Background: Stroke is the leading cause of long term disability and second leading cause of death worldwide. The effectiveness of primary and secondary prevention of stroke by antihypertensive medications is well validated, however, support for permissive hypertension in the early course of acute ischemic stroke (AIS) has been questioned.

Materials and methods: We searched Pubmed, Embase, and Cochrane databases to identify RCTs comparing different blood pressure reduction regimens with placebo in AIS patients within 48 hours after symptom onset and sample size of 100 or more patients. We excluded studies that do not report mortality or functional outcomes at the end of follow up. The main outcomes were all-cause mortality and death or severe morbidity which was defined as: modified Rankin Score >2 or Bartel ADL index<60, Glasgow outcome scale3, Mathew Impairment Scale <14. Relative risks (RR) and corresponding 95% confidence intervals (CI) were calculated using random-effect model.

Results: In our analysis we included 20 trials involving 17,209 patients. There was no difference in all-cause mortality RR 1.04 (95% CI 0.95-1.13), p=0.4 nor in mortality or severe disability RR 1.03 (95% CI 0.99-1.08), p=0.16 between active blood pressure reduction and permissive hypertension strategy. There was no evidence of heterogeneity between studies for both outcomes I2=2.6% and I2=14.1% , p for heterogeneity =0.42 and =0.27, respectively.

Conclusion: Use of antihypertensive therapy in acute period of ischemic stroke does not have an effect on disability or all-cause mortality.

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Tissue engineering of any tissue type requires the combination of a supporting scaffold, a range of biological factors and a suitable source of cells. This source of cells must satisfy a number of criteria:-

• The ability to form all of the mature/specialised cell types found in the target tissue.

• Readily obtainable.

• Readily maintainable in the laboratory without requiring excessive resources or time.

For intestinal tissue engineering there are a number of issues associated with the use of tissue derived stem cells particularly quantity of normal tissue available (from the patient) and maintenance and expansion of the cells when cultured in vitro. Using embryonic stem cells offers a potential alternative strategy but methods must be established to efficiently differentiate the cells towards the desired fate. Many strategies for differentiating embryonic stem cells are based upon treatment with growth factors in vitro. There is a (logistical) limit to the degree of complexity that these systems can achieve and therefore a limit to the number of differentiation signals that occur during in vivo development that can be mimicked. In recent years using embryonic tissue to provide signals to undifferentiated cells has proved a successful method of directing the differentiation of naive cells towards a particular fate (with the choice of tissue determined by the desired target cell type).

The aims of this thesis were to explore the potential of differentiating embryonic stem cells towards the intestinal progenitor fate using a combination of in vitro cell culture treatment with the growth factor Activin-A and ex vivo co-culture with embryonic chick gut tissue. Previous studies [Kubo et al 2004, Tada et al 2005, Yasunaga et al 2005, D'Amour et al 2005, MacClean et al 2007] have shown that Activin-A treatment will induce embryonic cells to more efficiently differentiate to definitive endoderm, the germ layer from which the intestines (and other visceral organs) arise. These techniques were applied to the Columnar Epithelial Epiblast murine embryonic stem cell line and cell differentiation was then evaluated at the molecular level using Reverse Transcription-Polymerase Chain Reaction, immunocytochemistry and Western blotting. Activin-A treatment produced an upregulation of definitive endoderm markers at both the mRNA and proteomic levels compared to the control conditions. However the cell population produced retained expression of pluripotent markers and showed some expression of markers of other cell lineages.

Further studies [Sugie et al 2005, Fair et al 2003, Van Vranken et al 2005, Coleman et al 2007, Krassowska et al 2006] have shown that co-culture of embryonic stem cells with early stage embryonic tissue can induce the formation of particular tissue types; the tissue must be selected based on proximity to the target cell type during development. This exposes the embryonic stem cells to the signals that prompt differentiation towards the target tissue during normal development. With gut tissue much signalling occurs between the different tissue layers that make up the whole organ both during development and in adult tissue. Ex vivo co-culture of murine embryonic stem cells with embryonic chick gut tissue was used to direct their differentiation to the intestinal epithelial stem cell fate. Before the co-culture was carried out various experiments were carried out to establish if the proposed protocol was viable e.g. defining how long chick gut tissue explants could survive in culture.

Once this had been established co-culture experiments were undertaken and cell differentiation was then evaluated at the molecular level using Reverse Transcription-Polymerase Chain Reaction, immunocytochemistry and Western blotting. The cells showed some expression of intestinal epithelial stem cell markers at both the mRNA and proteomic levels following co-culture. The cells were also assessed at a physiological/functional level by evaluating their ability to form a functional intestinal epithelial barrier. This was achieved using an in vitro co-culture model with intestinal subepithelial myofibroblasts by measuring transepithelial resistance, permeability to protein and morphology in a simple tissue model co-culture. The cells did not display the morphological or physiological characteristics associated with intestinal epithelial cells in the model system.

Overall this work has shown that co-culturing pluripotent mES cells with embryonic chick gut tissue can induce differentiation towards the ISC fate. Pre-treating the cells with growth factors in vitro did not seem to enhance this differentiation but there was scope to refine these techniques. Following the differentiation protocols the cells did not display the desired physiological characteristics but again there was scope to refine the techniques particularly with regard to selecting cells positive for the expression of the chosen molecular markers. These techniques show promise but do require some further development.


A splined shaft on a wood chip-to-fiber refiner failed during equipment start-up. The shaft broke into two pieces at a location close to the end of the splined part of the shaft. The failed component showed the classical fatigue-cracking fracture face. The shaft had a diam of approximately 140 mm (5.5 in.) in the unsplined section and was made of 4340 Ni-Cr-Mo alloy steel heat treated to a uniform hardness of HRC 31. Cracks from at least seven different origins had coalesced to produce the single large crack that resulted in failure. The origins of these cracks were on the flanks of the splines. SEM examination revealed the splined shaft failed by fretting fatigue.


To configure a transceiver card for the hand held radio which is used for the transmission and reception of data or signals in war field. An RF Agile transceiver IC is an IC which is programmable is used. The IC is programmed to transmit and receive the signals in war field. The hand held radio system consists of baseband processor, FPGA on which the program is run to configure the transceiver card and has a flash memory where the programs to configure the transceiver at different frequencies are stored. As the radio is powered the respective programs stored in the flash memory is run on the FPGA based on the user data which is given as input, which will configures the transceiver IC in turn configuring the in-built analog and digital filters and the signal will be transmitted. Before transmitting the transceiver IC can be programmed for different modulation techniques depending on the user specifications.At the other radio same transceiver is used where the signal is received and is demodulated and processed to get the original message or signal.The simulation is done with the help of XILINX tool. Keywords— Transceiver, FPGA, baseband processor


The enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) was used to detect bovine serum antibodies directed to the outer membrane antigen of a ruminal bacteria, Bacteroides succinogenes. The outer membrane antigen of B. succinogenes was highly reactive against homologous antiserum, compared with rabbit sera raised against B. ruminicola subsp. ruminicola, B. ruminicola subsp. brevis and Selenomonas ruminantium. The titers of sera from colostrum-deprived calves were negligible level, while those of sera from colostrum-fed calves were relatively high. The mean titer of sera from 10 day-old calves was significantly (p less than 0.01) higher than that of 40 day-old calves, and was significantly (p less than 0.01) lower than that of adult cattle. The mean titer of sera from dairy cows which fed high-roughage diet was higher than that of feedlot cattle which fed high-concentrate diet. These results suggest that the antibodies against the outer membrane antigen of B. succinogenes transfer to calves via the colostrum, and that the titers of cows are affected by the way of feed management.


Clinicians have long recognized that warts undergo spontaneous regression. The mechanism involved in such regression has undergone intensive investigation and is of interest for a variety of reasons. First, recalcitrant wart disease often frustrates both the afflicted individual and the physician. Second, understanding the process of regression would strengthen our understanding of tumor regression and might have implications in the therapy of cancer. Third, with the increasing population of immunosuppressed individuals, clinicians are faced with a group of patients afflicted with recalcitrant and potentially premalignant warts. It is known that the warts of immunosuppressed individuals may undergo malignant transformation as observed in epidermodysplasia verruciformis and renal transplant patients. 1-4 One would ideally like to have an immune-mediated therapy capable of eradicating warts in such high-risk individuals. Finally, there is the matter of the relationship between genital neoplasia and human wart virus infection. 5-8 Evidence implicating this


ABSTRACT The Klebsiella pneumoniae carbapenem (KPC) β-lactamase occurs in Enterobacteriaceae and can confer resistance to all β-lactam agents including carbapenems. The enzyme may confer low-level carbapenem resistance, and the failure of susceptibility methods to identify this resistance has been reported. Automated and nonautomated methods for carbapenem susceptibility were evaluated for identification of KPC-mediated resistance. Ertapenem was a more sensitive indicator of KPC resistance than meropenem and imipenem independently of the method used. Carbapenemase production could be confirmed with the modified Hodge test.


We extend the study of Ben Dor, Dynkin, Hyman, Houweling, Leeuwen and Penninga [2007] on the behaviour of corporate bond spreads to the realm of credit default swaps using a new estimation technique. The quasi-maximum likelihood approach we employ can accommodate the stochastic nature of the relation between spread volatility and spread level. Consistent with the results for corporate bonds, we find support for a linear relationship between spread volatility and spread level with some evidence of non-linear effects.


Cost estimation in software development is very important because it not only gives an idea to all stakeholders on how long it takes to complete the product under development, but it also mandates tracking development activities so that the project does not overrun on time or budget. Several cost estimation models have been reported in the literature for software development using traditional life cycle models but there are only a few ad hoc methods for software projects that used agile methods. This paper describes the design and implementation of a project tracking tool for software projects that are developed using the agile method Scrum. The users of the tool can closely monitor the progress of user stories, sprint tasks and test cases inducted into a scrum board. The tool also supports cost estimation of the project based on user stories and sprint tasks. For every user story, the tool provides a measure of hardship to implement in terms of story points, and for every sprint task, it gives the anticipated completion time. The tool uses machine learning support for continuous monitoring of efforts based on sprint tasks. The effectiveness of the tool has been tested using three different graduate course projects.


The neural theory of visual attention (NTVA) introduced by Bundesen, Habekost, and Kyllingsbæk (2005) is presented. NTVA is a neural interpretation of Bundesen's (1990) formal theory of visual attention (TVA). In NTVA, filtering (selection of objects) changes the number of cortical neurons in which an object is represented so that this number increases with the behavioural importance of the object (reallocation of processing resources by dynamic remapping of receptive fields). Another fundamental mechanism, pigeonholing (selection of features), scales the level of activation in individual neurons coding for a particular feature. The theory accounts both for a wide range of attentional effects in human performance (reaction times and error rates) and for a wide range of effects observed in firing rates of single cells in the primate visual system. NTVA provides a mathematical framework to unify the two fields of research—formulas bridging cognition and neurophysiology.


Over 900 buildings in the Christchurch central business district and 10,000 residential homes were demolished following the 22 of February 2011 Canterbury earthquake, significantly disrupting the rebuild progress. This study looks to quantify the time required for demolitions during this event which will be useful for future earthquake recovery planning. This was done using the Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Authority (CERA) demolition database, which allowed an in-depth look into the duration of each phase of the demolition process. The effect of building location, building height, and the stakeholder which initiated the demolition process (i.e. building owner or CERA) was investigated. The demolition process comprises of five phases; (i) decision making, (ii) procurement and planning, (iii) demolition, (iv) site clean-up, and (v) completion certification. It was found that the time required to decide to demolish the building made up majority of the total demolition duration. Demolition projects initiated by CERA had longer procurement and planning durations, but was quicker in other phases. Demolished buildings in the suburbs had a longer decision making duration, but had little effect on other phases of the demolition process. The decision making and procurement and planning phases of the demolition process were shorter for taller buildings, though the other phases took longer. Fragility functions for the duration of each phase in the demolition process are provided for the various categories of buildings for use in future studies.


Defining prices and in which consumers' segments to put the company's efforts within competitive markets selling bundles is challenging. On the one hand, methodologies focused on competition are usually appropriate for analyzing market dynamics but not for helping decision makers in specific tasks regarding pricing. On the other hand, simplistic cost-oriented methods may fail to capture consumer behavior. We see these characteristics in such markets as telecommunications, retail, and financial service providers, among others. We propose a framework to support pricing decisions for products with multiple attributes in competitive markets, considering consumers' willingness to pay and multiple segments. The proposed model is a nonlinear profit maximization probabilistic problem. We represent the demands for products and services through a multinomial logit model and then include consumers' maximum willingness to pay through soft constraints within the demand function. Since the profit function is non-concave, we deal with the nonlinearity and the multiple optima to solve the model through an equivalent nonlinear model and a particle swarm optimization (PSO) heuristic. This setting allows us to find the prices that achieve equilibrium for the game among the firms that maximize their profits. Including the features shown, our approach enables decision makers to set prices optimally. Estimating the parameters needed to run our model requires more effort than traditional multinomial approaches. Nevertheless, we show that it is essential to include these aspects because the optimal prices are different from those obtained with more simplified models that do not have them. Additionally, there are well-established methodologies available to estimate those parameters. Both the determination of the first-order optimality conditions and the PSO implementation allow to find equilibria, quantify the effect of the consumers' maximum willingness to pay, and assess the competition's relevance. As complementary material, we analyze a case from a Chilean telecommunications company and show the results regarding price decisions and market share effects. According to our literature review, these aspects have not been handled and quantified jointly, as we do to support pricing.


Globally, asthma is a chronic inflammatory respiratory disease affecting over 300 million people. Some asthma patients remain poorly controlled by conventional therapies and experience more life-threatening exacerbations. Vitamin D, as an adjunct therapy, may improve disease control in severe asthma patients since vitamin D enhances glucocorticoid responsiveness and mitigates airway smooth muscle (ASM) hyperplasia. We sought to characterize differences in transcriptome responsiveness to vitamin D between fatal asthma- and non-asthma-derived ASM by using RNA-Seq to measure ASM transcript expression in five donors with fatal asthma and ten non-asthma-derived donors at baseline and with vitamin D treatment. Based on a Benjamini-Hochberg corrected p-value <0.05, 838 genes were differentially expressed in fatal asthma vs. non-asthma-derived ASM at baseline, and vitamin D treatment compared to baseline conditions induced differential expression of 711 and 867 genes in fatal asthma- and non-asthma-derived ASM, respectively. Functional gene categories that were highly represented in all groups included extracellular matrix, and responses to steroid hormone stimuli and wounding. Genes differentially expressed by vitamin D also included cytokine and chemokine activity categories. Follow-up qPCR and individual analyte ELISA experiments were conducted for four cytokines (i.e. CCL2, CCL13, CXCL12, IL8) to measure TNFα-induced changes by asthma status and vitamin D treatment. Vitamin D inhibited TNFα-induced IL8 protein secretion levels to a comparable degree in fatal asthma- and non-asthma-derived ASM even though IL8 had significantly higher baseline levels in fatal asthma-derived ASM. Our findings identify vitamin D-specific gene targets and provide transcriptomic data to explore differences in the ASM of fatal asthma- and non-asthma-derived donors.


A large and growing body of research on occupational stress has established the existence of a variety of environmental conditions termed stressors that have detrimental physical and psychological effects on people, termed strains. Whereas some stressors are inherent in the nature of job tasks (e.g., role ambiguity and role conflict, see Katz and Kahn, 1978), social stressors involve interpersonal interactions among people and are considered as particularly stressful (e.g., Bolger et al., 1989). Social stressors have been studied under different labels, such as interpersonal conflict (Spector and Jex, 1998), bullying (Einarsen et al., 2010), injustice (Greenberg, 2004), incivility (Andersson and Pearson, 1999), emotional abuse (Keashly and Harvey, 2005), social undermining (Duffy, Ganster, and Pagon, 2002), abusive supervision (Tepper, 2007), and sexual harassment (Fitzgerald et al., 1997). A common feature of all these stressors is that they can involve instances of unethical behavior, which in many cases imply threats to self-esteem through expressions of disrespect, a lack of acceptance, and social exclusion. Such behaviors are unethical when they are intended to harm others for no legitimate purpose, or when they aim at attaining illegitimate advantages at the expense of others. In this chapter we will discuss various mechanisms regarding how social stressors arising from unethical behavior of one employee toward others lead to strains, integrating the ethics literature with the theory of stress as offense to self (for an overview, see Figure 11.1).


Diabetes insipidus (DI) is a syndrome characterized by chronic polyuria and polydipsia. It can result from any of three basic defects: (a) inadequate urinary concentration caused by a deficiency in the secretion or action of the antidiuretic hormone vasopressin (neurogenic or nephrogenic DI), or excessive intake of water caused by a defect in (b) thirst or (c) psychological function (dipsogenic or psychogenic DI). These four types of DI can be differentiated clinically only if they present in a complete and classical form. However, more sophisticated diagnostic approaches involving assays of plasma vasopressin or closely monitored trials of antidiuretic therapy usually are necessary when the patient has mild or incomplete defects in thirst or vasopressin function. Accurate diagnostic differentiation among the four basic types of DI is essential not only for safe and effective management but also for a proper understanding of the basic physiology and pathophysiology of water homeostasis.


Terrorism in all its forms and manifestations and its scope, intensity, cruelty has now become one of the most acute and topical problems of global significance. The article deals with conceptual measures for strengthening the fight against terrorism and extremism financing, effective work with the private sector on providing information necessary for detection of the activity connected with terrorism and extremism financing. This work analyses the increasing level of awareness of representatives of public and private sectors and strengthening of the role of financial intelligence for the use of reconnaissance data as a dominant way of fight against terrorism and extremism. It has been determined that in such circumstances effective fight against terrorism and extremism as the exterritorial phenomenon has to have a complex character, combining efforts at universal, regional and interstate levels. As experts note, the measures taken only at the national level will have a limited effect. For safety insurance, each state needs international cooperation. It has been established that in Israel in order to prevent crises and mass protests, they use in practice the positively recommended Israel's experiment of information exchange of law enforcement and special bodies with leaders of public opinion (authoritative persons, elders), representatives of official clergy, mass media and NGO by means of WhatsApp mobile application in online mode about the events having a public response. It is established that all interested private structures and government bodies have to reach a compromise in the strategy of ensuring a reliable system of counteraction and development of countermeasures according to the solution of anti-terrorist actions.


Lotus-type porous metals with low thermal conductivity are fabricated by continuous zone melting technique, which possess directional elongated pores. The porous metals have been able to be fabricated through the conventional casting method by utilizing the solubility gap between solid and liquid in pressurized gas atmosphere. However, there is a shortcoming that the pores are coarsened in the part farther from the chill plate in the ingot. In order to overcome such a shortcoming, we developed the continuous zone melting technique and successfully produced the lotus-type porous metals with even low thermal conductivity such as stainless steel and superalloys. Furthermore, from the viewpoint of mass production with low cost, we invented novel "continuous casting technique". The molten metals dissolving gas are solidified continuously by passing through the mold cooled with chiller and thus, lotus-type porous metal plate as long as one meter was produced for short time. Sufficient uniformity of the porosity and pore size was obtained in such long porous ingots. This technique is prospective method for commercial mass production.


: In a group of patients with complete atrioventricular block admitted for implantation of a cardiac stimulant, 15 out of 74 patients (20.3%) had normal intraventricular conduction before the block, while 59 (79.7%) had disorders of intraventricular conduction. A combination of right bundle-branch block with block of the anterior limb of the left branch was the most frequent occurrence (37.8%). Comparison of the QRS complexes in maintained atrioventricular conduction with those in complete antrioventricular block showed that among patients with disorders of intraventricular conduction complete atrioventricular block was of a proximal character in 45.5% and of a distal character in 54.5% of cases. There was a high risk of development of complete atrioventricular block in patients with right bundle-branch block combined with block of the anterior limb of the left branch; it was found to be 41.2% at an average follow-up period of 23 months.


Catchments are complex systems, which require regular monitoring of hydro-chemical parameters in space and time to provide comprehensive datasets. These are needed to characterize catchment behavior on a local level, make future projections based on models, implement mitigation measures and meet policy targets. However, many developing countries lack a good infrastructure for hydrological monitoring since its establishment is costly and the required resources are often not available. To overcome such challenges in data scarce regions like Kenya, a participatory citizen science approach can be a promising strategy for monitoring water resources. This study evaluates the potential of using a contributory citizen science approach to explore spatiotemporal turbidity and suspended sediment dynamics in the Sondu-Miriu river basin, western Kenya. A group of 19 citizen scientists was trained to monitor turbidity using turbidity tubes and water levels with water level gauges in six nested subcatchments of the Sondu-Miriu river basin. Over the course of the project, a total of 37 citizen scientists participated and contributed to the overall dataset of turbidity. The sampling effort and data contribution varied from year to year and among participants with the majority of the data (72%) originating from 8 (22%) citizen scientists. Comparison between citizen-scientist collected suspended sediment data and measurements from automated stations showed high correlation (R2 > 0.9) which demonstrates that data collected by citizen scientists can be comparable to data collected using expensive monitoring equipment. However, there was reduced precision of the measurements of suspended sediment concentrations at low and high levels attributed largely to the detection limitations of the turbidity tubes and citizen scientists not capturing major sediment export events. Suspended sediment concentrations were significantly higher downstream (109 ± 94 mg L−1), a subcatchment dominated by agriculture and rangeland with low forest vegetation cover, as compared to a subcatchment with high forest cover (50 ± 24.7 mg L−1). This finding indicates that forest cover is a key landscape feature to control suspended sediment concentrations in the region. Future citizen science projects should focus on motivation and engagement strategies and the application of robust methods with improved detection limits and resolution to advance hydrological monitoring.


The reconstruction of brain sources from non-invasive electroencephalography (EEG) or magnetoencephalography (MEG) via source imaging can be distorted by information redundancy in case of high-resolution recordings. Dimensionality reduction approaches such as spatial projection may be used to alleviate this problem. In this proof-of-principle paper we apply spatial projection to solve the problem of information redundancy in case of source reconstruction via spatiotemporal Kalman filtering (STKF), which is based on state-space modeling. We compare two approaches for incorporating spatial projection into the STKF algorithm and select the best approach based on its performance in source localization with respect to accurate estimation of source location, lack of spurious sources, computational speed and small number of required optimization steps in state-space model parameter estimation. We use state-of-the-art simulated EEG data based on neuronal population models, for which the number and location of sources is known, to validate the source reconstruction results of the STKF. The incorporation of spatial projection into the STKF algorithm solved the problem of information redundancy, resulting in correct source localization with no spurious sources, and decreased the overall computational time in STKF analysis. The results help make STKF analyses of high-density EEG, MEG or simultaneous MEG-EEG data more feasible.


Irrigation and N management are perhaps the most important aspects of successful potato (Solanum tuberosum L.) production in central Minnesota. With rising concern about current irrigation and N management practices and ground water quality, a two-year study was undertaken to evaluate the impact of alternative irrigation and N management practices on potato yield, tuber quality, and N uptake. The treatments were different irrigation schemes (sprinkler and drip), irrigation triggers (70 and 40% of available water [AW] remaining), drip tape placements (surface or buried at 25 cm), N sources (urea, turkey manure, sulfur-coated urea [SCU]), and timings of inorganic N fertilizer application. Rainfall in the area was less in 1994 (260 mm) than in 1995 (380 mm). As a result, irrigation applications in 1994 were greater than in 1995. Drip irrigation amounts were less than half of that applied by sprinkler irrigation treatments in both years. Except for the buried drip with fertigation (43.0 and 27.8 Mg ha -1 in 1994 and 1995) and the control (36.5 and 13.3 Mg ha -1 in 1994 and 1995), total tuber yields were similar regardless of irrigation and N source treatment. The turkey manure treatments in 1994 had significantly higher marketable tuber yields than the control, averaging 48.3 Mg ha -1 for both years. Total N uptake in 1994 was nearly 100% of that applied, while in 1995 it accounted for only 60% of the application. Lower N uptake was observed for the control (85.3 and 30.2 kg N ha -1 in 1994 and 1995, respectively), SCU (165.2 and 111.3 kg N ha -1 in 1994 and 1995), and BDF (157.2 and 80.1 kg N ha -1 in 1994 and 1995) treatments. The results showed that the use of unconventional N sources such as turkey manure and SCU are viable alternatives for potato production, provided they are managed properly.


This study compares different articles on aftonbladet.se and the availability of comment fields on the articles. It is not possible to comment all of them and we examined which you could and which you could not comment on. The study's purpose is to examine how well the comment fields on aftonbladet.se take advantage of the opportunity to create a deliberative discussion that the public may take part of. This study looks at what subject matters it is possible to comment on and if there are any statistical correlations between those subjects that you can't. This study analyses 250 articles on the news site aftonbladet.se with a total of eleven variables between the 26 of November and the 7 of December. The variables contained subject area, headliner and if the article mentions any political party. The study also analyses variables such as racism, religion and violence- and sex crime in relation to the comment fields. The main result was that you could only comment on 55, 7 percent of the articles. Of the articles that concerned economics, politics, crime and accidents you could only comment on one third (36, 5 percent) and of the articles that concerned sport, entertainment and health you could comment on 81, 8 percent. The study's main conclusion is even if the comment fields on aftonbladet.se have the opportunity to encourage a deliberative discussion it does not take advantage of that opportunity.


Clinical and laboratory data are available on affection of the peripheral nervous system (PNS) in 27 patients with Lyme-borreliosis (LB) in the endemic region of Russia. PNS disorders arose early, 88.9% of the patients had them within one month of the disease. 9 (37.5%) patients had meningoradiculoneuropathy (MRN) which emerged in the acute period in 77.8% of the patients. Inflammation in the cerebrospinal fluid was registered only in patients with clinical signs of meningitis. MRN developed more frequently in facial nerve neuritis (FNN) than in radiculopathy (RP)-80.0% and 14.3%, respectively, p = 0.01. Intrathecal synthesis of antibodies to B. burgdorferi in combination with pleocytosis was found only in FNN patients (16.7%). In 6 (37.5%) of 16 patients with neuroborreliosis concentrations of C-reactive protein were elevated. Its high level occurred significantly more frequently in RP (83%) than in FNN (17%) (p = 0.05). 5 out of 14 LB patients exhibited high level of Willebrand factor antigen. No clear clinical relations between this value and PNS lesions in LB were found.


Introduction. Chapter 1: I Say It How? Speaking Japanese. Chapter 2: Grammar on a Diet: Just the Basics. Chapter 3: Numerical Gumbo: Counting of All Kinds. Chapter 4: Making New Friends and Enjoying Small Talk. Chapter 5: Enjoying a Drink and a Snack (or Meal). Chapter 6: Shop 'til You Drop. Chapter 7: Making Leisure a Top Priority. Chapter 8: When You Gotta Work. Chapter 9: I Get Around: Transportation. Chapter 10: Finding a Place to Lay Your Weary Head. Chapter 11: Dealing with Emergencies. Chapter 12: Ten Favorite Japanese Expressions. Chapter 13: Ten Phrases That Make You Sound Like a Local. Index.


Marta Paluch The Flesh of the Message or the Bodily Shell: Dilemmas of the Recipient of Contemporary Audiovisual Culture The point of departure for the present article is a debate around the image of Izabelle Caro, which has proven to be received as shocking not because it transgresses the taboo of nudity, but because it violates the taboo of the ideal body. The model's body has been presented to the broad audience in its "raw," unbeautified state, thus forcing the viewers to acknowledge the existence of an ill body, a body remote from the preferred ideal, and―most importantly―a body which has become ill as a result of the strife to live up to the ubiquitous template of perfection. In the case discussed by the author of the article, the result which such a struggle yields stands in direct opposition to its goals. Pretending to be natural, the fully digitized―or, in fact, digitally generated―body of the model is painfully confronted with what apparently is the same body, yet a body entirely natural, although degraded and exhausted by the destructive power of the former. The viewer facing the image, in which the body is central and its background reduced to a blur beyond signification, confronts the exposed and emphasized discrepancy: its immediacy does not allow him or her to remain indifferent. However, the lack of background results in the model's suspension in vacuum: her body fails to harmonize with its surrounding, as is the case with bodies functioning as empty or void indices. It is for this reason that an average "consumer of the image," lacking proper interpretive tools, is likely to fail to tame such an image or to acknowledge its authenticity. Rather than that, he or she may be inclined to reduce the final outcome of the photographer's work to computer manipulation.


Background: The north-western part of Nigeria has the lowest maternal health services utilization according to the Nigeria Demographic and Health Survey (2013) with only about 34% of the women attending antenatal care clinic (ANC) and less than 10% delivering at the hospital or under a skilled birth attendant. There are several factors that militate against the utilization and uptake of maternal health services in northern Nigeria thus leading to increased risks of maternal deaths. The study was to identify some of the socio-cultural factors, practices and perception limiting the utilization and uptake of maternal health services in some selected communities of Zamfara State, northwestern Nigeria.Materials and Method: The study was qualitative research involving in-depth interviews (IDIs) with a purposive sample of some community leaders, health practitioners, and focus groups discussion (FGDs) with men and pregnant women in some selected communities in Gusau local government area of Zamfara state. Six FGDs were conducted with six different groups of men and pregnant women and ten (10) in-depth interviews. All sessions were conducted in Hausa language and tape recorded, notes taken. Both FGDs and IDs were transcribed, translated and coded. Themes were developed and analysis conducted based on thematic content.Results: The study found that some of the challenges for the utilization and uptake of maternal health services include ignorance, low level of women power in making decision, poverty, and negative attitude of health workers, delay at the clinic, distance to health facility and other cultural beliefs.Conclusion: Socio-cultural factors, beliefs and practices are the challenges to the uptake maternal health services in communities of Zamfara state, which may increase the risks for maternal deaths among pregnant women. Thus, there is the need to encourage attendance of antenatal care visits and good health care seeking behaviour.


This retrospective study included 106 children given cochlear implants in our hospital from 1991 to 2007. For the initial 4 years, all children receiving cochlear implants were over the age of 6 years. In recent years, however, there has been a growing trend to lower the age of implantation below 3 years. Almost 80% of the cases suffered from unknown congenital hearing loss, and 10% of the cases indicated post-meningitis deafness. Speech recognition tests after implantation showed good results except for children with congenital deafness aged over 8 years at implantation, congenital rubella syndrome, and severe inner ear anomalies such as semicircular canal aplasia. Furthermore, the evaluation of post-operative speech cognition in multi-handicapped children using cochlear implants is considered to require more time for an accurate estimation. The rate of delayed complications including MRSA infection and cholesteatoma formation was 7% of all cases, and was considered to rise with an increase of the follow-up period.


Multimode polymer waveguides are an attractive transmission medium for board-level optical links as they provide high bandwidth, relaxed alignment tolerances, and can be directly integrated onto conventional printed circuit boards. However, the performance of multimode waveguide components depends on the launch conditions at the component input, complicating their use in topologies that require the concatenation of multiple multimode components. This paper presents key polymer components for a multichannel optical bus and reports their performance under different launch conditions, enabling useful rules that can be used to design complex interconnection topologies to be derived. The components studied are multimode signal splitters and combiners, 90°-crossings, S-bends, and 90°-bends. By varying the width of the splitter arms, a splitting ratio between 1% and 95% is achieved from the 1 × 2 splitters, while low-loss signal combining is demonstrated with the waveguide combiners. It is shown that a 3 dB improvement in the combiner excess loss can be achieved by increasing the bus width by 50 μm. The worst-case insertion loss of 50 × 100 μm waveguide crossings is measured to be 0.1 dB/crossing. An empirical method is proposed and used to estimate the insertion losses of on-board optical paths of a polymeric four-channel optical bus module. Good agreement is achieved between the predicted and measured values. Although the components and empirical method have been tailored for use in a multichannel optical bus architecture, they can be used for any on-board optical interconnection topology.


Treatment of chronic prostatitis is a vital and complicated problem, in which a large number of stamps and "stereotyped" approaches often result in uncured patients. The increasing use of intracellular microorganisms in prostatitis etiology requires a modification in the standard approaches. TAURUS study shows high efficacy of doxycycline (Unidox Solutab®) and/or josamycin (Wilprafen®) in chronic prostatitis. Therapy, studied in this program, according to physicians, was effective in 93.2% of patients. Treatment failure was observed in 1.3% of all patients, another 5.5% of patients had insufficient data for assessment. Low incidence of adverse reactions was observed. In the study population, adverse reactions occurred in 2.6% of patients, of them serious adverse events were registered in 0.7% of patients. The most common adverse event in all treatment groups was diarrhea.


OBJECTIVE We have developed a highly interactive virtual environment that enables collaborative examination of stereoscopic three-dimensional (3-D) medical imaging data for planning, discussing, or teaching neurosurgical approaches and strategies. MATERIALS AND METHODS The system consists of an interactive console with which the user manipulates 3-D data using hand-held and tracked devices within a 3-D virtual workspace and a stereoscopic projection system. The projection system displays the 3-D data on a large screen while the user is working with it. This setup allows users to interact intuitively with complex 3-D data while sharing this information with a larger audience. RESULTS We have been using this system on a routine clinical basis and during neurosurgical training courses to collaboratively plan and discuss neurosurgical procedures with 3-D reconstructions of patient-specific magnetic resonance and computed tomographic imaging data or with a virtual model of the temporal bone. Working collaboratively with the 3-D information of a large, interactive, stereoscopic projection provides an unambiguous way to analyze and understand the anatomic spatial relationships of different surgical corridors. In our experience, the system creates a unique forum for open and precise discussion of neurosurgical approaches. CONCLUSION We believe the system provides a highly effective way to work with 3-D data in a group, and it significantly enhances teaching of neurosurgical anatomy and operative strategies.


the same position in the second. The book makes very good general reading, with plenty of anecdotes to lighten the more technical chapters. Although it is over 10 years since he retired, Sir William is still well remembered by older members of staff at Millbank and elsewhere in the Company. He joined ICI in 1928 at the request of Sir Alfred Mond (as he then was), who considered that in view of expanding interests in fertilizers a practical agriculturist should be brought in as an assistant to Mr. F. C. O. Speyer. Sir William served at various times on the Boards of the then Billingham Division, Scottish Agricultural Industries (chairman), Plant Protection (vice-chairman) and Central Agricultural Control (vicechairman). P. REILLY


Not-for-profit hospitals are increasingly considering the sale or long-term lease of assets to for-profit chains as a proactive response to anticipated future operating conditions. Analyzed here are two simplified examples, one a proposed sale and the other a lease option. They provide the basis for determining whether the hospital's current commitment to charity and community service will be met in the future


Abstract
Information on risks is collected from various sources and converted into loss of life expectancy throughout life and in various age ranges. Risks included are radiation, accidents of various types, various diseases, overweight, tobacco use, alcohol and drugs, coffee, saccharin, and The Pill, occupational risks, socioeconomic factors, marital status, geography, serving in U.S. armed forces in Vietnam, catastrophic events, energy production, and technology in general. Information is also included on methods for reducing risks, risks in individual actions, "very-hazardous" activities, and priorities and perspective. Risks of natural and occupational radiation and exposure to radioactivity from the nuclear industry are compared with risks of similar or competing activities.


User-defined data types such as intervals require specialized access methods to be efficiently searched and queried. As database implementors cannot provide appropriate index structures and query processing methods for each conceivable data type, present-day object-relational database systems offer extensible indexing frameworks that enable developers to extend the set of built-in index structures by custom access methods. Although these frameworks permit a seamless integration of user-defined indexing techniques into query processing they do not facilitate the actual implementation of the access method itself. In order to leverage the applicability of indexing frameworks, relational access methods such as the Relational Interval Tree (RI-tree), an efficient index structure to process interval intersection queries, mainly rely on the functionality, robustness and performance of built-in indexes, thus simplifying the index implementation significantly. To investigate the behavior and performance of the recently released IBM DB2 indexing framework we use this interface to integrate the RI-tree into the DB2 server. The standard implementation of the RI-tree, however, does not fit to the narrow corset of the DB2 framework which is restricted to the use of a single index only. We therefore present our adaptation of the originally two-tree technique to the single index constraint. As experimental results with interval intersection queries show, the plugged-in access method delivers excellent performance compared to other techniques.


Urinary tract infection (UTI) is the most common bacterial infection, affecting women far more than men. Aerobic gram-negative bacteria are the most common uropathogens causing UTI, with Escherichia coli remaining the most predominant organism in complicated infections. UTI can result in a variety of infections and inflammations, from asymptomatic bacteriuria to typical symptomatic cystitis to acute pyelonephritis, as well as bacterial prostatitis in men.
In general, antimicrobial therapy is warranted for any symptomatic infection of the urinary tract. However, new consensus treatment guidelines for uncomplicated UTI in women, set by the Infectious Diseases Society of America and the European Society for Microbiology of Infection Diseases in 2010, account for the increasing antimicrobial resistance of pathogens and focus on first-line empirical treatment regimens. To reduce the use of antibiotics, treatment and prevention of recurrent UTI may involve several strategies on varying levels of effectiveness; some of the more well-tested options include probiotics, antiseptics, and topical estrogen. Antimicrobial approaches should be reserved for women in whom these options prove to be ineffective.
This review contains 7 highly rendered figures, 7 tables, and 120 references.


The capital punishment system in the United States is broken. Studies reveal growing delays nationwide between death sentences and executions and inexcusably high rates of reversals and retrials of capital verdicts. The current system persistently malfunctions because it rewards trial actors, such as police, prosecutors, and trial judges, for imposing death sentences, but it does not force them either to avoid making mistakes or to bear the cost of mistakes that are made during the process. Nor is there any adversarial discipline imposed at the trial level because capital defendants usually receive appointed counsel who either do not have experience trying capital cases or who receive inadequate resources from the State to pay litigation expenses. Instead, the appellate system is forced to deal with large amounts of error, creating backlog and delays. This article proposes a radical trade-off for capital defendants in which they agree to give up existing post-conviction review rights in return for a real assurance of better qualified, higher quality trial counsel. This proposal will avoid the traps of window dressing reforms, save states a good bit of the expense of appellate review, and make the capital punishment system more fair, efficient, and effective.


Institutional Repositories (IRs) development in Tanzania has made publications readily available, accessible, and retrievable. IRs have increased the visibility of researchers and institutions and have contributed to the University ranking. Several Higher Learning Institutions (HLIs) in Tanzania have developed their IRs hosting institutional publications. This study assessed the citation impact of IR contents of selected Tanzanian HLIs. The study evaluated the citation impact of IR contents using publications indexed in the Scopus database. Four HLIs were purposively selected. The search within reference advanced feature for the Scopus database was conducted. The publications indexed in Scopus citing the selected IR contents from 2018 to 2022 were identified and extracted. Data analysis was carried out using Microsoft Excel and SPSS. The study findings indicated that the Tanzanian IR contents had a low citation impact. The study recommends that Tanzanian HLIs devise strategies for increasing IR content visibility. The strategies may include registering the IRs in online platforms and ensuring the Handle System is implemented to improve the accessibility of the IR content. Furthermore, the HLIs should create awareness of research visibility, enabling researchers to publish and increase their visibility.


In this article, we revisit the relationship between judicial interpretation of legislation and policymaking in the modern Congress. We develop a model of legislative decisionmaking, drawn from the influential work of positive political theory, and use this model to consider a puzzle in the contemporary lawmaking process, that is, what explains the dearth of progressive social legislation in the period from the early 1970's to the present? We argue that much of this demise of the progressive legislative agenda can be attributed to the decision of influential interest groups to push aggressively for expansionist interpretations of regulatory statutes, interpretations that go well beyond the terms of the statute and, as well, beyond the expectations of the legislators whose support was critical in securing the passage of this legislation. Paradoxically, as we explain, these expansions have made it more difficult for legislators to reach agreements within the lawmaking process and thereby defeated the very agendas for which interest groups have pushed. Moreover, these expansionist interpretations have contributed to the growing polarization within the modern Congress.


A high output 1dB compression point 60-GHz up-conversion mixer fabricated on 0.25 µm SiGe∶C technology is presented. It is based on the Gilbert cell and integrated with LO passive stacked Marchand balun to convert the LO single ended signal into differential. It employs tuned load consisting of spiral inductor and MIM capacitor to match the differential output to 100 ohm and to attenuate the image signal by 15 dB in the middle of the band. The conversion gain is 2.2-dB in 61 GHz and varies within 2 dB over 9 GHz band We achieve output 1-dB compression point of −3.4 dBm. To the best of our knowledge it is the highest output 1-dB compression point in silicon-based 60-GHz mixers. It consumes 10 mA from 3.3 V supply


With the rapid advancement of wireless technology and the exponential increase of wireless devices in the past decades, there are more consumer applications for MANETs (mobile ad hoc networks) in addition to the traditional military uses. A resilient and robust MANET is essential to high service quality for applications. The dynamically changing topologies of MANETs pose a huge challenge to normal network operations. Furthermore, malicious attacks against critical nodes in the network could result in the deterioration of the network. In this paper, we employ several real-world human mobility traces to analyze network robustness in the time domain. We apply attacks against important nodes of the human topology and compare the impact of attacks based on different centrality measures. Our results confirm that nodes with high betweenness in a well-connected large dynamic network play the most pivotal roles in the communication between all node pairs.


Motion profile smooth control is significant to reduce the obvious impact on machine tool in high speed and high accuracy CNC machining. However, the jerk is discontinuous and brings about flexible impact on machine tool in the linear Acceleration/Deceleration (ab. Acc/Dec), exponent Acc/Dec and S curve Acc/Dec approach. In the paper, the CNC machine tool dynamic model is built up to analyze the cause of machine impact, to describe the mathematics and physics meanings of jerk. Then a new Acc/Dec approach in which the jerk is continuous is put forward. And the motion profile smooth control algorithm based on continuous jerk is developed in details according to the permissible maximum acceleration, the permissible maximum jerk, the machining program segment displacement and the instruction feedrate. The motion profile smooth control algorithm can achieve continuous jerk, reduce impact on machine tool effectively, and be important to high speed and high accuracy CNC machining.


Ion chromatography (IC) belongs to the large group of separation methods that are based on separation of components in sample between two immiscible phases: mobile and stationary. In IC, the substances are separated due to different strengths of coulombic interactions with the stationary phase. Short analysis times, high separation efficiency, high reproducibility and low analysis costs make this technique useful in industry, clinical laboratories, food control and environmental analysis. This work is focused on the study of retention behavior of anions by IC and influence of experimental conditions (temperature, pH) on the separation efficiency. Mixtures of anions (F-, Cl-, NO2-, Br-, NO3-, PO43-, SO42- and I-) were analyzed on the Metrohm861 Advanced Compact IC ion chromatograph (Metrohm, Switzerland) with conductometric detector and Metrosep A Supp 4 - 250/4.0 annex column. The tested concentrations were in range of 0.08-10 mg/L. The analysis was performed with flow rate F of 1 ml/min, all samples were measured three times. The study of influence of temperature and pH on the separation was the main aim of this work. It was found that higher temperature and pH significantly decrease values of retention factors kA. The biggest difference was observed in case of iodide anions, where the retention time shifted from 22 to 14 min when the temperature was increased from 22 to 50 °C. The optimal analysis conditions were pH = 10.22 and t = 22 °C. The calibration provided LOD values between 3 µg/L (in case of Cl-) and 200 µg/L (in case of I-). To demonstrate the practical relevance of the method, real samples of drinking waters were analyzed. The achieved results were in good agreement with the concentration values declared by the producers. Ion chromatography represents a valuable approach for determination of anion concentrations. We have optimized the method with respect to effect of temperature and pH on the separation efficiency, the method is suitable for analysis of real samples. Due to discovered dependences it is possible to predict theoretical values of retention factors, which could be used to estimation of anion retention.


The salient issue for most human rights activists working from within the communities where female genital mutilation (FGM) has been prevalent is not whether, but how, to eradicate the practice. This essay focuses on policies adopted in one country of immigration – Canada – in order to explore the complex positioning of women within diasporic communities. The author's interest lies in the approach that emphasizes the procedural aspect of citizenship and promotes the participation of members of various identity groups in the political, social, and judicial institutions that shape the national community. This article considers questions such as: What are the risks and the benefits of using the legal system of the host country to redress one particularly stark manifestation of gender inequality within the diasporic community? Who is in the best position to make this assessment? What does the evidence to date suggest? The theoretical conundrum is clear: negotiating intragroup power relations within marginalized communities through resort to an apparatus of the state may help redress inequalities, but may simultaneously push the group as a whole further to the margins.


1. Kin selection is one of the mechanisms that can explain apparent altruism by subordinate individuals in cooperatively breeding species, if subordinates boost the production of kin. We compared productivity and breeder survival in pairs with and without subordinates in a genetically monogamous cooperatively breeding bird, the purple-crowned fairy-wren Malurus coronatus. 2. Additive effects of subordinate help increased productivity. Total feeding rates to the nest were increased by two or more subordinates, and fledgling production was greater in larger groups. Not all subordinates contributed to nestling feeding, and the effect of group size was greater when non-contributors were excluded from analyses, suggesting that increased fledgling production was a direct result of help. 3. Compensatory effects of subordinate help improved breeder survival. Assisted breeders reduced their workload by 20-30%, irrespective of the number of helpers. Although re-nesting intervals were not affected by group size, reduced breeder feeding rates resulted in improved survival and breeders in larger groups survived better. 4. Subordinates and nestlings are usually progeny of the breeding pair in this species, and benefits of cooperative breeding are very different from three congeners with extremely high levels of extra-group paternity (EGP). In these Malurus, fledgling production and survival of male breeders are not enhanced in larger groups. This is consistent with the expectation that kin-selected benefits vary with relatedness, and thus levels of EGP. 5. We tested whether benefits of cooperative breeding in 37 avian species varied with levels of extra-group mating. Both direct and phylogenetically controlled comparisons showed that improvement of (male) breeder survival and enhanced productivity are more likely when fidelity is higher, as predicted when investment of subordinates correlates with relatedness to offspring. This pattern highlights the importance of considering the genetic mating system for understanding the evolution of cooperative breeding.


The article analyses part-time work, both so-called voluntary and involuntary, in a gender perspective and discusses under what conditions women and men work part-time. The discussion is based on logistic regression models, including human capital, life-course- and household characteristics and job characteristics as independent variables. We use Norwegian Labour Force Survey data. The analysis shows that part-time work is a strongly gendered phenomenon, not only because it occurs much more frequently among women than among men, but also because the causes of part-time differ between the sexes. We find, as expected, that involuntary part-time is mainly tied to job characteristics, whereas voluntary part time is equally predicted by worker characteristics and job characteristics. The effect of gender is strong and significant, however less significant when controlling for job characteristics than when controlling for worker characteristics.


This study proposes to view Lee Guan Kin (the former director of the Center for Chinese Language, Culture, and Division of Chinese at Nanyang Technological University) in the historical context in which the identity of Southeast Asian Chinese has transformed from overseas Chinese to ethnic Chinese, from Straits Chinese to Chinese Singaporeans. Based on the interview with Lee and the study of Lee's numerous publications, this article exemplifies Lee's enduring efforts on researching diasporic Southeast Asian Chinese and their ties with Chinese language and culture is a meaningful choice rather than an essentialist returning to 'roots.' In this article, Lee's continuous engagement with China, Chinese language, and culture is illustrated by analyzing Lee's assertion of 'doing justice' for Lim Boon Keng and Tan Lark Sye. Accordingly, this study is divided into four parts. First, the concept of Chineseness is reviewed and explored in the context of Southeast Asia. Second, the historical background of English-educated and Chinese-educated Chinese groups and their varying degrees of Chineseness are introduced. Then this study analyzes how Lee does justice for Lim Boon Keng, a baba who served as chancellor of Xiamen University for 16 years, and Tan Lark Sye, who was the founder of former Nanyang University. Lee believes that both prominent figures were unfairly and relentlessly treated by Chinese and Singaporean historiography, respectively, and therefore, Lee wants to do justice to them as a way to relocate their position in the context of Chinese diaspora and to redefine Chinese accordingly. Finally, this study argues that locality defines Lee's Chineseness, her relation with China, China studies, Chinese identity, or Chinese culture. While locality defines Lee's Chineseness, a diasporic stance characterizes her articulation, which challenged the homogeneous threat of identity imposed by the nation-state and the kind of Chineseness traditionally shaped by the authority of a sino-centric core.


High altitude environments (treeline and alpine communities) are particularly sensitive to climate changes, disturbances and land-use changes due to their limited tolerance and adaptability range, habitat fragmentation and habitat restriction. The current and future climate warming is anticipated to shift the tree- and timberlines upwards thus affecting alpine plant communities and causing land-cover change and fragmentation of alpine habitats. An upslope movement of some trees, shrubs and cold adapted alpine herbs as a response to the current climate warming has already been noted in many montane and subalpine regions. Four Holocene peat and lacustrine sediment sequences located between 1670 and 1918 m a.s.l. (Fig.1), in the Rodna Mountains (Northern Romania, Eastern Carpathians) are used with the aim to determine: i) the sensitivity of high mountain habitats to climate, fire and land use changes; ii) tree- and timberline shifts: and iii) the influence of landscape topography on trees and shrubs.


A 50 year old man was referred to our rheumatology unit with an 18 month history of classic Raynaud's phenomenon with episodic digital pain and biphasic (white-blue) colour changes associated with cold exposure. He had noticed that his urine was dark during periods of cold weather. He had a macrocytic anaemia but normal serum levels of vitamin B-12 and folate. There were no additional clinical features to suggest an underlying connective tissue disease, and an autoimmune serology was negative.

Initial laboratory investigations showed a haemoglobin concentration of 107 g/l, mean corpuscular volume of 104.4 fl, bilirubin concentration of 47 µmol/l, and lactate dehydrogenase 695 U/l. Reticulocyte count was raised at 162.4 (normal range 10-100). IgG and IgA levels were normal. IgM concentration was raised at 3.62 g/l (normal range 0.5-2.0 g/l). Infrared thermography at baseline was normal, but delayed rewarming was apparent after local cold exposure, consistent with Raynaud's phenomenon (fig 1⇓). Nailfold capillaroscopy was normal.

Fig 1  Thermal images (A) at baseline and (B) 10 minutes after local cold challenge

### 1 What would be a more accurate medical description of this patient's symptoms?

#### Short answer

This patient's symptoms would be best described as acrocyanosis. Classic Raynaud's phenomenon involves triphasic colour changes that include a red-purple phase (representing post-ischaemic hyperaemia), although this stage is not essential for a diagnosis of Raynaud's phenomenon.1

#### Long answer

Raynaud's phenomenon describes abnormal vascular reactivity, most often after exposure to cold or emotional stress. Raynaud's phenomenon typically affects the fingers and toes, but can also affect other extremities such as the thumbs, nose, ears, and nipples. Episodes are usually accompanied by colour changes in the …


Background Childhood adversity (CA) has previously been linked to various health problems in adulthood. Investigations into the differential impact of distinct types of CA on a wide range of outcomes are scarce. This study aimed to assess the impact of self-reported childhood family conflict and/or financial strain on health and social functioning in adulthood among Europeans, while taking into account the mediating role of adulthood socioeconomic disadvantage (SED) in these associations. Methods Using the European Social Survey (ESS) collected in 2014, nationally representative cross-sectional data from 35 475 participants aged 15 years and older in 19 European countries were analysed. Logistic regressions were conducted to assess associations of retrospectively reported family conflict and/or financial strain in childhood with physical and mental health as well as health behaviours and social functioning in adulthood. Results A quarter of the European population reported having experienced family conflict, financial strain or both in childhood. Financial strain was reported more among older age groups and conflict more among younger age groups. A dose-response pattern with increased risk was demonstrated for almost all physical, behavioral, mental and social outcomes for these aspects of CA compared with no CA, with the highest risk observed in those who experienced both financial strain and family conflict. Adulthood SED mediated a significant proportion of the associations with financial strain (ranging from 5.4% to 72.4%), but did not mediate the associations with conflict. Conclusion Individuals reporting family conflict or financial strain during childhood are at increased risk of developing a wide range of health and social problems. Those who report financial strain in childhood are more likely to experience SED in adulthood, which in turn increases their risk of experiencing health and social problems. Reported family conflict during childhood conferred increased risk of health and social problems, but adulthood SED did not appear to operate as an indirect pathway.


The nature of work is changing rapidly, driven by the digital technologies that underpin industry 5.0. It has been argued worldwide that engineering education must adapt to these changes which have the potential to rewrite the core curriculum across engineering as a broader range of skills compete with traditional engineering knowledge. Although it is clear that skills such as data science, machine learning and AI will become fundamental skills of the future it is less clear how these should be integrated into existing engineering education curricula to ensure relevance of graduates. This chapter looks at the nature of future fusion skills and the range of strategies that might be adopted to integrated these into the existing engineering education curriculum.


This will be a 15 min PowerPoint presentation with 5mins for questions. Presentation defines Dyspraxia and challenges negative medical model label using Paulo Freire. Identifies what dyspraxia is, other labels used for dyspraxia, co-morbidity with dyslexia, ADD, Asperger's Syndrome and Tourette's Syndrome. Other names for Neurodiversity, the Great Pigeon Hole Debate, Definitions of ND, Individual ND conditions and their benefits. ND & Mental Health, ND & the Prison Service The Evils of Labelling. Famous people with ND. Individual experiences.

Janet Taylor is a disabled student and community activist who lives with dyspraxia & dyslexia in Manchester who founded the user led Self Help Group Greater Manchester Dyspraxia Adult Action. She now works part time in Bolton as a travel trainer for people with enduring mental health issues. Website www.daa.colsal.org.uk - Manchester Adult Neurodiversity Action. She now also raises awareness of dyspraxia and ND professionally to the Statutory and Voluntary sector including the Open University. Dyspraxia Inclusive Training website www.dyspraxia-training.co.uk She is at present studying on the MA in Inclusion & SEN at Manchester Metropolitan University.


Certain dietary patterns are associated with an increased risk of obesity and its comorbidities. However, these associations vary across populations. The prevalence of obesity has been rising amid a drastic nutrition transition in China during the country's rapid economic growth. This systematic review and meta-analysis were conducted to summarize how dietary patterns are associated with obesity in the Chinese population. We searched for articles from 1 January 2000 to 1 February 2022 in PubMed, Cumulative Index to Nursing and Allied Health Literature (CINAHL), and Scopus that assessed the relationship between dietary patterns and obesity outcomes. Odds ratios (ORs) and 95% confidence intervals (CIs) were estimated using a random effects model. From the 2556 articles identified from the search, 23 articles were included in the analysis. We found that the traditional Chinese dietary pattern was associated with a lower risk of overweight/obesity (OR = 0.69, 95% CI: 0.57, 0.84, p < 0.001), whereas the Western dietary pattern was associated with a higher OR of overweight/obesity, but not reaching statistical significance (OR = 1.34, 95% CI: 0.98, 1.84, p = 0.07). There were inconsistent results for other dietary patterns, such as meat/animal protein and plant/vegetarian patterns. In conclusion, the traditional Chinese diet characterized by vegetables, rice, and meat was associated with a lower risk of obesity. The heterogeneity in characterizing dietary patterns contributes to the inconsistency of how dietary patterns are associated with obesity in the Chinese population.


When the two hands act together to achieve a goal, the redundancy of the system makes it necessary to distribute the responsibility for error corrections across the two hands. In an experiment in which participants control a single cursor with the movements of both hands, we show that right-handed individuals correct for movement errors more with their nondominant left hand than with their right hand, even though the dominant right hand corrects the same errors more quickly and efficiently when each hand acts in isolation. By measuring the responses to rapid cursor and target displacements using force channels, we demonstrate that this shift is due to a modulation of the feedback gains of each hand rather than to a shift in the onset of the corrective response. We also show that the shift toward left-hand corrections is more pronounced for errors that lead to adaptation (cursor displacements) than for perturbations that do not (target displacements). This finding provides some support for the idea that the motor system assigns the correction to the most likely source of the error to induce learning and to optimize future performance. Finally, we find that the relative strength of the feedback corrections in the redundant task correlates positively with those found for the nonredundant tasks. Thus the process of responsibility assignment modulates the processes that normally determine the gains of feedback correction rather than completely overwriting them.


Abstract Background: The risk of sports-related sudden cardiac arrest after COVID-19 infection can be a serious problem. There is an urgent need for evidence-based criteria to ensure patient safety before resuming exercise. Objective: To estimate the pooled prevalence of acute myocardial injury caused by COVID-19 and to provide an easy-to-use cardiovascular risk assessment toolkit prior to resuming sports activities after COVID-19 infection. Methods: We searched the Medline and Cochrane databases for articles on the prevalence of acute myocardial injury associated with COVID-19 infection. The pooled prevalence of acute myocardial injury was calculated for hospitalized patients treated in different settings (non-intensive care unit [ICU], ICU, overall hospitalization, and non-survivors). Statistical significance was accepted for p values <0.05. We propose a practical flowchart to assess the cardiovascular risk of individuals who recovered from COVID-19 before resuming sports activities. Results: A total of 20 studies (6,573 patients) were included. The overall pooled prevalence of acute myocardial injury in hospitalized patients was 21.7% (95% CI 17.3-26.5%). The non-ICU setting had the lowest prevalence (9.5%, 95% CI 1.5-23.4%), followed by the ICU setting (44.9%, 95% CI 27.7-62.8%), and the cohort of non-survivors (57.7% with 95% CI 38.5-75.7%). We provide an approach to assess cardiovascular risk based on the prevalence of acute myocardial injury in each setting. Conclusions: Acute myocardial injury is frequent and associated with more severe disease and hospital admissions. Cardiac involvement could be a potential trigger for exercise-induced clinical complications after COVID-19 infection. We created a toolkit to assist with clinical decision-making prior to resuming sports activities after COVID-19 infection.


Efficient grinding of structural ceramics requires judicious selection of operating parameters to maximize removal rate while controlling surface integrity. Grinding of ceramics is difficult because of its low fracture toughness, making it very sensitive to cracking. In the present work, experiments were carried out to study the effect of wheel parameters such as grain size and grinding parameters like depth of cut and feed rate on the surface roughness and surface damage. The significance of the grinding parameters on the selected responses is evaluated using analysis of variance. Mathematical statistics like "Minitab" is used to analyzed the grinding conditions for maximum material removal, using a multi-objective function model, by imposing surface roughness, surface force and surface damage constraints. The choice of including manufacturer & apposes constraints on the basis of functional requirements of the component for maximizing the production rate is also embedded in the Mathematical statistics. For the verification of present work, the Mathematical statistics results are compared with experimental work.


Contact determination between nearly colliding objects is one of the crucial issues in virtual environment simulation particularly for collision detection system such as in medical simulation, computer games, and engineering visualization. The contact
determination technique consists of distance computation, point of contact and depth penetration phase. It requires information of object direction towards other object
that moves in opposite direction namely intersection. The main problem in this research is to study a nearly accurate distance approximation computation caused
by heavy calculation that deteriorating speed and efficiency of collision detection system. This thesis aims to introduce an agile and new technique for contact
determination in narrow phase collision detection that increases speed and improves the efficiency of narrow phase collision detection. The proposed narrow phase
collision detection technique in this study consists of distance computation method, point of contact between nearly collided object and depth penetration method
namely Dynamic Pivot Point (DyOP). The technique enables numbers of testing to be reduced as compared to the prominent techniques such as Un-Canny and GJK
technique. The proposed technique starts by first identifying the nearest triangle of corresponding objects that is going to be intersected with another triangle that are bound with an Axis Aligned Bounding-Box (AABB). Then, we need to find the parallel line distribution created by each axis of AABB for each triangle. Next, an internal intersection using internal AABB by using maximum and minimum parallel line distribution of each object. A pivot point called DyOP will be calculated as a reference point to the contact determination technique. The proposed technique is able to reduce nine vertices testing down to six vertices testing and nine vertex-edge
testing's down to only two vertex-edge testing's. Three sets of testing have been conducted to evaluate and verify the proposed technique with two other prominent
techniques. The first test was conducted by investigating time execution of ten different triangles with pre-defined size but vary in distance computation phase.
Based on the experiments, out of 90 concurrent testing's, the proposed technique managed to achieve 187.3% improvements with the fastest execution time about 55
milliseconds. The subsequent test was conducted with the point of contact phase. Based on the experiments conducted, the proposed technique successfully attained
79.05% improvement with an average of 7.6 milliseconds and almost similar to Uncanny technique for point of contact. The final test to determine depth penetration,
the technique managed to achieve 53.63% better improvement and an average of
10.75 milliseconds per test with similar accuracy. The results from the experiments
showed that the DyOP technique is efficient to perform contact determination in
narrow phase collision detection and increase the speed of distance computation,
point of contact and depth penetration by reducing the number of 'testing. These
indicated that, the DyOP technique is efficient, accurate and robust not only to the
tested environment but other unprepared environment and could be adapted to any
desired target area or domain.


According to the development of technology of automated highways, the platooning can be benefited for improvement in fuel consumption. Platooning has already been exercised in the nature and industry as an effective tool to reduce the drag coefficient. The goal of this article is to investigate the effect of longitudinal distance between two passenger cars on drag coefficient and hence the fuel consumption numerically and experimentally. It has already been shown by various investigators that a passenger car travelling in the wake of another car will experience a reduction in drag coefficient. The optimized distance and speed to attain the least drag coefficient and fuel consumption are reported. The car's speeds of 70, 90 and 110 kilometers per hour have been examined in this study. To evaluate the numerical results, some field tests are done. A device which was particularly designed and fabricated to measure the fuel consumption was installed on a sedan midsize car. The results show that the car platooning with an optimized longitudinal distance between two cars can reduce the drag coefficient by 7 percent. Review History: Received: 3 September 2016 Revised: 21 February 2017 Accepted: 5 March 2017 Available Online: 13 March 2017


Topical annotation of documents with keyphrases is a proven method for revealing the subject of scientific and research documents to both human readers and information retrieval systems. This article describes a machine learning-based keyphrase annotation method for scientific documents that utilizes Wikipedia as a thesaurus for candidate selection from documents' content. We have devised a set of 20 statistical, positional and semantical features for candidate phrases to capture and reflect various properties of those candidates that have the highest keyphraseness probability. We first introduce a simple unsupervised method for ranking and filtering the most probable keyphrases, and then evolve it into a novel supervised method using genetic algorithms. We have evaluated the performance of both methods on a third-party dataset of research papers. Reported experimental results show that the performance of our proposed methods, measured in terms of consistency with human annotators, is on a par with that achieved by humans and outperforms rival supervised and unsupervised methods.


First and second order slip flow models in rectangular microchannels heated at constant and uniform wall temperature are studied. The velocity and temperature profiles for hydrodynamically and thermally developed incompressible slip flow regime available in literature are used. The average nondimensional slip velocity and temperature jump are found by using first and second order slip flow models. The average Nusselt number is also derived by using both first and second order slip flow models. The effects of Knudsen number, aspect ratio and second order slip flow model on the heat transfer characteristics of microchannel are explored.Copyright © 2009 by ASME


Practical switching devices have finite turn-on and turn-off times. To avoid short circuit, a blanking time is added between turn-off and turn-on of the complementary working switches in a switching-leg. The blanking time, also referred to as deadtime, is one of the dominant sources of output current and voltage distortion in pulse-width modulated (PWM) power amplifiers. Extensive studies exist on elimination, minimization, and compensation of the effect. Most techniques achieve a reduction of the distortion but are not capable of completely removing it. The dual-buck (DB) converter does not suffer from blanking-time-related distortion. However, blanking time is not the only source of switching-leg-induced distortion. This paper focuses on the effects of semiconductor device parameters on the output quality of the DB converter. It is shown that, ideally, the forward voltages of the diodes and switches have no effect on the output quality. Measurements on a prototype, industrial power stack based, DB converter show a 100 times improvement of the open-loop spurious free dynamic range when compared to conventional PWM converters.


Sox6 belongs to the Sry (sex-determining region Y)–related high-mobility-group– box family of transcription factors, which control cell-fate specification of many cell types. Here, we explored the role of Sox6 in human erythropoiesis by its overexpression both in the erythroleukemic K562 cell line and in primary erythroid cultures from human cord blood CD34 (cid:1) cells. Sox6 induced significant erythroid differentiation in both models. K562 cells underwent hemoglobinization and, despite their leukemic origin, died within 9 days after transduction; primary erythroid cultures accelerated their kinetics of erythroid maturation and increased the number of cells that reached the final enucleation step. Searching for direct Sox6 targets, we found SOCS3 (suppres-sor of cytokine signaling-3), a known mediator of cytokine response. Sox6 was bound in vitro and in vivo to an evolutionarily conserved regulatory SOCS3 element, which induced transcriptional activation. SOCS3 overexpression in K562 cells and in primary erythroid cells recapitulated the growth inhibition induced by Sox6, which demonstrates that SOCS3 is a relevant Sox6 effector. ( Blood . 2011;117(13):3669-3679)


National food demand, especially rice increases in accordance with the rate of population growth. The availability of rice mostly is still relying on the intensification of irrigated and rainfed lowlands, through applying balance nutrients fertilization, including the management of sulfur (S). Sulfur as one of the essential nutrients, is required for protein and enzyme syntheses, amino acids formation and metabolic acticities in plants. However, the program of rice production increases is also impacting on the increase of atmospheric greenhouse gases. The objective of this paper was to discuss sulfur management on rice production system and its impact on greenhouse gas emissions in lowland rice areas in Indonesia. Sulfur fertilization of 20 kg S/ha along with the application of N, P, K fertilizers was considered adequate to provide better plant growth and to yield of 5 t grains/ha. Sulfur fertilization should be applied before active tillering phase by broadcasting on the surface of flooded lowland rice field to obtain higher efficiency of S fertilizer. Besides increasing crop yield, sulfuric fertilization on rice crop played a role in mitigating greenhouse gases emission. The sulfuric fertilizer application reduced atmospheric greenhouse gases (GHGs) release, especially CH4 and N2O from lowland rice. Balance sulfur fertilization could improve yield and grain quality of rice as well as mitigated greenhouse gas emissions from the lowland rice areas.


Background: HCQ has been found to provide the immunomodulation that helps to abate the possible cytokine storm response caused by the SARS COVID-19 virus and subsequent failures of major organs. It is also being used historically in treating Malaria and Rheumatoid arthritis and is known to be useful in cancer treatment. However, it shows a half-life of up to 70 days and has severe adverse effects including gastric disorders and retinopathy. Hypothesis: Therefore, we propose to explore some of its metabolites/ intermediates namely Desethyl hydroxychloroquine (DHCQ), Desethyl chloroquine (DCQ), and Bis-desethyl chloroquine (BDCQ) as alternate drug systems with minimized toxicity. Results and Discussion: The structural and spectral studies of these lead compounds to be unraveled using computational modeling and the evaluation of ADME parameters such as absorption, distribution, metabolism, and excretion would be performed using the SwissADME tool to assess the drug-likeness and medicinal chemistry friendliness. The future scope of the work involves the docking studies of these compounds to assess the therapeutic compliance for the treatment of viral infections and rheumatoid arthritis.


Fluid pressures were estimated from mud weights and wellhead shut-in pressures along a north-south linear trend through the Anadarko basin in southwest Oklahoma. Fluid pressures above hydrostatic start at a depth of about 2.5 km. On a normalized scale where hydrostatic pressure equals 0 and lithostatic pressure equals 1, estimates of fluid pressures were found to range from 0.4 to 0.8 over a depth range of 4-7 km. Using scale analyses and a simple numerical model, we evaluated two end-member hypotheses (compaction disequilibrium and hydrocarbon generation) as possible causes of overpressuring in the Anadarko basin. If compaction disequilibrium is the primary cause of present-day overpressures in the Anadarko basin, the Anadarko basin is required to have an average permeability of 10-23 m2 (10-8 md) or lower. If geopressures in the Anadarko basin result from hydrocarbon generation, average basin permeabilities can be as high as 10-21 m2 (10-6 md). Scaling these average permeabilities down to thicknesses of 100 m or less implies permeabilities lower than 10-25 m2 (10-10 md) are required in the most optimistic scenario. The lowest permeabilities ever measured on sedimentary rocks are in the neighborhood of 10-22-10-23 m2 (10-7-10-8 md). Thus it is not possible to reconcile the existence of overpressures in the Anadarko basin with classic hydrodynamic theories that maintain that aquicludes do not exist. Either some unknown process is generating excess fluid pressures, or the Anadarko basin contains pressure seals. Geopressure models that invoke compaction disequilibrium and are commonly applied to Cenozoic basins undergoing rapid sedimentation (e.g., the Gulf Coast basin of the southeastern United States) do not appear to apply to the Anadarko basin. The Anadarko basin belongs to a group of cratonic basins that are tectonically quiescent and characterized by the association of abnormal pressures with natural gas. (Begin page 146)


Aims. The vertical component of electric current densities and the height dependence of the vertical component of the magnetic field in sunspots were determined. Methods. Full-Stokes magnetograms of eight sunspots obtained from infrared spectro-polarimetric measurements were investigated. The magnetic field strength and the magnetic inclination and azimuth were obtained from an inversion code. Vertical current densities and the vertical derivative of the vertical component of the magnetic field strength resulted from Maxwell equations. Results. It is found that electric current densities and magnetic gradients depend on the finestructure of the sunspots. Typical values for current densities vary in the range ± 40 mA m -2 , but their errors are of the same order. Disturbances in the radial structure of the penumbra are related to enhanced current densities up to 149 mA m -2 , and a maximum value of 166 mA m -2 was found in a light bridge. There are indications that the radial structure of the penumbra is related to current densities, but no correlation to the local intensity fluctuations was found in the outer penumbra. The vertical component of the magnetic field decreases by 0.5–1.5 G km -1 in the umbra. Mean values in the inner penumbra are somewhat smaller than in the umbra, and locally dark structures exhibit a faster decrease with height than bright ones. In the outer penumbra the vertical magnetic component increases, independent of the local intensity distribution. Conclusions. Electric current densities could be a diagnostic tool for understanding the penumbral finestructure, although the presently available spatial resolution is probably not good enough to avoid artifacts. Magnetic extrapolations might depend crucially on this problem.


Using a primate analogue of the Wisconsin Card Sort Test, this study demonstrated, for the first time, that lesions of the prefrontal cortex in monkeys produce a qualitatively similar impairment in attentional set-shifting to that seen following prefrontal cortical damage in humans. Although damage to the prefrontal cortex did not disrupt the ability of marmosets, a New World monkey, to maintain an attentional set, it did disrupt their ability to shift an attentional set. It also impaired their performance on discrimination reversal, object retrieval, and spatial delayed response, consistent with the effects of prefrontal damage in Old World monkeys. Comparison of the cognitive processes underlying discrimination reversal, object retrieval, and attentional set-shifting reveals the various types of inhibitory control provided by the prefrontal cortex.


(Issued September 17, 2015) LaFLEUR, Commissioner, concurring: Today's order proposes to revise the Commission's regulations to provide the Commission and its staff with access, on a non-public and ongoing basis, to three databases maintained by the North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC): (1) The Transmission Availability Data System (TADS), (2) the Generating Availability Data System (GADS), and (3) the protection system misoperations database. As explained in the order, the Commission concludes that access to these databases would support its work under section 215(d)(5) of the Federal Power Act (FPA) to monitor reliability trends and issues that may warrant the development of new or modified reliability standards. On rare occasions, the Commission has exercised its authority to direct NERC to develop new standards to address reliability risks not covered in existing standards, such as geomagnetic disturbances and physical security. While I do not expect the Commission to frequently invoke that authority going forward, I agree that the information in these databases would assist the Commission with its responsibilities under section 215(d)(5), as well as its understanding of NERC's assessments under section 215(g). Access to these databases could therefore support the Commission's oversight of several steps of the reliability cycle, including event analysis, establishment of metrics, setting reliability priorities, and improving the standards development and review process. I recognize, however, that under section 215 of the FPA, NERC and the Commission have a unique relationship, since Congress vested a significant amount of authority over the standards process in the Electric Reliability Organization (i.e., NERC) and clearly prescribed the Commission's oversight role. It is important that we recognize the distinction between that oversight role and NERC's primary responsibility to monitor reliability issues and propose standards to address them. Ultimately, I believe our efforts to sustain and improve the reliability of the bulk electric system are furthered by mutual trust and shared priorities between the Commission and NERC. I understand that today's proposal might be controversial within the NERC community. I therefore welcome comment on the proposal, including any potential issues or concerns not identified in the NOPR, to provide a full record for the Commission to consider in deciding whether to proceed to a final rule. Accordingly, I respectfully concur.


Abstract Background Information on the impact of hygiene interventions on severe outcomes is limited. As a pre-specified secondary outcome of a cluster-randomized controlled trial among >400 000 low-income residents in Dhaka, Bangladesh, we examined the impact of cholera vaccination plus a behaviour change intervention on diarrhoea-associated hospitalization. Methods Ninety neighbourhood clusters were randomly allocated into three areas: cholera-vaccine-only; vaccine-plus-behaviour-change (promotion of hand-washing with soap plus drinking water chlorination); and control. Study follow-up continued for 2 years after intervention began. We calculated cluster-adjusted diarrhoea-associated hospitalization rates using data we collected from nearby hospitals, and 6-monthly census data of all trial households. Results A total of 429 995 people contributed 500 700 person-years of data (average follow-up 1.13 years). Vaccine coverage was 58% at the start of analysis but continued to drop due to population migration. In the vaccine-plus-behaviour-change area, water plus soap was present at 45% of hand-washing stations; 4% of households had detectable chlorine in stored drinking water. Hospitalization rates were similar across the study areas [events/1000 person-years, 95% confidence interval (CI), cholera-vaccine-only: 9.4 (95% CI: 8.3–10.6); vaccine-plus-behaviour-change: 9.6 (95% CI: 8.3–11.1); control: 9.7 (95% CI: 8.3–11.6)]. Cholera cases accounted for 7% of total number of diarrhoea-associated hospitalizations. Conclusions Neither cholera vaccination alone nor cholera vaccination combined with behaviour-change intervention efforts measurably reduced diarrhoea-associated hospitalization in this highly mobile population, during a time when cholera accounted for a small fraction of diarrhoea episodes. Affordable community-level interventions that prevent infection from multiple pathogens by reliably separating faeces from the environment, food and water, with minimal behavioural demands on impoverished communities, remain an important area for research.


The automation of extracting chemical names from text has significant value to biomedical and life science research. A major barrier in this task is the difficulty of getting a sizable and good quality data to train a reliable entity extraction model. Another difficulty is the selection of informative features of chemical names, since comprehensive domain knowledge on chemistry nomenclature is required. Leveraging random text generation techniques, we explore the idea of automatically creating training sets for the task of chemical name extraction. Assuming the availability of an incomplete list of chemical names, called a dictionary, we are able to generate well-controlled, random, yet realistic chemical-like training documents. We statistically analyze the construction of chemical names based on the incomplete dictionary, and propose a series of new features, without relying on any domain knowledge. Compared to state-of-the-art models learned from manually labeled data and domain knowledge, our solution shows better or comparable results in annotating real-world data with less human effort. Moreover, we report an interesting observation about the language for chemical names. That is, both the structural and semantic components of chemical names follow a Zipfian distribution, which resembles many natural languages.


Recent measurements on the semileptonic decays of $D_{(s)}$ meson and $\Lambda_c$ baryon at the BESIII experiment are reviewed. The measurements of absolute branching fractions of $D\to Ke^+\nu_e$, $D\to\pi e^+\nu_e$, $D_s^+\to\eta^{(\prime)}e^+\nu_e$ and $\Lambda_c^+\to\Lambda\ell^+\nu_\ell$ decays are presented. The experimental results of the $D\to K\ell\nu$ and $D\to\pi\ell\nu$ form factors as well as the Cabibbo-Kobayashi-Maskawa matrix elements $|V_{cs}|$ and $|V_{cd}|$ are also discussed.