This paper describes our efforts to build a multilingual heritage corpus of alpine texts. Currently we digitize the yearbooks of the Swiss Alpine Club which contain articles in French, German, Italian and Romansch. Articles comprise mountaineering reports from all corners of the earth, but also scientific topics such as topography, geology or glacierology as well as occasional poetry and lyrics. We have already scanned close to 70,000 pages which has resulted in a corpus of 25 million words, 10% of which is a parallel French-German corpus. We have solved a number of challenges in automatic language identification and text structure recognition. Our next goal is to identify the great variety of toponyms (e.g. names of mountains and valleys, glaciers and rivers, trails and cabins) in this corpus, and we sketch how a large gazetteer of Swiss topographical names can be exploited for this purpose. Despite the size of the resource, exact matching leads to a low recall because of spelling variations, language mixtures and partial repetitions. Challenges in Building a Multilingual Alpine Heritage Corpus Martin Volk, Noah Bubenhofer, Adrian Althaus, Maya Bangerter, Lenz Furrer, Beni Ruef Institute of Computational Linguistics, University of Zurich email@example.com


We analyze the effectiveness of public works programs (PWP, Arbeitsbeschaffungsmasnahmen) in east Germany as measured by their effects on individual future reemployment probabilities in regular jobs. These are estimated by discrete hazard rate models on the basis of individual?level panel data. We account for unobserved individual heterogeneity in both the PWP participation and in the outcome equations. In the latter, we differentiate between transitions into "stable" and "unstable" employment after the PWP. We find that these programs seem to have no special targeting focus on disadvantaged groups in the labor market and that participants are, on average, worse off concerning their re?employment prospects in regular jobs than unemployed people who do not join such a program. A possible explanation for this result is that PWP participants search less intensively for a regular job while on such a program than unemployed non-participants. Thus, our results cast serious doubts on both the effectiveness and the equity aspects of public works programs in east Germany.


Seasonal sampling of the seawater column and sediment in Adriatic coastal areas affected by various anthropogenic activities, primarily aquaculture, was conducted during 2017. In total, 32 samples from two sites (central and southern Adriatic) were analysed by 16S rRNA amplicon sequencing. This approach was selected to test the possibilities of using metabarcoding in studying marine cyanobacteria, exploring their ecology and potential as an indicator group in anthropologically stressed coastal environments. Additionally, physicochemical water column parameters, sediment granulometry and composition were assessed. Water column revealed a seasonal variation of amplicon sequencing variants (ASVs) closely related to Cyanobium PCC-6307, Prochlorococcus MIT9313 and Synechococcus CC9902, as well as seasonal grouping of physico-chemical parameters in PCA analysis. Sediment analysis uncovered greater community richness of 13 cyanobacterial genera and two uncultured groups. The most abundant in sandy gravels and gravelly sand type of sediments were ASVs closely related to Pleurocapsa PCC-7319 and Xenococcus PCC-7305. Furthermore, identified cyanobacterial ASVs predominantly displayed similarity to isolates from tropical areas (e.g. Neolyngbya, Chroococcidiopsis, Trichodesmium, etc.), which could indicate the tropicalization process already ongoing in the fish fauna of the Adriatic Sea.


This Application was designed for undergraduate and graduate marketing management classes. Its premise is to ensure that students receive not only sufficient grounding in theory, but also an opportunity to apply their classroom learning in a marketing rich business environment. AT&T Park, home of the San Francisco Giants, a Major League Baseball (MLB) team, provides one forum for experiencing the marketing concepts that are taught to MBA and BA marketing students. From the branded cup holders in the stadium seats, to the corporate sponsored luxury suites, to the advertisements on the Jumbotron scoreboard, the students are inundated with branding, logos, advertising, public relations, pricing schemes and countless other examples of marketing. This off-campus Application brings marketing to life in a way that cannot be accomplished through lectures, case discussions and projects. There are several goals for this Application. The first is to anchor the key marketing concepts discussed throughout the course. The second is to apply those concepts in a real world environment. The third goal is to provide the experience for students to synthesize what they have learned into a well organized and analytical deliverable in the form of a reflection and research paper. As the marketing industry continues to evolve and reinvent itself, it is important to prepare marketing students to effectively use and understand the tactics, strategies and ideas that comprise this discipline. This Application successfully provides students with an integrative experience for their Marketing Management or Principles of Marketing classes.


The fragmentation of international law is an undeniable phenomenon, and one that has met with increasing academic interest. This fragmentation is the result of the progressive expansion of both international legal activity and the subject-matter of international law. This expansion brings with it the risk of conflicting rules, principles and institutions. Non-Proliferation Law as a Special Regime focuses on weapons of mass destruction, and aims to identify whether there are specific rules applying to this field that depart from the general rules of international law and the rules of other special regimes, in particular with regard to the law of treaties and the law of state responsibility. In providing a systematic analysis of a substantive area of international law, and applying the theory of fragmentation and special regimes, the book contributes to the on-going debate concerning one of the most topical issues in international law.


This essay describes a project in a first-year writing course in which students created video Public Service Announcements. The project resulted from a university-sponsored contest to prevent the spread of the H1N1 virus on campus. Illustrating the process of creating such video compositions allows an examination of the potential for multimedia projects in writing courses, especially projects that respond to a public call or exigence. This project pushes students not only technologically but also rhetorically.


The increasing popularity and influence of service-oriented computing give rise to the need of representational and methodological supports for the development and management of business services. From an IT perspective, there is a proliferation of methods and languages for representing Web services. Unfortunately, there has not been much work in modeling high-level services from a business perspective. Modeling business services should arguably capture their inherent features, along with many other representational artifacts. We propose a novel approach for business services representation featuring a threedimensional representational space of which dimensions stand for the service consumer, service provider and service context. We also discuss how the proposed representation approach provides methodological supports to the area of service orientation. Finally, we present in-progress work on the application of our approach. Disciplines Physical Sciences and Mathematics Publication Details Le, L., Dam, H. Khanh. & Ghose, A. (2010). On business services representation the 3 x 3 x 3 Approach. Australasian Conferences on Information Systems (ACIS) 2010 Proceedings (pp. 1-10). AIS Electronic Library: Australasian (ACIS). This conference paper is available at Research Online: http://ro.uow.edu.au/infopapers/3473 21 st Australasian Conference on Information Systems On Business Services Representation 1-3 Dec 2010, Brisbane Le & Dam On Business Services Representation – The 3 x 3 x 3 Approach Lam-Son Le, Hoa Khanh Dam and Aditya Ghose School of Computer Science and Software Engineering Faculty of Informatics, University of Wollongong New South Wales 2522, Australia Email: {lle, hoa, email@example.com


Acute Trypanosoma cruzi infection induces alterations in both lymphoid and microenvironmental compartments of the thymus. This prompted us to investigate whether the lymphoepithelial complex thymic nurse cell (TNC) was comprised in the thymic pathology occurring in experimental Chagas' disease. The isolation of TNCs from acutely T. cruzi-infected mice revealed a reduction in TNC numbers that paralleled thymic atrophy. This decrease does not seem to be stress-related since it was not seen following glucocorticoid hormone injection. Moreover, an increased intra-TNC cell death in complexes from infected animals was noticed. In addition, acute T. cruzi infection induced a decrease in size and granularity of TNC complexes, as well as several ultrastructural alterations indicating cell damage. The epithelial component of TNCs, independent of being infected in vitro or derived from infected animals, showed an enhancement of extracellular matrix proteins that is likely related to the enhanced thymocyte release observed in these complexes. Conjointly, these data show that TNCs are importantly affected in acute experimental T. cruzi infection, possibly contributing to the previously observed alterations in thymocyte differentiation.


A previous study of new item types for the analytical measure of the GRE General Test found that the items loaded on three of four separable factors that were labeled verbal reasoning, informal reasoning, formal-deductive reasoning, and quantitative reasoning. The present study examined the issue of how processing differed for these item types in the context of a problem-space framework. Protocols of examinees solving a small set of problems aloud were collected. These protocols were examined with respect to two phases of the problem-solving process: problem representation and problem solution. For formal-deductive items, all the information necessary to solve the problem was provided in the problem statement. The representation of formal-deductive items involved the use of meaning-reduced tokens and spatial diagrams. The units involved in the representation of informal reasoning and verbal reasoning item types included meaningful propositions and meaning-emphasizing paraphrases. Reference to common background knowledge occurred. The analysis of the problem-solution phase focused on the processes of evaluation, (judgments of the correctness of an option) and justification (statements of an argument or of evidence for why an option was or was not correct). First, the order of these processes was found to differ for formal-deductive items and other item types. Secondly, item solutions varied in terms of the kinds of justifications that were offered by the examinees for accepting or rejecting options. These results illustrate how the addition of some item types to the GRE analytical measure will expand the variety of reasoning skills assessed. Implications of these results for cognitive models of reasoning are also discussed.


Electronic prescribing is highly useful for hospitals to reduce the error level of prescribing medicine to patients. Currently, a large number of prescribing errors are made by doctors to patients; however, there are also patients who are disobedient to prescriptions made by doctors. This research aims to evaluate whether the prescription information system at Ananda Bekasi Hospital can be evaluated to be successful and has a positive impact on the performance of doctors to patients. The study was conducted on the success of integrated prescribing information system at Ananda Bekasi Hospital using the theoretical framework of DeLone & McLean's information system model. Data processing was conductedby using SEM-PLS method. Aspects of technology analyzed in determining prescription information systems include system quality, information quality, service quality, usage intention, user satisfaction, and net benefits. Referring to the technological aspects, the research results on prescribing information system are as follow: information quality influences the usage intention and user satisfaction, and usage intention and user satisfaction influence the net/benefit. Hence, the results of the research show that the information system success model of DeLone and McLean is not fully proven empirically to be successful in the prescibing information system in Ananda Bekasi Hospital. Keywords: DeLone & McLean, Information System Success, user satisfaction, prescribing information systems, SEM-PLS


With increasing evidence of the detrimental effects of physical inactivity, there is interest in enhancing research on policies that may influence physical activity in communities. Given the potential policy impact, a framework that organized and conceptualized policy interventions and priorities for public health efforts to promote physical activity was developed. In addition, the Physical Activity Policy Research Network (PAPRN) was formed as a way to operationalize the contents of the framework. Recommendations for future work in this area include enhancing transdisciplinary collaborations, raising the priority of policy evaluation, studying policies at all levels, and emphasizing dissemination of findings.


Scoring systems to identify women at high risk for delivering low birthweight infants are used to place high-risk women into special prenatal clinics. The March of Dimes Birth Defects Foundation scoring system was evaluated to determine its sensitivity, specificity, and positive predictive value at each cutoff point between 0 and 20 for various patient profiles when conducted before 29 weeks' gestation. In the present study, 9014 singleton births in 1985 and 1986 from nine Florida county health units were reviewed. Scores of 1, 5, 10, and 20 provided a sensitivity of 0.96, 0.66, 0.26, and 0.02, a specificity of 0.05, 0.44, 0.86, and 0.99, and a positive predictive power of 8.7, 10.1, 15.9, and 21.1, respectively. Differences in the sensitivity and specificity of the scores existed among subsets in the study population classified by gravida, age, race, and urban or rural county. Overall, the applicability was restricted, and the positive predictive value appeared best if a cutoff point of 15 was used, which represented the upper 5th percentile of the population. It was concluded that a greater emphasis was needed to designate scores for specific subpopulations and to give more consideration to psychosocial factors associated with having low birthweight infants.


Age, chemical, and isotopic data from late Cenozoic volcanic rocks in the northern Sierra Nevada, California (USA), from Lake Tahoe north to the southern end of the modern Cascades volcanic arc, were obtained to investigate the evolution of the upper mantle beneath this continental margin during the transition from active subduction to the opening of a slabless window, and to test the possibility that the foundering of mantle lithosphere proposed for the southern Sierra Nevada extended to the northern reaches of the mountain range. Our data are consistent with previous work in the region and illustrate that volcanism shifted from widespread intermediate composition magmatism to small volume, localized trachybasalts to trachyandesites ca. 3 Ma. Similar to southern Cascades volcanism, 87 Sr/ 86 Sr and 206 Pb/ 204 Pb decrease, and e Nd increase in the older (older than 3 Ma) volcanic rocks with increasing proportions of a slab component, as measured by increasing (Sr/P) N , where N is primitive-mantle normalized. We interpret these observations as evidence that the older volcanic rocks are subduction related and represent the products of basaltic melts derived from flux melting of mantle wedge that interacted to varying degrees during ascent with lower e Nd and higher 87 Sr/ 86 Sr sub–Sierra Nevada continental mantle lithosphere. The younger volcanic rocks lack evidence for the involvement of a slab component in their generation, but have ranges of Nd, Sr, and Pb isotopic compositions similar to those of older volcanic rocks interpreted to have interacted to the greatest extent with the continental mantle lithosphere. However, the younger volcanic rocks have higher high field strength element (HFSE) and higher phosphorus abundances, and higher (La/Yb) N , than their older counterparts, suggesting that they are not simply the products of smaller degrees of partial melting of the same mantle lithosphere involved in the older magmatism. The high HFSE and P contents were more likely controlled by metasomatic accessory carrier phases such as rutile and apatite, the stabilities of which control the abundance of these elements in melts produced from the lithospheric mantle after 3 Ma. One possibility is that the accessory phases were introduced to lithosphere during melt–wall-rock interaction associated with the older magmatic episode. These phases were then purged as a result of conductive heating of the remaining lithospheric mantle triggered by postsubduction upwelling of the sublithospheric mantle. Our data are consistent with lithospheric mantle serving as a melt reactor during the earlier subduction-related magmatism that was baked out during later conductive heating, a process that may be relevant to the production of immediately postsubduction magmatism along other continental margins.


The relevance of this article can be described by two developments intrinsic to the digital age: the wide-spread use of the mobile devices with wireless connectivity and the exponential increase of radiofrequency electromagnetic fields in past years. The aim of this article is to determine the field strengths of popular mobile devices and to analyse their compliance in light of both legal safety limits and third-party precautionary limits. The importance of minimizing the exposure to the electromagnetic fields where possible is stressed by recent scientific evidence and also by the high level European bodies. The measurements are conducted using a novel 14-point measurement model, covering the entire body of the user. The measurement results show that the strongest fields are produced by a tablet PC, a smartphone and a netbook when they are connected to the network via EDGE or GPRS technologies. Significantly less exposure is obtained from the devices that utilize WLAN network connection or 3G within excellent network reception. At the same time, the least strong radiofrequency electromagnetic field is produced when using the e-reader or desktop PC. Based on the results, solutions are suggested to minimize the users' field exposure while retaining the network connectivity. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5755/j01.eee.19.6.4565


During the past few years we have observed the emergence of Mobile adhoc networks (MANETS) and its various uses in different fields of communication. It has led to an instant growth in wireless technology.  Many routing protocols have been designed and implemented for proper functioning of mobile adhoc networks. The prime objective of these routing protocols is to provide a specific and much effective route in a network. AODV which is a reactive protocol for MANETs is considered as the most effective routing protocol by Internet Engineering Task force. Due to MANETs  infrastructure less nature, security is a prime issue to be maintained. This paper submits the brief introduction about mobile adhoc networks, their counter attacks, different routing protocols and their consecutive security measures.


OBJECTIVE
To determine the specific morphology of the pituitary gland in children with severe isolated GH deficiency due to GH-1 gene mutations (IGHD type II).

DESIGN
The pituitary gland morphology in magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) of children with IGHD type II was analyzed and compared with the findings in a group of children with comparably severe IGHD of unknown origin. In addition, the birth histories of both groups were studied.

SUBJECTS
Thirteen children with IGHD type II were diagnosed in seven European children's hospitals and they carried a corresponding GH-1 gene mutation. For comparison, we selected from a group of 66 MRI-studied GH-insufficient subjects diagnosed in our clinic, all children with severe IGHD (all GH peaks <4 microg/l) who had no GH-1 gene mutation, no first-grade relative with IGHD and no septo-optic dysplasia.

METHODS
Sagittal and coronal images of the brain were analyzed for the presence of any malformation of the pituitary gland and the intracranium. The height of each adenohypophysis was measured in a strict midline sagittal image for quantification of the gland's size. In addition, patients' files were reviewed for birth trauma or breech delivery.

RESULTS
Normal MRI morphology of the pituitary gland was observed in all patients of the familial IGHD type II group (P<0.003) in which, however, five of thirteen patients (38%) exhibited a mild hypoplasia of their gland (mean sagittal adenohypophysial height -1.0+/-0.03 SD score (SDS)). In contrast, the pituitary gland in the idiopathic group showed a definitive malformation with hypoplasia of pituitary stalk and adenohypophysis in all cases, while ectopia of the neurohypophysis was present in nine of the ten cases. The adenohypophysis was significantly smaller in the idiopathic group (mean sagittal adenohypophysial height -3.2+/-0.3 SDS) (P<0.0001). All thirteen birth histories in the familial group (IGHD type II) were unremarkable while, in the idiopathic group, three of eight available birth histories recorded a breech delivery or traumatic birth (37.5%) (P<0.05).

CONCLUSIONS
This study shows for the first time that MRI pituitary morphology may correlate with the etiology of severe IGHD: normal morphology suggests the presence of GH-1 gene mutations, while severe hypoplasia with malformation have other causes which might include so far unknown genetic defects as well as traumatic insults.


Local ducks in Indonesia such as alabio duck and cihateup duck have advantages as egg producer and meat producer. Efforts is needed to increase the population of ducks by doing hatching. This research is to learn the hatchability of alabio duck and cihateup duck and identify of the factors that can be affected hatching duck eggs. Eggs ducks used 200 grains eggs ducks cihateup and eggs ducks alabio 300 grains. The process of hatching the egg ducks held for 28 days. The percentage fertility and hatchability results duck eggs alabio higher than cihateup duck eggs. Death embryonic the biggest occurred on the day to 26-28 days. Greater egg weights produce larger DOD. Weight of eggs and duck eggs index has no effect on hatchability but which affect hatchability of duck eggs in this study is high temperature during incubation, lower humidity during the period hatcher and egg hygiene. Alabio duck egg weight is lighter than duck eggs cihateup and more oval shaped while cihateup duck eggs more rounded shape. Weight egg and index egg on two types of eggs uniforms.


Recently, application of semiconductor sensors has widely spreaded into various industries becasuse those have several merits like easy miniaturization and batch production etc. But external conditions such as thermal and repetitive load have a bad effect on sensors's lifetime. Therefore, lots of studies related with the fatigue of microelectromechnical systems (MEMS) have been conducted. Especially, this paper was focused on fatigue life of aluminum interconnect in the supporting structure of sensor under cyclic thermal load and on the approximation equation defining the critical temperature to ensure required operating life using FEM simulation.


ABSTRACT In several organizations, business workgroups autonomously implement information technology (IT) outside the purview of the IT department. Shadow IT, evolving as a type of workaround from nontransparent and unapproved end-user computing (EUC), is a term used to refer to this phenomenon, which challenges norms relative to IT controllability. This report describes shadow IT based on case studies of three companies and investigates its management. In 62 percent of cases, companies decided to reengineer detected instances or reallocate related subtasks to their IT department. Considerations of risks and transaction cost economics with regard to specificity, uncertainty, and scope explain these actions and the resulting coordination of IT responsibilities between the business workgroups and IT departments. This turns shadow IT into controlled business-managed IT activities and enhances EUC management. The results contribute to the governance of IT task responsibilities and provide a way to formalize t...


1. We develop an individuals-based model that predicts the strength of interference between foraging animals from basic elements of their behaviour. The model is based on the same principles as previous behaviour-based interference models, but extends and adds further realism to these models. One key difference is that in our model the responses of animals to competitors are not fixed, as is assumed in previous models. Instead, animals use optimal decision rules to determine responses which maximize their intake rate. 2. The general shape of interference function generated by the model is similar to that predicted by previous behaviour-based models. Interference is insignificant at low competitor densities, but steadily increases in intensity as density rises. However, comparison with the observed level of interference between oystercatchers, Haematopus ostralegus, feeding on mussels, Mytilus edulis, shows that the model's predictive power is substantially increased through the addition of optimal decision rules. When animals have a fixed response to encounters, too much interference occurs because dominant animals waste time avoiding subdominants and subdominants waste time attempting, but failing, to steal prey from dominants. When animals use optimal decision rules, only subdominants avoid, and only dominants initiate attacks. Interference is therefore reduced and is much closer to that observed. 3. The conditions under which optimal decision rules will lead to interference are described in terms of basic elements of foraging behaviour. Interference is predicted to occur when handling time and the probability of winning fights are high, and when prey encounter rate and the duration of fights are low. These parameters are used to predict successfully the presence or absence of interference in a range of shorebird-prey systems. 4. We suggest that behaviour-based interference models will need to incorporate optimal decision rules if they are to predict accurately the strength of interference observed in real predator-prey systems.


Economic growth and development bring not only prosperity but also environmental degradation to the earth. In recent years, people have changed their views on traditional supply chain management (SCM). Green purchasing is a current trend in today's business process management. Green purchasing is a purchasing behavior for buying goods that emphasizes environmental protection. Due to governments' environmental regulations, such as WEEE and RoHS, directives have been formed and personal consciousness concerning the environment has been raised; therefore, green purchasing is strongly emphasized in SCM. In some high-tech industries, environmental consciousness may dominate the whole purchasing process, since vendors are asked to use environmentally-friendly materials. Customers thereby influence the component providers toward supplying environmentally-friendly products. For instance, in the PC board industry, the customers influence the suppliers' product manufacturing process with the aim of reducing the negative environmental impact of the materials used by vendors. This study models a green purchasing system by applying the analytic network process (ANP) and linear programming (LP) methods. The ANP provides the solution for green supplier selection and LP resolves the problem of order allocation for each vendor.


: The growing use of outcomes research will have a significant effect on the way surgeons make decisions concerning glove product selection. These effects will be both direct and indirect, as payers begin to use outcome data to develop practice guidelines. to reduce morbidity and mortality rates, and to alleviate long-term cost and consequences of acquired latex allergy or powder-related postoperative complications in patients. This article reviews elements of risk associated with surgical gloves.


In this study we consider how a discrediting event such as an environmental fine influences the quality of environmental disclosures in subsequent annual reports. Starting from prior work in the areas of impression management along with environmental and social responsibility disclosures, we propose that environmental disclosures provide organizations with a method of "managing" such discrediting events. Using a matched‐pair sample of publicly traded Canadian companies that have been subject to environmental fines and those that have not; we analyze changes in pre‐fine and post‐fine environmental disclosure quality. After controlling for firm‐specific characteristics, the provided results are consistent with this explanation.


Traditional methods lack the necessary or appropriate means for expressing the integrity constraints during the database conceptual modeling stage. At most, integrity constraints are informally documented and then, coded in the application. This leads to late error detection and database inconsistencies due to the incapacity of the domain expert to validate the program code. Thus, it is necessary to express such constraints in a natural and formal way in order to close the gap between modelers and domain experts, and to support the transformation to other languages and models. As a result, we propose a controlled natural language based on Semantics of Business Vocabulary and Business Rules (SBVR) to help modelers and domain experts in the process of writing and validating the constraints that cannot be represented in an Entity-Relationship schema; and the Alloy language to allow a formal specification. Inaddition, all the correspondences between the models and languages are described in order to consistently express the constraints and to lay the foundations of the automatic transformation. Finally, a case study and a usability survey show that the proposal is feasible, without abandoning a traditional and popular approach such as the Entity-Relationship model.


Cross-project defect prediction is taken as an effective means of predicting software defects when the data shortage exists in the early phase of software development. Unfortunately, the precision of cross-project defect prediction is usually poor, largely because of the differences between the reference and the target projects. Having realized the project differences, this paper proposes CPDP, a feature-based transfer learning approach to cross-project defect prediction. The core insight of CPDP is to (1) filter and transfer highly-correlated data based on data samples in the target projects, and (2) evaluate and choose learning schemas for transferring data sets. Models are then built for predicting defects in the target projects. We have also conducted an evaluation of the proposed approach on PROMISE datasets. The evaluation results show that, the proposed approach adapts to cross-project defect prediction in that f-measure of 81.8% of projects can get improved, and AUC of 54.5% projects improved. It also achieves similar f-measure and AUC as some inner-project defect prediction approaches.


Background Criteria for good candidate antigens for immunotherapy of acute myeloid leukemia are high expression on leukemic stem cells in the majority of patients with acute myeloid leukemia and low or no expression in vital tissues. It was shown in vaccination trials that Receptor for Hyaluronic Acid Mediated Motility (RHAMM/HMMR) generates cellular immune responses in patients with acute myeloid leukemia and that these responses correlate with clinical benefit. It is not clear however whether this response actually targets the leukemic stem cell, especially since it was reported that RHAMM is expressed maximally during the G2/M phase of the cell cycle. In addition, tumor specificity of RHAMM expression remains relatively unexplored. Design and Methods Blood, leukapheresis and bone marrow samples were collected from both acute myeloid leukemia patients and healthy controls. RHAMM expression was assessed at protein and mRNA levels on various sorted populations, either fresh or after manipulation. Results High levels of RHAMM were expressed by CD34+CD38+ and CD34- acute myeloid leukemia blasts. However, only baseline expression of RHAMM was measured in CD34+CD38- leukemic stem cells, and was not different from that in CD34+CD38- hematopoietic stem cells from healthy controls. RHAMM was significantly up-regulated in CD34+ cells from healthy donors during in vitro expansion and during in vivo engraftment. Finally, we demonstrated an explicit increase in the expression level of RHAMM after in vitro activation of T cells. Conclusions RHAMM does not fulfill the criteria of an ideal target antigen for immunotherapy of acute myeloid leukemia. RHAMM expression in leukemic stem cells does not differ significantly from the expression in hematopoietic stem cells from healthy controls. RHAMM expression in proliferating CD34+ cells of healthy donors and activated T cells further compromises RHAMM-specific T-cell-mediated immunotherapy.


This paper explores the nature of linguistic information present in the temporal structure of speech. We derive TempoRAl Patterns (TRAPs) which describe the temporal evolution of different phonemes in conversational speech. The temporal spread of the TRAPs in the region preceding as well as following the occurrence of a phoneme suggests that the information regarding the phoneme is available in rather long time durations around it. We propose an approach using TRAPs for phonetic feature extraction in speech recognition instead of the conventional spectral-based features. The resulting temporal-based automatic speech recognition (ASR) system yields recognition performance which is comparable to that of the conventional spectral-based ASR system and it is inherently robust to certain types of noise.


While scholars emphasize the importance of the role of the architect in shaping the urban fabric, they agree to that in the contemporary city, s/he has to confront the "planned urbanism" dictated by top-down policies and the market realities. The paper aims at projecting into the city after Urban Transformation in Istanbul at the end of the quarter of the 21st centuy. Will U.T. provide an innovative image to the city and enhance the building quality? The discussion of such questions will be carried through mostly the residential architecture, major zoning in the urban structure. Urban and architectural aesthetics can be adversely affected by relations between conflicting powers in the housing markets. The implementations of U.T raises two issues, namely, is the value of the demolished building for the sake of Architecture lost or diminished? Does the demolition break neighborhood ties embedded in the culture, leading to disruption and alienation? How can the architect resolve this dilemma? What are his design tools to intervene into urban structure? A critical assessment of the legal, cultural and physical frame in the urban context is the main research approach, to be supported by project archives. In this paper, possible tools of the architect to lead U.T. will be explored; to provide few clues for further research.


This study aims at enhancing reservoir characterization through simultaneous history matching of time-lapse seismic and electromagnetic (EM) data. We propose an efficient ensemble-based history-matching approach by exploiting the complementary nature of these data types.
 The developed workflow consists of two main steps. Firstly, water saturation and porosity as the rock cross-properties relating to both seismic velocities and formation conductivity are estimated by joint inversion of seismic and EM data using an iterative ensemble smoother with an adaptive non-distance- based Kalman gain localization. Prescribed rock-physics models are used to quantify the corresponding relationship of rock properties to seismic velocities and formation conductivity, based on which synthetic EM and full-waveform seismic data are simulated. Secondly, instead of integrating the inverted saturation field directly, front positions are identified from the inverted saturation field and used as the observed data for history matching. Model parameters are conditioned to the observed fronts using the iterative ensemble smoother with a feature-oriented distance parameterization.
 The approach is verified with synthetic data sets. Results show that joint inversion of seismic and EM data leads to better estimates of rock properties when compared with those from the separate inversion. Moreover, by integrating the extracted fronts from the improved estimation of the saturation field, which synthesizes the information from both types of data, the proposed approach significantly reduces the redundancy and number of data while still capturing the essential information. The novelty of the proposed approach consists in combining the feature-based history matching with ensemble-based geophysical inversion to achieve an efficient joint integration of time-lapse seismic and EM data.


Users' behaviors observed in many web-based applications are usually heterogeneous, so modeling their behaviors considering the interplay among multiple types of actions is important. However, recent collaborative filtering (CF) methods based on a metric learning approach cannot learn multiple types of user actions, because they are developed for only a single type of user actions. This paper proposes a novel metric learning method, called METAS, to jointly model heterogeneous user behaviors. Specifically, it learns two distinct spaces: 1) action space which captures the relations among all observed and unobserved actions, and 2) entity space which captures high-level similarities among users and among items. Each action vector in the action space is computed using a non-linear function and its corresponding entity vectors in the entity space. In addition, METAS adopts an efficient triplet mining algorithm to effectively speed up the convergence of metric learning. Experimental results show that METAS outperforms the state-of-the-art methods in predicting users' heterogeneous actions, and its entity space represents the user-user and item-item similarities more clearly than the space trained by the other methods.


EZ is a system that integrates traditional operating systems and programming languages into a very-high-level persistent string processing language. The authors describe the design and initial implementation of a distributed memory manager that distributes EZ's virtual address space transparently among a network of homogeneous computers. The design adapts the techniques used in recent implementation of shared virtual memory for use in EZ's persistent environment. Unlike most implementations of shared virtual memory, control information is distributed and migrates. This memory manager works in concert with a distributed mark-and-sweep garbage collector, which is also concurrent and real-time. This collector trades time for space and minimal disruption of mutators, which reduces communication costs.<<ETX>>


Comparison of interactions between the monomers of chicken gizzard and skeletal muscle actin revealed: 1. A more pronounced increase of the extent of polymerization of chicken gizzard than skeletal muscle actin with temperature, which resulted in higher positive changes of entropy and enthalpy of the former than of the latter species. 2. A difference in spectral changes accompanying polymerization: the changes at 295 nm, attibuted to environmental changes around tryptophan residues, were less pronounced for gizzard than for skeletal actin. 3. A difference in the amount of heavy meromyosin added to gizzard and to skeletal F-actin, with which the degree of flow birefringence of the acto-HMM complex is minimum: this amount was lower in the former than in the latter case. These results indicate quantitative differences between intermonomer interactions involved in polymerization of both actin species and also a possible difference in cooperativity between the monomers within the polymers of gizzard and skeletal actin.


Oxidative stress affects the availability of key-regulators of vascular homeostasis and controls a number of signaling pathways relevant to myocardial and vascular disease. Reactive oxygen species are generated by different intracellular molecular pathways principally located in mitochondria. The notion that mice carrying a targeted mutation of the p66 gene display prolonged lifespan, reduced production of intracellular oxidants, and increased resistance to oxidative stress–induced apoptosis prompted a series of studies aimed at defining the biochemical function of p66 and its possible implication in cardiovascular diseases. Indeed, p66 / mice are protected against vascular, cardiac, and renal impairment attributable to hypercholesterolemia, aging, diabetes, and ischemia/reperfusion. The present review focuses on the biochemical and physiological function of the p66 adaptor protein as well as on the mechanisms linking p66-associated generation of free radicals to the pathophysiology of aging and cardiovascular disease. On the whole, the evidence so far reported and here discussed supports the concept that pharmacological modulation of p66 expression and activity may be a novel and effective target for the treatment of atherosclerotic vascular disease as well as myocardial adaptation to hypertrophic, inflammatory and neuro-hormonal stimuli in the overloaded heart. (Arterioscler Thromb Vasc Biol. 2008;28:622-628)


DNA topoisomerase I enzymes relieve the torsional strain in DNA; they are essential for fundamental molecular processes such as DNA replication, transcription, recombination, and chromosome condensation; and act by cleaving and then religating DNA strands. Over the past few decades, scientists have focused on the DNA topoisomerases biological functions and established a unique role of Type I DNA topoisomerases in regulating gene expression and DNA chromosome condensation. Moreover, the human enzyme is being investigated as a target for cancer chemotherapy. The active site tyrosine is responsible for initiating two transesterification reactions to cleave and then religate the DNA backbone, allowing the release of superhelical tension. The different steps of the catalytic mechanism are affected by various inhibitors; some of them prevent the interaction between the enzyme and the DNA while others act as poisons, leading to TopI-DNA lesions, breakage of DNA, and eventually cellular death. In this review, our goal is to provide an overview of mechanism of human topoisomerase IB action together with the different types of inhibitors and their effect on the enzyme functionality.


Canada has experienced a significant change in its ethnic and cultural composition in recent decades. The sustained immigration from non-European countries has given rise to new generations of immigrants whose mother tongue is neither English nor French and whose religion is not Christian. This new trend is clearly reflected in hospital environment where workforce from visible minority nurses (VMN) continues to increase. However, it was noted we that in the nursing sector, the number of these VMN is particularly low in management positions.
This qualitative study adopting the method of critical ethnography and postcolonial approach focuses on the difficult career paths of VMN in a Canadian hospital. We explored the VMN experience in regard of vertical mobility, and sought to understand the perception of this population on the factors impeding or facilitating such mobility.
Twelve nurses and managers participated in a series of semi-structured interviews to gather relevant information about the representativeness of the VMN in advanced positions in the hierarchy of their institution. In addition to these interviews, two interviews were held with human resources individuals. Canales' (2000) theoretical account regarding "othering" was used for this research.
The results of this study show that the VMN faced obstacles, often invisible, that contribute to keeping them at a lower level of the institutional hierarchy, including the hiring and promotion process that they describe as unfair, arbitrary and discriminatory. They suffer from a lack of support from their institution for training and mentoring as well as poor social relationships in the workplace. The VMN feel instrumentalized and perceive that systemic discrimination and segregation have a great effect on their career development, for their institutions are not proactive to reduce inequalities.
This project has the potential to generate new knowledge that will be used to produce practical and creative tools for hospital and institutions to implement changes that will promote the representation of diversity in managerial positions.


Stabilization levels of activated sludge samples generated from different full scale municipal and industrial wastewater treatment plants were investigated. Anaerobic and aerobic stabilization tests were further applied in order to decrease the organic contents of sludges based on Volatile Suspended Solids (VSS) and Total Organic Carbon (TOC) analyses. The decrease in VSS and TOC in municipal wastewater sludge during aerobic stabilization was 40 and 75%, respectively. The loss of heterotrophic biomass activity assessed with respirometric evaluation and the aid of modeling for aerobic stabilization of municipal sludge was also approximately 75%. Aerobic stabilization had generally a more pronounced positive effect on the toxicities of sludges compared to anaerobic stabilization, with the municipal sludges showing no toxicity after aerobic stabilization.


The article presents materials on experiments substantiating the method for the subcutaneous administration of chemical adsorbed typhoid vaccine by means of a jet-injector and the possibility of using this preparation in combination with cholerogen toxoid.


In this paper, we propose a user-friendly three-dimensional CG presentation system for a typical traditional Japanese crafting industry based on agent and virtual reality functions over Japan Gigabit Network (JGN) which is a testbed highspeed backbone network with 2.4Gbps. A large number of traditional Japanese fittings in a local city are redesigned by three-dimensional computer graphics into CAD data and stored in the database servers distributed over JGN. Although each fitting data consists of more than several Mbytes size, user can interactively retrieve the desired fittings and put those into the traditional Japanese interior to design more creative and original houses, hotels and other buildings in realtime. We prototyped a presentation system using VRML and JAVA on networked CG workstations. User can walk through the desired virtual space as a Japanese interior organized by various Japanese traditional fittings and interactively change those fittings by selecting from the database and replacing by simple operations. As a result, we could verify the usefulness of our suggested system not only for Japanese crafting but also for worldwide design industries.


Among the most common purposes are the tracking of reference signals and the rejection of disturbance signals in the face of uncertainties. The related design problem is called the "robust regulation problem". Here we investigate the tradeoff between the robust regulation constraint and the requirement of robust stability with respect to perturbations in the normalized coprime factors of the plant. We use an approach in terms of subspace-valued functions associated to plant and controller. In this way, necessary and sufficient conditions for robust regulation with robust stability can be related to a simple geometric property.


Despite the creation of regional human rights protection systems and their efforts, the problems of discrimination, exclusion, and marginalization continue to be widespread, posing formidable barriers for many persons to exercise their basic civil, political, economic, social, and cultural rights. These considerations raise the question of whether the regional human rights protection systems in the Americas and Europe can really impact substantially the eradication of the problem of discrimination, which is part of their mandate.

The author contends in this article that the Inter-American and European Systems do have potential to contribute to the prevention and response to the problem of discrimination, through the execution of their varied mandates and mechanisms. In this sense, the author discusses in the article emerging legal tendencies that are noteworthy from both systems, among these: i) the special treatment of a number of groups as "vulnerable" or "in a situation of vulnerability;" ii) an approach considering the intersection of different identities or factors of discrimination; iii) a flexible reading to the textual prohibition of discrimination in the major treaties, identifying more prohibited motives such as sexual orientation and gender identity; iv) an avid link between violence and discrimination, and the obligation to act with due diligence when these acts are committed by non-State actors; and v) the issue of stereotypes and how these influence negatively the actions of State authorities towards historically marginalized groups and society as a whole. The article will review how these legal tendencies offer both opportunities and challenges to these two regional protection systems to improve their effectiveness in efforts to address in a structural and transformative way the problem of discrimination in the Americas and in Europe.

This paper contributes to current scholarship in this area by comparing the approach to discrimination issues of two regional human rights protection systems; examining the overall response of these institutions to discrimination through the lens of effectiveness and the varied mechanisms of each system; and considering the different social contexts, political realities, and financial pressures these systems face, which impact their overall work in the protection and promotion of human rights.


: The role of genetic factors in anxiety disorders is yet unknown, although their is a clear familial aggregation, and although twin studies found genetic factors to be at least as important as familial factors for some anxiety disorders such as panic disorder or phobias. In this review, the complexity of genetic studies on anxiety disorders are presented. The problem of incomplete penetrance (only a fraction of cases carrying a given gene manifest a specified phenotype) is illustrated by familial studies on some stress disorder, such as post-traumatic stress disorder. The presence of a severe stress is necessary to be able to manifest the disorder, familial studies on PTSD should thus use analysis with censored data. Questions concerning phenotype specificities are also raised. For exemple, on the basis of twin samples, generalised anxiety disorder and separation anxiety disorder seem to share most of their genetic determinism. Furthermore, more major depressive disorders are found in families of probands with generalised anxiety disorder, suggesting commun vulnerability factors for some of anxiety and mood disorders. Lastly, as standardised diagnostic criteria are much more based on clinical evidence than on etiopathogenic validity, genetic factors may be involved in various bounderies of the phenotype, for example taking into account level of severity, age at onset, or comorbidity. Some of the association studies in humans, analysing the impact of genetic polymorphisms on the existence of anxiety disorders, were either negative or showed week evidence for commun traits such as nevroticism. For animal studies, quantitative trait loci technics may help to pinpoint some still unknown candidate genes. In conclusion, the genetics of anxiety disorders reflect all the difficulties proper to the genetics of complex disorders. Progress in molecular genetics will nevertheless probably change the diagnostic criteria, which are more based on clinical evidence rather than on etiological originality.


Thirty five bacterial isolates were collected from urine and blood samples of 20 patients, before and after endoscopy examination, in new Surgical Hospitals , Zagazig University Hospital, Zagazig, Egypt. Antibiotic susceptibility profile of purified bacteria revealed four multi-resistant strains identified as S. aureus Zag11 , P. aeruginosa Zag60, E. coli Zag126 and S. epidermidis Zag128. The four selected bacteria were subjected to some disinfectants (glutaraldehyde, hydrogen peroxide, P3-oxonia and Orthophthaladehyde) at different concentrations and different exposure times. It was observed that 10 min were enough to inhibit growth of tested pathogenic bacteria in case of (8% H2O2 & 0.55% orthophthaladehyde) while completely inhibition was recorded after 15min in case of ( 2.2% glutaraldehyde, 70% ethanol and 0.45% P3-oxonia). Sterile urinary tract endoscopy was artificially contaminated with mixture (1:1:1:1:1:1) of six clinical pathogenic bacterial strains pararil with the four tested bacterial strains. Upon exposing the contaminated endoscope to different chemical disinfectants; 8% hydrogen peroxide and 0.55% Orthophthalaldehyde inhibited after 30 min exposure while 2.


Past research has suggested that brand-loyal adults are willing to pay more for their preferred brand. This study investigated if African American teens are willing to pay more for their preferred brand of honey bun and if, in a real store scenario, a price predetermined by a survey of brand-loyal customers will generate the highest profit. By using a survey of customers who prefer a name-brand honey bun, we found that brand-loyal customers reported they were willing on average to pay $1.26, while non-brand-loyal customers were willing to pay only $1.08. The surveyed price was used in a real store scenario by setting three prices: one lower than the surveyed price, one at the surveyed price, and one higher than the surveyed price. Customers shopped at the store regularly without instruction during the three weeks of price changes. We found the surveyed price produced the most profit. Our findings suggest that not just brand-loyal adults, but also brand-loyal African American teens are willing to pay more for a preferred brand of food product. Additionally, our study shows that surveying customers is an effective way to identify brand-loyal consumers and determine the ideal price to maximize profit for a particular product.


This thesis focuses on the generation of emotions around Pride activism in Turkey. Based on in-depth, semi-structured interviews with people who have been part of LGBTI activism in Turkey, this study investigates how feelings and emotions are becoming sites of political activism and how they generate discourses of equality, justice and humaneness that enables political participation and activism. What is 'emotional habitus'? What does "pride" refer to in the context of LGBTI activism historically? How is it emotionally charged through political activism? In the local context, what is the difference between "pride" and onur? What kind of emotions Pride Parades invokes in people participating in the organization of this event? How does Pride activism transform feelings such as shame, fear, anxiety, loneliness and vulnerability into anger, motivation, courage, joy, enthusiasm, solidarity and empowerment? How are these altered through the changing social political and economic conjuncture of Turkey? Are there any challenges to these emotional practices? Posing these questions, among others, this research examines Deborah Gould's conceptualization of "emotional habitus" in terms of the 'ambivalent' feelings and emotions attributed to being LGBTI in the context of heteronormative sociality and argues that the ambivalence created by the simultaneous existence of "conflicting" feelings can bolster political action and confrontational activism. Pride Weeks and Parades as a site to investigate relations between emotions and political activism, has been a focal point because they constitute the most visible physical outcome of the workings of emotions with activism, because of their associations to various forms of emotional states starting with pride itself. This study aims to articulate a new perspective to the LGBTI studies and literature in Turkey in its early stages by discussing the possibilities and openings that the concept "emotional habitus" can provide to the formation of political action.


The borderless (BDL) vias landing on the metal lines were demanded in high-density flash memory devices due to the reduced die size, compared with non-borderless (NBDL) vias. IMD material recess in un-landed via dry etching and the Al-Cu metal line undercut caused by post-etch cleaning may lead to via resistance Rv high and EM reliability issue. In this work, the Al-Cu loss mechanism in BDL-via cleaning by using amine- and fluoride-based chemicals were studied in 58nm flash devices. We found that the Al-Cu undercut can be minimized in HDA containing solvent by controlling the formation of Al2O3/Al/HDA gel-like material to the less amounts; the shorter HDA processing time with sufficient IPA rinse generated the thinner gel-like layer leading to the less Al-Cu undercut in DIW rinse step. For TMAH/H2O2-containing semi-aqueous solution, the metal contained etched-residues can be removed by reaction of OH- with Al to form dissolved Al(OH)4-; addition of H2O2 will form a oxidized passivation layer on the metal surface to prevent from metal corrosion. On the other hand, the Al/Al2O3 contained polymer was removed by fluoride-based solvent or DSP+ through the reaction with [F-] to form the DIW-dissolved AlFx by-products; while the dilute H2SO4 and H2O2 in DSP+ will oxidize Al to form Al2O3 that will be further etched by HF, the severe Al-Cu undercut was found in DSP+.


The location of intestinal cells taken from the base of the crypt to the tip of the villus responsive to calcitriol (1,25-dihydroxycholecalciferol) and the distribution of [3H]calcitriol within the intestinal epithelium has been determined in vitamin D-deficient rats. The calcitriol responses examined were CaBP (Ca2+-binding protein) levels as measured by immunodiffusion and alkaline phosphatase levels as determined cytochemically. Calcitriol had no effect on villus structure or on enterocyte kinetics. This made it possible to compare levels of CaBP and alkaline phosphatase activity in enterocytes at different ages in rats at known times after hormone injection. Cells from both the crypt and villus synthesized CaBP in response to calcitriol. Alkaline phosphatase activity was not detectable in crypt cells, although a pool of precursor was produced in these cells in response to calcitriol. Enzyme activity was increased in all villus cells in response to calcitriol, but the quantitative description of this effect was very different from that found for calcitriol effects on CaBP synthesis. Calcitriol injected into vitamin D-deficient rats was detected, within 2h, in all cells of the crypt and villus. Most of the binding was to sites having a high affinity for the injected hormone.


[1] We present an analysis of water balance and plant water stress along the Kalahari precipitation gradient using a probabilistic model of soil moisture. The rainfall statistical characteristics, obtained from daily data of four stations along the transect, show that the rainfall gradient (from 950 to 300 mm/year) is mostly due to a decrease in the mean rate of storm arrivals (from 0.38 to 0.09 1/day) rather than to a change in the mean storm depth (practically constant at 10 mm). Using this information and typical vegetation and soil parameters, the analysis relates the vegetation properties along the transect with those of climate and soil. It is shown that differences in water balance and plant water stress between trees and grasses generate varying preferences for vegetation types along the transect, with deeper-rooted trees favored in the more mesic regions of the northern Kalahari and grasses favored in the drier zones of the southern Kalahari. The point of equal plant water stress is found at about 420 mm of rainfall during the growing season (October–April), indicating the possibility of tree-grass coexistence in the central sector of the Kalahari. These findings are consistent with patterns of vegetation distribution across the Kalahari transect.


Energy-angle distributions of low-energy inert-gas ions scattered from surfaces provide information about surface composition and structure. We have measured energy spectra of He + scattered from an Al 71 Pd 20 Mn 9 quasicrystal, which was oriented perpendicular to the 5-fold axis, along various azimuthal directions. Strong scattering signals are seen from Al and Pd, but only a weak Mn signal is observed. From measurements made of He + at an oblique angle of incidence scattered in the forward direction, we observe a 72° periodicity in the azimuthal dependence of the scattering signal intensity from Al surface atoms. The effect arises from shadowing effects involving neighboring surface atoms and provides direct evidence that Al surface atoms exist in a local environment with 5-fold symmetry. In addition, measuring the variation of the signal intensity with incidence angle provides information about neighboring atom distances, which compare favorably with a model of the quasicrystal surface derived from the bulk structure.


This disclosure describes techniques for improving the mechanical performance of graphite sheets used for heat transfer in electronic devices. A pressure-sensitive adhesive (PSA) material layer is provided between the heat source component and the heat sensitive component for improved mechanical performance, while the graphite sheet is formed as a cladding surrounding the heat source. The PSA layer performs well under tensile stress, while also providing effective thermal insulation. The graphite sheet is formed over the heat source component, wrapped around its sides, and attached to the heat sensitive component. During a dynamic event, e.g. a drop of the device, most of the stress is exerted upon and absorbed by the PSA layer. The graphite sheet experiences relatively lower tensile stresses while still being positioned to transfer heat away from a large portion (surface area) of the heat source component. In limited-space designs, the graphite sheet is formed around the upper portion of the heat source component and extends on only one side of the heat source component and onto the heat sensitive component.


Introduction: Nosodes are homoeopathic preparations sourced from biological materials such as diseased tissues, organisms, cultures (bacteria, fungi, and viruses), or parasites, or from decomposed products from humans or animals. More than forty-five major nosodes have been in use since 1830 but no clear guidelines regarding their preparation are available. Objective : To standardize the method of preparation of nosodes using modern technology and lay down clear guidelines for the same. Materials and Methods : Biological material identification such as culture of organism, separation of required pure fraction, quantification, standardization, dilutions, potentisation method, and safe use of nosodes were documented in a systematic way . Result: HIV, HCV and Mycobacterium tuberculosis nosodes were prepared using the modified method described in this article. Conclusion: The improved method of nosode preparation can pave way for laying clear guidelines for preparation of nosodes in homoeopathic pharmacopeias.


By adopting different methods to the inlet of a zooplankton olfactometer, the current study investigates the effect of the energy of chemical flow on the Gnathiid isopod crustaceans predicted behavior. These are mobile external parasites of fishes that have a significant impact on the health of their hosts. They rely at least in part on olfactory cues to find the host fish. To better understand host-finding dynamics in these parasites, a study was conducted with the simulations as a blueprint for developing a 3-dimensional test apparatus similar to what has been used for studying olfactory orientation in insects. The simulated olfactometer has four legs, each leg forming an inlet where fluids are introduced into the flow domain. There is one outlet at the center of the device. A mixture of water and chemicals is presented by applying a multi-component system. The shear and chemical concentration distribution were conducted to see how fluid physics plays a role in creating a chemical landscape. Computational results show distinct regions separated by high chemical concentration gradients when introducing chemicals from one leg. Changing the fluid inflow from one common inlet to three inlets shows that the chemical distribution exhibits steeper gradients than the typical inlet case, depicting that the gradual chemical concentrations can drive the animal toward the target faster. The best behavior that gives higher chemical gradients is obtained through the study when using three sub-inlets and Schmidt number between 3 and 10.


We examined the effects of thromboxane A2 (TxA2) on the activities of the plasminogen-plasmin system in glomerular mesangial cells. When mesangial cells are exposed to the TxA2 agonist U-46619, a substantial increase in production of plasminogen activator inhibitor-1 (PAI-1) protein is observed that is significantly greater than that induced by 10% serum alone. This increase in PAI-1 protein production is accompanied by an increase in steady-state levels of PAI-1 mRNA. This stimulation is specifically mediated by TxA2 (thromboxane prostanoid, TP) receptors, since U-46619 also stimulates PAI-1 expression in cells that are transfected with TP receptors, and this stimulation of PAI-1 production is completely blocked by the TxA2 receptor antagonist, SQ-29,548. Despite the increase in PAI-1 production, there was net stimulation of plasmin activity in the medium of mesangial cells that had been exposed to U-46619. Furthermore, U-46619 also caused an increase in tissue plasminogen activator (tPA) mRNA levels. Thus TxA2 stimulates the production of PAI-1 and plasminogen activators by mesangial cells through a receptor-dependent mechanism. In inflammatory renal diseases, the balance of these effects may modulate glomerular thrombosis and renal fibrosis.


A facile, accurate, eco-friendly and sensitive spectrofluorometric method was evolved to assay alfuzosin hydrochloride (AFH) and tadalafil (TDF) in different matrices. Such a co-administered combination is clinically used for the treatment of lower urinary tract symptoms. Both compounds are characterized by their native fluorescence spectra upon excitation at specific wavelengths. Their characteristic fluorescence spectra were used for sensitive assay of the studied analytes in tablets and human biological samples. The assay principle is based on first-order synchronous spectrofluorometric scan using Δλ = 60 nm in which AFH peaks were recorded at 366 nm. Meanwhile, TDF measurements were recorded at 293 nm in the same scans without overlap with AFH spectra. Recent analytical chemistry trends were implemented to lessen occupational and environmental perils, using ethanol as a diluting solvent for method optimization and application. Linearity ranges were 5.0–90.0 and 10.0–100.0 ng ml−1 for AFH and TDF, respectively in their raw materials with average % recoveries of 100.44% and 99.73% in raw materials, 100.15% and 100.20% in spiked plasma, and 97.14% and 99.99% in spiked urine. The proposed method was successfully applied to Prostetrol and Starkoprex commercial tablets with no interference with common tablet additives.


The concern for the wellbeing and humane treatment of animals continues to grow in the United States. However, while public opinion on how animals should be treated has largely changed, the legal classification for animals has not. Nonhuman animals today, just as in centuries past, keep only a property classification in the law. This classification, which we humans assign to furniture, jewelry, and paper plates, comes with a set of legal rights held exclusively by the owner of the property. These rights bestow upon the owner the abilities to sell, use, and destroy the property as they see fit with little regard to factors outside of the owner's mere whim. This property classification, while perfectly suited to inanimate objects, does little to adequately address the pain and suffering felt by a sentient nonhuman animal. Many articles exist exploring the psychological aversion towards giving nonhuman animals the same rights as humans or exploring the deficiencies in statutes intended to protect animals. This Article, however, takes a different look at the status of nonhuman animals in the law and instead looks at the role capitalism has played in maintaining the property classification. To accomplish this goal the Article looks to one of the few other instances of sentient beings classified as property, the enslavement of African Americans, and the role capitalism played in driving and maintaining the institution of slavery past the economic purpose. Additionally, the Article discusses some of the animal rights issues that exist and how the current legal field fails to protect the nonhuman animals involved. Finally, the Article considers the psychological and emotional opposition to human rights and suggests a compromise that can advance the nonhuman animal's interests to some degree while resulting in minimal impact on the average person's day to day exploitation of nonhuman animals.


'Substrate-accelerated death' (Postgate & Hunter, 1963a, 1964) was observed with carbon-limited but not ammonium-, phosphate- or sulphate-limited Aerobacter aerogenes grown at 37° in defined medium and starved at 37° in aerated saline buffers containing the growth-limiting substrate. Carbon sources besides the one limiting growth increased the death-rate of starved mannitol-, glycerol-, galactose- and ribose-limited bacteria. Glycerol-accelerated death depended on the rate of oxidation of glycerol and the bacterial concentration; with bacteria fully adapted to glycerol, populations of less than 1-2 x 109 organisms/ml. died at a faster rate the denser the population and above this concentration the death-rate decreased with increasing bacterial concentration. Death was delayed when aerated bacterial suspensions containing glycerol were dialysed at 37° against saline buffer containing the substrate. Bacteria-free filtrates, from populations dying in the presence of glycerol, accelerated the death of fresh bacteria to a greater extent than did glycerol alone. In contrast, bacteria-free filtrates from dense populations surviving in the presence of glycerol partially protected fresh bacteria exposed to glycerol. Mg2+ abolished glycerol-accelerated death but not the lethal effect of filtrates from dying populations. Compared with its influence on glycerol-accelerated death, population density had much less influence on the death-rate of glycerol- or mannitol-limited organisms starved in the presence of glucose or mannitol. Irrespective of bacterial concentration, α-ketoglutarate had no effect and pyruvate, citrate, malate, succinate and oxalacetate had less effect than glycerol on the death-rate of starved glycerol-limited bacteria.


Abstract Posterior open bite (POB) is one of the most severe malocclusions that can impair patients' masticatory functions, yet it is also a condition that is poorly understood and not well studied. Most reported cases are either sporadic or idiosyncratic with a diverse yet poorly understood etiology. Although primary failure of eruption (PFE), lateral tongue thrust, and certain medical syndromes or pathology of the temporomandibular joints have all been shown to cause POB, the complex interplay of environmental and genetic factors makes its etiopathogenesis a difficult subject to understand and investigate. Here, we provide a comprehensive review of the etiology of posterior open bite. Additionally, a genetic cause for POB is proposed through a report of an apparently non-syndromic familial case series with high POB penetrance across two generations. Further investigations of the gene(s) and mechanism(s) involved can not only provide a unique opportunity to better understand POB and the intricate muscular-occlusal relationship, but also offer powerful insight into the most effective approaches to clinical management of these (and potentially other) malocclusions.


Sustainable development has received encouraging attention since the Rio Declaration on Environment and Development was signed in 1992 Earth Summit. In Malaysia, the focus on sustainability in building, especially in devising policies has been spelled out in the government policies at national, state and local level. It can be considered that many efforts relating to sustainability in building project have been implemented in the country, however till now sustainability in Malaysian building projects are still remain without proven. It was revealed that most of the current frameworks of sustainability in the country are not equipped to handle sustainable building project. It is often encouraged environmental measure in most cases, yet the rest of measures are less promoted. To response to the issues, this study therefore aims to explore the sustainability principles of building through the review of relevant literatures. Content analysis is used to identify the principles in the sustainability literature relevant to building projects. A theoretical framework of sustainability principles of building was then formulated to be the main outcome of the study. The framework consists of a list of 29 sustainability principles of building to be taken into account throughout the project development process. The findings is very important to be a useful starting point for future study, especially for formulating a clear guide for the development of upcoming sustainable building projects to its actual meaning.


In this paper the internal consistency and inter-observer reliability of the assessment of disabilities in stroke patients with apraxia is presented. Disabilities were assessed by means of observation of activities of daily living (ADL). The study was conducted at occupational therapy departments in general hospitals, rehabilitation centers and nursing homes in the Netherlands. Patients (n=42) diagnosed to have had a stroke in the left hemisphere and to have apraxia as well, participated in the study (48% male, aged 39–91). Guidelines were offered for the ADL-observation and the assessment of disabilities in these activities. The internal consistency of the scales is expressed by means of Cronbach's alpha and Mokken-scale analysis. The inter-observer reliability is expressed by means of percentage of agreement between two observers, Cohen's kappa and the intra-class correlation coefficient (ICC). The internal consistency of the observations is good: alpha is high (0.94). The Mokken-analysis confirms this finding: an H-coefficient of 0.58 and corresponding rho of 0.94 indicate a strong and reliable scale composed of the set of all ADL-observations. Results indicate that the inter-observer reliability can be considered fair to good: all kappa values were higher than 0.44; the maximum kappa was 0.95. Percentages of agreement vary between 60% and 96%. The ICC range from 0.62 to 0.98. The results of this study imply that the ADL-observations can be considered an internally consistent and reliable instrument for the assessment of disabilities in stroke patients with apraxia.


This paper is centered around rural development projects. But what is meant, specifically, by development? There is a tendency for people to confuse development with economic development and to use national income as a yardstick for measuring economic development. Economic development is too narrow a concept to tell all the development story. There are policital and social dimensions to development. Any definition of development incorporates implicitly or explicitly some value judgements. But where are those value judgements to come from? The common answer is that they should come from governments through their planning documents or the development path of other countries whose present state is judged desirable. A definition of development is basically a political statement. But what are the basic needs all development strategies are intended to satisfy? One answer is obvious, enough food, which is related to the satisfaction of a basic human biological need. Without enough food it is difficult for a human being to fully use her body and her mind. Enough income is a necessary but not sufficient condition for good nutrition as pointed out by Pinstrup-Anderson. Another basic need is a lucrative occupation for people to earn their livelihood and to be able to satisfy their own needs without resting upon outside assistance. Income distribution is another important aspect of development. A country relates its wealth to other countries wealth as do most human beings. The way income is distributed explains the gap between the average income per capita, in a country, and the proportion of the population living in poverty. Other considerations are education, freedom of speech and citizenship of a truly independent nation. But to promote those and other development objectives, plans, programs, and projects have an important role to play.


A long-term potentiation of the rat olfactory cortex slices induced by a high-frequency stimulation is followed by membrane phospholipid changes. Activation of the phosphoinositide metabolism and normalising of phosphatidylethanolamine methylation occurs within 60 min after tetanisation when the potentiation fades. The findings reveal a regulating role of the phospholipid signal system at different stages of the long-term potentiation.


For some time we have been studying blood prothrombin levels in human beings. It seemed of particular interest to one of us (L. P.) to investigate the effect of certain drugs which are administered prophylactically or therapeutically over long periods on the prothrombin level. Among the most widely used compounds of this type are the antimalarials, and the present paper deals with the effect of quinine on the prothrombin time. Five normal male subjects ranging in age from 18 to 43 years were chosen. Their nutritional state was satisfactory and they were advised to maintain a well balanced diet. The prothrombin time was normal in all instances. Two to four premedication controls, performed in each case, were in agreement within the range of normal variations. In carrying out the estimations the Page 1 method was used. According to this technic viper venom and calcium chloride are added to plasma obtained


[1] Rates of aggradation and infilling of accommodation space along lowland channels in response to postglacial sea level rise should depend on sediment supply. The Strickland and Fly rivers join at just 6 m above sea level and have experienced the same Holocene sea level rise. Historically, the Strickland has carried about 7 times the sediment load and 1.4 times the water discharge as the Fly. Therefore we hypothesize that the lowland Strickland floodplain should be more developed and consequently should presently be capturing proportionately less sediment than the floodplain of the lowland Fly River. We use mine-derived elevated Pb and Ag concentrations in 111 shallow (<1 m) floodplain cores collected in 2003 to determine deposition rates across the lower Strickland floodplain. Sediment deposition rates decrease across the floodplain with distance from the channel bank, and the average rate of deposition is 1.4 cm/a over the first 1 km. Overbank deposition along the lowland sandbedded Strickland results in ∼13% loss of the total load, ∼0.05%/km of channel length of the main stem. Deposition rates over the first 1 km from the channel bank on the Strickland are about 10 times those on the Fly (for estimated natural sediment loads); however, the proportional loss per channel length on the Strickland is less than that on the Fly (0.09%/km of main stem channel length) because of an extensive network of tributary and tie channels that convey sediment to the floodplain on the Fly. Furthermore, the lateral migration of the Strickland channel is ∼5 times that on the Fly, such that most overbank deposits on the Strickland are returned to the channel, causing the net loss of sediment to the floodplain to be small. We conclude that the Strickland River, which has a much higher overbank deposition rate than the Fly River as a function of distance from channel bank, nonetheless has significantly less net accumulation than the Fly because (1) a large proportion of the sediment load is conveyed up tributaries and tie channels on the Fly, and (2) lateral migration (which presumably results from the higher load) on the Strickland sweeps sediment back into the channel. Hence our field observations support our initial hypothesis, though the primary reason for this is because of active lateral migration rather than low overbank deposition rates.


Context: Epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) and its ligands are involved in the cell growth of 70% cancer cells. EGFR overexpression or dysregulation may alter intracellular signaling pathways that affect tumor cell survival and apoptosis. It is hypothesized that only those potentially malignant lesions express high levels of EGFR progress to frank malignancies during tumorigenesis which suggests that increase in receptors might be the cause of malignancy rather than the effect of malignancy. Aims: The aim of the study was to assess and correlate the expression of EGFR in varying grades of oral epithelial dysplasia, oral squamous cell carcinoma (OSCC), and normal oral mucosa and to evaluate the early rate of malignant transformation in potentially malignant lesions. Settings and Design: It was a immunohistochemical study. Subjects and Methods: Twenty formalin-fixed, paraffin-embedded blocks of various grades of oral epithelial dysplasia, 10 formalin-fixed, paraffin-embedded blocks of OSCC, and 10 normal mucosae are stained with routine hematoxylin and eosin and immunostained with EGFR by avidin–biotin method. Statistical Analysis Used: Statistical analysis was performed by one-way ANOVA and multiple comparison tests using IBM SPSS Software 20.0 20. Results: Of 40 cases analyszd, 38 cases showed EGFR expression with varied extent and intensity of staining in the cytoplasm and cell membrane of keratinocytes in basal, parabasal, deep spinous, and superficial spinous layer. The results showed a statistically significant increase (P < 0.0001) in the staining extent and intensity of EGFR expression in severe dysplasia and OSCC. Conclusions: EGFRs may act as a marker since they reflect the early changes in dysplastic lesions – predicting the rate of malignant transformation in potentially malignant disorders and thereby aiding the oral pathologist in arresting the lesion before it enters malignancy.


The advent of the digital age with its progress in digital technology has been
associated in recent years with an increase in binge-watching (i.e., seeing multiple
episodes of the same TV series in one session). Binge-watching has now become
the new normative way to consume TV shows. Nevertheless, along with its recent
massive rise has come concerns about the associated mental and physical health
outcomes. Currently available results suggest the potential harmfulness and even
addictive nature of binge-watching. The psychological investigation of this behavior,
however, is still in its infancy, with most studies using a confirmatory approach
and assuming a priori its genuine addictive nature. In contrast, the current perspective
article argues the case for an exploratory approach as an initial step for
conducting research on behaviors that—at first sight—look like addiction when
applying a symptom-based approach. A qualitative understanding of the phenomenological
characteristics of binge-watching as the foundation of an initial comprehensive
discussion makes it possible to formulate hypotheses concerning its
potentially addictive nature and to emphasize challenges and directions for future
research. Here we propose an exploration of the dynamics of binge-watching
behavior based on a model involving emotion regulation in the etiology and
maintenance of problem binge-watching


Ovulation monitors are widely used by women wishing to achieve pregnancy. However, there are few data substantiating claims that these devices enhance the probability of becoming pregnant. In one report it is concluded from the cumulative pregnancy rate that the use of the Clearblue Easy Fertility Monitor increased the pregnancy rate. In a second report, it is argued that the use of the Clearblue Digital Ovulation Test reduces the time taken to conceive. We reconsider these previously published data by analysing each cycle and show that use of such devices might have a small effect (ϕ ≈ 0.12, odds ratio = 2.1-2.2, relative risk = 1.9) in the first month of use, but has no significant effect (ϕ ≈ 0.01, odds ratio = 1.2, relative risk = 1.1-1.2) in the second month. However, the subjects recruited for these two trials had single cycle pregnancy rates (7-11%) that were more similar to those of women avoiding pregnancy (about 6%) than women trying to conceive (about 25%). Given this, there is a reason to suspect that the data that are available might not be representative of all women. Further work is required to test whether even this small transient effect can be replicated in women with higher pregnancy rates. Women should be aware of the limitations of these ovulation monitors.


There is a widespread view that political criteria have received less emphasis in aid allocation since the end of the cold war, with a greater share of aid subsequently being based on developmental criteria. An observed increase in aid effectiveness is attributed to this shift. A reasonably large literature on aid allocation supports this view: a number of influential, widely cited studies conclude that developmental criteria played no role in the 1970s and 1980s inter-recipient aid allocation. This paper argues that the shift is not as significant as commonly thought. It points to a number of methodological weaknesses in the dominant modelling approach used within the literature, showing that more rigorous econometric methods suggest that developmental criteria have had a larger influence on cold war period aid allocation than previously thought. An alternative interpretation of the observed increase in aid effectiveness is provided.


We present an algorithm to identify sparse dependence structure in continuous and non-Gaussian probability distributions, given a corresponding set of data. The conditional independence structure of an arbitrary distribution can be represented as an undirected graph (or Markov random field), but most algorithms for learning this structure are restricted to the discrete or Gaussian cases. Our new approach allows for more realistic and accurate descriptions of the distribution in question, and in turn better estimates of its sparse Markov structure. Sparsity in the graph is of interest as it can accelerate inference, improve sampling methods, and reveal important dependencies between variables. The algorithm relies on exploiting the connection between the sparsity of the graph and the sparsity of transport maps, which deterministically couple one probability measure to another.


ABSTRACT We review Seewave, new software for analysing and synthesizing sounds. Seewave is free and works on a wide variety of operating systems as an extension of the R operating environment. Its current 67 functions allow the user to achieve time, amplitude and frequency analyses, to estimate quantitative differences between sounds, and to generate new sounds for playback experiments. Thanks to its implementation in the R environment, Seewave is fully modular. All functions can be combined for complex data acquisition and graphical output, they can be part of important scripts for batch processing and they can be modified ad libitum. New functions can also be written, making Seewave a truly open-source tool.


While advances in computing resources have made processing enormous amounts of data possible, human ability to identify patterns in such data has not scaled accordingly. Thus, efficient computational methods for condensing and simplifying data are becoming vital for extracting actionable insights. In particular, while data summarization techniques have been studied extensively, only recently has summarizing interconnected data, or graphs, become popular. This survey is a structured, comprehensive overview of the state-of-the-art methods for summarizing graph data. We first broach the motivation behind and the challenges of graph summarization. We then categorize summarization approaches by the type of graphs taken as input and further organize each category by core methodology. Finally, we discuss applications of summarization on real-world graphs and conclude by describing some open problems in the field.


Locally-led change and sustainability is gaining traction in Aotearoa New Zealand amongst community groups, local NGOs and central government because it leverages community resources in ways that grow resilience in communities and enables communities to be their best. It also ensures the relevance of resulting activities, along with enabling 'outside' resources to go further. However, by its very nature, locally-led action manifests in different ways in different places and at different times and this can make it difficult to understand and amplify/replicate. This paper draws on practice-based evidence from nine communities across Aotearoa New Zealand that have helped refine core principles and practices of Community-led Development (CLD). Each of these communities has been consciously organising and working in community-led ways for a number of years and all agreed to contribute to a three year research project to better understand why this way of working was useful to them; what outcomes they were aiming for; how they were using community-led approaches; and what differences this way of working was actually making. The results reveal how working in such a way has contributed to sustaining what is valued by local people, and to inspiring and activating change that includes local voices at the decision making table as well as in the action taking phases. The paper provides a summary of these results as well as the key principles of locally-led change and sustainability as experienced in these initiatives. The paper concludes with some key actions that have contributed to success in these communities.


Introduction Women and men are different, and the jobs they do, their working conditions and circumstances and how society treats them are different, affecting the occupational risks they face: a gender-sensitive prevention approach is required. However, gender mainstreaming and taking a gender-sensitive approach are not always well understood in OSH. Practice needs to be exchanged and experiences shared in order to debunk some of the myths and barriers. This project researched examples of policies, programmes and practices from across the EU and worldwide to illustrate gender approaches in OSH. Methods The cases cover approaches by national and intermediary organisations and gender-sensitive approaches to OSH in the workplace. Detailed descriptions of a range of cases were made, covering the development process and what was achieved. Brief summaries of additional examples were made. The cases were analysed for success factors, challenges, drivers and transferability. Results The cases were varied, covering: integrating gender mainstreaming into organisations' planning, administration and daily working practices; developing methods and tools to promote gender mainstreaming; facilitating working conditions suitable for both women and men, including both health and human resources management; the reconciliation of work and family life and thereby promoting better work–life balance; ensuring women are encouraged and supported in working in male-dominated professions; designing and promoting personal protective equipment (PPE) for women; conducting awareness-raising campaigns on health. Discussion Men and women benefit when gender differences are recognised and are addressed in OSH. The report shows that this is happening in many different ways, through policy and strategy, research and at the workplace. Those taking action include scientific associations, OSH organisations, equalities organisations, health organisations, employers and trade unions. The cases range from comprehensive gender-mainstreaming projects to simple steps that organisations can take to ensure that the OSH of both male and female workers is covered.


Stating that present day development of motors and controllers is such that former limitations as to regulation of starting current from the viewpoint of motor, controller and supply system have been largely removed, the author presents a series of tests on 15 and 20-h.p., 230-volt, d-c. shunt motors, started from rest. The motors are of two types, constant and adjustable speed. These tests were made to determine: first, the load driven by the motor; second, the power supply; third, the motor operation. From these tests the author concludes, in part; that it is practical with automatic acceleration to use one switch to short-circuit the armature resistor used with motors as large as 15 h. p.; that the shunt field of small adjustable speed motors can be reduced in one step under normal load conditions (this practise can be safely followed up to motors of 50 h. p.); and that adjustable speed motors can use one step resistance for dynamic braking.


Recently, a number of ontology-driven healthcare systems have been leveraged by the Internet-of-Things (IoT) technologies, which offer opportunities to improve patient monitoring and abnormal situation detection with support of medical wearables and cloud infrastructure. Usually, these systems rely on IoT ontologies to represent sensor data observations. The ETSI Smart Appliances REFerence (SAREF) IoT ontology is an extensible industry-oriented standard. In this paper, we discuss the verbosity problem of SAREF when used for real-time electrocardiography (ECG), emphasizing the requirement of representing time series. We compared the main ontologies in this context according to quality, message size (payload), IoT-orientation and standardization. We also introduce a SAREF4health extension to tackle the verbosity problem. In the SAREF4health development we followed ontology-driven conceptual modelling, in which an ECG ontology grounded in the Unified Foundational Ontology (UFO) plays the role of a reference model. The methodology was enhanced by a standardization procedure and considers the RDF serialization of the HL7 Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources (FHIR) standard. The validation of SAREF4health includes the use cases of an early warning system that uses ECG data to detect accidents with truck drivers in a port area. A prototype that integrates an existing ECG wearable with cloud infrastructure demonstrates the performance impact of SAREF4health considering IoT constraints. Our results show that SAREF4health is adequate to enable semantic interoperability of IoT solutions that need to deal with frequency-based time series. Design decisions regarding the trade-off between ontology quality and aggregation representation are also discussed.


Collision avoidance is very important in contention-based medium access control protocols for multi-hop ad hoc networks due to the adverse effects of hidden terminals. Four-way sender-initiated schemes are the most popular collision-avoidance schemes to date. Although there has been considerable work on the performance evaluation of these schemes, most analytical work is confined to single-hop ad hoc networks or networks with very few hidden terminals. We use a simple analytical model to derive the saturation throughput of collision avoidance protocols in multi-hop ad hoc networks with nodes randomly placed according to a two-dimensional Poisson distribution, which, to our knowledge, has not been investigated sufficiently before. We show that the sender-initiated collision-avoidance scheme achieves much higher throughput than the idealized carrier sense multiple access scheme with an ideal separate channel for acknowledgments. More importantly, we show that the collision avoidance scheme can accommodate much fewer competing nodes within a region in a network infested with hidden terminals than in a fully-connected network, if reasonable throughput is to be maintained. This shows that the scalability problem of contention-based collision-avoidance protocols looms much earlier than might be expected. Simulation experiments of the popular IEEE 802.11 MAC protocol validate the predictions made in the analysis.