Supra and subgingival plaque associated with periodontal lesions in patients with Papillon-Lefèvre syndrome were studied by examining extracted teeth and associated soft tissue by scanning electron and light microscopy. Four zones of plaque were described according to their location along the tooth surface. Supragingivally, cocci, filamentous bacilli and "corncob" formations were seen. Fusiform bacilli colonized the surface of supragingival plaque on the root surface. Subgingival sites, particularly apical areas, had numerous spirochetes adherent to the plaque surface as well as directly to the cementum surface. Microcolonies of bacteria, probably Mycoplasma, could be seen in the subgingival plaque. The findings of a potentially pathogenic plaque, attached subgingival spirochetes and microcolony formation may have important therapeutic and research implications.


The aim of this pilot study is to determine the feasibility and clinical utility of a brief, informant-based screening questionnaire for Alzheimer's disease (AD) that can be administered in a primary care setting. The Alzheimer's Questionnaire (AQ) was administered to the informants of 188 patients in 3 dementia clinics (50 cognitively normal, 69 mild cognitive impairment (MCI), 69 AD). Total score for the AQ is based upon the sum of clinical symptom items in which the informant responds as being present. Clinical symptoms which are known to be highly predictive of the clinical AD diagnosis are given greater weight in the total AQ score. The mean time of administration of the AQ was 2.6 ± 0.6 minutes. Sensitivity and specificity were found to be high for detecting both AD (98.55, 96.00) and MCI (86.96, 94.00) with ROC curves yielding AUC values of 0.99 and 0.95, respectively. This pilot study indicates that the AQ is a brief, sensitive measure for detecting both MCI and AD and could be easily implemented in a primary care setting.


Background Capsular contracture is a common complication of two-stage expander/implant breast reconstruction. To minimize the risk of this complication, capsulectomy is performed using monopolar cautery or ultrasonic surgical instrumentation, the latter of which can be conducted with a Harmonic scalpel. To date, there is disagreement regarding which of the two methods is superior. The purpose of this study was to compare postoperative outcomes between a group of patients who underwent surgery using a Harmonic scalpel and another group treated with monopolar cautery. Methods A retrospective chart review was conducted of patients who underwent capsulectomy as part of two-stage breast reconstruction between January 2018 and February 2019 and who received at least 1 month of follow-up after surgery. Operative time and postoperative outcomes, including drainage duration, were analyzed. Results In total, 36 female patients underwent capsulectomy. The monopolar group consisted of 18 patients and 22 breasts, while the Harmonic scalpel group consisted of 18 patients and 21 breasts. There was no statistically significant difference in demographics between the two groups. The Harmonic scalpel group had a significantly shorter mean drainage duration (6.65 days vs. 7.36 days) and a smaller mean total drainage volume (334.69 mL vs. 433.54 mL) than the monopolar cautery group (P<0.05). No statistically significant difference was observed with regard to seroma or hematoma formation. Conclusions The Harmonic scalpel approach for capsulectomy reduced the total drainage volume and drainage duration compared to the monopolar cautery approach. Therefore, this approach could serve as a good alternative to electrocautery.


ObjectiveMobile HIV counseling and testing (mHCT) is an effective tool to access hard-to-reach most-at-risk populations (MARPs), but identifying which populations are not accessing services is often a challenge. We compared correlates of HIV infection and awareness of HIV care services among populations tested through mHCT and at testing facilities in Nigeria. DesignParticipants in a cross-sectional study completed a questionnaire and HIV counseling and testing between May 2003 and March 2010. ResultsOf 27,586 total participants, 26.7% had been previously tested for HIV; among mHCT clients, 14.7% had previously tested. HIV prevalence ranged from 6.6% among those tested through a facility to 50.4% among brothel-based sex workers tested by mHCT. Among mHCT participants aged 18–24, women were 9.0 times more likely to be infected than men. Women aged 18–24 were also less likely than their male counterparts to know that there were medicines available to treat HIV (63.2% vs 68.1%; P = 0.03). After controlling for gender, age and other risk factors, those with current symptoms of genital ulcers were more likely to be HIV-infected (ORmHCT = 1.65, 1.31–2.09; ORfacility = 1.71, 1.37–2.14), while those previously tested were less likely to be HIV-infected (ORmHCT = 0.75, 0.64–0.88; ORfacility = 0.27, 0.24–0.31). ConclusionsThere is an urgent need to promote strategies to identify those who are HIV-infected within MARPs, particularly young women, and to educate and inform them about availability of HIV testing and care services. mHCT, ideally coupled with STI management, may help to ensure that MARPs access HIV prevention support, and if infected, access care and treatment.


Abstract The hydrogen effect on dislocation nucleation in Ni single crystals with (111) surface orientation has been examined with the aid of a specifically designed nanoindentation setup for in situ electrochemical experiments. The effect of the electrochemical potential on the indent load – displacement curve, especially the unstable elastic-plastic transition (pop-in), was studied in detail. The experiments allowed the exclusion of the surface from hydrogen effects. The observations showed a pop-in load drop from an average value of 250 to 100 μN due to in situ hydrogen charging, which is reproducibly observed within sequential hydrogen charging and discharging. Clear evidence is provided that hydrogen atoms facilitate homogeneous dislocation nucleation.


Abstract This article gives an overview of the actual situation of language rights in Slovakia, focusing mainly on the minority language usage. The status of minority languages in Slovakia is still a politicized question and a series of conflicts arose especially between Slovak political elites and the representatives of ethnic Hungarians because of the controversial legislation of minority language rights. Slovakia was subjected in the field of minority protection and heavily criticized during the adoption of the State Language Law. Strict regulations on the use of state language have negative effects on the use of minority languages as well. In spite of the fact that in 1999 the Law on Use of Minority Languages was adopted and Slovakia ratified all of the international agreements in this field, the problem of minority language usage was not solved. This legal vacuum motivated the Hungarian civil sphere to take alternative actions in order to ensure bilingualism and promote the use of minority languages in official communication. Summarizing the legal accommodation of minority language rights, this paper is devoted to examine a recently less-observed civil activism supporting the use of regional languages in Slovakia.


: Actinomycin D and neoarsphenamine were tested for their ability to produce therapeutically favorable radiosensitization in the WAG/Rij rat. Acute and late skin reactions and control of the BA1112 rhabdomyosarcoma were examined in drug-treated and untreated animals irradiated in single- and five-fraction schedules. Actinomycin D was found to protect skin and tumors when added 15 minutes before irradiation. Actinomycin D added 2 hours before irradiation in a five-fraction trial produced slight tumor sensitization accompanied by slight skin protection. Neoarsphenamine produced significant tumor sensitization without skin sensitization in one of the single-fraction trials, but had no effect in the five-fraction trials.


This paper reports on a design process of e-learning courses for competence development of experienced employees in the manufacturing industry. Through a crossorganizational collaborative action design research project the aim was to design e-learning courses at university level to support work-integrated learning. Two designand learning cycles were evaluated over two years. The first cycle identified challenges that were applied to a pilot course in Industrial automation. From evaluation of this course we derived design principles applied to two further courses in Machining and Negotiation skills. The results from our empirical data suggest general principles as competence mapping work, collaborative manufacturing e-WIL cases and interactive learning technologies for design of e-WIL courses as boundary crossing activities to reach transformative learning integrated in the manufacturing industry.


Introduction: Transitioning to undergraduate college life can be stressful as students have to make multiple adjustments. Emotional Regulation (ER) plays a crucial role in the psychosocial development of college students. Adaptive ER strategies are important for developing resilience.
Objective: To examine the relationship between emotional regulation and resilience among first-year undergraduates.
Methodology: The sample included first-year undergraduate students from respective colleges (Medical, Engineering and Degree), who completed the following instruments; Emotion Regulation Questionnaire (ERQ; Gross and John, 2003) and Brief Resilience Scale (BRS; Smith, Dalen, Wiggins, Tooley, Christopher & Bernard, 2008). Statistical analyses were carried out and the findings were discussed by referring to relevant literature.
Results: A significant positive correlation was obtained between cognitive reappraisal and resilience. On the other hand, expressive suppression demonstrated a significant negative correlation with both cognitive reappraisal and resilience.
Conclusion: Effective life skills training program is necessary to battle various psychological in competencies.

Keywords: Emotional, Regulation, Resilience, College Students, Life Skills Training.


Introduction:
 The aim of our study was to investigate the effects of subclinical brain lesions and cognitive function on gait performance with or without concurrent cognitive task (i.e., dual task) in community-dwelling elderly subjects.

 Subjects and Methods:
 Between 2010 and 2012, magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans were performed for 170 non-demented volunteers (82 men and 88 women with a mean age of 67.5 years). The National Hospital Organization Hizen Psychiatric Center Institutional Review Board approved the study. All participants underwent neuropsychological tests (the Mini Mental State Examination [MMSE], Trail Making Test [TMT] and Rivermead Behavioral Memory Test [RBMT]). Time to complete the Timed Up and Go test was measured under two conditions: 1) Timed Up and Go test, and 2) dual task, walking while adding 3 to a predefined number "1". Impaired gait velocity was defined as the most prolonged quintile in the time of single (>9.0 sec) and dual (>11.0 sec) tasks. We determined indices for atrophy using Voxcel-based Specific Regional Analysis for Alzheimer's disease (VSRAD). Multivariate analysis was done using the logistic regression analysis with IBM SPSS Statistics 18 software for Windows.

 Results:
 Mean education years was 11.3±2.1 (S.D.) years, and mean MMSE score was 27.8±2.1. Silent brain infarction, deep white matter lesions (DWMLs), periventricular hyperintensities and cerebral microbleeds were detected in 19 (11.2%), 50 (29.4%), 24 (14.1%) and 8 (4.7%), respectively. Impaired gait velocity of single task (Timed Up and Go test) was associated with DWMLs (OR 2.57, 95% CI 1.16-5.69) after adjusted for age, sex, education, MMSE, TMT, RBMT, and MRI findings. Impaired gait velocity of the dual task walking was associated with age (OR 3.59/10 years, 95% CI 1.91-6.73) and score of the RBMT (OR 0.88, 95% CI 0.79-0.99), whereas MRI findings including brain atrophy (VSRAD) were not associated with reduced speed of dual task walking.

 Conclusions:
 Gait disturbance detected by single task was related to DWMLs, while dual task walking revealed an association between reduced gait speed and cognitive dysfunction. The present study showed that gait represents not only physical functioning but also cognitive dysfunction in healthy elderly individuals.


A novel multitap photonic microwave filter with arbitrary positive and negative coefficients implemented using an electrooptic polarization modulator (PolM) and an optical polarizer is proposed and experimentally demonstrated. In the proposed filter, the optical polarizer is connected at the output of the PolM with its transmission axis aligned at an angle of 45 to one principal axis of the PolM. By adjusting the polarization direction of the input lightwave to be 45 or 135 to one principal axis of the PolM, an inverted or noninverted intensity-modulated optical microwave signal is obtained at the output of the optical polarizer, which leads to the generation of a negative or positive coefficient. A time delay difference between adjacent taps is generated by using a wavelength-dependent delay line. A five-tap photonic microwave filter with arbitrary positive and negative coefficients is demonstrated. The reconfigurability of the filter is also investigated.


Recent growth in the utilisation of Electronic Gaming Machines (EGMs) has led to community disquiet about attendant problems of alleged loss of community standards, problem gambling and losses by retailers and other local businesses. Recent legislation provides an opportunity for local councils to object to any proposals to increase numbers of EGMs on the grounds of social and economic impact on the local community. The Pokie Application Research Kit (PARK) is a software tool that aims to help local councils determine the local social and economic impact of the introduction of additional EGMs to venues within their boundaries. PARK evaluates the benefit of additional EGMs by tracing the way in which expenditures on EGMs feed, or do not feed, into the local economy. If expenditures do feed through to further local economic activity there is a benefit for the local economy. If the expenditures accrue to agents who repatriate them outside the local economy there is no benefit for it. In such a circumstance the expenditure is said to be 'leaked'. The PARK model compares the situation that would arise with additional expenditures on EGMs with the status quo. In operationalising the comparison a number of crucial assumptions are required, the most important concerning 'leaked' expenditures. The analysis finds the results are very sensitive to these assumptions and the current structure of the model predisposes it to show large net losses from the introduction of additional EGMs. Alternative approaches to measuring the local economic impact of increasing the number of EGMs and the role of local economic impacts in the broader public policy debate are discussed in the paper.


PEANUTS, the classic comic strip by Charles M Schulz, appears in almost 3,000 newspapers worldwide, reaching 355 million readers in 75 countries, making it the most recognised and widely syndicated comic strip in the world. The timeless and endearing humour has expanded to more than 40 animated television specials and more than 1400 books, selling over 300 million copies. The strips in this very successful series, have been arranged under themes and feature Snoopy in some of his famous roles.


The works that Henri Matisse (1869-1954) executed between late 1913 and 1917 are among his most demanding, experimental, and enigmatic. Often sharply composed, heavily reworked, and dominated by the colours black and gray, these compositions are rigorously abstracted and purged of nearly all descriptive detail. Although they have typically been treated as unrelated to one another, as aberrations within the artist's oeuvre, or as singular responses to Cubism or World War I, "Matisse: Radical Invention, 1913-1917" reveals the deep connections among them and their critical role in an ambitious, cohesive project that took the act of creation itself as its main focus. This book represents the first sustained examination of Matisse's output from this important period, revealing fascinating information about his working method, experimental techniques, and compositional choices uncovered through extensive new historical, technical, and scientific research. The lavishly illustrated volume is published to accompany a major exhibition consisting of approximately 125 paintings, sculptures, drawings, and prints. It features in-depth studies of individual works such as "Bathers by a River" and "The Moroccans", which Matisse himself counted as among the most pivotal of his career, and facilitates a greater understanding of the artist's innovative process and radical stylistic evolution.


Both regional and local tectonics controlled the sediment distribution in the Fundy half-graben during the Triassic. Locally, alluvial fans built out into the basin from the western boundary fault along what is now the south shore of New Brunswick. The alluvial fan red beds of the Honeycomb Point Formation are covered by fluvial conglomerates of the Quaco Formation, which in turn are buried by a resurgence of alluvial fan deposition represented by the Echo Cove Formation. Pollen recovered from the upper part of the Echo Cove Formation indicates that, regionally, the system of Triassic-Jurassic grabens along the eastern seaboard is composed of two separate graben systems; one stretching from South Carolina to Connecticut, the other from the Gulf of Maine to the southern Grand Banks. Initial graben formation began at the southern end of each system, followed by successive grabens opening toward the north. The areal distribution of both graben systems appears to have been controlled by four large transform-fault systems from the Middle Triassic through the Jurassic. The age and overall distribution of sediments within the Fundy Basin confirm the existence of a hot spot along the Kelvin Seamount chain and refines determination of the position and timing of the initial rifting that led to the formation of the present Atlantic Ocean.


This book endorses Coleridge's statement: "nothing can permanently please which does not contain in itself the reason why it is so". It conceives 'Kubla Khan' as of a hypnotic poem, in which the "obtrusive rhythms" produce a hypnotic, emotionally heightened response, giving false security to the "Platonic Censor", so that our imagination is left free to explore higher levels of uncertainty. Critics intolerant of uncertainty tend to account for the poem's effect by extraneous background information. The book consists of three parts employing different research methods. Part One is speculative, and discusses three aspects of a complex aesthetic event: the verbal structure of 'Kubla Khan', validity in interpretation, and the influence of the critic's decision style on his critical decisions. The other two parts are empirical. Part Two explores reader response to gestalt qualities of rhyme patterns and hypnotic poems in perspective of decision style and professional training. Part Three submits four recordings of the poem by leading British actors to instrumental investigation.


OBJECTIVE
To estimate the number of necessary beds for tuberculosis patients in Japan from the view point of isolation of the source of infection.

METHODS
We calculated the number of necessary beds for tuberculosis cases separately for the initial phase and for the chronic excreters. For the initial phase we calculated by multiplying the number of detected tuberculosis cases and the duration of hospitalization. The number of detected cases is based on the figures in 2002 and the duration of hospitalization is assumed to be 90 days for sputum smear positive cases and 60 days for sputum smear negative cases. We calculated the number of necessary beds using the Monte Carlo simulation for each prefecture on the assumption that the incidence and the duration of diseases will be under the effect of random fluctuation with the Poisson's distribution for the number of cases and with the log normal distribution for the duration of hospitalization. We also considered the seasonal fluctuation.

RESULTS
Our calculation revealed that around 6,413 beds would be necessary for the initial phase and 200-400 beds for chronic excreters in Japan. There are several prefectures which only requires less than 30 beds.

DISCUSSION
Currently, Japan has around 17,000 beds secured for tuberculosis patients. Our calculation showed that this was much more than needed. In many areas, one ward will provide more than sufficient number of tuberculosis beds. Specialist consultation system must be improved because of the reduction in the number of TB cases treated at hospitals with TB wards and TB specialists. For the treatment of non-infectious TB, ambulatory DOT system, TB shelter and nursing care facilities would be necessary to guarantee compliance to treatment.


In this paper I explore the ways that academic sustainability writing engages with economic systems and consider the performative effects of these modes of engagement. Using capitalist realism and capitalocentrism, I define three mechanisms by which non-capitalist futures are foreclosed: 1) Actively Recreating Capitalism – where industries like advertising actively seek to recreate and reinforce capitalist values. 2) Capitalism Unseen – where capitalism is perceived as natural and synonymous with all economic forms. 3) Making a Monolith of Capitalism, where anti-capitalist writers focus so much on capitalism that they make it appear undefeatable. Examining the frequency of different terms used by academic sustainability writers when talking about economic systems, and looking at two different uses of the term 'capital' I argue that academic sustainability writers engage with and are influenced by these mechanisms in different ways. Currently, there is a substantive body of academic sustainability writing that contributes to Capitalism Unseen. However, there are also strands of work that emphasis discontinuity and change within economic systems. I argue that such work provides a model for escaping Capitalism Unseen and avoiding Making a Monolith of Capitalism.


The current study was conducted in North Kordofan State, in Jebel Eldair Mechanized farms, covering two consecutive cropping seasons (2007/08 and 2008/09). Was considered for mechanized farming system. The main objectives were to determine the optimum crop combination that maximizes small- holders' profitability in the area, to access food security status in terms of food intake and net income in the area. In order to estimate the contribution of different production factors to the variation of different crop yield in the area and to calculate the international competitiveness and comparative advantage for economic efficiency of resource allocation of different farming system for groundnuts, millet, sesame, sorghum, and other minor crops grown in the study area. The primary data were collected via structured questionnaire. A multi-stage random sampling technique was employed to select 120 householders. Linear programming (L.P), partial crop budget, robust regression, household economy approach (HEA) and policy analysis matrix (PAM) as empirical approaches were used. 0.648 and 2.886 feddan (one feddan = 0.42 ha.) of millet and sesame were grown, though a total of SDG 1097.122 as gross margin was obtained by the optimal solution. Partial crop budget results indicated that all crops gave positive net returns and the highest profit was 259 and SDG 322 attained by millet and sesame respectively. The households' income and food security situation was found to be positive and the weekly food intake for households was 2601 Kcal, due to, this area is food secured. Resource use indicated that, land, labor and capital for millet and sesame were positive and highly significant at ten and one percent level, however farm potentiality increased by 90.5 and 88%, respectively. The DRC and CIC results obtained in such respect revealed that sesame production in the area has a very high comparative advantage and international competitiveness, since the DRC ratio is far less than one (0.02) and the CIC is also less (SDG 0.03) , the CIC expresses that only SDG 0.03 is invested to gain one US$. The study concluded that food security in the area can be realized by following the optimum cropping combinations, mitigating factors affecting comparative advantages and competitiveness, allocating production resources efficiently and improving nutritional status of people by using recommended energy intake.


This working paper aims at improving the comparability of forecast quality measures of in-solvency prediction studies. For this purpose, in a first step commonly used accuracy measures for categorial, ordinal and cardinal insolvency predictions are presented. It will be argued, that ordinal measures are the most suitable measures for sample spanning comparisons concerning predictive power of rating models, as they are not affected by sample default rates. A method for transforming cardinal into ordinal accuracy measures is presented, by which comparisons of insolvency prediction results of older and present-day studies are enabled. In the second part of the working paper an overview of influencing variables - aside from the quality of the insolvency prediction methods - is given, which affect the accuracy measures presented in the first part of the paper and thus impair sample spanning comparison of empirically obtained forecast quality results. In this context, methods for evaluating information losses that are attributable to the discretization of continuous rating scales or preselection of portfolios are developed. Measure results of various insolvency prognosis studies are envisaged and compared with three benchmarks. First benchmark is the accuracy that can be achieved solely by taking into account legal status and industry classification of corporations. The second benchmark is the univariate prognosis accuracy of single financial ratios. As third benchmark, ALTMAN's Z-score model is examined, a multivariate insolvency prediction model, that is currently used as reference rating model in many empirical studies. It turns out, however, that the Z-score's forecast quality is so discontenting, that its application is not recommendable. Instead it is suggested to use those rating models that are cited in this discussion paper, which are fully documented and which therefore can be rebuilt and directly applied to any desired data sample. If applied to the respective target groups, their performance matches with the performance of commercial rating systems, like bureau and business scores for rather small companies, middle market rating models for SMB, or agency ratings for large public companies.


The coconut industry of North Sulawesi is dominated by a small number of products which are primarily exported from the province. Accordingly, demand for these products is generally very elastic. Conversely, the supply of coconuts is highly inelastic, especially in the short to medium-term. Hence, small shifts in supply and demand lead to large fluctuations in farmer incomes. From this context an equilibrium displacement model is used to examine the intra-industry consequences of investments into farm and marketing sector efficiency. These investments are assessed in terms of the distribution of producer surplus benefits that they generate, and their ability to improve the position of coconut farmers.


Objective: In our country, violence has been spreading to every part of society, especially in the health sector in recent years. In this study, we aimed to determine the properties of violence that physicians working in the emergency departments are exposed to and witness and also to present the process after the violence. Material and Methods: This study was held with participants of the 4th Emergency Medicine School Meeting organized by the Emergency Medicine Physicians Association of Turkey on January 11-12, 2013 in Istanbul. Answers given to the questionnaire titled "Violence in the health sector and its properties" by volunteer participants were evaluated with a statistical program. Results: Of the 73 physicians, 60.3% was male and 39.7% was female. The mean age was 31.9±5.8 years; 91.8% stated that they were exposed to violence at least once in their professional lives. The most common type of violence exposed and witnessed was verbal violence. Conclusion: Emergency departments are places where violence is experienced extremely often. Doing legal arrangements, taking security precautions, and solving patient-healthcare communication problems are important steps for preventing violence. But, it is thought that the main step is to provide social synergy in the perception of violence. (JAEM 2014; 13: 124-30)


An analytical model for compressive stress-strain curve of polypropylene fiber reinforced concrete (PPFRC) was proposed. The polypropylene fiber used was 60-mm long twisted fiber with aspect ratio of 120. The fiber was added in three volume fractions 0.2%, 0.4% and 0.6%. Tow concrete mixtures with varying water-cement ratio were used. The accuracy of the proposed model was evaluated by comparing the area under stress-strain curves for experimental and analytical model. The results showed good agreement between the experimental and analytical curves. In addition; empirical equations were proposed to quantify the effect of polypropylene fiber on compressive strength, strain at peak stress, and toughness of concrete in terms of fiber volume fraction.


Mitochondrial transcription was investigated in a cytoplasmic male-sterile (CMS) Brassica napus line with rearranged mitochondrial (mt) DNA mostly inherited from Arabidopsis thaliana. The transcript patterns were compared with the corresponding male-fertile progenitors, B. napus and A. thaliana, and a fertility-restored line. Transcriptional activities, gene stoichiometry and transcript steady-state levels were analysed for all protein and rRNA coding genes and for several orfs present in the A. thaliana mitochondrial genome. The transcriptional activities were highly variable when comparing the parental species, while the CMS and restored lines displayed similar activities. For several ribosomal protein genes transcriptional activity was reduced while it was increased for orf139 in comparison with the parental species. The differences in transcriptional activity observed could be related to differences in relative promoter strength, as gene stoichiometry between lines was very limited. Transcript steady-state levels were more homogenous than the transcriptional activities demonstrating RNA turnover as a compensating mechanism. In the CMS line higher transcript abundance and novel transcript patterns in comparison with the parental lines were found for several genes. Of those, the transcripts for orf139, orf240a and orf294 were less abundant in the fertility-restored line. These putative CMS-associated transcripts were mapped by cRT-PCR. In conclusion we show that (mt) DNA from A. thaliana was non-correctly transcribed and processed/degraded in the B. napus nuclear background. Furthermore, the introgressed nuclear A. thaliana DNA in the fertility-restored line contributes to a more rapid degradation of transcripts accumulated from A. thaliana derived orfs in the CMS line.


Classical novae produce radioactive nuclei which are emitters of gamma-rays in the MeV range. Some examples are the lines at 478 and 1275 keV (from 7Be and 22Na) and the positron-electron annihilation emission (511 keV line and a continuum below this energy, with a cut-off at 20-30 keV). The analysis of gamma-ray spectra and light curves is a potential unique and powerful tool both to trace the corresponding isotopes and to give insights on the properties of the expanding envelope determining its transparency. Another possible origin of gamma-rays is the acceleration of particles up to very high energies, so that either neutral pions or inverse Compton processes produce gamma-rays of energies larger than 100 MeV. MeV photons during nova explosions have not been detected yet, although several attempts have been made in the last decades; on the other hand, GeV photons from novae have been detected in some particular novae, in symbiotic binaries, where the companion is a red giant with a wind, instead of a main sequence star as in the cataclysmic variables hosting classical novae. Both mechanisms of gamma-ray production in novae are reviewed, with more emphasis on the one related to radioactivities.


Abstract This article seeks to re-evaluate the history and importance of one of the most important processes to have shaped the English cultural landscape in the last one thousand years. It emphasises the diversity of the enclosure experience through space and time, and attempts to identify some general 'rules' which help explain what happened. It also challenges some recent scholars who view enclosure as a unified, structuring process. The article begins by describing the different forms of enclosure; the distinction between piecemeal and general enclosure, and the various forms that general enclosure could take. It challenges the over-sharp distinction drawn in the past between 'champion' and 'ancient' countryside. It identifies two main phases of agricultural change – from late medieval times until 1700, and from 1700 to 1900 – and links these to the enclosure history of different regions, pointing out, for instance, the great early modern shift from arable to enclosed pasture in the Midlands that produced the familiar ridge and furrow earthworks which were, until recently, a ubiquitous feature of the region. The article establishes two general principles: firstly, the ease with which enclosure was achieved was closely connected to the nature of existing landholding patterns, and secondly, that before 1700 most enclosure was associated with a conversion to permanent pasture. It also proposes a modified chronology for enclosure. Finally the article explores the social and ideological causes and implications of the enclosed landscape: its expression of paternalistic social concerns, the landed elite's desire for prestige, and order – a landscape that was diametrically opposed to the commons, the democratic abode of 'undesirable elements' and the poor. It takes issue however, with the view that enclosure caused the decline in the fortunes of the rural poor and the small farmers. The article concludes by setting out a new agenda for landscape historians, one based on the analysis of the enclosure history of ecologically distinct regions and areas.


Background & Aim: Occupational hardiness as a set of personality traits is a source of resistance and protection against stressful life events. The aim of this study was assessment of psychometric properties of Occupational Hardiness Scale. Material & Methods: A total of 210 nurses were recruited through stratified sampling method and responded to Occupational Hardiness Scale, Beck Depression Questionnaire, and Rosenberg Self-esteem Questionnaire. Data was analyzed by factor analysis, Cronbach's alpha coefficients and Pearson correlations using SPSS-PC (v. 22). Results: Exploratory factor analysis, item-total correlation and reliability analyses were undertaken to assess the psychometric properties of the Occupational Hardiness Scale. Pearson correlation results indicated a significant relationship between hardiness and depression (r= -0.31 and p≤0.01) and self-esteem (r=0.28 and p≤0.01). Also hardiness scale reliability was assessed using Cronbach's alpha and it was 0.78 for the total scale, 0.81 for challenge, and 0.75 for commitment and 0.88 for control subscales. Conclusion: The Persian version of Occupational Hardiness Scale had acceptable psychometric properties in nurses' population and it can be used as a valid instrument in psychological and health research .


Abstruct- A theoretical model of a cubic GaN quantum-well laser is studied taking into account the effects of strong spinorbit (SO) split-off band coupling on the valence-band strncture and the optical gain within the 6 x 6 Luttinger-Kohn model. It is expected that a very narrow separation (10 mew between the SO band and the heavy- and light-hole bands causes two undesirable effects on the lasing of GaN quantum well: 1) the TE and the TM polarizations have comparable magnitudes over the wide range of carrier densities and 2) the SO band will be easily occupied by the injected holes which in turn reduces the injection efficiency or increases the lasing threshold. A combination of strain and the use of alloy is proposed to reduce the hole and the electron masses and to increase the SO band separation in order to reduce the lasing threshold.


We present a new algorithm for identifying the transition and emission probabilities of a hidden Markov model (HMM) from the emitted data. Expectation-maximization becomes computationally prohibitive for long observation records, which are often required for identification. The new algorithm is particularly suitable for cases where the available sample size is large enough to accurately estimate second-order output probabilities, but not higher-order ones. We show that if one is only able to obtain a reliable estimate of the pairwise co-occurrence probabilities of the emissions, it is still possible to uniquely identify the HMM if the emission probability is \emph{sufficiently scattered}. We apply our method to hidden topic Markov modeling, and demonstrate that we can learn topics with higher quality if documents are modeled as observations of HMMs sharing the same emission (topic) probability, compared to the simple but widely used bag-of-words model.


: A school-based pit-and-fissure sealant activity was developed by the Dental Health Section, Health Services Division, New Mexico Health and Environment Department as an adjunct to an ongoing dental disease prevention program. The sealants were applied by dental hygienist and dental assistant teams using a "four-handed" technic. The teams took portable dental equipment directly into the schools to apply the sealants to newly erupted permanent teeth. The costs to seal 15,281 teeth in 3,272 children were calculated to be $1.59 per tooth, and $7.41 per child. The average time for sealant application was nine minutes, 24.6 seconds per child. The one-year retention rate was 83 percent complete retention and 10 percent partial retention.


Problem statement: Today, inventory management is considered to be an important field in Supply chain management. Once the efficient and effective management of inventory is carried out throughout the supply chain, service provided to the customer ultimately gets enhanced. Hence, to ensure minimal cost for the supply chain, the determination of the level of inventory to be held at various levels in a supply chain is unavoidable. Minimizing the total supply chain cost refers to the reduction of holding and shortage cost in the entire supply chain. Efficient inventory management is a complex process which entails the management of the inventory in the whole supply chain and getting the final solution as an optimal one. In other words, during the process of supply chain management, the stock level at each member of the supply chain should account to minimum total supply chain cost. The dynamic nature of the excess stock level and shortage level over all the periods is a serious issue when implementation was considered. In addition, consideration of multiple products leads to very complex inventory management process. The complexity of the problem increases when more distribution centers and agents were involved. Approach: In present research, the issues of inventory management had been focused and a novel approach based on genetic algorithm had been proposed in which the most probable excess stock level and shortage level required for inventory optimization in the supply chain is distinctively determined so as to achieve minimum total supply chain cost. Results: The analysis provided us with an inventory level that made a remarkable contribution towards the increase of supply chain cost. We predicted the optimal inventory levels in all the supply chain members with the aid of these levels. Conclusion: We concluded that it is possible to minimize the supply chain cost by maintaining the optimal stock levels that we predicted from the inventory analysis. This will make the inventory management further effective and efficient thereby enhancing the customer servicing levels.


ABSTRACT Autophagosome formation is a fundamental process in macroautophagy/autophagy, a conserved self-eating mechanism in all eukaryotes, which requires the conjugating ATG (autophagy related) protein complex, ATG12–ATG5-ATG16L1 and lipidated MAP1LC3/LC3 (microtubule associated protein 1 light chain 3). How the ATG12–ATG5-ATG16L1 complex is recruited to membranes is not fully understood. Here, we demonstrated that RAB33B plays a key role in recruiting the ATG16L1 complex to phagophores during starvation-induced autophagy. Crystal structures of RAB33B bound to the coiled-coil domain (CCD) of ATG16L1 revealed the recognition mechanism between RAB33B and ATG16L1. ATG16L1 is a novel RAB-binding protein (RBP) that can induce RAB proteins to adopt active conformation without nucleotide exchange. RAB33B and ATG16L1 mutually determined the localization of each other on phagophores. RAB33B-ATG16L1 interaction was required for LC3 lipidation and autophagosome formation. Upon starvation, a fraction of RAB33B translocated from the Golgi to phagophores and recruited the ATG16L1 complex. In this work, we reported a new mechanism for the recruitment of the ATG12–ATG5-ATG16L1 complex to phagophores by RAB33B, which is required for autophagosome formation. Abbreviations : ATG: autophagy-related; Cα: alpha carbon; CCD: coiled-coil domain; CLEM: correlative light and electron microscopy; DTE: dithioerythritol; EBSS: Earle's balanced salt solution; EDTA: ethylenediaminetetraacetic acid; EGFP: enhanced green fluorescent protein; FBS: fetal bovine serum; FLIM: fluorescence lifetime imaging microscopy; FRET: Förster resonance energy transfer; GDP: guanosine diphosphate; GOLGA2/GM130: golgin A2; GppNHp: guanosine 5ʹ-[β,γ-imido]triphosphate; GST: glutathione S-transferase; GTP: guanosine triphosphate; GTPγS: guanosine 5ʹ-O-[gamma-thio]triphosphate; HA (tag): hemagglutinin (tag); HEK: human embryonic kidney; HeLa: Henrietta Lacks; HEPES: (4-(2-hydroxyethyl)-1-piperazineethanesulfonic acid); IgG: immunoglobulin G; Kd: dissociation constant; MAP1LC3/LC3: microtubule associated protein 1 light chain 3; MCF7: Michigan cancer foundation-7; MEF: mouse embryonic fibroblast; MEM: minimum essential medium Eagle; MST: microscale thermophoresis; NEAA: non-essential amino acids; PBS: phosphate-buffered saline; PE: phosphatidylethanolamine; PtdIns3P: phosphatidylinositol-3-phosphate; RAB: RAS-associated binding; RB1CC1/FIP200: RB1 inducible coiled-coil protein 1; RBP: RAB-binding protein; SD: standard deviation; SDS: sodium dodecyl sulfate; SQSTM1/p62: sequestosome 1; TBS-T: tris-buffered saline-tween 20; WD (repeat): tryptophan-aspartic acid (repeat); WIPI2B: WD repeat domain phosphoinositide interacting 2B; WT: wild type


In spite of a range of work on engaging with poverty, particularly in the Global South, the significance of the poor in conceptualizing and responding to the relationship between poverty and place seems to be downplayed. This article addresses this gap in current thinking by developing a conceptual framework by which the poor can appreciate the possibilities and constraints of the context in which they are grounded. Key strands of this framework were developed through a participatory concept mapping exercise conducted in the city of Trivandrum in southern India. The aims of this framework, D-SPACE (Dynamic Spatiotemporal Analysis of Cooperative and Comparative Visions) are (1) to act as a tool (opportunity/constraint diagram) for the poor to understand the relationship between poverty and place and to map out self-rated measures on their progress toward well-being; (2) to produce an output (neighborhood well-being map) that policy makers can use to identify which groups within poor neighborhoods need urgent help and in what form; (3) to produce a methodology (concept mapping) that relies on involvement of volunteers/civil society members to develop the poor's understanding of and responses to poverty. By moving from standardized conceptions of and responses to poverty, this article will advance an understanding that spatiotemporal pathways to well-being from the point of view of poor individuals and families need to be charted prior to interventions by the state.


Object detection performance, as measured on the canonical PASCAL VOC dataset, has plateaued in the last few years. The best-performing methods are complex ensemble systems that typically combine multiple low-level image features with high-level context. In this paper, we propose a simple and scalable detection algorithm that improves mean average precision (mAP) by more than 30% relative to the previous best result on VOC 2012 -- achieving a mAP of 53.3%. Our approach combines two key insights: (1) one can apply high-capacity convolutional neural networks (CNNs) to bottom-up region proposals in order to localize and segment objects and (2) when labeled training data is scarce, supervised pre-training for an auxiliary task, followed by domain-specific fine-tuning, yields a significant performance boost. Since we combine region proposals with CNNs, we call our method R-CNN: Regions with CNN features. We also present experiments that provide insight into what the network learns, revealing a rich hierarchy of image features. Source code for the complete system is available at http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~rbg/rcnn.


We introduce a human-computer interaction system which collaborates with a user by providing feed-back during user activities. The goal of the system is to help a user complete a high-level activity that has been represented hierarchically. While a user is performing the high-level activity, our system analyzes what sub-events a user has already completed and what sub-events are needed next in order for the user to finish the activity. The representations of human activities are constructed using a previously developed context-free grammar based representation scheme. We focus on a game named 'pentagram game' to illustrate our system. In the experiments, our system showsthe ability to guide the user to complete the 'pentagram game' by providing explicit feedback. The feedback not only contains atomic level instructions but also describes higher-level long-term goals of the composite activities.


In the social computing environment, the complete information about an individual is usually distributed in heterogeneous social networks, which are presented as linked data. Synthetically recognizing and integrating these distributed and heterogeneous data for efficiently information searching is an important but challenging work. In this paper, a dynamic weight (DW)-based similarity calculation is proposed to recognize and integrate similar individuals from distributed data environments. First, each link of an individual is weighted by applying DW. Then, a semantic similarity metric is proposed to combine the DW into similarity calculation. Then, a searching system framework for a similarity-based individual is designed and tested in real-world data sets. Finally, massive experiments are conducted both in benchmark and real-world social community data sets. The results show that our approach can produce a good result in similar individual searching in social networks. In addition, it performs significantly better than the existing state-of-the-art approaches in similar individual searching.


Actual motor competence (MC), perceived motor competence (PMC), and health-related fitness (HRF) exhibit a dynamic and reciprocal relationship in child populations, but little is known about the nature of these relationships in young adulthood. The purpose of the study was to assess these relationships in a sample of college-aged males. A total of 55 participants enrolled in an undergraduate Kinesiology course completed the study. Perceived motor competence (PMC) was assessed with the Physical Self-Perception Profile questionnaire; MC was assessed using maximum throw and kick speed and maximum jump distance; HRF was assessed with a two-minute push-up test, two-minute sit-up test, and the Multistage 20-m Shuttle Run Test. Pearson's bivariate correlations were calculated to assess relationships among PMC total score, MC scores, and HRF scores. Two separate indices were calculated to create composite total MC and total HRF scores used for subsequent analyses. Significant correlations were found between PMC total score, MC index, and HRF index. Multiple linear regressions were used for analyzing predictive measures for HRF and PMC scores. From the two regression models, significance varied among total MC scores, PMC scores, and HRF individual measures. These findings may suggest that relationships among MC, HRF, and PMC strengthen over developmental time in young adult males.


These data represent gas and clinoforms mapped wtihin two Pleistocene channels, Hudson Shelf Valley. These data were mapped based on 15 cubic inch water gun and CHIRP seismic-reflection records collected May, 1996. See Allison, 1997; Lanier, 1999; Lotto, 2000.


Bone morphogenetic protein-2 (BMP-2) is involved in bone formation, organogenesis or pattern formation during development. The expression of BMP-2 is regulated accurately and coordinately with that of other transforming growth factor-beta (TGF-beta) superfamily members. To elucidate the mechanism underlying the regulation of BMP-2 expression, a 6.7 kb SpeI-SalI fragment, from the P1 phage library, encompassing the 5'-flanking region of the human BMP-2 gene, was isolated and sequenced. Transcription start sites were mapped by the 5'-rapid amplification of cDNA ends (RACE) method. It has been found that the human BMP-2 gene contains, largely, two promoter regions surrounded by GC-rich sequences with several Sp1 consensus motifs. The proximal promoter possesses a single start site, whereas several start sites are clustered in the distal promoter region. Neither TATA nor CAAT consensus sequences are found in the proximity of the start sites for either promoter. Interestingly, in no case is the transcription-initiation site common between the human and mouse BMP-2 genes, although the sequence of the BMP-2 gene is well conserved in the promoter region between two species. Transient transfection experiments with the reporter fused with various lengths of the BMP-2 promoter sequence demonstrated that there exist enhancer elements in an 1.1 kb GC-rich fragment covering both promoter regions. It is noteworthy that the enhancer elements are 5'-flanked by a 790 bp strong repressor element that is characterized by numerous AT stretches. This intriguing organization may be amenable to the tight control of the expression of BMP-2 that is essential for development or bone morphogenesis.


Vitamin E was previously reported to reduce calcium oxalate (CaOx) crystal formation. This study explored whether vitamin E deficiency affects intrarenal oxidative stress and accelerates crystal deposition in hyperoxaluria. The control (C) group of rats received a standard diet and drinking water, while the experimental groups received 0.75% ethylene glycol (EG) in drinking water for 42 days. Of the latter, one group received a standard diet (EG group), one received a low-vitamin E (LE) diet (EG+LE group), and the last received an LE diet with vitamin E supplement (4 mg) (EG+LE+E group). The C+LE and C+LE+E groups were the specific controls for the last two experimental groups, respectively. In a separate experiment, EG and EG+LE rats were studied on days 3-42 to examine the temporal relationship between oxidative change and crystal formation. Urinary biochemistry and activity/levels of antioxidative and oxidative enzymes in glomeruli and tubulointerstitial specimens (TIS) were examined. In EG rats, CaOx crystal accumulation was associated with low antioxidative enzyme activity in TIS and with increased oxidative enzyme expression in glomeruli. In the EG+LE group, marked changes in antioxidative and oxidative enzyme levels were seen and correlated with massive CaOx deposition and tubular damage. The increased oxidative stress seen with EG+LE treatment was largely reversed by vitamin E supplementation. A temporal study showed that decrease in antioxidative defense and increased free radical formation in the EG+LE group occurred before crystal deposition. This study shows that low vitamin E disrupts the redox balance and causes cell death, thereby favoring crystal formation.


Ascaridoid species occurring in lizards and previously included in Amplicaecum are relegated to a new genus whose morphological features are defined. In spite of some diversity in relative length of spicules among the specimens examined, this was not correlated with host, location, or with existing species names. Accordingly, one species (R. varani) is recognized, other species names (iguanae, monitor, and mackerrasae) are regarded as synonyms.


The third edition of this bestselling resource provides clear, step-by-step guidance for new and experienced interviewers to help them develop, shape, and reflect on interviewing as a qualitative research process. While proposing a phenomenological approach to in-depth interviewing, the author also includes principles and methods that can be adapted to a range of interviewing approaches. Using concrete examples of interviewing techniques to illustrate the issues under discussion, this classic text helps readers to understand the complexities of interviewing and its connections to broader issues of qualitative research. Equally popular for individual and classroom use, the new Third Edition of "Interviewing as Qualitative Research" features: an introduction to the Institutional Review Board (IRB) process in its historical context, including an expanded discussion of informed consent and its complexities; special attention to the rights of participants in interview research as those rights interact with ethical issues; and, updated references and suggestions for additional reading for a deeper consideration of methodological, ethical, and philosophical issues, including relevant Internet resources.


The use of stress testing for risk monitoring has increased considerably over the last decade. Stress testing – a simulation technique used to assess the strength of a portfolio or a financial institution under unusual economic conditions – emerged as a powerful tool that was originally used in market risk. Its use has subsequently been extended into credit risk. To stress test a credit risk portfolio, practitioners focus on the key parameters that allow the risk of a credit portfolio to be assessed. These parameters, also known as Basel II parameters, are probability of default, loss given default, exposure at default and asset correlation. In this paper, using a time series approach (specifically, an error correction model), we focus on the probability of default parameter that is related to macroeconomic factors. Such an approach involves dealing with the nonstationarity of economic time series and cointegration issues. Hence, when the model is estimated, the probability of default can be simulated by measuring the effects of macroeconomic shocks applied to the model. In turn, these probabilities of default can be used to measure the impact on the probability of default under a given macroeconomic scenario, and then to improve the credit risk monitoring. The results of our study suggest that error correction models are well-suited to macroeconomic stress testing. Indeed, the fitting of the historical probability of default and the results under the stress scenarios considered here are satisfactory.


To meet National Standards recommended by the National Research Council for high school physics, in-service teachers must be integrated into the physics community. They must be empowered by access to resources of the physics community and by sustained support for their professional development. To that end, university and college physics departments must assume an essential role in establishing and maintaining the necessary local infrastructure. Nevertheless, this can be done within their current systems at negligible cost by forming partnerships with local alliances of in-service teachers. Practical details have been worked out, and working partnerships have been established in several localities. This effort should be extended to a national infrastructure for reform of physics teaching in community colleges as well as in high schools. Most teachers are eager to participate in teaching reform.


The nonlinear interaction between an earth dam founded on a compliant soil layer and this "foundation layer" is investigated by analysing a well-documented dam case history. The aim of this study is to (a) examine the effect of a compliant soil foundation layer on the dynamic response of an earth dam and (b) investigate how the presence of a large earth dam affects the dynamic response characteristics of the foundation soil layer. A nonlinear static and dynamic finite element model is used to analyse the behaviour of the dam under different input acceleration records and under two different scenarios: (a) the dam being built on a soft foundation soil layer and (b) built on perfectly rigid rock. It is found that the presence of the dam significantly affects both the amplification and frequency content of the underlying soil layer accelerations. It is also shown that the foundation soil layer needs to be explicitly taken into account when performing a seismic analysis of large earth dams, because it may considerably amplify the seismic motion at the base of the dam.


Purpose: This study was conducted to investigate the prevalence and correlates of depression among community-dwelling older adults (young-old vs old-old) in Korea. Methods: Data on 11,250 older adults aged 65 or above, from the 2008 National Elderly Survey, were analyzed. Results: Prevalence rate for depression was greater in old-old people (47.2%) than young-old people (24.7%). The logistic regression analysis revealed that gender, education, socioeconomic status (SES), living place, spouse, regular exercise, perceived health status, number of chronic disease, activity of daily living (ADL), instrumental activity of daily living (IADL), and cognitive function were significantly associated with depression in the young-old. However, in old-old people, education, SES, living status, religion, regular exercise, perceived health status, number of chronic disease, pain, ADL, IADL, and cognitive function were associated with depression. Conclusion: The findings indicate that there are age differences in prevalence and correlates of depression in older Koreans. Therefore, age differences should be considered in studying and developing interventions for depression in older adults.


Fifty random samples of Kashar cheese were collected from shops in different localities in Erzurum, all contained moulds. Mean count of total surface mould was 3.02 x 10(10)/g cheese and that of inner mould was 3.02 x 10(3)/g cheese. The genera Penicillium, Aspergillus, Mucor, Rhizopus and Geotrichum sp. were isolated from cheese samples. Aflatoxins were not detected in cheese samples. Potassium sorbate inhibited mould growth and sporulation in YES broth. The public health importance and economic significance of fungal contamination, and suggested measure for cheese quality are discussed.


Background
There is limited evidence on how active commuting is associated with health benefits in developing countries. The aim of this study therefore was to investigate the associations between active commuting and markers of adiposity and cardiometabolic risk in the Chilean adult population.

Methods
In total, 5157 participants from the Chilean National Health Survey 2009-10 were included in this cross-sectional study. Active commuting was measured using the Global Physical Activity Questionnaire (GPAQ v2). Body mass index (BMI) and waist circumference (WC) were measured and used to define obesity and central obesity. Type 2 diabetes (T2D) and metabolic syndrome were determined using WHO and updated ATPIII-NCEP criteria, respectively.

Results
The main finding of this study is that a 30 min increase in active commuting is associated with lower odds for BMI > 25.0 kg m-2 (0.93 [95% CI: 0.88-0.98, P = 0.010]). Similarly, the odds for central obesity was 0.87 [0.82-0.92, P < 0.0001]. Similar associations were found for T2D (0.81 [0.75-0.88], P < 0.0001) and metabolic syndrome (OR: 0.86 [0.80-0.92], P < 0.0001).

Conclusion
Our findings show that active commuting is associated with lower adiposity and a healthier metabolic profile including lower risk for obesity, diabetes and metabolic syndrome.


The enset root mealybug, Cataenococcus ensete Williams and Matile-Ferrero (Homoptera: Pseudococcidae) is a pest of national significance attacking enset in south and south-western Ethiopia. Adults and nymphs of several overlapping generations feed on the crops' underground corms and roots, making them hard to reach and thus control. The main means of pest spread is through infested planting material. The objective of this study was to evaluate the effect of a hot water treatment of enset suckers against enset root mealybugs. Small, medium and large-sized infested enset suckers were each exposed to water temperatures of 21, 55, 75 and 95°C for periods of 10, 30, 60 and 300 s. Complete mealybug mortality was obtained for 60 s at 55°C and at 10 and 30 s exposure times at 75 and 95°C without affecting the performance of enset suckers of all size groups. Considering the ease of using boiling water for small-scale enset farmers, immersing suckers for at least 10 and up to 30 s at 95°C is advocated in order to eliminate all enset root mealybugs from enset suckers. The immersion of enset suckers in boiling water for 10 to 30 s can be easily demonstrated, with a much higher envisaged adoption rate by farmers.

 Key words: Enset corm, enset roots, Ethiopia, integrated pest management (IPM), mortality, pseudostem, survival.


We present a real-time, accurate, large-scale monocular visual odometry system for real-world autonomous outdoor driving applications. This dissertation makes four important contributions: First, we demonstrate robust monocular Structure from Motion (SFM) with a series of architectural innovations including a novel epipolar searching module in a parallel thread to replenish 3D points through a series of validation mechanism, a novel combination of local and global bundle adjustment that ensures accuracy, robustness and efficiency and so on. These architectural innovations address the challenge of robust multithreading even for scenes with large motions and rapidly changing imagery. Our design is extensible for three or more parallel CPU threads. The novel epipolar searching module, operating in parallel with other threads to generate new 3D points at every frame, together with the local bundle adjustment in the primary thread, significantly boost robustness and accuracy. Secondly, we demonstrate robust monocular SFM with accuracy unmatched by prior state-of-the-art; over several kilometers, we achieve performance similar to stereo that far exceeds other monocular architectures. The key to this performance is scale drift correction using ground plane estimation that combines cues from sparse features and dense stereo. Our third contribution is a data-driven mechanism for cue combination that learns models from training data to relate observation covariances for each cue to error behavior of underlying variables. During testing, this allows per-frame adaptation of observation covariances based on relative confidences inferred from visual data. Finally, we present a framework for highly accurate 3D localization of objects like cars and a lane detection system based on our SFM poses and ground planes. Our accurate ground plane and SFM poses easily benefit 3D localization frameworks and vision-based lane detection for those applications, as demonstrated by our experiments. Our baseline SFM system is optimized to output pose within 50 ms in the worst case, while average case operation is over 30 fps. Evaluations are presented on the challenging KITTI dataset for autonomous driving, where we achieve better rotation and translation accuracy than other state-of-the-art systems


The presence of large palaeo-landslides can hinder the construction of railway lines if they cause an alteration of the natural balance of the slope, significantly increasing the cost of the project. During the construction works in a section of the Madrid–Asturias high-speed railway line (Spain), a large-scale hillside instability affected 460 m of the section. The ground movement began 10 months after the start of the excavations and remained active throughout the observation period (2008–2010). Data provided by fieldwork, boreholes and instrumental monitoring have allowed the investigation of the geological units involved, together with the geometry and the kinematics of the mass movement. This landslide involves a Paleozoic basement with an estimated volume of 4 400 000 m3. It shows low displacement rates (<45 mm a−1) and was accommodated on a single surface of rupture, which reaches more than 60 m depth. The kinematics is favoured by structural and lithological conditions, there being a strong rheological contrast in the lower part of the mobilized ground. This movement is linked to a large palaeo-landslide that was partially reactivated when excavations undermined the lower slopes of the hillside. Technical solutions for the stabilization have already caused an additional cost of 17% over the initial budget.


High-density polyethylene (HDPE) pipe and piping components have been used successfully and safely for natural gas distribution around the world for several decades. The primary concerns for a 50-year life for buried HDPE piping involves designing against three primary failure modes—ductile fracture, rapid crack propagation (RCP), and slow crack growth (SCG) under sustained pressure loading. Although, design methodologies for preventing ductile fracture and RCP are well established, SCG remains to be a limiting failure mode in determining useful service life of HDPE piping as it may occur under sustained pressure and temperature. Although considerable amount of research has been conducted over the last two decades, SCG still remains less well understood than other failure modes. A critical evaluation of various test methodologies available to determine the SCG resistance of HDPE resins was conducted using finite element analysis (FEA) of various widely used laboratory test specimens. While there exist extensive information on the test methodologies and the applicability of each of the SCG testing methods, there is a growing concern as to whether any/all of these SCG tests give the same information akin to the industrial pipe application, particularly so when conflicting messages are obtained from time to failure predictions from two different SCG tests. While notched-pipe test (NPT) proves to be a direct approach to assess SCG resistance of the polyethylene (PE) pipe with the use of temperature as a test accelerating factor; in the case of newer grade PE resins, the failure time of NPT can still be considerably large (∼5000 to 10,000 h). For this reason, some of the other coupon SCG tests are focus of recent investigations and especially sought after for rapid ranking/assessment of resins and understanding the manufactured HDPE pipe performance. In this study, FEA was conducted to facilitate a direct comparison of leading SCG test methods, through determination of both the stress intensity factor, KI, and existing constraint factors in various widely used specimen geometries. These results are then compared to pipe specimen with an outer diameter (OD) or inner diameter (ID) surface notch. Since, constraint can have a significant role in SCG initiation, transverse/constraint stress (T-stress), and biaxiality ratios (β), these were compared along the crack fronts to arrive at definitive reasons for the smaller failure times observed when testing some of the SCG test specimens, and also reasons for SCG mode of failure observed even under large applied loads (large KI compared to that in a notched pipe) when testing some of the SCG test specimens. The use of stress intensity factor, KI, along with the T-stress and biaxiality ratio (β), was found to provide a complete picture on the broad spectrum of failure times observed from various SCG test specimens, and rationale for choosing a SCG test specimen when evaluating HDPE pipe or resins.


Filter-paper residual toxicities of some insecticides used extensively in China were determined during 1994 using newly hatched (within 30 min) larvae of four Pectinophora gossypiella (Saunders) strains. The strains were field collections collected in the Yangtze River cotton-belt areas. Compared with the susceptible laboratory strain from Qunli (Lishui County, Jiangsu province), the four field strains from Anqing (Anhui province), Jiangling (Hubei province), Cixi(Zhejiang province) and Tongzhou(Jiangsu province) had developed 185-, 6·7-, 698- and 249-fold resistance, respectively, to deltamethrin. Cixi and Tongzhou field strains had also developed 103- and 94-fold resistance to fenvalerate, and 10- and 3·6- fold resistance to parathion-methyl. Percentage of survivors at diagnostic dosage for deltamethrin showed that the strains from Anqing, Jiangling, Cixi and Tongzhou had 87·2, 18·3, 90·1 and 74·6% resistant individuals respectively. Cixi and Tongzhou field strains had 88·9 and 65·3% resistant individuals after application of parathion-methyl, which was consistent with the corresponding resistance ratios. Studies of the effect of synergists piperonyl butoxide (PBO), triphenyl phosphate (TPP) with deltamethrin and parathion-methyl in Cixi, Anqing and Tongzhou field strains suggested that metabolic resistance mechanisms such as carboxylesterases (CarE) and mixed function oxygenases (MFO) were involved in parathion-methyl resistance, but not in deltamethrin resistance. © 1997 SCI.


Seasonal predictions have a great socioeconomic potential if they are reliable and skillful. In this study, we assess the prediction performance of SEAS5, version 5 of the seasonal prediction system of the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF), over South America against homogenized station data. For temperature, we find the highest prediction performances in the tropics during austral summer, where the probability that the predictions correctly discriminate different observed outcomes is 70%. In regions lying to the east of the Andes, the predictions of maximum and minimum temperature still exhibit considerable performance, while farther to the south in Chile and Argentina the temperature prediction performance is low. Generally, the prediction performance of minimum temperature is slightly lower than for maximum temperature. The prediction performance of precipitation is generally lower and spatially and temporally more variable than for temperature. The highest prediction performance is observed at the coast and over the highlands of Colombia and Ecuador, over the northeastern part of Brazil, and over an isolated region to the north of Uruguay during DJF. In general, Niño-3.4 has a strong influence on both air temperature and precipitation in the regions where ECMWF SEAS5 shows high performance, in some regions through teleconnections (e.g., to the north of Uruguay). However, we show that SEAS5 outperforms a simple empirical prediction based on Niño-3.4 in most regions where the prediction performance of the dynamical model is high, thereby supporting the potential benefit of using a dynamical model instead of statistical relationships for predictions at the seasonal scale.


In the first part, the theory of bounded symmetric domains is presented along two main approaches : as special cases of Riemannian symmetric spaces of the noncompact type on one hand, as unit balls in positive Hermitian Jordan triple systems on the other hand. In the second part, an invariant for triples in the Shilov boundary of such a domain is constructed. It generalizes an invariant constructed by E. Cartan for the unit sphere in C 2 and also the triple Maslov index on the Lagrangian manifold.


Highly efficient synthesis of multifunctional initiators based on cyclodextrin (CD) cores was achieved by a thiol–ene photoclick strategy. Different from existing approaches, the method reported here uses a thiol containing an ATRP initiating moiety to enable rapid and complete multivalent functionalization of the primary and secondary faces of α-, β-, and γ-CDs. The photoclick CD cores were attained in high yield through simple purification. They were successfully employed in a "core-first" approach to prepare well-defined multiarm star polymers via ATRP.


Press hardening is widely employed to produce automotive structural and safety components from advanced high-strength steels. This process depends on friction between the forming tools and the work piece. Wear of the forming tools affects the dimensional accuracy of produced components and reduces their service life. It is therefore desirable to reduce wear of forming tools for press hardening applications. One way to achieve this is by applying hard physical vapour deposited (PVD) coatings on the tool. In this work, the tribological behaviour of PVD coated tool-work piece material pairs has been studied at elevated temperatures in an experimental set-up simulating the tribological conditions in press hardening. Four different PVD coatings deposited on tool steel and uncoated tools as reference were studied during sliding against uncoated and Al-Si coated 22MnB5 steel. Results show that uncoated tools exhibited the lowest coefficient of friction when sliding against uncoated 22MnB5 steel. A CrWN coating initially showed low coefficient of friction but it increased with increasing sliding distance. A TiAlN coating and one of two AlCrN coatings showed similar frictional behaviour when sliding against uncoated 22MnB5 steel. During sliding against uncoated 22MnB5 steel, adhesive wear has been found to be the dominant wear mechanism. Adhesive wear was considerably reduced in the case of hard PVD coated tools in comparison to that of uncoated tools. During sliding against Al-Si coated 22MnB5 steel, no clear advantage in terms of friction behaviour of uncoated or PVD coated tools was observed. However, the transfer of Al-Si coating material from the work piece to the tools was significantly reduced for PVD coated tools. Frictional instabilities in all cases involving Al-Si coated work piece material further confirmed the occurrence of adhesive material transfer.


The present study explores the lived experiences of Chinese graduate students at a Southwestern University in order to find out how they experience race in daily life, what their interpretations of the racial experience are and how do racialized experiences shape their perceptions of life chances. The results indicate that the racialization process plays an important role in Chinese students9 life through their lived experiences. Most Chinese students have noticed race and some of them have experienced racial discrimination. However, Chinese students still hold up the importance of education and believe that education will blunt the racial edge


Confusion and controversy continues over how much oxygen to give patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) presenting with breathlessness. This article reviews the published literature dealing with this topic, identifies gaps in the debate that have not been addressed and makes recommendations for future research needed to resolve this issue. Based on this review guidelines for oxygen therapy, based on the best evidence currently available, are then constructed and presented in a subsequent issue.

### METHODS

Medline from 1966 to 2000 was searched for articles on oxygen therapy and carbon dioxide retention. In addition, colleagues in chest medicine, emergency medicine and intensive care medicine identified reports presented at recent scientific research meetings. As much of the literature on oxygen therapy in COPD was published before 1966, all references made in the literature obtained were examined. Any reports subsequently felt to be relevant, were then also obtained and analysed until it was felt that a complete search had been made.

### REVIEW

It is useful to consider the published literature in the light of a series of clinically relevant questions:

#### What are the perceived dangers of hypoxia and at what Pao2 does it become dangerous?

Significant hypoxia for more than four to six minutes will cause sudden cardiorespiratory arrest and irreversible damage to the brain and other vital organs. However, it is not known how much hypoxia is required to cause this.

In 1908, Boycott and Haldane showed that a Pao2 below 45 mm Hg resulted in mental difficulties and memory loss.1 Later it was found that consciousness was lost at a Pao2 of about 30 mm Hg.2,3 Hutchison et al , in 1964, commented on this but also noted that acclimatisation to hypoxia is possible, most notably in patients with COPD.4 Subsequent studies supported this finding and recorded very low Pao2 levels when these patients have acute exacerbations …


This study presents bi input-extended Kalman filter (BI-EKF) based speed-sensorless direct torque control (DTC) of induction motors (IMs). For this aim, all states required for the speed-sensorless control system as well as commonly known parameter uncertainties related to stator resistance Rs, rotor resistance R′r, and load torque tL including also viscous friction term have been estimated by using BI-EKF for a wide speed range. BI-EKF uses a single EKF algorithm with consecutive operation of two inputs obtained from two extended IM models developed for the simultaneous estimation of R′r and Rs; thus, it has an advantage over previous EKF based studies utilizing two separate EKF algorithms for the same purpose. By assuming that stator phase voltages and currents are available, the proposed control system has been tested with the instantaneous step and/or linear variations of the velocity reference, tL, Rs, and R′r in simulations. In spite of those challenging variations, the control system performs quite well.


The preventive effect of alpha-hydroxydimethyl-gamma-aminopropylidene bis-phosphonate was investigated histomorphometrically. The agent was injected subcutaneously to rats before hypokinesia at a dose of 5 mg/kg or during 35-day hypokinesia at a dose of 0.005 or 0.01 mg/kg daily. Regardless of the treatment protocol, the agent prevented osteoporosis and did not affect the epiphyseal growth plate. The agent modified significantly the bone cell count: osteoblasts decreased and osteoclasts increased. It is concluded that when compared to xydiphone (hydroxyethylidene bis-phosphoric acid), the agent proves several hundred times more effective. It is assumed that the agent modifies the relation between bone formation and bone resorption. Its osteotropic effect manifests as inhibition of bone resorption.


This paper proposes the use of shorter wavelengths and monolithic integration for chip-to-chip and on-chip optical communication. The promise of monolithic detectors for high-speed interconnection is demonstrated through experimental measurements and matching simulations. Responsivities >0.06 A/W and transit-time-limited response can be expected in the blue from planar p-i-n silicon-on-insulator (SOI) detectors.


In this study it was aimed to determine pre-service primary teachers' knowledge structures of fraction through problem posing activities. A total of 90 pre-service primary teachers participated in this study. A problem posing test consisting of two questions was used and the participants were asked to generate as many as problems based on the following conditions: i) using both 1/2 and 3/4 fractions, and ii) using either 1/2 or 3/4 fractions. Data were analyzed using both semantic and constant comperative analysis techniques. The results of the study showed that there was substantial diversity in the problems posed by pre-service primary teachers. Moreover, participants preferred to pose story and symbolic equations in first task and story equation in second task. Furthermore, the participants faced some issues such as not realizing 1/2 + 3/4 situation is more than 1, missing data, choosing wrong number, using different fractions and posing non-fraction problem.


Activation of delta-opioid receptors in NG108-15 cells releases Ca2+ from an intracellular store through activation of a pertussis toxin-sensitive G protein. We tested the hypothesis that activation of delta-opioid receptors mobilizes inositol 1,4,5-trisphosphate (IP(3))-sensitive Ca2+ stores via liberation of Gbetagamma. Fura-2-based digital imaging was used to study the mechanism of opioid-induced increases in [Ca2+](i) in NG108-15 cells. Exposure to D-Ala(2)-D-Leu(5) enkephalin (100 nM) for 90 s induced increases in [Ca2+](i) that were blocked by microinjection of the IP(3) receptor antagonist heparin (pipette concentration = 100 mg/ml) but not by sham injection. Microinjection of a peptide that binds Gbetagamma (QEHA, 1 mM) decreased the D-Ala(2)-D-Leu(5) enkephalin-evoked response. Microinjection of an inactive peptide (SKEE, 1 mM) that does not bind to Gbetagamma failed to inhibit the opioid-induced increase in [Ca2+](i). Microinjection of a peptide (QLKK, 15 mM) that binds to free Galpha(q) blocked the increase evoked by 3 nM bradykinin, but microinjection of an inactive peptide (ADRK, 15 mM) did not. Microinjection of QLKK did not significantly affect the opioid-induced increase in [Ca2+](i). Collectively, these data demonstrate that activation of delta-opioid receptors induces the release of Ca2+ from IP(3)-sensitive stores in NG108-15 cells through activation of the betagamma subunits of inhibitory G proteins.


Heightened noradrenergic reactivity may be a contributing factor in the pathophysiology of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Prazosin is an α1-adrenoceptor antagonist commonly used as an antihypertensive agent. Because α1-adrenergic activity has been associated with fear and startle responses, a drug that blocks central α1-adrenergic activity may be useful in the treatment of PTSD symptoms. An outpatient who had been exposed to civilian trauma and had subsequent chronic refractory PTSD was thus prescribed prazosin. The marked reduction in PTSD symptoms, particularly sleep and nightmares, prompted the following open-label feasibility trial. Five outpatients with non–combatrelated PTSD were consecutively identified and received prazosin in a 6-week open-label trial. In each case, the prazosin doses were slowly increased until optimal benefit was achieved. Change was assessed with the Clinician-Administered PTSD Scale for DSM-IV, One Week Symptom Version (CAPS-SX), the Clinical Global Impression of Change Scale (CGIC), and the Clinical Impression of Change-Nightmares (CIC-Nightmares) score. All five patients experienced moderate to marked improvement on the CGIC. The CAPS-SX PTSD nightmare and sleep PTSD categories showed at least a four-point reduction of those symptoms. All patients reported at least moderate improvement on the CIC-Nightmare score. Optimal doses of prazosin ranged from 1 to 4 mg/day. The drug was reasonably tolerated, and there were no drug discontinuations. These preliminary findings provide a rationale for blind placebo-controlled efficacy trials of the α1 antagonist prazosin for PTSD.


Lateral root initiation takes place deep within the parental root, requiring new primordia to break through the overlying tissues before they emerge into the soil. Lateral root emergence has been well described at the cellular level but, until recently, the molecular mechanisms involved were unclear. Scientists in the 19th and 20th centuries hypothesized that the cell wall of the overlying tissues was modified by enzymes released by cells within the primordium. Recent studies in the model plant Arabidopsis thaliana revealed the existence of a complex transcellular signalling network regulated by auxin that controls cell wall remodelling in cells overlying lateral root primordia. In the first part of this review, early observations on the cell biology of lateral root formation and emergence are summarized, and in the following two sections recent observations in Arabidopsis that led to the identification of the molecular mechanism regulating lateral root emergence are described.


Automatic authorship verification is known to be a challenging machine learning task. In this paper, we examine the efficacy of an enhanced common n-gram profile-based approach to assist educational institutions to validate students' essays and assignments through their writing styles. We investigated the impact that essays with different cognitive load requirements have in students' writing styles, which may or may not impact authorship verification methods. A total of 46 undergraduate students completed six essays in a laboratory study. Although results showed small and mixed effects of the tasks differing in cognitive load on the different writing product metrics, students' essays and assignments texts contained features that remained stable across essays requiring different levels of cognitive load. These results suggest that our approach could be successfully used in authorship verification, potentially helping to address issues related to academic integrity in higher education settings.


A problem concerning the perturbation of roots of a system of homogeneous algebraic equations is investigated. The question of conservation and decomposition of a multiple root into simple roots are discussed. The main theorem on the conservation of the number of roots of a deformed (not necessarily homogeneous) algebraic system is proved by making use of a homotopy connecting initial roots of the given system and roots of a perturbed system. Hereby we give an estimate on the size of perturbation that does not affect the number of roots. Further on we state the existence of a slightly deformed system that has the same number of real zeros as the original system in taking the multiplicities into account. We give also a result about the decomposition of multiple real roots into simple real roots.


The question of what, if anything, limits the length of food chains has been problematic ever since Elton originally asked it decades ago. Here, we reexamine the major evidence for one of the chief hypotheses: dynamical constraints. Reportedly, food chain stability decreases as chain length increases. However, the separate roles of self-damping (where a species shows density dependence independent of the densities of other species in the food chain model) and chain length have not been adequately determined. We examined food webs of varying chain length while controlling for self-damping. In contrast to the prevailing hypothesis, we find a weak but significant increase in stability in longer chains when we hold constant the number of species and the number of self-damping terms. Thus, the conclusion that longer food chains are more dynamically fragile, thereby setting an upper limit to food chain length, has at best very limited theoretical support. Our results indicate that community stability should ten...


An efficient matrix solver is critical to the analytical placement. As the size of the matrix becomes huge, the multilevel methods turn out to be more efficient and more scalable. Algebraic Multigrid (AMG) is a multilevel technique to speedup the iterative matrix solver in K. Stuben (1999). We apply the algebraic multigrid method to solve the linear equations that arise from the analytical placement. A layout based clustering scheme is put forward to generate coarsening levels for the multigrid method. The experimental results show that the algebraic multigrid solver is promising for analytical placement.


There is substantial evidence to suggest that parenting plays a significant role in children's development. The Welsh Government (WG) has recognised that early intervention programmes, designed to enhance parenting skills, can address social inequalities and reduce poor child outcomes. The Incredible Years (IY) series has strong evidence for improving parent and child outcomes with children from three to eight years. Consequently, the Incredible Years Parent-Toddler Programme (IYPTP) was one of five parent programmes selected for use in Flying Start areas in Wales in 2007 as part of the WG Flying Start Initiative. The take up of the IYPTP by a significant number of Authorities provided the first opportunity to assess the effectiveness of the 12-week programme in a rigorous randomised controlled trial (RCT). Videotaped observations of parents and children interacting during free-play were collected during the main trial and consequently the thesis is comprised of a number of sub-studies resulting from this data.
The aims and specific objectives of the thesis were to:
1. Identify the strength of the relationship between socioeconomic disadvantage and poor parenting behaviours for a sample of parents living in targeted Flying Start areas.
2. Develop a reliable observational tool to measure parental language in Wales.
3. Evaluate the efficacy of using a behaviour based parenting programmes to enhance parental language.
The observational data provided seven categories of parental language for assessment, five complex and two simple. Socioeconomic disadvantage was strongly associated with reductions in simple quantifications of parental speech and home stimulation measures. Two or more risks indicated a threshold for poor outcome. Simple measures of parental speech were also fairly stable over time and moderately associated with child language outcomes six months later. In contrast, complex measures were less stable over the short-term, and relations with socioeconomic disadvantage and child language outcomes were weak. Results generated from the efficacy study indicated that the IYPTP, a behaviour based parent programme, provides some benefit to two complex measures of parental language six-months post intervention for a sample of parents living in disadvantaged areas in Wales. Whilst these findings should be considered in line with the methodological limitations of the study the thesis does conclude that parenting programmes designed to enhance parenting behaviours may not be as beneficial to parental language than those that contain a stronger component of language coaching.


The pattern of antimicrobial resistance in Neisseria gonorrhoeae is depressingly predictable. An antibiotic is chosen and used for a few years but resistance develops, so the dose is increased to maintain efficacy before the drug finally fails irrevocably. For penicillin, this process took a number of decades but with the subsequent use of tetracyclines, macrolides and fluoroquinolones, the cycle has shortened, and the utility of oral cephalosporins is now threatened within a few short years of their introduction as preferred therapy in many countries.1

Following the emergence of N gonorrhoeae strains with decreased susceptibility to oral cephalosporins, clinical treatment failures soon appeared in Japan and Hong Kong;2–4 more recently, similar outcomes have reported from other regions of the world, including Europe. There still exists some debate as to the minimum inhibitory concentration (MIC) breakpoint for oral cephalosporins that correlates with clinical failure. However, data from Deguchi et al suggest that clinical failures may occur with MICs of 0.125 mg/l or higher.3 Pharmacodynamic modelling with Monte Carlo simulations highlighted the fact that, for reliable efficacy, cephalosporins require a free drug level above the MIC for 20–24 h (compared to 7–10 h in the case of penicillin G).5 These analyses predicted that failures with standard doses of cefixime (400 mg) and ceftriaxone (250 mg) become likely around MICs of 0.125 mg/l and 0.25 mg/l respectively. The clinical practice of treating patients with gonorrhoea with an additional agent for presumptive Chlamydia trachomatis infection—particularly azithromycin and, to a lesser extent, doxycycline—may have prevented the appearance of treatment failures in those individuals infected with N gonorrhoeae strains possessing high cephalosporin MICs.

The mechanism of resistance to oral cephalosporins involves changes in the structure and function of a number of key proteins, notably the penA -encoded penicillin binding protein …


Abstract The process of mixing-zone dolomitization has received enough criticism in recent years to suggest that it no longer be considered viable for making large amounts of dolomite. This study proposes an alternative model that still requires fluid mixing. In this model, ascending flow of freshwater mixes with evaporated seawater, leading to extensive dolomitization. The new model is constrained by data from upper Miocene strata of southeast Spain, where dolomite yields fluid-inclusion Tm-ice data that range from −0.2 to −2.3 °C, indicating precipitation from fluids of 4 to 43 ppt seawater salt equivalent, thus confirming fluid mixing. The δ13C and δ18O of the dolomite ranges from −4.5 to +3.0‰ VPDB and +0.9 to +6.0‰ VPDB, respectively, and displays positive covariance. Although such positive covariation may represent fluid mixing, the mixing of two dolomites during sampling, or an originally homogeneous dolomite that has been partially altered (recrystallized), fluid-inclusion data and cathodoluminescence petrography disprove the mixture during sampling and partial-alteration hypotheses. Modeling of the most positive dolomite δ18O values indicates an evaporated seawater endmember of 43 ppt salinity, identical to that of the most saline fluid inclusions. Because paleotopography is preserved in the study area, the spatial variation in dolomite geochemistry can be mapped to evaluate if it is consistent with the hydrogeology of a typical mixing-zone model or an alternative. The data reveal that both downdip and updip areas were influenced by high-salinity and low-salinity fluid endmembers, and that stratigraphically lower units have more depleted δ13C and δ18O than upper units. These results are consistent with a model of upward flow of freshwater that provides the mechanism of mixing of freshwater and evaporated seawater. Upward flow and degassing of CO2 from loss of pressure contributed to nearly platform-wide dolomitization in this succession, and may have analogs in other ancient successions.


This article explores the history of the Foundation for Cultural Cooperation between the Netherlands, Suriname, and the Netherlands Antilles (Sticusa), asking how cultural institutions partook in the process of decolonization. Analyzing the perspectives of Sticusa collaborators and critics in the Caribbean, I argue that cultural actors saw decolonization as an opportunity to reorient cultures toward an emergent world order. In this process, they envisioned a range of horizons, from closer integration with Europe to enhanced affinity with the broader Americas. By the 1970s, however, these horizons narrowed to the attainment of national sovereignty, and Sticusa's cultural experiment ended as a result.


The age-dependent peculiarities of the acid-base balance at rest and with standard loads were studied in 466 rats. It was found that with age the pH value of blood decreases, the tension of the carbonic acid increases, but the values of BB, BE, SB, and AB do not undergo any significant changes. With loads, old animals showed more profound changes in the system and these changes were of decompensated character. The maximal changes in young animals were registered 1.5 hours after loading, in old rats--3 hours after. The normalization of the shifts in old rats occurred much more slowly than in young animals, and it does not reached the initial value by 24 hours after loading. The analysis of the data obtained shows that with aging the reserve potentialities of the organism's mechanisms of the acid-base balance regulation greatly decrease, which under certain conditions results in disturbance of the given system compensation, thus exerting a negative effect on the body vital processes.


Many cochlear implant (CI) users achieve excellent speech understanding in acoustically quiet conditions but most perform poorly in the presence of background noise. An important contributor to this poor speech-in-noise performance is the limited transmission of low-frequency sound information through CIs. Recent work has suggested that tactile presentation of this low-frequency sound information could be used to improve speech-in-noise performance for CI users. Building on this work, we investigated whether vibro-tactile stimulation can improve speech intelligibility in multi-talker noise. The signal used for tactile stimulation was derived from the speech-in-noise using a computationally inexpensive algorithm. Eight normal-hearing participants listened to CI simulated speech-in-noise both with and without concurrent tactile stimulation of their fingertip. Participants' speech recognition performance was assessed before and after a training regime, which took place over 3 consecutive days and totaled around 30 min of exposure to CI-simulated speech-in-noise with concurrent tactile stimulation. Tactile stimulation was found to improve the intelligibility of speech in multi-talker noise, and this improvement was found to increase in size after training. Presentation of such tactile stimulation could be achieved by a compact, portable device and offer an inexpensive and noninvasive means for improving speech-in-noise performance in CI users.


I was recently invited by the South African Society for Obstetricians and Gynaecologists (SASOG) to give a lecture at their mini symposium on the implications of the Consumer Protection Act (68 of 2008 (CPA)) on the healthcare practitioner. Being very familiar with the drastic implications the no-fault regime of the CPA has on every service provider and product supplier, I still left the symposium being shocked by the fear instilled in the medical profession by the CPA and medical negligence litigation in general.