Social media have changed the communication practices by creating an acute need for continuous interaction. The use of social chatbots is growing as an effective way to communicate with publics. Bots have become social actors and then, someone must account for their actions. Since responsibility is bounded to agency and rationality, it cannot be directly attributed to bots. Who should be held responsible for non-human beings' actions, particularly when the consequences of these actions are negative?
We address this controversy from both theoretical and empirical perspectives. Firstly, we discuss the adequacy of the notions of moral responsibility and accountability regarding non-human artificial agents, as they are ruled by complex, intentionally opaque and unpredictable interactions and processes. We do it from the two approaches currently predominant: context-dependent and structuralist. Secondly, we draw on the assumption that the failure of a computer system is an opportunity to gain knowledge about the interested powers behind its design and functioning. Then, taking the concept of media frame as an implicit way of spotting the agent of the story, we perform an exploratory analysis on how responsibility was attributed by the media in the paradigmatic case of the transformation of Tay, a chatbot launched by Microsoft in 2016, turned into a racist, Nazi and homophobic hate speaker.
Our results illustrate the difficulties media experienced in consistently attributing the responsibility for the chatbots' malfunction. Results show the discourse is, in general, simplistic, non-critical and misleading, and tends to depict a reality that favors business's interests. We conclude that, while all the actors interacting with the chatbot share the responsibility of its actions, it is only Microsoft who must account for these actions, both retrospectively and prospectively.


The complete optical gyration tensor of monoclinic pure L-arginine phosphate monohydrate (LAP) and deuterated LAP (d-LAP) crystals has been determined. Variation of the optical activity in the presence of birefringence of d-LAP crystal with pure LAP is found from the high-accuracy universal polarimeter (HAUP) method at a wavelength of 632.8 nm. The gyration tensor components in terms of rotatory power were found to be r11 = -6.6(3) º/mm, r22 = 19(2) º/mm; r33 = 49.7(7) º/mm; and r13 = -43.7(8) º/mm for the LAP, and r11 = -1.2(1) º/mm, r22 = 5.0(4) º/mm; r33 = 41.4(3) º/mm; and r13 = -38.0(4) º/mm for d-LAP at room temperature.


Background: Hypoxia results in an increased generation of ROS. Until now, little is known about the role of MnSOD - a major endogenous antioxidant enzyme - on the cell adaptation response against hypoxia. The aim of this study was to  determine the MnSOD mRNA expression and levels of specific activity in blood, heart and brain of rats during induced systemic hypoxia. Methods: Twenty-five male Sprague Dawley rats were subjected to systemic hypoxia in an hypoxic chamber (at 8-10% O2) for 0, 1, 7, 14 and 21 days, respectively. The mRNA relative expression of MnSOD was analyzed using Real Time RT-PCR. MnSOD specific activity was determined using xanthine oxidase inhibition assay. Results: The MnSOD mRNA relative expression in rat blood and heart was decreased during early induced systemic hypoxia (day 1) and increased as hypoxia continued, whereas the mRNA expression in brain was increased since day 1 and reached its maximum level at day 7. The result of MnSOD specific activity during early systemic hypoxia was similar to the mRNA expression. Under very late hypoxic condition (day 21), MnSOD specific activity in blood, heart and brain was significantly decreased. We demonstrate a positive correlation between MnSOD mRNA expression and specific activity in these 3 tissues during day 0-14 of induced systemic hypoxia. Furthermore, mRNA expression and specific activity levels in heart strongly correlate with those in blood. Conclusion: The MnSOD expression at early and late phases of induced systemic hypoxia is distinctly regulated. The MnSOD expression in brain differs from that in blood and heart revealing that brain tissue can  possibly survive better from induced systemic hypoxia than heart and blood. The determination of MnSOD expression in blood can be used to describe its expression in heart under systemic hypoxic condition. (Med J Indones 2011; 20:27-33) Keywords: MnSOD, mRNA expression, ROS, specific activity, systemic hypoxia


Several observations support the notion that integration of neck proprioceptive input is impaired in cervical dystonia (CD). An example is the inconsistent or opposite to normal effect of lateral neck muscle vibration on body rotation during stepping. We hypothesized that lateral neck vibration produces abnormal responses also in a static task. Normal subjects and patients with CD stood quietly with eyes closed, without or with vibration applied to the sternocleidomastoid muscle, and center of foot pressure and body sway were recorded by a dynamometric platform. Patients had a larger than normal sway under control condition. They showed little or no postural responses to vibration. When body tilt occurred, it was rarely in the frontal plane as in normal subjects, but in the sagittal plane. No relationship existed between vibration‐induced tilt during stance and body rotation during stepping. Therefore, in CD, proprioceptive neck input is less used for the construction of the postural vertical during quiet stance than it is used for the definition of the subjective straight ahead during a dynamic task. © 2007 Movement Disorder Society


Having a voluntary code as the basis of a corporate governance regime is popular in countries in Europe and around the world. Generally, at the heart of such an approach is the concept of 'comply or explain.' This concept originated in the UK with the Cadbury Report in 1992 and provides that a company is to comply with a set code of practice, but if it does not then it is to state that it does not and explain why it does not. The use of this concept is designed to permit flexibility in companies and it is in response to the fact that one size does not fit all as far as companies are concerned, as they are all different and should not be subject to rigid rules.One of the critical aspects of many of the codes that embrace the comply or explain concept is that it is not the job of any regulatory body to assess what companies do or say in relation to the Code provisions. It is incumbent on the markets generally and the company's shareholders specifically to determine whether the response of the company to Code provisions does enough, and then to take some action in order to force companies either to conform with the provisions (if they have not) or to explain why they have failed to do so. The idea is that those who are really interested in conformity should examine company statements and respond appropriately. Hence, the aim of the comply or explain principle is to empower shareholders to make an informed evaluation as to whether non-compliance is justified, given the company's circumstances. The aim of the paper is to assess whether the present scheme which relies on the stewardship of shareholders and the efficiency of the markets should continue, or whether a regulatory body should be empowered to determine whether companies are in fact complying with Code provisions or, if not, whether they are providing adequate explanations for not complying. To this end, the paper will examine the comply or explain concept and ascertain how effective it is. It will identify and discuss the shortcomings that exist with shareholder and market scrutiny of company statements. Also it will focus on the nature of the explanations that are given by companies when they do not comply with a particular requirement in the Code. Next, the paper will consider whether a regulatory body should be employed to enhance the corporate governance scheme and evaluate whether it would provide a better approach to that which exists at the moment. The paper will touch on the kind of sanctions that might be implemented if a regulatory body was to oversee comply or explain.


The SARS-CoV-2 Omicron/BA.1 lineage emerged in late 2021 and rapidly displaced the Delta variant before being overtaken itself globally by, the Omicron/BA.2 lineage in early 2022. Here, we describe how Omicron BA.1 and BA.2 show a lower severity phenotype in a hamster model of pathogenicity which maps specifically to the spike gene. We further show that Omicron is attenuated in a lung cell line but replicates more rapidly, albeit to lower peak titres, in human primary nasal cells. This replication phenotype also maps to the spike gene. Omicron spike (including the emerging Omicron lineage BA.4) shows attenuated fusogenicity and a preference for cell entry via the endosomal route. We map the altered Omicron spike entry route and partially map the lower fusogenicity to the S2 domain, particularly the substitution N969K. Finally, we show that pseudovirus with Omicron spike, engineered in the S2 domain to confer a more Delta-like cell entry route retains the antigenic properties of Omicron. This shows a distinct separation between the genetic determinants of these two key Omicron phenotypes, raising the concerning possibility that future variants with large antigenic distance from currently circulating and vaccine strains will not necessarily display the lower intrinsic severity seen during Omicron infection.


Gneissic exotic pebbles from the Cisna beds (Dukla tectonic unit) in the region of Wolosate (Biesz- czady Mts., Eastern Carpathians) were investigated. These exotic pebbles are from 9.5 to 13 cm in size. Basing on the structural features, the following groups of exotic pebbles were distinguished: granitic gneisses, laminated gneisses, flaser gneisses and mylonitic gneisses. Granite - granodiorite protolith was deformed in the shear zone; strain partitioning was probably an important process during deformation. The observed structures allow to determine the temperature of metamorphism as 500-550°C. The lower limit of pressure was determined basing on phengite geobarometer as 5 kbar. The nature and localization of the source area can be similar to the Bretila sequence from the Romanian Eastern Carpathians.


This case report is believed to be the first case of Kawasaki disease in Portugal. An otherwise healthy 20 years old female was carefully examined and diagnosis of mucocutaneous lymphnode syndrome established, based on: typical clinical picture, exclusion of other mimicking situations and middle term evolution of this patient. The A. A. wish to emphasize their diagnosis complied on C. D. C. criteria for Kawasaki disease. A short up dated briefing on this peculiar entity and geographycal pathology are included in this article.


Topmouth culter (Culter alburnus) is an important freshwater species in China. In recent years, the population of topmouth culter has declined sharply due to the increasing pollution, overfishing and habitat destruction. It may lead to adverse effects, including weakening health, causing disease, and reducing the quality of topmouth culter. It is urgent to conduct resource management, protection and genetic improvement strategies in topmouth culter, especially develop genetic breeding program with disease resistance. In this study, we applied RNA-seq technology to de novo assemble a comprehensive transcriptome, and to discover immune-related genes and pathways in topmouth culter. A total of 102 017 transcripts were assembled with an average length of 945 bp, of which 45 482 protein coding sequences were predicted. BLAST search resulted in 53 575 and 45 602 transcripts with homologous sequences in NCBI-NR and UniProt respectively. Further functional analysis identified 24 052 transcripts in Gene Ontology (GO) categories and 19 260 transcripts in KEGG pathways. Significantly, 13 immune-related pathways with 524 immune-related genes were identified. Our data provided an integrated and comprehensive transcriptome resource for topmouth culter, which could be essential for further research in selective breeding of disease resistance, functional genomics, and genome editing of topmouth culter.


Focusing on inhabitant's climate comfort causes the neglect of personal and aesthetic factors that have effects on emotions and psychological comfort. Blindly adhering to sustainable design principles regardless of the basic architectural design parameters cause similar interior spaces in today's housing of Iran. Interior space form is one the main design factors that has some effects on inhabitant's emotions. It is a correlation research to study inhabitant's emotions towards sustainable interior space by focusing on interior form. It illustrates that form can consider as an influential factor in creating and improving sustainable conditions according to inhabitant's emotions.
Keywords: sustainable interior design; emotion; shape; PAD
2514-7528 © 2017 The Authors. Published for AMER ABRA by e-International Publishing House, Ltd., UK.. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/). Peer–review under responsibility of AMER (Association of Malaysian Environment-Behaviour Researchers), ABRA (Association of Behavioural Researchers on Asians) and cE-Bs (Centre for Environment-Behaviour Studies), Faculty of Architecture, Planning & Surveying, Universiti Teknologi MARA, Malaysia.


In situ bulk permeability was measured in a borehole that intersected the decollement zone (a low-angle detachment fault) between the North American and Caribbean plates. Permeability measurements were made at a variety of fluid-pressure conditions, defining a quantitative relation between bulk permeability and effective stress for this plate-boundary fault zone. The bulk permeability in this zone changed by several orders of magnitude as a consistent function of fluid pressure. This relation may help to explain the dynamics of fluid-fault interactions and the transient nature of hydrologic processes during deformation at convergent margins.


A new type of organic framework was synthesized via two different routes, a solvothermal reaction and conventional refluxing, via a Stille cross-coupling reaction. The resulting products from the two routes consisted of graphene-like nanosheets. Additionally, the morphologies of such polymer networks were controlled based on the synthetic route and solvent used for film formation.


This volume forms part of a series exploring key issues in ethics, law and society, published in association with the Cardiff Centre for Ethics, Law and Society. The collection is a celebration of the approach and values embraced within previous volumes in the series. The works collectively address new technological, social and regulatory developments and the fresh ethical dilemmas these pose, but quite critically, also compel an urgent revisiting of social and legal issues that were once the subject of controversy but which have fallen out of the line of sight of academics, politicians and policy-makers. Bringing together selected papers, the editors seek to make apparent the thematic links between contributions in presenting works written by a group of international experts in response to specific ethical issues, including topics on the ethics of care, theorizing ethics, body politics and governance; as such, the collection is multidisciplinary in approach, seeks to appeal to a broad audience and provides a valuable resource for all those concerned with contemporary ethical issues. This fifth and final volume brings the series to a close and is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Jennifer Gunning.
About the Editor: Nicky Priaulx is Co-Editor of Ethics, Law and Society Volume V (Ashgate Publishing, 2012) and a Senior Lecturer in the Law School, Cardiff University, UK. She is author of The Harm Paradox: Tort Law and the Unwanted Child in an Era of Choice (Routledge-Cavendish, 2007) and Director of the Cardiff Centre for Ethics, Law & Society at Cardiff University and the Legal Aspects of Medical Practice LLM Programme.
Anthony Wrigley is Co-Editor of Ethics, Law & Society Volume V (Ashgate Publishing, 2012) and a Senior Lecturer in Ethics in the Centre for Professional Ethics, Keele University. He is a philosopher with research interests in ethics, metaphysics and law who has published widely in philosophy and applied ethics. His work predominantly tackles issues at the margins of life, from harms and the Non-Identity Problem in reproductive ethics to the scope and limits of advance decision-making for those who have lost capacity. He is also co-author of the European Textbook on Ethics in Research (The European Union, 2010).


Pleurocera proxima is a small, freshwater gastropod that has been recently discovered in four headwater tributaries in the Christina River watershed. The species was previously known only as far north as Virginia, so nothing is known about the species in Pennsylvania or Delaware. The purpose of this study was to determine if the species existed in additional locations in this region, and to assess the habitat where it is found. Fieldwork was conducted in Winter 2012 in the Red Clay Creek, White Clay Creek, and Brandywine Creek subwatersheds of the Christina River basin. In addition to the four streams where P. proxima was already known, 102 new streams were surveyed in this field season for presence of the species. Water chemistry and surrounding land use data were collected at all sites, and substrate characteristics and physical stream data were collected at sites with P. proxima. Only four of the 102 new sites had P. proxima. These data suggest the species is very rare in the region, and mostly populates small, headwater streams in areas with low developed land cover and high forest cover. The streams where P. proxima is found show lower levels of conductivity and salinity than other streams, but it is apparent further research is needed to identify the exact habitat conditions that predict P. proxima presence and density. Disciplines Environmental Sciences | Physical Sciences and Mathematics This thesis or dissertation is available at ScholarlyCommons: http://repository.upenn.edu/mes_capstones/52 DISTRIBUTION AND HABITAT CHARACTERISTICS OF A FRESHWATER GASTROPOD, PLEUROCERA PROXIMA, IN EASTERN PENNSYLVANIA


In this paper, we are proposing a unified and principled method for both the querying and training processes in deep batch active learning. We are providing theoretical insights from the intuition of modeling the interactive procedure in active learning as distribution matching, by adopting the Wasserstein distance. As a consequence, we derived a new training loss from the theoretical analysis, which is decomposed into optimizing deep neural network parameters and batch query selection through alternative optimization. In addition, the loss for training a deep neural network is naturally formulated as a min-max optimization problem through leveraging the unlabeled data information. Moreover, the proposed principles also indicate an explicit uncertainty-diversity trade-off in the query batch selection. Finally, we evaluate our proposed method on different benchmarks, consistently showing better empirical performances and a better time-efficient query strategy compared to the baselines.


Sweet and/or sour service environments require the use of corrosion resistant materials since conventional steels usually exhibit general corrosion, pitting attack, and stress corrosion cracking (SCC) under these conditions. Long term performance and cost effectiveness must be considered when evaluating material selection. Duplex stainless steels (DSSs) may be considered useful materials under corrosive conditions. These materials are highly resistant to general corrosion and resistant to pitting attack. The low nickel content is an advantage from a SCC stand-point. In this study, the pitting corrosion behavior of a lean duplex stainless steel (type Fe-15Cr-5Ni-1.9Cu) alloy as well as medium grade (type 3RE60 DSS) were evaluated in NaCl solutions saturated with CO2 (sweet environment), containing little or no thiosulfate species at 50°C. The effect of inappropriate heat treatment (e.g., formation of sigma phase in the 3RE60 alloy and sensitization in the lean grade DSS type) is also studied under such conditions. The results revealed that these alloys are susceptible to chloride pitting corrosion with better performance for the 3RE60 alloy. The intensity of the chloride attack is remarkably increased with the addition of CO2, the presence of thiosulfate species, and with the application of inappropriate heat treatment. Although chloride solutions containing saturated dissolved CO2 are more corrosive than those containing thiosulfate species, the presence of both species (CO2 and S2O32) has a more negative effect on the chloride pitting resistance than on each component separately. More severe attack was obtained for heat-treated samples immersed in chloride solutions containing both dissolved carbon dioxide and thiosulfate ions.


We use measurements of the H I content, stellar mass and star formation rates (SFRs) in ∼190 massive galaxies with M > 1010 M , obtained from the GALEX (Galaxy Evolution Explorer) Arecibo SDSS (Sloan Digital Sky Survey) survey described in Paper I to explore the global scaling relations associated with the bin-averaged ratio of the SFR over the H I mass (i.e. SFR/ MHI), which we call the H I-based star formation efficiency (SFE). Unlike the mean specific star formation rate (sSFR), which decreases with stellar mass and stellar mass surface density, the SFE remains relatively constant across the sample with a value close to SFE = 10−9.5 yr−1 (or an equivalent gas consumption time-scale of ∼3 × 109 yr). Specifically, we find little variation in SFE with stellar mass, stellar mass surface density, NUV − r colour and concentration (R90/R50). We interpret these results as an indication that external processes or feedback mechanisms that control the gas supply are important for regulating star formation in massive galaxies. An investigation into the detailed distribution of SFEs reveals that approximately 5 per cent of the sample shows high efficiencies with SFE > 10−9 yr−1, and we suggest that this is very likely due to a deficiency of cold gas rather than an excess SFR. Conversely, we also find a similar fraction of galaxies that appear to be gas-rich E-mail: email@example.com C © 2010 The Authors. Journal compilation C © 2010 RAS 920 D. Schiminovich et al. for their given sSFR, although these galaxies show both a higher than average gas fraction and lower than average sSFR. Both of these populations are plausible candidates for 'transition' galaxies, showing potential for a change (either decrease or increase) in their sSFR in the near future. We also find that 36 ± 5 per cent of the total H I mass density and 47 ± 5 per cent of the total SFR density are found in galaxies with M > 1010 M .


In contemporary leadership theories, the proposition that leaders, who employ performance-based rewards and punishment are more effective than those leaders who use rewards and punishments just as incentives. Some researchers believe that punishments act as a motivational tool to promote responsiveness and improve performances of the employees while others assume that punishments produce undesirable consequences for the institutions. Similarly, the fairness in procedures in providing punishments to employees is the phenomenon of greater importance in connecting the contingent punishments and employees' responsiveness. Therefore, to examine these issues, in a native environment, data was collected through a structured questionnaire from employees working in higher educational institutions of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan. The results of the study, while applying the statistical procedures, provide valuable information for the eye-openers (employees, leadership and management) of the institutions about the research issues under considerations. Together with, some recommendations, future directions and practical implications have also been offered as emerged from the results of the study.


Hospitals are establishing procedure services to address resident training and patient safety. We examined whether a hospitalist procedure service affects a patient's hospital length of stay (LOS) and the time from admission to paracentesis (A2P). We queried our electronic medical records for all inpatient peritoneal fluid samples from July 1, 2016, to May 31, 2019. LOS and A2P time were compared among patients who had paracentesis by the procedure service, by residents, or by radiology. Of the 1,321 procedures, 509 (38.5%) were performed by the procedure service. In the adjusted analysis, as compared with procedure service, the group that underwent paracentesis by the radiology service had a 27% longer LOS (95% CI, 2%-58%) and 40% longer A2P time (95% CI, 5%-87%). The resident group had shorter A2P (-19%; 95% CI, -33% to 0.2%; P = .05) than the procedure service group but similar LOS. To our knowledge, this is the first study that suggests patient-centered benefits of a hospitalist procedure service.


A control system is proposed for a low Earth orbit gravity gradient stabilised microsatellite using Z wheel. The microsatellite is 3-axis stabilized using a yaw reaction wheel, with dual redundant 3-axis magnetorquers. Two vector magnetometers and four dual sun sensors are carried in order to determine the full attitude. The attitude was estimated using an Euler angles (small libration version) on based extended Kalman filter (EKF). After the satellite has been detumbled and deploy the gravity gradient boom, in order to have the accurate Nadir pointing we will use the Z zero-bias mode controller. The Z momentum wheel will be damped by the magnetorquers. This paper describes the attitude determination and control system design of LEO microsatellite using Z reaction wheel for yaw phase mode control.


The position of women rests, as everything in our complex society, on an economic base. - Eleanor Marx and Edward Aveling. The "woman question" is generally ignored in analyses of the class structure of society. This is so because, on the one hand, classes are generally defined by their relation to the means of production and, on the other hand, women are not supposed to have any unique relation to the means of production. The category seems instead to cut across all classes; one speaks of working-dass women, middle-class women, etc. The status of women is clearly inferior to that of men, but analysis of this condition usually falls into discussing socialization, psychology, interpersonal relations, or the role of marriage as a social institution. Are these, however, the primary factors? In arguing that the roots of the secondary status of women are in fact economic, it can be shown that women as a group do indeed have a definite relation to the means of production and that this is different from that of men.This article can also be found at the Monthly Review website, where most recent articles are published in full.Click here to purchase a PDF version of this article at the Monthly Review website.


In multiuser relay systems, if the relay does not have sufficient degrees of freedom to eliminate multiuser interference, the spectral efficiency gain of two-way relay (TWR) transmission may vanish. Signal alignment (SA) signaling is possible to recover this gain but may suffer from a signal power loss. To improve the spectral efficiency of multicarrier code-division multiple-access (MC-CDMA) TWR systems, we develop an equivalent SA (ESA) signaling procedure. Simply by aligning the received symbols after despreading instead of aligning the received signals as in SA signaling, ESA signaling has more feasible solutions than SA signaling, and its performance and complexity depend on the spreading sequences. This allows us to improve the system performance by optimizing ESA signaling and to reduce its complexity by designing the spreading sequences. Specifically, we develop optimal ESA signaling to maximize the signal-to-noise-ratio (SNR) under the interference-free constraint. Then, we design the spreading sequence to obtain a low-complexity ESA-based frequency-domain equalizer (FDE), i.e., ESA-based one-tap FDE, and to provide the maximal diversity gain for the one-tap FDE. Both theoretical analysis and simulation results demonstrate that ESA signaling is more spectral efficient than SA signaling for MC-CDMA TWR systems.


In principle, land evaluation is to compare the properties and characteristics of the requirements or demands of land (use) it. Farmland assessment is the basis of their classification as class, after the note of evaluation in natural conditions. In concept assessing the concept of "land" includes all environmental factors (soil, terrain, climate, hydrology, etc.), which have significant influence on use. Because of economic conditions, different land in the same class of evaluation in natural conditions may have different economic outcomes, resulting in the amount of net income and therefore different economic values. Quantitative assessment of land was based on estimated production potential of evaluation by marks, calculated for existing conditions on the ground (current or natural conditions). Note of evaluation (natural conditions) divided the land quality in terms of their quality for agricultural use, and the use of shared framework in terms of production capacity. Agricultural production is adversely affected by restrictions given by some properties of soil, terrain and climate, which show equal intensities, decreases depending on how different productions of land use (arable, pasture, vines), so one and the same land may have restrictions of varying intensity depending on his usage. The land evaluation for natural conditions, ecological characterization participated indicators for determining the coefficients stringent evaluation notes. The physical and chemical properties of soil samples (texture, pH, humus and N, P, K content) and biochemical were analyzed in the OSPA Olt Research laboratory, according with the national norms and standards approved by National Association of Standardization. Research of ecopedological conditions, data ordering and processing was done in accordance with the Methodology of Elaboration of Pedological Studies; (vol. I, II, III), developed by the ICPA Bucharest in 1987 and the Romanian System of Soil Taxonomy (SRTS-2003). For details of the work to be as conclusive materials were used in the cadastral records OJCPI Olt. The work was carried out with a good control throughout the stages of work, the final result being given by grades and classes of evaluation. Field units (TEO) which were calculated scores and grades were established quality are concrete forms that appear in certain areas (geographic and historical), territorial units of the ground as concrete forms of manifestation and expression on the surface land, the actual taxonomic rank lowest (ground variations).


SIR,-In your leading article (12 March, p 668) you state that the dangers of dextropropoxyphene overdosage have to be set against "its popularity based, presumably, on doctors' and patients' clinical impression of its effectiveness." It is my impression, based on patients' remarks-and intuition-that the popularity of the most widely prescribed proprietary preparation containing the drug-namely, Distalgesic-is based primarily on its shape, size, and coating, which render it easy to swallow and tasteless. Many other analgesics, such as the once popular compound codeine tablets, are large, bitter, and granular when crushed and taken with water-that is, bulky, offensive, and troublesome in comparison with the small, smooth, rounded, oblong tablet with a non-powdery surface, easily slipped into the pocket or handbag as well as the mouth. On two occasions I have been presented with two compound codeine tablets with the remark: "These have passed right through my body without disintegrating." This of course is due to overcompression in the manufacturing process by small, inexperienced firms and is probably rare. Such observations, however, highlight possibilities which do not occur to the average medical mind. Patient acceptability in itself will often enhance the effectiveness of any drug or preparation and thus increase patient demand for it, especially when price does not concern them. It would be interesting to issue Distalgesic tablets without dextropropoxyphene.


We present ugriBV photometry and optical spectroscopy of the Type Ib/Ic SN 2005bf covering the first ∼100 days following discovery. The ugBV light curves displayed an unprecedented morphology among Type Ib/Ic supernovae, with an initial maximum some 2 weeks after discovery, and a second, main maximum about 25 days after that. The bolometric light curve indicates that SN 2005bf was a remarkably luminous event, radiating at least 6.3× 10 erg s at maximum light, and a total of 2.1 × 10 erg during the first 75 days after the explosion. Spectroscopically, SN 2005bf underwent a unique transformation Las Campanas Observatory, Carnegie Observatories, Casilla 601, La Serena, Chile. Department of Astronomy, University of California, Santa Cruz, CA 95064. MPA D-85741 Garching, Germany, and ITEP 117218 Moscow, Russia. Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory, Casilla 603, La Serena, Chile. Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics, University of Toronto, 60 St. George St., Toronto, Ontario, Canada M5S 3H8. Department of Astronomy, University of California, Berkeley, CA 94720-3411. Observatories of the Carnegie Institution of Washington, 813 Santa Barbara St., Pasadena, CA 91101. Infrared Processing and Analysis Center, Caltech/Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, CA 91125. Departamento de Astronomı́a y Astrof́ısica, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, Casilla 306, Santiago 22, Chile. Universidad de Chile, Departamento de Astronomı́a, Casilla 36-D, Santiago, Chile. Copernicus Astronomical Center, Bartycka 18, PL-00716 Warszawa, Poland. Member of the Carrera del Investigador Cient́ıfico, CONICET, Argenina; on leave from Facultad de Ciencias Astronómicas y Geof́ısicas, Universidad Nacional de La Plata.


Abstract
Objectives: To determine the impact of dermatophytosis on quality of life (QoL) of patients at tertiary care hospital, Karachi.
Methods: The cross-sectional descriptive research was piloted in the Departments of Dermatology and Microbiology, Jinnah Postgraduate Medical Centre (JPMC) Karachi, a leading public tertiary care hospital during the July 2019 to December 2019. The patients <16 years aged were excluded from this study. The KOH (10%) wet mount was performed for fungal hyphae and spore observation in specimens. Quality of life was determined by dermatology life quality index (DLQI) scores and their association with different variables was evaluated by using t-test and Fisher test.
Results: A total of 300 dermatophytosis patients were analyzed. The majority of the patients were of no education category. The active age group (16-30 years) showing higher frequency (138; 46.0%) and followed by age group of 31-50 years (126; 42.0%)).  In present study DLQI score mean was 13.4 ± 7.3. Unexposed area was the main site 249 (83.0%). Dermatophytosis has effect on the quality of life (QoL) in majority (98.7%) of the patients. The DLQI score was significantly higher in unexposed and both sites involvement (P < 0.001). DLQI score was not affected by the age, sex, literacy, addiction and other demographic variables.
Conclusion: This study revealed that dermatophytosis has a significant impact on the quality of life (QoL) in these patients.


'Prevalence and severity of feeding and nutritional problems in children with neurological impairment: Oxford Feeding Study' SIR–There are many parallels between the paper by Sullivan and colleagues1 and a similar study published in 19962. Both highlight how common feeding problems are in children with neurological impairment and illustrate that nutritional and feeding problems in children with disabilities continue to be under recognized. There is, however, one interesting difference in the two studies which I feel is worth highlighting. In the above study, maternal stress was associated with increased duration of mealtimes. Twenty eight percent of the carers reported prolonged mealtimes (i.e. more than 3 hours per day). We reported similar findings2. However, we found there was a significant difference between parental reports of mealtime durations and the actual length of mealtimes observed by the researchers, even though parents described these as typical. Of concern was the fact that children with the most severe oral-motor dysfunction tended to have the shorter mealtimes. The finding that mealtimes were in reality far shorter than they were perceived to be by caretakers was surprising and, we felt, may have contributed to some of the chronic under-nourishment seen in some of these children, particularly those with severe oral-motor dysfunction. Sullivan and colleagues suggest that feeding time can be used as a reliable measure of the severity of feeding impairment. However, I would caution clinicians about relying solely on carers' reports of mealtime durations, as we clearly showed a substantial discrepancy between the lengthy durations of mealtimes reported and those actually observed. This highlights the importance of always observing feeding, preferably in the home.


Design of optimal distributed controllers with a priori assigned localization constraints is, in general, a difficult problem. Optimality of a closed-loop system is desirable because it guarantees, among other properties, favorable gain and phase margins. These margins provide robustness to different types of uncertainty. Alternatively, one can ask a following question: given a localized distributed exponentially stabilizing controller, is it inversely optimal with respect to some physically meaningful cost functional? We study this problem for linear spatially invariant (LSI) systems and establish a frequency domain criterion for inverse optimality (in the LQR sense). We utilize this criterion to separate localized distributed controllers that are never optimal from localized distributed controllers that are optimal. In the latter case, we provide examples to demonstrate optimality with respect to physically appealing cost functionals. These cost functionals are characterized by state penalties that are not fully decentralized. Our results can be used to motivate design of both optimal and inversely optimal controllers for other classes of distributed control problems.


Transition metal (iron, cobalt, and chromium) substituted Hexagonal Mesoporous Aluminophosphate (HMA), and AlPO4-5 were studied for the oxidative desulfurization (ODS) reaction of refractory sulfur compounds such as DBT (dibenzothiophene) and 4,6-DMDBT (4,6- dimethyldibenzothiophene). Selective oxidation activity varies with the kind of transition metal employed. The ODS activity of HMA substituted catalyst follows the order: CrHMA >> CoHMA ≥ FeHMA. Comparison between HMA and AlPO-5, CrHMA catalyst shows better performance than Cr-AlPO4-5 catalyst when tert-butyl hydroperoxide is used as oxidizing agent.


We introduce a novel survey measure of attitude toward debt. Matching our survey results with panel data on Swedish household balance sheets from registry data, we show that our debt attitude measure helps explain individual variation in indebtedness as well as debt build-up and consumption behavior in the period 2004–2007. As an explanatory variable, debt attitude compares well to a number of other determinants of debt, including education, risk-taking, and financial literacy. We also provide evidence that debt attitude is passed down along family lines and has a cultural element.


A new form of transistor series regulated power supply is presented which permits unusually good performance characteristics to be realized with simple and economical circuitry. Expressions are given for the open-circuit output voltage and the output resistance in terms of the supply voltages and the circuit parameters. Application of the new circuit to two practical laboratory regulated power supplies is described, the specifications of which are: 0.5 ampere at 18 to 22 volts, and 1 a at 5 to 25 v. The output resistance is of the order of 0.01 ohm for both supplies; for sudden change of load current between minimum and maximum the transient in output voltage is 80 mv or less, and decays in 40 μsec or less. At full load, ripple in the output voltage is less than 5 mv and line voltage variations of ±10 per cent produce output variations of less than 5 mv. Each supply uses only one line transformer.


The 2017 CCP4 Study Weekend was held at the University of Nottingham with the title From Crystal to Structure. The meeting covered the full process of macromolecular X-ray structure determination from indexing of the diffraction data to deposition of a fully validated structure in the Protein Data Bank. This topic was last covered at the 2010 Study Weekend and the presentations at the 2017 meeting demonstrated the many developments in CCP4 in that interval. This year's meeting included a number of education-focused talks covering the basic principles of each stage of structure determination. CCP4 remains at the forefront of software development for macromolecular crystallography almost four decades since its founding. The first session, Getting the data was opened by Martin Noble with an overview of the status of protein crystallography in 2017. This was followed by a description from Gwyndaf Evans of the newly developed DIALS data reduction package, with a user's perspective of data collection and processing provided by Johan Turkenburg. The second session began with an elegant overview of experimental phasing by George Sheldrick, followed by presentations of two widely used experimental phasing approaches, Crank2 and PhaserEP, by Pavol Skubak and Randy Read, respectively. The Is there a homologue? session addressed molecular replacement (MR) – now the predominant method for solving the phase problem. This was reviewed in the opening talk by Airlie McCoy, after which Ronan Keegan described the MRBump approach to highly automated MR. The following talks addressed options where a suitable search model is not readily available. Dan Rigden described the generation of homology models for MR using AMPLE, while Isabel Usón and Huw Jenkins described fragment-based approaches. The first session of the second day covered Refining and building, featuring a highly interactive demonstration of model building in Coot from Paul Emsley. Kevin Cowtan described automation of model building and refinement, and the session was completed with a talk from Oleg Kovalevskiy on maximum-likelihood refinement. The Did you get it right? session addressed the critical issue of structure validation. Jane Richardson discussed the use of, and new features in, the Molprobity server, followed by a description of the PDB Validation Server from Sameer Velankar. Finally, Eugene Krissinel discussed the functionality and future of cloud-based CCP4 services. The final session, Going forwards opened with a review of the state-of-the-art in the handling of ligands by Judit Debreczeni. Liz Potterton introduced the new CCP4 graphical user interface, CCP4i2. The meeting was brought to a close with a reflective talk from David Stuart, addressing the question quo vadis crystallography? – providing both a historical perspective and thoughts on the future of X-ray crystallography in the age of high-resolution cryo-EM and X-ray free-electron lasers. We would like to thank all speakers and chairs for their excellent contributions together with all the authors and referees who have contributed to this special issue. We hope that this will provide both an informative guide to contemporary crystallographic data analysis and a benchmark reference for the CCP4 suite in its current form. We also gratefully thank the administrative staff of CCP4 for their essential support in organizing the meeting, and Charles Ballard for his role as guest editor of these proceedings. ISSN 2059-7983


The chelicerate arthropod Limulus polyphemus is a dioecious species, with external fertilization and development, in which the sexes can usually be readily distinguished (Shuster, 1960). In males the genital papillae are pointed, while in females they are blunt. In addition, the first walking leg of the mature male bears a claw-like appendage used for clasping the female during fertilization. Internally the gonads of both sexes are highly branched structures distributed throughout the cephalothorax. In February of 1972 we obtained an animal from the Woods Hole Marine Biological Laboratory, Woods Hole, Massachusetts, that appeared to be a mature male. The animal was about 17 cm wide across the carapace and possessed male claspers on both sides of the body. Upon dissection, however, the specimen was seen to contain numerous oocytes and embryos in various stages of development. These oocytes and embryos were limited to the left side and anterior mid-region of the animal. Several of the more fully developed embryos were dissected free of the ovarian tissue and placed in sea water at room temperature. Most of these larvae subsequently emerged, and many of them have been reared on brine shrimp in the laboratory for several weeks. Histological studies disclosed the existence of both ovarian and testicular elements on the left side of the animal, but only testes were found on the right side. This dimorphism extended to the genital ducts and papillae. The left papilla was femalelike, while the right more closely resembled the normal male structure. The left genital duct contained mature oocytes, while the right did not. We have examined several hundred representatives of this species and have never before observed the above condition. To our knowledge it is the first example of such a mosaic in chelicerate arthropods (Bacci, 1965). Additionally, we know of no other instance in which normal internal embryogenesis has been reported in such a form. We were unable to determine if embryogenesis resulted from internal self-fertilization or parthenogenesis.


In this work, 4-(3-morpholin-4-ylpropoxy)phthalonitrile 2, 3-(3-morpholin-4-ylpropoxy)phthalonitrile 3, Co(II)Pc and Mn(III)Pcs containing (3-morpholin-4-ylpropoxy) groups at peripheral and nonperipheral positions were synthesized. Phthalonitrile derivatives (2 and 3), Co(II)Pc and Mn(III)Pcs (2a, 2b, 3a, 3b) were characterized by using FT-IR, NMR (only for 2 and 3), mass and UV–Vis (except 2 and 3) spectral data techniques. Also, electrochemistry of (3-morpholin-4-ylpropoxy) group substituted Co(II)Pc and Mn(III)Pcs were inspected by using cyclic voltammetry. Electrochemical studies show that (3-morpholin-4-ylpropoxy) group substituted Co(II)Pc and Mn(III)Pcs electropolymerized on the Pt working electrode.


Anorexia, cachexia, and resultant weight loss are major clinical problems in a substantial proportion of patients with advanced cancer. Effective means of alleviating these problematic symptoms are lacking. Extensive clinical data demonstrate a weight enhancing effect for the serotonin antagonist, cyproheptadine, in several clinical situations. In addition, sound basic research suggests that cyproheptadine may be helpful in patients with cancer anorexia/cachexia. Because of this, the authors performed a randomized, placebo‐controlled, double‐blinded clinical trial using cyproheptadine, 8 mg orally three times a day in 295 patients with advanced malignant disease. Patients assigned to cyproheptadine had less nausea (P = 0.02), less emesis (P = 0.11), more sedation (P = 0.07), and more dizziness (P = 0.01) than placebo patients. Patients' appetites, measured by serial patient‐completed questionnaires, appeared to be mildly enhanced by cyproheptadine. Unfortunately, cyproheptadine did not significantly abate progressive weight loss in these patients with advanced malignant disease; patients assigned to cyproheptadine lost an average of 4.5 pounds per month compared to 4.9 pounds per month for patients assigned to a placebo (P = 0.72).


This thesis deals with processes coupled to injury in the peripheral nervous system (PNS), with a general aim to investigate the role of phospholipase A2 (PLA2) enzymes in axonal outgrowth. The axonal outgrowth of dorsal root ganglia (DRG) neurons in vitro was reduced by several different inhibitors of PLA2 activity and enhanced by an activator of this enzyme. The PLA2 inhibitors acted locally in the outgrowth region and the effect only comprised the axonal elongation stage. Time-lapse recording of growing axons showed a rapid retraction of filopodia and a reduction in growth cone motility at exposure to the drugs. The PLA2 activity was upregulated in the DRG and nerve after a sciatic nerve injury in vivo, most profoundly in the crush region of the nerve. The upregulated activity was strongly Ca2+-dependent, acid sensitive and reduced by an inhibitor of type IV cytosolic (c) PLA2 (methyl arachidonyl fluorophosphonate, MAFP) and the role of this PLA2 form in axonal outgrowth was further investigated in vitro. MAFP reduced the axonal outgrowth length with ~50%, and caused rapid collapse of the growth cone, an effect which was counteracted by addition of arachidonic acid (AA). Control experiments ruled out a major role of the Ca2+-independent type VI iPLA2 as well as diacylglycerol-lipase (DAG-lipase). An inhibitor of 5-lipoxygenase (LOX) (AA861) reduced axonal outgrowth and inhibited growth cone motility. By immunocytochemistry cPLA2 was visualised in neurons, Schwann cells and macrophages and found to be upregulated in the crush region after injury in vivo. cPLA2 also accumulated in the cut axonal endings. Whole-mount immunostaining demonstrated cPLA2 and 5-LOX in the growing axons and their growth cones. Interestingly, elevated levels of cPLA2 was also found in the cell bodies of degenerating neurons, as detected by TUNEL- and Fluoro-Jade staining. The results of this thesis show the importance of continuous PLA2 activity for growth cone motility and axonal outgrowth in the adult peripheral nerve. The data strongly link cPLA2 activity to axonal outgrowth and growth cone function via mechanisms involving AA and leukotrienes. However, the role of cPLA2 activity after injury might be more complex, involving perhaps also harmful effects of this enzyme form. (Less)


An effective computational technique to estimate lateral spatial effects in laser beams compressed by diffraction grating plates is established. In particular, the equivalence of the Kirchoff-Fresnel integral form to the exponential split-operator Fourier transform representation for a propagating-beam amplitude provides a more general numerical technique. Thus realistic beam profiles may be accurately propagated through the compressor pair, including grating-plate misalignment contributions. Additionally, the use of a stationary-phase approximation to the propagation integral kernel is shown to be a convenient, reliable method to evaluate analytical beam forms. Both the numerical and the approximate approaches generalize previously discussed ray-tracing approaches to optimize compressor design.


In a traditional sense, ownership determines rights and duties in regard to an object, for example a property. The owner of source code usually refers to the person that invented the code. However, larger code artifacts, such as files, are usually composed by multiple engineers contributing to the entity over time through a series of changes. Frequently, the person with the highest contribution, e.g. The most number of code changes, is defined as the code owner and takes responsibility for it. Thus, code ownership relates to the knowledge engineers have about code. Lacking responsibility and knowledge about code can reduce code quality. In an earlier study, Bird et al. [1] showed that Windows binaries that lacked clear code ownership were more likely to be defect prone. However recommendations for large artifacts such as binaries are usually not actionable. E.g. Changing the concept of binaries and refactoring them to ensure strong ownership would violate system architecture principles. A recent replication study by Foucault et al. [2] on open source software replicate the original results and lead to doubts about the general concept of ownership impacting code quality. In this paper, we replicated and extended the previous two ownership studies [1, 2] and reflect on their findings. Further, we define several new ownership metrics to investigate the dependency between ownership and code quality on file and directory level for 4 major Microsoft products. The results confirm the original findings by Bird et al. [1] that code ownership correlates with code quality. Using new and refined code ownership metrics we were able to classify source files that contained at least one bug with a median precision of 0.74 and a median recall of 0.38. On directory level, we achieve a precision of 0.76 and a recall of 0.60.


Recombinant human insulin-like growth factor-I (hIGF-I) and a biologically potent variant lacking the N-terminal tripeptide (des(1-3)IGF-I) were produced from transfected Chinese hamster ovary cells. The constructs encoding the signal peptide, sequence of the mature peptide and a C-terminal extension peptide were expressed under the control of a Rous sarcoma virus promoter. Successfully transfected clones secreting correctly processed recombinant hIGF-I or des(1-3)IGF-I were selected by their secretion of IGF-I-like activity into the culture medium. The recombinant peptides were purified to homogeneity as assessed by high-performance liquid chromatography and N-terminal sequence analysis. The purified recombinant peptides exhibited biological potencies equivalent to authentic IGF-I and des(1-3)IGF-I respectively.


Organizational culture is widely considered to be one of the most significant factors in reforming and modernizing public administration and service delivery. This article documents the findings of a literature review of existing qualitative and quantitative instruments for the exploration of organizational culture. Seventy instruments are identified, of which 48 could be submitted to psychometric assessment. The majority of these are at a preliminary stage of development. The study's conclusion is that there is no ideal instrument for cultural exploration. The degree to which any measure is seen as "fit for purpose" depends on the particular reason for which it is to be used and the context within which it is to be applied.


Ancient undeciphered scripts present problems of different nature, not just tied to linguistic identification. The undeciphered Cypro-Minoan script from second millennium BCE Cyprus, for instance, currently does not have a standardized, definitive inventory of signs, and, in addition, stands divided into three separate subgroups (CM1, CM2, CM3), which have also been alleged to record different languages. However, this state of the art is not consensually accepted by the experts. In this article, we aim to apply a method that can aid to shed light on the tripartite division, to assess if it holds up against a multi-pronged, multi-disciplinary approach. This involves considerations linked to paleography (shapes of individual signs) and epigraphy (writing style tied to the support used), and crucially, deep learning-based strategies. These automatic methods, which are widely adopted in many fields such as computer vision and computational linguistics, allow us to look from an innovative perspective at the specific issues presented by ancient, poorly understood scripts in general, and Cypro-Minoan in particular. The usage of a state-of-the-art convolutional neural model that is unsupervised, and therefore does not use any prior knowledge of the script, is still underrepresented in the study of undeciphered writing systems, and helps to investigate the tripartite division from a fresh standpoint. The conclusions we reached show that: 1. the use of different media skews to a large extent the uniformity of the sign shapes; 2. the application of several neural techniques confirm this, since they highlight graphic proximity among signs inscribed on similar supports; 3. multi-stranded approaches prove to be a successful tool to investigate ancient scripts whose language is still unidentified. More crucially, these aspects, together, point in the same direction, namely the validation of a unitary, single Cypro-Minoan script, rather than the current division into three subgroups.


The advent of novel cancer immunotherapy approaches is revolutionizing the treatment for cancer. Current small animal models for most cancers are syngeneic or genetically engineered mouse models or xenograft models based on immunodeficient mouse strains. These models have been limited in evaluating immunotherapy regimens due to the lack of functional human immune system. Development of animal models for bone cancer faces another challenge in the accessibility of tumor engraftment sites. Here, we describe a protocol to develop an orthotopic humanized mouse model for a bone and soft tissue sarcoma, Ewing sarcoma, by transplanting fresh human cord blood CD34+ hematopoietic stem cells into young NSG-SGM3 mice combined with subsequent Ewing sarcoma patient derived cell engraftment in the tibia of the humanized mice. We demonstrated early and robust reconstitution of human CD45+ leukocytes including T cells, B cells, natural killer cells and monocytes. Ewing sarcoma xenograft tumors successfully orthotopically engrafted in the humanized mice with minimal invasive procedures. We validated the translational utility of this orthotopic humanized model by evaluating the safety and efficacy of an immunotherapy antibody, magrolimab. Treatment with magrolimab induces CD47 blockade resulting in significantly decreased primary tumor growth, decreased lung metastasis and prolonged animal survival in the established humanized model. Furthermore, the humanized model recapitulated the dose dependent toxicity associated with the CD47 blockade as observed in patients in clinical trials. In conclusion, this orthotopic humanized mouse model of Ewing sarcoma represents an improved platform for evaluating immunotherapy in bone and soft tissue sarcoma, such as Ewing sarcoma. With careful design and optimization, this model is generalizable for other bone malignancies.


Some health indices were studied in teenagers in Nagorny Karabakh. The paper presents data on their physical development, hemodynamics, sexual maturity, and total morbidity. There are some regional features in the study indices, which consist in low harmonicity of physical development and hemodynamics, as well as in high morbidity rates with a predominance of cardiovascular and collagen diseases. The found abnormalities may be directly related to the poor environment for teenagers in Nagorny Karabakh after the 1991-1994 war in the region and show it necessary to improve their living conditions, medical control, and therapeutical-and-prophylactic measures.


An assessment is presented of the impact of recent magnetohydrodynamic research results on performance projections for reactor scale tokamaks as exemplified by the ITER Final Design Report (ITER/FDR) facility. For nominal ELMy H mode operation, the presence and amplitude of neoclassical tearing modes governs the achievable β value. Recent work finds that the scaling of β at which such modes onset agrees well with a polarization drift model, with the consequence that, with reasonable assumptions regarding seed island width, the mode onset β will be lower in reactor scale tokamaks than in contemporary devices. Confinement degradation by such modes, on the other hand, depends on relative saturated island size which is governed principally by β and secondarily by ν* effects on bootstrap current density. Relative saturated island size should be comparable in present and reactor devices. DT ITER demonstration discharges in JET exhibited no confinement degradation at the planned ITER operating value of βN = 2.2. Theory indicates that electron cyclotron current drive can either stabilize these modes or appreciably reduce saturated island size. Turning to operation in candidate steady state, reverse shear, high bootstrap fraction configurations, wall stabilization of external kink modes is effective while the plasma is rotating but (so far) rotation has not been maintained. Recent error field observations in JET imply an error field size scaling that leads to a projection that the ITER/FDR facility will be somewhat more tolerant to error fields than thought previously. ICRF experiments on JET and Alcator C-Mod indicate that plasmas heated by central energetic particles have benign ELMs compared with the usual type 1 ELM of NBI heated discharges.


Studies of the impact of hypoxic or anoxic environments on both climate and ecosystems rely on a detailed characterization of the oxygen (O2) distribution along the water column. The former trivial separation between oxic and anoxic conditions is now often redefined as a blurry concentration range in which both aerobic and anaerobic processes might coexist, both in situ and during experimental incubations. The O2 concentrations during such incubations have often been assumed to be equal to in situ levels, but the concentration was rarely measured. In order to evaluate the actual oxygen concentration in samples collected from low‐oxygen environments, a series of measurements were performed on samples collected in the Pacific oxygen minimum zones. Our results show a significant deviation from in situ anoxic conditions in samples collected by Niskin bottles where leakage from the bottle material resulted in O2 concentrations of up to 1 μM. Subsequent sampling further increased the O2 contamination. Sampling and analysis by Winkler method resulted in variable apparent concentrations of 2–4 μM. Two common procedures to avoid atmospheric contamination were also tested: allowing gentle overflow and keeping the sampling bottle submersed in a portion of the sampled water. Both procedures resulted in similar O2 contamination with values of 0.5–1.5 μM when bottles were immediately closed and measurements performed with optical sensors, and 3–4 μM apparent concentration when analyzed by the Winkler method. Winkler titration is thus not suited for analysis of low‐O2 samples. It can be concluded that incubation under anoxic conditions requires deoxygenation after conventional sampling.


ABSTRACT This article aims to assess the concentrations of zinc (Zn) and nickel (Ni) and the organic matter (OM) content in different depth samples of sediments produced in this river basin of the Mãe d'Água dam. The sampling was carried out in June 2014, and four sediment cores in pre-defined points of the dam were sampled. A core sampler 'Piston Core' was used for the extraction of sediment cores. The sediments with fraction less than 63 μm were destined to the chemical analysis for the verification of the presence and concentration of trace elements: Ni and Zn. The acid digestion methodology employed is the EPA 3050, adopted by the US Environment Protection Agency, and the analyses were carried out in duplicates and for quality control we used two reference materials of the US Geological Survey: Green River Shale (SGR-1b) and Cody Shale (SCO-1). With the results obtained, all samples showed concentrations of Zn and Ni above the local background value and growth patterns, demonstrating the existence of enrichment of the sediments by these elements. The levels of OM when correlated at concentrations of Zn and Ni showed the growing enrichment in the sediment cores analysed, confirming the high affinity of these elements with the sediment compounds of fraction organic.


Cardiac tumors in children are rare, are more commonly benign, and differ in types when compared with those in adults. Rhabdomyoma, teratoma, and fibroma are the most common cardiac tumors in fetuses and neonates. In infants and children, the most common cardiac tumors are rhabdomyoma and fibroma, which are benign primary cardiac tumors, whereas in adults, thrombus is the most common cardiac mass and myxoma is the most common primary cardiac tumor. Sarcomas are the most common primary malignant cardiac tumors in both children and adults. Metastatic cardiac tumors are less common in children than in adults and include sarcoma, lymphoma, testicular cancer, and Wilms tumor. Patients with cardiac tumors can be asymptomatic or may present with murmur, arrhythmia, heart failure, or sudden death. Echocardiography is the primary modality for initial evaluation of symptomatic patients. Cardiac magnetic resonance imaging provides further characterization of cardiac masses and tumors for diagnostic purposes and can be used to assess cardiac and extracardiac involvement for treatment planning. Treatment varies from conservative management or surgical resection to transplantation, depending on the diagnosis and the patient's symptoms. Rhabdomyoma typically regresses spontaneously during early childhood and does not require surgical intervention if asymptomatic. However, fibroma is generally resected because it does not regress. An understanding of the types of cardiac tumors that occur in infants and children, their clinical implications and associations, and their imaging appearances will facilitate patient management.


This paper reports tentative results from a recent case study conducted with novice undergraduate computer programmers. These new computer science students completed a shyness scale questionnaire and were then observed using two kinds of technology that logged their self-rated emotions during their lab-based exercise classes whilst they learned to program using Java. Participants were then interviewed about their use of the technology, their experiences of learning to program and of asking questions within teaching and learning environments. The results here focus on the emerging themes concerning shyness and inhibitions that surround asking and answering questions. It highlights shyness as being a general part of the experience of a computer science undergraduate student, the importance of providing a suitable environment conducive to facilitating questions and answers, and considers how technology might be developed in the future to better support the needs of these students.


UNLABELLED: The treatment of the strictures in the posterior urethra and especially in its bulbar part is a serious therapeutic problem. The urethroplasty with a buccal mucosal graft is a good choice in solving this problem. MATERIALS AND METHODS: For a period of 8 months (11.2002-06.2003) 5 patients with strictures of the posterior urethra we operated and followed up. In 3 cases (60%) we made a ventral urethroplasty, and in 2 (40%) dorsal. The free buccal mucosal was taken from the inner part of the lower lip. We used an "onlay" technique in all patients. RESULTS: The patients were from 32 to 76 years old (on average 56.2). All of them suffered several operative procedures before that. The causes of the strictures in 3 (60%) cases were due to medical treatment, in 1 (20%) case due to trauma and in 1 (20%) case due to inflammation. After the removing of the catheter all patients were urinating spontaneously with a flow > 15 ml/sec. Only in 1 patient, 10 days after the removing of the catheter, an urethrocystoscopy was done with an UTI, because of a retention. CONCLUSIONS: The urethroplasty with a free buccal mucosal graft gives us great possibilities and priorities in the treatment of the strictures of the posterior urethra.


Morphologic study of various structures of ocular tissues after exposure to infrasound massage at 4 Hz frequency, depth 0.5, and amplitude of 0.1 kg/cm2, 10 min per session, for 5 and 10 days, revealed no detrimental effects of the exposure on ocular tissues. The most expressed changes were observed in various segments of the vascular coating.


Background: Survival models accounting for unobserved heterogeneity (frailty models) play an important role in mortality research, yet there is no article that concisely summarizes useful relationships. Objective: We present a list of important mathematical relationships that govern populations in which individuals differ from each other in unobserved ways. For some relationships we present proofs that, albeit formal, tend to be simple and intuitive. Methods: We organize the article in a progression, starting with general relationships and then turning to models with stronger and stronger assumptions. Results: We start with the general case, in which we do not assume any structure of the underlying baseline hazard, the frailty distribution, or their link to one another. Then we sequentially assume, first, a relative-risk model; second, a gamma distribution for frailty; and, finally, a Gompertz and Gompertz-Makeham specification for baseline mortality. Comments: The article might serve as a handy overall reference to frailty models, especially for mortality research.


Abstract The paper is concerned with the issue of variants within a firm, the causes of their emergence and coexistence. A particular attention is paid to the New Economy's variant called market‐like form. It is contrasted with the M‐form firm that was dominated over the last century. Significant shift in physical technology is thought to be a major force driving the evolution process of a firm which is characterized by the emergence of new variants. The paper also analyzes how the character of the production technology determines which variant of the firm is the best suitable to a particular technology.


Self-determination theory (SDT) is a macro theory of human motivation that utilizes concepts essential for organizational psychology. Among the concepts are types and quality of motivation and basic (i.e., innate and universal) psychological needs. Further, the theory has specified social-environmental factors that affect both the satisfaction versus frustration of the basic psychological needs and the types of motivation. The social-environmental factors concern ways in which colleagues, employees' immediate supervisors, and their higher-level managers create workplace conditions that are important determinants of the employees' motivation, performance, and wellness. In addition, SDT highlights individual differences that also influence the degrees of basic need satisfaction and the types of motivation that the employees display. This theoretical framework has gained increasingly attention within the context of work the last 15 years, showcasing the importance of basic psychological needs and type of work motivation in explaining the relation from workplace factors to work behaviors, work attitudes and occupational health.


The aim of this paper is to give a short review on cluster dynamics modeling in the field of atoms and point defects clustering in materials. It is shown that this method, due to its low computer cost, can handle long term evolution that cannot, in many cases, be obtained by Lattice Kinetic Monte Carlo methods. Indeed, such a possibility is achieved thanks to an important drawback that is the loss of space correlations of the elements of the microstructures. Some examples, in the field of precipitation and irradiation of metallic materials are given. The limitations and difficulties of this method are also discussed. Unsurprisingly, it is shown that it goes in a very satisfactory way when the objects are distributed homogeneously. Conversely, the source term describing the primary damage under irradiation, by nature heterogeneous in space and time, is tricky to introduce especially when displacement cascades are produced.


In this paper, two new architectures for high-speed CMOS wave-pipelined current-mode A/D converters (WP-IADCs) are proposed and analyzed. In the new WP-IADC architectures, the wave-pipelined theory is applied to both pipeline structures, called full WP-IADC (FWP-IADC) and indirect transfer WP-IADC (ITWP-IADC). In the FWP-IADC, each stage uses the full current-mode wave-pipelined structure without switched-current cell circuits. In the ITWP-IADC, the switched-current cells are incorporated into the wave-pipelined stages which are divided into several sections with controlled clocks. Therefore, the proposed ITWP-IADC performs optimally in terms of speed and accuracy in the WP-IADCs. Generally, the proposed WP-IADCs have the advantages of high speed, high input frequency, high efficiency of timing usage, high clock-period flexibility in switched-current cells for precision enhancement, and reduced number of switched-current cells in the overall data path for linearity improvement. According to the theoretical analysis on the proposed WP-IADC structures, the minimum sampling clock period is proportional to the intrinsic delay of the current mirror and the increased rise/fall time in each wave-pipelined stage. The HSPICE simulation results reveal that, under Nyquist rate sampling in 8-b resolution, a sampling rate of 20 and 54 MHz can be achieved for FWP-IADC and two-section ITWP-IADC, respectively. If four wave-pipelined sections are used, the ITWP-IADC can be operated at 166 MHz at an input frequency of 8 MHz. To experimentally verify the correct function of the proposed WP-IADC structures, the proposed new architecture of the FWP-IADC is implemented by using 0.35-/spl mu/m CMOS technology. The measurement results successfully demonstrate the feasibility of wave-pipelined IADC architectures in applications of high-speed ADCs.


ABSTRACT The tectonically active Vancouver Island continental margin is characterized by a very narrow (< 80 km) continental shelf and an extremely steep continental slope. The shelf is marked by high wave and current energies on the inner, nondepositional shelf and very slow rates of sediment accumulation on the outer shelf. Within the muddy sands of the outer shelf and slope, glauconitic grains are frequently an important constituent of the sand fraction, occurring in four principal forms: (a) locally abundant, pale green infillings of benthic foraminifera; (b) very abundant, pale to moderately dark green, dull grains displaying varying degrees of fracturing of the external surfaces; (c) scarce, moderately dark green, altered and expanded mica grains; and (d) scarce, very dark green, small (< 200 µm) grains with polished, highly fractured surfaces. Mineralogically, the grains mainly reflect their origins as detrital sediments. They consist most commonly of quartz, plagioclase minerals, chlorite, smectite, and illite. Also, a mixed-layer mineral, smectite-illite, occurs in significant amounts in glauconitic grams but is absent in unaltered mud fragments and in the clay fraction of sediments from the outer shelf. The appearance of this mineral reflects the first stages of glauconite authigenesis. Bulk analyses of glauconitic grains yielded K2O values of less than 2%, reflecting their very early stage of evolution, but 19-28% Fe2O3, several times the level in the surrounding matrix sediments. Microprobe analyses and scanning electron microscopy show that glauconitic smectite forms in the pores and along fractures in the host grains, commonly as a boxwork arrangement or rosette clusters of blades. Fe2O3 and K2O values at these sites can reach 32.5% and 7.5%, respectively. Several lines of evidence, including radiocarbon age determinations on glauconitized foraminifera tests, indicate a Recent age for the Vancouver Island shelf glauconitic grains.


Many writing guides list constructions that writers should avoid, including passives, no- minalisations and long complex words and sentences. This study presents an eye-tracking experi- ment that compared the reading of such supposedly problematic constructions with the reading of their recommended parallel versions in four different Danish LSP texts. While a range of control predictors, including the length of the target constructions and their position in the texts, had significant effects on reading time, there was no effect of whether a target construction followed or opposed the advice given in writing guides. This suggests that, in themselves, the supposed problem constructions are not inherently problematic to understand. Therefore, factors previous- ly put forward as important, such as the information structure of texts and the image the sender wishes to project, should be what influences the choice of constructions rather than simplified rules such as "Avoid passives!". The implications of this finding for writing guides and for company and institutional language policies are discussed.


The approaches to reducing the alternating stresses in the compressor blades, arising at a resonance, are discussed in paper. Maximum alternating stresses in blades of the fifth stage of intermediate pressure compressor (IPC, that operating under the gas flow circumferential variation conditions, are defined on the basis of the forced blade oscillations calculation method. Parametric CFD-model which allows to introduce different stagger angles and circumferentially alternating blade pitch at the guide vanes of IPC fifth stage was created to reduce the stresses. The flow circumferential variation was reduced by changing these parameters and as a consequence the resonant stresses were decreased by more than 2.5 times.© 2014 ASME


This study was initiated to study the factors leading to formation and eventual sale of International Cooperative, Inc., a potato processing cooperative located at Grand Forks, North Dakota. The business, which began operation in the fall of 1976, developed from the desire of potato growers in the Red River Valley region of Minnesota, North Dakota, and Manitoba, Canada to maintain a local market for their potatoes. The cooperative was dissolved in June 1981 and the processing facility wac sold to a major potato processing firm.


There is a potent interface between the work of filmmaker Neil Jordan and novelist Patrick McCabe. The Butcher Boy would present a particular attraction for Jordan, conceptualized as it is in the Ireland of the '50s and early '60s in which Jordan grew up, a time governed by the paranoiac, and somewhat mad A-Bomb and anti-Communist hysteria, the mysticism and paralysis of a country still dominated by archaic religious beliefs and superstitions, and the repressive, largely rural, small-town milieu that characterized the era. And as Jordan has said of his films, they are ". . . all basically about the clash between the real world and the world of imagination and unreality. The constant concern is to do with realistic and surrealistic explanations of human behavior and whether human beings answer to rational modes of thought or are inspired by things quite irrational and unknown to themselves" (McIlroy 108). McCabe's creation of Francie Brady-in all his extravagant aberrance-harmonizes perfectly with Jordan's continual interrogation of the limits and necessity of human reason. McCabe, who has been dubbed the ". . . high priest of rural Irish dementia" (Lacey 50), shares Jordan's world view in his concern for the liminal states between rationality and unbalance, what McCabe has termed the "social fantastic" (FitzSimon 176). In essence both Jordan and McCabe have an intense interest in investigating what it means to be human in this world, the contrast between what Northrop Frye in Anatomy of Criticism would call the world of innocence and experience, and with rhythm-in the visual, aural, and verbal sense. Jordan has been characterized on various occasions as a filmmaker who ". . . translates] jazz into film style (Pramaggiore 274). McCabe is well known (as is Jordan) for his concern for rhythm of language. In the novelist's words: ". . . you see, the things that people say, ordinary human exchange, you know-'Not a bad day, 'Tis surely'; 'how's it goin'?' All this kind of stuff that you hear, the rhythm of it, it is actually quite fascinating" (FitzSimon 186). Both Jordan and McCabe are musicians, and the latter unabashedly admits the influence of Jordan's "Night in Tunisia"-in terms of the father/son relationship, the importance of music in the household, and the significance of the natural world-on The Butcher Boy (FitzSimon 176). But beyond merely categorizing the similarities between the two artists, or focusing on the various strategies that are typically utilized in adaptation (e.g., compression and simplification of narrative events, the concentration of sympathy on the main character, the deletion or reduction of the roles of secondary characters, etc.), I will focus on the film, on the ways in which Jordan has reconfigured McCabe's prose style in cinematic terms, his dexterous and creative use of narrative voice and vision to give expression to the feelings, thoughts, and sensations of the protagonist, Francie Brady. Jordan's evocative medium for articulating Francie's consciousness is the voice-over of the older Francie, which begins: "When I was a young lad, twenty or thirty or forty years ago I lived in a small town where they were all after me on account of what I'd done on Mrs. Nugent." The older Francie (brilliantly performed by Stephen Rea) speaks from the "Garage For Bad Bastards," evidently an institution for the criminally insane. The flashback structure serves to create two vantage points (and more, as I will explain later), permitting the viewer complex access to the character of Francie, both as an older man and as the young boy around whom the story revolves. A closer examination of the narration reveals the multiplicity of strategies Jordan engages, in order to manifest Francie's perceptions. This following passage occurs directly after Annie/Ma has returned home, having been institutionalized with a nervous breakdown: Back from the garage there was no holding ma, talking nineteen to the dozen, whiz here one minute there the next-and hadn't she bought the bogman record we heard playing in the cafe. …


Although previous research has shown that teacher coaching can improve teaching practices and student achievement, little is known about specific features of effective coaching programs. We estimate the impact of MATCH Teacher Coaching (MTC) on a range of teacher practices using a blocked randomized trial and explore how changes in the coaching model across two cohorts are related to program effects. Findings indicate large positive effects in Cohort 1 but no effects in Cohort 2. After ruling out explanations related to the research design, a set of exploratory analyses suggest that differential treatment effects may be attributable to differences in coach effectiveness, coaching dosage, and the focus of coaching across cohorts.


NETosis is a process by which neutrophils extrude their DNA together with bactericidal proteins that trap and/or kill pathogens. In the present study, we evaluated the ability of Leptospira spp. to induce NETosis using human ex vivo and murine in vivo models. Microscopy and fluorometric studies showed that incubation of human neutrophils with Leptospira interrogans serovar Copenhageni strain Fiocruz L1-130 (LIC) resulted in the release of DNA extracellular traps (NETs). The bacteria number, pathogenicity and viability were relevant factors for induction of NETs, but bacteria motility was not. Entrapment of LIC in the NETs resulted in LIC death; however, pathogenic but not saprophytic Leptospira sp. exerted nuclease activity and degraded DNA. Mice infected with LIC showed circulating NETs after 2 days post-infection (dpi). Depletion of neutrophils with mAb1A8 significantly reduced the amount of intravascular NETs in LIC-infected mice, increasing bacteremia at 3 dpi. Although there was a low bacterial burden, scarce neutrophils and an absence of inflammation in the early stages of infection in the kidney and liver, at the beginning of the leptospiruric phase, the bacterial burden was significantly higher in kidneys of neutrophil-depleted-mice compared to non-depleted and infected mice. Surprisingly, interstitial nephritis was of similar intensity in both groups of infected mice. Taken together, these data suggest that LIC triggers NETs, and that the intravascular formation of these DNA traps appears to be critical not only to prevent early leptospiral dissemination but also to preclude further bacterial burden.


Background: Macrophage cell death following infection with Mycobacterium tuberculosis plays a central role in tuberculosis disease pathogenesis. Certain attenuated strains induce extrinsic apoptosis of infected macrophages but virulent strains of M. tuberculosis suppress this host response. We previously reported that virulent M. tuberculosis induces cell death when bacillary load exceeds , 20 per macrophage but the precise nature of this demise has not been defined. Methodology/PrincipalFindings: We analyzed the characteristics of cell death in primary murine macrophages challenged with virulent or attenuated M. tuberculosis complex strains. We report that high intracellular bacillary burden causes rapid and primarily necrotic death via lysosomal permeabilization, releasing hydrolases that promote Bax/Bak-independent mitochondrial damage and necrosis. Cell death was independent of cathepsins B or L and notable for ultrastructural evidence of damage to lipid bilayers throughout host cells with depletion of several host phospholipid species. These events require viable bacteria that can respond to intracellular cues via the PhoPR sensor kinase system but are independent of the ESX1 system. Conclusions/Significance: Cell death caused by virulent M. tuberculosis is distinct from classical apoptosis, pyroptosis or pyronecrosis. Mycobacterial genes essential for cytotoxicity are regulated by the PhoPR two-component system. This atypical death mode provides a mechanism for viable bacilli to exit host macrophages for spreading infection and the eventual transition to extracellular persistence that characterizes advanced pulmonary tuberculosis.


The concept of the larval host plant as the centre of activity for dacine fruit flies, which is supported by a wealth of information on the Queensland fruit fly Bactrocera tryoni (Froggatt), has been refuted by two recently published studies. Conclusions in the first study are based solely on a failure to observe mating by Bactrocera cacuminata (Hering) on its major larval host plant Solanum mauritianum Scopoli in Queensland, and the second on a field cage experiment that concluded that B. cacuminata flies respond strongly to methyl eugenol at dusk, primarily to mate. We thus undertook a detailed study of the mating behaviour of Bactrocera cacuminata (Hering) both in the laboratory and in nature, and we also analysed a variety of plant tissues from S. mauritianum for methyl eugenol. Contrary to current understanding, female B. cacuminata are not monandrous but mate up to 3 times over their life span in the laboratory. In the field, over a 15 month period, we made 44,171 observations of adult B. cacuminata individuals and observed 1,109 mating pairs on its major larval host plant Solanum mauritianum Scopoli in a single plant at each of two study sites in southeast Queensland. We also consistently observed and filmed calling behaviour by male flies on the underside of leaves of S. mauritianum, and female flies responding to such groups of 10 -15 calling males at dusk. Female flies that arrived into these groups of calling males were mated and remained coupled until dawn. We detected no methyl eugenol from the analysis of a variety of tissues from S. mauritianum. Thus B. cacuminata does not need to aggregate at sites where methyl eugenol is present and the hypothesis that this chemical plays a role in the selection of mating sites by B cacuminata is not supported by our studies. We conclude that the concept of the larval host plant as the centre of activity for dacine fruit flies remains robust and is also important in the development of strategies for the management of pest fruit flies as well as in our understanding of the speciation processes in the Tephritidae.


Although the intensive care unit offers technology and treatment aimed at prolonging life, many patients die in ICUs, and most ICU patients experience pain and/or other distressing symptoms. Accordingly, palliative care, emphasizing effective management of symptoms, communication about the goals and expected outcomes of therapy, and attention to a broad range of patient and family needs, deserves a central place in critical care practice, research, and education. In this two-part series we review the role of palliative care in the intensive care unit. Part I focuses on aspects of death and distress among the critically ill that mandate expertise and education in palliative medicine, and identifies obstacles to the delivery of optimal palliative care in the ICU setting. In Part II we will review the practice of withdrawal and withholding of life support, which now precede the majority of ICU deaths, address issues in management of distress and discomfort experienced by critically ill patients, and suggest strategies for improving palliative care in the ICU. As a conceptual framework we discuss an integrated model in which all patients receive both intensive care and palliative care in a concurrent and coordinated manner, in preference to the traditional dichotomization of palliation and curative or life-prolonging care.


How can we summarize a dynamic data stream when elements selected for the summary can be deleted at any time? This is an important challenge in online services, where the users generating the data may decide to exercise their right to restrict the service provider from using (part of) their data due to privacy concerns. Motivated by this challenge, we introduce the dynamic deletion-robust submodular maximization problem. We develop the first resilient streaming algorithm, called ROBUST-STREAMING, with a constant factor approximation guarantee to the optimum solution. We evaluate the effectiveness of our approach on several real-world applications, including summarizing (1) streams of geo-coordinates (2); streams of images; and (3) click-stream log data, consisting of 45 million feature vectors from a news recommendation task.


The Architecture, Engineering, Construction, and Facility Management (AEC-FM) industry is increasingly affected by digital technologies that monitor sensor network data and control automation systems. Advances in digital technologies like Digital Twin offer a high-level representation of buildings and their assets by integrating the physical and digital world. This paper examines patterns, gaps, and trends in the AEC-FM sector and contributes to digitalization and automation solutions for building management. This work covers a broad range of research topics, from intelligent information management of complex models to building information management and the interaction of building systems, where researchers are increasingly interested in using the Digital Twin to manage their information and in developing new research lines focused on data interchange and the interoperability of building information modeling (BIM) and facility management (FM). After a complete bibliometric search of several databases and following selection criteria, 77 academic publications about the Digital Twin application in the AEC-FM industry were labeled and clustered accordingly. This study analyzed in detail the concept of key technologies, including "Digital Twin in Facility Lifecycle Management," "Digital Twin-Information Integration Standards," "Digital Twin-Based Occupants Centric Building Design," "Digital Twin-Based Predictive Maintenance," "Semantic Digital Twin for Facility Maintenance," and "Digital Twin-Based Human Knowledge." The findings show that information standardization is the first major hurdle that must be overcome before the actual use of Digital Twin can be realized in the AEC-FM industry. Based on that, this paper provides a conceptual framework of Digital Twin for building management as a starting point for future research.


In the addiction field, the approach to the client is being discussed because the care that is offered is apparently not fully effective, efficient or of sufficient quality. In the Netherlands the new policy direction in the addiction field aims at improving the quality and innovation of care and prevention by use of evidence‐based research. One of the spearheads is 'Social Addiction Policy', which focuses on material context (housing, work, etc.) and social circumstances in which addicts live. This paper outlines the concept of demand‐driven care and discusses its applicability in the addiction field. Quotations from drug users and clients of various services are used to illustrate the issues and attitudes discussed in the article. The new policy in the addiction field encompasses so called 'assertive outreach', which implies that care providers actively try to reach those marginalized groups that do not seek help themselves. Although this seems to be in contradiction with the general concept of demand‐driven care, it is argued that demand‐driven care in the form of assertive outreach is both necessary and possible. Four main characteristics of the addiction field are discussed in relation to the principles of demand‐driven care, and are compared with characteristics of the healthcare sector. A demand‐driven approach seems to be worth the effort, also in the addiction field.


A method to decompose dynamic complex systems is proposed, that is, by using the dynamic inclusion principle and permutation transformation, complex system with information constrains of dynamic topology structure is decomposed as a group of pair-wise decoupled subsystems in the expanded space. Then according to the Lyapunov method, the connective stability of pair-wise subsystems is discussed by constructing Lyapunov functions in the case all isolated systems are stable, the conditions of connective stability for the expanded system are obtained, which are also adapt to the original system based on inclusion principle. Finally, the theorem and deduction of connective stability for the dynamic interconnnected complex system are given.


Poor adherence to combination antiretroviral therapy (ART) is a major global challenge. In this study we examined the efficacy of a smartphone application incorporating personalized health-related visual imagery that provided real-time information about the level of medication and the patient's level of immunoprotection, in order to improve adherence to ART. We randomized 28 people on ART to either a standard or augmented version of the smartphone application. The augmented version contained components that illustrated participants' current estimated plasma concentrations of antiretroviral drugs and the immune protection provided by ART. Adherence to ART was assessed at baseline and at 3 months using self-reported adherence, pharmacy dispensing records, and HIV viral load. Information was also collected on illness and medication beliefs and use of the application. Participants who received the augmented application showed a significantly higher level of self-reported adherence to ART at three months ( p = 0.03) and decreased viral load ( p = 0.023) as compared to individuals using the standard version. Greater usage of the extra components of the augmented application was associated with greater perceived understanding of HIV infection and increased perceived necessity for ART. Smartphone applications that incorporate personalized health-related visual imagery may have potential to improve adherence to ART.


Flexible monolithic ultra-portable ground penetrating radar using inkjet printing technology A Ground Penetrating Radar (GPR) performs nondestructive detection of buried objects, or subsurface imaging by transmitting electromagnetic waves and detecting and analyzing the reflections. The main challenge of GPR is the reduction in detection range due to the severe signal attenuation that is caused by subsurface conductivity that becomes more severe at high frequencies. In order to increase the detection range, GPR uses lower frequencies than non-GPR radars and thus requires larger antennas that may limit system portability. Most GPR systems use impulse radars however the FMCW (frequency modulated continuous wave) radar can provide some advantages such as frequency versatility, reduced system maintenance and improved range resolution. Frequencies below 1 GHz were initially uncommon in short-range FMCW radars but are now finding their way back in systems such as ultra-wideband (UWB) ground penetrating radars for mine detection and as well as other applications. When measurements are performed on vehicles, large antenna fixtures are not a problem. Portability, however, can become an issue in geophysical studies or emergency work in which one may need to transport the system through rugged, unexplored and/or hazardous locations without vehicle access and perform measurements. Inaccessible environments may require climbing up and down, squeezing through, jumping over, crawling under, maneuvering through or swimming through obstacles (mountains, caves, lakes, rocky areas). In addition to transportation, rapid system setup is critical in difficult conditions such as freezing temperatures or extreme heat where exposure time is costly and limits measurement time. One solution to enhance the portability and deployability of a GPR system for wide area rugged measurements is to realize a complete system on a continuous substrate that is rollable around a reasonably small radius and storable in a scroll or poster-like fashion for easy backpack transportation. Electronics that can flex and bend have already used in military applications and for outdoor sporting gear. Currently, there are a few types of technology available to realize flexible electronics that have been a major topic of research, each with different levels of integration. Inkjet printing technology offers a cost effective, versatile and efficient method for realizing flexible devices. In this work a classical FMCW radar system is designed and an effort is made, for the first time, to apply inkjet printing technology to a radar system. The system is referred to as a portable monolithic radar system in which all actives, passives and antenna are meant to share the same continuous rollable substrate. In doing this, a medium level of integration is used to investigate limits of system complexity, resolution and ultra miniaturization for tight rollability. Various design challenges of a large system are overcome that will hopefully give insight to new designs as the integration level using inkjet printing technology increases.