Like killing two birds with one stone, we here utilize sulfur functionalization to simultaneously mitigate the persistent instability issue of the famous Zr(IV)-based metal–organic frameworks (MOFs) and impart effective metal uptake capabilities for broader potential applications. Thioether side groups can be conveniently designed to have various sizes and configurations, and offer unique advantages for functionalizing and stabilizing highly porous frameworks. Sulfuration as such on Zr(IV)-based frameworks is meaningful, because these MOF materials, in spite of their improved stability when protected by solvents, often degrade fast upon exposure to air, therefore limiting applications that involve gas–solid interfaces. For better practical impact, here we install sulfur side chains, e.g., tris(methylthiomethyl)methyl, that are conveniently derived from inexpensive pentaerythrityl compounds. One notable advance achieved pertains to a UiO-68-type porous solid (i.e., based on terphenyl dicarboxyl linkers) featuring long-term stability in direct exposure to air, while maintaining significant mercury uptake capability from water and organic solutions. Also discovered is a cubic NU-1100-type net that offers more efficient mercury removal capability (with regards to the adsorption capacity as well as binding strength as measured from the distribution coefficient Kd) than other thioether-equipped MOF materials.


Service Quality ideals and evaluations are relatively neglected areas in regard to the backpacker/budget traveller segment of the tourism market. This study examines the Service Quality expectations and evaluations of a sample of backpacker visitors to the Wet Tropics World Heritage area of Northern Australia. It was found that ideals were rated more highly than were evaluations concerning the region. Older visitors were more likely to exhibit a higher ideal and also evaluation whereas those with a higher level of formal education expressed a higher ideal. This study has also found that individuals with a higher preference for planning and organization in their vacation were more likely to be associated with higher ideals. Higher evaluation levels regarding the destination were associated with individuals who preferred a new destination each vacation, who preferred only a few other people around them during a vacation, who preferred outdoor vacation facilities and who also preferred little previous planning and organization as part of their vacation. The implications of these findings for destinations and for this visitor segment are discussed.


In this paper, we discuss properties of the Knack system which is designed as a testbed for experimenting memory retrieval and organization in Case-Based Reasoning. Methods used for retrieval and indexing are based on mathematically sound techniques developed in classification, clustering and decision analysis. Retrieval is done using decision theoretic methods such as voting k nearest neighbor and Bayesian theory with weighted attributes. New indices for cases are generated by using clustering methods. Cases are then re-organized using the new indices. The Knack environment was designed so that additional techniques and metrics can easily be added.


Objective: The aim of the present study was to compare the efficacy of compression bandage and compression device in the treatment of patients with breast cancer with mild to moderate upper extremity secondary mastectomy with secondary lymphedema. Methods: The present study was conducted on 80 female patients with unilateral upper extremity lymphadenopathy diagnosed postoperatively in women with breast cancer who underwent mastectomy. Only bandage was applied to the control group (n=40); intermittent pneumatic compression (IPC) and bandage (n=40) were applied to the treatment group. All patients received treatment for a total of 15 sessions for 5 weeks, 3 days/week. After all the patients' age and body mass index (BMI) were recorded, the shoulder joint range of motions (ROMs) were measured by goniometer, circumferential measurements were measured by tape measure 4 times and on days 5, 10, and 15, and the Q-DASH functional disability scale was evaluated. The SPSS 22.0 package program was used for statistical analyzes. A p value <0.05 was accepted as statistically significant. Results: The average age of the patients was 54.80±10.36 years, and BMI was 28.78±4.65 kg/m 2 . When the circumferential and ROM measurements of the patients were examined, improvement was observed in both groups, but only the bandaged group was better than the IPC group (p=0.030, 0.019, 0.044, < 0.001, and < 0.001). In case of functional status assessments, improvement was observed only in patients who received bandages (p<0.001). Conclusion: As a result of the present study, there was no significant difference between compression bandage and intermittent compression device applications in the treatment of patients with lymphedema after mastectomy. Even in some measurements, it was seen that there was more improvement in patients who had only bandages applied.


In this chapter, we focus on proposing new strategies to efficiently transfer a compressed image/video content through wireless links using a multiple antenna technology. The proposed solutions can be considered as application layer physical layer (APP-PHY) cross layer design methods as they involve optimizing both application and physical layers. After a wide state-of-the-art study, we present two main solutions. The first focuses on using a new precoding algorithm that takes into account the image/video content structure when assigning transmission powers. We showed that its results are better than the existing conventional precoders. Second, a link adaptation process is integrated to efficiently assign coding parameters as a function of the channel state. Simulations over a realistic channel environment show that the link adaptation activates a dynamic process that results in a good image/video reconstruction quality even if the channel is varying. Finally, we incorporated soft decoding algorithms at the receiver side, and we showed that they could induce further improvements. In fact, almost 5 dB peak signal-to-noise ratio (PSNR) improvements are demonstrated in the case of transmission over a Rayleigh channel.


A constitutive model is proposed for simulations of hot forming processes. Dominant mechanisms in hot forming including inter-granular deformation, grain boundary sliding and grain boundary diffusion are considered in the constitutive model. A Taylor type polycrystalline model is used to predict inter-granular deformation. Previous works on grain boundary sliding and grain boundary diffusion are extended to drive three dimensional macro stress-strain rate relationships for each mechanism. In these relationships, the effect of grain size is also taken into account. It is shown that for grain boundary diffusion, stress-strain rate relationship obeys the Prandtl-Reuss flow rule. The proposed model is used to simulate step strain rate tests and the results are compared with experimental data. It is concluded that the model can be used to predict flow stress for various grain sizes and strain rates. The proposed model can be directly used in simulation of hot forming processes and as an example the bulge forming process is simulated and the results are compared with experimental data.


Politeknik Caltex Riau (PCR) is one of the private educational institutions, where income from student tuition fees is the main income to run its operations. Therefore, it is very important for PCR to conduct an analysis of the cost per student per semester. It can be used as a basis for determining the fees to be paid by each student every semester and can maintain the competitiveness of each department with other private educational institutions. The aims of this study are to determine how much the unit cost per student and how much student from engineering and social department has to pay. PCR Cost analysis is performed by using the Time-Driven Activity Based Costing (TDABC) approach to allocate the cost from supporting departments to the main departments and then allocate costs to cost objects such as students. The results show that tuition fee per student of engineering departments is higher than the social department. There are five engineering departments: Electronics, Computer, Mechatronics, Telecommunications and Information Systems where the student tuition fee is smaller than the unit cost given. Thus, in order to cover the unit cost and maintain the quality and competitiveness, PCR should recalculated the unit cost per student to set reasonable tuition fee. Key words: Unit costs, tuition fees, competitiveness, Time Driven Activity Based Costing (TDABC)..


Peripheral T-cell lymphoma (PTCL) is a group of diseases with poor outcome and few therapeutic options. Three main studies described bendamustine in these patients: one prospective phase II study, Bently and two retrospectives Italian and French studies. Patients were mainly angioimmunoblastic, PTCL-not otherwise specified (PTCL-NOS) and anaplastic large cell lymphoma. The majority of patients had disseminated disease and extranodal localizations refractory or in relapsed with over one previous line therapy. Overall response rate (ORR) was 32% to 55% with complete response (CR) rate of 10% to 28%. Median progression free survival and overall survival (OS) were 3.1 to 3.6 and 4.4 to 6.2 months in different studies. Bendamustine as single agent could be considered as an accessible therapeutic option for relapsed or refractory PTCL (R/R PTCL). It can be a way to bring the eligible patients to transplant. In another way, this treatment could be administered for elderly patients. Combinations of bendamustine with other drugs warrant further evaluation.


Abstract Giant reed is an extremely aggressive riparian invader in California. Little is known about its response to nitrogen, which is often elevated in watersheds downstream from agricultural fields and wastewater treatment facilities. Two pot-experiments were conducted to quantify physiological responses of giant reed, and a co-occurring riparian species, common threesquare, to added nitrogen and to investigate a possible enhancement effect of nitrogen on the ability of giant reed to spread laterally belowground into a competitive environment. The first experiment measured shoot height, tissue biomass, and leaf area of giant reed and common threesquare, both herbaceous perennials, grown in pots with and without added nitrogen. The second experiment measured lateral rhizome growth, tissue biomass, and tiller production of giant reed in planters subjected to four possible treatments: with or without competition and with or without added nitrogen. Competition planters had previously been colonized by common threesquare and no-competition planters were unoccupied. Nitrogen-treated plants from the first experiment had greater overall shoot height. With added nitrogen, giant reed produced more root and shoot biomass, whereas common threesquare produced more rhizome and shoot biomass. In the second experiment, added nitrogen resulted in significantly greater rhizome length and greater production of tillers by giant reed regardless of competition. In competition plantings without added nitrogen, giant reed tiller production was reduced, whereas the addition of nitrogen nearly restored tiller production to levels attained without competition. Neither nitrogen nor competition significantly affected giant reed biomass production. Results of these experiments indicate the positive response of giant reed and a native riparian species to nitrogen enrichment and suggest that nitrogen can compensate for the effects of competition on giant reed in some cases. As a result, this species might be able to penetrate some environments without negative impacts from competing vegetation. Nomenclature: Common threesquare, Scirpus americanus Pers. SCPAM, giant reed, Arundo donax L. ABKDO


As the United States mobilized troops to invade Iraq in the spring of 2003, the national agenda at the forefront of the charge was "Operation Iraqi Freedom." The push to "liberate" the Iraqi citizen from the oppressive Ba'athist State capitalized on a newly created United Nations Security Council Resolution: Resolution 1325. As a peace-building mechanism, Resolution 1325 proposes that in order to reconstruct a nation following conflict, increased numbers of women must be incorporated into policy, government, and police forces. This form of gender mainstreaming is a tenet of liberal feminism that relies on the "add women and stir" approach to gendered equality. However, when applied in post-conflict Iraq, women did not experience the expected gendered equality envisioned by Resolution 1325. Instead, these reconstruction techniques ignored the crumbling state infrastructure and attempted to impose western ideals of equality, leaving Iraqi women only more vulnerable and susceptible to gender based violence and retaliation, disease, poverty, and death. This Comment argues that in post-conflict Iraq, Resolution 1325 was not only apathetically applied, but was, and remains to be, a wholly ineffective tool to reconstruct war-torn nations. This Comment therefore proposes an alternative to the gender-mainstreaming policies of Resolution 1325, turning instead to Martha Fineman's Vulnerability Theory. Rather than attempting to achieve gendered justice by increasing the numbers of women in reconstruction, Vulnerability Theory operates within the post-conflict state to assert that the state must be responsive to the root causes of suffering and discrimination experienced by vulnerable populations following armed conflict, and must rebuild base economic, political, and social infrastructure first, understanding that factors such as poverty, diminished access to life-saving resources, unemployment and insecurity all intersect with gender to perpetuate conditions of vulnerability, suffering, and violence. BRESLIN_COMMENTPROOFS 4/1/2019 2:31 PM 260 EMORY INTERNATIONAL LAW REVIEW [Vol. 33


The subject of this article is whether, and to what extent, modern English negligence law relies on cost-benefit balancing. Some scholars have claimed that actors are subject to liability under English negligence law when they create a substantial foreseeable risk of harm to others, without regard to the costs of avoiding that risk. A close look at the leading English decisions (most of which date from the period 1945-1970) shows that this account is incorrect. Reasoning from the fundamental principle that negligence is failure to act as a reasonably prudent person would have acted, the English judiciary has repeatedly endorsed the proposition that a reasonable person balances the costs and benefits of avoiding foreseeable risks of harm to others. The practical importance of this proposition varies: in some contexts, such as workplace accidents, English judges -- who both find the facts and apply the law in negligence cases -- routinely and explicitly engage in balancing; in other contexts, such as automobile accidents, some judges balance, while others simply imagine what a reasonable person would have done. In no context, however, is balancing forbidden and liability imposed solely for creating a substantial foreseeable risk. On the other hand, when they do balance, English judges often say that a precaution should be taken unless its costs are disproportionately (not merely marginally) greater than its benefits. English law thus makes cost-benefit balancing a major component of the reasonable person standard, while leaving substantial room for divergent intuitions about fault and responsibility.


We give a conceptual exposition of aspects of gravitational radiation, especially in relation to energy. Our motive for doing so is that the strong analogies with electromagnetic radiation seem not to be widely enough appreciated. In particular, we reply to some recent papers in the philosophy of physics literature that seem to deny that gravitational waves carry energy. Our argument is based on two points: (i) that for both electromagnetism and gravity, in the presence of material sources, radiation is an effective concept, unambiguously emerging only in certain regimes or solutions of the theory; and (ii) similarly, energy conservation is only unambiguous in certain regimes or solutions of general relativity. Crucially, the domain of (i), in which radiation is meaningful, has a significant overlap with the domain of (ii), in which energy conservation is meaningful. Conceptually, the overlap of regimes is no coincidence: the long-standing question about the existence of gravitational waves was settled precisely by finding a consistent way to articulate their energy and momentum.


While man is probably highly resistant to extraneural infection by the rabies virus, each year records the death of several persons after sustaining a wound inflicted by a rabid animal. While the infliction of the wound usually precedes the clinical signs of infection by a sufficiently long interval to institute prophylaxis, the recent report of Constantine1raises the specter that mammals may become infected without the association of trauma. Moreover, prevention of the disease by conventional methods has failed sufficiently often to indicate the desirability of increasing the efficacy of available vaccines. Most of the vaccines currently in use in man contain mammalian nervous tissue which apparently has the potential of tissue-specific sensitization which is presumably the cause of demyelinating incidents in a small but frightening per cent of subjects who submit to the conventional Pasteur prophylaxis of rabies. Consequently, it seems desirable to develop vaccines which contain no


To estimate the fatigue life of long-span steel bridge more accurately, this paper proposes a method for estimating the fatigue life of long-span bridges by considering vehicle-bridge coupled vibration. Firstly, the universal equation of vehicle-bridge vibration is derived based on triaxial standard multi-scale model of fatigue vehicle and bridge, and relevant program for vehicle-bridge coupled vibration is programmed. Secondly, a method for estimating the fatigue life of long-span steel bridge is proposed based on fracture mechanics theories, and the analysis process is expounded in details. Finally, the method for estimating fatigue life proposed in this paper is verified by taking a double pylon cable- stayed bridge with orthotropic steel bridge deck slab as an example.


A study was conducted to determine the rheological properties of green and gold kiwifruit purees with total soluble solids of 16 to 17 °Brix at different temperatures (25, 35 and 45 °C). The rheological properties of the samples were determined using a rotational rheometer at a shear range of 32 to 4835 s-1. The green and gold kiwifruit purees were found to be Non-Newtonian fluids following the Herschel-Bulkley model. The yield stress and consistency coefficient of the green kiwifruit puree at different temperatures were higher than those of the gold kiwifruit purees but the opposite was observed for the flow behavior index. Moreover, all rheological properties of the green and gold kiwifruit purees decreased with increasing temperature. The consistency coefficient was related to temperature using an Arrhenius-type relationship. The gold kiwifruit puree (8.96 kJ/mol) has higher activation energy than the green kiwifruit puree (5.82 kJ/mol). The yield stress values of the green and gold kiwifruit purees can be related to temperature by linear regression equations and the flow behavior index values by exponential regression equations.


We read with great interest the recent report by Li et al. analyzing the correlation between the clusters of differentiation 24 (CD24) polymorphism and risk of chronic hepatitis B virus (HBV) infection. In their study, the CD24 P170 T allele (thymidine at position 170) was correlated with a strong, statistically significant increased risk of developing chronic HBV infection. They also showed that CD24 polymorphism may associate with development of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). Chronic HBV infection is one of the most important risk factors for HCC. Many patients with chronic HBV infection are more prone to develop liver cirrhosis and HCC when the infection is rampant. In view of these theories, genetic variants underlying chronic HBV infection should be related to HCC susceptibility. Results of a genome-wide association show the overlapping relation of the Corticotropin-releasing hormone receptor 2 (CRHR2) gene with HCC mediated largely through its association with HBV infection. To analyze if CD24 polymorphisms are associated with host susceptibility to HCC, we described a case–control study of 235 cases with HCC and 268 healthy controls in a southeast Chinese population. All patients presented clear histopathological confirmation of HCC. Patients who had preoperative chemotherapy or preoperative chemoradiotherapy were excluded. Population controls were selected from a pool of cancer-free subjects living in the same region as the cases. The control subjects were frequencymatched to the cases on sex and age. The T/T homozygote in CD24 P170 was correlated with a strong, statistically significant increased risk of developing HCC (adjusted odds ratio 1⁄4 2.96, 95% confidence interval 1⁄4 1.54-5.79; Table 1). Hence, we proposed that genes underlying a susceptibility to chronic HBV infection may also be relevant to HCC. This result is analogous to the overlapping relation of gene polymorphism with lung cancer that is mediated largely through its association with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. HCC is one of the most common malignant neoplasms in the world. HBV, hepatitis C virus, excessive alcohol intake, and exposure to aflatoxin B1 are major risk factors for the development of HCC. Approximately 80% of HCC incidence worldwide is etiologically associated with HBV. In view of these facts, HCC is the outcome of chronic inflammation. Genes regulated in local inflammation may be linked with HCC through inflammatory or immune-modulating pathways. Liver inflammation induced by hepatitis B is produced by the cellular immune response against viral antigens present in infected hepatocytes. In this local microenvironment, preneoplastic transformation of hepatocytes is believed to happen. This therefore shows that the CD24 P170 T/T genotype increases the risk of HCC. Genetic factors underlying HBV could be related to HCC risk. Future genome-wide association studies may consider this overlap phenomenon.


Nondipolar corrections to the photoelectron angular distributions from C{sub 60} have been calculated for the highest occupied molecular orbital (HOMO), HOMO-1, and HOMO-2 photoemission bands. The computational method employed takes advantage of a parallel algorithm that uses a multicentric expansion of bound- and scattering-wave functions and a density-functional theory one-particle Hamiltonian. First-order nondipolar asymmetry parameters have been calculated from thresholds of up to 160 eV of photon energy. Strong oscillations, reminiscent of those found in the ratio of the HOMO and HOMO-1 partial cross sections, have been observed in the nondipolar asymmetry parameters as well. The oscillations have the same period, but a different phase, compared to the ones that characterize the HOMO-HOMO-1 intensity ratio.


This article examines the process of state-formation in the new United States republic after 1776 through a case study of the brief-lived state of Franklin (1784–c.1789) and its successor, Tennessee, which achieved statehood in 1796. The article asks why Franklin failed and Tennessee succeeded within such a short time-span and what both tell us about how the new United States and its citizens were working out questions of sovereignty and self-governance after 1776. I argue that westward moving white settlers never rejected the state; they merely wanted to control its formation themselves. However, the violence of white settlers in places like Franklin, focused on dispossessing neighboring Cherokees, contributed to evolving federal policies that backed away from a robust embrace of settler sovereignty as might have been implied by Revolutionary war-era rhetoric. Eastern policymakers, existing "parent" states like North Carolina, and wealthy speculators increasingly argued that western settlement needed to be centrally controlled, leading to the imposition of policies like the Northwest Ordinance. Tennessee was the first territory and state to enter the union under the terms of the Northwest Ordinance, but it controverted the spirit if not the letter of that law, reflecting the fact that white settlers continually asserted their own capacity and right to self-determination.


An important function of symbiont-bearing benthic foraminifera is to provide their endosymbiotic microalgae with light. At the same time, these foraminifera have to resist hydrodynamic forces. Foraminifera match these demands by constructing shells (tests) functioning as glasshouses. In shallowest regions of oligotrophic tropical seas, at the one end of the scale, foraminifera with spherical and thick lenticular tests develop special fixing mechanisms to resist extreme water motion. In the deepest euphotic zone, at the other end of the scale with extremely weak light and quiet water, foraminifera with flat discoid and blade-shaped tests possessing a high surface/volume-ratio position their symbionts just beneath the transparent test walls, intensifying the weak light through elevated test surface structures. Between these two extremes, foraminifera react to decreasing light intensity and water motion by the transition in shell form from spherical to extremely flat tests. A second way in test form from high energetic shallow water to less, but still energetic water is the transition from spherical to fusiform tests, again raising the surface/volume-ratio but not in the same degree as performed by test flattening.


This summer, LP chairman Bryan Schwartz boldly went where few modern attorneys have gone before. Bryan decided to take a month-long sabbatical from his practice, meaning no work calls or email. Recently, the National Law Journal published Bryan's thoughts on his time "unplugged" in the article "What I Did on Summer Vacation - Restored Myself to Sanity." In the article, Bryan addresses the catalyst for his decision to fully disconnect, the real/imagined obstacles that prevent so many from doing the same, and how the time he spent away has since enriched his work. From the article: "Most of us in the legal profession — myself included — have felt that sense of being trapped (or, as we hear daily, "swamped"). We have believed in the impossibility of getting any time away — a week, a weekend, an evening. The tragedy is that it is very possible, and not only for senior partners like me. Certainly, it takes planning. And certainly, it requires one to establish boundaries. But it is within the reach of all lawyers working in any reasonably humane environment, and in the end it makes us better attorneys." Read the full article here.


Abstract Objectives Severe forms of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) are characterized by an excessive production of inflammatory cytokines. Activated monocytes secrete high levels of cytokines. Human monocytes are divided into three major populations: conventional (CD14posCD16neg), non-classical (CD14dimCD16pos), and intermediate (CD14posCD16pos) monocytes. The aim of this study was to analyze whether the distribution of conventional (CD16neg) and CD16pos monocytes is different in patients with COVID-19 and whether the variations could be predictive of the outcome of the disease. Methods We performed a prospective study on 390 consecutive patients referred to the Emergency Unit, with a proven diagnosis of SARS-CoV 2 infection by RT-PCR. Using the CytoDiff™ reagent, an automated routine leukocyte differential, we quantified CD16neg and CD16pos monocytes. Results In the entire population, median CD16neg and CD16pos monocyte levels (0.398 and 0.054×109/L, respectively) were in the normal range [(0.3–0.7×109/L) and (0.015–0.065×109/L), respectively], but the 35 patients in the intensive care unit (ICU) had a significantly (p<0.001) lower CD16pos monocyte count (0.018 × 109/L) in comparison to the 70 patients who were discharged (0.064 × 109/L) or were hospitalized in conventional units (0.058 × 109/L). By ROC curve analysis, the ratio [absolute neutrophil count/CD16pos monocyte count] was highly discriminant to identify patients requiring ICU hospitalization: with a cut-off 193.1, the sensitivity and the specificity were 74.3 and 81.8%, respectively (area under the curve=0.817). Conclusions Quantification of CD16pos monocytes and the ratio [absolute neutrophil count/CD16pos monocyte count] could constitute a marker of the severity of disease in COVID-19 patients.


To study the relationship between polymorphism of vitamin D receptor (VDR) allele with formation of calcium oxalate calculus and find the predisposing genes of calcium oxalate calculus, we screened out 150 patients who suffered from calcium oxalate calculus. 36 of them had idiopathic hypercalciuria according to analysis of calculus component and assay of urine calcium. The polymorphisms of VDR gene Taq1, Apa1 and Fok1 were detected using PCR-RFLP technique and the correlation were analyzed between the polymorphism and urinary calculus or between the polymorphism and hypercalciuria. The difference in each genotypic frequency of the allele of promoter Fok1 between calculus group and healthy group or between idiopathic hypercalciuria calculus group and health group was significant. The content of 24-h urine calcium of those who had genotype ff was obviously higher than that of those who have other genotypes in the same group. There was no significant difference in the polymorphism of gene Apa1 and Taq1 between each two groups. It is concluded that hypercalciuria and calcium oxalate calculus were related to the polymorphism of VDR gene's promoter Fok1 allele, but it had nothing to do with the polymorphism of gene Apa1 and Taq1. The genotype ff was a candidate heredity marker of calcium calculus disease.


Noble metals (e.g., Ru, Ir and Pt) or their derivatives exhibit very appealing activity toward the hydrogen evolution reaction (HER), but their high price and low reserves impede their wide use. Herein, we propose a strategy in which, through the manipulation of crystal and electronic structure, one can convert a common metal to have a Pt-like performance for HER. To achieve this goal, a series of MCo2 (M = Ti, Zr, Hf and Sc) has been synthesized by using a rapid arc-melting method. TiCo2 exhibits comparable HER activity to that of Pt/C, for which it requires only -70 mV (V vs. RHE) to reach 10 mA cm-2 with a Tafel slope of 33 mV decade-1 in 1.0 M KOH. Moreover, X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) and density functional theory (DFT) indicate that the lower adsorption energy (ΔGH*) of H on the Co atom in TiCo2, due to the change in Co electronic state, is another key factor to account for its high HER activity. This case study offers a good illustration of how to transform a non-noble metal so it behaves like a noble metal toward HER and can potentially be applied under other conditions.


Many states have limited information on truck trips, their origins and destinations, routes traveled and commodities carried. The overall goal of this study was to identify a reliable data collection method capable of generating specific detail useful to Oregon Department of Transportation's modeling and freight planning needs for data on truck movements at the metropolitan level. This report looks specifically at the use of interceptor surveys at different land use locations. Roadside interviews were conducted on an interstate highway, a port facility and a warehouse/distribution center. Results indicate that data captured at roadside interview locations do provide excellent trip detail for inter-regional movements (state and interstate highway locations) and also very good trip detail for intra- regional freight movements (warehouse / distribution center locations). It was found that the capture rate (number of vehicles sampled out of the total volume) is dependent upon available parking and survey personnel relative to the total truck traffic volume and undoubtedly will vary by roadside interview site. All three types of roadside interviews produced high response rates related to vehicle and trailer, carrier identification, route, and facility. Roadside interviews at the warehouse/distribution center and interstate highway weigh station provided high response rates related to commodity type, while the preponderance of container traffic at the port facility limited responses on payload information. Obtaining specific street addresses and zip codes for trip origin and destination is very difficult for all types of roadside interviews, but the best responses were from warehouse/distribution centers. Specific findings and analyses will be presented in the paper. Implications for costs and applicability are drawn.


This paper studies the problem of programming a robotic panda gardener to keep a bamboo garden from obstructing the view of the lake by your house.
The garden consists of $n$ bamboo stalks with known daily growth rates and the gardener can cut at most one bamboo per day. As a computer scientist, you found out that this problem has already been formalized in [Gąsieniec et al., SOFSEM'17] as the Bamboo Garden Trimming (BGT) problem, where the goal is that of computing a perpetual schedule (i.e., the sequence of bamboos to cut) for the robotic gardener to follow in order to minimize the makespan, i.e., the maximum height ever reached by a bamboo.
Two natural strategies are Reduce-Max and Reduce-Fastest(x). Reduce-Max trims the tallest bamboo of the day, while Reduce-Fastest(x) trims the fastest growing bamboo among the ones that are taller than $x$. It is known that Reduce-Max and Reduce-Fastest(x) achieve a makespan of $O(\log n)$ and $4$ for the best choice of $x=2$, respectively. We prove the first constant upper bound of $9$ for Reduce-Max and improve the one for Reduce-Fastest(x) to $\frac{3+\sqrt{5}}{2} < 2.62$ for $x=1+\frac{1}{\sqrt{5}}$.
Another critical aspect stems from the fact that your robotic gardener has a limited amount of processing power and memory. It is then important for the algorithm to be able to quickly determine the next bamboo to cut while requiring at most linear space. We formalize this aspect as the problem of designing a Trimming Oracle data structure, and we provide three efficient Trimming Oracles implementing different perpetual schedules, including those produced by Reduce-Max and Reduce-Fastest(x).


The Swedish private pension insurance industry has experienced several important legislative amendments in recent years, which has altered the conditions for market players on both the supply side and the demand side. The one change that is most important for the purpose of this paper is the introduction of transfer rights in 2007 and this change is likely to influence market dynamics where switching costs play a crucial role. The first part of this paper investigates in what way switching costs has been affected by this alteration. Secondly, this paper will challenge the model created by Shy (2002). The model is constructed to estimate switching costs in a simple way. The results suggest that switching costs necessarily has not decreased in connection with the market opening up. There are no significant outcomes supporting the hypothesis of lower switching costs with the introduction of transfer rights. Further, in evaluation of the model by Shy (2002) it seems as if the model is excessively simple. The model omits essential information in its estimation of switching costs. In line with recent theories, I suggest that quantification of advisors contribution is important and needs to be added to the existing model. Future research should focus on testing the model on data from other industries in order to determine its capability.


Summary Dental practitioners are exposed occupationally to infectious materials. The aim of the study was to obtain comprehensive information about attitudes and practices of Lithuanian general dental practitioners (GDPs) regarding infection control and use of personal protective equipment (PPE). Material and methods: A confidential, self administered questionnaire was send to all 2235 Lithuanian general dental practitioners. The questionnaire collected data on sociodemographic characteristics, practice time, working place and environment, attitudes regarding infection control, hand hygiene, wearing of gloves, masks, protective eyewear/face shield, and reasons of ignoring of infection control procedures. Results:  Overall response rate was 64.7% (87.4% of them were women; 64.1% were working in five major cities of Lithuania and 60.8% in privat clinics. Mean age of repondents was 44.8 (range 23 – 74 years).  As much as 95.3% dentists expressed concern about the risk of cross-infection from patients to themselves and their dental assistants. Respondents reported: handwashing before treating patients and after deglowing (83.0%); always wearing gloves (85.3%); changing gloves after each patient (92.8%); using masks (75.1%) and protective eyerwear/face shield (49.4%); changing masks after each patient (28.0%). Insufficient use of PPE was associated mostly with limited resources and shortage of equipment. Even 51.5% of respondents who do not change masks thought they did not become infected. Multifactorial logistic regression analysis revealed significant predictors of "inappropriate infection control procedures": longer time of practicing, working at community clinics and outside of five biggest cities of Lithuania. Conclusions. Improvements in infection control procedures as use of personal protective equipment are necessary in dental practice. The main causes of inappropriate infection control in dental offices were recognized as limited resources especially in community clinics and lack of knowledge according to masks changing habits.


Gliomas are one of the most common primary brain-tumors. Despite surgery and radiotherapy (RT) with or without adjuvant chemotherapy, malignant glioma remains an almost uniformly fatal disease characterized by a rapid and devastating clinical course. Deep region hyperthermia (capacitative electro-hyperthermia) as an oncological treatment in brain-glioma (BG) is applied either alone or in combination with chemoand/or radiotherapy. We present a retrospective study of 140 patients, which were treated/followed from February 2000 to June 2005. The endpoint was the overall survival and the survival from the 1st oncological hyperthermia treatment (survival from the relapse untreatable by other methods). The median/mean survival times were 19.8/31.7 and 6.7/10.0 months from 1st diagnosis and from 1st hyperthermia, respectively. Results support the feasibility of capacitative deep region hyperthermia for advanced brain-glioma patients.


As one of the fastest growing states in the country, Arizona faces a problem: where is it going to find water to support this growth? The problem arises because most surface water supplies are completely allocated and groundwater is being pumped at an unsustainable rate. This leaves, as the only viable source of new water, Colorado River water available through the sale, lease or exchange of existing water rights. The United States is entering an era of water reallocation, when demand for new supplies will be satisfied by shifting water use from existing users to those with new demands. Voluntary transfers between willing sellers and willing buyers is, we believe, the best way to bring about this reallocation. Water marketing should be especially embraced by the environmental community because the alternatives are unsatisfactory: more diversions of water from the few remaining free-flowing rivers; an increase in groundwater pumping; or the construction of new dams. This paper explores the opportunities for marketing Colorado River water by examining case studies of individual transfers that have occurred or been proposed. We consider a recent proposal by the seven Colorado River Basin States that would alter the Law of the River with a set of incentives that would encourage water conservation by allowing cities to pay farmers and irrigation districts to undertake extraordinary conservation measures. We conclude that there substantial impediments to water marketing: the legal constraints are formidable; the transaction costs substantial; and the emotions highly charged. Procedural pitfalls and bureaucratic oversight of transfers constitute substantial impediments to the transfer of even modest quantities of water. These regulatory obstacles drive up transaction costs and discourage the development of a market in water.


Duluth, a "boom and bust" city with a marginal economy, has a unique position outside the mainstream of American life that adds a different dimension lo the understanding of community politics. Settlement patterns have contributed to the development of separate "business" and "labor" subcommunities that are substantially alienated from and hostile to one another and have rarely been able to cooperate in any civic endeavor. Operating within the framework of a political system caricaturing that of Minnesota as a whole, the two subcommunities reversed the pattern of local concern found in other cities; labor became the progressive force in local matters while business played a highly conservative role. Since World War II, the decline of the city's established economic base hos been completed. At the same time, the DemocralicFarmer-Labor Party has emerged as the dominant political party locally. Its leaders, in alliance with organized labor, have tried to do something about Duluth's predicament. In J 956, they secured a major change in the city's form of government that was designed to open the door to progress an other fronts. Ta do so, they forged an alliance with the business community that, at least temporarily, transcended the city's normal cleavage. While the constitutional change was of little immediate importance, the effect of the alliance was ta convince community leaders on both sides that cooperation for civic improvement was possible, thus opening the door lo a series of government-aided developments that may hove for-reaching consequences for Duluth's economic and social well-being. Duluth and the Study of Community


Neuronal cell culture models in vitro are often restricted to 2D surfaces. Engineering the complexity of the neuronal microenvironment in microfluidic systems can help to generate more tissue like cultures. We have developed a new neuronal cell culturing system based on a microfluidic device that can culture primary neurons in a 3D patterned hydro- gel based microenvironment. Perpendicular to the culture channel a chemical gradient was established to guide neurites. Neurons cultured under a 62.5 ng (ml mm)-1 nerve growth factor (NGF) gradient up to 9 days in vitro (DIV), extended their neurites through the hydrogel in the direction of the higher concentration.


We have previously reported that water-soluble beta-glucan completely devoid of mannoprotein and purified from the yeast cell wall effectively stimulated the macrophage function (Biosci. Biotechnol., Biochem., 65, 4, 837-841 (2001)). In this present study, to increase the yield of water-soluble beta-glucan, the wild type of Sacharomyces cerevisiae, JH, was treated with a combination of UV irradiation and laminarinase (endo-beta-(1,3)-glucanase) to yield the laminarinase-resistant mutants, JUL1 and JUL3. Water-soluble beta-glucans that were free of mannoprotein from JH, JUL1 and JUL3 were purified and their effects on TNF-alpha secretion and phagocytosis by macrophages were evaluated. Crude beta-glucan was first solubilized from the yeast cell wall by alkaline extraction and then subjected to an acid treatment. The residual mannoprotein was completely removed by DEAE and ConA chromatography. The yield of water-soluble beta-glucan in both mutants (JUL1, 5.11%; JUL3, 5.76%) was about 5-fold higher than that of the wild type (1.16%). The water-soluble beta-glucan from JH induced TNF-alpha secretion slightly more than that from JUL1 or JUL3: TNF-alpha secretion by JH at 50, 200, 500 microg/ml of beta-glucan was 11-17% more than that by JUL1 or JUL3 for the same treatment. Beta-glucan from the wild type stimulated phagocytosis slightly more than that from the mutants. These mutants could therefore effectively produce purified water-soluble beta-glucan with immune activity.


When characterizing the processes that shape ecosystems, ecologists increasingly use the unique perspective offered by repeat observations of remotely sensed imagery. However, the concept of change embodied in much of the traditional remote-sensing literature was primarily limited to capturing large or extreme changes occurring in natural systems, omitting many more subtle processes of interest to ecologists. Recent technical advances have led to a fundamental shift toward an ecological view of change. Although this conceptual shift began with coarser-scale global imagery, it has now reached users of Landsat imagery, since these datasets have temporal and spatial characteristics appropriate to many ecological questions. We argue that this ecologically relevant perspective of change allows the novel characterization of important dynamic processes, including disturbances, longterm trends, cyclical functions, and feedbacks, and that these improvements are already facilitating our understanding of critical driving forces, such as climate change, ecological interactions, and economic pressures.


Nine parallel aeromagnetic traverses were flown by the U. S. Geological Survey across the southern Appalachian Mountains and the plateau regions to the west. These traverses are at right angles to the prevailing structural trend and form a strip approximately 20 miles wide and 250 miles long, extending from the Blue Ridge, just north of Asheville, North Carolina, to the Ohio River at Louisville, Kentucky. There is a pronounced northeast linearity in the trends of the individual magnetic anomalies and the larger magnetic units which parallels the regional tectonic trends of the Appalachian Mountains. The anomaly pattern implies several sharp contrasts in magnetic expression of the crystalline basement rocks. The dominant feature on the profiles is a group of exceptionally large anomalies which delineate a block of strongly magnetic rock, approximately 100 miles in width, underlying the Appalachian Plateau. Available gravity data along this same strip, although sparse, show a marked resemblance to the over-all magnetic pattern. A positive Bouguer anomaly of about 30 milligals coincides with the group of large magnetic anomalies. It is concluded that these magnetic and gravity anomalies a e produced by a large mass of predominantly mafic igneous rock underlying the Paleozoic sedimentary rocks of the Appalachian Plateau. Estimates of depth to magnetic rock have been made from many individual magnetic anomalies. These magnetic rocks presumably are part of the Precambrian complex underlying the Paleozoic sedimentary rocks. The depths obtained were generally consistent and indicate that in the Appalachian Plateau there are 8,000-10,000 feet of sedimentary rock and the basement surface is 7,000-9,000 feet below sea level. These thicknesses are less than those predicted from stratigraphic considerations but are supported by data from recently drilled wells which reached basement. One well in Leslie County, Kentucky, entered granite 9,412 feet below the surface or 8,233 feet below sea level. The depth analyses of magnetic anomalies in the Valley and Ridge province indicate that the Paleozoic section End_Page 1251------------------------------ thickens to the southeast, although not as much as expected. The average thickness in the Valley and Ridge province is about 17,000 feet and the greatest thicknesses are in the southern part, indicating that the basement surface plunges in that direction. End_of_Article - Last_Page 1252------------


Two seroprevalence studies of viral hepatitis A and hepatitis E were conducted in El Paso, Tex, and Cd Juárez, Mexico. Subjects were randomly selected, low-income pregnant women. Blood from 557 women in El Paso and 307 women in Cd Juárez, obtained from routine prenatal testing, was analyzed for antibodies to hepatitis A and hepatitis E. Women from both cities showed high seroprevalence rates of hepatitis A (75.8% in El Paso and 96.1% in Cd Juárez). Rates increased significantly by age, with 100% of women in Cd Juárez older than 28 years testing positive. Nationality and ethnicity were significantly associated with hepatitis A seroprevalence: Mexican nationals, 96.1%; US Hispanics, 78.8%; and US Caucasians, 36.4% (P < .001). With respect to hepatitis E, 0.4% of women in El Paso and 1.6% of women in Cd Juárez tested positive for anti-HEV. The rate of hepatitis A seroprevalence was higher for women with lower educational levels and for women residing in crowded households, but these findings were not statistically significant.


Objectives The mining industry is associated with exposures to a range of established and potential carcinogens (e.g. radiation and particulates from metals, crystalline silica, diesel exhaust, etc.). We aimed to assess the full spectrum of cancer incidence in miners relative to the general population and to identify specific subgroups at risk. Methods Cancer registry data identified cancer incidence in a cohort of 222,899 mine workers (87% male, mean age: 34 ± 11 years) in Western Australia during 1996–2013. Indirectly standardised incidence ratios (SIRs) were calculated and multivariable Poisson models were used to evaluate ever-underground work, employment commencement year and employment tenure as predictors of cancer incidence within miners after adjusting for age, sex, ever-smoker status and socioeconomic status. Results Among miners, 4,884 cancers over 1,826,498 person-years were identified. Both female (SIR: 0.81, 95% CI: 0.73–0.90) and male (SIR:0.89, 95% CI:0.87–0.92) miners had lower cancer incidence than the general population. Significantly greater risks were observed for cancers of the bones (SIR:2.10, 95% CI: 1.36–2.84), larynx (SIR: 1.42, 95% CI: 1.05–1.80) and melanoma (SIR: 1.16, 95% CI: 1.08–1.24) in males. Within miners, those commencing employment before 1996 had elevated risks for any cancer (Incidence Rate Ratio (IRR):1.11, 95% CI: 1.02–1.22) than their counterparts, in particular mesothelioma, brain, lung, liver and colorectal cancers. With the exception of testicular cancer (trend IRR: 1.27, 95% CI: 1.06–1.51), risks for mesothelioma and brain, bone, lung, pharyngeal, stomach, colorectal and any cancer (trend IRR: 0.92, 95% CI: 0.89–0.95) declined with increasing employment tenure. Ever working underground was positively associated with lung (IRR:1.60, 95% CI: 1.11–2.32) and renal (IRR: 1.79, 95% CI: 1.03–3.12) cancer. Conclusion The healthy worker effect possibly explains miners' lower incidence of most cancers compared with the general population. Short-tenured and underground miners were at risk of certain cancers, not limited to the lung. Forthcoming studies will need to evaluate the role of mining exposures in these cancers in the occupational sub-groups.


Some scientists have suggested that in the Brown soil zone an annual legume green manure crop (GM) could be used as a partial-fallow replacement to protect the soil against erosion and increase its N fertility, particularly when combined with a snow trapping technique to replenish soil water used by the legume. We assessed this possibility by comparing yields, N economy, water use efficiency, and economic returns of hard red spring wheat (W) grown in rotation with Indianhead black lentil (i.e., GM-W-W) vs. that obtained in a F-W-W system. Further, we assessed whether a change in management of the GM crop (i.e., moving to earlier seeding and earlier turn-down) was advantageous to the overall performance of this practice. The study was conducted over 12 years (1988-99) on a loam soil at Swift Current, SK. (wheat stubble was left tall to trap snow, tillage was kept to a minimum, and the wheat was fertilized based on soil tests). When examined after 6 years, the results suggested that by waiting for full bloom of the legume (usually late July or early August) to maximize N2 fixation, soil water was being depleted to the detriment of yields of the following wheat crop. However, the change in management of the GM crop since 1994 has resulted in wheat yields following GM equalling those after fallow. It also produced a significant increase (after one rotation cycle) in grain protein and N yields of aboveground parts of wheat in the GM-W-W compared to the F-W-W system, and lead to a gradual decrease in fertilizer N requirements of wheat in the GM system in the last 6 years. These savings in N fertilizer, together with savings in tillage and herbicide costs for weed control on partial-fallow vs conventional-fallow areas, and higher revenues from the enhanced grain protein, more than offset the added costs for seed and management of the GM crop. Thus, our results imply that, with proper management and given sufficient time, an annual legume GMcereal rotation is a viable option for area producers.


Past research (Hasselmo et al. 2002) suggests that some fundamental tasks are better accomplished if memories are encoded and recovered during different parts of the theta cycle. A model of the CA3 subfield of the hippocampus is presented, using biophysical representations of the major cell types including pyramidal cells and two types of interneurons. Inputs to the network come from the septum and the entorhinal cortex (directly and via the dentate gyrus). A mechanism for parsing the theta rhythm into two epochs is proposed and simulated: in the first half, the strong, proximal input from the dentate to a subset of CA3 pyramidal cells and coincident, direct input from the entorhinal cortex to other pyramidal cells creates an environment for strengthening synapses between cells, thus encoding information. During the second half of theta, cueing signals from the entorhinal cortex, via the dentate, activate previously strengthened synapses, retrieving memories. Slow inhibitory neurons (O-LM cells) play a role in the disambiguation during retrieval. We compare and contrast our computational results with existing experimental data and other contemporary models.


One of the most important limiting factors in cultivation of strawberry in greenhouses during winter season is short daylength. An experiment was conducted to evaluate the effect of end-of-day red light on growth characteristics, yield and fruit quality of strawberry (cv. Queen Elisa) in a completely randomized design with 4 treatments in winter of 2013. Strawberry plants were exposed to red light (660 nm, 12 μmol/m.s) for 2, 4 and 8 hours, using LED light source, from 6 pm, and were compared with control (plants without red light treatment). Results showed that 8 hours of red light radiation caused a significant increase in number of leaves, petiole length, leaf length and width and leaf area of the plants. Fresh and dry weight of plants, as well as weight and length of Queen Elisa strawberry fruits were increased in red-light treatments. Also, soluble-solids content of fruits in radiated treatments, especially in 8 hours red light treatment, was increased. But, fruit's titratable acidity and pH were not significantly affected by the red light. Results clearly demonstrated that end-of-day red light, emitted from LED source, improved morphological characteristics, growth, yield and fruit quality of strawberry cv. Queen Elisa.


Case management is an approach to work that inherently emphasizes the client experience and is, therefore, an important paradigm for work in our 21st century services-driven economies. It specifically accounts for unique, contextual information and allows for emergent activity, whereas operational process management places primacy on standardized information and standardized tasks performed in a deterministic sequence. As a result, case management has been characterized as involving "unstructured" processes and data, in contrast to process management of "structured" processes and data. Referencing information systems research on process management and organizational research on work and routines, I argue that this conceptualization of case management obscures the real nature of the work and inhibits design of information systems to support that work. Drawing on studies of various casework settings, I propose a framework highlighting the underlying structure of casework and revealing new possibilities for combining human expertise and digital technology in case management.


We have previously demonstrated that adult mouse plasma obtained 36 hours post partial hepatectomy has an inhibitory effect on the mitotic activity of enterocytes from young mouse duodenal cripts. In this paper we investigate whether this effect is derived from any regenerating liver factor. Accordingly, we studied the action of adult mouse (90 days old) liver extract obtained 36 hours after partial hepatectomy (70%), on the mitotic activity of young mouse enterocytes, considering 3 cellular levels of the duodenum cripts. Thirty six C3H/S inbred female mice (27 days old) were employed. Half of them received at 16:00 hour an intraperitoneal injection of saline and the other half received liver extract (0.01 ml/g). Animals from each group were sacrificed at 08:00/ 16, 12:00/20 and 16:00/24 (time of day/hours post treatment). All the animals received an intraperitoneal dose of colchicine (2 micrograms/g) 4 hours before sacrifice. The results are expressed as colchicine metaphases/1000 nuclei and show that the mitotic activity is significantly lower in the animals treated with the extract than in the controls. This inhibiting effect is observed at the levels from 1 to 4 and from 5 to 12 cells of the analyzed cripts. At the superficial level from 13 to 20 cells there is no modification of the proliferative activity. This inhibiting effect on the mitotic activity of duodenum enterocytes from the basal and intermedial zone of the cripts is probably due to a liver diffusing factor.


Pedestrian infrastructure plays a critical role in facilitating first-/last-mile access to transit. Efforts to connect pedestrians to transit through infrastructure improvements, however, often face considerable implementation barriers. These barriers can be particularly pronounced for suburban transit providers, which serve low-density, automobile-oriented development and often must coordinate across many jurisdictions. In this analysis, we examine strategies that transit agencies, metropolitan planning organizations, and municipalities use to build pedestrian infrastructure near suburban transit services in the United States, and the barriers they face in this process. We use Pace Suburban Bus, a transit provider in the Chicago, Illinois region, as an illustrative case study, conducting surveys with planners and interviews with diverse stakeholder groups in the agency's service area. To complement these findings, we conduct an online survey of similar agency types in ten peer regions across the United States. The results suggest that agencies support pedestrian access to transit through a variety of plans, policies, programs, and partnerships. However, agencies face significant implementation barriers, including limited funding, competing investment priorities, jurisdictional/coordination issues, automobile-oriented planning and development, regulatory compliance issues, and limited staff capacity. Based on these findings, we propose recommendations related to planning (e.g., better inclusion/documentation of pedestrian needs in plans), policy (e.g., regional support for Complete Streets and Americans with Disability Act related policy efforts), funding (e.g., regional platforms for sharing funding opportunities), and education (e.g., staff training and community awareness campaigns). These recommendations provide specific actions that agencies at multiple levels of government can take to better support pedestrian access to transit in suburban communities.


Microtox® and Mutatox® were used to evaluate the acute toxicity and genotoxicity, respectively, of organic sediment extracts from Pensacola Bay and St. Andrew Bay, two estuaries that cover about 273 and 127 km2, respectively, along the Gulf coast of Florida, USA. The sensitivity and selectivity of these two bioluminescent toxicity assays were demonstrated in validation studies with over 50 pesticides, genotoxins, and industrial pollutants, both as single compounds and in complex mixtures. The 50% effective concentration (EC50) values of insecticides, petroleum products, and polychlorinated biphenyls determined by Microtox all tended to group around the mean EC50 value of 1.2 (0.8) mg/L. The polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon sensitivity of Mutatox was in general similar to that reported in the Ames test. Surficial sediment samples were collected, extracted with dichloromethane, evaporated and concentrated under nitrogen, dissolved in dimethyl sulfoxide, assayed for acute toxicity and genotoxicity, and compared with reference sediments. Samples with low EC50 values, and determined to be genotoxic, were detected in Massalina Bayou, Watson Bayou, East Bay, and St. Andrew Bay–East in St. Andrew Bay as well as Bayou Grande, Bayou Chico, and Bayou Texar in Pensacola Bay. An overview of these data sets analyzed by Spearman rank correlation showed a significant correlation between acute toxicity and genotoxicity (p < 0.05). Microtox and Mutatox in tandem was a sensitive, cost‐effective, and rapid (<24 h) screening tool that identified troublesome areas of pollution and assessed the potential sediment toxicity of lipophilic contaminants in aquatic ecosystems.


The obligate mutualistic relationship between corals and dinoflagellates is a classic example of symbiosis. Coral reefs have been devastated by warm water temperatures at a rapid pace and currently, there is no effective method to predict a mass bleaching event. Fluorescence is a potential indicator of coral health but very few studies have attempted to utilize it as a proxy for dinoflagellate density, which was the scope of the present research. Here, we determined the effects of elevated water temperatures on fluorescence, dinoflagellate density, and mitotic index in the captive coral, Anthelia sp. Over a six-week period, tanks filled with Anthelia sp. underwent gradual increases in water temperature beginning at 28ºC and ending at 34ºC . Coral samples were quantified for fluorescence, dinoflagellate density, and mitotic index by fluorescence microscopy of whole specimens and a maceration method to examine dinoflagellates. As a result of the gradual increase in water temperature, corrected fluorescence decreased over time. In contrast, dinoflagellate density first increased until reaching a thermal limit that was then followed by a decrease. This was driven by an increase in the rate of cell division before the limit and a decrease afterwards. These results suggest that symbionts may be increasing their mitotic rate in response to elevated water temperatures to compensate for the shortage of photosynthate supply for their host. Because fluorescence dropped simultaneously with the increase in dinoflagellate density and mitotic index, coral fluorescence may be utilized as a prognostic tool for coral bleaching in Anthelia sp.


This paper offers a discussion and rich information on teacher leader's role in creating policy. Teacher leadership describes various phenomena in the arena of education. Informal and formal leadership roles, improvement processes, personal characteristics, professional development and other activities are linked to teacher leadership. There is a need to justify the roles of teacher leaders in the policy making processes in schools as a legitimate tool for enhancing school and teaching performance. Therefore, using various scholars' viewpoints, this paper will define various roles that teacher leaders play in the development of policy in school programs. The paper will first define teacher leaders and determine the importance of teacher leaders in policy making. Based on the findings teacher leaders play a vital role in policy making in schools due to their traits and roles that influence the school improvement programs.


Background: Chronic myeloid leukemia is a clonal myeloproliferative neoplasm, characterized by the presence of chromosomal translocation t(9; 22)(q34; q11). This is found in over 95% of the cases and results in the BCR-ABL1 fusion protein with high tyrosine kinase activity. During the last decades, imatinib and other generations of tyrosine kinase inhibitor have been used effectively for target therapy of the disease. However, many of the drug resistant cases have been reported recently, due to the mutation within kinase domain of the BCR-ABL1 fusion gene. In order to provide further information about this incidence, we performed a retrospective study of 141 imatinib-resistance chronic myeloid leukemia patients to analyze kinase domain mutation by deep sequencing. Another group of 20 untreated patients were added as control. Methods: RNA from bone marrow cells were extracted and followed by cDNA synthesis. Nested polymerase chain reaction was performed to amplify kinase domain of the BCR-ABL1 fusion gene. The amplified products were monitored size, concentration and prepared DNA sequencing library. Sequence analysis was performed using Illumina MiSeq sequencer and Sequence Pilot software. The sequencing results were randomly chose for Sanger sequencing. Results: None of the control group was positive with kinase domain mutation. There were 47 out of 141 patients (33%) detected with at least one nucleotide substitution. The sequencing results were also confirmed by Sanger sequencing. Of those 47 samples, 72 nucleotide substitutions of 28 types, altered 24 codons were identified. Among those, Y253F/H, M351T, G250E, F359V/I and M244V were the most frequent mutations, while T315I took only 4.1%. There were also a number of samples harboring multiple substitutions and new variations. Conclusion: Nextgeneration deep sequencing is a sensitive and effective method to detect kinase domain mutation and our results could provide further information about the drug-resistance mutation in chronic myeloid leukemia.


Author(s): Hoang, Phuc D. | Advisor(s): Rosenzweig, James B. | Abstract: Recent works have established that electron beam driven wakefield not only can serve as a viable source for coherent narrow band terahertz radiation but also as a future candidate for high gradient compact linear accelerators. It has also been pointed out that concentric cylindrical dielectric structures, while being very efficient in extracting the energy of the drive beam, which leads to GeV/m gradient level, are susceptible to excitation of transverse modes which give unwanted trajectory kicks and cause beam breakup instabilities. At the same time, temporary high field induced dielectric conductivity was observed in the same system where in response to high field, charge carriers were injected to the conduction band of the dielectric resulting in anomalous dissipation of the wake. Evidence of this point shall be presented in this thesis. First, in order to address the issue of deflection modes, a solution was proposed to use slab structures. Exploiting the Cartesian symmetry, and the wakefield response thereof, a dielectric wakefield system, where both the structure and the beam are flat, may achieve zero net transverse deflection forces. Second, in order to confine high field to the vacuum region away from the dielectric, thus avoiding all high field related problems, photonic band gap materials may be used. Also known as photonic crystals, these structures give rise to defect modes which are confined only to the defect (vacuum) region. Further shaping of the vacuum/dielectric interface, for example by periodic corrugation, not only reduces the field across the interface on the dielectric side by $1/\epsilon$ as consequence of boundary condition, but also brings about further options of tailoring the field. Motivated by these issues, in this thesis, through a series of relevant analytic calculations, simulations, and experiments, the possibility of using Cartesian symmetric, photonic structures for dielectric wakefield will be assessed.


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The method has been developed to study initial vacuum breakdown process for individual CNT in pulsed electric-field. The results show that individual CNT can bear higher electric field in impulse current than in direct current (DC), and the initiating breakdown time of CNT decrease exponentially with increasing applied field. The relationship between the initiating breakdown time and the size of CNT has been studied also. The results exhibit that one shorter of CNT could endure higher electric field than one longer and this advantage property will gradually disappear as the field enhanced.


Background Long noncoding RNA (lncRNA) is considered to be a mediator of carcinogenesis, which may be associated with liver cancer survival. However, the relationship remains inconclusive. Meta-analysis was conducted to analytically review the association between the lncRNA expression level and clinicopathological characteristics and prognostic value of hepatic carcinoma. Materials and Methods Four databases including Embase, PubMed, Web of Science, and the Cochrane Library were searched to collect studies about the relation between lncRNA overexpression and prognosis of liver cancer, dating from the earliest records of these databases to March 2021. Two researchers independently screened the data and literature to perform a stringent evaluation of the quality of material involved in the study. Meta-analysis was performed by Stata 16.0 software on 42 case-control studies with 6293 samples. Results The outcomes of meta-analysis are presented as follows: lncRNA overexpression patients had later TNM stage (OR = 0.36, 95% CI (0.31, 0.41), P < 0.001), lower histological grade (OR = 0.56, 95%CI (0.49, 0.65), P < 0.001), more vascular invasion (OR = 2.02, 95% CI (1.74, 2.35), P < 0.001), bigger tumor size (OR = 2.28, 95% CI (2.00, 2.60), P < 0.001), more severe liver cirrhosis (OR = 1.39, 95% CI(0.1.16, 1.66), P < 0.001), more likely to metastasize (OR = 1.80, 95%CI(1.49, 2.18), P < 0.001), and more tumor numbers (OR = 0.72, 95% CI (0.62, 0.84), P < 0.05). lncRNA over expression patients had shorter OS (HR = 2.32, 95 CI% (2.08, 2.59), P < 0.01, RFS (HR = 2.19, 95 CI% (1.72, 2.78), P < 0.01), and DFS (HR = 2.01, 95 CI% (1.57, 2.57), P < 0.01). Conclusions Overexposure of lncRNA is a poor prognostic feature for patients with hepatic carcinoma. The scope of our study was limited because of a lack of relevant research and the poor representativeness and varying quality of the studies involved in the current meta-analysis. Our conclusion still requires higher studies for further validation. This trial is clinically registered with CRD4201920620.


Background: In Ethiopia, still, malaria is killing and affecting a lot of people of any age group somewhere in the country at any time. However, due to limited research, little is known about the spatial patterns and correlated risk factors on the wards scale. Methods: In this research, we explored spatial patterns and evaluated related potential environmental risk factors in the distribution of malaria incidence in Ethiopia in 2015 and 2016. Hot Spot Analysis (Getis-Ord Gi* statistic) was used to assess the clustering patterns of the disease. The ordinary least square (OLS), geographically weighted regression (GWR), and semiparametric geographically weighted regression (s-GWR) models were compared to describe the spatial association of potential environmental risk factors with malaria incidence.Results: Our results revealed a heterogeneous and highly clustered distribution of malaria incidence in Ethiopia during the study period. The s-GWR model best explained the spatial correlation of potential risk factors with malaria incidence and was used to produce predictive maps. The GWR model revealed that the relationship between malaria incidence and elevation, temperature, precipitation, relative humidity, and normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) varied significantly among the wards. During the study period, the s-GWR model provided a similar conclusion, except in the case of NDVI in 2015, and elevation and temperature in 2016, which were found to have a global relationship with malaria incidence. Hence, precipitation and relative humidity exhibited a varying relationship with malaria incidence among the wards in both years. Conclusions: This finding could be used in the formulation and execution of evidence-based malaria control and management program to allocate scare resources locally at the wards level. Moreover, these study results provide a scientific basis for malaria researchers in the country.


Question: Under what conditions will a group of adaptive, communicating agents converge on a single language, and when will there instead be a multiplicity of languages? This is sometimes termed the 'Tower of Babel problem', and is similar to those addressed in Slobodkin's book on simplicity and complexity. Features of the model: Agents learn to speak a language from those around them locally, or from those with whom they communicate. Learning fidelity can vary, as can connectedness. Populations of learning agents are simulated and the equilibrium properties deduced. Range of key variables: Populations of agents are arranged in a regular ring lattice, with varying degrees of connectivity. Languages are not all equally related, as studied in the past, but rather some languages are more closely related than others. Conclusions: If a grammar has limited mutational transitions to other grammars, one expects three, rather than two, distinctive grammar distributions at equilibrium. In line with previous studies, our model exhibits a bifurcation from the symmetric state, where all grammars are in equal frequency, to an asymmetric state under dense grammar networks. However, different patterns of convergence, including a weak cohesion phase where the distribution of grammar frequencies is roughly Gaussian and centred on the most frequent grammar, emerge in more sparse grammar networks. Weak cohesion is of particular interest from an adaptation standpoint, since there is both linguistic coherence and standing heritable variation.


In this paper we investigate the dynamics of an asymmetric exclusion process on a one-dimensional lattice with longrange hopping and random update via Monte Carlo simulations theoretically. Particles in the model will firstly try to hop over successive unoccupied sites with a probability q, which is different from previous exclusion process models. The probability q may represent the random access of particles. Numerical simulations for stationary particle currents, density profiles, and phase diagrams are obtained. There are three possible stationary phases: the low density(LD) phase, high density(HD) phase, and maximal current(MC) in the system, respectively. Interestingly, bulk density in the LD phase tends to zero, while the MC phase is governed by α, β, and q. The HD phase is nearly the same as the normal TASEP,determined by exit rate β. Theoretical analysis is in good agreement with simulation results. The proposed model may provide a better understanding of random interaction dynamics in complex systems.更多还原


Background Pre-eclampsia shares pathophysiology with intrauterine growth restriction. Objective To investigate whether delivery of a small for gestational age (SGA) infant in the 1st pregnancy increases the risk of early and late onset pre-eclampsia in the 2nd pregnancy. Conversely, we investigated whether pre-eclampsia in the 1st pregnancy impacts SGA risk in the 2nd pregnancy. Study design We studied a cohort from the Dutch Perinatal Registry of 265,031 women with 1st and 2nd singleton pregnancies who delivered between 2000 and 2007. We analyzed 2nd pregnancy risks of early and late onset pre-eclampsia—defined by delivery before or after 34 gestational weeks—as well as SGA below the 5th and between the 5th and 10th percentiles risks with multivariable logistic regressions. Interaction terms between 1st pregnancy hypertension, pre-eclampsia, SGA, and delivery before or after 34 gestational weeks were included in the regressions. Results First pregnancy early onset pre-eclampsia increased risk of SGA <5th percentile (OR 2.1, 95% CI 1.7–2.7) in the 2nd pregnancy. Late onset pre-eclampsia increased the SGA <5th percentile marginally (OR 1.1, 95% CI 1.0–1.3). In the absence of 1st pregnancy hypertensive disorder, women who delivered an SGA infant in their 1st pregnancy were at increased risk of 2nd pregnancy late onset pre-eclampsia (SGA <5th: OR 2.05, 95% CI 1.58–2.66; SGA 5–10th: OR 1.39, 95% CI 1.01–1.93). Early onset 2nd pregnancy pre-eclampsia risk was also increased, but this was only statistically significant for women who delivered an SGA infant below the 5th percentile in the 1st pregnancy (SGA <5th: OR 2.44, 95% CI 1.19–5.00; SGA 5–10th: OR 1.69, 95% CI 0.68–4.24;). Conclusion Women with 1st pregnancy early onset pre-eclampsia have increased risk of SGA <5th percentile in the 2nd pregnancy. SGA in the 1st pregnancy increases pre-eclampsia risk in the 2nd pregnancy even in the absence of hypertensive disorders in the 1st pregnancy, although absolute risks remain low. These findings strengthen the evidence base associating intrauterine growth restriction with early onset pre-eclampsia.


From the perspective of conditional convergence, China's GDP growth rate since 1990 has been surprisingly high. However, China cannot deviate forever from the global historical experience, and the per capita growth rate is likely to fall soon from around 8 percent per year to a range of 3–4 percent. China can be viewed as a middle-income convergence success story, grouped with Costa Rica, Indonesia, Peru, Thailand and Uruguay. Upper-income convergence successes (toward which China is likely heading) include Chile, Hong Kong, Ireland, Malaysia, Poland, Singapore, South Korea and Taiwan.


Promoting the consumption of forest plant foods is a sustainable way of ensuring good nutrition and food security. This study assessed traditional knowledge on and use of forest plant foods in three administrative districts of Ghana and evaluated their potentials for domestication and processing. A total of 606 households were randomly selected and interviewed using enumerator-administered questionnaires. Validation workshops with 30 participants were held in each district to help identify the species mentioned. In all, 83 species belonging to 45 families were documented. Knowledge of forest plant foods was found to be higher among older respondents than younger ones, indicating an urgent need to document traditional knowledge on forest plant foods before it disappears along with the older generation. Artocarpus altilis (Parkinson) Fosberg and Tetrapleura tetraptera (Schumach. & Thonn.) Taub. were identified as potential species for domestication and processing. Domestication and processing of forest plant foods on a larger scale presents opportunity for economic development, sustainability benefits and food security.


A significant challenge in seasonal climate prediction is whether a prediction can beat climatology. We hereby present results from two data-driven models – a convolutional (CNN) and a recurrent (RNN) neural network – that predict 2 m temperature out to 52 weeks for six geographically-diverse locations. The motivation for testing the two classes of ML models is to allow the CNN to leverage information related to teleconnections and the RNN to leverage long-term historical temporal signals. The ML models boast improved accuracy of long-range temperature forecasts up to a lead time of 30 weeks for PCC and up 52 weeks for RMSESS, however only for select locations. Further iteration is required to ensure the ML models have value beyond regions where the climatology has a noticeably reduced correlation skill, namely the tropics.


Chinese calligraphy has traditionally been an emblem of the ruling class and its authority. After a century of mass revolution, what is the fate of this elite art? Richard Kraus explores the relationship beween politics and the art of writing in China today to explicate the complex relationship between tradition and modernity in Chinese culture. His study draws upon a wide range of sources, from political documents, memoirs, and interviews with Chinese intellectuals to art exhibitions and television melodramas. Mao Zedong and other Communist leaders gave calligraphy a revolutionary role, believing that their beloved art reflected the luster of authoritative words and deeds. Calligraphy was joined with new propagandistic mass media to become less a private art and more a public performance. It provided politically engaged citizens with subtle cues to changing power relationships in the People's Republic. Claiming neither that the Communists obliterated traditional culture nor that revolution failed to relieve the burden of China's past, this study subtly examines the changing uses of tradition in a modernizing society.


Traumatized refugees often suffer from complex posttraumatic disorders with a high tendency of chronicity. This is due to severe and often repeated traumatization in the course of political persecution on one hand and uprooting and ongoing stress caused by leaving their home country and society and living under an adverse situation in exile on the other hand. This article shows how positive and negative factors going along with migration interfere with the course of the traumatic process and the therapeutic possibilities and how the therapeutic process can be adjusted to the


Background  Chronic granulomatous disease (CGD) is an inherited disorder of the innate immune system characterized by impairment of intracellular microbicidal activity of phagocytes. Mutations in one of four known NADPH‐oxidase components preclude generation of superoxide and related antimicrobial oxidants, leading to the phenotype of CGD. Defects in gp91‐phox, encoded by CYBB, lead to X‐linked CGD and have been reported to be responsible for approximately 70% of all CGD cases. The aim of this study was to identify the CGD mutations in a group of Turkish CGD patients and to evaluate the predominance of CGD mutations as X‐linked or autosomal recessive (AR) within the Turkish CGD families with known mutations.


This paper refines and extends an earlier one by the first author [1]. It considers the problem of reasoning about the reliability of fault-tolerant systems with two "channels" (i.e., components) of which one, A, because it is conventionally engineered and presumed to contain faults, supports only a claim of reliability, while the other, B, by virtue of extreme simplicity and extensive analysis, supports a plausible claim of "perfection." We begin with the case where either channel can bring the system to a safe state. The reasoning about system probability of failure on demand (pfd) is divided into two steps. The first concerns aleatory uncertainty about 1) whether channel A will fail on a randomly selected demand and 2) whether channel B is imperfect. It is shown that, conditional upon knowing pA (the probability that A fails on a randomly selected demand) and pB (the probability that channel B is imperfect), a conservative bound on the probability that the system fails on a randomly selected demand is simply pA X pB. That is, there is conditional independence between the events "A fails" and "B is imperfect." The second step of the reasoning involves epistemic uncertainty, represented by assessors' beliefs about the distribution of (pA, pB), and it is here that dependence may arise. However, we show that under quite plausible assumptions, a conservative bound on system pfd can be constructed from point estimates for just three parameters. We discuss the feasibility of establishing credible estimates for these parameters. We extend our analysis from faults of omission to those of commission, and then combine these to yield an analysis for monitored architectures of a kind proposed for aircraft.


Measurement of pulmonary clearance of an inhaled aerosol of technetium-99m labelled diethylenetriaminepenta-acetate (DTPA) by external detection methods has been used widely as an index of permeability across alveolar epithelium and bronchial mucosa. To determine the applicability of the tracer to measurement of permeability in the airways the diffusion and binding characteristics of 99mTc DTPA and the chemically related ethylenediaminetetra-acetic acid labelled with carbon-14 (14C EDTA) was studied in purified respiratory tract mucus glycoprotein from patients with chronic bronchitis. The diffusion coefficients for 99mTc DTPA and 14C EDTA through mucus gels were significantly lower than those for tritiated water. Both molecules bound to the mucus gels with high affinity at two independent low capacity sites. Appreciable amounts of 99mTc DTPA or 14C EDTA are therefore unlikely to cross mucus layers of physiological thickness over periods of four or five hours. This suggests that when pulmonary clearance is determined by the 99mTc DTPA method the tracer retained in mucus lined airways will provide background activity. This study supports the assumption that pulmonary clearance measurements are mainly measuring alveolar epithelial permeability and should not be used to study bronchial epithelial permeability.


We propose an exactly solvable model of soliton-based pulse control that describes the physically important situation when the soliton period is much longer than the length of the coupling region in a nonlinear fiber coupler. This case can occur, e.g., in fused-fiber couplers. We demonstrate that the problem of soliton interaction and switching in such a coupler can be reduced to a linear relation between the fields before and after interaction. The soliton states can be found by solution of two Zakharov–Shabat eigenvalue problems associated with a pair of decoupled nonlinear Schrodinger equations. Various regimes of soliton control, switching, and splitting in this model are discussed. In particular, we show that perfect pulse switching from one arm of the coupler to the other resembles the switching of continuous waves in linear couplers, whereas the phase-controlled switching of solitons is similar to that in nonlinear directional couplers. We also describe other schemes of soliton control, including pulse compression through fusion of two fundamental solitons.


BIN-OCULAR is a pun on the word 'bottle' in Japanese (bin) and a reference to how binocular (3D) vision is assumed to give an acute (real) view of the world. 'Crust' refers to how the mineral resources sector (and some national governments) typically treat soil as some annoying object in the way of extracting iron ore and coal. But soil is the Earth's living 'skin' and all terrestrial life depends on it. BIN-OCULAR is about our relationship with the soil. It explores the geological and cultural histories of the Merri Creek region in northern suburban Melbourne (Australia) with reference to the politics of White Australia. Before European settlement, Merri Creek was home to the aboriginal Wurundjeri-willam people. From 1835 subdivision of land in the region was followed by rapid expansion of industries around quarrying, brickmaking and farming into the late 1800s. This brought housing, transport and commercial development, all of which served to scatter, bury or remove the traces of aboriginal presence in the region. One day while walking along the Merri Creek, I found a whole, unbroken, brown bottle of White King bleach half-buried in the soil. In BIN-OCULAR, the 'skin' of the Merri Creek gazes down upon the impotent White King through two broken lenses: the scene and its sad histories imperfectly rendered in stereoscopic 'binocular' 3D.


Troposcatter can be used as a communication medium for beyond-Line-of-Sight (b-LoS) links. However, available troposcatter channel models do not provide comprehensive channel modeling especially at high frequencies. Therefore, the main motivation of this study is to develop a ray-based MIMO troposcatter channel model to analyze transmission-loss characteristics, coherence bandwidth and correlation between antennas for the first time in the literature for troposcatter communications. In addition, the link budget calculations and the distribution of capacity in troposcatter links are provided by using real world water vapor mixing ratio measurements.


Multihop transmission is a promising technique that helps in achieving broader coverage (excellent network connectivity) and preventing the impairment of wireless channels. This paper proposes a cluster-based multihop wireless network that makes use of the advantages of multihop relaying, i.e., path loss gain, and partial relay selection in each hop, i.e., spatial diversity. In this partial relay selection, the node with the maximum instantaneous channel gain will serve as the sender for the next hop. With the proposed protocol, the transmit power and spectral efficiency can be improved over those in the case of direct transmission and conventional multihop transmission. Moreover, at a high signal-to-noise ratio (SNR), the performance of the system with at least two nodes in each cluster is dependent only on the last hop and not on any of the intermediate hops. For a practically feasible decode-and-forward relay strategy, a compact expression for the probability density function of the end-to-end SNR at the destination is derived. This expression is then used to derive closed-form expressions for the outage probability, average symbol error rate, and average bit error rate for M-ary square quadrature amplitude modulation as well as to determine the spectral efficiency of the system. In addition, the probability of SNR gain over direct transmission is investigated for different environments. The mathematical analysis is verified by various simulation results for demonstrating the accuracy of the theoretical approach.


Abstract : To rigorously constrain the role of organic compounds in crustal alteration processes at mid-ocean ridges, quantitative information on the abundances and distributions of organic compounds in hydrothermal vent fluids is required. This thesis was undertaken to provide this information for several low-molecular weight organic compounds (C(1)-C(4) alkanes, C(2)-C(3) alkenes, benzene and toluene) in fluids collected in July, 2000, at three sites on the northern Juan de Fuca Ridge: the Dead Dog and ODP Mound fields, which are located at Middle Valley, and the Main Endeavour Field (MEF), located on the Endeavour segment. The relative abundances of alkane-alkene pairs were used to constrain subsurface reaction zone temperatures. Isotopic systematics of CO2, C(1)-C(4) alkanes, and benzene provided information on the residence times of fluids in the subsurface and the reaction mechanisms that control the distributions of aqueous organic compounds. The presence of organic compounds in these fluids also controlled the distributions of inorganic compounds-most notably, H(2). Integration of the data on both organic and inorganic species in these fluids provides a powerful tool to befter constraining models of subsurface conditions in hydrothennal vent environments.


AIM
The aim of this study was to validate the ROMA (Risk Of Malocclusion Assessment) Index, verifying both its reproducibility and its ability to determine treatment priority.

MATERIALS AND METHODS
The levels of treatment priority assessed for 75 children examined at the Gemelli General Hospital Orthodontic Service (Rome) ranged from grade 3 to grade 5 of the index. Multivariate analysis was conducted to verify the influence of covariates on the dependent variable. Moreover, the DHC of the IOTN was assessed for all patients, and a bivariate analysis was carried out to investigate its relationship with the ROMA Index. Intra- and inter- examiner reliability was calculated on a sample of 20 children, and the reproducibility of the index was evaluated using the Kappa statistic as a measure of concordance.

RESULTS
It arose that there is an inverse relation between risk grades and the time interval from the first examination and start of treatment. According to the index, patients at extreme risk require immediate treatment, whereas priority is lower in case of great or moderate risk. In statistical terms, the study revealed a significant correlation between the ROMA Index and the DHC of the IOTN. With regard to intra- and inter-examiner reliability, the data collected by the two examiners showed a high level of agreement.

CONCLUSION
The ROMA index appears quick to apply, reproducible, reliable and sensitive as a mean for carefully identifying different dento-skeletal problems. Furthermore, it is able to determine the priority of every risk grade and the corresponding timing of treatment.


Reppy's language CML extends Standard ML of Milner et al. with primitives for communication. It thus inherits a notion of strong polymorphic typing and may be equipped with a structural operational semantics. We formulate an effect system for statically expressing the communication behaviours of CML programs as these are not otherwise reflected in the types. We then show how types and behaviours evolve in the course of computation: types may decrease and behaviours may loose alternatives as well as decrease. It will turn out that the syntax of behaviours is rather similar to that of a process algebra; our main results may therefore be viewed as regarding the semantics of a process algebra as an abstraction of the semantics of an underlying programming language. This establishes a new kind of connection between "realistic" concurrent programming languages and "theoretical" process algebras.


This paper presents an advanced review of regression tree methods for mining data streams. Batch regression tree methods are known for their simplicity, interpretability, accuracy, and efficiency. They use fast divide‐and‐conquer greedy algorithms that recursively partition the given training data into smaller subsets. The result is a tree‐shaped model with splitting rules in the internal nodes and predictions in the leaves. Most batch regression tree methods take a complete dataset and build a model using that data. Generally, this tree model cannot be modified if new data is acquired later. Their successors, the incremental model and interval trees algorithms, are able to build and retrain a model on a step‐by‐step basis by incorporating new numerical training instances into the model as they become available. Moreover, these algorithms produce even more compact and accurate models than batch regression tree algorithms because they use intervals or functional models with a change detection mechanism, which makes them a more suitable choice for regression analysis of data streams. Finally, this review summarizes the performance results of the reviewed methods and crystallizes 10 requirements for successful implementation of a regression tree algorithm in data stream mining area. © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.


Diversified livelihoods combining farming, livestock keeping and non-farm income are characteristic of many rural households worldwide. For the Central Asian and Caucasian region, livestock keeping is especially important in terms of land use and socio-cultural heritage. We contribute to the literature with data from the under-researched Caucasus region and investigate: (i) the extent of diversification in smallholder households; (ii) the role of livestock keeping in diversification; (iii) the influence of household-specific and location-specific variables and diversification on household income. Based on a dataset of 303 households, we calculate contribution margins for the main agricultural activities, household income, and diversification indices and analyze the influence of diversification, asset and location variables on household income with a regression model. Household income is generally diversified and a combination of four income sources (crops, livestock, poultry/bees and social benefits) was the most frequent. The econometric analysis shows that higher household incomes are positively correlated with higher household land and livestock assets, the presence of non-farm work and social benefit income sources and with an increasing specialization as measured by the diversification index. For enhancing rural household incomes and slowing down rural-urban migration, the development of non-farm job opportunities is recommended.


Non-finite state parsers provide fine-grained information. However, they are computationally demanding. Therefore, it is interesting to see how far a shallow parsing approach is able to go. In a pattern-based matching operation, the transducer described here consists of POS-tags using regular expressions that take advantage of the characteristics of German grammar. The process aims at finding linguistically relevant phrases with a good precision, which enables in turn an estimation of the actual valency of a given verb. The chunker reads its input exactly once instead of using cascades, which greatly benefits computational efficiency. This finite-state chunking approach does not return a tree structure, but rather yields various kinds of linguistic information useful to the language researcher. Possible applications include simulation of text comprehension on the syntactical level, creation of selective benchmarks and failure analysis.