adaptability, experimentation, pragmatism, and constant improvement. With such an open-minded approach, the American legal system might consider breathing new life into the practice of oral judgments, which serves not simply as an exotic toy, but as a useful tool. III. THE SUCCESS OF ORAL JUDGMENTS British and Canadian appeal courts achieve four basic goals with oral judgments: timeliness, clarity, efficiency, and fine-tuning. A. Timeliness With oral judgments, the parties get an instant answer to their appeal. This eliminates any delay at the critical stage of the appeal, when the lawyers and clients are most dependent on the court for timely and responsive conclusions. This is particularly important in urgent matters. If the court affords instant judgment in matters of high profile, the public and the media are apt to view the court in a positive light. B. Clarity In the appeal process, the most critical time to avoid delay is the interval between argument and judgment. (8) This is especially so when some of the judges live in other cities. (9) Oral judgments allow judges to give their reasons while their memories are fresh and uncontaminated. Courts usually hear argument on several appeals, then wait until the end of the morning (or even later) to confer. But the passage of time can make a judge forget the nuances of competing issues or make her unsure whether factual details come from another similar case argued the same day. Often the difficult decision is not whether to affirm or reverse a decision; it is what ground to choose. Delaying the judgment may cause the judge's memory of details on which a judgment is based to become vague or even inaccurate. In turn, this would require the judge to recheck court documents or get a detailed draft from a law clerk or staff lawyer. Oral judgments avoid this time-consuming process by affording accuracy and clarity. C. Efficiency Oral judgments are efficient in two respects. First, oral judgments leave the judges no further work to do. There is nothing more to draft, circulate, check, or proofread. No one has to refresh his or her memory of anything. No judge or clerk needs to segregate or send papers to any judge's office or home city. Second, the judge can save oral argument time before judgment. By employing oral judgments, a court that is not persuaded by the appellant may opt not to hear any oral argument from the appellee. (Of course, the court has already read the appellee's brief.) The court may retire briefly after the appellant's oral argument. …


The development of English in Western Australia is a history of conflict and contestation that has shaped the subject's strength, content and intelligibility. Since the establishment of the state's first university in 1912, the control of English by various groups and individuals has positioned English at the centre of recurrent political debates about literacy, literature and language according to the priorities and agendas pursued by policy-makers of the day. A 'core' learning area that is compulsory for secondary certification and tertiary entrance, English stands as a subject in which many internal and external stakeholders vie for power and influence. Chronologically, this thesis examines how English in Western Australia has been formed as a negotiated product of these networks and exchanges, an amalgam that has sometimes been weakened but often strengthened by the links between institutions, educational bureaucrats and teachers. The story of English in Western Australia provides insights into why and how English has developed in one state context. Historically, it is characterised by a composite of cultural heritage, functional literacy skills, critical and cultural literacies, and personal growth models of English which articulate collaborative or dictatorial control systems operating at the state, national and international levels of education. With a national curriculum presently framing secondary English, state-based subject histories play an important role in helping to understand how curricula, teaching and examination practices came to be authorised for the enhancement of student experiences of English in secondary schools. A substantial amount has been written about the history of education in Western Australia, but until now not specifically about the control and subsequent development of subject English in the State. Including an archival study of letters, minutes, syllabuses, examination papers and other historical documents, this thesis reveals that the first two Professors of English at the University of Western Australia played significant roles in establishing and determining the form of secondary English. Notable for their differing propagation of Imperial values, Professors Walter Murdoch and Allan Edwards were reluctant examiners of secondary English. They believed that real education was about independent thinking, not rote-learning and rehearsing examination responses. Their questionably innovative but indisputably formative emphases stemmed from alternative traditions. Murdoch's Oxford English and Writing orientation preceded Edwards's Cambridge English and Reading orientation. iv By analysing professional journals, Government Reports such as those by Dettman (1969), Martin (1980), Beazley (1984), McGaw (1984) and Andrich (1995), and socio-cultural histories by Fred Alexander, Leigh Dale, John La Nauze, Marnie O'Neill, Bill Green and Robin Peel, Annette Patterson and Jeanne Gerlach, this thesis demonstrates how the bureaucratisation of English in Western Australia since the 1960s, marked a significant transition from an autocracy controlled by the University and the Professor of English. It distinguishes the Western Australian story of secondary English within Australian education, by considering the particular effects of the 'London School', the Petch Report (1964), the teacher-writer figure, and the specialised study of Media. These historical aspects of subject English in Western Australia still influence English teachers today as they engage with a 'national' English curriculum, exemplifying that it is not the existence of conflict and contestation within the subject that alone is destabilising, but rather, how power is wielded within the conflict of enacting curriculum change.


AbstractThe growing population on the one hand, and consequently the increase and change in the pattern of consumption, has caused a double burden on the environment. It seems that a great deal of environmental problems are rooted in human behavior that can be solved by knowing its consumption behavior and correcting it. The present study examines the responsiveness of rural households' behavioral responses to the environment and the individual factors affecting it. The research method is descriptive-analytical and the sample size is 235 households in 16 villages of Khaf frontier city. In this study, the ecological behavior of consumption was divided into three dimensions of environmental knowledge with 14 indicators, environmental value with 15 indicators and environmental perception with 17 indicators by field studies. The results showed that there is a positive and significant relationship between the number of years of studying rural households and adherence to green behavior in the field of consumption with a severity of 0.22. Although there is a positive and significant relationship between green behavior and its dimensions, the relationship between green behavior and environmental knowledge is very strong with intensity of 0.917 (Sig. = 0. 00). Also, "the perceived environmental benefits Consumer "with 3.5, " consumer environmental knowledge "with 3.32 and" consumer environmental value "with 3.22 higher than the theoretical average (Sig. = 0. 00). in total, the adherence of rural households to" Green consumption "with 3.33, although more than average (Sig. = 0. 00), but far to the desired threshold. Obviously, behavioral changes will not be accepted by themselves and require the preconditions that are more important in the context of research findings, the strengthening of "environmental knowledge.


Abstract This article explores the notion of artistic collaboration between performer and composer, a topic that has attracted some attention but whose methodology might be thought to preclude objective discussion by the participants themselves. Although our report can make no claims to objectivity either, it attempts a critical reflection on a specific collaboration between the two authors as composer and performer, respectively. Cast in a dialogical format, it traces the genesis of a composition by Fabrice Fitch for speaking cellist, Per Serafino Calbarsi II: Le Songe de Panurge, written in 2002–3 and premiered in London in October 2006. The collaboration first evolved as a constant exchange of ideas in which concept, technique, and realization were held in fine balance. The piece engages a variety of frames of reference. If its stance in relation to the instrument clearly draws on certain contemporary traditions, for example Lachenmann's musiqueconcrète instrumentale, other aspects draw on earlier idioms, notably a specialized instance of scordatura, and the use of a spoken text (from the third book of Rabelais's Pantagruel) that recalls Marin Marais's Tableau de l'opération de la taille. The interferences and resonances between these influences pose aesthetic questions that are explored within the piece and its performance, while remaining open for the analyst and audience. Finally, the 'extended techniques' employed posed specific notational problems. The resulting score navigates a path between tablature and 'traditional' notation, in which the emphasis between what is heard and what is played shifts constantly. This hybrid status, we imagine, constitutes a challenge not only for the performer, but for the analyst as well.


During adolescence, teenagers are expected to develop standards of behavior and reconcile them with their perceptions of adult standards. In this context, music, a powerful medium in the lives of adolescents, offers conflicting values. The explicit sexual and violent lyrics of some forms of music often clash with the themes of abstinence and rational behavior promoted by adult society. Identification with rock music, particularly those styles that are rejected by adults, functions to separate adolescents from adult society. Some forms of rock music extend well beyond respectability in fulfilling this definitional role. Total immersion into a rock subculture, such as heavy metal, may be both a portrait of adolescent alienation and an unflattering reflection of an adolescent's perception of the moral and ethical duplicity of adult society. Physicians should be aware of the role of music in the lives of adolescents and use music preferences as clues to the emotional and mental health of adolescents.


I approach the state of global currency issues by identifying eight concepts that I see as having recently "peaked†and eight more that I see as currently rising in relevance. Those that I see as having already seen their best days are: the G-7, global savings glut, corners hypothesis, proliferating currency unions, inflation targeting (narrowly defined), exorbitant privilege, Bretton Woods II, and currency manipulation. Those that I see as receiving increased emphasis in the future are: the G-20, the IMF, SDR, credit cycle, reserves, intermediate exchange rate regimes, commodity currencies, and multiple international currency system.


Bike-Sharing Systems (BSSs) have rapidly grown in popularity worldwide in recent years. The driving forces of this explosive growth are attributed to access to modern ubiquitous technology, increased urbanization, a desire to decrease pollution, and the need for flexible and integrated mobility in city environments. However, in order to keep BSSs in a balanced state where bikes and stations are readily available for users, companies are seeking ways to accurately predict future demand. This project aims to objectively compare and evaluate various machine learning algorithms for the problem of predicting cluster-level BSS traffic flow. All models are evaluated using two different station clustering techniques, zone-based and grid-based, representing ways to group stations both with and without expert knowledge of the system. Furthermore, this thesis presents a rigorous state-of-the-art review of current research on demand prediction in BSSs and other on-demand transport services. Random Forest (RF), Feed-Forward Neural Network (FFNN) and Deep Residual Network (ResNet) emerged as the most promising models from this review, and were therefore implemented. Additionally, this thesis presents the first evaluation of using Recurrent Neural Networks within the context of BSSs demand prediction. FFNN proved to be the most successful model, reaching 21.1% and 36.65% improvements over the best baseline using grid-basedand zone-based clustering respectively. The developed system is designed to run in a cloud production environment, and elaborations are made as to how it can be extended to handle real-time streaming data from Oslo City Bike users.


The TJ-II stellarator neutral-beam injection (NBI) system, vacuum vessel and magnetic configuration have been included in the orbit-following Monte Carlo code ASCOT5 to simulate neutral-beam heating and current drive for high-density NBI plasmas. Co- and counter-injection beams are simulated separately. A scan in both electron density and temperature is carried out within the range of values corresponding to realistic high-density NBI plasmas, for which a low level of fast-ion losses due to charge-exchange reactions is expected, since the version of ASCOT5 used in the paper does not include such processes. The rest of the kinetic profiles (ion temperature, radial electric field and effective charge) are kept fixed. The initial distribution of markers shows that the amount of available power in the plasma carried by the beam ions depends slightly on the electron temperature and on the injection direction (co/counter). The steady-state fast-ion distribution function is obtained and used to calculate the three-dimensional fast-ion density, the neutral-beam driven current and the amount of power deposited to the plasma in the two injection scenarios. These three quantities are higher in the counter-injected case due to a lower amount of promptly lost particles. The neutral-beam current drive (NBCD) has been calculated using the fast-ion beam current given by ASCOT5 and the electron return current, which is computed with the analytic solution of the drift kinetic equation for electrons in the presence of fast ions in the low-collisionality regime. Neither the calculated fast-ion density nor the NBCD are flux functions, in consistency with the fact that fast-ion drift surfaces and flux surfaces are generally not aligned.


In this ambitious work, first published in 1983, Cedric Robinson demonstrates that efforts to understand black people's history of resistance solely through the prism of Marxist theory are incomplete and inaccurate. Marxist analyses tend to presuppose European models of history and experience that downplay the significance of black people and black communities as agents of change and resistance. Black radicalism must be linked to the traditions of Africa and the unique experiences of blacks on western continents, Robinson argues, and any analyses of African American history need to acknowledge this. To illustrate his argument, Robinson traces the emergence of Marxist ideology in Europe, the resistance by blacks in historically oppressive environments, and the influence of both of these traditions on such important twentieth-century black radical thinkers as W. E. B. Du Bois, C. L. R. James, and Richard Wright. |In this reissue of a 1983 classic, Robinson argues that Western Marxism is unable to comprehend either the racial character of capitalism or mass movements outside of Europe. Robinson combines political theory, history, philosophy, and cultural analysis to illustrate his argument and chronicles the influence of Marxist ideology and black resistance on such important black radical thinkers as W. E. B. Du Bois, C. L. R. James, and Richard Wright.


OBJECTIVE Patients with diabetic neuropathy (DN) demonstrate variable degrees of nerve regeneration and degeneration. Our aim was to identify risk factors associated with sural nerve degeneration in patients with DN. RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS Demographic, anthropometric, biochemical, and anatomical data of subjects with DN from a 52-week trial of acetyl-L-carnitine were retrospectively examined. Based on the change in sural nerve myelinated fiber density (ΔMFD%), subjects were divided into three groups: regenerator (top 16 percentiles, n = 67), degenerator (bottom 16 percentiles, n = 67), and intermediate (n = 290), with dramatically increased, decreased, and steady ΔMFD%, respectively. ANOVA, Fisher exact test, and multifactorial logistic regression were used to evaluate statistical significance. RESULTS ΔMFD%s were 35.6 ± 17.4 (regenerator), −4.8 ± 12.1 (intermediate), and −39.8 ± 11.0 (degenerator). HbA1c at baseline was the only factor significantly different across the three groups (P = 0.01). In multifactorial logistic regression, HbA1c at baseline was also the only risk factor significantly different between regenerator (8.3 ± 1.6%) and degenerator (9.2 ± 1.8%) (odds ratio 0.68 [95% CI 0.54–0.85]; P < 0.01). Support Vector Machine classifier using HbA1c demonstrated 62.4% accuracy of classifying subjects into regenerator or degenerator. A preliminary microarray experiment revealed that upregulated genes in the regenerator group are enriched with cell cycle and myelin sheath functions, while downregulated genes are enriched in immune/inflammatory responses. CONCLUSIONS These data, based on the largest cohort with ΔMFD% information, suggest that HbA1c levels predict myelinated nerve fiber regeneration and degeneration in patients with DN. Therefore, maintaining optimal blood glucose control is likely essential in patients with DN to prevent continued nerve injury.


Vietnam retail market is one among the attractive retail markets in the world. The development of retail market leads to the formation and development of modern retail formats. Currently, the modern retail formats like supermarkets, commercial centers, convenience stores are gradually replacing the traditional forms of retail stores such as markets and individual business. This study was conducted to assess the development potential of modern retail in Vietnam. The foundation of this development is the growth of the size of the domestic retail market, the increasing degree of urbanization and the rapid increase of foreign investment projects in the retail sector, thanks to Vietnam's economic progress of integration with the world economy. The study results showed that after about the first 20 years of formation and development, the modern retail formats are entering the stage with strong development potential.


Parathyroid hormone (PTH) is a polypeptide containing 84 amino acids secreted by cells of the parathyroid glands. Imbalances of parathyroid levels cause medical problems such as osteoporosis, mental disorders, pancreatitis, kidney stones, cancer, and other symptoms. In this study, we aimed to design an ultrasensitive electrochemical immunosensor for PTH detection. Indium tin oxide (ITO) was used as an electrode for electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS) measurements. ITO sheets were modified by using 3-cyanopropyltrimethoxysilane (3-CPTMS) self-assembled monolayers (SAMs) for immobilizing the anti-PTH antibody via covalent interactions. Cyclic voltammetry (CV) and EIS methods were applied to characterize immobilization steps. Therefore, 1% was selected for an optimal concentration of silane, 10 ng/mL was selected as an optimal concentration of anti-PTH, and 30 and 45 min were selected as optimal incubation times for anti-PTH and PTH, respectively. PTH antigen was determined in the concentration range from 0.05 fg/mL to 150 fg/mL. To detect the analytical characterization of the 3-CPTMS modified immunosensor, linear range, repeatability, reproducibility, Kramers-Kronig transform, and regeneration studies were performed. Also, the shelf life of the developed biosensor was investigated. Finally, real human serum samples were analyzed with the PTH immunosensor. The results showed that the designed biosensor system has high potential for early detection for medical treatments.


Background:Recent clinical trials with rilpivirine combined with emtricitabine and tenofovir revealed that patients failing treatment, frequently, harbored viruses encoding resistance-associated mutations in the HIV-1 reverse transcriptase at position E138K and M184I. We show here that APOBEC3 proteins play a role in the emergence of these drug resistance mutations. Methods:We used a Vif mutant that has suboptimal activity against APOBEC3 to assess the in-vitro frequency of APOBEC3-induced resistance mutations in reverse transcriptase. To assess the degree of in-vivo G-to-A viral hypermutation, a large amount of data of HIV-1 RT proviral sequences from peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs) recovered from infected patients under HAART was analyzed. Results:In-vitro replication experiments in cell lines with and without APOBEC3 expression suggest that APOBEC3-driven mutagenesis contributes to the generation of both M184I and E138K within HIV proviral repository in the absence of drug exposure. Additionally, analysis of 601 patients PBMCs sequences revealed that the copresence of mutations E138K and M184I were never detected in nonhypermutated sequences, whereas these mutations were found at a high frequency (24%) in the context of APOBEC3 editing and in the absence of exposure to etravirine–rilpivirine. Conclusion:We demonstrate using in-vitro experiments and analyzing patients PBMCs sequences that M184I and E138K resistance-associated mutations may pre-exist in proviral reservoir at a high frequency prior to drug exposure, as a result of APOBEC3 editing. Thus, incomplete neutralization of one or more APOBEC3 proteins may favor viral escape to rilpivirine-emtricitabine.


Introduction: The biologic width is invaded by different factors, among them, the periodontal surgery could be mentioned, especially when accompanied by bone contouring. The aim of this study was to determine the changes of alveolar crest which participate in the reconstruction of biologic width after applying two methods of periodontal surgery. Materials and Methods: 20 patients were selected from the special clinic of Mashhad Dental School and after initial therapy, the surgical treatment were performed by a single operator. Since the study technique was cross over with split mouth design, at one side apically positioned flap (APF) with bone exposure and at the opposite side the APF without bone exposure were perfomed. The distance between CEJ to bone crest was determined. After two months the patients were examined for the same parameters by sounding technique. For analysis of data, paired t-student test was used. Results: The results showed that at sites of apically positioned flap with bone exposure, the crestal resorption was 0.77±0.63 mm and on the opposite side it was 1.05±0.19mm. The difference before and after surgery in each area was significant but the difference between two sides was not significant. Conclusion: It was concluded that crestal resorption observed following two periodontal surgery methods plays an important role in reconstruction of biologic width.


Wireless mesh networks (WMNs) are an emerging technology which provides broadband wireless access services. One of the challenges that still faces high performance WMNs is the capacity reduction due to interference of wireless links. In this paper, we address the problem of assigning channels to nodes in WMNs. For this, we introduce the cluster channel assignment (CCA) approach with the objective of reducing network interference to increase the overall network performance. A clustering approach is employed in order to reduce the complexity of channel assignment into local problems within clusters and taking the advantage of the possibility to reuse the channels in different clusters.


Magnetotactic bacteria have the potential to execute nontrivial tasks, such as microactuation, micromanipulation, and microassembly, under the influence of the controlled magnetic fields. Closed-loop control characteristics of these magnetic microorganisms depend on their self-propulsion forces (motility) and magnetic dipole moments. These properties can be controlled through the growth conditions of magnetotactic bacteria. We provide a comparison between two species of magnetotactic bacteria, i.e., Magnetospirillum magnetotacticum strain MS-1 and Magnetospirillum magneticum strain AMB-1. This comparison includes the characterization of their morphologies, magnetic dipole moments, and closed-loop control characteristics in the transient and steady states. The characterized average magnetic dipole moments of motile cells of M. magnetotacticum and M. magneticum strains are 1.4 × 10−16 A.m2 and 1.5 × 10−17 A.m2 at a magnetic field of 7.9 mT, respectively. These magnetic dipole moments are used in the realization of closed-loop control systems for each bacterial strain. The closed-loop control systems achieve point-to-point positioning of M. magnetotacticum cells at an average velocity of 32 ± 10 μm/s (approximately seven body lengths per second), and within an average region of convergence of 23 ± 10 μm (approximately four body lengths), while cells of M. magneticum strain are positioned at an average velocity of 30 ± 12 μm/s (approximately eight body lengths per second), and within an average region of convergence of 35 ± 14 μm (approximately 14 body lengths). These results suggest that the cells of M. magnetotacticum strain have a slightly greater tendency to provide desirable closed-loop control characteristics than cells of M. magneticum strain.


Self-attention networks (SAN) have attracted a lot of interests due to their high parallelization and strong performance on a variety of NLP tasks, e.g. machine translation. Due to the lack of recurrence structure such as recurrent neural networks (RNN), SAN is ascribed to be weak at learning positional information of words for sequence modeling. However, neither this speculation has been empirically confirmed, nor explanations for their strong performances on machine translation tasks when "lacking positional information" have been explored. To this end, we propose a novel word reordering detection task to quantify how well the word order information learned by SAN and RNN. Specifically, we randomly move one word to another position, and examine whether a trained model can detect both the original and inserted positions. Experimental results reveal that: 1) SAN trained on word reordering detection indeed has difficulty learning the positional information even with the position embedding; and 2) SAN trained on machine translation learns better positional information than its RNN counterpart, in which position embedding plays a critical role. Although recurrence structure make the model more universally-effective on learning word order, learning objectives matter more in the downstream tasks such as machine translation.


In recent years, research on neurohormones has yielded valuable data on enzymatic pathways of synthesis and metabolism, processes of storage and release, and interactions with receptor sites. A far more difficult problem, which transcends the molecular level, concerns the mechanism whereby nerve endings translate nerve impulses into the discharge of precise amounts of neurohormone to the receptor. An inherent difficulty in bridging physiological and molecular events lies in the nature of the approach. The properties of an organ are not the sum of the properties of the component parts, nor is functional change the sum of the molecular alterations. It is not surprising then that the mechanism of action of drugs that exert functional changes might not be disclosed by studies of their effects on isolated cell components.

A new perspective in studies of nerve endings was introduced by the discovery that NE is in a state of continual flux with amine stores maintained in constant amount by a rate of input by synthesis in balance with a rate of exit by breakdown or transport. The significance of this dynamic steady-state is best appreciated when the separate processes are measured by the use of highly labeled H3-NE.

Results of studies at the steady-state lend themselves to the formation of theoretical models in which NE is located in interconnecting compartments. A model must be simple enough to aid the research worker, yet complete enough to avoid gross inaccuracies. To achieve this, the rules of simple kinetics should be applied. Because of the failure to measure rates when NE concentration has been changed, many conclusions from earlier work with drugs must be discarded or reappraised. For example, the demonstration that truly tracer amounts of H3-NE disappear from the heart by a single exponential phase, and that tyramine and reserpine cause a rapid and exponential release of NE stores, shows that the amine is transferred so rapidly between compartments that they behave towards drugs essentially as a single pool. In addition, the application of kinetics indicates that at the steady-state NE flows from the neuron at a rate proportional to concentration, and that after maximally effective doses of reserpine the increased flow is best explained by a primary action of the drug on a transport system in the neuronal membrane. Again kinetic studies make it unlikely that cocaine or desmethylimipramine act directly on a membrane pump since these drugs not only block the uptake of NE, but also reduce the spontaneous efflux and nervestimulated release. Thus the membrane effects of these substances cannot as yet be simply formulated.

The kinetic approach has yielded a working hypothesis of the nerve ending that is readily amenable to change. The model leaves much to be answered and presumably includes much that is in error. We can only repeat the words attributed to Kepler, "Give me a fruitful error any time, full of seeds, bursting with its own corrections. You can keep your sterile truths for yourself."


Legal education is ripe for disruption because the legal profession and the law itself are ripe for disruption. In the last recession, demand for legal education dropped 40 percent, and only in the last year are we seeing increases in law school admissions. The recession illuminated an even bigger crisis for law and legal education—an increasing mismatch between the limited services that the law and lawyers provide and the vast and acute societal needs for legal services. A recent American Bar Association study estimated that 80 percent of the poor and those of moderate income lack meaningful access to our justice system and legal services.

Ample scholarship exists on how to restructure legal education to address this mismatch. However, this essay undertakes a new focus—the tough and potentially perilous road of attempting necessary change in a real-world law school setting. We impart our experiences as unwitting "disruptive leaders" prodding a small, private law school to meet the changing legal environment, and experiencing extreme blowback as result. We discuss characteristics of academia generally that contributed to this resistance—tenure, academic freedom, and the imperatives of university administration to raise funds and maintain tradition rather than respond innovatively to shifting economic and social dynamics. We also highlight characteristics of legal education that make disruptive leadership particularly unlikely to succeed: the ABA monopoly in legal regulation and the gendered nature of law and legal education.

This essay provides a narrative that will resonate with many in legal academia, as well as academia in general. The peer reviews we received also confirmed that this essay will jumpstart an important and necessary conversation on these issues.


This study was designed enable application of multivariate technique in the interpretation of categorical data for measuring health care services satisfaction in Turkey. The data was collected from a total of 17726 respondents. The establishment of the sample group and collection of the data were carried out by a joint team from The Ministry of Health and Turkish Statistical Institute (Turk Stat) of Turkey. The multiple correspondence analysis (MCA) was used on the data of 2882 respondents who answered the questionnaire in full. The multiple correspondence analysis indicated that, in the evaluation of health services females, public employees, younger and more highly educated individuals were more concerned and complainant than males, private sector employees, older and less educated individuals. Overall 53 % of the respondents were pleased with the improvements in health care services in the past three years. This study demonstrates the public consciousness in health services and health care satisfaction in Turkey. It was found that most the respondents were pleased with the improvements in health care services over the past three years. Awareness of health service quality increases with education levels. Older individuals and males would appear to have lower expectancies in health services. Keywords—Multiple correspondence analysis, optimal scaling, multivariate categorical data, health care services, health satisfaction survey, statistical visualizing, Turkey.


Epilepsy is a common, and often genetic, neurological disorder. The most cost-effective genetic tests for identifying an idiopathic epilepsy etiology are Next-Generation Sequencing (NGS) gene panels. Since 2017, the Genetic Testing Stewardship Program (GTSP) at UPMC Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh (CHP) has been utilizing a set of epilepsy panel (EP) testing criteria to facilitate appropriate EP ordering practices for patients with epilepsy. Outside of this setting, few guidelines exist to help medical providers decide when to order EPs or to help insurance companies decide on covering them. Following IRB approval, retrospective chart review of the electronic medical record (EMR) was performed for 1,242 patients that were evaluated in the CHP Neurology department for a primary diagnosis of epilepsy between 2016 and 2018. The goal of the study was to identify patients with positive and negative EPs that met criteria in order to calculate the sensitivities and positive predictive values (PPVs) of the criteria. Criteria were organized into four categories, with each successive category accounting for an increased proportion of criteria combinations. The highest respective sensitivity and PPV results in each category were as follows: Category 1 (64.7% and 60%); Category 2, (88% and 30.3%); Category 3, (94.1% and 27.1%); Category 4, (94.1% and 25.4%). Overall, the sensitivities increased and PPVs decreased but remained similar when more criteria were considered together. Family history played a key role in increasing sensitivity. Confidence intervals narrowed as category level increased, improving the reliability of the results. When applied to the untested population from the study cohort, the PPV result from Category 4 predicted 121 patients with unidentified positive EP results. This study presents data supporting the reliability and predictive capabilities of the EP testing criteria and further suggests the addition of a family history criterion. This study impacts public health by opening the door for conversations about adopting evidence-driven policies and by suggesting vetted guidelines to ease EP ordering and coverage decisions and subsequently improve patient access to EP testing.


In the paper the attempt of determining the influencing factors of the formation of typical cracks in the area of loadbearing walls corner made of ACC masonry unit was made. Numerical calculations were conducted and they showed that with extreme self-weight loads, imposed loads, environmental and rheological loads the corner of the walls was exposed to the damage. At different level of loads and different geometry of walls the size of shrinkage deformations, by which the crack formations in the area of intersecting loadbearing walls won't take place was given.


N-doped TiO2 powders with high photocatalytic activity under visible-light irradiation have been prepared by calcining anatase nanocrystalline TiO2 powders and guanidine hydrochloride at 350 °C, 450 °C, 550 °C and 650 °C with the holding time ranged from 1.5 h to 3 h, respectively. The guanidine hydrochloride content was varied from 1 to 6 M for the experiments. XRD patterns indicate that all the powders are anatase crystalline phase. The specific surface area is 25~45 m2/g measured by BET method. XPS results show that N atoms were incorporated into the lattice of TiO2 and the amount of N doped in TiO2 is reached up to 8.26 at%. UV-Vis absorption spectra show that the absorption edge of the synthesized N-doped TiO2 powders, calcined at 350 °C for 2.5 h, has red-shifted well into visible region up to 700 nm. Degradation of methylene blue (MB) aqueous solution has been investigated by UV-Vis light spectrophotometer. The 400-mL 10 mg/L aqueous solution of methylene blue could be degraded completely with 4 g N-doped TiO2 within 4.5 h of visible light irradiation.


Electric Arc Furnaces(eaf) are nonliear loads which are occured the power quality problems in electrical grids. Because of theese reasons, teh operational characteristic of EAF must be understanding very well. In this paper, Operation characteristics of MVA EAF which is located in Sivas Iron and Steel Inc. (SIDEMIR) has been examined for different EAF transformator taps. In adition to, CA 8332 power analyzer meaurements obtained from the input power in EAF and static characteristics have been compared and current values and optimal operation condations for EAF loads can be determined.


Nonactin is a polyketide antibiotic produced by Streptomyces griseus ETH A7796 and is an ionophore that is selective for K(+) ions. It is a cyclic tetraester generated from two monomers of (+)-nonactic acid and two of (-)-nonactic acid, arranged (+)-(-)-(+)-(-) so that nonactin has S4 symmetry and is achiral. To understand why achiral nonactin is the naturally generated diastereoisomer, we generated two alternate diastereoisomers of nonactin, one prepared solely from (+)-nonactic acid and one prepared solely from (-)-nonactic acid, referred to here as 'all-(+)-nonactin' and 'all-(-)-nonactin', respectively. Both non-natural diastereoisomers were 500-fold less active against gram positive organisms than nonactin confirming that the natural stereochemistry is necessary for biological activity. We used isothermal calorimetry to obtain the K(a), DeltaG, DeltaH, and DeltaS of formation for the K(+), Na(+), and NH(4)(+) complexes of nonactin and all-(-)-nonactin; the natural diastereoisomer bound K(+) 880-fold better than all-(-)-nonactin. A picrate partitioning assay confirmed that all-(-)-nonactin, unlike nonactin, could not partition K(+) ions into organic solvent. To complement the thermodynamic data we used a simple model system to show that K(+) transport was facilitated by nonactin but not by all-(-)-nonactin. Modeling of the K(+) complexes of nonactin and all-(-)-nonactin suggested that poor steric interactions in the latter complex precluded tight binding to K(+). Overall, the data show that both enantiomers of nonactic acid are needed for the formation of a nonactin diastereoisomer that can act as an ionophore and has antibacterial activity.


The composition-dependent thermoelectric properties of lead telluride (PbTe) doped with bismuth telluride (Bi2Te3), antimony telluride (Sb2Te3) and (BiSb)2Te3 have been studied at room temperature. All the samples exhibit small thermal conductivity. The figures of merit, 7.63, 1.03 and 8.97×10−4, have been obtained in PbTe with these dopants, respectively. These values are several times higher than those of PbTe containing other dopants with small grain sizes. The high thermoelectric performance is explained by electronic topological transition induced by alloying. The results indicate that these dopants are effective to enhance the thermoelectric performance of PbTe.


The Pauline Theology of Albert Schweitzer and the developments in this field of study a century on from him forms the core of this current Masters dissertation. The subject of the investigation is the extent to which Schweitzer was a catalyst in steering the conversation toward a self-identity of the Church which can be described as a participation with Christ in His mission. The motivation for this investigation is the growing interest and development in what has become known globally as, 'Missional Ecclesiology', with its claim to be a more faithful understanding of Paul and a true description of the nature and identity of the earliest Church.
The dissertation concerns itself mainly with the work written in the early part of the 20th century by Albert Schweitzer called, The Mysticism of Paul the Apostle. The present work attempts to highlight and briefly describe Schweitzer's Pauline theology on key themes such as eschatology, Christ-mysticism, the law, justification, and more. It then takes a fair selection of New Testament scholars who have been more influential than most in this field and demonstrate how and where they have contributed to the main thesis – that of the selfunderstanding of the Christian, the Church and her mission. These include such scholars as: Rudolf Bultmann; CH Dodd; Oscar Cullman; WD Davies; EP Sanders; Lesslie Newbigin; NT Wright, and others.
The investigation is set within the changing context from a Christendom to a post-Christendom environment in Europe with South Africa following close on the heals of these changes. We are introduced to the statistical data in South Africa with its present situation of change, focussing particularly on the Church of England in South Africa as the Author's personal context at the time of writing. After the core work on Schweitzer and his successors is completed with sufficient evidence of Schweitzer's influence especially in eschatology, the dissertation analyses the post-Christian environment of England and Scotland. It quite deliberately focuses on the theological responses of the two large National Churches of these countries - the Church of England and the Church of Scotland - and not on the smaller missional initiatives from newer, independent church groups in order to observe the sense of urgency for change despite the long and historical complexity of these organizations.
The dissertation concludes with an attempt to determine any detectable similarities between the theological response of these national churches in a post-Christian environment and the Pauline conversation of Schweitzer and his successors over the preceding century. The conclusion shows an overall eschatological orientation in both as well as a similar emphases on a corporate participation in the mission of God in Christ that determines the shape and life of the Church as a foretaste of the Kingdom.


Although sedation is frequently used to facilitate patient compliance in feline echocardiography, the effects of sedative drugs on echocardiographic variables have been poorly documented. This study investigated the effects of two sedation protocols on echocardiographic indices in healthy cats, with special emphasis on the assessment of left atrial size and function, as well as left ventricular diastolic performance. Seven cats underwent echocardiography (transthoracic two-dimensional, spectral Doppler, color flow Doppler and tissue Doppler imaging) before and after sedation with both acepromazine (0.1 mg/kg IM) and butorphanol (0.25 mg/kg IM), or acepromazine (0.1 mg/kg IM), butorphanol (0.25 mg/kg IM) and ketamine (1.5 mg/kg IV). Heart rate increased significantly following acepromazine/butorphanol/ketamine (mean ± SD of increase, 40 ± 26 beats/min) and non-invasive systolic blood pressure decreased significantly following acepromazine/butorphanol (mean ± SD of decrease, 12 ± 19 mmHg). The majority of echocardiographic variables were not significantly different after sedation compared with baseline values. Both sedation protocols resulted in mildly decreased left ventricular end-diastolic dimension and mildly increased left ventricular end-diastolic wall thickness. This study therefore failed to demonstrate clinically meaningful effects of these sedation protocols on echocardiographic measurements, suggesting that sedation with acepromazine, butorphanol and/or ketamine can be used to facilitate echocardiography in healthy cats.


: Implementation of system of credits and score-rating of students' knowledge at the medical faculty of Peoples' Friendship University of Russia is considered. Estimation of maximum possible rating for each discipline is conventionally based on mode of "one credit--36 study hours of student--36 scores". System of numerical score elaborated at Course of history of medicine considers attendance of lectures and studies, activity of student during study hours and self-instruction (term papers included), contribution of student into chair research, interim testing and test passing. Total score of discipline determines rating of student for study class, university year and faculty. Tables of score estimation, its relationship with conventional system of scores are discussed. Examples of evaluation of student's knowledge using score-rating system are presented.


In spite of the many studies carried out on glioblastoma multiforme (GBM) in recent years and the implementation of promising new therapeutic strategies, median survival rates in GBM patients have not been improved. A key issue in the fight against a tumor is learning its biology which is only possible in laboratory conditions that accurately reproduce its physiological microenvironment. GBM is among the most hypoxic and glycolytic tumors of the central nervous system. The most recent data suggest that these two metabolic features should be recognized as the most important markers of the GBM aggressive phenotype associated with its resistance to chemo- and radiotherapy. However, until now, the effect of modulation of the tumor's microenvironment on drug efficacy has been evaluated only in a few studies.
Since hypoxia inside a tumor creates protection for GBM cells from chemotherapy and the spatial arrangement of hypoxia in GBM is a dynamic process (the level of pO2 inside a tumor is from 0% to 5%), our experiments performed on the T98G glioblastoma cell line were carried out in a range of oxygen availability conditions and then compared to standard laboratory conditions. Moreover, the influence of high or standard glucose concentration or its deprivation in the culture medium on temozolomide effect (the standard chemotherapeutic for GBM) was estimated. We examined the influence of temozolomide on cell viability, division and apoptosis as well as on migration of tumor cells by using the time-lapse real-time observations.
Our study showed that glioblastoma cells cultured in conditions of chronic hypoxia were almost completely resistant to the effect of the drug. Moreover, we observed that increased glucose availability in the GBM microenvironment was associated with the enhanced resistance of the GBM to the cytotoxic effect of temozolomide in hypoxic conditions which was manifested by an increased cellular viability and division and a diminished percentage of apoptotic cells.


This paper describes the health profile of Brazilian mothers in Massachusetts according to data collected through Massachusetts Standard Certificate of Live Births (1989 revision) filed with the Massachusetts Registry of Vital Records and Statistics during 1999 and 2009. To our knowledge this is the first time that such information is reviewed with a focus on Brazilian immigrants. The findings of this article suggests that Brazilian mothers who gave birth in Massachusetts between 1999 and 2009 fared better than all mothers in Massachusetts in most obstetric health indicators considered.


Assisting users by suggesting completed queries as they type is a common feature of search systems known as query auto-completion. A query auto-completion engine may use prior signals and available information (e.g., user is anonymous, user has a history, user visited the site before the search or not, etc.) in order to improve its recommendations. There are many possible strategies for query auto-completion and a challenge is to design one optimal engine that considers and uses all available information. When different strategies are used to produce the suggestions, it becomes hard to rank these heterogeneous suggestions. An alternative strategy could be to aggregate several engines in order to enhance the diversity of recommendations by combining the capacity of each engine to digest available information differently, while keeping the simplicity of each engine. The main objective of this research is therefore to find such mixture of query completion engines that would beat any engine taken alone. We tackle this problem under the bandits setting and evaluate four strategies to overcome this challenge. Experiments conducted on three real datasets show that a mixture of engines can outperform a single engine.


Economists, including agricultural economists, have a long history of recognizing the importance of the behavioral foundations in decision making while ignoring these observable human dimensions in their economic models. The economics of social capital and trust, two important human characteristics influencing decisions, have captured the attention of economists in recent years. Recent empirical work demonstrates that social capital and trust considerations are prevalent and economically significant, especially in business. Trust alters the terms of trade, generates decision flexibility, reduces transaction costs, and creates additional time resources for management.


Abstract. The state-of-the-art lightweight multispectral cameras are widely used for low altitude remote sensing, also can be exploited as a tool for close-range photogrammetry application. The acquired imagery can be used for generating the 3D model using Structure-from-Motion/ Multi-view Stereo (SfM/MVS) processing software. In photogrammetry, camera calibration is an essential step for accurate measurement. The parameter of the camera system can be estimated using photogrammetric self-calibration bundle-adjustment, or by automatic and straightforward calibration procedure developed by computer vision (CV) community. When using SfM/MVS photogrammetry software, the pre-calibration value is not required, as the algorithm calculates the parameter as a part of point cloud construction process. Nevertheless, processing with the uncalibrated image is only suitable when no metric accuracy required in the modelling project. This paper aims to evaluate the measurement accuracy on generated 3D point cloud based on different estimated parameter method. The evaluation of measurement accuracy started by estimates the camera's interior parameter using two different approaches; photogrammetric self-calibration bundle-adjustment and computer vision calibration. The estimated parameter from both methods then imported into commercial SfM/MVS software to construct the 3D point cloud. The point cloud also generated using uncalibrated images and used for measurement accuracy assessment. All parameters applied to the same datasets involved three different check-fields. Two accuracy assessments were performed by comparing the check-points and check-distance extracted with the total station measurement. As a result, the point cloud generated using photogrammetric approach provides the most accurate result on both assessments. While the automatic on-the-job self-calibration shows inconsistent results.


Drowned coral reefs on rapidly subsiding margins possess a unique archive of sea level and climate changes, generally unavailable from stable or uplifting margins. Using available field observations and sedimentary, radiometric age, and numerical modeling data, we propose a new model of submerged reef development around Hawaii during the last two glacial cycles (250 kyr). This model provides a quantitative predictive stratigraphy for the reefs that we argue, if drilled, will yield new information on sea level and climate changes, as well as coral reef response over the last 250 kyr. Comparing the observational and numerical modeling data, combined with sensitivity testing, we present our "best case" scenario for the evolution of the drowned lowstand reefs now at −400 (H2) and −150 m (H1). We find that growth rates of 2.5–2.85 m/kyr for the main shallow reef building facies, a subsidence rate of 2.5 m/kyr, and a variable basement substrate configuration best explain the observational data. Modeling of the internal stratigraphic succession of the reefs shows that the number and thickness of shallow reef units, as well as the frequency and duration of subaerial exposure and reef‐drowning events, are sensitive to the frequency and amplitude of eustatic sea level variations but not the rate of subaerial erosion. H2 and H1 initiated growth during stable eustatic sea level conditions during highstands circa 222 ka (MIS7) and circa 126 ka (MIS5e), respectively. Both H2 and H1 have a long and complex growth history, growing episodically for ∼90 kyr. Precessional (∼20 kyr) and higher‐frequency, suborbital eustatic sea level fluctuations dominate, with each reef experiencing repeated but brief (<5–10 kyr) drowning and subaerial exposure, producing a complex layer cake stratigraphy of shallow (0–30 m) coral reef units separated by either subaerial exposure horizons or thin, intermediate (30–60 m) coralgal units. Final drowning of H2 and H1 occurs during the penultimate (133–134 ka) and last deglaciation (12–14 ka). These findings are consistent with available age data and qualitative predictions of previous studies around Hawaii.


Abstract: This study aimed to validate the Caregiver Strain Index (CSI), a self-administered questionnaire for rating burden and strain related to care provision, for use in local clinical practice. The CSI was translated into Malay language using forward and back translation method. The final Malay version was administered to 50 caregivers of post-stroke patients attending the medical clinic, Hospital Umum Sarawak in December 2011. The Malay Caregiver Strain Index (CSI-M) has a good face and content validity as well as internal consistency (Cronbach's alpha 0.79). In conclusion, the CSI-M is a reliable tool for assessment of burden experienced by caregivers in Malaysian population.


The purpose of this study was to examine acutely effective marketing strategies for bridge line imported handbag brands in order to succeed in launch and establishment in local market. Based on the successful bridge line imported handbag brands status in local market, this selected the brands, "LeSprotsac", "Longchamp", "Sequoia" that execute brand strategy including positioning strategies such as basic concept, prices, materials, promotion, distributions in order to succeed in local launching. For corroborate analysis, three staffs in each brands, consecutive in-person interviews and continuous telephone interviews, mail survey were used for this study. The results were as follows; First, differentiate brand positioning strategy that has considered accurate analysis of niche market and domestic market environment when brand launch effects on brand value enhancement. Second, marketing mix activity based on positioning strategy effects on establishing brand image and spreading brand awareness. Third, marketing activity based on positioning strategy should be executed based on consistent brand strategy.


Arrestins are multi-functional adapter proteins that orchestrate a vast array of cellular functions including MAPK signaling, receptor trafficking, and transcriptional regulation. Inositol hexaphosphate (IP6) is a naturally occurring phosphorylated carbohydrate that is abundant in almost all plant and mammalian cells. Previously studies showed that IP6 interacts with arrestin proteins, and regulates arrestin-mediated signaling. More interestingly, binding of IP6 affects four arrestin isoforms deferentially. Here, we report an equilibrium gel-filtration method to evaluate the interaction between arrestin and IP6. The interaction of arrestin3-IP6 can be further investigated by the method reported to determine the binding stoichiometry and binding affinities.


In response to these episodes, 48 AAI's were used. Personal prescribed AAI were used in 25 cases, one student was given 2 personal AAI. General use AAI were used in 20 cases, including 2 students who required 2 AAI to treat symptoms of anaphylaxis. On 2 occasions adrenaline was given by ambulance staff or in hospital, and on 1 occasion no adrenaline was given despite signs of anaphylaxis in the report.


BACKGROUND
Acute myeloid leukemia (AML) is a fatal hematological malignancy which is resistant to a variety of chemotherapy drugs. Myeloid cell leukemia-1 (Mcl-1), a death-inhibiting protein that regulates apoptosis, has been shown to be overexpressed in numerous malignancies. In addition, it has been demonstrated that the expression level of the Mcl-1 gene increases at the time of leukemic relapse following chemotherapy. The aim of this study was to target Mcl-1 by small interference RNA (siRNA) and analyze its effects on survival and chemosensitivity of acute myeloid leukemia cell line HL-60.

MATERIALS AND METHODS
siRNA transfection was performed with a liposome approach. The expression levels of mRNA and protein were measured by real-time quantitative PCR and Western blot analysis, respectively. Trypan blue assays were performed to evaluate tumor cell growth after siRNA transfection. The cytotoxic effects of Mcl-1 siRNA (siMcl-1) and etoposide were determined using MTT assay on their own and in combination. Apoptosis was quantified using a DNA-histone ELISA assay.

RESULTS
Transfection with siMcl-1 significantly suppressed the expression of Mcl-1 mRNA and protein in a time- dependent manner, resulting in strong growth inhibition and spontaneous apoptosis. Surprisingly, pretreatment with siMcl-1 synergistically enhanced the cytotoxic effect of etoposide. Furthermore, Mcl-1 down-regulation significantly increased apoptosis sensitivity to etoposide. No significant biological effects were observed with negative control siRNA treatment.

CONCLUSIONS
Our results suggest that specific suppression of Mcl-1 by siRNA can effectively induce apoptosis and overcome chemoresistance of leukemic cells. Therefore, siMcl-1 may be a potent adjuvant in leukemia chemotherapy.


This paper aims to examine the work entitled Taʻlīm-i fārisī in the context of the Ottoman tradition of the grammatical study of the Persian language. Taʻlīm-i fārisī, most likely penned by Kemal-pasha, is a short yet exceedingly significant primer for Persian language students dated in the middle of the 19th century. After a brief overview of the Persian grammar studies in the Ottoman Empire, the authors present the work and its author and conduct an analysis of the content of Taʻlīm-i fārisī. In terms of its underlying methodology, this work stands halfway between two principal tendencies: one is the traditional approach to studying the Persian language in the Ottoman Empire; another is a new approach developed under the influence of grammatical description of European languages. This paradigm shift in the Persian language's grammatical description within the Ottoman Empire is readily observable in the primer under review.


The objective of this paper is to evaluate and analyze energy savings and process optimization opportunities in the gas-oil separation plants (GOSPs) in upstream surface facilities. This approach resulted in the development of a new design for a compact gas-oil separation plant (C-GOSP) to meet the crude oil export specifications with less process equipment and operating costs, and higher oil product yield compared to conventional GOSPs. The new design was materialized as patents granted by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO). The innovative C-GOSP is based on the integration of the gas compression system with production traps to conserve energy consumption and minimize capital cost and increase crude production. Atmospheric and hot discharge gas from low pressure compressors will be rerouted and directly mixed with the incoming wild crude before entering the production traps. This process will result in simultaneously cooling the compressors' discharge gas and heating the incoming crude while increasing crude production. Hysys simulation was used to model and verify the feasibility of the C-GOSP. A 300 MBD production facility was used to benchmark the Hysys simulation model and to verify the feasibility of these promising energy saving opportunities.
 The extensive process simulation modelling using Aspen Hysys and benchmarked with the actual plant energy consumption revealed the feasibility of this innovative C-GOSP, which will result in the following benefits:
 Lowering the capital cost by eliminating the compressors discharge after coolers, liquid pumps, discharge KO drums and minimize the surface area of the crude heat exchangers. Lowering operating cost by eliminating the after coolers and heating medium required to heat the crude. Increase crude production yield by condensing the heavy hydrocarbon from the gas stream. Minimize the spacing requirements, which make ideal for offshore applications.
 The innovative approach of direct heating and cooling by mixing of hot and cold streams is superior to any other optimization approach. Consequently, a patent was granted from the USPTO on July 17, 2018, for the innovative C-GOSP. The patent number is 10023811.


Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to analyze some barriers and the "drivers of localism" during the long-term disaster recovery process. The main question is: what types of discourses and practices about localism are being heard and revealed in the frontline?

Design/methodology/approach
Fieldwork, which was conducted from January 2010 to June 2013, consisted of participant observation and qualitative data collection. The authors opted for an approach that privileges narrative and observation, dialoguing with participants to gather local knowledge and information. Data were analyzed in light of the disaster recovery literature, focusing on disaster recovery as an expression of power relations.

Findings
Localism has been framed in diverse ways according to the interests of social groups placed in contextual meanings and, sometimes, in different phases of risk and disaster management. One important driver of localism is disaster narrative framing that allowed identification of how localism is composed, by whom and how.

Research limitations/implications
One important aspect that needs further research is longitudinal studies to investigate how the barriers are changing between the generations, and how intergenerational dialogues can be promoted to sustain long-term participation and localism.

Originality/value
This study recommends the need to identify who is talking about the importance of local and how localism has been framed in policy and action. It is important to empower localism in order to provide ways for local people sharing what is going on in the frontline. But it is also essential to provide funding and means of implementation for local initiatives regarding advocating, researching and proposing disaster recovery interventions led by people.


Improving the mechanical properties of immiscible PP/PET blend is of practical significance especially in the recycling process of multi-layered plastic solid waste. In this work, a multi-flow vibration injection molding technology (MFVIM) was hired to convert the crystalline morphology of the PP matrix from spherulite into shish-kebab. POE–g–MA was added as compatibilizer, and results showed that the compatibilization effect consisted in the formation of a core-shell structure by dispersing the POE–g–MA into the PP matrix to encapsulate the PET. It was found that the joint action of shish-kebab crystals and spherical core-shell structure enabled excellent mechanical performance with a balance of strength and toughness for samples containing 10 wt % PET and 4 wt % POE–g–MA, of which the yield strength and impact strengths were 50.87 MPa and 13.71 kJ/m2, respectively. This work demonstrates a new approach to optimize mechanical properties of immiscible PP/PET blends, which is very meaningful for the effective recycling of challenging plastic wastes.


The Accelerated Stability Assessment Program (ASAP) was applied for the first time to a peptide, the antibiotic active pharmaceutical ingredient bacitracin. Bacitracin and its complex with zinc were exposed to temperature and relative humidity conditions from 50 to 80°C and from 0 to 63% for up to 21 days. High-performance liquid chromatography was used to analyze the stressed samples for both degradant formation and loss of the active (bacitracin A) and two inactive isoforms, with identities confirmed by mass spectrometry. These data were then analyzed using a humidity-corrected Arrhenius equation and isoconversion approach to create a shelf-life predicting model for typical storage conditions. Model fitting was found to be good with low residuals in both temperature and relative humidity axes for all parameters examined. The generated model's predictions for both the native and zinc complex of bacitracin for both formation of the major degradation product (F) and loss of the active isoform (A) were consistent with longer-term measured values at 30°C/53%RH and 40°C/75%RH, validating this approach for accelerating the determination of long-term stability of a peptide.


Transcription of the human PRL (hPRL) gene in the pituitary is subject to tissue-specific and multihormonal regulation involving two main regulatory regions, a proximal promoter and a distal enhancer. In this report we show that thyroid hormone inhibits the expression of the hPRL gene in rat pituitary cells. Transient expression experiments show that thyroid hormone regulation involves a strong inhibitory element, located in the proximal (-164/-35) promoter, which is modulated by a more distal stimulatory response control region. Gel retardation experiments reveal that the thyroid hormone receptor does not bind to the proximal negative element. We show the existence of an activating protein-1 (AP-1) response element located at positions -61 to -54 of the proximal promoter, conferring AP-1 stimulation to the hPRL promoter. This AP-1 induction is abolished when hormone-bound thyroid hormone receptor is present, indicating that there is an interference between the thyroid hormone receptor and AP-1 regulatory pathways. Furthermore, using the complete hPRL upstream region, we show that estrogen induction is abolished by simultaneous thyroid hormone treatment.


Summary form only given. We begin with a survey of the system-level energy estimation techniques, with a look at the potential pitfalls and trade-offs in accuracy at various levels of modeling. We further discuss various approaches to estimate energy estimation accurately at higher abstraction levels. The main focus of the tutorial is on an energy estimation flow that has been successfully used in design of state-of-the-art Gigabit per second (Gbps), multi-stream Software Defined Radio (SDR) receiver supporting WLAN, LTE and DVB applications. The design flow itself is generic, and has been found immensely useful especially during energy optimization iterations. When a particular energy optimization was implemented at the back-end synthesis, we could percolate the benefits at higher abstraction levels and verify them for all the available applications to be run on the platform. Further, we show how our flow gave us quick and accurate feedback on performance figures with respect to feasibility of mapping a new upcoming wireless standard on our existing tape-out. The tutorial concludes with a look at some of the open problems in the area of system-level power modeling, both from a practical and research point of view.


It is very interesting to bring plasmonic circular dichroism spectroscopy to the mid-infrared spectral interval, and there are two reasons for this. This spectral interval is very important for thermal bioimaging, and simultaneously, this spectral range includes vibrational lines of many chiral biomolecules. Here we demonstrate that graphene plasmons indeed offer such opportunity. In particular, we show that chiral graphene assemblies consisting of a few graphene nanodisks can generate strong circular dichroism (CD) in the mid-infrared interval. The CD signal is generated due to the plasmon-plasmon coupling between adjacent nanodisks in the specially designed chiral graphene assemblies. Because of the large dimension mismatch between the thickness of a graphene layer and the incoming light's wavelength, three-dimensional configurations with a total height of a few hundred nanometers are necessary to obtain a strong CD signal in the mid-infrared range. The mid-infrared CD strength is mainly governed by the total dimensions (total height and helix scaffold radius) of the graphene nanodisk assembly and by the plasmon-plasmon interaction strength between its constitutive nanodisks. Both positive and negative CD bands can be observed in the graphene assembly array. The frequency interval of the plasmonic CD spectra overlaps with the vibrational modes of some important biomolecules, such as DNA and many different peptides, giving rise to the possibility of enhancing the vibrational optical activity of these molecular species by attaching them to the graphene assemblies. Simultaneously the spectral range of chiral mid-infrared plasmons in our structures appears near the typical wavelength of the human-body thermal radiation, and therefore, our chiral metastructures can be potentially utilized as optical components in thermal imaging devices.


In this paper, we introduce approaches to navigating and manipulating objects in a Collaborative Virtual Environment (CVE) that engage tangible objects and an interactive table interface. We also identify three design concerns that are common to physical-virtual connectivity for interaction with CVE systems. At last, we propose solutions to these issues within the context of CVEs.


A systematic comparison of single and binary metal oxide TiO2, TiO2-Ga2O3, TiO2-Er2O3 and TiO2-Ta2O5 gas sensors with nanocrystalline and mesoporous microstructure, prepared by solgel route, was conducted. The gas sensitivity was increased by secondary phase introduction into TiO2 film via two mechanisms, firstly through the inhibition of anatase-to-rutile transformation, since the anatase phase accommodates larger amounts of adsorbed oxygen, and secondly through the retardation of grain growth, since the higher surface area provides more active sites for gas molecule adsorption. The binary metal oxides exhibited a remarkable response towards low concentrations of CO and NO2 gases at low operating temperature of 200°C, resulting in increasing thermal stability of sensing films as well as decreasing their power consumption. The calibration curves revealed that all sensors followed the power law ( B gas A S ] [ = ) (where S is sensor response, coefficients A and B are constants and [gas] is gas concentration). The response magnitude of the sensors obtained in this work is superior to TiO2-based sensors reported in previous studies.


Moored buoys have long served national interests, but incur high development, construction, installation, and maintenance costs. Buoys which drift off-location can pose hazards to mariners, and in coastal waters may cause environmental damage. Moreover, retrieval, repair and replacement of drifting buoys may be delayed when data would be most useful. Such gaps in coastal buoy data can pose a threat to national security by reducing maritime domain awareness. The concept of self-positioning buoys has been advanced to reduce installation cost by eliminating mooring hardware. We here describe technology for operation of reduced cost self-positioning buoys which can be used in coastal or oceanic waters. The ASC SCOUT model is based on a self-propelled, GPS-positioned, autonomous surface craft that can be pre-programmed, autonomous, or directed in real time. Each vessel can communicate wirelessly with deployment vessels and other similar buoys directly or via satellite. Engineering options for short or longer term power requirements are considered, in addition to future options for improved energy delivery systems. Methods of reducing buoy drift and position-maintaining energy requirements for self-locating buoys are also discussed, based on the potential of incorporating traditional maritime solutions to these problems. We here include discussion of the advanced Delay Tolerant Networking (DTN) communications draft protocol which offers improved wireless communication capabilities underwater, to adjacent vessels, and to satellites. DTN is particularly adapted for noisy or loss-prone environments, thus it improves reliability. In addition to existing buoy communication via commercial satellites, a growing network of small satellites known as PICOSATs can be readily adapted to provide low-cost communications nodes for buoys. Coordination with planned vessel Automated Identification Systems (AIS) and International Maritime Organization standards for buoy and vessel notification systems are reviewed and the legal framework for deployment of autonomous surface vessels is considered


Many Aluminum-based alloys are strengthened by using a heat-treatment process known as age-hardening. The aim of this work was to produce a high-strength 6xxx-series Aluminum alloy by adjusting the processing conditions, namely solutionizing and artificial aging. It consists of heating the alloy to a temperature at which the soluble constituents will form an homogeneous mass via solid diffusion, holding the mass at that temperature until diffusion takes place, then quenching the alloy rapidly to retain the homogeneous condition. In the quenched condition, heat-treated alloys are supersaturated solid solutions that are comparatively soft and workable, and unstable, depending upon the composition. After solution treatment and quenching, hardening is achieved either at room temperature (natural aging) or via a precipitation heat treatment at a suitable temperature (artificial aging). Precipitation heat treatments are generally low-temperature, long-term processes. Temperatures range from 115 to 190C; times vary from 5 to 48 h. The choice of time-temperature cycles for precipitation heat treatment should receive careful consideration. The objective is to select the cycle that produces an optimum precipitate size and distribution pattern. The mechanical characterization of heat-treatable 6xxx (Al-Mg-Si-Cu based) 6066 wrought aluminum alloys was studied. Their effects were investigated in terms of microstructure using positron annihilation lifetime techniques and monitoring the mechanical properties by mean of Vickers hardness measurements. The hardness is the resistance of a material to plastic deformation, and gives it the ability to resist deformation when a load is applied. The greater the hardness of the material, the greater resistance it has to deformation. The Vickers hardness of 6066 alloy has its maximum value (98) when aged for (10) hours at (175C) after quenching at 530C; so this temperature is the solution temperature of this alloy .The hardness conformed to reference values.


The continuing debate on the genesis of MMN centers on the question of whether MMN reflects differential adaptation of the circuits responding to the standard and deviant (the adaptation hypothesis) or whether it is generated by dedicated deviance detection mechanisms relying on sensory memory (the memory hypothesis). That is, either the MMN expresses response modulation, or it has a separate,specialized generator system which produces a "genuine" MMN. Previous research has attempted to settle this question non-invasively, in favor of the memory hypothesis, through so called multi-standard (MS) control experiments. The current study re-examines these issues in the context of a computational model which is based on the anatomical structure of auditory cortex and includes short-term depression (adaptation) of excitatory connections. In simulations, the model replicates the responses elicited in the oddball and MS conditions without the presence of separate deviance-detection subsystems. Instead, the cortical columns of the model index stimulus-specific adaptation and respond to tone sequences in a highly selective way. These results show that it is doubtful whether MS control experiments can offer reliable non-invasive evidence for the memory hypothesis. Instead, the model supports the adaptation hypothesis, offering a parsimonious account of MMN as part of an adaptation-modulated N1 response. Novel predictions for single and multiunit measurements which could falsify the adaptation hypothesis are offered.


The rules of quantum mechanics makes it possible to exchange a secret key at a distance. This is called quantum key distribution (QKD). In theory the key exchange can be made completely secure. Real QKD implementations however, has numerous imperfections. Luckily one has also been able to prove the security of QKD with a large variety of imperfections. The field of QKD has matured over the recent years, and it has now reached commercial applications with photons as the quantum bits, and optical fibers as the quantum channel. Today there are at least three commercial vendors of QKD-systems. We live in the times of quantum hacking. Researchers has begun the task of breaking the security of QKD-systems. Many new imperfections has been discovered, some of which might be used to break the security of QKD. This thesis is a study of the detector efficiency mismatch loophole. Most QKD-systems require two detectors, and it is virtually impossible to make two identical detectors with the exact same efficiency. What is worse, it turns out that the eavesdropper can often control the relative efficiencies of the two detectors trough some domain, for instance by controlling the timing, the frequency or the spacial mode of the photons. This can in turn be used by the eavesdropper to gain information about the secret key. Previously the best known attack would compromise security if the detector efficiency mismatch of about 1:15. Here the current attacks on systems with detector efficiency mismatch are improved to compromise security for a mismatch of about 1:4. This is less than the mismatch found in a commercial QKD-system, so the attack could in principle be used to eavesdrop on this QKD-system. One might try to close the loophole by modifying the implementation. One suggestion is the four state Bob. The problem is that this patch will in turn open other loopholes, and one of these loopholes reopen the detector efficiency mismatch loophole. One can remove Eves information about the key by doing a sufficient amount of extra privacy amplification. Here a general security bound is presented, quantifying the required amount of extra privacy amplification to remove Eve's information about the key. The proof is more general than the previous security proof, and is valid for any basis dependent, possibly lossy, linear optical imperfections in the channel and receiver/detectors. Since this is more realistic assumptions for a QKD-implementation, the proof represents a major step of closing the loophole in real devices.


Ultralight hollow microlattice materials offer tremendous potential for energy dissipation, thanks to a unique form of structural damping associated with local buckling of the hollow bars. This dissertation provides a comprehensive study of this damping mechanism and exploits it for the design of hollow microlattices with superior combinations of stiffness and damping at low mass. To encompass a wide design space, both metallic and hybrid (metal/elastomer) hollow microlattices are investigated. This structural damping mechanism is studied in detail and a simple mechanical model is developed and validated by experimental characterization. The model is adopted to optimize the microlattice geometry for maximum values of a damping figure of merit, expressing optimal combinations of high stiffness, low density and high damping coefficient. We find that hollow metallic microlattices exhibit exceptionally large values of this figure of merit; however, this level of performance requires extremely low relative densities (<0.1%), thus limiting the actual amount of energy dissipated.In order to increase the damping figure of merit at higher densities, hollow microlattices with metal/elastomer/metal sandwich walls are investigated. The sandwich construction provides increased local buckling strength, thus increasing the amount of energy dissipated by the lattice in a loading cycle. At the same time, the elastomer provides additional energy dissipation through the classic intrinsic constrained-layer damping mechanism, which is active even at relatively high densities and low deformation amplitudes. An analytical model for stiffness and damping (both intrinsic and structural) of hybrid hollow microlattices is derived, and verified via Finite Elements analyses and experimental characterization. Finally, the model is adopted in optimal design studies to identify hybrid microlattices with ideal combinations of the same figure of merit used for metallic lattices. The results indicate that hybrid lattices are clearly superior. Over the course of this work, significant discrepancies between predicted and measured values of the mechanical properties (e.g., stiffness, strength) of ultralight hollow microlattices were consistently observed. Such discrepancies are attributed to a complex stress state around the hollow nodes and the existence of a variety of manufacturing-induced geometric imperfections (e.g. cracks, non-circularity of the bars). The ultralight nature of the lattices investigated in this study makes them particularly sensitive to these defects. Here, a detailed study of such imperfections is performed with the aim of quantifying their effects on the mechanical performance of the lattices. The results confirm that the major discrepancy between analytical and experimental results can indeed be attributed to manufacturing-induced imperfections.


Background The weaning pig is used as an experimental model to assess the impact of diet on intestinal health. Blood parameters (BP) are considered a useful tool in humans, but there is very scarce information of such indicators in the weaning pig. The objective of the present study is to evaluate the use of different BP as indicators in an experimental model of salmonellosis. Methodology Seventy-two 28-day-old piglets were divided into four groups in a 2x2 factorial arrangement, with animals receiving or not a probiotic combination based on B. infantis IM1® and B. lactis BPL6 (109 colony forming units (cfu)/d) and orally challenged or not a week later with Salmonella Typhimurium (5x108 cfu). Blood samples of one animal per pen (N = 24) were taken four days post-inoculation for the evaluation of different BP using an I-stat® System and of plasmatic concentrations of zinc, iron and copper. Principal findings Results reported marginal deficiencies of zinc in piglets at weaning. Moreover, plasmatic zinc, copper and iron presented good correlations with weight gain (r 0.57, r -0.67, r 0.54 respectively; P < 0.01). Blood electrolytes (Na+, Cl- and K+) decreased (P < 0.01) only when the performance of the animals was seriously compromised and clinical symptoms were more apparent. Acid-base balance parameters such as HCO3-, TCO2 and BEecf significantly correlated with weight gain, but only in the challenged animals (r -0.54, r -0.55, and r -0.51, respectively; P < 0.05), suggesting metabolic acidosis depending on Salmonella infection. Glucose was affected by the challenge (P = 0.040), while Htc and Hgb increased with the challenge and decreased with the probiotic (P < 0.05). Furthermore, correlations of Glu, Htc and Hgb with weight gain were observed (P < 0.05). Overall, BP could be regarded as simple, useful indexes to assess performance and health of weaning piglets.


Asthma is a chronic airway inflammation with a potential systemic impact. Atherosclerosis is a chronic inflammatory artery disease. The aim of our study was to prove if there is a correlation between the occurrence of asthma and increased atherosclerotic vessel disorders. Vessel status was compared between mild-to-moderate, severe allergic asthma and matched controls. Measurements of artery stiffness were calculated by central pulse wave velocity, ultrasonographic strain imaging and ankle-brachial index. Atherosclerotic plaque burden was assessed by colour-coded duplex sonography. Additionally, analysis of cardiovascular and asthma blood markers was conducted. Arterial stiffness expressed as an increased central pulse wave velocity and decreased circumferential and radial strains as well as the prevalence of media sclerosis were significantly higher among asthma patients compared to controls. Atherosclerotic plaque burden was relevantly increased in asthma groups vs. controls (severe asthma: 43.1%, mild-to-moderate asthma: 25.0%, control: 14.3% of study participants). Except for the elevated IgE and fibrinogen concentrations as well as leukocyte number there were no relevant differences in the blood parameters between the groups. Allergic asthma is associated with distinct atherosclerotic artery changes compared to the respectively matched control collective. The severity of asthma correlates with more pronounced pathological vessel alternations.