Solitary fibrous tumor of the pleura (SFTP) is a rare primary pleural neoplasm arising from the submesothelial mesenchymal cell layer just beneath the mesothelial lining of the pleura. SFTPs consist of spindle cells embedded within variable amounts of connective tissue, typically staining positive for vimentin and antibodies to CD34. SFTPs are often attached to pleural surfaces through a pedicle. Histopathologic criteria for malignancy include high mitotic counts (>4 mitoses per 10 high-power fields), pleomorphism, hypercellularity, tumor giant cells, necrosis, and hemorrhage. Chest radiography in patients with SFTP shows a peripheral mass displaying characteristics suggesting an extraparenchymal location: obtuse angles with the chest wall associated with a circumscribed border on one side of the lesion with an indistinct, "fading" margin on the opposite side of the lesion. Cross-sectional imaging findings of SFTP include a variably sized mass contacting the chest wall or the diaphragm, showing enhancement after intravenous contrast administration. Calcification and effusion are uncommon. Magnetic resonance imaging may show decreased T1 and T2 signal, suggesting the fibrous nature of SFTPs, and also typically shows intense, heterogeneous, intravenous contrast enhancement. The treatment of choice for SFTP is wide surgical resection.


Abstract T cell αβ receptors have binding sites for peptide-MHC complexes formed by six hypervariable regions. Analysis of the six atomic structures known for Vα and for Vβ domains shows that their first and second hypervariable regions have one of three or four different main-chain conformations (canonical structures). Six of these canonical structures have the same conformation in complexes with peptide-MHC complexes, the free receptor and/or in an isolated V domain. Thus, for at least the first and second hypervariable regions in the currently known structures, the conformation of the canonical structures is well defined in the free state and is conserved on formation of complexes with peptide-MHC. We identified the key residues that are mainly responsible for the conformation of each canonical structure. The first and second hypervariable regions of Vα and Vβ domains are encoded by the germline V segments. Humans have 37 functional Vα segments and 47 Vβ segments, and mice have 20 Vβ segments. Inspection of the size of their hypervariable regions, and of sites that contain key residues, indicates that close to 70 % of Vα segments and 90 % of Vβ segments have hypervariable regions with a conformation of one of the known canonical structures. The α and β V gene segments in both humans and mice have only a few combinations of different canonical structure in their first and second hypervariable regions. In human Vβ domains, the number of different sequences with these canonical structure combinations is larger than in mice, whilst for Vα domains it is probably smaller.


1. In twenty-three uraemic patients on regular dialysis, plasma renin activity and blood volume were measured before and after a single dialysis. Three groups were identified; the first had a low or normal plasma renin activity and a high or normal blood volume, the second had a high plasma renin activity and a low blood volume and the third had both variables above normal. 2. In spite of these differences, diastolic blood pressure before and after dialysis was the same in the three groups and multiple regression analyses failed to demonstrate any dependence of blood pressure on plasma renin activity, blood volume or body weight taken separately or together. 3. We conclude that other factors besides plasma renin activity and blood volume are important in maintaining arterial hypertension in terminal renal failure.


Plant Genomics
Scientists use GC content (that is, the percentage of guanine or cytosine residues in a genome) as a proxy to measure many elements relating to gene evolution. Within the major group of flowering plants called monocots, which includes many agriculturally important species, the GC content of the genomes of grasses decreases from the 5' to 3' end of the gene. In order to better understand how the distribution of GC content evolved in monocots, Clement et al. examined orthologous genes across 10 monocot species. They found that the specific pattern of GC distribution seen in grasses is in fact not grassspecific—it is ancestral to the monocots.

Genome Biol. Evol. 10.1093/gbe/evu278 (2014).


A comprehensive study on wormholing has been conducted to improve the understanding of matrix acidizing in carbonate reservoirs. This work is a continuation of the previous work by Furui et al. (2012a, 2012b). An analysis of additional experimental results, as well as field measurements, is provided to reinforce and extend the wormhole-penetration model and productivity benefits provided by Furui et al. (2012b).A series of small-block tests and one large-block test under geomechanical stresses have been conducted to characterize wormholing in outcrop-chalk samples. In addition, field data including acid-pumping data and post-stimulation pressure-falloff data have been collected and analyzed to evaluate stimulation effectiveness. Pressure-buildup data from stimulated wells have also been analyzed to evaluate the sustainability of the acid-induced skin benefits. Production-logging data have been used to investigate whether created wormhole networks have remained stable or have collapsed under production stresses. To statistically analyze the data more comprehensively, the new data were also compared to field data available in the literature.The following conclusions are drawn from an analysis of the laboratory data and field data: (1) A skin value of −4 is achievable in carbonate reservoirs by matrix acidizing; (2) the negative acid skin is relatively stable under production stresses; (3) the wormhole-penetration model is proved to successfully simulate matrix-acidizing processes in both laboratory-scale and field-scale work; (4) the small- and large-block laboratory tests reconfirmed wormholing efficiency, which was discussed as a scale effect in the previous studies; and (5) an understanding of the possible range of wormhole penetration has allowed us to improve field acid treatments and reduce the risk of connecting to water.This comprehensive study includes acid-linear-coreflooding tests, small-block tests, large-block tests, and field measurements to thoroughly analyze acid wormholing in carbonate rock. The database can be very useful information for understanding, benchmarking, and optimizing future completion/stimulation design.


A new application of the least mean squares algorithm (LMS) to signal analysis and enhancement is presented. The LMS is implemented in the frequency domain to simulate a fixed-notch filter that nulls sinusoids with harmonically related frequencies. In the proposed structure, the Fourier transform (FT) block length is set to represent the fundamental period of the undesired periodic signal. The paper shows that by applying constant deterministic signals to the reference input, the frequency-domain LMS adaptive structure operates on eliminating all constant values in the transform and, therefore, cancels all harmonic frequency components, leaving out other components in the signal to propagate to the error with minimum distortion. >


In Konvolut M of the Arcades Project, Walter Benjamin comments instructively on the duality of the city as experienced by the flâneur. He writes: 'the city splits for him into dialectical poles. It opens up to him as a landscape, even as it closes around him as a room' (Benjamin, trans. Eiland and McLaughlin, 1999, 417). The implications of this are several. The dialectical poles are on the one hand spatial - indicators of the flexibility of self-location in the city. However, they are also metaphysical and meta-poetic. The city offers the possibility for a blending of personal and collective memories; for an opening of the mind to a 'landscape' of social interaction or a retreat of the soul into its own isolated 'room'; for the injection of a creative impulse or the projection of psychological and experiential stagnation. This study examines the impact of these dialectical poles on ideas of selfhood, loss and memory in Cees Nooteboom's All Souls' Day and Orhan Pamuk's Snow.


On-Line Analytical Processing (OLAP) tools are frequently used in business, science and health to extract useful knowledge from massive databases. An important and hard optimization problem in OLAP data warehouses is the view selection problem, consisting of selecting a set of aggregate views of the data for speeding up future query processing. In this paper we present a new approach, named HGEDA, which is a new hybrid algorithm based on genetic and estimation of distribution algorithms. The original objective is to get benefits from both approaches. Experimental results show that the HGEDA are competitive with the genetic algorithm on a variety of problem instances, often finding approximate optimal solutions in a reasonable amount of time.


Transcriptional enhancers regulate gene expression in a developmental-stage and cell-specific manner. They were originally defined as individual regulatory elements that activate expression regardless of distance and orientation to their cognate genes. Genome-wide studies have shown that the mammalian enhancer landscape is much more complex, with different classes of individual enhancers and clusters of enhancer-like elements combining in additive, synergistic and redundant manners, possibly acting as single, integrated regulatory elements. These so-called super-enhancers are largely defined as clusters of enhancer-like elements which recruit particularly high levels of Mediator and often drive high levels of expression of key lineage-specific genes. Here, we analysed 78 erythroid-specific super-enhancers and showed that, as units, they preferentially interact in a directional manner, to drive expression of their cognate genes. Using the well characterised α-globin super-enhancer, we show that inverting this entire structure severely downregulates α-globin expression and activates flanking genes 5' of the super-enhancer. Our detailed genetic dissection of the α-globin locus clearly attributes the cluster's functional directionality to its sequence orientation, demonstrating that, unlike regular enhancers, super-enhancers act in an orientation-dependent manner. Together, these findings identify a novel emergent property of super-enhancers and revise current models by which enhancers are thought to contact and activate their cognate genes.


Abstract Since the 1977 discovery of hydrothermal vents and their extraordinary fauna, vents have been discovered along mid-ocean ridges in the eastern Pacific, on the Mid-Atlantic Ridge and on the spreading centres behind western Pacific subduction zones. The dependence of these habitats on plate activity suggests that plate history may play a strong role in their evolution. As few of the species known from vents are found in other marine habitats, an examination of biogeographic patterns with respect to plate history is feasible. An examination of taxon overlap with other sulphide-rich habitats (seeps and whale carcasses) suggests that a minority of faunal elements have common ancestors. Proximity of vent sites to each other does reflect regional similarities but it is the distance along ridge pathways and vicariant events that appear most important. An understanding of the tectonic history of our oceans provides a framework for predicting the composition of vent communities in unexplored areas.


The frictional conditions between an aluminium AA6060 alloy and tool steel in hot bulk forming have been investigated. The compressive-rotational method for frictional measurements, presented herein, represents an innovative approach for defining the thermo-mechanical conditions required for sticking friction at the interface between the two metals. Aluminium disks with inserted contrast material were subjected to a variety of pressures and rotated at one end at temperatures ranging from 250 °C to 500 °C. Visual inspection of the surfaces in combination with sectioning of the deformed disks formed a method for studying how different factors affect a stick-slip criterion in metal forming. It was found that the normal contact pressure required for sticking to occur was strongly dependent on the instantaneous temperature. When comparing the normal contact pressure q with the characteristic shear strength k of the aluminium alloy, q/k > 0.6 yielded sticking friction for temperatures above 300 °C, while a ratio of 0.7 was required for the lower temperatures.


The development of steel chemistries which result in highly weldable niobium -molybdenum micro-alloyed thin walled, high strength X80 grade is resulting in increasing consideration for use by Australian industry, particularly in offshore and pipeline applications. Despite the significant material cost saving through reduced thickness and increased strength, a limiting factor controlling widespread use of X80 is the susceptibility to weld metal cracking. The excellent weldability of this grade of line pipe steel has enhanced the potential for the use of high strength cellulosic consumables like E 9010 and E 8010 in root pass welding, but the risk of hydrogen assisted cold cracking ( HACC ) is also increased.because of the high strength weld metal. To quantify the cracking susceptibility and to alloy guidance for field welding condition, the Welding Institute of Canada ( WIC ) restraint test was used in the present investigation. This thesis outlines the use of two grades (E 9010 and E 6010 ) and five different brands of commercial cellulosic consumable to assess conditions leading to hydrogen assisted cold cracking and solidification cracking in the diluted weld metal. The investigation also involved clarification of the relationship between microstructure, preheat temperature and hardness values for the various weld consumables and their effect on cracking susceptibility.

Tests were carried out using a standard restraint length of 25mm on 8.6mm strip preheated to various temperatures to determine the critical crack free temperature. For E9010 electrodes, a preheat of 40°C or more was found to be effective and For E6010 electrodes, a preheat of 30°C or more was effective in avoiding cold cracks in the weld metal. Most of the cracks found on welds preheated at room temperature were initiated by a defective weld feature such as undercut or lack of penetration. An attempt was made to correlate the hardness values and carbon equivalents ( IIW ) of weld metal to cracking. However, it was found that there was no significant effect of these variables on cracking over the range of welding conditions investigated.

The cracking morphology studies indicated that there are many ways in which the crack can propagate in the weld and HAZ. The modes of cracking observed were microvoid coalescence, quasi cleavage and intergranular. In some cases solidification cracking was detected.

The testing program indicated that despite the high hydrogen content of the weld metal for E 9010 electrodes, crack-free root pass welds can be obtained for 8.6mm X80 steel strip provided a preheat of 40°C or higher is used to ensure a low cooling rate.


Online Education encompasses teaching and learning delivered via a computer and the Internet. With components of discussion groups, quizzes, social rooms, online submission of assignments, pair work, group work under the guidance of a professional tutor, it provides one of the best means of education. Nigeria, a major developing country in the African Sub Saharan region has a major problem of access to higher education. Yearly several thousands of candidates pass the University Matriculation Examination out which only a small percentage are able to get a place in the University. The brick and 'Mortar Universities' or 'conventional University' education has been used to educate thousands of individuals. However the opportunities and advantages offered by online education are so compelling that no Nation can afford to ignore it. Some of these include students ability to 'attend' a course at anytime and from anywhere, accessibility to learning materials 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, increase in students interaction, use of the Internet technology which is critical to the 21 st century. Online education therefore will not only provide more access to higher education in Nigeria, it will allow thousands who wants to learn but are not able to attend conventional schools the opportunity to do so. Online education is usually a complete package that makes it easy for students to carry out registration, access the Library, pay fees and obtain help and counseling. The design and implementation is usually very user friendly and easily used by anyone.


Integrating her extensive knowledge of sixteenth and seventeenth century literature, Judy Sproxton examines the expression of a recurring theme in history, that of the tension between religious faith and political and militant action. Violence and Religion offers a detailed and fascinating study of the writings of some of the major figures of the time including Calvin, D'Aubigne Cromwell, Winstanley and the poet Andrew Marvell. Looking at texts written during two periods of major political upheaval and civil unrest in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, she explores the division between their understanding of the self-interest of humanity and the will of God.


Drawing from queer and communication privacy management frameworks, this study examines the narratives of 22 bisexual, male-partnered women who were interviewed during the perinatal period and one year postnatally about their disclosures of sexual identity to family of origin. Most women rarely discussed their sexual identity with family; participants who had disclosed described such disclosures as provoking discomfort. Some women stated that their parental status seemed to invalidate the need to talk about their sexual history or identity with family, due its declining salience and increased concerns about judgment. This study reveals how partnership and parenthood statuses contribute to the intensification of heteronormative pressures in relation to family. Therapists should attend to the role of heteronormative values regarding partnering, family-building, and parenting.


Qianaphaenops emersoni n. sp. is described from Gan Dong, a limestone cave in Yanhe Xian, northeastern Guizhou Province, China. Likely to be a narrow range endemic species, Q. emersoni is only known from two almost adjacent type locality sites in Gan Dong cave. Q. emersoni is the fifth species to be described in this genus of eyeless troglobitic trechine beetles, known only from caves in northeastern Guizhou; a distributional map of the genus Qianaphaenops Ueno is provided. Q. emersoni belongs to the Qianaphaenops tenuis species group which contains two described species: Q. tenuis and Q. rotundicollis (Ueno, 2000). Q. emersoni is very similar to Q. rotundicollis Ueno, but easily distinguished from the latter by its broader head and elytra, narrower pronotum and its more elongate and slender aedeagus. Some explanation of the exploration of Gan Dong is provided, along with habitat details of the trechine beetle Type Locality sites located approximately 950 metres into the cave. The subsequent discovery of an efflux cave, presumed to be the Gan Dong Resurgence, is also discussed.


The Colorado River Basin (CRB) includes seven states and provides municipal and industrial water to millions of people across all major southwestern cities both inside and outside the basin. Agriculture is the largest part of the CRB economy and crop production depends on irrigation, which accounts for about 74% of the total water demand cross the region. A better understanding of irrigation water demands is critically needed as temperatures continue to rise and drought intensifies, potentially leading to water shortages across the region. Yet, past research on irrigation dynamics has generally utilized relatively low spatiotemporal resolution datasets and has often overlooked the relationship between climate and management decisions such as land fallowing, i.e., the practice of leaving cultivated land idle for a growing season. Here, we produced annual estimates of fallow and active cropland extent at high spatial resolution (30 m) from 2001 to 2017 by applying the fallow-land algorithm based on neighborhood and temporal anomalies (FANTA). We specifically focused on diverse CRB agricultural regions: the lower Colorado River planning (LCRP) area and the Pinal and Phoenix active management areas (PPAMA). Utilizing ground observations collected in 2014 and 2017, we found an overall classification accuracy of 88.9% and 87.2% for LCRP and PPAMA, respectively. We then quantified how factors such as climate, district water rights, and market value influenced: (1) annual fallow and active cropland extent and (2) annual cropland productivity, approximated by integrated growing season NDVI (iNDVI). We found that for the LCRP, a region of winter cropping and senior (i.e., preferential) water rights, active cropland productivity was positively correlated with cool-season average vapor pressure deficit (R = 0.72; p < 0.01). By contrast, for the PPAMA, a region of summer cropping and junior water rights, annual fallow and active cropland extent was positively correlated with cool-season aridity (precipitation/potential evapotranspiration) (R = 0.46; p < 0.05), and active cropland productivity was positively correlated with warm-season aridity (precipitation/potential evapotranspiration) (R = 0.42; p < 0.01). We also found that PPAMA cropland productivity was more sensitive to aridity when crop prices were low, potentially due to the influence of market value on management decisions. Our analysis highlights how biophysical (e.g., temperature and precipitation) and socioeconomic (e.g., water rights and crop market value) factors interact to explain seasonal patterns of cropland extent, water use and productivity. These findings indicate that increasing aridity across the region may result in reduced cropland productivity and increased land fallowing for some regions, particularly those with junior water rights.


Self-assembly of capsid proteins and genome encapsidation are two critical steps in the life cycle of most plant and animal viruses. A theoretical description of such processes from a physiochemical perspective may help better understand viral replication and morphogenesis thus provide fresh insights into the experimental studies of antiviral strategies. In this work, we propose a molecular thermodynamic model for predicting the stability of Hepatitis B virus (HBV) capsids either with or without loading nucleic materials. With the key components represented by coarse-grained thermodynamic models, the theoretical predictions are in excellent agreement with experimental data for the formation free energies of empty T4 capsids over a broad range of temperature and ion concentrations. The theoretical model predicts T3/T4 dimorphism also in good agreement with the capsid formation at in vivo and in vitro conditions. In addition, we have studied the stability of the viral particles in response to physiological cellular conditions with the explicit consideration of the hydrophobic association of capsid subunits, electrostatic interactions, molecular excluded volume effects, entropy of mixing, and conformational changes of the biomolecular species. The course-grained model captures the essential features of the HBV nucleocapsid stability revealed by recent experiments.


ABSTRACT Innate immunity provides an ever-present or rapidly inducible initial defense against microbial infection. Among the effector molecules of this defense in many species are broad-spectrum antimicrobial peptides. Tracheal antimicrobial peptide (TAP) was the first discovered member of the β-defensin family of mammalian antimicrobial peptides. TAP is expressed in the ciliated epithelium of the bovine trachea, and its mRNA levels are dramatically increased upon stimulation with bacteria or bacterial lipopolysaccharide (LPS). We report here that this induction by LPS is regulated at the level of transcription. Furthermore, the transfection of reporter gene constructs into tracheal epithelial cells indicates that DNA sequences in the 5′ flanking region of the TAP gene, within 324 nucleotides of the transcription start site, are responsible in part for mediating gene induction. This region includes consensus binding sites for NF-κB and nuclear factor interleukin-6 (NF IL-6) transcription factors. Gel mobility shift assays indicate that LPS induces NF-κB binding activity in the nuclei of these cells, while NF IL-6 binding activity is constitutively present. The gene encoding human β-defensin 2, a human homologue of TAP with similar inducible expression patterns in the airway, was cloned and found to have conserved NF-κB and NF IL-6 consensus binding sites in its 5′ flanking region. Previous studies of antimicrobial peptides from insects indicated that their induction by infectious microbes and microbial products also occurs via activation of NF-κB-like and NF IL-6-like transcription factors. Together, these observations indicate that a strategy for the induction of peptide-based antimicrobial innate immunity is conserved among evolutionarily diverse organisms.


Injections of phenylalanine increased a 2.5-fold in 9 h the hepatic phenylalanine hydroxylase activity of 6-day-old or adult rats that had been pretreated (24h earlier) with p-chlorophenylalanine; without such pretreatment, phenylalanine did not raise the enzyme concentration. This difference is paralleled by the much greater extent to which the injected phenylalanine accumulated in livers of the pretreated compared with the normal animals. The hormonal induction of hepatic phenylalanine hydroxylase activity obeyed different rules: an injection of cortisol was without effect on adult livers but caused a threefold rise in phenylalanine hydroxylase activity of immature ones, both without and after pretreatment with p-chlorophenylalanine. In the latter instance, the effects of cortisol, and of phenylalanine were additive. Actinomycin inhibited the cortisol- but not the substrate-induced increase of phenylalanine hydroxylase, whereas puromycin inhibited both. The results indicate that substrate and hormone, two potential positive regulators of the amount of the hepatic (but not the renal) phenylalanine hydroxylase, act independently by two different mechanisms. The negative effector, p-chlorophenylalanine, also appears to interact with the synthetic (or degradative) machinery rather than with the existing phenylalanine hydroxylase molecules: 24h were required in vivo for an 85% decrease to ensue, and no inhibition occurred in vitro when incubating the enzyme with p-chlorophenylalanine or with liver extracts from p-chlorophenylalanine-treated rats.


OBJECTIVE: A non-degenerative etiology is supported by a normal SPI [normal SPECT with 123I-Ioflupane (SPI)] in a patient with movement disorders (MD). METHOD: A total of 196 SPIs were conducted during the period of 2004/05. Of these, 44 were selected in order to rule out degenerative MD (DMD), the results being normal in these patients. The clinical background of these patients were reviewed in a minimum period of 24 months (range 24-40), collecting the diagnoses reached by the neurology specialists. The SPI were evaluated using a consensus, according to subjective criteria and quantification. RESULTS: Thirty-six of the 44 patients (81%) were identified at 2 years of having nondegenerative movement disorders: 18 as essential tremor, 5 as drug-induced disorder, 4 as vascular disease, 3 as peripheral polyneuropathy, 2 postural tremors, 1 writer's cramp, 1 psychogenic tremor, 1 intercranial hypertension and 1 fibromyalgia. The remaining 8 patients were diagnosed with Parkinson's disease in 5 cases, 1 corticobasal degeneration, 1 multisystemic atrophy and another degenerative Parkinsonism with unclear etiology. CONCLUSION: The SPI in our hospital has a lower negative predictive value than the data reported in the literature. The false negatives could be explained because most of our patients come from neurologist physicians who are not movement disorder experts. In addition, a small proportion of degenerative Parkinsonism could evolve with normal SPI.


Nerve growth factor (NGF) has a modulating effect on immune function, which may occur as a consequence of binding to the NGF receptor (NGF-R). To determine if mRNA for the gene coding for p75NGFR (low affinity NGF-R) is present in lymphocytes, Northern blot analysis of mRNA from human peripheral blood lymphocytes (PBL) and purified T lymphocytes was initiated using cDNA probe for human ~ 7 5 ~ ~ ~ ~ . p75NGFR mRNA was present in PBL and T lymphocytes, and the mRNA in response to phytohemagglutinin stimulation showed maximum levels at 14 hr of stimulation. p75NGFR mRNA content when analyzed in PBL and T cells from volunteers of various ages showed that p75NGFR mRNA expression does not change with the age of the cell donor.


Lithium tantalate in single-crystalline and coarse-grained configurations is a poor ionic conductor and does not qualify as a solid electrolyte for lithium-based batteries. In this work, ionic conductivity was sought to be enhanced by the use of nanocrystals of LiTaO3 embedded in a borate-based glass matrix. Glasses of composition 3Li(2)O-4B(2)O(3)-Ta2O5 were formed by melt-quenching. The crystallization process was described by using isothermal crystallization kinetics, invoking the Johnson-Mehl-Avrami-Kolmogorov equation, which indicated a three-dimensional growth with an Avrami exponent of 3.5 and an effective activation energy for crystallization of 735 +/- 65 kJ mol -1. Heat treatment of the as-quenched glasses was performed between 530 and 560 degrees C, and the evolution of LiTaO3 phase was studied by X-ray powder diffraction, scanning electron microscopy, and transmission electron microscopy. The heat treatment yielded coalesced LiTaO3 nanocrystals of 18-32 nm size, forming dendritic structures in the glass matrix. Impedance analyses of the asquenched and heat-treated glasses showed a dramatic improvement in dc conductivity (sigma(dc)), with a maximum around 3 x 10(-3) S m(-1) at 200 degrees C (sigma T-dc = 1.5 S m(-1) K) and activation energy of 0.54 eV for 530 degrees C/3 h heat-treated glasses. The values of rdc of the as-quenched glasses and of the 530 degrees C/ 3 h and 540 degrees C/3 h heat-treated glasses were about seven orders of magnitude higher than those of the single crystalline LiTaO3. Furthermore, the effect of heat treatment on lithium ion dynamics in the 40-200 degrees C temperature range was investigated by modulus formalism invoking the stretched exponential Kohlrausch-Williams-Watts function. The Li-7 magic angle spinning NMR was used to investigate lithium self-diffusion in the nanostructured glass nanocrystal composites as a function of temperature between -10 degrees C and 60 degrees C. Published by AIP Publishing.


5G K-SimSys is a system-level simulator which has been designed and implemented to provide an open platform and a tractable testbed for evaluating the system-level performance of 5G standard. In this paper, we present its design overview with the overall modular structure, including the functionality of the flexible modules. Meanwhile, massive multi-input multi-output (MIMO) is a key technology for improving the spectral efficiency of 5G systems. While massive MIMO has been standardized in 3GPP Rel-13 (LTE-Advanced Pro), the next generation of massive MIMO standard is now available in Rel-16, a.k.a New Radio (NR) interface, with further improvement by introducing more antenna elements over the higher frequency band. In particular, the beam-based air interface for above 6 GHz band involves various antenna configurations and feedback schemes, requiring a more complex testbed for system-level performance evaluation. This paper examines the multi-antenna technologies in 3GPP NR specification to develop its system-level model in 5G K-SimSys in order to test the factors affecting performance in the corresponding environments through various embodiments. In the simulation results, the baseline performance for massive MIMO in NR is evaluated by changing the number of antenna ports and the number of spatial multiplexing layers in different experimental environments. Particularly, the effect of vertical beamforming on interference is evaluated for Full Dimension MIMO (FD-MIMO). In order to demonstrate that 5G K-SimSys is an easy-to-design simulator that facilitates modification and reconfiguration, owing to its modularized and customized structure, we consider the proposed bandwise analog beamforming (BAB) scheme. The modular and flexible structure immediately allows implementation of virtual modules for bandwise analog beamforming by reusing the elementary modules as hierarchically designed simulator objects.


Objectives To assess whether parkinsonism in manganese (Mn)-exposed welders is associated with methylation of NOS2, a methylation-regulated gene that codes for inducible nitric oxide synthase (iNOS). We hypothesised that parkinsonian welders would have lower NOS2 methylation than other welders, consistent with greater iNOS activity and an inflammatory pathogenesis. Method In a cohort of U. S. shipyard welders we conducted a nested case-control study of parkinsonism and DNA methylation of a NOS2 region previously suggested to be altered with welding exposure. A movement disorders specialist examined each subject using the Unified Parkinson Disease Rating Scale motor subsection 3 (UPDRS3). We included 50 parkinsonian welders as cases (UPDRS3≥15), 105 welders with normal exams (UPDRS3 <6), and 50 welders with an intermediate UPDRS3 score (≥6 to <15), all non-Hispanic Caucasian men 25–65 years of age. We used DNA from whole blood and a pyrosequencing assay for 3 CpG (methylation) sites in NOS2 exon 1. We used unconditional polytomous logistic regression to assess the age-adjusted association between parkinsonism and mean NOS2 methylation. Results CpG sites were highly methylated (90.8–98.5% mean methylation) among all subjects. Welders with parkinsonism had significantly lower NOS2 methylation than normal welders (odds ratio [OR]=0.69, 95% confidence interval [CI] 0.49–0.97 per 1% absolute increase in methylation). The welders with intermediate UPDRS3 scores also had lower methylation compared to normal welders (OR=0.88, 95% CI 0.65–1.20) (p trend = 0.03). Adjustment for smoking did not alter the results. Conclusions This study suggests that inflammation mediated by NOS2 gene expression may underlie the pathophysiology of parkinsonism in Mn-exposed welders.


Earnings management via discretionary accruals is a manager's instrument for changing stock holders' expectations. The purpose of this study is to investigate the role of discretionary accruals in the earnings management of Iranian firms. There are two hypotheses associated with this study on the relationship between income smoothness and discretionary accruals and the proposed study is implemented on selected firms from Tehran Stock Exchange. The result of the first hypothesis indicates the relationship between earnings smoothness and discretionary accruals variables. It means that discretionary accruals (DA) leads to the converse relationship among discretionary accruals variation and current and future cash flow. The result of the second hypothesis indicates that the firms with high variation in Iran utilize more discretionary accruals compared with the firms with lower variation.


Kawangware Location o f Dagoretti Division is one o f the low-income residential areas where about 60 percent o f the people o f Nairobi live. Before 1963, the Division of Dagoretti was under Kiambu District jurisdiction. As the colonial authorities prohibited African Local people to reside in the city unless they were employed. Indigenous people took the advantage that Dagoretti was a rural setting but near Nairobi and they massively came in. The City Council planning powers only covered the area within the city boundaries thus leaving out the rural periphery outside the official boundaries. Therefore, People settled in Dagoretti without any planning intervention at all supporting their livelihood. In Kenya, the provision and management of infrastructure like Water Supply and Sanitation services are under the responsibility o f the Government agencies. In Nairobi, Nairobi City Council (NCC) is in charge o f managing those services. From 1963, the city boundary was extended to cover the entire division o f Dagoretti. Thus formal Planning intervention by the city council was extended to cover Dagoretti Division. In 1984, NCC assisted by European Economic Community1 (EEC), undertook the upgrading of slums project. Kawangware was one o f the selected slums to implement the water supply and sewerage reticulation projects scheme. Because o f the flat terrain of the area, the sewer system laid out was a combined sewer to drain both runoff and wastewater. The Water project covered almost % of the location while sewerage reticulation covered only % of the location. Despite that effort, the sewerage project was beneficial only to a small part o f the area; and the facilities that have been set up are in a deplorable state because they lack proper maintenance. This study set out to examine the system o f water and Sanitation disposal in this Suburb o f Nairobi, and come up with ways o f improving those services. The analysis 1 1 Now known as EU, European Union of the sources o f water o f Nairobi's people found that water supply is adequate and enough to satisfy water demand for the entire city up to 2007 projection. In Kawangware, the study revealed that among other water sources (i.e. rainwater, well, etc), Water provided by Nairobi City Council is the major source o f water for the residents. However, most people were complaining that they only got water once or twice in a week. That lack o f adequate water supply has had significant impact on sanitary conditions in the area. Owing to the inadequate supply o f water, the sanitation conditions o f the area were very poor indeed. Sewerage got blocked and sewage was diverted into open surface drains that were obstructed due to poor urban management and the habits o f local people. Residents mostly used pit latrines to dispose off their night soils. When they filled, exhausters or labourers emptied pits and exposed the excreta to the eye of contaminant agents. After a critical analysis o f the worsening water supply and sanitation situation, the study has recommended that the Government and public sectors should pay special attention to the protection o f the Nairobi water catchment area o f Aberdare Forest and enforce the development control powers o f the City Council o f Nairobi. The study has recommended further the need for a clear and strong partnership o f the public, private and community effort in water supply and sanitation provision within the study area. The research has also recommended the construction o f more storage water tanks in the location, the improved layout o f sewerage system (in the entire location) to which both private and public toilets should be connected. The construction o f tanks, toilets and layout of sewerage reticulation would be beneficial to residents by increasing the capacity o f water supply and the access to modem sanitary facilities, and indeed, create the healthy living environment urgently needed in the area. Furthermore, the project envisages that the implementation o f the above mentioned policy strategies would eventually create increased job opportunities for the residents o f the study area.


It has become common wisdom that Russia has nothing we can call a party system. No fewer than 141 "electoral associations" registered with the Ministry of Justice by December 1998, and only the Communist Party is usually seen as much more than a small, leader-centric clique of individuals with no strong roots outside of Moscow or perhaps St. Petersburg. There are strong signs, however, that a real party system is now coalescing in Russia in the run-up to the 1999 parliamentary elections. While Russia is still many years away from Western levels of party development, there is good reason to expect parties to play a much more important role in these elections than in the past, and we may even be witnessing the emergence of a relatively stable four-party system in Russia.


OBJECTIVE-To evaluate use of gadolinium diethylenetriamine pentaacetic acid (Gd-DTPA) to estimate glomerular filtration rate (GFR) by plasma clearance and use of an ELISA as the method of Gd-DTPA quantification. ANIMALS-16 dogs of various sexes and breeds (12 dogs were clinically normal, and 4 dogs were polyuric and polydipsic with no other clinical or biochemical abnormalities). PROCEDURES-GFR was estimated by measuring the plasma clearance of Gd-DTPA and iohexol by use of an ELISA and high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC), respectively. The GFR was determined by use of a 1-compartment model for both methods. The GFRs obtained by Gd-DTPA plasma clearance were compared with those obtained by iohexol plasma clearance by use of correlation analysis, paired t tests, and limits of agreement analysis. A paired t test was used to evaluate differences between the 2 plasma clearance methods. RESULTS-A strong linear correlation (r(2) = 0.90) was found between GFRs derived from the plasma clearance of Gd-DTPA and those derived from the plasma clearance of iohexol. By use of limits of agreement analysis, almost all (13/14) dogs had Gd-DTPA GFRs that were within 12% of iohexol GFRs. The remaining dog had a Gd-DTPA GFR that was 45% higher than the iohexol GFR. There was no significant difference between Gd-DTPA GFRs and those obtained with iohexol. CONCLUSIONS AND CLINICAL RELEVANCE-This study revealed that plasma clearance of Gd-DTPA measured by use of an ELISA is an effective method to estimate GFR in dogs because it compared favorably with results for the iohexol-HPLC method.


A significant part of global primary productivity is provided by cyanobacteria, which are abundant in most marine and freshwater habitats. In many oceanographic regions, however, the concentration of iron can be so low that it limits growth. Cyanobacteria respond to this condition by expressing a number of iron stress inducible genes, of which the isiA gene encodes a chlorophyll-binding protein known as IsiA or CP43'. It was recently shown that 18 IsiA proteins encircle trimeric photosystem I (PSI) under iron-deficient growth conditions. We report here that after prolonged growth of Synechocystis PCC 6803 in an iron-deficient medium, the number of bound IsiA proteins can be much higher than previously known. The largest complexes bind 12-14 units in an inner ring and 19-21 units in an outer ring around a PSI monomer. Fluorescence excitation spectra indicate an efficient light harvesting function for all PSI-bound chlorophylls. We also find that IsiA accumulates in cyanobacteria in excess of what is needed for functional light harvesting by PSI, and that a significant part of IsiA builds supercomplexes without PSI. Because the further decline of PSI makes photosystem II (PSII) increasingly vulnerable to photooxidation, we postulate that the surplus synthesis of IsiA shields PSII from excess light. We suggest that IsiA plays a surprisingly versatile role in cyanobacteria, by significantly enhancing the light harvesting ability of PSI and providing photoprotection for PSII.


Reversible cutting method is a new research thesis proposed to shorten processing route, decrease tool number and handling time, increase machining efficiency. Based on nonlinear hardening during reverse loading and the change of the Bauschinger effect factor with plastic strain, reverse loading released strain energy of elastic responses of machined underlayer. The chip formation model of reversible finish cutting was established. The difference between the advance and return stroke was analyzed in crystal slipping and elongating, residual stress, micro-hardness of machined surface. Experimental research indicted that the results of micro-hardness of reversible fine machining technique are smaller than that of general fine machining, the circumferential residual stress at the finished surface is compressive, the surface roughness of machined surface are smaller than that of general fine machining. The kinematic hardening models of the advance and return stroke finishing cutting based on Bauschinger effect is presented.


Summary The Yellow Chat Epthianura crocea is comprised of three disjunct subspecies. Subspecies E. c. macgregori (Capricorn Yellow Chat) is listed as Critically Endangered under the EPBC Act and has a distribution that also appears to be disjunct, with a limited geographic area of less than 7,000 ha. Some populations are threatened by rapid industrial development, and it is important for conservation of the subspecies to determine the extent to which the putative populations are connected. We used 14 microsatellite markers to measure genetic diversity and to determine the extent of gene flow between two disjunct populations at the northern and southern extremes of the subspecies' range. No significant differences in genetic diversity (number of alleles and heterozygosity) were observed, but clear population structuring was apparent, with obvious differentiation between the northern and southern populations. The most likely explanation for reduced gene flow between the two populations is either the development of a geographic barrier as a consequence of shrinkage of the marine plains associated with the rise in sea levels following the last glacial maxima, or reduced connectivity across the largely unsuitable pasture and forest habitat that now separates the two populations, exacerbated by declining population size and fewer potential emigrants. Regardless of the mechanism, restricted gene flow between these two populations has important consequences for their ongoing conservation. The relative isolation of the smaller southern groups (the Fitzroy River delta and Curtis Island) from the much larger northern group (both sides of the Broad Sound) makes the southern population more vulnerable to local extinction. Conservation efforts should focus on nature refuge agreements with land owners agreeing to maintain favourable grazing management practices in perpetuity, particularly in the northern area where most chats occur. Supplemental exchanges of individuals from northern and southern populations should be explored as a way of increasing genetic diversity and reducing inbreeding.


The study examines the factors affecting the performance of food stuff retail at urban district in Zanzibar. It was conducted in Zanzibar, Urban district incorporating 80 people all of them dealing with food stuff retail trade. Probability and non probability sampling methods were used. Structured questionnaires, interview and focus group discussion were used to explore information from the participants.
Based on the information collected from the study, it is found that the performance of food stuff retail trade is affected by marketing practices, management skills and miscellaneous factors. Marketing practices include kind and quality of products the business is offering, channels involved for the products to reach the potential customers, ways of communicating with the customers on details of the products offered and price set up for the product. In addition to that, it includes the after sales services served by the business.
More over the study findings reveal that the business is profitable one as the respective shop worth always increases year to year, although a lump of business outcomes are used by the owner for non business expenditures.
The study recommends people to acquire entrepreneurial skills before start trading. Laws and regulations governing the business have to be made fair.
Infrastructure should be developed proportionally to the technology growth. Financial institutions have to provide the trader with fair borrowing restrictions together with moderate interest rate


A recent European Commission report revealed the discrepancies in e-health adoption amongst older people between various European countries (Kubitschke, 2010). Uptake rates, in terms of the percentage of people aged over 65 using e-health technologies, differ for example, for social alarms between around 3% in Germany and the Netherlands, 6-10% the Nordic countries and 15% in the United Kingdom. Even within individual countries there are areas with vastly different adoption rates (Cooney, 2010).
Considering that the European population is ageing and the life expectancy at birth is still rising significantly (European Commission, 2011), there is a need for government policy on ageing in place to keep people at home as long as possible and there are chances for producers and providers of ALT solutions to increase their sales. The most important barrier to overcome is the low adoption rate of ALT solutions. Governments, companies and society as a whole need to find out why individuals prefer not to use ALT products and/or services even though they can be seen as potential users.


We present a moral reasoner, Moral Coppelia that combines rational ethical theory with affective states and personality traits. We, moreover, treat human autonomy in the sense of self-determination as well as making a meaningful choice. Our system combines connectionist bottom-up with utilitarian top-down approaches. Moral Coppelia can reproduce the verdicts of medical ethicists and health judges in real-life cases and can handle the emotional differences between logically identical problems such as the Trolley and Footbridge dilemma. It also deals with properties of character and personality such as honesty and humility to explain why logic reasoning is not always descriptive of actual human moral behavior. Apart from simulating known cases, we performed a split-half experiment with the responses of 153 participants in a criminal justice experiment. While fine-tuning the parameters to the first half of the data, the encompassing version of Moral Coppelia was capable of forecasting criminal decisions, leading to a better fit with the second half of the data than either of the loose component parts did. In other words, we found empirical support for the integral contribution of ratio, affect, and personality to moral decision making, which, additionally, could be acceptably simulated by our extended version of the Moral Coppelia system.


Recently, Antibody drugs are attracting attention in the medical field. Antibody using immune function has high efficacy and side effects are relatively few, so it is expected to become the mainstream of future medicine. Indispensable technologies for development of antibody drugs are continuous, large amount and high-speed separation of medical protein. Therefore, we have proposed superconducting high gradient magnetic separation (HGMS) system for medical protein. If HGMS system using superconducting magnet is realized, processing time of separation can be greatly shortened. In the previous studies, it was possible to separate 200 nm magnetic beads suspended in pure water, with the result that the capture ratio was 97.8% and the collection ratio was 94.1%. However, depending on the type of the suspension, the clogging of the magnetic filter and the phenomenon that the magnetic nano-beads are not trapped have been confirmed. Therefore, in this study, the magnetic force of the magnetic filter is evaluated by electromagnetic fluid and particle tracing analysis considering the behaviour of the magnetic beads two-dimensionally in the magnetic filter.


This paper studies the impacts on productivity following an investment in regional high-speed rail in the Mälaren region in Sweden. It uses wage earnings as a measure of productivity and proposes to capture agglomeration effects by measuring changes in effective labour force density induced by the transport improvement across municipalities in the region. This change in effective labour force density is then used as a continuous measure of treatment, in order to estimate the effect of the Svealand line introduction on labour earnings. While the transport improvement had a large impact on the connectivity and commuting patterns in affected municipalities, we find estimates of wage elasticities with respect to agglomeration that are in line with or smaller than average values from previous literature. The productivity effects, estimated over a ten-year time period, are shown to be rather modest and concentrated to the regions whose connectivity to the greater Stockholm area was directly affected. We also find that the main results do not materialize when a much shorter time period is used for analysis, indicating that a rather long adjustment time needs to occur before any effects can be seen.


Fascioliasis is infection by liver flukes, Fasciola spp. The two species that infect humans are Fasciola hepatica and Fasciola gigantica. Other herbivorous animals such as cattle, goats, water buffalo, horses, camels, hogs, rabbits, and deer can be infected with Fasciola spp. Humans acquire Fasciola after ingestion of food and water that are contaminated with Fasciola metacercaria, especially aquatic plants. Fascioliasis is usually mild disease in human. Clinical manifestrations are related with the the phases of infection. In migratory phase, symptoms may occur when metacercariae excyst in the duodenum and young liver flukes migrate through the intestinal wall to the liver capsule and hepatic parenchyma before reaching the bile ducts. Clinical symptoms include abdominal pain in the right hypochondrium, dyspepsia and anorexia, nausea, vomiting, and hepatomegaly. Systemic manifestration such as urticaria and eosinophilia are also common presentation. After Fasciola reside in the biliary tract, most of cases are asymptomatic. Biliary track obstruction can accidentally occur and might lead to cholangitis. Triclabendazole 10 mg/kg as a single dose is the current drug of choice for fascioliasis treatment and triclabendazole two doses of 10 mg/kg for 1 day is effective in severe or persistent infections, with cure rates of 79% and 92%, respectively. Currently, there is no vaccine for prevent Fasciola infection. Proper cooking or cleaning food especially aquatic plants before consumption will prevent accidental Fasciola infection. Adequate mass treatment among infected animals in endemic areas and proper sanitary in the livestock farm are important for disease control.

Figure 1  ภาพถ่ายตัวเต็มวัยพยาธิ Fasciola hepatica (Linnaeus, 1758) (A) และ Fasciola gigantica (Cobbold, 1855) (B)(ได้รับการอนุเคราะห์ภาพจาก รศ.ดร.อุรุษา แทนขำ ภาควิชาปรสิตหนอนพยาธิ คณะเวชศาสตร์เขตร้อน มหาวิทยาลัยมหิดล)


Radiation therapy for the treatment of cancer has been established as a highly precise and effective way to eradicate a localized region of diseased tissue. To achieve further significant gains in the therapeutic ratio, we need to move towards biologically optimized treatment planning. To achieve this goal, we need to understand how the radiation-type dependent patterns of induced energy depositions within the cell (physics) connect via molecular, cellular and tissue reactions to treatment outcome such as tumor control and undesirable effects on normal tissue. Several computational biology approaches have been developed connecting physics to biology. Monte Carlo simulations are the most accurate method to calculate physical dose distributions at the nanometer scale, however simulations at the DNA scale are slow and repair processes are generally not simulated. Alternative models that rely on the random formation of individual DNA lesions within one or two turns of the DNA have been shown to reproduce the clusters of DNA lesions, including single strand breaks (SSBs), double strand breaks (DSBs) without the need for detailed track structure simulations. Efficient computational simulations of initial DNA damage induction facilitate computational modeling of DNA repair and other molecular and cellular processes. Mechanistic, multiscale models provide a useful conceptual framework to test biological hypotheses and help connect fundamental information about track structure and dosimetry at the sub-cellular level to dose-response effects on larger scales. In this symposium we will learn about the current state of the art of computational approaches estimating radiation damage at the cellular and sub-cellular scale. How can understanding the physics interactions at the DNA level be used to predict biological outcome? We will discuss if and how such calculations are relevant to advance our understanding of radiation damage and its repair, or, if the underlying biological processes are too complex for a mechanistic approach. Can computer simulations be used to guide future biological research? We will debate the feasibility of explaining biology from a physicists' perspective.

LEARNING OBJECTIVES
1. Understand the potential applications and limitations of computational methods for dose-response modeling at the molecular, cellular and tissue levels 2. Learn about mechanism of action underlying the induction, repair and biological processing of damage to DNA and other constituents 3. Understand how effects and processes at one biological scale impact on biological processes and outcomes on other scales J. Schuemann, NCI/NIH grantsS. McMahon, Funding: European Commission FP7 (grant EC FP7 MC-IOF-623630).


Service composition is an emerging way to provide the value-added service. For most existing composition results are rather unstructured and flat, it is very difficult to reuse them. In this paper, we propose two kinds patterns to construct the hierarchy of the composition. This method can not only improve the abstract level of the composition results, but also can promote their reusability. The experiment results and analysis show it is effective.


Building security into software development lifecycles and doing it right is hard. To address the challenge, several prominent organizations have published process-oriented security guidelines to bring security activities into a structured way. Although these eorts contribute to measurable improvements in software and system security, they are often too verbose and fuzzy to be implementable in a development lifecycle involving people (e.g., security experts, developers, and managers) with dierent skillsets. In this paper, we propose the model-driven secure development lifecycle (MD-SDL), an approach that leverages on modeling methods and the advances in model-driven security to simplify the process of eciently integrating security into development lifecycles for the development of securitycritical software and systems.


In 300 cases the effectiveness of the long-acting anesthetic Meaverin-ultra for retrobulbar anesthesia was systematically investigated. The duration of analgesis and immobilisation for the globe as well as for the eyelids runs over hours; they are considerabley more effective than with other common local anesthetics so far. 91% of the patients got free of pains for more than 24 hours after the operation. As to the interruption of pain attacks in cases of haemorrhagic glaucoma painless intervalls of more than 30 hours were reached. Special advantages result in cases of buckling operations for retinal detachment, which have to be followed by photo-(xenon)-coagulation. On the whole, long-acting anesthetics are an extraordinary gain for ophthalmosurgery.


Background Young children are infected by a diverse variety of enteric pathogens in low-income, high-burden countries. Little is known about which conditions pose the greatest risk for enteric pathogen exposure and infection. Young children frequently play in residential public areas around their household, including areas contaminated by human and animal feces, suggesting these exposures are particularly hazardous. Objectives The objective of this study was to examine how the dose of six types of common enteric pathogens, and the probability of exposure to one or multiple enteric pathogens for young children playing at public play areas in Kisumu, Kenya is influenced by the type and frequency of child play behaviors that result in ingestion of soil or surface water, as well as by spatial variability in the number of public areas children are exposed to in their neighborhood. Methods A Bayesian framework was employed to obtain the posterior distribution of pathogen doses for a certain number of contacts. First, a multivariate random effects tobit model was used to obtain the posterior distribution of pathogen concentrations, and their interdependencies, in soil and surface water, based upon empirical data of enteric pathogen contamination in three neighborhoods of Kisumu. Then, exposure doses were estimated using behavioral contact parameters from previous studies, and contrasted under different exposure conditions. Results Multi-pathogen exposure of children at public play areas was common. Pathogen doses and the probability of multi-pathogen ingestion increased with: higher frequency of environmental contact, especially for surface water; larger volume of soil or water ingested; and with play at multiple sites in the neighborhood versus single site play. Discussion Child contact with surface water and soil at public play areas in their neighborhood is an important cause of exposure to enteric pathogens in Kisumu, and behavioral, environmental, and spatial conditions are determinants of exposure.


Almost nothing is known about the capacity of minimally verbal students with autism to develop literacy skills. Shared reading is a regular practice in early education settings and is widely thought to encourage language and literacy development. There is some evidence that children with severe disabilities can be engaged in adapted shared reading activities. The current study examines the impact of teacher-led adapted shared reading activities on engagement and story comprehension in minimally verbal 5-6 year old children with autism using a multiple baseline/alternating treatment design. Four students and three teachers participated. Teachers conducted adapted shared reading activities with modified books and used specific strategies for increasing student engagement. Student performance during adapted activities was compared to performance during standard shared reading sessions.Results: All students showed increased story comprehension and engagement during adapted shared reading. Average percent of session engaged was 87-100% during adapted sessions, compared with 41-52% during baseline. Average number of correct responses to story comprehension questions was 4.2-4.8 out of 6 during adapted sessions compared with 1.2-2 during baseline. Visual supports, tactile objects and specific teaching strategies offer ways for minimally verbal students to meaningfully participate in literacy activities. Future research should investigate adapted shared reading activities implemented classroom-wide, as well as joint engagement, language and literacy outcomes after using such activities over time.


The new Oblique ECE diagnostics of JET allows simultaneous measurement along three lines of sight at different toroidal angles. JET pulses, in which modulated LHCD power was applied, were analyzed by means of the SPECE emission code, which takes into account the fast electron tail generated by LH. The code results were compared to the ECE spectra from the oblique ECE diagnostic. The match between the computed and the experimental data from the three lines of sight provides an estimate of the density of superthermal electrons and of their maximum energy from which the fraction of the plasma current driven by LHCD is derived.


Information technology is radically and rapidly transforming the way the AEC industry operates. Large, globally operating firms are often out of necessity on the leading edge of implementing advanced IT-tools because their ability to prosper depends more and more on their ability to use technology to augment industry-wide effectiveness and innovation. To maximize the benefits that lie in company-wide highly integrated information and to foster internal collaboration, such companies often rely heavily on the use of IT supporting their practices. As global projects have become the main sources of revenue for many large AEC firms, geographically distributed project teams and human networks have become more and more common. A wide array of tools is available for IT-based collaboration. Global teams and networks face difficulties that are different from those of teams and networks that are not geographically distributed. These difficulties are usually caused by national, cultural, and organizational differences within the organizations and the multitude of markets they are serving as well as the peculiarities of virtual collaboration. This paper examines these phenomena using the Germany-based Hochtief Group, one of the world's largest AEC companies, as an example. It presents a case study of global virtual teamwork in a recently completed large-scale project in Asia. It then moves on to describe Hochtief's participation in a larger research effort initiated by Stanford University's CIFE (Center for Integrated Facility Management) that examines virtual collaboration in the AEC industry. The results of both the case study and the joint research project are analyzed and presented. They suggest a number of important guidelines for global virtual teamwork in the AEC industry, including the suitability of particular IT-tools as well as the coordination of team members with different national, cultural, and organizational backgrounds over multiple time zones.


This article introduces two swarm intelligent algorithms, a group search optimizer (GSO) and an artificial fish swarm algorithm (AFSA). A single intelligent algorithm always has both merits in its specific formulation and deficiencies due to its inherent limitations. Therefore, we propose a mixture of these algorithms to create a new hybrid optimization algorithm known as the group search-artificial fish swarm algorithm (GS-AFSA). This algorithm has been applied to three different discrete truss optimization problems. The optimization results are compared with those obtained using the standard GSO, the AFSA and the quick group search optimizer (QGSO). The proposed GS-AFSA eliminated the shortcomings of GSO regarding falling into the local optimum by taking advantage of AFSA's stable convergence characteristics and achieving a better convergence rate and convergence accuracy than the GSO and the AFSA. Furthermore, the GS-AFSA has a superior convergence accuracy compared to the QGSO, all while solving a complicated structural optimization problem containing numerous design variables. Received: 10 September 2014; Accepted: 20 December 2014


Introduction. Imipenemase (IMP) carbapenemase genes are relatively rare among Enterobacterales in the UK. Emergence in multiple hospitals, in different strains and species, prompted an investigation into their genetic context.Aim. Our goal was to identify and describe the elements carrying bla IMP genes in a variety of Enterobacterales from five hospitals in the UK.Methodology. Long-read nanopore sequencing was carried out on 18 IMP-positive isolates belonging to 6 species. The locations of the bla IMP genes and other associated genetic elements were identified.Results. Ten out of 18 isolates carried bla IMP-1 on an IncN3 plasmid (52-57 kb) in an In1763 class 1 integron. These plasmids also contained genes encoding type IV secretion and conjugal transfer proteins. Five out of 18 isolates carried bla IMP-1 in the same In1763 integron in much larger IncHI2 plasmids. A further isolate carried the In1763 integron in a chromosomally located plasmid fragment. Two isolates carried bla IMP-4 in IncHI2 plasmids. The isolates included three representatives of sequence type 20 of Klebsiella pneumoniae, with one carrying a distinct plasmid from the other two.Conclusion. Highly similar IncN3 plasmids were found in a range of Enterobacterales, mostly K. pneumoniae and the Enterobacter cloacae complex, from three of four London hospitals, with the same In1763 integron carrying bla IMP-1 also being found in IncHI2 plasmids and chromosomally. These plasmids carried multiple elements facilitating self-transmission. Strain typing alone was not sufficient to investigate cross-infection among this set of isolates, many of which appeared to be unrelated until plasmid analysis was undertaken, and vice versa.


Agricultural activities are depicted as highly dependent on weather conditions. The need to employ risk management strategies is emphasized leading to the aim of the paper stating that a basic qualitative decision making model should be adopted to ensure timely adjustments to weather conditions. Factors affecting production are discussed. Two models adapted to an arid environment as well as their practical application in an actual production scenario are discussed. It is concluded that the incorporation of pro-active decision making models into the management plan contributes towards the stabilization of the production system, while also protecting the grazing resources.


The authors examine the statistical determinants of transfer risk using probit estimation and an extensive data set of over 300 sovereign ratings given by the leading rating agencies between 1992 and 1997. Both macroeconomic and balance sheet variables are found to be important, and regional and rating agency biases are present. The models both within and out-of-sample perform well and produce a close relationship with the variables predicting currency crises.


The prevalence of the feeling of cold hands and feet (FCHF) is high in the general population but the etiology of FCHF is largely unknown. The aim of the present study was to explore whether the FCHF is heritable. Eight hundred and ninety-four pairs of twins completed a question about FCHF. Tetrachoric correlations for FCHF were .58, .29, .67, .52, and .04 for monozygotic male, dizygotic male, monozygotic female, and dizygotic female twins, respectively. Model-fitting analyses suggested that in the best fitting model, additive genetic and nonshared environmental variance including measurement error were 64% (95% CI: 55%-72%) and 36% (28%-45%), respectively. Sex differences in genetic and environmental influences were not significant.


In this paper, we consider the secure communication in a K-user multi-antenna broadcast channel (BC) with state feedback. We characterize the optimal secure degrees of freedom (SDoF) region of multiple-input single-output (MISO) channel. The SDoF region is achievable by a secret key based linear scheme, which generates analog secret keys by sending artificial noise and then performs space-time alignment scheme secured by these secret keys. The optimality is proved by deriving a new outer bound on the capacity region in a systematic way. Interestingly, the proposed outer bounding technique also applies to the erasure broadcast channel and provides a simpler proof as compared to the existing one. Finally, an explicit connection between the multi-antenna BC and the erasure BC is revealed. We show that, with a large number of users, secrecy cannot be guaranteed in the erasure BC, while it comes almost "for free" in the multi-antenna BC when the number of transmit antennas grows accordingly.


In the analysis of causal effects in non-experimental studies, conditioning on observable covariates is one way to try to reduce unobserved confounder bias. However, a developing literature has shown that conditioning on certain covariates may increase bias, and the mechanisms underlying this phenomenon have not been fully explored. We add to the literature on bias-increasing covariates by first introducing a way to decompose omitted variable bias into three constituent parts: bias due to an unobserved confounder, bias due to excluding observed covariates, and bias due to amplification. This leads to two important findings. Although instruments have been the primary focus of the bias amplification literature to date, we identify the fact that the popular approach of adding group fixed effects can lead to bias amplification as well. This is an important finding because many practitioners think that fixed effects are a convenient way to account for any and all group-level confounding and are at worst harmless. The second finding introduces the concept of bias unmasking and shows how it can be even more insidious than bias amplification in some cases. After introducing these new results analytically, we use constructed observational placebo studies to illustrate bias amplification and bias unmasking with real data. Finally, we propose a way to add bias decomposition information to graphical displays for sensitivity analysis to help practitioners think through the potential for bias amplification and bias unmasking in actual applications.


Phytostabilization is a remediation technology that uses plants for in-situ stabilization of contamination in soils and mine tailings. The objective of this study was to identify native plant species with potential for phytostabilization of the abandoned mine tailings in Nacozari, Sonora in northern Mexico. A flora of 42 species in 16 families of angiosperms was recorded on the tailings site and the abundance of the most common perennial species was estimated. Four of the five abundant perennial species showed evidence of regeneration: the ability to reproduce and establish new seedlings. A comparison of selected physicochemical properties of the tailings in vegetated patches with adjacent barren areas suggests that pH, electrical conductivity, texture, and concentration of potentially toxic elements do not limit plant distribution. For the most abundant species, the accumulation factor for most metals was <1, with the exception of Zn in two species. A short-term experiment on adaptation revealed limited evidence for the formation of local ecotypes in Prosopis velutina and Amaranthus watsonii. Overall, the results of this study indicate that five native plant species might have potential for phytostabilization of the Nacozari tailings and that seed could be collected locally to revegetate the site. More broadly, this study provides a methodology that can be used to identify native plants and evaluate their phytostabilization potential for similar mine tailings.


Typical clinical presentations of Kawasaki disease (KD) are well known to paediatricians. Abdominal pain, vomiting, diarrhoea and hydrops of gallbladder are the commonest gastrointestinal presentations of KD, while acute surgical abdomen or severe gastrointestinal complication as a presenting sign is rare. We report a case of a three-year-old previously healthy boy with KD whose gastrointestinal symptoms and signs were present at the onset, which subsequently progressed to intestinal pseudo-obstruction syndrome, and the condition responded to bowel rest, intravenous immunoglobulin and oral aspirin treatment, without any complications. We suggest that KD should be considered a differential diagnosis of a child presenting with fever and intestinal pseudo-obstruction without identifiable cause, and high index of suspicion of atypical KD should be taken as prompt diagnosis and treatment can prevent serious long term consequences.


The Internet gives individuals more choice in political news and information sources and more tools to filter out disagreeable information. Citing the preference described by selective exposure theory — people prefer information that supports their beliefs and avoid counter-attitudinal information — observers warn that people may use these tools to access only agreeable information and thus live in ideological echo chambers. We report on a field deployment of a browser extension that showed users feedback about the political lean of their weekly and all time reading behaviors. Compared to a control group, showing feedback led to a modest move toward balanced exposure, corresponding to 1-2 visits per week to ideologically opposing sites or 5-10 additional visits per week to centrist sites.


Anti-myelin associated glycoprotein (anti-MAG) antibody associated polyneuropathy is a chronic distal symmetric sensorimotor neuropathy. The rarity of this condition precludes establishment of a standard of care. It has been treated with steroids, intravenous immunoglobulin (IVIG) and Rituximab. We present a case of a 72 years old man presenting with 1 year history of neuropathic pain in lower extremities and hands bilaterally, right cervical lymphadenopathy on physical exam, and the anti-MAG antibody ELISA was positive. An excisional biopsy of the cervical lymph node showed diffuse large B cell lymphoma. The staging bone marrow examination did not show lymphoma involvement, the PET/CT did only demonstrated neck and mediastinal lymphadenopathy. The patient received four cycles of R-CHOP (Rituximab, Cyclophosphamide, Doxorubicin, Vincristine and Prednisone) for Stage IIA disease with complete response, and complete resolution of polyneuropathy after the first cycle of chemotherapy. The case report highlights the successful treatment of a rare presentation of anti-MAG polyneuropathy associated with early stage diffuse large B-cell lymphoma. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.4021/jmc1399w


Background and purpose: Antibiotic prophylaxis is an effective strategy for reduction of postoperative infection. Prophylactic cefazolin and vancomycin are used in patients undergoing hip and knee surgeries. The aim of this meta-analysis was to determine the knee and hip infection after surgery in patients under cefazolin and vancomycin regimen/s. Materials and methods: A literature search was performed in electronic databases including Google scholar, Pubmed, Web of science, and Scopus. The search keywords were hip, knee, cefazolin, and vancomycin. Eligible articles were determined after considering the inclusion/exclusion criteria. Finally, the heterogeneity among the results were defined by Q and I2 tests. Prevalence of infection were determined via randomized effect model based on heterogeneity results. Results: The meta-analysis included 19 articles in which hip and knee infections were investigated in 77108 patients. Prevalence of infection (95% confidence interval) in patients receiving cefazolin, vancomycin, and both antibiotics was 1.2% (0.9-1.5), 0.9% (0.04-1.7), and 1.3% (1.04-1.6), respectively. Conclusion: Current results showed low rates of postoperative knee and hip infections. There was no significant difference between the types of these antibiotics.


: We consider M estimation of a regression model with a nui- sance parameter and a vector of other parameters. The unknown distribution of the residuals is not assumed to be normal or symmetric. Simple and easily estimated formulas are given for the dominant terms of the bias and skewness of the parameter estimates. For the linear model these are proportional to the skewness of the 'independent' variables. For a nonlinear model, its linear component plays the role of these independent variables, and a second term must be added proportional to the covariance of its linear and quadratic components. For the least squares estimate with normal errors this term was derived by Box [1]. We also consider the effect of a large number of parameters, and the case of random independent variables.


We propose a new approach for 3D instance segmentation based on sparse convolution and point affinity prediction, which indicates the likelihood of two points belonging to the same instance. The proposed network, built upon submanifold sparse convolution [3], processes a voxelized point cloud and predicts semantic scores for each occupied voxel as well as the affinity between neighboring voxels at different scales. A simple yet effective clustering algorithm segments points into instances based on the predicted affinity and the mesh topology. The semantic for each instance is determined by the semantic prediction. Experiments show that our method outperforms the state-of-the-art instance segmentation methods by a large margin on the widely used ScanNet benchmark [2]. We share our code publicly at this https URL.


The purpose of this course is to explore the meaning of community, especially as it relates to the American community as a whole and communities within the United States, and the relation of law to community.


This study focuses on the role of organisational setting and age in shaping individuals' narratives of embodied selfhood. It compares older and younger women's use of 'narrative resistance' to negotiate identity in light of their ageing and the negative social and personal meanings of being fat. Cordell and Ronai (1999) observed three types of narrative resistance among overweight people: loopholes, exemplars and continuums. This paper identifies two others: 'justifications', for behaviour that associated with weight gain, and 'repentance', for behaviour that reaffirmed a commitment to losing weight. Drawing from six months of participant-observation and in-depth interviews with 20 older and younger female clients of a commercial weight-loss organisation, this article shows that both the meanings women attributed to their experiences of slimming, and their opportunities for benefiting from organisational resources, varied by their stage in the lifecourse. The weight-loss group generated narrative strategies and opportunities for its members that were informed by both cultural constructions of ageing and the organisation's interests. While these strategies stopped short of empowering the clients to abandon restrictive dieting altogether, they did enable the older respondents to excuse temporary setbacks in weight loss and their deviation from (what they described as) the more exacting appearance standards of youth. At the same time, the strategic narratives reaffirmed constructions of ageing that present the older female body as uncontrollable and older women as unconcerned with physical attractiveness.


IntroductionBackground cross-reactivity with other coronaviruses may reduce the specificity of COVID-19 rapid serologic tests. Blood collected during prenatal care is a unique source of population-based samples appropriate for validation studies. We used stored 2018 serum samples from an existing pregnancy cohort study to evaluate the specificity of COVID-19 serologic rapid diagnostic tests. MethodsWe randomly selected 120 stored serum samples from pregnant women enrolled in a cohort in 2018, at least one year before the COVID-19 pandemic. We used stored serum to evaluate four lateral flow rapid diagnostic tests, following manufacturers' instructions. Pictures were taken for all tests and read by two blinded trained evaluators. Results We evaluated 120, 80, 90, and 90 samples, respectively. Specificity for both IgM and IgG was 100% for the first two tests. The third test had a specificity of 98.9% for IgM and 94.4% for IgG. The fourth test had a specificity of 88.9% for IgM and 100% for IgG.Discussion COVID-19 serologic rapid tests are of variable specificity. Blood specimens from sentinel prenatal clinics provide an opportunity to validate serologic tests with population-based samples.


High-speed electrical machines (HSEMs) are becoming more popular in applications such as air handling devices. Using surface-mounted permanent magnet (PM) rotors manufactured from rare earth metals, they provide benefits over their mechanical transmission counterparts. However, these PMs have low tensile strength and are prone to failure under large centrifugal loads when rotating. Therefore, retaining sleeves are used to hold the PMs in compression to eliminate tensile stress and reduce failure risk. The magnets are also often held on a back iron or carrier, forming an assembly of three cylinders. The ability to predict these stresses is extremely important to rotor design. Current published work shows a lack of exploration of analytical methods of calculating these stresses for three-cylinder assemblies. This paper shows the development of plane stress, plane strain and generalised plane strain (GPS) theories for three cylinders. For a range of rotor designs, these theories are compared with finite element analysis (FEA). GPS is shown to be more accurate than plane stress or plane strain for the central region of long cylinders. For short cylinders and for the ends of cylinders, all three theories give poor results.


Multiprocessor-system-on-a-chip will be the dominating architecture in embedded systems as it provides an increase in concurrency improving the performance of the system rather than increasing the clock speed which affects the power consumption of the system. However, concurrency needs to be exploited in order to improve the system performance in the different applications'environments. The new emerging H.264/AVC coding standard is designed to cover a wide range of applications (real-time conversational services such as videoconferencing, video phone, etc.). It has many new features that require complex computations compared to previous video coding standards. This coding standard will be a challenging workload for future MPSoC embedded systems. Exploiting the different levels of parallelism for video codec applications can be done at the data level, the functional level, or both simultaneously. Our intention in this paper is to explore the natural existent parallelism in the H.264 decoder software [2] itself without any modification to the encoder phase, rather than forcing parallelization techniques. Our novel idea is based on the fact that the H.264 decoder decodes the luminance and chrominance signals separately, but the decoder is implemented in a way to decode them in series. Our approach is to execute the different decoding phases of the luminance signals in parallel to the chrominance signals. Using two cores to decode the luma and the chroma signals in parallel gives a gain of 15-20% of the decoding processing time and combining them the functional pipelined implementation over four cores or more, the gain can reach 60% compared to the current sequential execution.


Subsampling is a widely used and effective method to deal with the challenges brought by big data. Most subsampling procedures are designed based on the importance sampling framework, where samples with high importance measures are given corresponding sampling probabilities. However, in the highly noisy case, these samples may cause an unstable estimator which could lead to a misleading result. To tackle this issue, we propose a gradient-based Markov subsampling (GMS) algorithm to achieve robust estimation. The core idea is to construct a subset which allows us to conservatively correct a crude initial estimate towards the true signal. Specifically, GMS selects samples with small gradients via a probabilistic procedure, constructing a subset that is likely to exclude noisy samples and provide a safe improvement over the initial estimate. We show that the GMS estimator is statistically consistent at a rate which matches the optimal in the minimax sense. The promising performance of GMS is supported by simulation studies and real data examples.


Because not all females are equally attractive, and because mating reduces the chances of getting further copulations, males should prefer better-quality mates. In this paper, we use the Trinidadian guppy (Poecilia reticulata) to explore the effects of two non–correlated measures of female quality—size and reproductive status—on male mating decisions. All male guppies employ two alternative mating tactics. We found that large females, particularly those from a high predation site, were the target of most sneaky mating attempts. The response persisted in fish raised under standard conditions over several generations in the laboratory. In addition, non-pregnant females received more courtship displays. We conclude that males can discriminate among females and that they uncouple their mating tactics to track different axes of quality.


The Public Transport Authority of Thessaloniki (ThePTA) participates in the NODES (New Tools for Design and Operation of Urban Transport Interchanges) Project, a three year research & development project co-funded by the 7th Framework Programme, focusing on the efficient integration of public transport services. Recognizing the crucial role of interchanges in the transport network, the NODES project aims to develop and deliver a toolbox to support European cities in the design and operation of new or upgraded interchanges. The toolbox covers all the aspects of a modern interchange's design, construction, operation, maintenance and most importantly successful integration in the urban transport system. The tools that comprise the Toolbox can be legislative/regulatory, cultural/social, economic/financial, organizational, technical (software technology), methodological (method, strategy, planning) etc. Following an initial selection, over 100 tools were included in the NODES toolbox. A number of tools were tested at reference sites of 11 European cities. The selected interchanges varied regarding the number of served modes, size, relative location to the city core, facilities offered, business uses, operational or under construction status etc. covering all the range of possible interchange types. Identifying the most suitable tools for each interchange type was one of the main objectives of NODES. ThePTA selected the Mikra interchange as a NODES reference site. The Mikra interchange is the only NODES reference site that is a brand new interchange currently under construction. Hence, many of its features are not finalized yet. Mikra will be the end station for the Kalamaria extension line of Thessaloniki's newly built Metro system. Due to the butterfly urban sprawl shape of Thessaloniki, Mikra is expected to function as the main entrance to the city for the commuters moving from the eastern residential suburbs to the city Centre and the western industrial zone of the city. The unique characteristics of the Mikra interchange bring significant added value to the project and a relatively high number of tools (27 in total) were selected for testing at Mikra. These tools covered the thematic topics of "Integrated land use and infrastructure planning", "Intermodality and Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) and "Management and business models" with the addition of a 3 cross-topic tools. This paper presents the main findings from the tool testing process at the Mikra interchange in Thessaloniki for the aforementioned thematic topics. Additional focus is placed on the findings from the two phase questionnaire survey that was carried out as part of the process. The survey was conducted using the Station Experience Monitoring (SEM) tool which was designed by the Netherlands' Railways (NS) to measure passenger station experience. The SEM questionnaire was enriched with additional questions aiming to assess not only user satisfaction, but also the impact that the installation of information provision equipment would have on the public transport users. The survey was carried out before and after the installation of two information totems and one VMS (Variable Message Sign) with a sample of 300 responses for each phase, resulting to a total of over 600 questionnaires. The SEM questionnaire was used not only in Thessaloniki but also in another six of the NODES reference sites.


In the modern world, the development of technology has a significant impact on various areas of human functioning. However, the appearance of the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic and the need to implement numerous restrictions resulted in an even greater increase in the importance of new technologies, especially in such sectors as education, administration, or finance. In Poland, the introduction of the remote work system encountered many difficulties related to the unpreparedness of previous structures to implement such solutions. An example of a country where they operate efficiently, responding to the problems that Poland faces today, is Estonia, in which, beginning from 2004, the state administration sector has been gradually replaced by a digital system based on Blockchain technology. At present, in Poland, appropriate steps are already taken by the Ministry of Digitization to digitize public administration in the form of a plan of four streams. Given the protracted pandemic, the possibilities for immediate solutions and considering the advantages and disadvantages of digitizing the state seem worth attention.


Crucial steps in the formation of stars and planets can be studied only at mid‐ to far‐infrared wavelengths, where the Space Infrared Telescope (SIRTF) provides an unprecedented improvement in sensitivity. We will use all three SIRTF instruments (Infrared Array Camera [IRAC], Multiband Imaging Photometer for SIRTF [MIPS], and Infrared Spectrograph [IRS]) to observe sources that span the evolutionary sequence from molecular cores to protoplanetary disks, encompassing a wide range of cloud masses, stellar masses, and star‐forming environments. In addition to targeting about 150 known compact cores, we will survey with IRAC and MIPS (3.6–70 μm) the entire areas of five of the nearest large molecular clouds for new candidate protostars and substellar objects as faint as 0.001 solar luminosities. We will also observe with IRAC and MIPS about 190 systems likely to be in the early stages of planetary system formation (ages up to about 10 Myr), probing the evolution of the circumstellar dust, the raw material for planetary cores. Candidate planet‐forming disks as small as 0.1 lunar masses will be detectable. Spectroscopy with IRS of new objects found in the surveys and of a select group of known objects will add vital information on the changing chemical and physical conditions in the disks and envelopes. The resulting data products will include catalogs of thousands of previously unknown sources, multiwavelength maps of about 20 deg2 of molecular clouds, photometry of about 190 known young stars, spectra of at least 170 sources, ancillary data from ground‐based telescopes, and new tools for analysis and modeling. These products will constitute the foundations for many follow‐up studies with ground‐based telescopes, as well as with SIRTF itself and other space missions such as SIM, JWST, Herschel, and TPF/Darwin.


There has been remarkable progress in the field of nanoscience and technology during the last couple of years across the world. Indian scientists have made significant impact, which is being reflected, in the number of publications in high impact factor journals from the country (Fig. 1: histogram). Nanoscience and nanotechnology has been in the forefront of research in India due to the initiatives of the Department of Science and Technology (DST), Government of India (especially the NanoMission Council of the DST), Department of Biotechnology (DBT), Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), Department of electronics and information Technology(DeiTy) and Defence Research and Development organization (DRDO) and several other institutions of the Govt. of India which have also played a major role in encouraging research in nanoscience and nanotechnology. In this direction, several centres of nanoscience and technology have been started in the institutes of technology (IIT's) and Central Universities and national laboratories. Recently, a new institute "Institute of Nanoscience and Technology" supported by DST has started functioning at Mohali, Punjab. Many of the earlier contributions from India were focussed on synthesis and properties of nanomaterials. In the last few years, the emphasis has shifted to deliver processes/devices in the area of sensors, nanomedicine, environmental and energy – based applications. There has been enormous progress in the field of photocatalysis and electrocatalysis, photovoltaics, nanophotonics, drug delivery, sensors and water purification. (Fig. 2: pie chart). The future is to design nanoscience based solutions for problems specific to India. It is hoped to couple available resources, especially skilled manpower with nanoscience and nanotechnology to apply to challenges being faced by India. One such example would be in the area of medical diagnostics which requires human intervention (skilled) and nanotechnology (imaging or drug delivery). In this article, we have highlighted the major contributions by scientists working in India towards the progress in nanoscience in the recent past (2012–2013). In addition, some high quality work in engineering and technology of nanostructured materials have also been published which has not been covered here.


Digital avatars are an important part of identity representation, but there is little work on understanding how to represent disability. We interviewed 18 people with disabilities and related identities about their experiences and preferences in representing their identities with avatars. Participants generally preferred to represent their disability identity if the context felt safe and platforms supported their expression, as it was important for feeling authentically represented. They also utilized avatars in strategic ways: as a means to signal and disclose current abilities, access needs, and to raise awareness. Some participants even found avatars to be a more accessible way to communicate than alternatives. We discuss how avatars can support disability identity representation because of their easily customizable format that is not strictly tied to reality. We conclude with design recommendations for creating platforms that better support people in representing their disability and other minoritized identities.


In this work, we develop a new model for competition in markets with differentiated products. In addition, we present a consumer model designed to produce a flexible nonlinear inverse demand system that resembles the classical Multinomial Logit model, and discuss several extensions. We characterize firms competition in quantities based on the inverse demand system. The model is applied to the Spanish newspaper industry. This is a highly competitive two-sided market whose revenues are generated from sales and to a larger extent from advertising driven by its circulation. We then characterize the Perfect Equilibrium by conditional moment conditions, and estimate the parameters using the Generalized Method of Moments