Intriguing advances have been made in recent years in identifying the mechanisms and consequences of genetic diversity and immune defects of pattern recognition receptors in innate immunity. The subject of this thesis is the interplay between the gene, protein and disease for two of these receptors: mannose-binding lectin (MBL) and L-ficolin. By studying genotypes, protein levels and functionality in a cohort of hospitalized patients with community-acquired pneumonia and in an outbreak of legionellosis, we aimed to obtain more insight into the reciprocal effect of these proteins and pneumonia on each other, in the light of the genetic background of the patients. Both MBL and L-ficolin are part of the complement system of innate immunity, sharing similarities in structure and function. Both proteins have trimeric collagen-like subunits assembled into higher order oligomers, held together by disulfide bridges at the cysteine-rich N-terminal domain. The multimeric structure exposes multiple ligand-binding C-terminal heads: carbohydrate-recognition domains for MBL and fibrinogen-like domains for L-ficolin. This enables the binding of repeating molecular patterns on pathogens with high avidity, resulting in complement activation and in opsonization for phagocytosis. Multiple genetic polymorphisms in the gene encoding MBL lead to impaired oligomerization, resulting in deficiency of functional MBL. The gene encoding L-ficolin revealed to be highly polymorphic as well, with two single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) leading to an altered substrate binding affinity of the protein. Both genes harbor promoter SNPs that influence plasma protein levels. MBL deficiency has been associated with an increased risk in infection. Conflicting results have been published on the effect of MBL deficiency on pneumococcal infections. In our cohort of community-acquired pneumonia, we did not find an association between MBL genotypes and pneumococcal infection. MBL-sufficient genotypes were more frequently found in a small group of patients with atypical pneumonia. In a large outbreak of legionellosis at a Dutch flower show, MBL genotypes were not a risk factor for legionellosis. However, patients with legionellosis displayed deficient MBL-mediated complement activation even with MBL-sufficient genotypes. Together, these genotypical and functional data suggest that the observed deficiency of lectin pathway activation is an effect of legionellosis rather than a risk factor for acquiring it. MBL and L-ficolin both revealed to act as acute-phase reactants in community-acquired pneumonia. However, the effect of genetic variants on this response differed between the two proteins. With MBL, the acute phase responsiveness was highly dependent upon the genotype. With L-ficolin, the genotype only determined variations in the protein levels, not in the acute-phase responsiveness itself. At the first glance MBL and L-ficolin look very much alike, with similar protein domains, multimeric structure, pattern recognition and complement activating properties. Yet the small differences in exactly these characteristics may give rise to essential differences in biological function, and this might have driven the different evolutionary strategies in shaping polymorphisms of the genes. In their similarities and differences, MBL and L-ficolin are an excellent example of one of nature's successful strategies: creating necessary redundancy, without unnecessary abundance


Bibliometric data are frequently used to study the effects of events, such as the honoring of a scholar with an award, and to investigate changes of citation impact over time. However, the number of yearly citations depends upon time for multiple reasons: a) general time trends in citation data, b) changing coverage of databases, c) individual citation life‐cycles, and d) selection on citation impact. Hence, it is often ill‐advised to simply compare the average number of citations before and after an event to estimate its causal effect. Using a recent publication in this journal on the potential citation chain reaction of a Nobel Prize, we demonstrate that a simple pre‐post comparison can lead to biased and misleading results. We propose using matched control groups to improve causal inference and illustrate that the inclusion of a tailor‐made synthetic control group in the statistical analysis helps to avoid methodological artifacts. Our results suggest that there is neither a Nobel Prize effect as regards citation impact of the Nobel laureate under investigation nor a related chain reaction in the citation network, as suggested in the original study. Finally, we explain that these methodological recommendations extend far beyond the study of Nobel Prize effects in citation data.


Background: The study of neuromuscular blocking agents (NMBAs) in the management of acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) has provided conflicting results in terms of their effect on mortality. Objectives: The main purpose of this study was to evaluate mortality in ARDS patients who underwent NMBA. Methods: A retrospective secondary analysis of 4200 patients with ARDS was collected from two academic medical centers, Tehran, Iran. This study was performed to assess the impact of NMBAs use in ARDS patients with different subgroups including mild and moderate-to-severe ARDS, age more and less than 65 years, having medical turnover vs. not-having, and high acute nursing care vs. moderate to low nursing care. Results: Intensive care unit (ICU) mortality has occurred in 1169 (27.8%) participants. The mortality rate was 28.6% and 27.5% in patients with mild and moderate-to-severe ARDS, respectively. In the subjects without medical turnover, the moderate dose of NMBAs significantly reduces the mortality of patients (P=0.044). In patients who need high acute nursing care, increasing the NMBAs dose significantly reduces patients' mortality (P=0.010). In addition, increasing the NMBAs doses significantly reduces ICU length of stay (LOS). Conclusion: This study provides evidence that the administration of different doses of NMBAs had no effect on patients' mortality with mild or moderate-to-severe ARDS. However, higher doses of NMBAs than low doses increased the risk of mortality in patients over 80 years and can reduce the risk of death in patients less than 55 years.


This article explores the creation of the Over 60 Health Clinic in Berkeley, California, during the mid-1970s. Developed by a local network of the activist group Gray Panthers, the clinic offered screening and preventive care to elderly clients and was intended to serve as a catalyst for broader health reform. Drawing on the proposals, contracts, and reports that structured the clinic's early operations, the article traces the clinic's efforts to imagine new modes of care, even within the constraints of collaboration with bureaucratic public agencies. In so doing, the East Bay Gray Panthers articulated a distinct understanding of "healthy aging" as relational and contingent on the maintenance of existing intergenerational communities.


In this paper, we present a combined photometric, spectroscopic, and orbital period study of three early-type eclipsing binary systems: XZ Aql, UX Her, and AT Peg. As a result, we have derived the absolute parameters of their components and, on that basis, we discuss their evolutionary states. Furthermore, we compare their parameters with those of other binary systems and with theoretical models. An analysis of all available up-to-date times of minima indicated that all three systems studied here show cyclic orbital changes; their origin is discussed in detail. Finally, we performed a frequency analysis for possible pulsational behavior, and as a result we suggest that XZ Aql hosts a δ Scuti component.


In this paper, the abilities of recovery and regeneration for aged asphalt of a new type of asphalt pavement maintenance agent are studied. The agent is applied in the construction of test section of Yuhe Road, and the pavement performances before and after the construction are compared. The test indicates that after the maintenance agent is added into aged asphalt, the penetration and ductility are effectively improved, the softening point is lowered. When the penetration depth of agent reaches 6 mm,the texture depth , friction coefficient and antiskid value are improved to some extent ,the water permeability coefficient is reduced, and the appearance of pavement is improved as well,The paper provided reference for the applying curing agent of asphalt pavement to the preventive maintenance system.


This paper demonstrates the use of electrical test structures patterned on Silicon-On-Insulator (SOI) material to evaluate the performance of the plasma etching process. Electrical characterization is performed by capacitance and resistance measurements. The measurements are used to compare the etch results of slightly varied plasma etch processes. Subtle differences in submicron trench profiles are very difficult to distinguish and quantify when using scanning electron microscopy (SEM). The electrical measurements can reveal these differences which facilitates the etch process development. Experimental results are presented and compared to cross-sectional SEM analysis. The goal of the development of test structures presented here is to establish a fast, low cost, and non-destructive method to characterize and optimize deep trench etching process cycles needed in the fabrication of micromachined devices.


The newly synthesized cadmium chalcogenide ternary cluster is composed by six [S3Se]2− tetrahedron units, coordinated with six Cd2+ cations. The potential cavity, calculated by the PLATON program, occupied 38.1% of crystal cell volume. The charge of unit cell is neutral. Therefore, the unit cell formula is determinate as [Cd6S18Se6]. Two strong solid-state luminescence peaks, centered at 450 nm and 498 nm, were observed from the ternary [Cd6S18Se6] clusters by λ = 370 nm radiation. The 450 nm peak is due to the porosity property of cadmium chalcogenide clusters. However, the 498 nm peak has not been reported for the cadmium chalcogenide clusters before. In this study, we demonstrate that the 498 nm peak is attributed to the embedded Se atoms confined in the [S3Se]2− unit of [Cd6S18Se6] cluster. The luminescent output from the ternary [Cd8S18Se6] cluster is stable in room temperature for more than 6 months.


Objective. Optic nerve's intraneural stimulation is an emerging neuroprosthetic approach to provide artificial vision to totally blind patients. An open question is the possibility to evoke individual non-overlapping phosphenes via selective intraneural optic nerve stimulation. To begin answering this question, first, we aim at showing in preclinical experiments with animals that each intraneural electrode could evoke a distinguishable activity pattern in the primary visual cortex. Approach. We performed both patterned visual stimulation and patterned electrical stimulation in healthy rabbits while recording evoked cortical activity with an electrocorticogram array in the primary visual cortex. Electrical stimulation was delivered to the optic nerve with the intraneural array OpticSELINE. We used a support vector machine algorithm paired to a linear regression model to classify cortical responses originating from visual stimuli located in different portions of the visual field and electrical stimuli from the different electrodes of the OpticSELINE. Main results. Cortical activity induced by visual and electrical stimulation could be classified with nearly 100% accuracy relative to the specific location in the visual field or electrode in the array from which it originated. For visual stimulation, the accuracy increased with the separation of the stimuli and reached 100% for separation higher than 7°. For electrical stimulation, at low current amplitudes, the accuracy increased with the distance between electrodes, while at higher current amplitudes, the accuracy was nearly 100% already for the shortest separation. Significance. Optic nerve's intraneural stimulation with the OpticSELINE induced discernible cortical activity patterns. These results represent a necessary condition for an optic nerve prosthesis to deliver vision with non-overlapping phosphene. However, clinical investigations will be required to assess the translation of these results into perceptual phenomena.


Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to explore how the product type (hedonic product and utilitarian product) and reward type (hedonic gift and utilitarian gift) influence customer referral likelihood in referral reward program.

Design/methodology/approach
The authors test the effect of the product type and reward type on referral likelihood through two studies. Study 1 produces a 2 (product type: hedonic product and utilitarian product) × 2 (reward type: hedonic gift and utilitarian gift) factorial design to test H1, H2 and H3, that is, the effect of the product type and reward type on referral likelihood and their interaction effect. On the basis of study 1, study 2 will select different subjects, different products and different incentive allocation schemes to test H1, H2 and H3 again.

Findings
The results are as follow: first, the product type has significant influences on referral likelihood. Compared with a utilitarian product, customers are more likely to make referrals when consuming a hedonic product. Second, the product type and reward type have significant interactions to referral likelihood. When rewarded a hedonic gift, customers who consumed the hedonic product have great willing to make referrals; however, when rewarded the utilitarian gift, customer who consumed the utilitarian product have great willing to make referrals.

Originality/value
The authors' findings contribute to the literature of consumers' recommendation in the following aspects. First, from the perspective of enterprises which launch referral reward program, the present research demonstrates the product type (hedonic product and utilitarian product) and reward type (hedonic gift and utilitarian gift) influence customer referral likelihood. Previous studies discuss attributes of product that influence consumers' referral likelihood, such as product sensitivity (Kornish and Li, 2010), product involvement (Zhu et al., 2011), brand strength (Ryu and Feick, 2007) and price (Xiao et al., 2011). However, few studies focus on the hedonic and utilitarian attributes of products and explore their impact on the willingness to recommend. This paper makes a useful supplement to the research gap. Most previous studies simply divide the type of reward into tangible and intangible (Shi and Wojnicki, 2007), cash and coupon (Wang, 2010) or cash and gift (Huang et al., 2013). This paper enriches the research on reward types and refines the types of gifts in a referral reward program. The present research divides the type of reward into hedonic gifts and utilitarian gifts, and applies benefit congruency frameworks (Chandon et al., 2000), attitude theory (Eagly and Chaiken, 1993) and over-justification effect (Deci and Ryan, 1985).


The authors investigated whether soy intake is associated with sex steroid levels in Japanese children. This cross-sectional study was conducted in autumn 2006. Subjects were substantially healthy preschoolers, 230 boys and 198 girls, aged 3-6 years. Dietary data, including soy intake, were assessed using 3-day dietary records. Each child's dietary intake was controlled for total energy intake using the Willett method (Nutritional Epidemiology. Oxford, United Kingdom: Oxford University Press; 1990:245-271). Urinary estrone, estradiol, testosterone, and 5-androstene-3β,17α diol levels measured using liquid chromatography-electrospray ionization tandem mass spectrometry, and urinary dehydroepiandrosterone level measured with a radioimmunoassay, were adjusted for urinary creatinine levels. In the analysis of covariance for sex steroids after adjustments for age and body mass index, soy intake was significantly negatively related to estrone and estradiol in boys and positively related to testosterone and 5-androstene-3β,17α diol in girls. Isoflavone had a significant tendency to be negatively associated with estradiol in boys and to be positively associated with testosterone in girls. Total energy intake was not associated with any sex steroids in boys or girls. These results suggest that soy intake might affect the secretion or metabolism of sex steroids in childhood and that the effects might differ by sex.


There are numerous articles in the literature dealing with the myofascial system, on the physiological, pathological, macroscopic and microscopic level; yet, we still do not have a thorough knowledge of its functions, just as there is still no shared vision of how to classify it. Many professional manual practitioners are involved in its treatment and there are many emerging therapeutic approaches. What is still missing is the awareness that the body is also emotion. The myofascial continuum is able to stimulate the areas of the brain that deal with the emotional state, and manual treatment activates the interoceptive system. To optimize myofascial treatment, a psychologist should work alongside the manual practitioner, creating a multidisciplinary team that takes into account both the physical and emotional aspects.


Soybean meal (SBM) is one of the protein ingredients fed to commercial pigs. With recent increases in cost of this ingredient, evaluation of quality is critical. This study evaluated a total of 122 SBM samples collected from commercial feed mills, from 9 different states, 6 different SBM suppliers, 4 different regions and included 2 separate harvest years (2019 and 2020). Samples were sent to 2 separate labs (University of Missouri Agricultural Experiment Station Chemical Laboratories, and Eurofins) and analyzed for amino acids, digestibility factors, anti-nutritive factors and trypsin inhibitors. The model was a factorial in an 9 x 6 x 4 x 2 arrangement, consisting of 9 states, 6 suppliers, 4 regions, and 2 harvest years where all samples were tested. Data was analyzed by ANOVA JMP PRO 15 (SAS Institute Inc, 2019) and means were separated by Tukey HSD with significance level set at P < 0.05. Results showed state was significant (P < 0.05) for trypsin inhibitor, protein dispersibility index (PDI), and protein solubility. While SBM supplier and region was significant for trypsin inhibitor and PDI only. For those parameters that were significant, northeastern region were of the highest (P < 0.05) for trypsin inhibitor, PDI and protein solubility. Typical benchmark of urease activity to evaluate SBM quality was not significant for supplier, region or state. However, the coefficient of variation of urease activity ranged from 31% to 70%, indicating this parameter is too variable to utilize as an indicator of SBM quality. Total oligosaccharides (stachyose+raffinose+verbascose) was analyzed and indicated a significant (P < 0.05) difference for state, with samples from Mississippi being the lowest, while samples from the Midwest region had the greatest (P < 0.05). This study indicates the significant differences between supplier, the state in which supplier resides and the region the soy comes from can play a role in the overall quality.


The Branch Target Buffer (BTB) can reduce the performance penalty of branches in pipelined processors by predicting the path of the branch and caching information used by the branch. This paper discusses two major issues in the design of BTBs with the theme of achieving maximum performance with a limited number of bits allocated to the BTB design. First is the issue of BTB management-when to enter and discard branches into the BTB. Higher performance can be obtained by entering branches into the BTB only when they experience a branch taken execution. This method discards the branch with the smallest expected value for improving performance, outperforming the LRU strategy by a small margin, at the cost of additional complexity. The second major issue discussed is the question of what information to store in the BTB. A BTB entry can consist of one or more of the following: branch tag (i.e. the branch address), prediction information, the branch target address, and instructions at the branch target. A variety of BTB designs, with one or more of these fields, are evaluated and compared. This study is then extended to multilevel BTBs, in which different levels have different amounts of information per entry. For the specific implementation assumptions used, multi-level BTBs improved performance over single level BTBs only slightly, at the cost of additional complexity. Multi-level BTBs may provide significant performance improvements for other implementations, however. Design target miss ratios for BTBs are also developed, so that the performance of BTBs for real workloads may be estimated.


There is an increasing need for an integrated test framework which can do conformance and interoperability testing in all layers of e-business standards without any dependence on a specific standard. In this paper a knowledge framework was provided for designing a model for e-business integrated testing by combining identified design factors from testing experience and conducting the CEN (European Committee for Standardization) GITB (Global Interoperability Test Bed) project feasibility study. Also, it was shown that abstracting of test scenarios in a modular manner makes them easily understandable, independent from test beds and standards and, furthermore, more reusable. Embedding a test case tool in the test framework provides the capability of automatic generation of executable test cases, and simultaneously makes them more manageable. A modular test bed design, by considering some interfaces to pluggable adaptors and applying event driven execution model, make it configurable and applicable to the various test types. By embedding management components into the test bed, more controlling and monitoring were provided over the test and its steps as, functional requirements for the current test beds.


Inflammatory Optic Neuritis (ON) is the most frequent cause of acute visual loss in young adults. Although the visual prognosis is excellent in the majority of cases, many patients develop pathology, such as multiple sclerosis, in its subsequent evolution.
The natural history of ON has been studied in numerous works in recent years; one of the most important of which is Optic Neuritis Treatment Trial.
Magnetic Resonance plays a fundamental role in the etiological diagnosis of ON and in predicting the risk of conversion into multiple sclerosis.
New exploratory techniques have recently been incorporated, such as optical coherence tomography, useful for diagnosis and prognosis; serum biomarkers have been identified in the diagnosis of other pathologies with an autoimmune nature that produce ON.
A better understanding of the clinical and exploratory data of typical ON will make a more rapid and accurate diagnostic study possible. Treatment of ON with steroids must be individualised bearing in mind that they do not alter the long-term prognosis and an immunomodulating therapy must be proposed for patients with a high risk of conversion into multiple sclerosis.
This article reviews the existing data in the literature on its clinical manifestations, its etiological and differential diagnosis, and the treatment of inflammatory ON.


In this work, we are reporting on the simulation of the beryllium selenide (BeSe) nanowires (NWs) by computational package Q-Espresso / PWSCF according to the ab-initio calculations. Structural and electronic properties, including cohesive energy and Density Of State (DOS) BeSe NWs in two phases on the zinc–blende (ZB) and wurtzite (WZ), using density functional theory based on pseudo-potential approximation and generalized gradient approximation (GGA) up to 20 angstrom in diameter has been calculated. Due to dangling bonds (DBs) in the side surface NWs, cohesive energy is obtained less than the amount of this energy in bulk state of this compound, but with increasing diameter of NWs, the amount of this energy will approach to the bulk state. Comparison of cohesive energy with beryllium selenide NWs in two phases, we find these NWs in WZ phase is more stable and have good compatibility for this result with other results in NWs of similar compounds. The value of energy gap in these NWs on various diameters is obtained less than the amount of the bulk state. It is observed that by increasing the diameter of NWs, the cohesive energy approaches to its value in bulk state.


The complement of the "obligatory" B vitamins presented in part 1 of this review (133:192-199, 1979) refers to factors that must always be supplied to maintain health in a normal individual. The group of compounds that have been designated as "conditional" B vitamins will be discussed in this section and, in addition, a discussion of vitamin C will be presented. The term conditional, implies that members of this diverse group of factors are essential dietary components only under certain special circumstances. Members of this group include niacin, biotin, pantothenic acid, choline, and inositol. When adequate tryptophan is supplied in the diet, humans have the ability to synthesize niacin. Thus, the exogenous requirement for niacin is conditional on the amount of dietary tryptophan. Both biotin and pantothenate are synthesized by intestinal microflora; therefore, a dietary need for either is exceptional. An avian protein, avidin, binds biotin and prevents intestinal absorption. Only


Introduction: Neurofibromas, benign peripheral nerve sheath tumors, are the most common among neural lesion. Neurofibromas are rare in head and neck location, although it may involve any part of oral cavity. However, tongue is the most common region. Case Presentation: A 27 year-old man was admitted to Otorhinolaryngology Department due to a swelling in the base of his tongue, since two weeks before. This mass was painless, and without any associated symptoms. He was suffered from a mild eating disorder, too. He had no any positive past medical history, and only a large soft 6×5 cm mass was found at the base of his tongue without bleeding in the oral cavity. Excisional biopsy was performed for him under general anesthesia and the tumor was easily enucleated. The final diagnosis was neurofibroma. After the diagnosis of neurofibroma, the physical reexamination revealed a series of café au lait spots on his skin. Conclusion: the neurofibroma should be considered by otorhinolaryngologist, as a differential diagnosis of tongue mass, and more accurate physical examination are recommended for better management.


The water buffalo is one of the most important domestic animals in Southeast Asia including Thailand. As the Thai swamp buffalo population declined during the last two decades, the swamp buffalo reproductive performance needs to be improved. Lack of knowledge on swamp buffalo reproduction, improper management and failure to use genetic superior males and females in breeding programs are the major factors to be considered. Artificial insemination was applied in Thailand but is inefficient due to suboptimal heat detection. Our study emphasized that the presence of a buffalo teaser bull is a very helpful tool for heat detection in the female swamp buffalo and thus for the proper insemination time either natural or artificial. There are also other signs of estrus of the female buffalo which can be detected by trained experts. Postpartum anestrus is one of the major causes of poor reproductive performance in the buffalo leading to the long period of days open and thus a long calving interval. To improve postpartum buffalo reproduction efficiency, proper husbandry management such as quality of nutrition, optimal estrus detection and a fertile buffalo bull are crucial. In this study, the postpartum buffalo could be successfully mated within two months postpartum at the second spontaneous ovulation, even without hormonal treatment. Embryo transfer would allow a wider exploitation and dissemination of superior swamp buffalo genotypes. We demonstrated that oocytes for IVM and IVF can be collected successfully by OPU without hormonal pretreatment, and those twice weekly pick-up resulted in more oocytes than once-weekly pick-up. In order to reinforce a more effective management of buffalo genetic resources and reconstruct their genetic history, we studied the genetic diversity of both paternal and maternal lineages. We found evidence for a separate domestication of the river and swamp buffalo, a shared wild-ancestral origin of the swamp buffalo A and B mtDNA haplotype and a Southeast Asian domestication site of the swamp buffalo. Occurrence of Y-chromosomal DNA variants depends on the region within Thailand, indicating a restricted migration of water buffaloes. Our data warrant a wider investigation of swamp buffalo mtDNA and Y-chromosomal diversity as well as a comprehensive study of autosomal variation. Insight in the genetic constitution of water buffalo may prove essential for the preservation and utilization of the genetic resources of Thailand


Several cellular processes are regulated through coordinated mechanisms including those related to the expression of gene regulatory networks or transcriptional modules. The identification of these transcriptional modules is essential to understand how different genes are coordinately expressed in response to both positive or negative stimulus. In eukaryotic cells, due to the large number of genes, the identification of transcriptional modules is difficult. However, during the last years several studies have been performed to understand the coordinated expression of ribosomal protein genes (RPGs). Those genes form a gene regulatory network and contain in their promoter sequences one or more common cis DNA elements which can control and regulate their expression. Such is the case of the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae, where the conserved Rap1 sequence is the key element in the recruiting of the RNA polymerase II transcriptional machinery. This element binds the transcription factor Rap1. However, Rap1 sequence is absent in the yeast Schizosaccharomyces pombe, where this element was replaced by the HomolD-box sequence, which binds the transcription factor Rrn7. Interestingly, neither of both elements have been identified in metazoan RPGs promoters. However, analyses in Drosophila have shown the presence of the TCT element in the RPGs promoters, which may be recognized by the factor M1PB. The study of each of these elements and the transcription factors which are able to bind them, is essential to understand the coordination of the expression of RPGs, which are fundamental in ribosome biogenesis and in the cellular response to environmental cues.


Many governments in the global south are grappling with challenges of improving the quality of informal transport, and an inability to pay for service improvements. This paper asks the question whether efficiency benefits might be gained through strategic implementation of once-off infrastructure interventions providing priority to informal vehicles at intersections. We note that informal drivers already indicate this demand through (illegal) driving behaviour in traffic. We use a drone to observe indicative behaviours among minibus-taxi drivers in South Africa. We identify interventions that would formalise this behaviour: a single lane pre-signal strategy, queue-jumping lane, and dedicated public transport lane. The objective of the paper is to quantify the potential economic impacts of such treatments on minibus-taxi operators, passengers and other road users. The findings indicate that substantial savings could be realised in terms of travel time, user cost, and operating cost to taxi passengers and drivers without additional costs being incurred by other road users. The single-lane pre-signal strategy, the queue-jumping lane and the dedicated taxi lane saw a decrease in total hourly cost of 12%, 14% and 30% respectively, including construction cost, user cost, and agency cost, indicating a net social benefit. If part of these savings were passed on to passengers, priority infrastructure could serve as an implicit subsidy to public transport users.


Aminoguanidyl-chitosan imprinted polymers (AGCIPs) were synthesized and applied to the selective extraction of silver and gold cyanocomplexes from aqueous solutions. Batch adsorption parameters for the recovery of silver and gold cyanocomplexes from aqueous solutions by the AGCIPs viz., contact time, solution pH, initial metal concentrations and temperature, were optimized by a two-level fractional factorial design and the Box-Behnken matrix. The equilibrium data correlated well with Langmuir isotherm model; and the maximum adsorption capacities for silver cyanide calculated from the Langmuir equation were 429.2 mg Ag g-1 and 319.5 mg Ag g-1 at pH 6.9 and 10, respectively; whereas they were 319.5 mg Au g-1 and 312.5 mg Au g-1 for gold cyanide in the same order. Adsorption kinetics suggested that these materials predominantly display a pseudo-second-order kinetic mechanism, while thermodynamic parameters revealed that the adsorption process was spontaneous and of exothermic nature. Investigation on the adsorption selectivity showed that the selectivity coefficients of AGCSIP (gold cyanide) with respect to Ag(CN)2 -, Fe(CN)6 -, and Hg(CN)2 - were 8.675, 26.005 and 5694.667 respectively whereas for AGCIP (Silver cyanide) they were 3.017, 75.478 and ∞ for Au(CN)2 -, Fe(CN)6 -, and Hg(CN)2 - respectively. This indicates that AGCSIPs have excellent selectivity for silver and gold cyanide complexes. Regeneration and reusability studies also revealed that 2M solution of KNO3 at pH 10.5 could be used to regenerate the AGCIPs; and these materials could be recycled up to five times without significantly diminishing their adsorption capacity.


Abstract. Photogrammetric methods and sensors like LIDAR, RADAR and cameras are becoming more and more important for new applications like highly automatic driving, since they enable capturing relative information of the ego vehicle w.r.t its environment. Integrity measure the trust that we can put in the navigation information of a system. The concept of integrity was first developed for civil aviation and is linked to reliability concepts well known in geodesy and photogrammetry. Currently, the navigation community is discussing how to guarantee integrity for car navigation and multi-sensor systems.In this paper, we will give a short review on integrity concepts and on the current discussion of how to apply it to car navigation. We will discuss which role photogrammetry could play to solve the open issues in the integrity definition and monitoring for multi-sensor systems.


This collection contains the questionnaire, codebook, reference document and dataset (in Stata .dta format) for the Tanzania 2011 ACTwatch outlet survey.

Started in 2008, ACTwatch was intended to fill evidence gaps related to malaria diagnostics, antimalarial medicines and fever case management in the private and public sectors. ACTwatch collected data to inform evidence-based malaria control policies and programmes. ACTwatch was a PSI research project in partnership with LSHTM.

ACTwatch measured nationally representative surveys to all public and private health outlets within selected regions, across a total of 12 countries in sub-Saharan Africa and the Greater Mekong Sub-region and multiple years.

Outlet Surveys monitored trends in the availability, volumes, and prices of antimalarials in the public and private sectors, which included the informal sector. All outlet types with the potential to sell antimalarials were included, from hospitals to private pharmacies to street hawkers.

The collection and processing of these data provided sound evidence for country-specific policy recommendations. The use of standardized indicators allowed for broad trends to be identified and global policy recommendations to be implemented into policy and action.

A guidance document containing comprehensive information on the ACTwatch project, design, questionnaires and data can be found by clicking on the reference link below.

All potential data users are encouraged to review this document before analyzing any ACTwatch data.


The linearity of a selection of common advection schemes is tested and examined with a view to their use in the tangent linear and adjoint versions of an atmospheric general circulation model. The schemes are tested within a simple offline one-dimensional periodic domain as well as using a simplified and complete configuration of the linearised version of NASA's Goddard Earth Observing System version 5 (GEOS-5). All schemes which prevent the development of negative values and preserve the shape of the solution are confirmed to have non-linear behaviour. The piecewise parabolic method (PPM) with certain flux limiters, including that used by default in GEOS-5, is found to support linear growth near the shocks. This property can cause the rapid development of unrealistically large perturbations within the tangent linear and adjoint models. It is shown that these schemes with flux limiters should not be used within the linearised version of a transport scheme. The results from tests using GEOS-5 show that the current default scheme (a version of PPM) is not suitable for the tangent linear and adjoint model, and that using a linear third-order scheme for the linearised model produces better behaviour. Using the third-order scheme for the linearised model improves the correlations between the linear and non-linear perturbation trajectories for cloud liquid water and cloud liquid ice in GEOS-5.


Gray mold is caused by Botrytis cinerea Pers.:Fr., a cosmopolitan and polyphagous fungus that is responsible for significant losses on several fruit crops, including kiwifruit (Actinidia deliciosa), in the field and during storage (2). A. arguta, the hardy kiwifruit, is grown in several countries (e.g., Japan, China, Korea, Russia, and the United States) (1,3) and regions of Italy (Apulia [southeastern], Basilicata [southern], Marche [central eastern], Tuscany [central western], and Piedmont, Friuli Venezia Giulia, and Trentino Alto Adige [northern]) (4). The oblong- to oval-shaped fruit is produced in clusters, has a smooth, edible, thin skin, bears tips with a persistent style, and weighs approximately 5 to 15 g (1,3,4). Several fruits of cv. Ananasnaya selection 'Anna red' harvested from September to October in 2007 and 2008 in the Apulia and Marche regions showed browning and depressions in the surface and a decay of the flesh. Disease affected approximately 5% of 420 examined fruits; symptoms mainly developed in the equatorial zone, eventually expanding through the entire fruit. Severely infected fruit showed deformation followed by drying. In the field or after storage in an environment with high relative humidity, fungal mycelia with sporulation appeared on the surface of the symptomatic areas of the fruit. Nineteen symptomatic fruit were surface disinfested by immersion in a 0.5% sodium hypochlorite solution for 2 min, then rinsed in sterile distilled water. Portions of the flesh were plated onto petri dishes containing potato dextrose agar (PDA) supplemented with 250 mg/liter of each ampicillin and streptomycin sulfate. Colonies that originated from symptomatic portions of the fruit were transferred to new PDA plates and identified as B. cinerea by the morphological features of conidiophores and conidia. Conidia were produced on dichotomously branched conidiophores, which had globose basal cells from mycelia. The conidia were hyaline or pigmented, ellipsoid-obovoid, globoid, and without septa (2). Conidia were collected from an isolate (Accession No. CBS 125087) of B. cinerea recovered from diseased A. arguta fruit grown in Monopoli (BA), Apulia in September 2007, and maintained in pure culture on PDA. A spore suspension was created by flooding plates with a small volume of sterile distilled water plus surfactant (0.05% Triton X-100). The suspension was filtered through four layers of cheesecloth and diluted with sterile water to an absorbance of 0.25 at 425 nm as determined by a spectrophotometer. This suspension contained approximately 1.0 × 106 conidia/ml and was diluted with sterile water to 1 × 104 spores/ml. Twenty microliter droplets of spore suspension were deposited within the equatorial zone on each of 10 nonwounded fruits of cv. Ananasnaya selection 'Anna red'. All fruit developed typical gray mold symptoms after 4 to 5 days of incubation at 20 ± 2°C and 95 to 98% relative humidity. Reisolation from the decayed tissues on PDA produced pure colonies of B. cinerea. To our knowledge, this is the first report of B. cinerea infection on A. arguta in Italy. References: (1) C. L. Fisk et al. Postharvest Biol. Technol. 47:338, 2007. (2) T. Michailides and P. A. G. Elmer, Plant Dis. 84:208, 2000. (3) J. Morton. Page 293 in: Fruits of Warm Climates. J. F. Morton, Miami, FL, 1987. (4) R. Testolin and G. Costa. Frutticoltura 56:31, 1994.


Identifying singers is an important task with many applications. However, the task remains challenging due to many issues. One major issue is related to the confounding factors from the background instrumental music that is mixed with the vocals in music production. A singer identification model may learn to extract non-vocal related features from the instrumental part of the songs, if a singer only sings in certain musical contexts (e.g., genres). The model cannot therefore generalize well when the singer sings in unseen contexts. In this paper, we attempt to address this issue. Specifically, we employ open-unmix, an open source tool with state-of-the-art performance in source separation, to separate the vocal and instrumental tracks of music. We then investigate two means to train a singer identification model: by learning from the separated vocal only, or from an augmented set of data where we "shuffle-and-remix" the separated vocal tracks and instrumental tracks of different songs to artificially make the singers sing in different contexts. We also incorporate melodic features learned from the vocal melody contour for better performance. Evaluation results on a benchmark dataset called the artist20 shows that this data augmentation method greatly improves the accuracy of singer identification.


Seamless phase II/III clinical trials are attractive in development of new drugs because they accelerate the drug development process. Seamless phase II/III trials are carried out in two stages. After stage 1 (phase II stage), an interim analysis is performed and a decision is made on whether to proceed to stage 2 (phase III stage). If the decision is to continue with further testing, some dose selection procedure is used to determine the set of doses to be tested in stage 2. In this paper we propose a dose-selection procedure for binary outcomes in adaptive seamless phase II/III clinical trials that incorporates the dose-response relationship when the experimental treatments are different dose levels of the same drug, and explicitly incorporates both efficacy and toxicity. The choice of the doses to continue to stage 2 is made by comparing the predictive power of the potential sets of doses which might continue. Copyright c © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.


The paper answers several open questions of the alternating direction method of multipliers (ADMM) and the block coordinate descent (BCD) method that are now wildly used to solve large scale convex optimization problems in many fields. For ADMM, it is still lack of theoretical understanding of the algorithm when the objective function is not separable across the variables. In this paper, we analyze the convergence of the 2-block ADMM for solving the linearly constrained convex optimization with coupled quadratic objective, and show that the classical ADMM point-wisely converges to a primal-dual solution pair of this problem. Moreover, we propose to use the randomly permuted ADMM (RPADMM) to solve the nonseparable multi-block convex optimization, and prove its expected convergence while applied to solve a class of quadratic programming problems. When the linear constraint vanishes, the 2-block ADMM and the randomly permuted ADMM reduce to the 2-block cyclic BCD method (also known as the alternating minimization method) and the EPOCHS. Interestingly, our study provides the first iterate convergence result of the 2-block cyclic BCD method without assuming the boundedness of the iterates. Under the same setting, the sublinear convergence rate of the function values can also be verified. Moreover, we also theoretically establish the expected iterate convergence result of the multi-block EPOCHS for convex quadratic optimization which can be regarded as one of the first iterate convergence analysis of EPOCHS. Last but not least, although random permutation is indeed to make multi-block ADMM and BCD more robust, we theoretically demonstrate that EPOCHS has a worse convergence rate than the cyclic BCD does in solving 2-block convex quadratic minimization problems. Therefore, EPOCHS should be applied in caution when solving general optimization problems.


[1] A new method for the reconstruction of the physical characteristics of dilute pyroclastic density currents is introduced. The velocity, density and particle volumetric concentration profiles of the stratified current are calculated, together with the profile of dynamic pressure, which is a useful parameter for checking resistance of buildings. The model links turbulent boundary layer shear flow theory with particle coupling to gas turbulence. The working procedure starts with the recognition in the field of the fining upward sequence of layers formed during the time integrated depositional history of an individual current. Distinct processes of particle transportation and deposition are associated with the different particle modes composing the bedset. The system of equations for the solution of the fluid-dynamic parameters is implemented in two alternative ways. The first one uses data of particles coming from both the basal coarse layer and the overlying laminated layer of the bedset. The second uses features of two distinct components of the laminated layer. A statistical test is performed for checking model results against experimental data of actual particles. Model calculations give the average solution, as well as solutions corresponding to a range of 68% of probability around the average value. The maximum solution can be considered as a safety value for impact parameters. The methodology is applied to deposits of recent eruptions of Vesuvius and Campi Flegrei in Italy, and results are discussed in terms of hazard and expected damage.


Abstract : With the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact and the fall of the Soviet Union, the number of alert aircraft dwindled to 14 aircraft located at 7 sites on September 11, 2001. After the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center Towers and the Pentagon, the United States could not continue to endorse an outward looking air defense strategy. Terrorism completely changed the landscape of the air defense mission. This research develops a location optimization model to optimally locate alert sites post-11 September to cover areas of interest in the CONUS. The model finds the minimum number of alert sites, minimum aggregate network distance, and minimized maximum distance given a range of aircraft launch times and speeds. The model is formulated as an Integer Program, and Microsoft Excel's(Registered) Solver(TM) Add-In is used to run the model. This research provides air defense planners a tool to use in formulating an optimal strip alert network. By finding the minimum number of sites and the minimum aggregate distance to cover all areas of interest, duplication of coverage effort, dispersion of resources, and network response time is minimized. The results presented in this research should lead to a more efficient and effective air defense strip alert network to support homeland defense of the United States.


Objective: To report on safety and effectiveness of subcutaneous cladribine (Litak®) in multiple sclerosis (MS) patients. Methods: Litak® was offered to MS-patients irrespective of disease course. Litak® 10 mg was administered for 3–4 days during week 1. Based on lymphocyte count at week 4, patients received another 0–3 doses at week 5. A second course was administered 11 months later. Follow-up included adverse events, relapses, expanded disability status scale (EDSS), 9-hole-peg and Timed-25-foot-walking tests, no-evidence-of-disease-activity (NEDA), no-evidence-of-progression-or-active-disease (NEPAD), MRI, cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) neurofilament light chain (NfL), and lymphocyte counts. Results: In all, 208 patients received at least one course of treatment. Age at baseline was 44 (17–72) years and EDSS 0–8.5. Cladribine was generally well tolerated. One myocardial infarction, one breast cancer, and three severe skin reactions occurred without long-term sequelae. Two patients died (one pneumonia, one encephalitis). Lymphopenia grade 3 occurred in 5% and grade 4 in 0.5%. In 94 out of 116 pwMS with baseline and follow-up (BaFU) data after two treatment courses, EDSS remained stable or improved. At 18 months, 64% of patients with relapsing MS and BaFU data (n = 39) had NEDA. At 19 months, 62% of patients with progressive MS and BaFU data (n = 13) had NEPAD. Of n = 13 patients whose CSF-NfL at baseline was elevated, 77% were normalised within 12 months. Conclusions: Litak® was well tolerated. Effectiveness in relapsing MS appeared similar to cladribine tablets and was encouraging in progressive MS. Our data suggest cladribine may be safe and effective in MS-patients irrespective of their disease stage.


Introduction Several surgical options exist for the treatment of haemorrhoids, with rubber band ligation (RBL) being the commonest. Long term outcome data for RBL is sparse. We investigate the effectiveness of RBL haemorrhoids in the outpatient setting. Method Data for consecutive patients undergoing RBL of haemorrhoids between January 2013–January 2014 was collected retrospectively. Patients were followed up for a minimum of one year with specific data collected for previous treatments, proctoscopic appearances, and outcomes after RBL. Results Two hundred and sixty four patients [145 males, median age 52 years (range 19–94)] underwent RBL. In 177 this episode of RBL was their first intervention for haemorrhoids, with the remaining patients having previously had several different treatments including RBL (31%, n = 81), surgery (3%, n = 7) and sclerotherapy (<1%, n = 1). Median time between previous treatments and RBL was 1 year (range 1 month- 30 years). The number of haemorrhoids was noted in 65% of patients (n = 177; solitary haemorrhoid 23% n = 40, multiple haemorrhoids 77% n = 137). Grade was recorded in 94/264: 1% Grade I (n = 11), 26% Grade II (n = 46), 19% Grade III (n = 33), 2% Grade IV (n = 4). Post RBL 88% (n = 231) of patients were offered 10 week open outpatient appointment as per local protocol, 11 patients (4%) were discharged and 22 (8%) were given specific dates for follow up (median 10 months (range 4–20 months)). 17% required further investigation: endoscopy in 16% (n = 44, where 37/44 were patients over the age of 50 years which follows local protocol for rectal bleed), defecating proctography in 2 patients and CT pneumocolon in 2 patients. At 1-year post RBL 72% (n = 192) of patients had not returned, but the remaining 72 were re-referred (mean time 8 months, standard deviation 154 days) with recurrent symptoms. Further treatment was with repeat RBL (n = 30) and surgery (n = 33), 1 patient referred to dermatology, one patient was referred to gastroenterology with proctitis. Seven patients returning to clinic either declined further banding or data was unavailable. Conclusion Patients presenting with haemorrhoids can be treated with RBL and then discharged (notwithstanding local protocols for exclusion of malignancy in patients over a certain age with PR bleeding). Three quarters will not return with further symptoms and the remainder will not represent for a year, so making planned follow up unnecessary. Disclosure of interest None Declared.


Southern European countries, particularly Spain, are greatly affected by forest fires each year. Quantification of burned area is essential to assess wildfire consequences (both ecological and socioeconomic) and to support decision making in land management. Our study proposed a new synergetic approach based on hotspots and reflectance data to map burned areas from remote sensing data in Mediterranean countries. It was based on a widely used species distribution modeling algorithm, in particular the Maximum Entropy (MaxEnt) one-class classifier. Additionally, MaxEnt identifies variables with the highest contribution to the final model. MaxEnt was trained with hyperspectral indexes (from Earth-Observing One (EO-1) Hyperion data) and hotspot information (from Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite Near Real-Time 375 m active fire product). Official fire perimeter measurements by Global Positioning System acted as a ground reference. A highly accurate burned area estimation (overall accuracy = 0.99%) was obtained, and the indexes which most contributed to identifying burned areas included Simple Ratio (SR), Red Edge Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI750), Normalized Difference Water Index (NDWI), Plant Senescence Reflectance Index (PSRI), and Normalized Burn Ratio (NBR). We concluded that the presented methodology enables accurate burned area mapping in Mediterranean ecosystems and may easily be automated and generalized to other ecosystems and satellite sensors.


In the last 20 years, it has become evident that the continued use of 4 to 5 cm margins of resection around a primary melanoma is not justified. A prospective randomized trial by the World Health Organization (WHO) Melanoma Group showed that for melanomas up to 2 mm thick, a 1 cm margin provides local control similar to that observed after a 3 cm margin. Another prospective randomized trial by the Melanoma Intergroup Committee in the United States concluded that for melanomas 1 to 4 mm in thickness, a 2 cm margin of resection provides local control that is as good as a 4 cm margin. For melanomas thicker than 4 mm, the current evidence suggests that a 2 cm margin is adequate, the chief manifestation of recurrence for these thick lesions being hematogenous and lymphogenous spread. The adoption of the narrower surgical margins suggested above should reduce the morbidity caused by the radical margins of the past without compromising local control of the disease.


Abstract Electrical properties of food materials can give information about the inner structure and physiological state of biological tissues. Generally, the process of drying of fruits and vegetables is followed by weight loss. The aim of this study was to measure the impedance spectra of carrot slices during drying and to correlate impedance parameters to moisture content in different drying periods. Cylindrical slices were cut out from the carrot root along the axis. The slices were dried in a Venticell 111 air oven at 50°C. The weight of the slices was measured with a Denver SI-603 electronic analytical and precision balance. The weighing of the samples was performed every 30 min at the beginning of drying and every 60 min after the process. The moisture content of the samples was calculated on wet basis. The magnitude and phase angle of electrical impedance of the slices were measured with HP 4284A and 4285A precision LCR meters in the frequency range from 30 Hz to 1 MHz and from 75 kHz to 30 MHz, respectively, at voltage 1 V. The impedance measurement was performed after weighting. The change in the magnitude of impedance during drying showed a good correlation with the change in the moisture content.


Agri-food chains are complex systems involving multiple multifaceted firms usually working together within specific industry sectors (e.g. grains, beef, wool, dairy) to satisfy an increasingly globalised market demand for high value food products. In so doing, the groupings of companies involved in an agri-food chain undertake activities that require multidimensional inter-organisational and cross organisational decision-making in the process of adding value to a raw commodity product through the production, manufacturing and distribution stages of the chain. Additional complexity is added by climate variability which impacts randomly and unpredictably on decision making in every component of the chain. The work outlined in this paper is a pilot investigation looking at a number of approaches to conceptualising and modelling an agri-food chain and its related decision making processes to better evaluate the impact and effects of that decision making and associated information flows across the components of the agri-food chains. The modelling approaches were (i) a multimedia model initially explored as an opportunity to visualise supply and value chain issues for educational purposes; (ii) an agent based model (ABM) using deterministic rules to architecturally synthesise a supply chain, and (iii) a baysian belief network (BBN) which we discuss as an approach for looking at the likelihood of certain decisions being made under certain scenarios.


Recent research suggests that organizations increasingly rely on external sources of innovation via interorganizational network relationships. This article explores the diffusion and characteristics of collaborative relationships between universities and industry, and develops a research agenda informed by an 'open innovation' perspective. A framework is proposed that distinguishes university-industry relationships from other mechanisms based on technology transfer or human mobility. On the basis of the existing body research, the role of practices such as collaborative research, university-industry research centres, contract research and academic consulting compared to other university-industry links is analyzed. The evidence suggests that multiplex forms of relationship-based links between universities and industry are widely practiced whereby differences exist across industries and scientific disciplines.

While most existing research focuses on the effects of university-industry links on innovation-specific variables, such as patents or firm innovationess, the organizational dynamics of these relationships remain under-researched. A detailed research agenda addresses research needs in two main areas: search and match processes between universities and firms, and the organization and management of collaborative relationships.


Verticillium wilt, caused by Verticillium dahliae Kleb., leads to significant losses in cotton yield and fiber quality worldwide. To investigate Verticillium wilt impact on photosynthesis rate, yield, and fiber quality, six upland cotton genotypes, namely Verticillium susceptible (DP 1612 B2XF) and partially resistant (FM 2484B2F) commercial cultivars and four breeding lines, were grown to maturity under greenhouse conditions in soil either infested or not infested with V. dahliae microsclerotia. Photosynthetic rate, lint, and seed yield were all higher (p < 0.05) for FM 2484B2F than DP 1612 B2XF when infected with V. dahliae. When comparing healthy (H) to Verticillium wilt (VW) affected plants, fiber properties were greatly impacted. Micronaire decreased from 5.0 (H) to 3.6 (VW) with DP 1612 B2XF and 4.4 (H) to 4.1 (VW) with FM 2484B2F. The maturity ratio decreased from 0.90 (H) to 0.83 (VW) for DP 1612 B2XF and was unchanged for FM 2484B2F (0.90). Fiber properties such as short fiber content, nep count, fineness, and immature fiber content were also significantly affected under Verticillium wilt pressure. With Verticillium wilt affected plants, lines 16-13-601V and 17-17-206V performed similarly to FM 2484B2F for photosynthetic rate, yield, and all fiber properties measured. When selecting for improved cultivars in the presence of Verticillium wilt, it is important to select for relatively unchanged fiber properties under disease pressure in addition to reduced disease severity and increased yield.


To increase the bearing capacity of piles, the protruding technique proves to be both reliable and effective. The spiral protruding pile is a variation of this kind that can be applied to dry soil conditions. A practical formula is proposed for designing spiral protruding multi-disk cast-in-place piles. Also illustrated here is the project in which spiral protruding piles were applied with great success in terms of techniques and costs, while its unique advantages under certain conditions can be viewed. The paper aims to provide solid basis for research, design and further application of this type of pile.


Recently several possibilities arose to conduct electronic measurement experiments via remote control. Now a comparison of the latest different technologies should bring some answers to interested people, so that they can choose the best technology for them under their criteria. Criteria in this case are, the up-to-dateness of the technology, the development-time, the system-independency of the client in terms of the operating system and internet browser as well as other necessary installations on the client.


This paper describes two patients with vertically cracked roots. They illustrate the detailed attention which should be given to the signs, symptoms, and subsequent investigations which may lead to a diagnosis of vertical root fracture, and show the advantages of consultation between the periodontist, the endodontist, and the general dental practitioner.


INTRODUCTION
The incidence of colon cancer varies by sex. Whether women and men show differences in extent of disease, treatment, and outcomes is not well described. We used a large population-based cohort to evaluate sex differences in colon cancer.

METHODS
Using the Ontario Cancer Registry, all cases of colon cancer treated with surgery in Ontario during 2002-2008 were identified. Electronic records of treatment identified use of surgery and adjuvant chemotherapy. Pathology reports for a random 25% sample of all cases were obtained, and disease characteristics, treatment, and outcomes in women and men were compared. A Cox proportional hazards model was used to identify factors associated with overall (os) and cancer-specific survival (css).

RESULTS
The study population included 7249 patients who underwent resection of colon cancer; 49% (n = 3556) were women. Stage of disease and histologic grade did not vary by sex. Compared with men, women were more likely to have right-sided disease (55% vs. 44%, p ≤ 0.001). Surgical procedure and lymph node yield did not differ by sex. Adjuvant chemotherapy was delivered to 18% of patients with stage ii and 64% of patients with stage iii disease; when adjusted for patient- and disease-related factors, use of adjuvant chemotherapy was similar for women and men [relative risk: 0.99; 95% confidence interval (ci): 0.94 to 1.03]. Adjusted analyses demonstrated that os [hazard ratio (hr): 0.80; 95% ci: 0.75 to 0.86] and css (hr: 0.82; 95% ci: 0.76 to 0.90) were superior for women compared with men.

CONCLUSIONS
Long-term survival after colon cancer is significantly better for women than for men, which is not explained by any substantial differences in extent of disease or treatment delivered.


The temporal and accurate change detection of earth surface features is extremely important for understanding the relationships and interaction between human and natural phenomena in order to promote better decision making. Remote sensing data are primary sources extensively used for environmental change detection in recent decades. In this study, images of landsat (TM) 1988 and landsat (ETM + ) 2001 were analyzed using five change detection techniques over 80,470 hectares in the region of Daresher in Ilam Province. Change detection techniques considered were image differencing, image ratioing, NDVI differencing, change vector analysis (CVA) and post-classification comparison. In this study, a statistical method was used for determining the change threshold. According to the results, the threshold level was set at ±1 standard deviation from the mean. After determining optimal threshold, areas having decreasing, increasing change and no changes was determined. Based on ground data, field visit and Google Earth, accuracy assessment of change detection techniques was carried out using overall accuracy and Kappa coefficient. According to the results, NDVI differencing with an overall accuracy of 98.5 and a Kappa coefficient of 97% showed the highest accuracy among the techniques applied while, in contrast, band ratioing with an overall accuracy of 72.5 and a Kappa coefficient of 50% had the lowest accuracy in land use/land cover change in the study area.


This paper investigates the impact of video streaming quality on bandwidth consumption during the transfer of video data from a humanoid robot `NAO' to computing devices, used to perform face recognition tasks, and to the cloud. It presents the results of profiling the network performance of connecting NAO with an edge controller, and discusses the effect of using different qualities of video streaming on the consumed up-link bandwidth. This study considers the limitation of the up-link bandwidth in the Wi-Fi network. It compares the performances of Wi-Fi and Ethernet connections between the NAO robot and a computer. In addition, it examines the accuracy of the face recognition tasks using various streaming scenarios, such as colored video and black & white video. It investigates real-time video streaming using a wide range of frame rates, and video qualities, and their impact on the bandwidth, and accuracy of face identification. The results of our investigations are used to determine the acceptable video quality, frame rate, buffering and bandwidth that would give optimal results in face recognition using NAO robot, and enable efficient data transfer to the cloud.


We investigated the antibacterial susceptibility of intestinal lactobacilli of Estonian and Swedish children aged 1-2 y. Sixty isolates (10 species) of lactobacilli (29 Estonian and 31 Swedish strains) were tested against ampicillin, cefuroxime, cefoxitin, gentamicin, ciprofloxacin, tetracycline, vancomycin, metronidazole and erythromycin, We observed that intestinal lactobacilli do not display uniform susceptibility to antibiotics. None of the tested lactobaciļli was resistant to ampicillin, gentamicin and erythromycin. Single strains were resistant to cefuroxime and tetracycline, about half of the strains to cefoxitin and ciprofloxacin and 73oÄ of the strains to vancomycin. Äll studied strains were resistant to metronidazole. Most of the strains investigated were resistant to two or three antibiotics out of nine. Some differences in susceptibility were noted between strains belonging to different fermentation types. No differences in susceptibility were found between Estonian and Swedish isolates. Metronidazole, cefoxitin, vancomycin and ciprofloxacin seem to be safer for gastrointestinal lactoflora than other tested antibiotics in both countries. R. MĮindar, MD' Rat:iĮa 19, Department of MicrobioĮogy, Uniaersity of Tartu, EE-50411 TĮĮftu, Estonįū. E-maįļ: firstname.lastname@example.com


For many years mechanical and natural ventilation systems have developed separately. Naturally, the next step in this development is the development of ventilation concepts that utilize and combine the best features from each system to create a new type of ventilation systemHybrid Ventilation. The hybrid ventilation concepts, design challenges and principles are discussed and illustrated by four building examples. Buildings ventilated by hybrid ventilation often include other sustainable technologies and an energy optimization requires an }ntegrated approach in the design of the building and its mechanical systems. Therefore, the hybrid ventilation design procedure differs from the design procedure for conventional HV AC systems. The first ideas to a design procedure for hybrid ventilation are presented and the different types of design methods that are needed in different phases of the design process are discussed. _.,


Ensuring human safety without unnecessarily impacting task efficiency during human-robot interactive manipulation tasks is a critical challenge. In this work, we formally define human physical safety as collision avoidance or safe impact in the event of a collision. We developed a motion planner that theoretically guarantees safety, with a high probability, under the uncertainty in human dynamic models. Our two-pronged definition of safety is able to unlock the planner's potential in finding efficient plans even when collision avoidance is nearly impossible. The improved efficiency is empirically demonstrated in both a simulated goal-reaching domain and a real-world robot-assisted dressing domain. We provide a unified view of two approaches to safe human-robot interaction: human-aware motion planners that use predictive human models and reactive controllers that compliantly handle collisions.


Previous examination of the accessibility of a panel of single-Cys mutants in transmembrane domain III (TMDIII) of the yeast mitochondrial citrate transport protein to hydrophilic, cysteine-specific methanethiosulfonate reagents, enabled identification of the water-accessible surface of this domain and suggested its potential participation in the formation of a portion of the substrate translocation pathway. To evaluate this idea, we conducted a detailed characterization of the functional properties of 20 TMDIII single-Cys substitution mutants. Kinetic studies indicate that the A118C, S123C, and K134C mutants displayed a 3- to 7-fold increase in Km. Moreover, the A118C mutation caused a doubling of the Vmax value, whereas the S123C, E131C, and K134C mutations caused Vmax to dramatically decrease, resulting in a reduction of the catalytic efficiencies of these three mutants by >97%. Examination of the ability of citrate to protect against the inhibition mediated by sodium (2-sulfonatoethyl)methanethiosulfonate (MTSES) indicated that citrate conferred significant protection of cysteines substituted at eight water-accessible locations (i.e. Gly-115, Leu-116, Gly-117, Leu-121, Ser-123, Val-127, Glu-131, and Thr-135), but not at other sites. Importantly, similar levels of protection were observed at both 4 °C and 20 °C. The temperature independence of the protection indicates that substrate binding and/or occupancy of the transport pathway sterically blocks the access of MTSES to these sites, thereby providing direct protection, without involvement of a major protein conformational change. The significance of these extensive functional investigations is discussed in terms of the three-dimensional CTP homology model that we previously developed and a new model of the dimer interface.


Abstract. A 13-year analysis (2000–2012) of the NO2 vertical column densities derived from ground-based (GB) instruments and satellites has been carried out over the Izana NDACC (Network for the Detection of the Atmospheric Composition Change) subtropical site. Ground-based DOAS (differential optical absorption spectroscopy) and FTIR (Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy) instruments are intercompared to test mutual consistency and then used for validation of stratospheric NO2 from OMI (Ozone Monitoring Instrument) and SCIAMACHY (SCanning Imaging Absorption spectroMeter for Atmospheric CHartographY). The intercomparison has been carried out taking into account the various differences existing in instruments, namely temporal coincidence, collocation, sensitivity, field of view, etc. The paper highlights the importance of considering an "effective solar zenith angle" instead of the actual one when comparing direct-sun instruments with zenith sky ones for a proper photochemical correction. Results show that NO2 vertical column densities mean relative difference between FTIR and DOAS instruments is 2.8 ± 10.7 % for a.m. data. Both instruments properly reproduce the NO2 seasonal and the interannual variation. Mean relative difference of the stratospheric NO2 derived from OMI and DOAS is −0.2 ± 8.7 % and from OMI and FTIR is −1.6 ± 6.7 %. SCIAMACHY mean relative difference is of 3.7 ± 11.7 and −5.7 ± 11.0 % for DOAS and FTIR, respectively. Note that the days used for the intercomparison are not the same for all the pairs of instruments since it depends on the availability of data. The discrepancies are found to be seasonally dependent with largest differences in winter and excellent agreement in the spring months (AMJ). A preliminary analysis of NO2 trends has been carried out with the available data series. Results show increases in stratospheric NO2 columns in all instruments but larger values in those that are GB than that expected by nitrous oxide oxidation. The possible reasons for the discrepancy between instruments and the positive trends are discussed in the text.


Input devices of the audio studio that formerly were physical have mostly been converted into virtual controls on the computer screen. Whereas this transition saves space and cost, it has reduced the performance of these controls, as virtual controls adjusted using the computer mouse do not exhibit the accuracy and accessibility of their physical counterparts. Previous studies show that interaction with scrollable timelines can be enhanced by an intelligent interpretation of the mouse movement. We apply similar techniques to virtual faders as used for audio control, leveraging such approaches as controllable zoom levels and pseudo-haptic interaction. Tests conducted on five such methods provide insight into how to decouple the fader from the mouse movement to improve accuracy without impairing the speed of the interaction.


The objective of this study was to investigate the effects of rice husk and acrylic impact modifiers on the mechanical properties of unplasticised poly(vinyl chloride) (PVC-U) composites. The composites were prepared using a two-roll mill at temperature 165 °C before being hot pressed at 185 °C. The incorporation of rice husk (RH) fillers from 10 to 40 per hundred resin (phr) has increased the flexural and tensile modulus of the unmodified and modified (8 phr impact modifier) PVC-U composite. The flexural strength for both unmodified and modified PVC-U composite was observed to increase until RH loading of 20 phr. However, the tensile and impact strength of PVC-U composite decreased with RH loading. The scanning electron microscopy (SEM) showed that the rice husk fillers agglomerated and unevenly distributed throughout the matrix. The result showed that the impact strength of the filled PVC-U composites (20 phr filler) increased but the tensile and flexural properties decreased with increasing impact modifier content. The formulation containing 8 phr of acrylic impact modifier and 20 phr of RH loading showed the best balance of stiffness and toughness properties.


Dementia is a growing problem in societies with aging populations, not only for patients, but also for family members and for the society in terms of the associated costs of providing health care. Helping patients to maintain a degree of independence in their home environment while ensuring their safeties is considered as a positive step forward for addressing individual needs of dementia patients. A common symptom for dementia patients including those with Alzheimer's Disease and Related Dementia (ADRD) is sleep disturbance, patients being awake at night and asleep during the day. One of the problems with night time sleep disturbance in dementia patients is the possible accidental falls of patients in the dark environment. An issue associated with un-hourly sleeping behavior in these patients is the lighting condition of their surroundings. Clinical studies indicate that appropriate level of lightning can help to restore the rest-activity cycles of ADRD patients. This study tackles this problem by generating machine learning solutions for controlling the lighting conditions of multiple rooms in the house in different hours based on patterns of behaviors generated for the patient. Several neural network oriented classification methods are investigated and their feasibilities are assessed with a collection of synthetic data capturing two conditions of balanced and unbalanced inter-class samples. The classifiers are utilized within two centric and distributed lighting control architectures. The results indicate the feasibility of the distributed architecture in achieving a high level of classification performance resulting in adequate control over lighting conditions of the house in various time periods.


Selecting appropriate technology strategy is crucial to those designing ICT-based offering for specific geographical market. The antecedents of adopting particular technology can be used to identify opportunities and barriers of entry, but further information is needed for technology management on how adoption would take place. In this paper, it is argued that deploying a scenario method facilitates identification of future developments and setting a technology strategy, which matches the emerging needs and requirements of a specific market. Specifically, this paper examines the trends and developments affecting state of Cloud Computing business in China and creating incentives for stakeholders to adopt Cloud Computing. Based on expert interviews and scenario analysis, four alternative and possibly co-existing scenarios are derived. The macro-level scenarios serve as inputs and tools for company-specific examinations on technology strategy. Also, the scenarios facilitate identifying indicators on whether standard or flexible technology architecture is needed for this particular market.


Previous work has indicated that ribosomes isolated from Salmonella typhimurium were highly immunogenic and afforded excellent protection against homologous challenge. Effective protection was obtained also when ribonucleic acid ( RNA) extracted from these ribosomes was used as a vaccine. In this investigation ribosomes prepared by another method and washed repeatedly in 1 M NH1Cl lost much of their prophylactic potency and yielded poorly protective RNA. The high-salt wash of the ribosomes was immunogenic. The RNA and the protein isolated from the salt wash of the ribosomes were effective vaccines. No intrinsic component of the ribosomes was removed by the NH4Cl wash, since the ability of both "crude" and "clean" ribosomes to function equally well in an in vitro protein synthesizing system was demonstrated. The presence of a component with toxic properties similar to those of endotoxin was found in active vaccines but not in weak ones. This was shown by the ability of effective vaccines to kill lead acetate-sensitized mice and to induce tolerance to endotoxin.


In the last several years, remote sensing technology has opened up the possibility of performing large scale building detection from satellite imagery. Our work is some of the first to create population density maps from building detection on a large scale. The scale of our work on population density estimation via high resolution satellite images raises many issues, that we will address in this paper. The first was data acquisition. Labeling buildings from satellite images is a hard problem, one where we found our labelers to only be about 85% accurate at. There is a tradeoff of quantity vs. quality of labels, so we designed two separate policies for labels meant for training sets and those meant for test sets, since our requirements of the two set types are quite different. We also trained weakly supervised footprint detection models with the classification labels, and semi-supervised approaches with a small number of pixel-level labels, which are very expensive to procure.


Author(s): Tseng, Roger Dergen | Advisor(s): LiWang, Andy C | Abstract: As an adaption to the solar day-night cycles, organisms have evolved endogenous circadian clocks in order to generate ~24-h rhythms in regulating their physiology and behavior. The goal of this study was to uncover mechanisms underlying the rhythm generation in the cyanobacterial clock, which, consisting of only three proteins, KaiA, KaiB, and KaiC, can be reconstituted in vitro. A wide array of biochemical and biophysical techniques including fluorescence spectroscopy, NMR, HDX-MS, and X-ray crystallography have been utilized for studying the transition of daytime (KaiA-KaiC) to nighttime (KaiA-KaiB-KaiC) complexes. In addition, genetic tools such as bioluminescence have been applied for functional validation in vivo. Specific findings to date include: (1) the day-to-night signal, KaiC phosphorylation at Ser431, is transmitted allosterically to a site over 60 A away for initiating nighttime complex assembly; (2) KaiA cooperatively promotes the formation of the nighttime complex, in contrast to the view that KaiA is sequestered and inert at night; (3) KaiB is a metamorphic protein, forming a KaiA-KaiB-KaiC complex at night using its alternative thioredoxin-like fold; (4) KaiB inhibits KaiA through an unexpected mechanism in which KaiB disrupts KaiA-KaiC interactions by inducing a large conformational change on an α-helix of KaiA to block the binding site of KaiA for KaiC; (5) KaiB metamorphosis couples the circadian oscillator to clock output signaling by displacing the daytime output protein SasA, and engages the nighttime output protein CikA. In summary, this work reveals the role of allostery and large conformational changes in ~24-h rhythm generation in the cyanobacterial clock, creating a conceptual framework for understanding other clock systems.


This paper examines trade openness and economic growth. What has been the effect of openness to trade on economic growth in Kenya? Kenya's trade policies have emerged since independence, it has improved from import substitution to progressive liberalization through emergence of export processing zones, reduction of tariffs levels, eliminated price controls and licensing requirements leading to modest growth in trade Republic of Kenya (2005). Although the country has improved in it's trade policies, it is still counted as mostly unfree. Empirical evidence suggests that free trade leads to a better economic performance in different channels, however the evidence has been questioned because of the doubts on how trade openness of a country should be measured and methodology estimation. The study uses trade intensity as a measure of trade openness. Applying Ordinary least squares using a time series data obtained from the World Development Indicators a negative relationship is seen between trade openness measure and Gross domestic product in Kenya. A Granger causality test is done also to determine whether trade liberalization can be used to give significant information about the economic growth of Kenya or vice versa. Vector Auto regression model (VAR) is used to determine the Granger causality. In the OLS regression model measures of openness, labor and capital are significant.


Morphometry is introduced as quantitative approach to seek information concerning variations and changes in the forms of organisms that described the relationship between the human body and disease. Scientists of all civilization, who existed until today, examined the human body using anthropometric methods. For these reasons, anthropometric data are used in many contexts to screen for or monitor disease. Anthropometry, a branch of morphometry, is the study of the size and shape of the components of biological forms and their variations in populations. Morphometrics can also be defined as the quantitative analysis of biological forms. The field has developed rapidly over the last two decades to the extent that we now distinguish between traditional morphometrics and the more recent geometric morphometrics. Advances in imaging technology have resulted in the protection of a greater amount of morphological information and have permitted the analysis of this information. The oldest and most commonly used of these methods is radiography. With developments in this area, CT and MRI have also been started to be used in screening of the internal organs. Morphometric measurements that are used in medicine, are widely used in the diagnosis and the follow-up and the treatment of the disease, today. In addition, in cosmetology use of these new measurements is increasing every day.


Abstract. The techniques and methods to capture and represent in a three-dimensional digital space the shape of objects belonging to Cultural Heritage have become more widespread, regarding both the economic and practical accessibility of technologies and equipment. At the same time, systems and tools have developed to integrate different 3D survey techniques that allow to achievement a complete acquisition of the tangible assets, considering the purposes of the survey, the required accuracy and the representation scale.The product of an integrated (image-based and range-base acquisition) and multi-scale (architectural and landscape scale) digital survey is a metric 3D reconstruction, potentially suitable for a broader 'use' and 'user' and not only for visualisation and documentation. According to this vision, the 3D model becomes a container of information, which include different type of data depending on the users and the aim of the work. The final result of this process can be the valorisation of the Cultural Heritage and its environment, through the access from experts and non-experts users. The aim of the article is showing the entire pipeline for 3D measurement, survey data acquisition, modelling, and representation of tangible assets and the related layers of information, as "best practice" to improve the Cultural Heritage knowledge, fruition, and sharing.


Long read in relation to public health and gender/sexual mores, Katherine Mayo's Mother India (1927) has rarely been viewed from an animal studies perspective. This article proposes that the animal, tethered to the woman question and to the figure of the Muslim, is integral to the book's imperialist apologetics. Investigations of physical cruelty to women and to animals build Mayo's case against Hindu nationalists' bid for self-rule. Highlighting cruelty alongside the question of dietary choice, Mayo interrogates the self-representation of the Hindu vegetarian as nonviolent, rewriting him instead as rapacious carnivore in every sense but the literal. Mobilized in different contexts and modes, the abused animal becomes part of Mayo's arsenal of shaming rhetoric, as does the figure of the "internationalist" Muslim who is imagined as bulwark against the Hindu vegetarian and as dysgenic threat and "world-menace." Mother India's political-theological engagement with "the Muslim" as the iconoclastic meat eater pits him against the unfit, diabetic Hindu in a fantasy of carnivory and carnage that enacts a wished-for solution to the problem of defending empire.


Corrosion and dissolving of thin films laid on the surface of restorative materials represents two phenomena which take place in salivary environment (natural or artificial). Degradation of metallic and nonmetallic materials is, usually, a combination of electrochemical and mechanical effects. In a watery environment, like the salivary environment, electrochemical corrosion prevails, associated in lower proportions with the occurrence of chemical corrosion cells (uniform dissolving of the restorative dental material). Above these two phenomena, a third form of corrosion takes place in the oral environment, biologic corrosion, held under the direct influence of the bacterial microflora


Infrastructure public private partnerships (PPP) procurement must be carefully selected on the basis of value for money when compared to conventional procurement. While the value for money analysis has been widely used to ensure low procurement cost in PPP, little is known with respect to its effectiveness and data source. The paper explores existing value for money assessment model and reports its deficiencies in ignoring project revenue and network data collecting. Addressing the current issues, a new revenue based value for money assessment model with Monte Carlo simulation technique is proposed. Data used for simulation come from project participants who obtain and share data through an online virtual collaborative platform. By applying this online technique, project data is more easily shared and reused. This data transmission process is automated and seamless. Then, the effectiveness of new model was examined by using a hypothetical toll road case. It shows that the new value for money assessment model demonstrates the significant advantage in estimating the risk, cost, and revenue variance and assisting the public agency to make decision in the procurement phase.


Performance on verbal and mathematical tasks is enhanced when participants shift from using algorithms to retrieving information directly from memory (Siegler, 1988a). However, it is unknown whether a shift to retrieval is involved in dynamic spatial skill acquisition. For example, do athletes mentally extrapolate the trajectory of the ball, or do they retrieve the future location from memory? To examine this question, 2 experiments were conducted using a task paradigm similar to the game Pong—a ball was launched from 1 side of the screen and participants attempted to position a paddle to intercept the ball. In Experiment 1, participants responded to a limited number of repeated trajectories. During the learning phase, the response deadline was near the paddle. During the difficult phase, the response deadline was closer to the launch point. During the critical phase, novel trajectories were introduced at the difficult response deadline. If participants are using a retrieval strategy by the critical phase, performance should be significantly worse on the novel trajectories, whereas if they are using an algorithmic strategy, performance on the novel trials should be similar to performance on the repeated trajectories. In Experiment 2, half the participants followed an experimental paradigm similar to Experiment 1 and half experienced all novel trajectories throughout the task. Our results were consistent with a shift from algorithmic processing to retrieval—participants performed significantly better on repeated trajectories relative to novel trajectories. Furthermore, retrieval strategies enhance performance above and beyond what is gained by practicing the algorithm alone.


In this paper we deal with the degree of ill-posedness of linear operator equations Ax = y, x ∈ X, y ∈ Y, in the Hilbert space X = Y = L 2(0, 1), where A = M о J is a compact operator that may be decomposed into the simple integration operator J with a well-known decay rate of singular values and a multiplication operator M determined by the multiplier function m. This case occurs for example for nonlinear operator equations F(x) = y with a forward operator F = N о J where N is a Nemytskii operator. Then the local degree of ill-posedness of the nonlinear equation at a point x 0 of the domain of F is investigated via the Fréchet derivative of F which has the form F' (x 0) = M о J. We show the restricted influence of such multiplication operators M mapping in L 2(0,1). If the multiplier function m has got zeros, the determination of the degree of ill-posedness is not trivial. We are going to investigate this situation and provide analytical tools as well as their limitations. For power and exponential type multiplier functions with essential zeros we will show by using several numerical approaches that the unbounded inverse of the injective multiplication operator does not influence the local degree of ill-posedness. We provide a conjecture, verified by several numerical studies, how these multiplication operators influence the singular values of A = M о J. Finally we analyze the influence of those multiplication operators M on the possibilities of Tikhonov regularization and corresponding convergence rates. We investigate the role of approximate source conditions in the method of Tikhonov regularization for linear and nonlinear ill-posed operator equations. Based on the studies on approximate source conditions we indicate that only integrals of m and not the decay of multiplier functions near zero determines the convergence behavior of the regularized solution.


Optimization under uncertainty is a powerful methodology used in design and optimization to produce robust, reliable designs. Such an optimization methodology, employed when the input quantities of interest are uncertain, yields output uncertainties that help the designer choose appropriate values for input parameters to produce safe designs. Apart from providing basic statistical information such as mean and standard deviation in the output quantities, uncertainty-based optimization produces auxiliary information such as local and global sensitivities. The designer may thus decide the input parameter(s) to which the output quantity of interest is most sensitive, and thereby design better experiments based on just the most sensitive input parameter(s). Another critical output of such a methodology is the solution to the inverse problem, i.e, finding the allowable uncertainty (range) in the input parameter(s), given an acceptable uncertainty (range) in the output quantities of interest. We apply optimization under uncertainty to the problem of heat transfer in fin heat sinks with uncertainties in geometry and operating conditions. The analysis methodology is implemented using DAKOTA, an open source design and analysis kit. A response surface is first generated which captures the dependence of the quantity of interest on inputs. This response surface is then used to perform both deterministic and probabilistic optimization of the heat sink, and the results of the two approaches are compared.


Background: A recently discovered adipokine, retinol-binding protein-4 (RBP-4), is reportedly associated with insulin resistance and metabolic syndrome. This study was performed to analyze the relationship between serum RBP-4 levels and coronary artery disease (CAD) in Korean adults. Methods: In 235 subjects (mean age 58 years) in whom coronary artery angiograms were performed due to complaints of chest pain, serum RBP-4 levels were measured by enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay. Coronary artery angiograms were performed in all subjects and t he severity of CAD was assessed by the number of stenotic vessels. The presence of metabolic syndrome was defined by AHA/NHLBI criteria with body mass index substituted for waist circumference. Results: Coronary angiogram showed that 101 subjects (43%) had normal coronary vessel, 82 subjects (34.9%) had 1-vessel disease, 31 subjects (13.2%) had 2-vessel disease and 21 subjects (8.9%) had 3-vessel disease. Subjects with coronary artery stenosis showed a higher mean age (60.5 ± 10.0 years), fasting glucose (123.3 mg ± 45.0 mg/dL) and lower mean value for high-density lipoprotein cholesterol (HDL-C) level (49.0 ± 13.2 mg/dL), although serum RBP-4 levels were not significantly different between those with and without CAD. Mean age and fasting glucose level increased significantly as the number of stenotic vessels increased, although serum RBP4 level showed no significant differences amo ng the different groups. Among the metabolic parameters, only serum triglyceride levels showed a significant correlation with serum RBP-4 levels. Conclusion: There was no difference in mean serum RBP-4 levels between subjects with or without coronary artery disease in Korean adults. Further studies are warranted to draw a clear conclusion on the effect of RBP-4 on atherosclerosis. (Korean Diabetes J 33:105-112, 2009)


Storage potential of processing potatoes is often terminated prematurely by the unpredictable onset of senescent sweetening. The condition, characterised by a rise in reducing sugar content (fructose and glucose), results in darkening of chips and crisps increasing the risk of acrylamide formation through the Maillard reaction. Information is lacking on biochemical mechanisms that trigger senescent sweetening and better predictive methodologies for growers/processors are urgently needed. This study aims to understand mechanism(s) underpinning senescent sweetening and develop predictive tools. Commercial varieties Lady Rosetta ('susceptible' to sweetening) and VR 808 (able to maintain a 'stable' sugar profile), were planted from common seed tubers at 3 UK locations (Norfolk, Shropshire, Yorkshire) during the 1st year, Norfolk (Norwich) during the 2nd year and Yorkshire during the 3rd year of the study. During the first two years Pentland Dell and Russet Burbank, were included in the trial as additional material that provided contrasting profiles of sugar accumulation during storage. During the 3rd year P. Dell tubers chitted (250 days) and non-chitted were added to the trials to determine the influence in aged seed in Senescent Sweetening. Cured and CIPC treated tubers were stored at 10°C (Sutton Bridge Crop Storage Research) and sampled every 6-8 weeks for tuber quality (NRI) for physiological changes during long-term storage at 10°C. Effects of calcium (Ca) in storage potencial were studied in tubers from a fertilization trial, and its effects on dormancy break/sprout growth were tested as well. Duration of storage had the largest impact on sugar accumulation and respiration. Significant varietal differences effected senescent sweetening: respiration and sugar accumulation were higher in L. Rosetta and P. Dell than in VR 808 and R. Burbank. Comparison of fluctuations and the abundance of ROS activity captured by staining help to link possible mechanisms for a decrease in vitamin C during 10°C storage. Quantifying changes in amyloplast integrity, water dikinases activity and ROS activity could help with the development of diagnostic markers for predicting changes in tuber health and be used in the longer term for genetic marker development. It was concluded that Ca regulation had a significant impact in senescent sweetening.