Collaborative study designs (CSDs) that combine individual-level data from multiple independent contributing studies (ICSs) are becoming much more common due to their many advantages: increased statistical power through large sample sizes; increased ability to investigate effect heterogeneity due to diversity of participants; cost-efficiency through capitalizing on existing data; and ability to foster cooperative research and training of junior investigators. CSDs also present surmountable political, logistical and methodological challenges. Data harmonization may result in a reduced set of common data elements, but opportunities exist to leverage heterogeneous data across ICSs to investigate measurement error and residual confounding. Combining data from different study designs is an art, which motivates methods development. Diverse study samples, both across and within ICSs, prompt questions about the generalizability of results from CSDs. However, CSDs present unique opportunities to describe population health across person, place and time in a consistent fashion, and to explicitly generalize results to target populations of public health interest. Additional analytic challenges exist when analysing CSD data, because mechanisms by which systematic biases (e.g. information bias, confounding bias) arise may vary across ICSs, but multidisciplinary research teams are ready to tackle these challenges. CSDs are a powerful tool that, when properly harnessed, permits research that was not previously possible.


Background: In order to promote the dignity of terminal patients, and improve end-of-life care (EOL care) in Korea, consensus guidelines to the withdrawal of life-sustaining therapies (LST) were published in October, 2009. The aim of this study was to assess the current perception of the guideline among internal medicine residents and to identify barriers to the application of the guidelines. Methods: The study was designed prospectively on the basis of data from e-mail survey. We surveyed 98 medical residents working in 19 medical centers. Results: 75.5% of respondents agreed with withdrawing (WD) of LST and 33.3% (33/98) of respondents were unaware of the guideline. Although 58.1% of all respondents had taken an EOL care class in medical school, about 30% of residents did feel uncomfortable with communicating with patients and surrogates. The most important obstacle for decision of WD of LST was the resident's psychological stress. 39.8% of medical residents felt guilty or failure after a patient's death, and 41.8% became often or always depressed in a patient's dying. Conclusions: In order to protect and enhance the dignity and autonomy of terminal patients, the improvement of the medical training program in the hospitals and the more concern of educational leaders are urgent.


Introduction: Lithium has been used over time in the treatment of psychiatric pathologies, mainly the bipolar spectrum, however, the narrow therapeutic range generates a high incidence of poisoning by this metal, with a very heterogeneous clinical presentation of toxicity which will depend on two factors: the time of evolution, if it is acute or chronic, and the serum levels, ranging from gastrointestinal symptoms to severe neurological compromise. As of today, there is no specific antidote for lithium, so intermittent hemodialysis is the strategy of choice for the intoxicated patient. Objectives: To describe the available and relevant literature on the management of Lithium poisoning. Methodology: A search was performed with the MeSH terms "Lithium, Renal Dialysis, Poisoning, Toxicity, Acute kidney injury" in the ClinicalKey, PubMed and Ovid databases search engines, finding 156 results, of which 47 were used to develop this manuscript. Conclusions: Lithium poisoning is frequent due to its narrow therapeutic margin, so serum lithium levels should be monitored in patients medicated with it. Today there is no specific antidote, so renal replacement therapy is the best therapeutic option for lithium poisoning, demonstrating high efficiency, especially in cases of marked neurotoxicity. It is necessary to assess the need to initiate timely management in order to achieve a rapid clearance of the drug and decrease the rate of complications and mortality.


New materials discovery is the driving force for progress in solid state physics and chemistry. Here we solve the crystal structure and comprehensively study physical properties of ZnVSb in the polycrystalline form. Synchrotron x-ray diffraction reveals that the compound attains a layered ZrSiS-type structure ($P4$/nmm, $a$ = 4.09021(2) \AA{}, $c$ = 6.42027(4) \AA{}). The unit cell is composed of a 2D vanadium network separated by Zn-Sb blocks that are slightly distorted from the ideal cubic arrangement. A considerable amount of vacancies were observed on the vanadium and antimony positions; the experimental composition is ${\mathrm{ZnV}}_{0.91}{\mathrm{Sb}}_{0.96}$. Low-temperature x-ray diffraction shows very subtle discontinuity in the lattice parameters around 175 K. Bonding V-V distance is below the critical separation of 2.97 \AA{} known from the literature, which allows for V-V orbital overlap and subsequent metallic conductivity. From ab initio calculations, we found that ZnVSb is a pseudogap material with an expected dominant vanadium contribution to the density of states at the Fermi level. The energy difference between the antiferromagnetic and nonordered magnetic configurations is rather small (0.34 eV/f.u.). X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy fully corroborates the results of the band structure calculations. Magnetic susceptibility uncovered that, in ZnVSb, itinerant charge carriers coexist with a small, localized magnetic moment of ca. 0.25 ${\ensuremath{\mu}}_{\mathrm{B}}$. The itinerant electrons arise from the ordered part of the vanadium lattice. Fractional localization, in turn, was attributed to V atoms neighboring vacancies, which hinder full V-V orbital overlap. Furthermore, the susceptibility and electrical resistivity showed a large hysteresis between 120 K and 160 K. The effect is not sensitive to magnetic fields up to 9 T. Curie-Weiss fitting revealed that the amount of itinerant charge carriers in ZnVSb drops with decreasing temperature below 160 K, which is accompanied by a concurrent rise in the localized magnetic moment. This observation together with the overall shape of the hysteresis in the resistivity allows for suggesting a plausible origin of the effect as a charge-transfer metal-insulator transition. Ab initio phonon calculations show the formation of a collective phonon mode at 2.8 THz (134 K). The experimental heat capacity reflected this feature by a boson peak with Einstein temperature of 116 K. Analysis of the heat capacity with both an ab initio perspective and Debye-Einstein model revealed a sizable anharmonic contribution to heat capacity, in line with disordered nature of the material. Further investigation of the electron and phonon properties for ZnVSb is likely to provide valuable insight into the relation between structural disorder and the physical properties of transition-metal-bearing compounds.


A quality circle is a group of service providers who meet regularly to solve problems relating to the quality of their work. This is an example of bottom-up rather than top-down management which has found considerable success in the industries of the developed world. This article describes the principles which govern the operation of quality circles, the expected benefits and how best to introduce them. The problems relating to the provision of quality health care in rural areas and the potential application of the quality circle methodology are discussed.


The outage probability limit is a fundamental and achievable lower bound on the word error rate of coded communication systems affected by fading. This limit is mainly determined by two parameters: the diversity order and the coding gain. With linear precoding, full diversity on a block fading channel can be achieved without error-correcting code. However, the effect of precoding on the coding gain is not well known, mainly due to the complicated expression of the outage probability. Using a geometric approach, this paper establishes simple upper bounds on the outage probability, the minimization of which yields to precoding matrices that achieve very good performance. For discrete alphabets, it is shown that the combination of constellation expansion and precoding is sufficient to closely approach the minimum possible outage achieved by an i.i.d. Gaussian input distribution, thus essentially maximizing the coding gain.


Abstract From establishing Confucius Institutes all over the world to mounting an advertising blitz in New York's Times Square, the Chinese state's multifaceted endeavour to strengthen its "soft power" has been highly visible and the subject of much recent political, journalistic, and scholarly attention. This paper locates the Chinese state's "soft power" quest within historical and geopolitical contexts and explores the profound contradictions in its underpinning political economy and cultural politics. While this campaign's state, industry, professional and moral imperatives appear self-evident and there are converging elite and popular interests in the project, its structural impediments seem to be insurmountable. Furthermore, there are irreconcilable tensions between a drive to pursue an elitist, technocratic, and cultural essentialist approach to global communication and a capacity to articulate and communicate an alternative global political and social vision that appeals to the vast majority of the world population in a deeply divided and crises-laden domestic and global order.


Building on John Ruggie's pioneering study of multilateralism, this paper presents an analogous study of multistakeholder governance, or multistakeholderism. Its central argument is that multistakeholderism is, as yet, a much less well-defined institutional form. Cases exhibit significant variation both in the combinations of actor classes entitled to participate and the nature of authority relations among those actors. The first section discusses multistakeholderism as an institutional form, and proposes a taxonomy of its types. This section also briefly addresses the implications of the analysis for International Relations theory. The paper then conducts a comparative analysis of multistakeholderism, applying the taxonomy to five illustrative cases. It demonstrates the degree of inter-case variation, and the range of issue-areas across which the institutional form is employed and invoked by actors. Three cases are drawn from the increasingly contentious area of Internet governance; the paper thus makes a secondary contribution to this growing literature. The paper's most striking finding in this regard is that Internet governance often fails to live up to its multistakeholder rhetoric. Other cases include governance of securities regulation and the governance of corporate social responsibility. The paper concludes by examining the implications of our argument, and identifying areas for further research.


We investigated the degree of flexibility in retention strategies of young fishes in the low‐salinity zone (LSZ) of the San Francisco Estuary during years of highly variable river flow. We conducted depth‐stratified sampling over three full tidal cycles in each year from 1994 to 1996. In 1994, exotic striped bass (Morone saxatilis), native longfin smelt (Spirinchus thaleichthys), and exotic yellowfin goby (Acanthogobus flavimanus) migrated tidally, occurring near the surface on flood tides and near the bottom on ebb tides. This strategy may have facilitated retention, because landward residual currents were absent in this drought year. During 1995, this behavior persisted for striped bass and yellowfin goby, even though landward residual currents were present under high river‐flow conditions. In moderate river‐flow conditions (1996), longfin smelt again migrated tidally, whereas at another station adjacent to shallow bays, longfin smelt, striped bass, and native delta smelt (Hypomesus transpacificus) migrated on a reverse diel cycle, occurring near the surface by day and at depth by night. Reverse diel migration may facilitate horizontal transport and retention. Therefore, young fishes appeared to be behaviorally flexible in different environmental conditions to maximize retention. Vertical migrations may also enhance feeding success because zooplankton prey similarly migrated in the LSZ. Our study underscores the value of interdisciplinary studies in a variety of environmental conditions to decipher the range of organism behaviors promoting transport and retention in optimal habitats.


Full-band Monte Carlo simulations are performed for FinFETs with gate lengths from 50 nm down to 10 nm comparing the improvement of (110) surface pFinFETs with channel directions in lang-110rang, lang-111rang and lang001rang to the results of the standard (001)/ lang110rang CMOS configuration. Due to the reduced importance of surface scattering in (a) the undoped pFinFET channel and (b) the short-channel regime the advantage of the (110) surface orientation in long-channel bulk pMOSFETs vanishes in the scaling limit, while the (001) channel direction becomes more beneficial. Consequently, our device simulation analysis suggests that a (-110) wafer with (110)/lang001rang pFinFETs and (00-l)/lang001rang nFinFETs is superior to a (00-1) wafer with (110)/ lang-100rang pFinFETs and (010)/lang-100rang nFinFETs in the ultrashort-channel regime


Pseudo-Goldstone bosons (pGBs) can provide technically natural inflatons, as has been comparatively well-explored in the simplest axion examples. Although inflationary success requires trans-Planckian decay constants, f ≳ Mp, several mechanisms have been proposed to obtain this, relying on (mis-)alignments between potential and kinetic energies in multiple-field models. We extend these mechanisms to a broader class of inflationary models, including in particular the exponential potentials that arise for pGB potentials based on noncompact groups (and so which might apply to moduli in an extra-dimensional setting). The resulting potentials provide natural large-field inflationary models and can predict a larger primordial tensor signal than is true for simpler single-field versions of these models. In so doing we provide a unified treatment of several alignment mechanisms, showing how each emerges as a limit of the more general setup.


Our investigations indicate that Wuqinxi in Singapore has now been studied and is mainly promoted through performing exercises, exchanges and competition. The Singapore government has regarded for Qigong for many years, and thus helps Chinese Wuqinxi developed a successful foundation in Singapore. Besides, this research promptes that the Wuqinxi practitioners are mostly women who are around the age of 20 - 40 and their occupations are mainly workman, civil servants and self-employment. Most of them learn Wuqinxi through Wuqinxi exercises classes or in the Wushu clubs. In Singapore, people improve their health through learning and practice Wuqinxi which cater the demand for municipal and have been promoted and advocated by levels of government departments. It is encouraging that the data indicate that 75.7% of the Wuqinxi practitioners practice 1 - 3 times per week. The data seem to indicate that China Wu-qinxi will well developed in Singapore. However, The main obstacles affecting the promotion of Wuqinxi in Singapore are the lack of professional action coaches and theoretical education of sports action.


The high voltage system of an EMU (electrical multiple unit) is an important part of the power supply, and its electrical safety is directly related to the safe and stable operation of the EMU. With the increasing speeds of EMUs, the high-voltage equipment of the EMU should not only sustain the normal working voltages of the contact network, but also withstand the impact of overvoltage. The transient overvoltage generated during the operation of the EMU and the lightning overvoltage generated during thunderstorms may cause insulation breakdown of the electrical equipment on the roof of carriage, accelerate the insulation aging process, and affect the normal operation of the vehicle's high-voltage equipment. In this paper, the electromagnetic field analysis software Ansoft Maxwell is used to model and analyze the electric field intensity and potential distribution of the pantograph and its supporting insulators of the EMU. The distribution of the electric field intensity and potential of the pantograph and its supporting insulators under normal operating voltage, transient voltage and lightning overvoltage is studied to understand the weak links of insulation coordination of the high-voltage components, optimize the connection structure mode and the layout of high-voltage components. This is important to ensure the real-time security and efficient operating life of the high voltage system of an EMU.


: Given the effects of steep dips and large lateral variations in seismic velocity beneath the Vancouver Island continental shelf, seismic processing and travel time inversion are inadequate to obtain a detailed velocity model of the subsurface. Therefore, seismic full waveform inversion is applied to multichannel seismic reflection data to obtain a high-resolution velocity model beneath the Tofino fore-arc basin under the continental shelf off Vancouver Island margin. Seismic velocities obtained in this study help in understanding the shallow shelf sediment structures, as well as the deeper structures associated with accreted terranes, such as Pacific Rim and Crescent terranes. Shallow high velocities, as large as ∼ 5 km/s, were modeled in the mid-shelf region at ∼ 1.5–2.0 km depth. These coincide with an anticlinal structure in the seismic data, and possibly indicate the shallowest occurrence of the volcanic Crescent terrane. In general, seismic velocities increase landward, indicating sediment over-consolidation related to the compressional regime associated with the ongoing subduction of the Juan de Fuca plate and the emplacement of Pacific Rim and Crescent accreted terranes. Seismic velocities show a sharp increase about 10 km west of Vancouver Island, possibly indicating an underlying transition to the Pacific Rim terrane. A prominent low velocity zone extending over 10 km is observed in the velocity model at 800–900 m below the seafloor. This possibly indicates the presence of a high porosity layer associated with lithology changes. Alternatively, this may indicate fluid over-pressure or over-pressured gas in this potential hydrocarbon environment.


Entrepreneurship is a key component for answering the need for creating and strengthening businesses. The expected results of entrepreneurial activities are the creation of jobs and innovative firms. Therefore, entrepreneurship education plays a vital role in engaging students in the systematic practice of innovation. An entrepreneur committed to a management role has a significant perspective to innovation and entrepreneurship endeavor, both tasks demanding a management practice for creating change. In this context, the Front End of Innovation (FEI) plays a critical role. However, this is a challenging phase for entrepreneurs and companies as the FEI demands a variety of activities and approaches, necessary to overcoming the risks entailed in a new concept development, which hopefully will be unfolded as a new product or service, or even a business. The literature reflects this situation, with a variety of FEI approaches and works. This study builds on the results of research that aimed at overcoming this issue by proposing the FEI Integrative Ontology (FEI2O). This paper details the manner by which the FEI Integrative Ontology offers an appropriate novel conceptual model for entrepreneurship education providing a cross-analysis of the FEI2O and the Content Standards for Entrepreneurship Education considering the "Entrepreneurial Process" that is part of the "Entrepreneurial Skills" section of the standard. Therefore, it explores the benefits of adopting the FEI2O canvas to support innovation projects in the classroom, and ultimately the management of the FEI. Lastly, the work evaluates the FEI2O answers for FEI Critical Success Factors, such as strategy, resources, processes, climate and leadership. Given the clear relationship between the subset of skills required for entrepreneurship education and the concepts handled at the front-end of innovation, our results demonstrate that the in-depth understanding of the FEI ontology could help entrepreneurship educators to enrich entrepreneurship and management skills by the use of an organized body of knowledge. In sum, this comprehensive tool is helpful to translate into action the management of the FEI contributing as a novel approach to education for entrepreneurship.


Future networked embedded systems will be complex deployments deeply integrated in the environment that they monitor. They will have to react to both user and environmental events, and this may require modifying their structure to handle the changing situations. In a number of domains including industrial environments, this modification of the system structure will need to take place in real time. This is a hard problem that will require novel and paradigmatic solutions involving cross-domain knowledge to build a middleware for enabling real-time interaction between nodes allowing time-bounded reconfiguration. For supporting real-time, this middleware must be vertically architected in a modular way from the network and operating system levels up to the application software and the real-time policies for achieving time-bounded behavior. This paper presents a middleware that addresses these characteristics supporting timely reconfiguration in distributed real-time systems based on services. Experimental results are shown to validate the middleware in an actual small-scale video prototype.


There is a solution to the twin problem of large non-performing loans in the banking systems and the funding crisis for sovereign borrowers that is affecting especially Spain, Portugal, Ireland, Cyprus, Greece, but to some extent also Italy and other countries. The needed policies constitute 'true quantitative easing': as argued in 1994 and 1995 in Japan, there is no need for a recession due to the bad debt problems in the banking system. Necessary and sufficient condition for a recovery is an expansion in credit creation – which was originally called 'quantitative easing', an expression that was later used by central banks to refer to the type of traditional monetarist policy (bank reserve expansion) that was not likely to be sufficient. True quantitative easing can be achieved quickly and without extra costs in a two-part process as follows: 1. The central bank purchases all actual and likely non-performing assets from the banks at face value (book value) and transfers them to its balance sheet. In the case of non-securitised loans, if needed a law should be passed to allow compulsory purchase by and reassignment to the central bank. 2. The government stops the issuance of government bonds. Instead, it funds any future borrowing requirement (including all scheduled 'roll-overs' of bonds) by entering into loan contracts with the domestic banks, borrowing at the much lower prime rate. Ideally, these two measures are combined, and part and parcel of a larger policy package. For a fuller list of measures, see our CBFSD Discussion Paper No. 1-12. But they can also be implemented separately, so if ECB and national central bank support cannot be gained for measure 1, national governments can end the negative vicious cycle and end their sovereign debt problems by going ahead on their own with part 2.


Burst-tonic (BT) neurons in the prepositus hypoglossi and adjacent medial vestibular nuclei are important elements of the neural integrator for horizontal eye movements. While the metrics of their discharges have been studied during conjugate saccades (where the eyes rotate with similar dynamics), their role during disjunctive saccades (where the eyes rotate with markedly different dynamics to account for differences in depths between saccadic targets) remains completely unexplored. In this report, we provide the first detailed quantification of the discharge dynamics of BT neurons during conjugate saccades, disjunctive saccades, and disjunctive fixation. We show that these neurons carry both significant eye position and eye velocity-related signals during conjugate saccades as well as smaller, yet important, "slide" and eye acceleration terms. Further, we demonstrate that a majority of BT neurons, during disjunctive fixation and disjunctive saccades, preferentially encode the position and the velocity of a single eye; only few BT neurons equally encode the movements of both eyes (i.e., have conjugate sensitivities). We argue that BT neurons in the nucleus prepositus hypoglossi/medial vestibular nucleus play an important role in the generation of unequal eye movements during disjunctive saccades, and carry appropriate information to shape the saccadic discharges of the abducens nucleus neurons to which they project.


We described an efficient in situ generation of hydroxypyruvate from d‐serine catalyzed by a d‐amino acid oxidase from Rhodotorula gracilis. This strategy revealed an interesting alternative to the conventional chemical synthesis of hydroxypyruvate starting from toxic bromopyruvate or to the enzymatic transamination from l‐serine requiring an additional substrate as amino acceptor. Hydroxypyruvate thus produced was used as donor substrate of transketolases from Escherichia coli or from Geobacillus stearothermophilus catalyzing the stereoselective formation of a carbon−carbon bond. The enzymatic cascade reaction was performed in one‐pot in the presence of d‐serine and appropriate aldehydes for the synthesis of valuable (3S)‐hydroxyketones, which were obtained with high enantio‐ and diastereoselectivity and in good yield. The efficiency of the process was based on the irreversibility of both reactions allowing complete conversion of d‐serine and aldehydes.


This study examines the distribution of high-status materials and archaeological and artefactual evidence of their production in the settlements known as royal cities during the New Kingdom in ancient Egypt (c.1550-1069 BC). The research focusses on the sites of Amarna, Gurob and Malqata, but also incorporates Qantir/Pi-Ramesse for comparison. The industries considered as relevant for inclusion within this thesis are those of glass, faience, metal, sculpture and textiles.

No systematic and comprehensive discussion of the intra-urban distribution of high-status goods, their production or role as a marker of the nature of royal cities has been undertaken to date. The approach of using spatial analysis as a means to detect patterns of artefact distribution throughout entire suburbs has not been done in this form before and it has been proved successful in this thesis, although the methodological approach to each settlement necessarily varies, depending on the nature and quality of the available data. This thesis also includes new and unpublished data from survey and excavations at the site of Gurob, as well as critical and detailed reviews of the archaeology and material remains at several other sites.

Apart from an introduction and a conclusion, the thesis comprises two main analytical and discussion chapters:

The introduction outlines the aims and objectives, in addition to the theoretical and historiographical background to this thesis. In addition, it presents the sources used and methods employed. It furthermore provides some definitions and terminology used in the following chapters.

The spatial and artefactual analysis chapter discusses the distribution of the artefactual evidence of glass-working, faience-production, metal-working and sculpture-production, as well as the finished products, and the evidence of textile-working, for both Amarna and Gurob. Using a Geographical Information Systems (GIS) model incorporating a database of all relevant finds and a vector grid, distribution patterns are plotted and spatially and statistically analysed. This was not possible for Malqata, however, and therefore that section contains a detailed discussion of all information available on the nature of the production of glass and faience objects throughout the site. This chapter highlights patterns of artefact distributions throughout the three settlements, attempting the reconstruction of infrastructures.

The third chapter analyses workshops and factories in urban settlements in more detail. It includes a presentation of the archaeological remains at sites O45.1 and IA1 at Amarna and Gurob, highlighting parallels in layout and function. The chapter then focuses on archaeological analysis of artefactual assemblages from selected groups of houses at Amarna and Malqata, highlighting their industrial diversity.

The thesis concludes by summarising the results from both chapters, and using these to address the research questions asked in the introduction. This chapter uses the preceding data analysis to define three broad types of workshops: (1) the large, purpose-built (often royal) workshops, (2) the larger houses involved in manufacture, but with limited specialism, and (3) those working on a household-level with a low skill set. Based on the results from the analysis, a series of organisational models has been proposed, one for each industry, including the control of raw materials and the redistribution of half-finished and finished objects and their consumption.


A TERABYTE is unit of measurement for data storage capacity that is roughly equivalent to 50,000 trees made into paper and printed; (1) it is 500 million typewritten pages of plain text; (2) it is enough words that it would take every adult in America speaking at the same time five minutes to say them all, (3) and it is the amount of data that can be stored on only two to three commercially available hard disk drives, or on a single network server. Electronic discovery is now a fact of life for companies, litigators and courts. The proliferation of computer usage, inexpensive data storage, and developments in communication technology have changed modern discovery practice tremendously over the past several years. Courts around the country have been promulgating ad hoc case law, rules, and procedures to deal with electronic discovery. (4) The United States Judicial Conference Committee on Rules of Practice and Procedure voiced concern about the effect this patchwork of rules will have on companies and individual litigants: Developing case law on discovery into electronically stored information under the current rules is not consistent and is necessarily limited to the specific facts involved. Disparate local rules have emerged to fill this gap between the existing discovery rules and practice, and more courts are considering local rules. Without national rules adequate to address the issues raised by electronic discovery, a patchwork of rules and requirements is likely to develop. While such inconsistencies are particularly confusing and debilitating to large public and private organizations, the uncertainty, expense, delays, and burdens of such discovery also affect small organizations and even individual litigants. (5) To address the gap between the current Federal Rules of Civil Procedure and modern discovery practice, the Judicial Conference proposed amendments to Federal Rules of Civil Procedure 16, 26, 33, 34, 37, 45, and Form 35. The United States Supreme Court approved the amendments and, absent unexpected congressional intervention, the changes will take effect on December 1, 2006. (6) Although the amendments are still a few months away, courts have already started looking to the proposed rules for guidance. (7) Perhaps the most significant change effected by the new amendments will be the imposition of obligations on the parties to address issues relating to the discovery of electronic information very early in litigation. Meeting those obligations and the other requirements set forth in the new amendments will call for some new and creative approaches to discovery. Staying ahead of the terabytes of information that are accumulating in companies' computer systems and managing that information for discovery will require a great deal cooperation and communication between companies and their counsel. Indeed, there is already a growing expectation by the judiciary that counsel will be familiar with their client's electronic information systems. Brief Summary of the Amendments The proposed rules do not dramatically change e-discovery practices that have developed over the years in many jurisdictions. The proposed rules will specifically empower courts to adopt the parties' agreements regarding e-discovery into pretrial case management and scheduling orders. The new rules will allow a requesting party to test or sample electronically stored information and specify the format in which it wants electronic information produced. The rules also establish a two-tiered process for production whereby easily obtained information can be produced first, and less accessible data can be produced later, if necessary. The new rules envision a safe harbor from sanctions for the loss of electronically stored information, provided the loss is occasioned by the good-faith, routine operation of computer equipment. …


On June 23rd, 2016 52% of UK voters opted to put their country on the path to leave the European Union by March 29, 2019. This result was a surprise to many, and went against the advice of the vast majority of economic experts and business leaders. Two years later, and after a remarkable period in UK politics, key questions about the future relationship between the UK and the EU remain unresolved. Various models have been proposed; the latest one by Prime Minister May triggered the resignation of a number of key ministers. All of them struggle to deal with a fundamental tension: how to square barrier-free trade between the UK and the EU, especially across the border between Ireland and Northern Ireland, with both full policy sovereignty for the UK and adherence to the 'four freedoms' at the heart of the EUs Single Market. A 'no deal' Brexit by default remains an option, despite the costs to UK businesses and the wider UK economy.


INTRODUCTION The description of the first laparoscopic nephrectomy made a revolution in the managing of the benign and malignant renal diseases. Hand-assisted laparoscopy (HAL) was developed with the aim of offering advantages to both patients and surgeons. The aim of the present work is to compare, in our experience, the results offered in the radical nephrectomy by HAL and open surgery, by analysis of surgical time, estimated blood loss during surgery and hospital stay. METHODS Eleven Hand-assisted laparoscopic (HAL) radical nephrectomies and eight open radical nephrectomies were carried out at our institution during the same period (June 2001 to December 2002). All patients underwent computed tomography and were found to have a clinically localised functioning renal mass in all cases. The size of this renal mass was 4-7 cm (average 5.5 cm) in the HAL group and 4.5-15 cm (average 7.8 cm) in the open group. Patient age, body mass index, and American Society of Anaesthesiologists' score showed no significant difference between groups. RESULTS The average surgical time in the HAL group was 156.72 minutes, the average blood loss during surgery was of 83.6 ml and the average hospital stay was of 3.09 days. Conversion to open surgery was not necessary in any patient. Average surgical time in the open surgery group was 178.25 minutes, the estimated blood loss during surgery was of 337.75 ml (p < 0.05) and the hospital stay was of 5.37 days (p < 0.05). The comparison of the means by two-tailed student's t test revealed significant differences in estimated blood loss and hospital stay, favoring HAL, and no significant differences in surgical time. CONCLUSIONS HAL nephrectomy is feasible in almost all nephrectomies and is a safe, reproducible, and minimally invasive technique to perform extirpable renal surgery. HAL offer clear advantages over traditional open surgery, including decreased blood loss and hospital stay.


The major difference between a dSLR camera, a consumer camera, and a camera in a mobile device is the sensor size. The sensor size is also related to the over all system size including the lens. With the sensors getting smaller the individual light sensitive areas are also getting smaller leaving less light falling onto each of the pixels. This effect requires higher signal amplification that leads to higher noise levels or other problems that may occur due to denoising algorithms. These Problems become more visible at low light conditions because of the lower signal levels. The fact that the sensitivity of cameras decreases makes customers ask for a standardized way to measure low light performance of cameras. The CEA (Consumer Electronics Association) together with ANSI has addressed this for camcorders in the CEA-639 [1] standard. The ISO technical committee 42 (photography) is currently also thinking about a potential standard on this topic for still picture cameras. This paper is part of the preparation work for this standardization activity and addresses the differences compared to camcorders and also potential additional problems with noise reduction that have occurred over the past few years. The result of this paper is a proposed test procedure with a few open questions that have to be answered in future work.


We investigate the nonlinear mechanics of a bimetallic, optically absorbing SiN-Nb nanowire in the presence of incident laser light and a reflecting Si mirror. Situated in a standing wave of optical intensity and subject to photothermal forces, the nanowire undergoes self-induced oscillations at low incident light thresholds of <1 μW due to engineered strong temperature-position (T-z) coupling. Along with inducing self-oscillation, laser light causes large changes to the mechanical resonant frequency ω0 and equilibrium position z0 that cannot be neglected. We present experimental results and a theoretical model for the motion under laser illumination. In the model, we solve the governing nonlinear differential equations by perturbative means to show that self-oscillation amplitude is set by the competing effects of direct T-z coupling and 2ω0 parametric excitation due to T-ω0 coupling. We then study the linearized equations of motion to show that the optimal thermal time constant τ for photothermal feedback is τ → ∞ rather than the previously reported ω0 τ = 1. Lastly, we demonstrate photothermal quality factor (Q) enhancement of driven motion as a means to counteract air damping. Understanding photothermal effects on nano- and micromechanical devices, as well as nonlinear aspects of optics-based motion detection, can enable new device applications as oscillators or other electronic elements with smaller device footprints and less stringent ambient vacuum requirements.


The birth of a child and transition into home ownership are markers of progression along a life course. Research shows that pathways to home ownership have become more diverse and deviate from the traditional pathway which was characterised by marriage followed by the birth of a child before entering home ownership. This study investigates the timing and order of the two interrelated events of birth of a child and the transition to home ownership in Australia. Using the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia panel survey, we apply a multi-process event history analysis for describing the timing of each event following the formation of a cohabiting relationship. The results suggest that the likelihood of birth increases with prior home ownership attainment but as time passes following the purchase of a home, the likelihood of birth decreases, similarly, the likelihood of home ownership attainment decreased with time following birth.


This contribution describes the Twente News Corpus (TwNC), a multifaceted corpus for Dutch that is being deployed in a number of NLP research projects among which tracks within the Dutch national research programme MultimediaN, the NWO programme CATCH, and the Dutch-Flemish programme STEVIN.

The development of the corpus started in 1998 within a predecessor project DRUID and has currently a size of 530M words. The text part has been built from texts
of four different sources: Dutch national newspapers, television subtitles, teleprompter
(auto-cues) files, and both manually and automatically generated broadcast news transcripts
along with the broadcast news audio. TwNC plays a crucial role in the
development and evaluation of a wide range of tools and applications for the
domain of multimedia indexing, such as large vocabulary speech recognition,
cross-media indexing, cross-language information retrieval etc. Part of the corpus was fed into
the Dutch written text corpus in the context of the Dutch-Belgian STEVIN project D-COI that
was completed in 2007. The sections below will describe the rationale that was the starting point
for the corpus development; it will outline the cross-media linking approach adopted within
MultimediaN, and finally provide some facts and figures about the corpus.


Part of the early Heide circle, Moya Dyring left Melbourne for Europe in the late 1930s and lived much of her life in Paris, in an apartment on the Ile St Louis which became known as Chez Moya. This exhibition follows Dyring's transition from art student at the National Gallery School in Melbourne (1929-1932), where she met her future husband Sam Atyeo, to Parisian resident and charismatic salonniere – from Heide to the Left Bank. As a young artist, Dyring was among the first painters in Melbourne to respond to the influence of Cubism, evident in her painting Melanctha (1937), which John and Sunday Reed purchased from her first solo exhibition. Arriving in Paris in 1937, she immersed herself in the Parisian art world, meeting artists and attending studios and exhibitions. Later, on numerous excursions into the French countryside with artist friends she painted en plein air. Throughout the war years and up until her death in 1967, Dyring remained in close correspondence with John and Sunday Reed and extracts from their letters, as well as photographs and other archival materials, are displayed in the exhibition.


Coronary artery bypass grafts (CABG) are widely studied with respect to hemodynamic conditions which play important role in presence of a restenosis. However, papers which concern with constitutive modeling of CABG are lacking in the literature. The purpose of this study is to find a constitutive model for CABG tissue. A sample of the CABG obtained within an autopsy underwent an inflation–extension test. Displacements were recoredered by CCD cameras and subsequently evaluated by digital image correlation. Pressure – radius and axial force – elongation data were used to fit material model. The tissue was modeled as onelayered composite reinforced by two families of helical fibers. The material is assumed to be locally orthotropic, nonlinear, incompressible and hyperelastic. Material parameters are estimated for two strain energy functions (SEF). The first is classical exponential. The second SEF is logarithmic which allows interpretation by means of limiting (finite) strain extensibility. Presented material parameters are estimated by optimization based on radial and axial equilibrium equation in a thick-walled tube. Both material models fit experimental data successfully. The exponential model fits significantly better relationship between axial force and axial strain than logarithmic one. Keywords—Constitutive model, coronary artery bypass graft, digital image correlation, fiber reinforced composite, inflation test, saphenous vein.


Thrombosis of the deep venous system presenting with bilateral thalamic infarction or edema is a common finding, but unilateral venous thrombosis presenting with unilateral thalamic edema is extremely rare. We report a case of a patient with this unusual condition presenting with nonspecific clinical signs and symptoms. CT and MR imaging revealed a unilateral thalamostriate lesion. The imaging sign that was most helpful in establishing the diagnosis, however, was the MR finding of a thrombus in a single internal cerebral vein.


The problems of pastoralist livestock marketing systems in East Africa are well-documented in the literature. They include poor transport infrastructure, inadequate market access and frequent rejection of animals at certain markets. Thus far, few studies have analyzed the effects of eliminating these problems. This study was based on household and market survey data from the community of Il Ngwesi in the Laikipia district of Kenya. Our decision analysis framework for pastoralist livestock producers uses a stochastic simulation model to evaluate how policies that mitigate these marketing problems affect pastoralist incomes and marketing patterns. We find that three of the five hypothetical policy simulations yield statistically significant improvements on the baseline marketing scenario.


This working paper considers the legal system of England and Wales in terms of its impact on other legal systems and its reception of transplants from other legal systems. The paper was written to comply with a template established by the coordinator of a global representation of legal systems for the meeting of the Academy of International and Comparative Law held in Washington oin 2010. As such it provides a very broad overview which provides an introduction to some aspects of the Common Law system of England and Wales.


Within an increasing interconnected global society, it is important for undergraduate university students to be educated as competent/fluent global citizens. International service-learning is an effective tool for developing cross-cultural competencies and relationships, and many universities have programs that bring their students to serve in communities abroad. At the same time, technological advances have made telecommunication tools available and affordable. The confluence of these three factors raises an intriguing thought: what if two service-learning courses in two countries were linked, such that students learn together digitally , from their own campuses, and then serve together, in a third country? This paper describes a pilot global classroom service-learning course designed and cotaught by instructors at the University of Maryland at College Park (UMD) and Hong Kong Polytechnic University (PolyU). The expertise of the PolyU team is in computer science and engineering, while the UMD team has much experience with education, leadership and social development. The service project, which took place in Rwanda in May 2016, was designed to take advantage of the expertise from both sides.


Background
The novel dynamic biomechanical device Corvis ST can measure a variety of corneal deformation parameters and record the dynamic process of cornea deformation.Understanding various corneal deformation parameters is of important clinical significance for morphological and functional prediction for myopic eyes in corneal refractive surgery.However, the range and meaning of corneal deformation parameters in myopic eyes are still unknown.

Objective
This study was to establish the range of corneal defamation parameters by Corvis ST and explore its clinical significance in myopic eyes.

Methods
A descriptive study was designed under the approval of Ethic Committee of Tianjin Eye Hospital and informed consent of patients.This study protocol complied with Helsinki Declaration.Four hundred and seventy-seven eyes of 257 myopic patients who were going to receive corneal refractive surgery were included in Tianjin Eye Hospital from June 2014 to January 2015.The corneal deformation parameters including the first applanation time (1st A-time), first applanation lengh (1st A-length), first applanation velocity (1st A-velocity), second applanation time (2nd A-time), second applanation length(2nd A-length), second applanation velocity (2nd A-velocity), highest concavity time (HC-time), highest concavity deformation amplitude (HC-DA), highest concavity peak distance (HC-PD), highest concavity radius (HC-R), non-contact intraocular pressure (IOPnct) and the central corneal thickness (CCTst) were measured by Corvis ST.Corneal structural parameters including CCT and corneal curvature were measured by 3-D anterior segment analysis system( Pentacam), and corneal biomechanical parameters including corneal resistance factor (CRF), corneal hysteresis (CH), intraocular pressure mimic Goldmann (IOPg) and intraocular pressure of corneal compensation (IOPcc) were measured by Ocular Response Analyzer (ORA). The distributions of the data were tested with the Shapiro-Wilk test and 95% confidence intervals (CI) were calculated.The correlations of the variables were evaluated by Pearson correlation coefficient and Spearman rank correlation coefficient.Multiple linear regression was used to analyze the changes of 1st A-time, 2nd A-time and HC-DA with corneal morphology and biomechanical parameters.

Results
Only 1st A-time, 2ndA-time, HC-time, HC-DA, CCTst and IOPnct showed the normality distribution in corneal deformation parameters.The positive correlations were found between 1st A-time, 1st A-length, 2nd A-length, 2nd A-velocity, HC-R with CCT (r=0.338, rs=0.129, rs=0.282, rs=0.374, r=0.306, all at P<0.01), while 1st A-velocity, 2nd A-time, HC-D and HC-PD showed the negative correlations with CCT (rs=-0.235, r=-0.130, r=-0.259, r=-0.226, all at P<0.01). CRF and CH showed positive correlations with 1st A-time, 2nd A-length, 2nd A-velocity, HC-time, HC-R and negative correlations with HC-PD, △A-length (all at P<0.05).1st A-time, 2nd A-time and HC-DA changed with CRF and IOPcc with the regression formations of 1st A-time =6.185+ 0.066CRF+ 0.034IOPcc (F=300.123, P=0.000), 2nd A-time=23.397-0.074IOPcc-0.044CRF (F=227.979, P=0.000) and HC-DA= 1.523-0.017IOPcc-0.017CRF (F=152.662, P=0.000). The CCTst, IOPst and IOPnct values by Corvis ST were significantly lower than CCT by Pentacam ([548.23±26.31]μm, IOPg ([15.02±2.72]mmHg and ([16.02±2.56]mmHg) by ORA respectively (t=11.00, 2.919, 6.815, all at P<0.01).

Conclusions
The corneal deformation parameters by Corvis ST can quantitatively describe corneal biomechanical properties in myopic eyes.Both IOP and the corneal steep curvature of the 3 mm center area (K2) affect the deformation response of cornea.The reliability of Corvis ST in the measurement of CCT and IOP remains to be further studied.

Key words:
Cornea/physiopathology; Cornea/anatomy h Myopia/physiopathology; Biomechanical phenomena/physiology; Elasticity/physiology; Corneal deformation parameters


When addressing administrative reform, many scholars have referred to the fact that governments confront multiple internal challenges such as fiscal stress, distrust of bureaucracy, and higher demands for public services (Peters and Savoie 1995). Externally, governments become more sensitive to global issues and tend to be more influenced by international environments (Garcia-Zamor and Khator 1994). Faced with internal and external challenges, governments seek new paradigms for governance (Ingraham and Romzek 1994) and often initiate administrative reform (AR) aimed at enhancing governmental performance and improving the administrative system through technological advances, managerial improvements, administrative innovations and continued enhancement of administrative capabilities (Caiden 1991).

Administrative reform and its diffusion among Western countries are well documented in the literature (Campbell and Peters 1988; Savoie 1994; Halligan 1996; Peters and Savoie 1995). However, studies are skewed toward Western countries and little attention has been paid to Asia. Even less attention has been paid to comparative studies on Asian administrative reform, even though many Asian countries have developed their own AR trajectories to improve public efficiency and productivity (Burns 1994; Zhang, De Guzman, and Reforma 1992). As many students of comparative public administration (CPA) understand, it is always a challenging task, both methodologically and theoretically, to examine a group of different countries (Aberbach and Rockman 1987; Heady 1996a; 1996b; Peters 1988; Peters 1996). It is an even more challenging and controversial task to develop a single comparative framework from which we can examine different countries.

This article attempts to fill a gap in the literature by examining Asian AR from a comparative perspective. First, we propose an exploratory theoretical framework, a Political Nexus Triad (PNT). PNT is an extended model, which adds civil society as the third dimension to the traditional politics-administration model. We suggest the PNT and its dynamic trajectory as a building block of the comparative study of Asian administrative reform. This is similar to the power interaction models in which Peters (1988) addresses the power interactions between politicians and bureaucrats.1 Second, we examine the conventional patterns of PNT for three Asian countries: China, Japan, and Korea. Third, we survey AR of the three countries, focusing on actors, contents and potential impacts to the new PNT. Finally, we discuss conclusions and comparisons


Bessen and Meurer (2008) theorize that a breakdown in notice of patent boundaries caused the patent litigation surge of the 1990s. They argue a prime source of this breakdown was the proliferation of software patents with particularly uncertain scope. In this paper I seek evidence that software patent scope is more uncertain by extending the empirical literature on claim construction reversal rates to determine whether the Federal Circuit has been more likely to find error in district court construction of software patents. Not only do I find that it has, since 2002 software patents account for forty percent of the difference between the Federal Circuit's high claim construction reversal rate and its lower average reversal rate on all other patent issues. These results are cause for optimism because, in general, the application of existing claim construction law has been more predictable than many have feared. However, that optimism does not extend to software claim construction, which remains highly unpredictable.


Human physiology needs to be well adapted to cope with major discontinuities in both the supply of and demand for energy. This adaptability requires 'a clear capacity to utilize lipid and carbohydrate fuels and to transition between them' ( Kelley et al. 2002b). Such capacities characterize the healthy state and can be termed 'metabolic flexibility'. However, increasing evidence points to metabolic inflexibility as a key dysfunction of the cluster of disease states encompassed by the term 'metabolic syndrome'. In obese and diabetic individuals this inflexibility is manifest in a range of metabolic pathways and tissues including: (1) failure of cephalic-phase insulin secretion (impaired early-phase prandial insulin secretion concomitant with failure to suppress hepatic glucose production and NEFA efflux from adipose tissue); (2) failure of skeletal muscle to appropriately move between use of lipid in the fasting state and use of carbohydrate in the insulin-stimulated prandial state; (3) impaired transition from fatty acid efflux to storage in response to a meal. Finally, it is increasingly clear that reduced capacity for fuel usage in, for example, skeletal muscle, as indicated by reduced mitochondrial size and density, is characteristic of the metabolic syndrome state and a fundamental component of metabolic inflexibility. Key questions that remain are how metabolic flexibility is lost in obese and diabetic individuals and by what means it may be regained.


: A macro-microscopic investigation was performed on preparations of the pharynx from 110 corpses of people practically healthy in their life-time. Lymphoid accumulations (prenodules) by the rhinopharynx are disposed mainly in the area of salpingo-pharyngeal folds and between them, in the oral part of the organ--near salpingo-pharyngeal folds and in the posterior wall. In children the lymphoid accumulations by laryngopharynx are found near the middle line of the posterior wall, while in adult people they are concentrated in the area of piriform recesses. In the rhinopharynx walls the lymphoid accumulations are adjacent immediately to the basal layer of the epithelium, by the oral and laryngeal parts of the organ they are disposed closer to the muscular layer. The maximum quantity of the lymphoid accumulations was observed in early childhood, it was twice lower in senile people. The greatest sizes of them were noted in juvenile age.


Land degradation affecting the livelihoods of people living in dryland areas, particularly the Sub-Saharan Africa countries like Ethiopia. Degraded land rehabilitation in dryland is a challenging task due to moisture limitation. This study was conducted to evaluate the effects of soil and water conservation structures on growth of planted tree and rehabilitation of indigenous plant species in West Guji Zone, Dugda Dawa District. Four multipurpose tree species (MPTs) namely Faidherbia albida, Melia azedarach, Moringa stenopetala, and Sesbania sesban were planted in four soil and moisture conservation structures (soil level bund, half-moon, trench and normal pit). Data of survival rate, height and diameter growth of planted tree species and, diversity and species richness of indigenous plant species were collected. The survival rate of all planted MPTs species were declining along the study years; however, the survival rate was better under soil level bund and half-moon. Under control treatments, all planted MPTs died at the end of the study period. The height and stem diameter of F. albida, M. azedarach and M. stenopetala were best in soil level bund and half-moon and followed by the trench. Whereas, the growth performance of Sesbania sesban was not significantly different among the three moisture conservation structures. Furthermore, soil moisture conservation structures significantly increased the indigenous plant species regeneration after the intervention. The mean indigenous plant species diversity and richness were significantly highest in half-moon and soil level bund followed by trench and, lowest in Control (normal pit). Thus, the results a potential for alternative forest and soil restoration in arid areas.

 Key words: Rehabilitation, Land degradation, survival rate,Trees growth, Indigenous plant species diversity, Moisture conservation structures.


Take example for the fault diagnostic system for shipboard chemical defense equipment, it is developed, applied virtual instrument technology, grey system theory, and database, in order to update entirely the means of the equipment testing. The modularization and universalization are proposed in its database-based design concept, realizing the design of software and hardware. The ODBC technique is applied for the interconnection of databases to ensure the generality and flexibility of the system. The system mode the best of virtual instrument platform and grey diagnosis method, broke through conventional check diagnosis patterns for warships chemical defense equipment, solved the problems of state prediction and trouble-mode recognition of warships chemical defense equipment. It has been proved by experiments that the system has merits both high accuracy and economical practicability. Also it can reduce the application development cycle and cost.


The aim of this study was to compare the usefulness of complete small and large subunit rRNA, and a combination of both molecules, for reconstructing stramenopile evolution. To this end, phylogenies from species of which both sequences are known Acre constructed with the neighbor‐joining, maximum parsimony, and maximum likelihood methods. Also the use of structural features of the rRNAs was evaluated. The large subunit rRNA from the diatom Skeletonema pseudocostatum was sequenced in order to have a more complete taxon sampling, and a group I intron was identified. Our results indicated that heterokont algae are monophyletic, with diatoms diverging first. However, as the analysis was restricted to a particular data set containing merely six taxa, the outcome has limited value for elucidating stramenopile relationships. On the other hand, this approach permits comparison of the performance of both rRNA molecules without interference from other factors, such as a different species selection for each molecule. For the taxa used, the large subunit rRNA clearly contained more phylogenetic information than the small subunit rRNA. Although this result can definitely not be generalized and depends on the phvlogeny to be studied, in some cases determining complete large subunit rRNA sequences certainly seems worthwhile.


Abstract
There has recently been interest in neuroleptic malignant syndrome (NMS) as the disorder has been better characterized. Nms is still poorly recognized, however, by most physicians. Hyperpyrexia, rigidity, altered consciousness, autonomic instability, and enzymatic evidence of muscle breakdown after drug intake are the cardinal features. The authors of this article review the proposed pathogenesis, complications, and treatment of NMS.


In 1989 the Catholic Health Association, in conjunction with the University of Iowa Center for Health Services Research, surveyed chief executive officers (CEOs) of rural hospitals regarding their hospital's viability and strategic behaviors and orientations. An extensive questionnaire was sent to the CEOs of all Catholic, all other religious not-for-profit, and all investor-owned rural hospitals, as well as to a 50 percent random sample of government and other not-for-profit rural hospitals. CEOs on average perceived that their hospital's viability relative to that of other rural hospitals was higher in 1989 than it had been in 1987. Ninety-four percent of hospitals whose CEOs perceived an increase in viability had been medium- or low-viability hospitals two years earlier. Thus, despite reports of deteriorating conditions for rural hospitals, rural hospital CEOs appeared to be relatively optimistic regarding their institution's viability. Changes in strategic direction accompanied these perceived increases in viability. The predominant strategic orientation adopted by rural hospitals in 1987 was that of the defender, but many hospitals that used this approach switched to the analyzer orientation by 1989. Significant shifts also occurred toward the reactor orientation from the analyzer and defender orientations. A greater percentage of hospitals with a perceived increase in viability between 1987 and 1989 altered their organizational role. The most common change for these hospitals was from limited care to basic care.


Identifying which species are perceived as charismatic can improve the impact and efficiency of conservation outreach, as charismatic species receive more conservation funding and have their conservation needs prioritized (9; 17; 13). Sociological experiments studying animal charisma have relied on stated preferences to find correlations between hypothetical "willingness to pay" or "empathy" for a species' conservation and species' size, color, and aesthetic appeal (51; 13; 16). Recognizing the increasing availability of digital records of public engagement with animals that reveal preferences, an emerging field of "culturomics" uses Google search results, Wikipedia article activities, and other digital modes of engagement to identify charismatic species and traits (46; 31; 10; 41). In this study, we take advantage of community science efforts as another form of digital data that can reveal observer preferences. We apply a multi-stage analysis to ask whether opportunistic birders contributing to iNaturalist engage more with larger, more colorful, and rarer birds relative to a baseline, from eBird contributors, approximating unbiased detection. We find that body mass, color contrast, and range size all predict over-representation in the opportunistic dataset. We also find evidence that, across 473 modeled species, 52 species are significantly overreported and 158 are significantly underreported, indicating a wide variety of species-specific effects. Understanding which birds are charismatic can aid conservationists in creating impactful outreach materials and engaging new naturalists. The quantified differences between two prominent community science efforts may also be of use for researchers leveraging the data from one or both of them to answer scientific questions of interest.


Geographical routing protocol requires node physical location information to make forwarding decision. Geographical routing uses location service or position service to obtain the position of a node. The geographical information is a geographic coordinates or can be obtained through reference points on some fixed coordinate system. Link can be formed between two nodes. Link lifetime plays a crucial role in MANET. Link lifetime represent how long the link is stable without any failure between the nodes. Link failure may occur due to mobility and because of link failure energy of nodes can be drained. Thus this paper proposes survey about link lifetime prediction using geographical information. Keywords—MANET, Geographical routing, Link lifetime, Link


Fucoidans are complex bioactive sulfated fucosyl-polysaccharides primarily found in brown macroalgae. Endo-fucoidanases catalyze the specific hydrolysis of α-L-fucosyl linkages in fucoidans and can be utilized to tailor-make fucoidan oligosaccharides and elucidate new structural details of fucoidans. In this study, an endo-α(1,3)-fucoidanase encoding gene, Mef2, from the marine bacterium Muricauda eckloniae, was cloned, and the Mef2 protein was functionally characterized. Based on the primary sequence, Mef2 was suggested to belong to the glycosyl hydrolase family 107 (GH107) in the Carbohydrate Active enZyme database (CAZy). The Mef2 fucoidanase showed maximal activity at pH 8 and 35 °C, although it could tolerate temperatures up to 50 °C. Ca2+ was shown to increase the melting temperature from 38 to 44 °C and was furthermore required for optimal activity of Mef2. The substrate specificity of Mef2 was investigated, and Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) was used to determine the enzymatic activity (Units per μM enzyme: Uf/μM) of Mef2 on two structurally different fucoidans, showing an activity of 1.2 × 10−3 Uf/μM and 3.6 × 10−3 Uf/μM on fucoidans from Fucus evanescens and Saccharina latissima, respectively. Interestingly, Mef2 was identified as the first described fucoidanase active on fucoidans from S. latissima. The fucoidan oligosaccharides released by Mef2 consisted of a backbone of α(1,3)-linked fucosyl residues with unique and novel α(1,4)-linked fucosyl branches, not previously identified in fucoidans from S. latissima.


A prototype of a wearable computer system is proposed and implemented using commercial off-shelf components. The system is designed to allow the user to access location-specific information about an environment, and to provide capability for user tracking. Areas of applicability include primarily first response scenarios, with possible applications in maintenance or construction of buildings and other structures. Necessary preparation of the target environment prior to system's deployment is limited to noninvasive labeling using optical fiducial markers. The system relies on computational vision methods for registration of labels and user position. With the system the user has access to on-demand information relevant to a particular real-world location. Team collaboration is assisted by user tracking and real-time visualizations of team member positions within the environment. The user interface and display methods are inspired by Augmented Reality1 (AR) techniques, incorporating a video-see-through Head Mounted Display (HMD) and fingerbending sensor glove.*. 1Augmented reality (AR) is a field of computer research which deals with the combination of real world and computer generated data. At present, most AR research is concerned with the use of live video imagery which is digitally processed and "augmented" by the addition of computer generated graphics. Advanced research includes the use of motion tracking data, fiducial marker recognition using machine vision, and the construction of controlled environments containing any number of sensors and actuators. (Source: Wikipedia) *This dissertation is a compound document (contains both a paper copy and a CD as part of the dissertation). The CD requires the following system requirements: Adobe Acrobat; Microsoft Office; Windows MediaPlayer or RealPlayer.


The August 2008 avulsion of the Kosi River, northern India, resulted in a maximum eastward shift of >100 km and created an avulsion belt of 2722 km 2 . Based on A.D. 2000 Shuttle Radar Topography Mission data and on 2005 Landsat Thematic Mapper satellite image–derived channel network (pre-avulsion), we use a topography-driven connectivity model to simulate the avulsion pathway, which corresponds, to a large extent, to that observed in the post-avulsion period. We then use this model to postulate the avulsive course of the river from another upstream point based on avulsion threshold analysis. Our results demonstrate that this model has the potential for postulating the path of an avulsive channel, and can provide a priori information on the areas likely to be flooded following an embankment breach.


: Research on cooperative social structures and particular types of conflict behavior online is readily available. However, the field lacks a framework to analyze how antagonistic structures are represented on online platforms . Social structures can be represented formally (manifestly) or informally (in open verbal or visual forms) or remain latent—a distinction that has received little scholarly attention in the analysis of computer-mediated communication. Based on an interpretative analysis of relational structures and types of acts, we distinguish structural elements that lead us to empirical typologies of antagonistic structures and an analysis of whether and how they are represented online. We develop theses about why some structures are formally represented more often than others and theorize the consequences of this selective representation


Previous studies have associated hypertension with discrepancies between right arm and left arm blood pressure (BP) measurements. The purpose of this study was to determine if there were clinically (defined as > or = 10 mm Hg disparity) and statistically significant differences between right arm and left arm BP measurements (systolic, diastolic, or mean) in 34 third-trimester hypertensive gravidas. Thirty-four third-trimester normotensive gravidas were used as controls. No subjects were in active labor. This study used a cross-sectional, 2-group design with convenience sampling. The protocol for BP measurement followed guidelines of the American Heart Association and the instrument manufacturer. The results showed a greater range in BP differences between arms for the hypertensive group in the systolic (0.67-26.67 mm Hg) and mean (0.25-67 mm Hg) pressures compared with the normotensive group (systolic, 0-14.33 mm Hg; mean, 0-12 mm Hg). The mean difference in BP between arms was greater for the hypertensive group compared with the normotensive group. Using a 1-tailed t test, the mean difference was statistically significant (P < or = .05) for the systolic pressure (P = .027) and for the mean pressure (P = .022), but not the diastolic pressure (P = .168). The frequency of clinically significant differences (> or = 10 mm Hg) was greater for the hypertensive group than for the normotensive group (13 vs 4). These differences in frequencies were not statistically significant with chi-square analysis (systolic, P = .074; diastolic, P = .303; mean, P = .303). These findings indicated BP discrepancies between arms exist in both normotensive and hypertensive gravidas, with a greater range and frequency of differences in the hypertensive group. This study supports the American Heart Association's recommendation of bilateral BP assessment.


In the face of growing urbanised areas, the presence of forests and their appropriate shaping is a key challenge for contemporary urban planning. The importance of forests is largely identified with natural, economic and social functions in non-urban areas; however, forests are of vital value in urbanised areas. This article explores young Polish urbanites' awareness of the role forests play, and submits diagnoses of the forests multidimensional benefits and their functions in Poland's urban areas. Moreover, the research is based on the premise that the management of urban forests must ultimately lead to the satisfying of social needs. Based on empirical research, the perceptions of the value of urban forests as assessed by young people (students) in the Śląskie Voivodeship are presented, leading to the authors' postulation that urban forests are underestimated resources. Furthermore, the study suggests that young Poles do not recognise the multi-beneficial aspects of urban forests; and the authors indicate feasible directions for local policy to achieve sustainable development. The final statements argue that in the face of serious threats to the functioning of Earth's ecosystem, a campaign for the presence of forests and green spaces in cities is necessary.


A new approach for the computerized simulation of load distribution in mismatched spiral bevel gears with point contact is presented. The loaded tooth contact is treated in a special way: it is assumed that the point contact under load spreads over a surface along the "potential" contact line (Simon, 2006, Mech. and Machine Theory, in press), which line is made up of the points of the mating tooth surfaces in which the separations of these surfaces are minimal, instead of assuming the usually applied elliptical contact area. The bending and shearing deflections of gear teeth, the local contact deformations of mating surfaces, gear body bending and torsion, the deflections of supporting shafts, and the manufacturing and alignment errors of mating members are included. The tooth deflections of the pinion and gear teeth are calculated by the finite element method. As the equations governing the load sharing among the engaged tooth pairs and load distribution along the tooth face are nonlinear, an approximate and iterative technique is used to solve this system of equations. The method is implemented by a computer program. By using this program the load and tooth contact pressure distributions, the angular displacements of the driven gear and the stresses in the pinion and gear teeth are calculated. The influence of design data and transmitted torque on load distribution parameters and fillet stresses is investigated and discussed.


Introduction Hypoproteinaemia leads to spuriously high-sodium values when measured by indirect ion-selective electrodes (ISE) as used in main laboratory analysers compared with direct ISE employed in point-of-care analysers (POCT). The authors, therefore, investigated the occurrence of hypoalbuminaemia and its effect on measured sodium from POCT and the main laboratory analyser of neonatal intensive-care samples. Method Sodium, in paired retrospective samples, measured by the main laboratory and neonatal unit blood-gas (POCT) analysers were compared. Results Hypoalbuminaemia (<30 g/l) was present in 1400/2420 paired results. Sodium was higher when measured by laboratory analyser, the difference increased with decreasing albumin; sodium (laboratory – POCT)=7.6 (±1.1)–0.22 (±0.04)×albumin. A difference >3 mmol/l was present in 31% and consequently underestimated (9.4%) hyponatraemia and overestimated (3.8%) hypernatraemia. Conclusion Hypoalbuminaemia is common in sick neonates and monitoring electrolytes using POCT and laboratory analysers frequently yield significantly different results with consequent misclassification. In these patients, measurement of electrolytes by direct ISE (blood-gas analyser) may be more accurate.


The paper is concerned with the problems of obtaining clinico-diagnostic and topometric information and its preparation for further computer-assisted use. Topometric schemes were made in the frontal, sagittal, and a series of transversal planes which permit assessment of the nature of ionizing radiation energy distribution in the main projection area of normal organs involved in the irradiated zone as well as within the limits of extended targets on the basis of optimized computer-assisted total dose distribution at the level of the tumor center. A dosimetric plan is regarded as a normal one if it meets the requirements of quality at all studied levels.


The interfacial bonding property between carbon fiber laminate (CFL) and concrete is a key issue in the application of RC beams strengthened with CFL. In this paper, fracture mechanics method is used to develop a calculation formula of stress intensity factor for the CFL-concrete interfacial crack. In combination with a series of tests, the interfacial fracture toughness is discussed, and the influencing factors and process of the intermediate crack-induced debonding (IC debonding) are also analyzed. The tests results show that IC debonding is generally induced by the flexural or flexural-shear cracks in the bottom of RC beams around the mid-span, and develop along the interface towards the end of the beam. A method to determine IC debonding derived from theoretic analysis and the tests results demonstrates that the interfacial failure can be effectively avoided by limiting CFL strain in the range of the debonding strain.


Encore is an innovative way to find materials in the library collections. It functions like a search engine, so you do not need to search by title, author or subject.


Urease-positive (Ure+) and urease-negative (Ure-) strains of Vibrio parahaemolyticus isolated from patients on the West Coast of the United States between 1979 and 1995 were analyzed for the thermostable direct hemolysin (tdh) gene and the tdh-related hemolysin (trh) genes (trh1 and trh2). The DNA colony hybridization method with the polynucleotide probes was used to determine the distribution of the genes. Of 60 Ure+ strains, 59 strains (98%) had the trh (either trh1 or trh2) gene and 54 strains (90%) carried the tdh gene. The absence of the trh gene or a related sequence in an exceptional Ure+ strain was confirmed by Southern blot analyses. The stronger correlation with the trh gene than with the tdh gene was mostly attributable to strains possessing only the trh2 gene. Of 25 Ure- strains, 20 strains (80%) had the tdh gene but none had the trh gene. These results indicate a very strong correlation between the Ure+ phenotype and the trh gene and are consistent with those reported for strains isolated in Asia. The Ure+ strains carrying the trh genes were not restricted to a unique group of the strains. The O4:K12 strains carrying the trh1 gene have predominantly been isolated since 1979. However, strains of various non-O4:K12 serovars carrying either the trh1 or the trh2 gene became predominant after 1992. In addition, analysis by the arbitrarily primed PCR method revealed two subgroups within the selected Ure+ O4:K12 strains. Hybridization tests with oligonucleotide probes demonstrated that the trh1 sequences of the West Coast strains differ to some extent from those of Asian strains. Nevertheless, a PCR method previously established to detect both the trh1 and the trh2 genes in Asian strains could detect 98% of those genes in the West Coast strains.


Phylogenetic relationships were determined for 45 Colletotrichum isolates causing anthracnose disease of chili in Queensland, Australia. Initial screening based on morphology, ITS and TUB2 genes resulted in a subset of 21 isolates being chosen for further taxonomic study. Isolates in the C. acutatum complex were analysed using partial sequences of six gene regions (ITS, GAPDH, ACT, CHS-1, TUB2 and HIS3), and in the C. gloeosporioides complex were analysed using four gene regions (ITS, TUB2, ApMat and GS). Phylogenetic analysis delineated four Colletotrichum species including C. siamense, C. simmondsii, C. queenslandicum, C. truncatum and a new Colletotrichum species, described here as C. cairnsense sp. nov. This is the first reported association of C. queenslandicum, C. simmondsii and C. siamense with chili anthracnose in Australia; these species were previously associated with anthracnose on papaya and avocado. Furthermore, the dominant species causing anthracnose of chili in Southeast Asia, C. scovillei, was not detected in Australia. Inoculations on chili fruit confirmed the pathogenicity of C. cairnsense and the other four species in the development of chili anthracnose in Australia.


Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs) have gained significant attention in recent years, with impressive applications highlighted in computer vision, in particular. Compared to such examples, however, there have been more limited applications of GANs to time series modeling, including forecasting. In this work, we present the Mixture Density Conditional Generative Adversarial Model (MD-CGAN), with a focus on time series forecasting. We show that our model is capable of estimating a probabilistic posterior distribution over forecasts and that, in comparison to a set of benchmark methods, the MD-CGAN model performs well, particularly in situations where noise is a significant component of the observed time series. Further, by using a Gaussian mixture model as the output distribution, MD-CGAN offers posterior predictions that are non-Gaussian.


Osteoarthritis (OA), the most prevalent joint disease and the leading cause of disability, remains an incurable disease largely because the etiology and pathogenesis underlying this degenerative process are poorly understood. Low-grade inflammation within joints is a well-established factor that disturbs joint homeostasis and leads to an imbalance between anabolic and catabolic processes in articular cartilage; however, the complexity of the network between inflammatory factors that often involves positive and negative feedback loops makes current anti-cytokine therapy ineffective. MicroRNAs (miRNAs) have emerged as key regulators to control inflammation, and aberrant miRNAs expression has recently been linked to OA pathophysiology. In the present study, we characterized transcriptomic profiles of miRNAs in primary murine articular chondrocytes in response to a proinflammatory cytokine, IL-1β, and identified miR-146a-5p as the most responsive miRNA to IL-1β. miR-146a-5p was also found to be upregulated in human OA cartilage. We further demonstrated that knockdown of miR-146a-5p antagonized IL-1β-mediated inflammatory responses and IL-1β-induced catabolism in vitro, and silencing of miR-146a in chondrocytes ameliorated articular cartilage destruction and reduced OA-evoked pain in an injury-induced murine OA model. Moreover, parallel RNA sequencing revealed that differentially expressed genes in response to IL-1β were enriched in pathways related to inflammatory processes, cartilage matrix homeostasis, and cell metabolism. Bioinformatic analyses of putative miR-146a-5p gene targets and following prediction of protein–protein interactions suggest a functional role of miR-146a-5p in mediating inflammatory processes and regulation of cartilage homeostasis. Our genetic and transcriptomic data define a crucial role of miR-146a-5p in OA pathogenesis and implicate modulation of miR-146a-5p in articular chondrocytes as a potential therapeutic strategy to alleviate OA.


Abstract. There are three key components for developing a metadata system: a container structure laying out the key semantic issues of interest and their relationships; an extensible controlled vocabulary providing possible content; and tools to create and manipulate that content. While metadata systems must allow users to enter their own information, the use of a controlled vocabulary both imposes consistency of definition and ensures comparability of the objects described. Here we describe the controlled vocabulary (CV) and metadata creation tool built by the METAFOR project for use in the context of describing the climate models, simulations and experiments of the fifth Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP5). The CV and resulting tool chain introduced here is designed for extensibility and reuse and should find applicability in many more projects.


Goat grasses (Aegilops spp.) contributed to the evolution of bread wheat and are important sources of genes and alleles for modern wheat improvement. However, their use in alien introgression breeding is hindered by poor knowledge of their genome structure and a lack of molecular tools. The analysis of large and complex genomes may be simplified by dissecting them into single chromosomes via flow cytometric sorting. In some species this is not possible due to similarities in relative DNA content among chromosomes within a karyotype. This work describes the distribution of GAA and ACG microsatellite repeats on chromosomes of the U, M, S and C genomes of Aegilops, and the use of microsatellite probes to label the chromosomes in suspension by fluorescence in situ hybridization (FISHIS). Bivariate flow cytometric analysis of chromosome DAPI fluorescence and fluorescence of FITC-labelled microsatellites made it possible to discriminate all chromosomes and sort them with negligible contamination by other chromosomes. DNA of purified chromosomes was used as a template for polymerase chain reation (PCR) using Conserved Orthologous Set (COS) markers with known positions on wheat A, B and D genomes. Wheat-Aegilops macrosyntenic comparisons using COS markers revealed significant rearrangements in the U and C genomes, while the M and S genomes exhibited structure similar to wheat. Purified chromosome fractions provided an attractive resource to investigate the structure and evolution of the Aegilops genomes, and the COS markers assigned to Aegilops chromosomes will facilitate alien gene introgression into wheat.


The results of climate models are now of more than purely academic interest: governments and the private sector
also have a need to discover the results in order to prepare for and mitigate against the potentially severe impacts
of global climate change. Climate modelling is a complex process, which requires accurate and complete metadata
(data describing data) in order to identify, assess and use the climate data stored in digital repositories.

The EU funded METAFOR project has developed a Common Information Model (CIM) to describe in a
standard way climate data and the models and modelling environments that produce this data. To establish the
CIM, METAFOR first considered the metadata models developed by many groups engaged in similar efforts in
Europe and worldwide (for example the US Earth System Curator), explored fragmentation and gaps as well
as duplication of information present in these metadata models, and reviewed current problems in identifying,
accessing or using climate data present in existing repositories. The CIM documents the "simulation context and
models", i.e. the whys and wherefores and issues associated with any particular simulation.

Climate modelling is a complex process with a wide degree of variability between different models and
different modelling groups. To accommodate this, the CIM has been designed to be highly generic and flexible.
The climate modelling process which is "an activity undertaken using software on computers to produce data" is
described as separate UML packages. This fairly generic structure can be paired with more specific "controlled
vocabularies" in order to restrict the range of valid CIM instances.

METAFOR has been charged by the Working Group on Coupled Modelling (WGCM) via the Coupled
Model Inter-comparison Project (CMIP) panel to define and collect model and experiment metadata for CMIP5.
To do this, a web-based questionnaire will collect information and metadata from the CMIP5 modelling groups
on the details of the models used, how the simulations were carried out, how the models conformed to the specific
CMIP5 experiment requirements. The aim of the questionnaire is to document the climate models in sufficient
detail so that the CMIP5 data can be located and compared by a wide and diverse community, including those
researchers with an interest in the impacts and adaptations of climate change (e.g. IPCC's WGII). A new set
of "controlled vocabulary" was devised to describe in a standard and structured way the dynamics, physics,
numerical schemes and other parameterisations of the several components (ocean, atmosphere, land surface, sea
ice, atmospheric chemistry, etc.) of the earth system models used in CMIP5.

The CMIP5 model documentation questionnaire is an ambitious metadata collection tool. It will provide
the most comprehensive metadata for a climate model inter-comparison project yet and plans for the community
governance of its associated standards and now being organised. The questionnaire's close ties with the CIM will
ensure that the metadata for the CMIP5 model runs will be stored in a standard way, enabling the development of
tools to search for and compare CIM documents, and hence different climate models


Breast cancer is the leading cause of death in Brazil and worldwide, between the types of cancer, triple negative TNBC (Triple Negative Breast Cancer), which do not express hormone receptors, represents 20% of the cases and presents relapses within 3 years. However, the major cause of death in cancer is due the formation of metastasis. The TNBC has a greater propensity to form lung and brain metastasis. Furthermore, currently few treatments are available. Search for new target treatments, with fewer side effects is very important to treat this disease. Natural products are rich sources of molecules with antitumoral activity; among them are the gingerols, from ginger and resveratrol, from grapes. Nevertheless, not much is known about antitumor activity of [10]-gingerol (10G). Therefore, the aim of this work was to investigate the potential use of 10G as an antimetastatic molecule in in vitro and in vivo experiments. In this work, 10G had antiproliferative activity on several breast cancer cell lines (4T1BM2, 4T1BM2 shRNAβ3, 4T1Br4, MDA-MB-231, MDA-MB-231 BrM) and on a normal cell line, bEnd.3. The natural compounds affected tumor cell morphology and RSVT was able to inhibit cell migration and adhesion through vitronectin. 10G induced apoptosis via the extrinsic pathway through the increase of caspase-9, -3 and -7 expression and decrease of Bcl-2 expression, induced cell cycle arrest in G1 and subG0 phase. In in vivo models, 10G inhibited primary tumor growth and lung metastasis, as well as bone and brain metastasis. Therefore, this study was able to provide new data as 10G can be acting in tumor cells and its possible clinical application.


Abstract
The relation between language and cognition in child development is one of the oldest and most debated questions, which has recently come back to the forefront of several disciplines in the social sciences. The overview below examines several universalistic vs. relativistic approaches to this question, stemming both from traditional developmental theories and from more recent proposals in psycholinguistics that are illustrated by some findings concerning space in child language. Two main questions are raised for future research. First, substantial evidence is necessary concerning the potential impact of linguistic variation on cognitive development, including evidence that can provide ways of articulating precocious capacities in the pre-linguistic period and subsequent developments across a variety of child languages. Second, relating language and cognition also requires that we take into account both structural and functional determinants of child language within a model that can explain development at different levels of linguistic organization in the face of cross-linguistic diversity.

Keywords: Linguistic relativity, Child development, Structure, Function, Space.


Summary: The degradation of malathion was investigated under various conditions, including ultrasound (US) irradiation, ultraviolet (UV) irradiation, and the combination of US/UV, UV/ZnO, UV/H2O2, and US/UV/ZnO/H2O2. In addition, the effect of the operational parameters, such as the initial concentration of the catalyst, the initial malathion concentration, the initial salt concentration (NaHCO3 and Na2SO4), and pH, were studied. Analyses were performed by a gas chromatography-mass spectroscopy instrument. The k values were in the following order: US/UV/H2O2/ZnO > US/UV > UV/ZnO > UV/H2O2 > UV > US. ZnO concentration of 100 mg/l, malathion initial concentration of 200 μg/l, H2O2 concentration of 30 mg/l, pH of 9, and irradiation time of 105 min were the optimum conditions for degrading malathion by the US/UV/H2O2/ZnO system. Additionally, the optimized parameters were also tested for the treatment of an actual water sample containing the pesticide. As a result, the efficiency of the US/UV/H2O2/ZnO system was higher in the distilled water sample than in the actual water sample. © 2015, Chemical Society of Pakistan. All rights reserved.


Small fiber neuropathy is a disorder of the small nerve fibers, in which patients experience severe pain and complaints of dysfunction of the autonomic nervous system (such as dizziness when standing or intestinal complaints). This dissertation describes the occurrence of underlying disorders in small fiber neuropathy, in which diabetes mellitus, immunological disorders, a vitamin B12 deficiency and certain abnormalities in the hereditary material (sodium channel mutations) were found to occur more frequently than in the general Dutch population. In addition, this thesis shows the current and new treatment options for pain in small fiber neuropathy, such as the medication lacosamide. The dissertation shows that lacosamide is a safe and complication-delaying treatment that can reduce pain in patients with small fiber neuropathy based on a sodium channel mutation in the SCN9A gene.


Chromosome numbers and karyotypes of some species belonging to the genus Artemisia L. (Asteraceae) were investigated, and chromosome counts of 12 species, 1 of which was counted for the first time, are presented with a thorough compilation of previously published data. All of the species studied belong to the subgenus Artemisia Chromosome numbers of 6 taxa confirmed the previous data. Additionally, karyotypes of 8 species were reported. Karyotype analyses of 6 Artemisia species are reported here for the first time. The basic chromosome numbers in the species studied were x = 8 and x = 9, with ploidy levels ranging from 2x to 4x and 6x. B chromosomes were also present in Artemisia incana (L.) Druce as 2n = 2x = 16 + 2B.


Stress is a natural part of everyday living thus, individuals experience varying levels of stress within and outside the work place but when in excess, stress results in loss of productivity. This study therefore examined whether Nigerian teachers experience stress on their job, assessed the extent to which stress affects their productivity and examined their coping strategies. These were with a view to providing information on level of job stress among Nigerian teachers, issues associated with it and the need to minimize job stress among teachers. The study adopted descriptive survey research method. The population for the study was 6,982 while 270 teachers purposively selected constituted the sample frame. A self-designed instrument: Job Stress and Teachers' Coping Strategies Questionnaire (JSCS-Q) was used for data collection with percentage to answer the research questions. The results showed that having to teach very large classes (92.2%), marking and recording for all the students in such classes (88.1%) constituted stress for teachers. Others include; gross inadequate instructional materials (93.3%), poor conditions of service (87.5%), heavy workload (83.7%), students' indiscipline and people's attitude towards teachers (80.4%). Consequently, all of these caused Nigerian teachers' productivity to be affected to a very large extent. Also, Nigerian teachers had to cope by chatting with colleagues (82.6%), physical exercising (78.9%), relaxation and behavioural modifications (72.2%) and (71.1%) respectively. This study concluded that teaching job has stress and teachers devise coping strategies themselves.


Nasal-type natural killer/T-cell lymphoma (NKTCL) is an aggressive disease characterized by frequent deletions on 6q, and constitutive activation of signal transducer and activator of transcription 3 (STAT3). Phosphorylation at Tyr705 activates STAT3, inducing dimerization, nuclear translocation, and DNA binding. In this study, we investigated whether receptor-type tyrosine-protein phosphatase κ (PTPRK), the only protein tyrosine phosphatase at 6q that contains a STAT3-specifying motif, negatively regulates STAT3 activation in NKTCL. PTPRK was highly expressed in normal NK cells but was underexpressed in 4 of 5 (80%) NKTCL cell lines and 15 of 27 (55.6%) primary tumors. Significantly, PTPRK protein expression was inversely correlated with nuclear phospho-STAT3(Tyr705) expression in NKTCL cell lines (P = .025) and tumors (P = .040). PTPRK restoration decreased nuclear phospho-STAT3(Tyr705) levels, whereas knockdown of PTPRK increased such levels in NKTCL cells. Phosphatase substrate-trapping mutant assays demonstrated the binding of PTPRK to STAT3, and phosphatase assays showed that PTPRK directly dephosphorylated phospho-STAT3(Tyr705). Restoration of PTPRK inhibited tumor cell growth and reduced the migration and invasion ability of NKTCL cells. Monoallelic deletion and promoter hypermethylation caused underexpression of PTPRK messenger RNA in NKTCL, and methylation of the PTPRK promoter significantly correlated with inferior overall survival (P = .049) in NKTCL patients treated with the steroid-dexamethasone, methotrexate, ifosfamide, l-asparaginase, and etoposide regimen. Altogether, our findings show that PTPRK underexpression leads to STAT3 activation and contributes to NKTCL pathogenesis.