In developing countries a big issue for urban development is the growth in infrastructure in response to economic and population demands. Such development causes cities to expand and occupy the suburbs, turning them into more built up areas. The impacts of such urban growth are immediately observable in the reduction of green areas and environmental quality, and diminishing contact with the natural environment. This study will focus on green spaces in a city in a developing country to consider the effect of this urbanization. In response to urban growth in developed countries attempts have been made to link together green spaces into a form of networks. These networks are intended to conserve the function of natural areas in towns and cities while still accommodating development. The greenway or green network and ecological network are two successful approaches developed in America and Europe. This study assesses the green spaces in Makassar, an Indonesia city, to see possibility of implementing such concepts. The study begins by redefining spaces into a typology, then assessing the spaces through three stages. The first stage is biodiversity assessment. The Rapid Biodiversity Assessment, adapted from a study in the UK, is used to assess plant biodiversity as an indicator of the quality of green spaces in urban areas. This method was adjusted and simplified to reflect the limitation in resources and time. The second stage was assessment of spaces based on a target species, in this case urban birds. The third stage combines the biodiversity score with consideration of space size and ownership. This stage produced different classes of spaces. These stages produced three different maps which were then overlaid to find the best quality green spaces termed 'the most preferred spaces'. The next step was to see whether these spaces could be linked up in a network and to determine what sort of network could be achieved. In this part of the analysis spaces are grouped into main patches and scattered small patches, termed stepping stones. With this approach the potential connectivity can be observed visually. This study also acknowledged the significance of areas of ecological quality outside the main city but within the greater urban region and proposed connection of the network of spaces outward towards two natural parks, which could be considered as the main ecological patches. Having assessed the two main elements of a green space network—patches and corridors—through visual observation of the maps generated by the fieldwork, this study concludes that currently an ecological network is not feasible for the city because of the condition of the green spaces that make up the patches and corridors. Even a greenway along the main river corridor is not currently feasible because the highly valuable natural remnants have been significantly fragmented by cultural activities. Similarly, the road corridors are also not currently in a promising condition. The thesis ends with recommendations for the improvement of these.


The bottom of valleys, like the seaside, represents privileged places for the setting-up and extension of human population. The last decades have seen a very fast urbanization there, including in low zones renowned for being easily flooded. When they combine an accentuated topography and intense and brutal precipitation, these zones can have extremely sudden and devastating floods. The department of the Gard, the French metropolitan territory the most exposed to these fast floods, provides one such example. In living memory, these catastrophic floods mark out the history of the region despite numerous actions having been undertaken with more or less success to deal with the problem. Regulations have also evolved in order to channel urbanization and reduce the vulnerability of people and their property. However, if at the legal level, the mayors and the prefects have had the possibility of forbidding urbanization in high-risk areas since the end of the 19th century, we can remark a limited recourse to these plans (plan of submersible surface 1935, plan of risk exposure 1982, the perimeter R111-3 of the planning laws 1959) to control the urbanization in flood-risk areas before the implementation of the plans of risk prevention (PPR). One of the stakes in the program " Mobiclimex ", financed by the ANR, is to highlight the consideration of flood risks and the regulations in the delivery of the recent building permits. According to the Ministry of Ecology, sustainable development and energy, in 2009, 44 % of housing and 41 % of the population were exposed to the risk of flooding in 2009 in the Gard; figures among the highest in France. However, this order of magnitude says nothing of the evolutions of construction observed in flood-risk areas. That is why, looking at three symbolic municipalities of the Gard (Nimes, Ales and Sommieres), we can analyze simultaneously the level of flood risk, the evolution of buildings and the evolution of the legislation on the subject. Having dated the set of buildings recognized by a precise scale (BDTopo source of the IGN), we can lead a thorough statistical analysis of the phenomena of urbanization coupled with the levels of hazards. This approach allows us on one hand, to underline the strong relations between types of constructions, zones of hazards and periods of urbanization, and to highlight different strategies according to the different municipalities, these strategies evolving over time.


This paper demonstrates the control parameter optimization using a hybrid Differential Evolution (DE) — Adaptive Neuro-Fuzzy Inference System (ANFIS) technique for permanent-magnet brushless DC (BLDC) motor drive system ensuring deadbeat response. The parameter settings are further used in adaptive current and speed controllers to attain the objective in a BLDC drive system. The parameters of both inner-loop and outer-loop PI controllers, which vary with the operating conditions of the system, are adapted in order to maintain deadbeat response for current and speed. The ANFIS is modeled using the evenly distributed operating points selected within preset regions of system loading. The optimized data from DE are used to train the ANFIS that could deduce the controller parameters at any other loading condition within the same region of operation.


Studies on species that attain very large body sizes provide a powerful opportunity to clarify the ecological correlates and consequences of body size, but logistical obstacles mean that most 'giant' species have attracted little field-based research. The Australian scrub python, Morelia kinghorni (= M. amethistina in earlier literature), is the largest Australian snake. Our three-year field study in the Tully River Gorge of tropical north-eastern Australia provides the first detailed ecological data on this species. Snakes aggregate in the gorge during the dry season for reproductive activities (combat, courtship and mating), and these aggregations consist primarily of large adult males. Wet-season samples from a nearby road contained more females, and more juvenile animals. Body temperatures of diurnally active pythons averaged 25.2°C, and were highly correlated with air and substrate temperatures. Larger snakes were cooler than smaller conspecifics, perhaps reflecting their slower heating rates. Recapture of marked individuals suggests that pythons of both sexes and all body sizes maintain fixed home ranges, as the distance from initial capture did not increase through time; most animals were recaptured <100 m from their initial capture point, but some dispersed at least 1.5 km. Adult male pythons spanned a massive range in body sizes (1.3-3.76 m in snout-vent length, 0.30-11 kg in mass), and larger males were more likely to engage in combat, exhibit combat-related injuries (bite wounds) and obtain matings. Presumably reflecting the reproductive advantage of larger body size, males attained much larger maximum sizes than did females within our study population.


The biological activity of sulfur and selenium, despite their similarity, shows some remarkable differences that have been recognized in many different scenarios. However, the underlying cause has not been completely clarified yet. The difference in the redox behavior of these two chalcogens has lately been addressed as justification of the presence of selenium in some essential biological systems. In particular, selenium is found in some peroxidases, i.e. glutathione peroxidases (GPx), whose redox activity relies on a fast-reacting selenocysteine and is fundamental in metabolizing harmful peroxides. In this work, a systematic in silico investigation on model systems, i.e. phenylchalcogenides, containing sulfur, selenium and tellurium is presented. Sequential oxidation reactions of these chalcogen-based substrates by hydrogen peroxide are carried out spanning the range of the biologically relevant chalcogen oxidation numbers [Advances in Molecular Toxicology, ed. J. C. Fishbein, Elsevier, 2010, vol. 4, pp. 183–222.] (2−, 0, 2+ and 4+) and analyzed through the calculation of intrinsic reaction coordinate paths and the application of the activation strain model. The results allowed us to highlight the different behaviors of S, Se and Te in highly oxidizing environments.


Regimes of chemical reaction wave propagation initiated by initial temperature nonuniformity in gaseous mixtures, whose chemistry is governed by chain-branching kinetics, are studied using a multispecies transport model and a detailed chemical model. Possible regimes of reaction wave propagation are identified for stoichiometric hydrogen-oxygen and hydrogen-air mixtures in a wide range of initial pressures and temperature levels, depending on the initial non-uniformity steepness. The limits of the regimes of reaction wave propagation depend upon the values of the spontaneous wave speed and the characteristic velocities of the problem. It is shown that one-step kinetics cannot reproduce either quantitative neither qualitative features of the ignition process in real gaseous mixtures because the difference between the induction time and the time when the exothermic reaction begins significantly affects the ignition, evolution, and coupling of the spontaneous reaction wave and the pressure wave, especially at lower temperatures. We show that all the regimes initiated by the temperature gradient occur for much shallower temperature gradients than predicted by a one-step model. The difference is very large for lower initial pressures and for slowly reacting mixtures. In this way the paper provides an answer to questions, important in practice, about the ignition energy, its distribution, and the scale of the initial nonuniformity required for ignition in one or another regime of combustion wave propagation.


This work intends to explain about the temporal aspects and the appropriation of images of photosensitive materials already revealed, as a way to produce new cinematographic narratives and transformed images, using as a demonstration of time, the wear and tear of this photosensitive material through the process of deterioration and wear of the image. By contact with fungal organisms, arising from the non-maintenance of the photographic or filmic film, providing a new possibility of image, which is in a constant process of change, and the creation of a temporal poetics, called the poetics of time. We propose to investigate the "fungal image", and its intervention in a biological way, contributing to the aesthetics of the film. The "fungal image" in slides and its development processes is treated, which permeate the analog + digital hybridization, which involves the rescue of old analog technologies and their resignification in the digital context.


With recent advances in natural language processing, rationalization becomes an essential self-explaining diagram to disentangle the black box by selecting a subset of input texts to account for the major variation in prediction. Yet, existing association-based approaches on rationalization cannot identify true rationales when two or more snippets are highly inter-correlated and thus provide a similar contribution to prediction accuracy, so-called spuriousness. To address this limitation, we novelly leverage two causal desiderata, non-spuriousness and efficiency, into rationalization from the causal inference perspective. We formally define a series of probabilities of causation based on a newly proposed structural causal model of rationalization, with its theoretical identification established as the main component of learning necessary and sufficient rationales. The superior performance of the proposed causal rationalization is demonstrated on real-world review and medical datasets with extensive experiments compared to state-of-the-art methods.


The immunogenicity of three random copolymers of amino acids with L-glutamic acid and L-alanine (GA), L-glutamic acid and L-tyrosine (GT), or L-glutamic acid, L-alanine, and L-tyrosine (GAT), administered in complete Freund's adjuvant, was studied in several inbred and random-bred guinea pig strains. The animals were tested for delayed sensitivity and their sera were assayed for the presence of antibody directed against the immunizing polymer. All of the guinea pigs developing delayed hypersensitivity also had significant antibody levels in their sera. Inbred strain 2 guinea pigs responded to immunization with GA, but failed to form detectable responses to GT. Inbred strain 13 animals, on the other hand, responded to GT, but not to GA. The (2 x 13)F1 hybrids responded to both GA and GT with both delayed hypersensitivity and circulating antibody. Thus, the ability of these inbred guinea pigs to respond immunologically to GA or GT is controlled by distinct autosomal dominant genes. A variable percentage of random-bred guinea pigs, depending on their source as well as their strain, responded to immunization with GA and with GT. All guinea pigs, both inbred and random bred, responded to immunization with GAT. The ability to respond immunologically to GAT, therefore, does not seem to be under simple genetic control. However, the levels of anti-GAT antibody found in the sera of animals lacking the ability to respond to GA were much lower than those detected in GA responder animals.


The cloud computing is the most efficient technology that reduces the time, cost and resources which are used by IT companies of any size from small to large companies. There are many cloud approaches existing nowadays related to store the data files and synchronize file versions. However, few of these cloud models let the user open or configure the file on cloud. Therefore, our new cloud model proposed in this paper concentrate to let the user open, execute, configure, edit, delete, and update his files online, on the cloud. It gives the user all the operating systems features and virtual desktop icons on the cloud. In addition, the proposed cloud operating system offers variety of selected applications that allow the users to write documents, draw graphs, and compile classes and programs.


The BEM‐based acoustic holography is applied to predicting vibroacoustic parameters on the boundary enclosing the interior space. The singular value decomposition method is utilized for inverse operation of the transfer matrix. Such backward reconstruction usually suffers from the divergence phenomenon due to the inversion of ill‐conditioned matrix produced by nonradiating wave components involved with extremely small measurement errors. In order to minimize the reconstruction error arising from the divergence phenomenon, optimal measurement positions are determined by the effective independence method. In addition, regularization methods are used to enhance the resolution of reconstructed field by suppressing the nonradiating wave components. The interior field of a rectangular box is considered as an example for validating and demonstrating the proposed reconstruction process and the experimental verification is carried out. It is noted that the present method can effectively improve the resolution of the reconstructed field, thus vibroacoustic parameters on the vibrating boundary can be estimated with reasonably good precision.


SUMMARY In this paper, ultra-wideband (UWB) multiple access systems are introduced by using direct-sequence (DS) and hybrid direct-sequence time-hopping (DS/TH) code division multiple access (CDMA) that use arbitrary chip-duty of the spreading sequences. The bit error probabilities are presented. First of all, the variances of the multiple access interference are developed by investigating the collision properties of the signals. Afterward, various approximations are applied. The standard Gaussian approximation (SGA) for the DS system is shown to become extremely optimistic as the chip-duty becomes low. Though the hybrid system performs better, the SGA still remains optimistic. To obtain accurate results, Holtzman's simplified improved Gaussian approximation (SIGA) and Morrow and Lehnert's improved Gaussian approximation (IGA) are used. A shortcoming of the SIGA is rediscovered that renders it unusable for low-duty DS systems, especially, at high signal-to-noise ratio. However , for the hybrid system, the SIGA works as an excellent tool. The IGA is used to get accurate results for the low-duty DS systems. It is shown that lowering of chip-duty by keeping chip rate and chip length unchanged improves performance for asynchronous DS and both asynchronous and synchronous hybrid systems. However, under the same processing gain, a high-duty system performs better than a low-duty system. Performance of synchronous DS system remains independent of chip-duty.


Abstract The biotransformation of lignocellulosic materials into biofuels and chemicals requires the simultaneous action of multiple enzymes. Since the cost of producing an efficient enzyme system maybe high, mixed cultures of microorganisms maybe an alternative to increase enzymatic production and consequently reduce costs. This study investigated the effects of different inoculum ratios and inoculation delays on the biosynthesis of cellulases and xylanases during co-cultivation of Aspergillus niger and Trichoderma reesei under solid-state fermentation (SSF). While the monoculture of T. reesei was more efficient for CMCase production than the co-cultivation of A. niger and T. reesei, a significant increase in β-glucosidase and xylanase production was achieved by co-cultivation of both species. The maximum CMCase activity of 153.91 IU/g was obtained with T. reesei after 48 h of cultivation, while the highest β-glucosidase activity of 119.71 IU/g (after 120 h) was obtained by co-cultivation of A. niger and T. reesei with a 3:1 inoculum ratio (A. niger: T. reesei). The greatest xylanase activity observed was 589.39 IU/g after 72 h of mixed culturing of A. niger and T. Reesei with a 1:1 inoculum ratio. This is the first study where the effects of inoculum ratio and inoculation delay in mixed culture of T. reesei and A. niger under SSF have been systematically assessed, and it indicates co-cultivation as a feasible alternative to increase enzymatic production.


A novel and simple approach has been developed for a large-scale synthesis of ZnO nanorods using ultrasound radiation. Double-pod-like ZnO nanorods were directly grown from the starting precursors of zinc nitrate hydrate [Zn(NO3)26H2O] and hexamethylene tetramine (HMT) in deionized water without any templates or seeds. The obtained double-pod-like product had a diameter ranging from 80 to 150 nm and length ranging from 1 to 5 um. Scanning electron microscope (SEM), X-ray diffraction (XRD) and transmission electron microscope (TEM) revealed that these products are of high purity, hexagonal and of single-crystalline structure. The ZnO nanorods synthesized were utilized for gas sensing application. Alumina plate consists of Pt interdigitated electrode was used as sensor substrate. The as-prepared products were transferred to the surface of substrate by screen printing method to fabricate the gas sensor. The sensing properties of the sensor were investigated toward methyl mercaptan (CH3SH). The sensor shows good and fast response towards methyl mercaptan at a fixed operating temperature. The high sensitivity may be ascribed to the high surface area and aspect ration of the double-pod-like nanomaterial.


The rate of cybercrime is on the rise as more people embrace technology in their different spheres of live. Hackers are daily exploiting the anonymity and speed which the internet offers to lure unsuspecting victims into disclosing personal and confidential information through social engineering, phishing mails and sites and promises of great rewards which are never received. Thus resulting in great loss of property, finances, life, etc. and harm to their victims.  This research work seeks to evaluate ways of protecting users from malicious Uniform Resource Locators (URLs) embedded in the emails they receive. The aim is to evaluate ways of identifying malicious URLs in emails by classifying them based on their lexical and hostname features. This study is conducted by extracting features from URLs sourced from phishing tank and DMOZ and adopting Association Rule of classification in building a URL classifier that analyzed extracted features of  a URL and use it in predicting if it is malicious or not.  0.546 level of accuracy and an error rate of 0.484 was achieved as multiple URL features were employed in the classification process.


SUMMARY: The effect of dissolved oxygen concentration on glucose metabolism, poly-β-hydroxybutyr-ate (PHB) synthesis and respiration of nitrogen-fixing Azotobacter beijerinckii was investigated over a range of values spanning oxygen limitation and sufficiency (nitrogen limitation) in continuous culture. The activities of the Entner-Doudoroff enzymes decreased with increasing oxygen supply while glucose-6-phosphate dehydrogenase was unaffected; β-ketothiolase and acetoacetyl-CoA reductase decreased more markedly, reflecting the fall in PHB content. The metabolic quotients for O2 and CO2 increased rapidly with increasing oxygen supply, in keeping with the respiratory protection of nitrogenase. The specific activities of all these enzymes, and also of fructose-1,6-bisphosphate aldolase, increased with increasing dilution rate under either oxygen or nitrogen limitation, except that both β-ketothiolase and acetoacetyl-CoA reductase activities fell at the highest dilution rate (0·23 h-1) under oxygen limitation. It was concluded that the role of the Entner-Doudoroff sequence as the major route of glucose metabolism in A. beijerinckii was unaffected by oxygen concentration and growth rate.


Background The School of Life Sciences (SoLS) (University of Bradford) has recently completed the first stage of a dedicated centre for SoLS simulation technology, designed to enhance learning and teaching in the areas of anatomy, physiology, pharmacology and pathology. The Simulation Lecture Theatre houses a high fidelity human patient simulator (HPS) and an Anatomage Table ®, a virtual dissection table which allows the detailed study of the human body, demonstrating normal physiology or pathological changes. The newly-designed undergraduate Pharmacy curriculum1 is an ideal platform to utilise new/existing simulation technologies, integrating them into appropriate areas of the curriculum and providing interactive and experiential learning2 opportunities. Methodology Various methods have been used to integrate simulation technology in order to remove animal tissue use in undergraduate pharmacology teaching,3 and address the need for interactive learning opportunities to enhance current provision.4 Results To date, we have successfully: Designed and implemented small group teaching sessions using the Anatomage table, increasing the anatomy taught in appropriate areas of the new curriculum; Designed and created online video demonstrations using the Anatomage table to enhance the provision of accessible learning materials; Utilised the HPS to demonstrate the physiological responses of a human (healthy or with a pre-existing disorder) to drugs or to drug overdoses; Replaced pharmacology experiments using animal tissue with computer assisted learning. Potential impact The integration of new and existing technologies into the curriculum will create new opportunities for students to experience virtual human dissection and the real-time effects of different drugs on the human body - situations which would not usually be possible in an undergraduate Pharmacy degree. This work also includes feedback from staff and Pharmacy students involved in the design and development of these resources. Future work will build on these resources as well as the future development of interprofessional education opportunities. References General Pharmaceutical Council (2011) "Future Pharmacists: Standards for the initial education and training of pharmacists" Accessed online 13-06–2014 Zigmont, JJ, Kappus, LJ, and Sudikoff SN (2011) "Theoretical Foundations of Learning Through Simulation" Seminars in Perinatology 35:47–51 Badyal, DK & Desai, C (2014) "Animal use in pharmacology education and research: The changing scenario" Indian Journal of Pharmacology, 46(3): 257–65 Branch, C (2013) "Pharmacy students' learning and satisfaction with high-fidelity simulation to teach drug-induced dyspepsia" American Journal of Pharmaceutical Education 77(2); Article 30


Previous studies suggest that humans use facial characteristics as a cue of kinship in a context-dependent manner: a self-resembling face is preferred as a target of cooperation because cooperating with kin enhances inclusive fitness, but avoided as a mating partner because mating with kin increases the risk of inbreeding. Another line of evidence indicates that children internalize faces of their family members and later use them as a referent with which faces of others are compared. Using digital morphing techniques, we conduct an experiment in a village in Sumba, Indonesia, to investigate effects of facial self- or parent-resemblance on perceived attractiveness of opposite-sex faces in the context of a long-term or short-term relationship. Our results show that females prefer a male face not resembling themselves and males prefer a female face not resembling their mothers, both in the long-term context.


We address multi-armed bandits (MAB) where the objective is to maximize the cumulative reward under a probabilistic linear constraint. For a few real-world instances of this problem, constrained extensions of the well-known Thompson Sampling (TS) heuristic have recently been proposed. However, finite-time analysis of constrained TS is challenging; as a result, only O(\sqrt{T}) bounds on the cumulative reward loss (i.e., the regret) are available. In this paper, we describe LinConTS, a TS-based algorithm for bandits that place a linear constraint on the probability of earning a reward in every round. We show that for LinConTS, the regret as well as the cumulative constraint violations are upper bounded by O(\log T) for the suboptimal arms. We develop a proof technique that relies on careful analysis of the dual problem and combine it with recent theoretical work on unconstrained TS. Through numerical experiments on two real-world datasets, we demonstrate that LinConTS outperforms an asymptotically optimal upper confidence bound (UCB) scheme in terms of simultaneously minimizing the regret and the violation.


Background: The third wave of COVID-19 in England coincided with the rapid spread of the Delta variant of SARS-CoV-2 from the end of May 2021. Case incidence data from the national testing programme (Pillar 2) in England may be affected by changes in testing behaviour and other biases. Community surveys may provide important contextual information to inform policy and the public health response. Methods: We estimated patterns of community prevalence of SARS-CoV-2 infection in England using RT-PCR swab-positivity, demographic and other risk factor data from round 15 (interim) of the REal-time Assessment of Community Transmission-1 (REACT-1) study (round 15a, carried out from 19 to 29 October 2021). We compared these findings with those from round 14 (9 to 27 September 2021). Results: During mid- to late-October 2021 (round 15a) weighted prevalence was 1.72% (1.61%, 1.84%) compared to 0.83% (0.76%, 0.89%) in September 2021 (round 14). The overall reproduction number (R) from round 14 to round 15a was 1.12 (1.11, 1.14) with increases in prevalence over this period (September to October) across age groups and regions except Yorkshire and The Humber. However, within round 15a (mid- to late-October) there was evidence of a fall in prevalence with R of 0.76 (0.65, 0.88). The highest weighted prevalence was observed among children aged 5 to 12 years at 5.85% (5.10%, 6.70%) and 13 to 17 years at 5.75% (5.02%, 6.57%). At regional level, there was an almost four-fold increase in weighted prevalence in South West from round 14 at 0.59% (0.43%,0.80%) to round 15a at 2.18% (1.84%, 2.58%), with highest smoothed prevalence at subregional level also found in South West in round 15a. Age, sex, key worker status, and presence of children in the home jointly contributed to the risk of swab-positivity. Among the 126 sequenced positive swabs obtained up until 23 October, all were Delta variant; 13 (10.3%) were identified as the AY.4.2 sub-lineage. Discussion: We observed the highest overall prevalence of swab-positivity seen in the REACT-1 study in England to date in round 15a (October 2021), with a two-fold rise in swab-positivity from round 14 (September 2021). Despite evidence of a fall in prevalence from mid- to late-October 2021, prevalence remains high, particularly in school-aged children, with evidence also of higher prevalence in households with one or more children. Thus, vaccination of children aged 12 and over remains a high priority (with possible extension to children aged 5-12) to help reduce within-household transmission and disruptions to education, as well as among adults, to lessen the risk of serious disease among those infected.


This paper estimates farmer benefits for corn rootworm (CRW) active Bt corn and costs of complying with Environmental Protection Agency insect resistance management requirements. The estimates are obtained from farmer survey data that were collected in Minnesota in 2002, just prior to the commercial releases of CRW Bt corn. Benefit estimates range from $14 to $33.4 million, while compliance cost estimated range from $3.5 to $8.7 million depending on whether or not CRW Bt corn also controlled the European corn borer and whether of not it was approved for sale in major export markets.


current in relation to the voltage difference V D = V s - V L . When V L approaches V s , the relation-ships between currents become i c = i L and i 0 0 ≈ . Abstract To reduce errors due to loading effects, an automatic compensation circuit (ACC) for the loading effect is developed. The concept of the ACC is quite simple. The ACC generates a current in relation to the difference between the input and load voltages. The ACC compensates for the errors automatically with only a connection to the buffer amplifier in parallel. The errors due to loading effects were compensated to nearly zero with the ACC. Furthermore, to confirm the function of the ACC, we used an inductive voltage divider (IVD) that has known load characteristics. The errors of the in-phase components reach 100 × 10 - 6 owing to loading effects, but the errors are compensated to nearly zero with the ACC. Similarly, the errors of the quadrature components are compensated by the ACC automatically.


The principle of avoiding surprises, on the other hand, provides some recourse. This is because most of the time there is general agreement about which possible outcomes would be surprising. Moreover, if the patient is surprised, that is some - albeit inconclusive - reason to believe that the physician should have provided the information. Also, a physician who fails to warn a patient must be willing to say that he was unprepared for that outcome, and so may be open to the criticism that he should have been. Granted, there will be instances in
which it is not clear that the physician should have been prepared for an outcome, or should have found it unsurprising. But these correspond with the instances in which it simply is not clear whether the physician had the obligation to provide that information. There are gray areas. Although Steinberg's characteristics will be helpful for physicians sincerely looking for guidance, my concern is that they cannot provide a standard, and would not allow criticism of those rare physicians who stubbornly refuse to inform their patients.


We consider a birth and death process in which death is due to both 'natural death' and to competition between individuals, modelled as a quadratic function of population size. The resulting 'logistic branching process' has been proposed as a model for numbers of individuals in populations competing for some resource, or for numbers of species. However, because of the quadratic death rate, even if the intrinsic growth rate is positive, the population will, with probability one, die out in finite time. There is considerable interest in understanding the process conditioned on non-extinction. In this paper, we exploit a connection with the ancestral selection graph of population genetics to find expressions for the transition rates in the logistic branching process conditioned on survival until some fixed time T, in terms of the distribution of a certain one-dimensional diffusion process at time T. We also find the probability generating function of the Yaglom distribution of the process and rather explicit expressions for the transition rates for the so-called Q-process, that is the logistic branching process conditioned to stay alive into the indefinite future. For this process, one can write down the joint generator of the (time-reversed) total population size and what in population genetics would be called the 'genealogy' and in phylogenetics would be called the 'reconstructed tree' of a sample from the population. We explore some ramifications of these calculations numerically.


A new semianalytical method, which is a combination of the density functional theory with Rosenfeld density functional and the Ornstein–Zernike equation, is proposed for the calculation of the effective depletion potentials between a pair of big spheres immersed in a small hard sphere fluid. The calculated results are almost identical to the integral equation method with the Percus–Yevick approximation, and are also in agreement well with the Monte Carlo simulation results.


Soil samples were prepared for multi-element analysis using HNO3 leaching or pseudo-total digestion with HNO3, HCl and HF in a microwave oven, both methods requiring 70 min heating time. Two calibration approaches for the soil characterization were also compared: external calibration, combined with internal standardization, and isotope dilution (ID) after appropriate spiking of the soils with a stable isotope mixture prior to sample preparation. Analyses were performed using inductively coupled plasma sector field mass spectrometry (ICP-SFMS). Accurate total elemental concentrations were only obtained for Cd and P using both sample preparation methods in two certified reference materials, NIST SRM 2709 and CCRMP SO-2, as well as comparable values for a Finnish inter-laboratory soil. The pseudo-total digestion method also provided accurate results for As, Be, Co, Fe, Mn, Ni, Pb, Sb, Ti, V and Zn. For Cu in SO-2 and Cr in both certified reference materials, incomplete recoveries were always obtained. In the case of Cr, this is due to difficulties associated with the complete solubilization of refractory minerals.
 For a given final dilution factor, external calibration provides better limits of detection (LODs) than ID. As both methods of quantification yield results of essentially equivalent accuracy and precision, external calibration is to be preferred as a greater number of elements are amenable to analysis in a shorter measurement time. On the other hand, ID can be combined with matrix separation (NH3 precipitation was used here), allowing lower dilution factors to be used without deleterious effects on the instrumental performance. In particular, improved LODs could be obtained for Cd, Cu and Hg, primarily as a result of being able to introduce ten-fold more concentrated solutions from which the bulk of the matrix had been removed. For Cu and Ni, matrix separation almost eliminated Ti, and thus the formation of spectrally interfering TiO+ was completely suppressed. Potentially, the combination of ID and matrix separation would allow these elements to be determined without resorting to medium resolution measurement mode, again improving the LODs for the determination by ID-ICP-SFMS.


Infusing autonomous artificial systems with knowledge about the physical world they inhabit is of utmost importance and a long-lasting goal in Artificial Intelligence (AI) research. Training systems with relevant data is a common approach; yet, it is not always feasible to find the data needed, especially since a big portion of this knowledge is commonsense. In this paper, we propose a novel method for extracting and evaluating relations between objects and actions from knowledge graphs, such as ConceptNet and WordNet. We present a complete methodology of locating, enriching, evaluating, cleaning and exposing knowledge from such resources, taking into consideration semantic similarity methods. One important aspect of our method is the flexibility in deciding how to deal with the noise that exists in the data. We compare our method with typical approaches found in the relevant literature, such as methods that exploit the topology or the semantic information in a knowledge graph, and embeddings. We test the performance of these methods on the Something-Something Dataset.


Context
This improvement project was set in Lincolnshire, a large rural county in the East Midlands with high prescribing rates of hypnotic drugs compared with the rest of England. Eight general practices volunteered to participate in a Quality Improvement Collaborative (QIC) designed to improve management of sleep problems in patients presenting to primary care.

Problem
Sleep problems are common affecting around 40% of adults in the UK. Insomnia has considerable resource implications in terms of disability, impaired quality of life and health service utilisation. Up to half of individuals with Insomnia seek help from primary care and hypnotic drugs are often inappropriately prescribed for long term use. Non-pharmacological treatment measures are rarely implemented in practice despite guidance supporting their use. A lack of training as well as limited availability of resources for effective sleep assessment and treatment in primary care are possible explanations for this. It is clear that there is considerable scope for improving management of sleep problems in general practice

Assessment of problem and analysis of its causes
We used a Quality Improvement Collaborative to introduce practitioners to sleep assessment tools including the Insomnia Severity Index (ISI), Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index (PSQI) and Sleep Diaries and non-pharmacological interventions such as Cognitive Behavioural Therapy for Insomnia (CBTi). Practitioners from participating practices were asked to begin using these where appropriate within their day to day practice.

Strategy for change
The project team met bi-monthly with practice teams to share learning. We used adult learning techniques to promote rapid experimentation (Plan, Do, Study, Act) cycles, process redesign and monthly feedback of prescribing rates and costs of hypnotic drugs using statistical control charts. Data were collected from the collaborative meetings to understand the facilitators, barriers and changes that practices were making as a result of the Quality Improvement Collaborative (QIC).

Measure of improvement
Qualitative data were collected via audio recordings of practice and collaborative meetings with practitioners and practice staff. This data was then transcribed verbatim. Thematic analysis was carried out supported by computer software MaxQDA using a framework method. Nine themes emerged which were then reviewed by five members of the evaluation steering group to assess inter-rater reliability of the themes. We used statistical process control charts and an interrupted time series design to analyse prescribing data for the two year period preceding the establishment of the collaborative and for the six months of its operation.

Effects of changes
There was a significant reduction in hypnotic prescribing of benzodiazepines and Z drugs in the practices over the six months of the project and this improvement has been sustained since the initiative.
Nine themes emerged from the qualitative data: -

 Engagement of staff: Most practitioners showed enthusiasm to incorporate changes in their practice and encouraged other members of the practice to become involved by demonstrating use of the tools and reminders during meetings

"It's brought up at every practice meeting and so it's always fresh in people minds. It's not something that's then forgotten."

 Practitioner views of the tools: Practitioners tried the tools and techniques and overall seemed to favour the Sleep diary and Insomnia Severity Index (ISI) over the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index (PSQI)

"Generally we found that the ISI was easy to complete, score and interpret and can be used in general practice"

 Practitioner preconceptions: Practitioners came with preconceptions about the feasibility of sleep tools and techniques. Patients' age and intellect were factors that practitioners thought might affect whether tools were completed correctly or at all.

 Needs & educational needs of patients & staff: Before this project hypnotics had been seen as the solution to most sleep problems by both patients and practitioners.

"When people come in it was so easy to give them a prescription"

"As GPs we're overly limited and actually to have a slightly more sophisticated response would actually be better for us but also for the patient".

 Barriers to implementing tools & techniques: This related to systems (of care) practitioners and patients

Systems: "Once the psychiatrist says you should have this, it is really hard as a GP to go against it because you know they say the psychiatrist has asked me to take this."

Practitioner: "We come down to the cognitive behaviour therapy approach; it's a bit thin on my part, we've not got great skills in that".

Patient: "I think the key is also definitely how to communicate it…the minute you start even trying to approach the subject that the tablets are not really very good and what about thinking about alternative ways, they will kind of glare very rudely and be like I have been there before doc[tor]. So you have got to kind of approach it in a kind of a fresh way to make them thing they are trying something new. You have got to be a salesman'.

 Changes initiated by practices: Some practices had taken other measures to try and reduce hypnotic prescribing including implementing withdrawal programmes and limiting repeat prescriptions which let to improvement is patient and practitioner experience

 GP-Patient treatment & expectations: Practitioners revealed what they thought patients expected and made suggestions of how consultations could be improved to meet patients' needs and increase successful outcomes from a sleep consultation.

 Importance of tailored approach: Each patient with Insomnia would need to have their treatment tailored to their individual requirements therefore every consultation could potentially have very different solutions

 Lack of feedback from patients: Receiving feedback from patients was difficult for some practitioners when patients didn't return for their follow-up consultation or didn't complete and return their sleep assessment tools. This lead practitioners to feel unsure as to whether patients had read and absorbed the information provided to them

Lessons learnt
Qualitative methods for collecting and analysing data were invaluable in understanding the factors which helped bring about change, how change happened and the effect of the change on process of care and patient and practitioner experience

Message for others
Quality improvement collaboratives benefit from careful analysis using qualitative as well as quantitative methods.

Further information
www.restproject.org.uk
Project manager: firstname.lastname@example.com
Project lead: email@example.com


: We present two cases who have been diagnosed of definitive Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease in the health area of Lanzarote in the period January 2002 to January 2004. The two cases are presented with clinical description, complementary tests -- including electroencephalogram, 14-3-3 protein determination -- study of the prionic protein gene, and histopathologic findings. In this article, we try to show the importance of trying to reach a definitive diagnosis with the histopathologic study once there is clinical suspicion (a diagnosis that is probable or possible). In addition our cases show that communication between the clinical and the epidemiological coordinator of the regional community and the National Center of Epidemiology is very important. We refer to the clear growth in the incidence of the disease in the population of Lanzarote in the period above mentioned. Finally, we discuss whether this growth is or is not an isolated event.


The controlled shedding of vorticity and the resulting development of liftlike forces on control surfaces are fundamental to the hydrodynamics of macroscopic marine animals and underwater vehicles alike. Computational models can reproduce these phenomena with high fidelity, but such models are largely incompatible with analytical methods of model-based feedback control design. Problems in aquatic locomotion have recently attracted attention within the analytical mechanics community, leading to the framing of such problems in the context of Lagrangian systems and geometric nonlinear control, but efforts in this area have been limited to idealized problems in which vortex shedding is conspicuously absent. This paper describes preliminary work to extend the language of geometric mechanics to address the effects of vortex shedding implicitly by modeling the development of liftlike forces on self-propelling bodies.


For Vincent Ostrom access to information was a self-evident condition for realisation of polycentric governance. The analytical framework that supports this Volume positions access to information as a polycentric prerequisite, explaining more explicitly why it is a necessary condition for the achievement of institutional essentials that characterize polycentric systems. Whilst the literature on polycentric governance makes references to the relevance of access to information, a more in-depth analysis is lacking. Often information exchanges are only portrayed in passing when looking at polycentric governance systems such as in regulatory networks or capital markets. This chapter seeks to remedy this gap by offering observations on the role, requirements and effects of access to information as a polycentric prerequisite generally and for polycentric governance in the EU specifically.


The human skeleton serves several functions for the body: support, locomotion, protection of vital organs, and housing of bone marrow. Bone remodeling is the result of the interactions of multiple elements, including osteoblasts, osteoclasts, hormones, growth factors, and cytokines, the end result being the maintenance of the bone architecture and to maintain systemic calcium homeostasis. In early life, a careful balance exists between bone formation by osteoblasts and bone resorption by osteoclasts. With aging, the process of coupled bone formation is affected by the reduction of osteoblast differentiation, activity, and life span which is further potentiated in the perimenopausal years with hormone deprivation and increased osteoclast activity. Age-related bone loss is thus not only a consequence of hormone deprivation, but also the result of changes in bone formation and cell-cell interactions with a unique pathophysiology. In this review, we describe the cellular and metabolic changes associated with aging bone and present recent evidence regarding cell differentiation within the bone marrow. We also consider the mechanism of programmed cell death, apoptosis, as being an important determinant of aging in bone as well as describe possible future interventions to prolong the life span of osteoblasts.


OBJECTIVE: Mutations in the TP53 gene are frequently detected in some types of malignant tumors (bladder, prostate, kidney, lungs, breast, colon and rectum). This study analyzed the utility of semi-quantitative determination of p53 in transitional cell carcinoma of the bladder by an immunohistochemical technique and evaluated the results at 5 years. METHODS/RESULTS: A prospective clinical cohort study was conducted on 81 patients. The study comprised two groups: nontumoral bladder tissue specimens from 20 patients (group I) and tissue specimens from 61 patients with bladder carcinoma (group II). In both groups the tissue specimens were obtained between November 1992 and November 1993, and during the follow-up period until July 1998. p53 expression was determined by a semi-quantitative method based on an immunohistochemical technique (NCL-p53-DO7, Novocastra). CONCLUSIONS: p53 oncoprotein was not found to be useful in the characterization of carcinoma of the urinary bladder.


A major critique of the globalization of the culture principle in anthropology. This study contends that the subjective anthropology promoted through postmodernism represents an extreme development of long established, highly patronizing and misleading evaluations in the anthropologist's creative role in the construction of theory. Arguing that theory building is dependent on the actual study of peoples - a study which is empirically based and historically sensitive - the book advocates the "fieldwork mode of production and reproduction". The simplest model for the construction of empirically-grounded theory involves three interacting sets of factors: the subjective ethnographer and their deployment of current theoretical assumptions; the multi-layered ethnographic "facts" disclosed by fieldwork; and the geopolitical and historical contexts in which fieldwork is conducted.


A 7-day-old (term small for gestational age) newborn female, first of a twin delivery, presented to the paediatric admissions unit, with a 2-day history of coryza, cough, shortness of breath and poor feeding. The twins were born at term by normal delivery (twin 1 weighed 1.89 kg and twin 2 2.58 kg) and they did not require any resuscitation at birth. The parents were of Asian origin and were first cousins. The mother had three previous normal deliveries and the children were healthy. The pregnancy had been complicated by gestational diabetes mellitus requiring insulin treatment. There was no other major family history of note.

On examination, the baby had signs of upper respiratory tract infection, tachypnoea, mild respiratory distress, a chest clear on auscultation and normal oxygen saturations in air. Systemic examination was otherwise unremarkable. The baby was admitted for observation and nasogastric feeding, with a diagnosis of acute bronchiolitis on admission. The nasopharyngeal aspirate was negative for common respiratory viruses, including respiratory syncytial virus. Full blood count showed haemoglobin 18.9 g/dl, white cells 19.5×109/l, neutrophils 8.9×109/l, lymphocytes 6.6×109/l and …


According to the principle of processing, a non-contact photoelectric detection method for double-enveloping hourglass worm is investigated. The structure of the detection system is designed. It consists of solid-state image sensor CCD and light source. The parallel light source is installed on a sliding-board which is fixed on the rotary table. There is an inclination angular β between the parallel light source and the plane of the work table. The industrial CCD lens is mounted on the other side of the worm through a frame. The plane of the CCD is vertical to the parallel light source. Therefore CCD imaging is along with the direction of the generating process surface. By comparing the measured spiral tooth surface with the standard spiral tooth surface, the manufacturing error of worm can be calculated. Manufacturing accuracy of the worm can be obtained. Based on the four-axis CNC grinder, Non-contact photoelectric detection method is studied through preliminary experimental study. The experimental results indicate that this method is feasible in the precise detection of the double-enveloping hourglass worm.


The aim of this study is to examine the effectiveness of collaborative learning with hints and peer tutoring with hints, and individual learning with hints in chemistry laboratory education in a secondary school. A total of 96 eleventh graders participated in this study. The study has a randomized pre‐test and post‐test design with a delayed post‐test. During the four‐week intervention, students were required to carry out eight lab tasks in total. The students filled in a 17‐item self‐assessment of learning gain questionnaire on the last day. Analyses of students' learning achievements showed that students in both the collaborative learning and peer tutoring situations outperformed those learning individually with hints. The delayed post‐test, which was administered three months later, revealed that students who had been in the peer tutoring situation outscored those in the collaborative learning situation. Student self‐assessment questionnaires on learning gain provided further details in this regard.


Title: Saint Francis and the Iconography of Chastity During the second half of the 16th century, images of a naked Saint Francis of Assisi, lying on a bed of burning coal accompanied by a female prostitute, started to appear in Franciscan art – first in illustrated manuscripts and then in oil paintings and murals. The motif is known as La castita essemplaria di san Francesco (St Francis's Exemplary Chastity) or Le tentazioni di san Francesco (The Temptations of St Francis) and forms part of the new Franciscan iconography that developed as a result of the Catholic reformation (1545–1563). Many of the episodes illustrated by Giotto and the artists of the 14th and 15th centuries were replaced by others that focused on Francis's poverty, humility and exemplary chastity. In this article, the iconography of St Francis's Exemplary Chastity in Italian art is studied from its origin in late 16th-century engravings through its developments in oil painting and murals until the early 18th century. The origin of the story is found in I Fioretti di San Francesco (The Little Flowers of St Francis). The Saint is pictured as a potent and muscular Miles Christi offering an example of his spotlessly chaste character through resisting a young prostitute, but who also performs a miracle and saves her soul. This image, it is argued, reflects the position of the reformed Catholic Church, where the individual's own responsibility for salvation was clearly emphasized.


After a brief review of the previous studies and a description of the geographical setting of the Changjiang River, the Changjiang River delta, and the Changjiang River estuary, this paper first summarizes the geological framework in which the recent vertical tectonic movement is emphasized because of its close connection with relative sea level changes and earthquakes. A systematic description of the stratigraphy reveals the local geologic history. Sedimentary sequences, facies and structures since the Holocene are next briefly reviewed. The historical delta and coast development is examined, with special reference to the coastal response to sediment supply. Recent achievements on the physical and biological processes in estuarine and coastal waters are presented. These processes are found to greatly influence the temporal and spatial variation of water salinity, suspended sediment concentration, sedimentation rate, and primary productivity. The interaction of natural processes with socioeconomic development is discussed in detail, with an emphasis on the major problems of estuarine freshwater resources and the impact of water diversion, harbors and navigation channels, land shortage and the impact of land reclamation, subsiding ground surface, rising sea level and flood hazards. Finally, the probable delta development in the coming decades in response to several large scale engineering works is discussed, such as the Three-Gorges Dam, the planned water transfer to North China, and the Deep Water Navigation Channel.


This study compared the movement and coordination variability of the previously injured leg of ACL injured subjects (ACLr, n=9), against their non-injured leg and a control (nACL, n=9) leg. The variability of lower limb joint angles and couplings were calculated during a land-cut task (n=20). The previously injured leg had less variability than the noninjured leg in the knee rotation–knee abd-adduction coupling, and more variability than the nACL leg in frontal and transverse knee joint angles and hip rotation–knee abdadduction coupling. Reduced coordination variability could produce a more repetitive loading pattern linked to cartilage degeneration. Increased movement and coordination variability may stem from proprioceptive deficits on the previously injured leg and decrease the ability to adapt to perturbations.


We describe the quantum phase transition in the $N$-state chiral clock model in spatial dimension $d=1$. With couplings chosen to preserve time-reversal and spatial inversion symmetries, such a model is in the universality class of recent experimental studies of the ordering of pumped Rydberg states in a one-dimensional chain of trapped ultracold alkali atoms. For such couplings and $N=3$, the clock model is expected to have a direct phase transition from a gapped phase with a broken global $\mathbb{Z}_N$ symmetry, to a gapped phase with the $\mathbb{Z}_N$ symmetry restored. The transition has dynamical critical exponent $z \neq 1$, and so cannot be described by a relativistic quantum field theory. We use a lattice duality transformation to map the transition onto that of a Bose gas in $d=1$, involving the onset of a single boson condensate in the background of a higher-dimensional $N$-boson condensate. We present a renormalization group analysis of the strongly coupled field theory for the Bose gas transition in an expansion in $2-d$, with $4-N$ chosen to be of order $2-d$. At two-loop order, we find a regime of parameters with a renormalization group fixed point which can describe a direct phase transition. We also present numerical density-matrix renormalization group studies of lattice chiral clock and Bose gas models for $N=3$, finding good evidence for a direct phase transition, and obtain estimates for $z$ and the correlation length exponent $\nu$.


This paper focuses on the effects of commuting time on sickness insurance utilization by applying a generalized propensity score estimator to a large sample of Swedish employees. We analyse the effect of commuting time both on the probability of using sickness insurance at all and on the probability that an individual on sick leave is on so-called partial sick leave rather than being completely absent from work. Insurance utilization is in both cases defined as being ill for more than 14 days. The results indicate, in general, that individuals do not use sickness insurance because of their commuting time. However, commuting time seems to increase the risk of being on sick leave among females with relatively low annual wage earnings. The results indicate, furthermore, a relatively weak and negative relationship between the probability of being on partial sick leave and commuting time in the group of individuals who have utilized sickness insurance. The latter result applies to both men and women.


Background: Ensuring gender equality in faculty representation at medical academic meetings is important as it is linked to career development, building networks, increasing visibility, and reputation. The objective of this study was to analyze the gender representation among the faculty and abstract presenters at the Indian Rheumatology Association's (IRA) Annual Conferences (IRACONs). Methods: Gender representation among faculty (speakers and chairpersons from India and abroad) and the first author among abstract presenters in the past 10 years (IRACONs 2010–2019) was tabulated. Ratio and proportion of gender representation in these categories were calculated and compared in the two time frames of 2010–2014 and 2015–2019. Trends of female gender representation as faculty and abstract presenters were also compared with trend of enrollment of female life members of the IRA. Results: Female faculty from India constituted 127/627 (20%) and 91/567 (16%) as speakers and chairpersons respectively, with combined representation (speakers and chairpersons) of 18.5% ± 2.34% (mean) over the past 10 years with only few orations (4 out of 29). Widening of gender gap in speaker representation was noted in the latter 5 years' time period of 2015–2019 (23% [3.3:1] vs. 18% [4.6:1]). More females became life members of the IRA in the period 2015–2019, and though a similar positive trend was also noted in female abstract presenters, it was not seen in the female faculty representation. Conclusion: This study confirms that gender gap exists in the representation of female faculty at IRACONs. A systematic approach is required to address this issue by sensitizing the members and developing relevant policies.


This paper addresses the optimal design of a novel nontraditional inerter-based dynamic vibration absorber (NTIDVA) installed on an undamped primary system of single degree-of-freedom under harmonic and transient excitations. Our NTIDVA is based on the traditional dynamic vibration absorber (TDVA) with the damper replaced by a grounded inerter-based mechanical network. Closed-form expressions of optimal parameters of NTIDVA are derived according to an extended version of fixed point theory developed in the literature and the stability maximization criterion. The transient response of the primary system is optimized when the coupled system becomes defective, namely having three pairs of coalesced conjugate poles, the proof of which is also spelt out in this paper. Moreover, the analogous relationship between NTIDVA and electromagnetic dynamic vibration absorber is highlighted, facilitating the practical implementation of the proposed absorber. Finally, numerical studies suggest that compared with TDVA, NTIDVA can decrease the peak vibration amplitude of the primary system and enlarge the frequency bandwidth of vibration suppression when optimized by the extended fixed point technique, while the stability maximization criterion shows an improved transient response in terms of larger modal damping ratio and accelerated attenuation rate.


Endangered, wide‐ranging megafauna have many threats to contend with during their struggle for survival in an ever‐increasing human dominance of the environment. Reliable monitoring of endangered large mammal populations is therefore a critical conservation requirement. Photographic capture–recapture (CR) techniques have opened up avenues for population monitoring of individually recognizable large mammal species. The efficient application of these techniques, however, can be constrained by challenges in reliably identifying individuals arising from the use of multiple, and potentially variable traits, as well as issues of temporal sampling of populations in the field. We address these key problems by describing an automated process of rapidly identifying individual Asian elephants (Elephas maximus) from photographs, and comparing resultant CR‐based population parameter estimates with those obtained using supervised visual identification of individuals. In addition, we assess the temporal effort necessary for robust estimation of demographic parameters in our study population. Morphological traits that maintain constancy over time, including variations in tusk characteristics, and ear fold and lobe shape, proved the most reliable for individual identification and subsequent estimation of population parameters. The use of temporally variable traits contributed to high probabilities of misidentification and biased estimates of population size. We found a minimum of seven sampling occasions necessary for reliable population estimation. Our study contributes to design issues for CR studies by providing insights into optimality of sampling effort such that precision of parameter estimates are not compromised while minimizing survey costs. We demonstrate the importance of accurate individual identification in the context of such studies and recommend the use of fixed morphological traits as the optimal individual identification strategy for species where animals are distinguished on the basis of multiple attributes, including some that may be variable over time.


Romania is one of the largest producers of sunflower closely followed by Bulgaria, Hungary, France and Spain. The total sunflower production increased after 1990, due the increase of cultivated surface during the moderate yield average increasing rate. Last year, Romania was ranked first in the European Union (EU) for the area cultivated with sunflower and the total production of sunflower seeds, according to the National Statistics Institute (INS). Romania's position on the map of sunflower producers area is supported by about 1 million hectares sown. In the segment of sunflower productivity, Romania has an unfavourable position, situated in the last places in the classification of the EU's most productive agricultures. In order to increase production per hectare, it is required to perform measures aimed at the elements of sustainable cultivation technology, including the stability of the production level by ensuring phytosanitary protection.


Cortical neurons receive synaptic inputs from thousands of afferents that fire action potentials at rates ranging from less than 1 hertz to more than 200 hertz. Both the number of afferents and their large dynamic range can mask changes in the spatial and temporal pattern of synaptic activity, limiting the ability of a cortical neuron to respond to its inputs. Modeling work based on experimental measurements indicates that short-term depression of intracortical synapses provides a dynamic gain-control mechanism that allows equal percentage rate changes on rapidly and slowly firing afferents to produce equal postsynaptic responses. Unlike inhibitory and adaptive mechanisms that reduce responsiveness to all inputs, synaptic depression is input-specific, leading to a dramatic increase in the sensitivity of a neuron to subtle changes in the firing patterns of its afferents.


The paper presents a new type of electronically-switched doubly-salient permanent-magnet (DSPM) small motor for household appliances. Its basic structure is similar to that of a switched reluctance motor, except for the presence of high-energy PMs inside the rotor poles. Electromagnetic torque is thereby developed in much the same way as in PM brushless DC motors but with an important cogging torque component required for holding the rotor stationary when the power supply is switched off. A prototype of the new DSPM small motor is designed and nonlinear finite-element analysis made to investigate its static characteristics


To enable the continued development of power transmission cabling, an understanding of the processes which result in their failures is essential. In order to do so, powerful analysis techniques are required. However, those which consider chemical degradation are lagging behind those for visible degradation. This paper presents the Atomic Force Microscopy - Infrared Spectroscopy (AFM-IR) chemical analysis technique, which can provide surface chemical analysis with resolution of ~50 nm across the infrared spectrum. Two cases are considered: interfacial tracking between epoxy and silicone rubber, and the degraded region formed in front of a needle tip in the electrical tree initiation process. The results obtained using AFM-IR are compared to the outcomes from other techniques. It is found that AFM-IR offers a unique and powerful insight into visible and non-visible degradation of solid dielectrics.


Objectives
The objective of the study was to present the findings of an audit tool aimed at assessing contact tracing activities during an Ebola outbreak.

Methods
The tool was based on Ebola guidelines and observations in the field. It was composed of 38 indicators covering contact tracing preparatives, resources, procedures and results.

Results
All contact tracing teams were assessed in Boké and Conakry prefectures (24 supervisors, 22 community workers, 442 contacts) between 1 July and 10 August 2015. Contact lists had less than a 40% accomplishment rate. 7% of the contacts were not seen by community workers or supervisors. 'No touch policy' was fully respected.

Conclusion
Audit checklist helped to systematically identify critical issues related to contact tracing.


PURPOSE
The inverted internal limiting membrane (ILM) flap technique was initially developed for the closure of large macular holes (MH). However, its efficacy in treating small holes has been a matter of debate. This study aimed to compare the anatomical and visual outcomes of vitrectomy (PPV) combined with the inverted ILM flap and ILM peeling in cases of small and medium-sized MHs.

METHODS
A meta-analysis was conducted by searching the relevant literature in databases, including PubMed, Web of Science, Embase, and Cochrane Library. The search included articles published from the inception of the databases up until January 2023. The inclusion criteria limited the studies to only experimental based research. The heterogeneity, publication bias, and sensitivity analysis were performed to ensure the statistical power and reliability of the analysis.

RESULTS
Five studies, including two RCTs and three non-randomized concurrent control trials (n-RCTs), comprising a total of 269 eyes, were analyzed. The results showed no significant difference in the MH closure rate between the two group (odds ratio (OR) = 0.29, 95% confidence interval (CI): 0.04-1.96, P = 0.33). Furthermore, there were no significant differences observed in visual acuity, external limiting membrane (ELM) and ellipsoid zone (EZ) integrity at 3 months (ELM OR = 0.88, EZ OR = 0.85) or 12 months (ELM OR = 0.96, EZ OR = 1.39) post-operation between the two groups.

CONCLUSION
The surgical repair of MHs smaller than 400μm with ILM flap seem to be similar in VA improvement and anatomical recovery compared to the traditional technique.


The development of social forestry in Malaysia is a result of the recognition that marginalized rural communities depend on forest resources for their subsistence. It is estimated that 12 percent of Malaysia's 31 million population are natives and aborigines who, at varying degree, forest resourcesdependent for their livelihood. It is also among these communities that pockets of severe poverty remain despite the significant reduction in national incidence of poverty.


Congenital pulmonary airway malformations (CPAM) are rare conditions generally diagnosed in childhood and possibly harboring malignant tumor growths. We describe a unique case of pleomorphic carcinoma in a longstanding type 1 CPAM diagnosed by wedge resection. The patient underwent completion left lower lobectomy and lymphadenectomy, but cancer recurred in nodal station #7 six months later. Clinicians should keep in mind that CPAM may hide radiologically undetectable malignancy in a relevant rate of cases, then requiring surgery in all patients. While MIA is the most common histology in type 1 CPAM, sarcomatoid change has herein been demonstrated.


In the area of Northern Adriatic Neogene and Quaternary sediments have relatively large thicknesses. Those are deposited in some depressions located inside Adriatic Basin, where is the largest Po Depression. Recent borders of Po Depression are located in Italian and Croatian offshore where hemipelagic sequences of Pliocene and Pleistocene were interrupted by Po palaeodelta progradations, and to a lesser extent of Adige and Piave Rivers. These sediments include important reservoirs with significant quantities of hydrocarbon gas, and it is why they are well explored in areas of Italian and Croatian gas fields by deep wells as well as different methods for subsurface imaging, mostly by reflective seismic. Sequence of Pliocene and Pleistocene sediments can reach thickness of 6000 m, and it is divided in lithostratigraphic system with units in rank of formation. On Italian side Cenozoic sediments up to Mesozoic basement are divided in twelve formations, but on Croatian side has been described only one formation. It is Susak Formation that encompasses all Cenozoic rocks. It is why in Croatian part of Northern Adriatic in proposed introducing of the following lithostratigraphic units 8in rank of formation): Dinaridi Formation (Mesozoic rocks), Susak Formation (Palaeocene-Miocene rocks), Istra Formation (Pliocene sediments) and Ivana Formation (Pleistocene and Holocene sediments).


Blumea balsamifera (L.) DC., locally called as "Ainaxiang" in Luodian China, is a traditional Miao nationality medicinal plant and belongs to the Family Asteraceae. B. balsamifera has been reported to possess to promote digestion, reduce phlegm, antispasmodic and sudorific properties. Chinese Pharmacopoeia defines that B. balsamifera leaves are the only plant source to extract natural (-)-borneol (Chinese name: Aipian) and natural (-)-borneol is widely used in cardiovascular Chinese patent medicines. In the production of "Aipian", the high quality raw leaves were selected to ensure high productivity. According to experience of herbalist, B. balsamifera leaves are harvested in autumn and winter, but the accurate and detailed (-)-borneol contents of leaves in growth period are not measured. Therefore, the variation of (-)-borneol content must be monitored in harvest period. Meanwhile, "Aipian" contains not only (-)-borneol but also two impurities (isoborneol and camphor), so that their contents also need to be monitored. To the best of our knowledge, no report has yet appeared on the relevant investigation. To the above objective, we must rapidly and accurately determine (-)-borneol, isoborneol and camphor contents of leaves. (-)-Borneol, isoborneol and camphor are volatile compounds, the determination need to be performed by GC and there are a lot of Determination of (-)-Borneol, Camphor and Isoborneol in Blumea balsamifera (L.) DC. Leaves by Simultaneous Ultrasonic and Microwave Assisted Extraction and Gas Chromatography


Urban transit centers or hubs that expand walkability, increase transportation and neighborhood connectivity, and broaden infrastructure resilience are intrinsically sustainable. However, under the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design Neighborhood Development (LEED ND) rating system, the infrastructure requirements of this built typology can preclude it from achieving sustainability certification. LEED ND is the most established certification system for projects at the district scale that seek economic development without the depletion of natural, cultural, and social surroundings. In 2015, Los Angeles Union Station, in California, through its master plan, LAUSMP, became the first transit hub to pursue LEED ND certification. Using evidence from LAUSMP, this paper outlines the inherent advantages, existing barriers, and needed expansions to achieve compatibility between transit center design and LEED ND. This paper also suggests updated metrics for connectivity and walkability to recognize linkages that occur above and below the ground plane, inclusion of incentives for carbon emissions reduction and air quality monitoring, and expanded exemptions for transit infrastructure from density and tree-lined street calculations. The paper proposes a revised version of the LEED ND rating system to create a standardized tool with which to measure sustainability across transit hubs.


From analysis of experimental (576 rats) and clinical (104 patients) materials, the authors drew the conclusion that the pharmacological activity of certain drugs metabolized in the liver increased markedly in old rats with experimental peritonitis. The drug-metabolizing function of the liver was inhibited significantly in peritonitis in elderly and senile patients. A method was developed for establishing the stages of peritonitis.


In this paper we study numerically solving optimal control problems with bang-bang control functions. We present a formal Lagrangian approach for solving the optimal control problem, and address difficulties encountered when numerically solving the state and adjoint equations by using the immersed interface method. We note that our numerical approach does not approximate the discontinuous control function with smooth functions, instead we solve the true bang-bang optimal control problem. Our approach for solving the optimal control problem uses an adjoint-based gradient. We use the gradient in our first-order trust-region method to generate a local minimizing control. We present detailed numerical results to demonstrate the effectiveness of our method.


ČČermák S. & Rekovets L. I. 2010. — Early Pliocene ochotonids (Mammalia, Lagomorpha) from Southern Ukraine. Geodiversitas 32 (1): 107-120. ABSTRACT The aim of this paper is to enlarge knowledge about poorly known ochotonids from the Early Pliocene (Ruscinian, MN 14) from southern Ukraine. The abundant new material of Ochotona antiqua Argyropulo & Pidoplichko, 1939 from Novopetrovka (type locality) and Frunzovka-1 is analyzed in detail and compared with the type material. The results are expressed in a redescription of the taxon and evaluation of its intraspecific variation, including the outlying and/or aberrant forms closely related to it. Pseudobellatona relicta Topachevsky, Nesin & Topachevsky, 1993 confined to the type locality Krasnopol is redescribed and considered herein as a taxon incertae sedis within the Ochotonidae clade. Specificities of the Early Pliocene taxa from the Kuchurganian sedimentary series are discussed in the context of phylogeny and systematics of Eurasian ochotonids.


Polish recommendations regarding management of patients suffering from neuroendocrine tumors of small intestine and appendix are presented. Small intestine, especially ileum represent most common origin of these tumors. Majority of them are well differentiated and grow slowly. Rarely, they are less differentiated with fast growth and poor prognosis. Symptoms are atypical, diagnosis could be often accidental. In 4–10% of patients typical symptoms of carcinoid syndrome are present. Chromogranin A is useful in the laboratory diagnostics, and urinary excretion of 5-hydroxyindoloacetic acid is helpuf for the diagnostics and monitoring of the disease. Histopathological diagnostics was extensively described. Ultrasound, colonoscopy, capsule endoscopy, baloon enteroscopy, computed tomography, magnetic resonance and somatostatin analogs scintigraphy could be used for the visualization. The treatment of choice in the neuroendocrine tumors of small intestine and appendix is radical or palliative surgery, if possible using endoscopy. Pharmacotherapy consists of biotherapy and chemotherapy. The crucial in biotherapy is somatostatin analogs application, possible in symptomatic treatment of hormonally functioning tumors. This is treatment of choice in carcinoid crisis. Interferon alfa could be applied because of the same indications as somatostatin analogs, except for carcinoid crisis. Chemotherapy is less successful in disseminated or locally advanced intestinal neuroendocrine tumors, so radioisotope therapy should be considered in each case of unresectable tumor. (Pol J Endocrinol 2008; 59 (1): 87–96)


Intractivity laser spectroscopy is an analytical technique which offers the possibility of making sensitive measurements of atomic and molecular species in combustion environments. Absorption signals can be as much as a million times greater than those obtained from conventional absorption spectroscopy. In this paper we examine the main experimental and theoretical approaches that have been taken to understand how the technique works. We show that the two principal theories of intracavity spectroscopy can be reconciled and that recent theoretical and experimental advances allow intracavity spectroscopy to give reliable and reproducible results which can be used for quantitative measurements. Possible applications of the the technique as a diagnostic technique for combustion applications are proposed.


Nano-sized molecularly imprinted polymers for tiliroside were successfully prepared by a precipitation polymerization method. Acrylamide, ethylene glycol dimethacrylate, azobisisobutyronitrile, and acetonitrile/dimethyl sulfoxide were used as functional monomer, cross-linker, initiator, and porogen, respectively. The structural features and morphological characterization of tiliroside-imprinted polymers were characterized by Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy and scanning electron microscopy, respectively. The adsorption experiments indicated that the tiliroside-imprinted polymers exhibited high selective recognition property to tiliroside. Scatchard analysis indicated that the homogeneous-binding sites were formed in the polymers. The selectivity test revealed that the adsorption capacity and selectivity of polymers to tiliroside was significantly higher than that of rutin, astragalin, and kaempferol. Finally, the tiliroside-imprinted polymers were employed as adsorbents in solid-phase extraction for the extraction of tiliroside from the ethyl acetate extract of the flowers of Edgeworthia gardneri (wall.) Meisn. The results demonstrated that the extraction recoveries of tiliroside ranged from 69.3 to 73.5% by using tiliroside-imprinted polymers coupled with solid-phase extraction method. These results indicated that the tiliroside-based molecularly imprinted solid-phase extraction method was proven to be an effective technique for the separation and enrichment of tiliroside from natural medicines.


Presented as a paper at the 1974 Conference on Non-Formal Education held at the Michigan State University, this bulletin contains selective digests of not readily available, unpublished and published documents, research reports, summaries, descriptive articles, conference reports, international surveys, and observer or participant reports on the use of communication media and technology in nonformal educational projects around the world. Specific instances are cited, with emphasis on projects in the less developed areas, which might serve as tentative guidelines for future development. The first section discusses the need for a nonformal approach to education and how this might be combined with other formal and informal learning opportunities. The second section deals vith the types of media znd technology currently in use including TV, radio, traditional folk media, games and simulation techniques, audio cassettes, programed instruction, and multimedia approach. (SK)


This paper considers sampling proportional to expected size from a partly unknown distribution. The applied context is the exploration for undiscovered resources, like oil accumulations in different deposits, where the most promising deposits are likely to be drilled first, based on some geologic size indicators ("creaming"). A Log-normal size distribution turns out to have nice analytical features in this context, and fits available data reasonably well. The theoretical and practical consequences for the accumulation of knowledge on the underlying distribution based on this scheme, named Log-normal creaming, are explored in some detail. The theory is applied on the prediction of remaining oil accumulations to be found on the Norwegian Continental Shelf.


In recent years, many extensive studies have been performed that have attempted to improve the performance of TCP for wireless networks. The common assumptions made by TCP for wired networks definitely do not hold for wireless networks. TCP with its semantics such as end-to-end flow control, a congestion control mechanism and error recovery provide reliability in wired networks. Wireless communication has significantly different characteristics compared to wired networks such as higher bit error rates, higher latency, limited bandwidth, multi-path fading of the signals and handoff. In this paper, we propose an enhancement to TCP that will be referred to as E-TCP, which improves upon conventional TCP congestion and flow control in a wireless environment. Our simulation results show significant improvements to TCP performance can be achieved.


The objective of this study was to fabricate 3-dimensional (3D) chitosan nanofiber scaffolds using an electrospinning technique and explore its potential for cardiac tissue engineering. Three culture conditions were tested: cardiomyocytes only, cardiomyocytes-fibroblasts cocultures, and cardiomyocyte-endothelial cells cocultures. The cells were seeded on 2-dimensional (2D) chitosan films and 3D chitosan nanofibers. Cellular morphology and functionality were assessed using immunofluorescent staining for alpha-sarcomeric actin (SA) and gap junction protein, connexin-43 (Cx43). In both the 2D and 3D scaffolds, only the cardiomyocyte-fibroblasts cocultures resulted in polarized cardiomyocyte morphology, fibril SA expression and Cx43 expression was higher compared to the other two conditions. In addition, the fibroblasts cocultures demonstrated synchronized contractions involving large tissue-like cellular networks. To our knowledge, this is the first attempt to utilize 3D chitosan nanofibers as cardiomyocyte scaffolds. Our results demonstrate that chitosan nanofibers can serve as a potential scaffold that can retain cardiomyocyte morphology and function.


Abstract FRAP1 (FK506-binding protein 12-rapamycin complex-associated protein 1), a component of the nutrient-sensing cell signaling pathway, is critical for cell growth and metabolism. The present study determined expression of FRAP1 and associated members of the mTORC1 and mTORC2 cell signaling pathways in uteri of cyclic and pregnant ewes and conceptuses, as well as effects of pregnancy, progesterone (P4), and interferon tau (IFNT) on their expression. The mRNAs for FRAP1, LST8, MAPKAP1, RAPTOR, RICTOR, TSC1, TSC2, RHEB, and EIF4EBP1 were localized to luminal, superficial glandular, and glandular epithelia and stromal cells of uteri from cyclic and pregnant ewes, as well as trophectoderm and endoderm of conceptuses between Days 13 and 18 of pregnancy. The abundance of FRAP1, RAPTOR, RICTOR, TSC1, and TSC2 mRNAs in endometria was unaffected by pregnancy status or by day of the estrous cycle or pregnancy; however, levels of LST8, MAPKAP1, RHEB, and EIF4EBP1 mRNA increased in endometria during early pregnancy. In ovariectomized ewes, P4 and IFNT stimulated expression of RHEB and EIF4EBP1 in uterine endometria. Total endometrial FRAP1 protein and phosphorylated FRAP1 protein levels were affected by pregnancy status and by day after onset of estrus, and phosphorylated FRAP1 protein was detected in nuclei of uterine epithelia and conceptuses. In endometria of pregnant ewes, increases in abundance of mRNAs for RICTOR, RHEB, and EIF4EBP1, as well as RHEB protein, correlated with rapid conceptus growth and development during the peri-implantation period. These results suggest that the FRAP1 cell signaling pathway mediates interactions between the maternal uterus and peri-implantation conceptuses and that P4 and IFNT affect this pathway by regulating expression of RHEB and EIF4EBP1.


We present causal evidence of an important yet less explored channel for board of directors to enhance firm value, namely by building, maintaining and disclosing a CEO succession plan. Using a new dataset of 9,084 CEOs and hand-collected information of succession plans, we exploit two regulatory changes and show that better corporate governance instigates firms to disclose succession plans, which causes significantly reduction in the volatility of stock returns, the entrenchment of incumbent CEOs, and the chances of hiring less-qualified successors. Firms with better governance earn positive abnormal returns around the announcement of regulations requesting for more disclosure of CEO succession plans. Firms disclosing succession plans have higher equity returns and experience positive abnormal returns when a new CEO is announced.


Truncation artifacts arise when the object being imaged extends past the scanned field of view (SFOV). The line integrals which lie beyond the SFOV are unmeasured, and reconstruction with traditional filtered backprojection (FBP) produces bright signal artifacts at the edge of the SFOV and little useful information outside the SFOV. A variety of techniques have been proposed to correct for truncation artifacts by estimating the unmeasured rays. We explore an alternative, iterative correction technique that reduces the artifacts and recovers the support (or outline) of the object that is consistent with the measured rays. We assume that the support is filled uniformly with tissue of a given CT number (for example, water-equivalent soft tissue) and segment the region outside the SFOV in a dichotomous fashion into tissue and air. In general, any choice for the object support will not be consistent with the measured rays in that a forward projection of the image containing the proposed support will not match the measured rays. The proposed algorithm reduces this inconsistency by deforming the object support to better match the measured rays. We initialize the reconstruction using the water cylinder extrapolation algorithm, an existing truncation artifact correction technique, but other starting algorithms can be used. The estimate of the object support is then iteratively deformed to reduce the inconsistency with the measured rays. After several iterations, forward projection is used to estimate the missing rays. Preliminary results indicate that this iterative, support recovery technique is able to produce superior reconstructions in the case of significant truncation compared to water cylinder extrapolation.


Hydrogen is seen as an important future energy carrier as part of the move away from traditional hydrocarbon sources. Delayed ignition of a hydrogen-air mixture formed from an accidental release of hydrogen in either a confined or congested environment can lead to the generation of overpressure impacting both people and assets. An understanding of the possible overpressures generated is critical in designing facilities and effective mitigation systems against hydrogen explosion hazards. This paper describes the numerical modelling of hydrogen deflagrations using a new application PDRFOAM-R that is part of the wider OpenFOAM open-source CFD package of routines for the solution of systems of partial differential equations. The PDRFOAM-R code solves momentum and continuity equations, the combustion model is based on flame area transport and the turbulent burning velocity correlation is based on Markstein and Karlovitz numbers. PDRFOAM-R is derived from publicly available PDRFOAM tool and it resolves small and large obstacles, unlike PDRFOAM which is based on the Porosity Distributed Resistance approach. The PDRFOAM-R code is validated against various unconfined-uncongested and semiconfined-congested explosion experiments. The flame dynamics and pressure history predicted from the simulation show a reasonable comparison with the experiments.


Music recommender systems are used by millions of people every day to discover new and exciting music. Central to making recommendations is the representation of each track, which may be used to calculate similarity. Content representations capture the musical and texture facets of each track, and semantic representations describe social and cultural information provided by listeners. This thesis is motivated by an analysis of the strengths and weaknesses of both content and semantic representations. Content representations can be available for all tracks in a collection, but provide poor recommendation quality. Semantic representations suffer from the cold-start problem and are not available for all tracks, but provide good recommendation quality when a strong representation is available. These observations highlight the need to integrate both content and semantic representations, and use the strengths of each to improve music recommendation quality and discovery. A bridge of the gap between content and semantic representations is achieved in this thesis through hybrid representation. Content texture representations are examined, and a new music-inspired texture representation is defined. This content is integrated with semantic tags directly, and through a mid-level pseudo-tag representation. The effect of these approaches is to increase the high quality discovery of tracks, and to allow users to uncover interesting novel recommendations. The challenge of evaluating music recommendations when many tracks are undertagged is addressed. Implicit and explicit feedback provided by users is exploited to define a new ground truth similarity measure, which accurately reflects how different recommendation methods perform. A user study is conducted to evaluate both this measure, and the performance of integrated representations for recommending strong novel recommendations.


WHILE pneumatosis cystoides intestinalis is not a common condition, it occurs frequently enough to warrant the attention of the clinician, because its unique features should readily lead to its recognition. Moreover, while the exact mode of its origin is not clear, the condition seems causally related to other commoner disorders; in such cases, awareness of the existence of pneumatosis cystoides intestinalis may aid in the diagnosis or therapy of the associated disease. This condition involves the presence of gaseous cysts of varying size within the walls of the stomach and of the intestine. If, as often occurs, some of the cysts rupture, air enters the peritoneal cavity, leading to the clinical and roentgenologic picture of pneumoperitoneum, which may prompt the erroneous diagnosis of perforation of a viscus. The roentgenographic appearance of gaseous cysts, with or without pneumoperitoneum, is so characteristic that the correct diagnosis should not be missed. HISTORICAL REVIEW


This study has identified a single amino acid change in the viral glycoprotein that profoundly affects the ability of lymphocytic choriomeningitis virus (LCMV) to persist in its natural host. Adult immunocompetent mice infected with a variant of the Armstrong strain, spleen isolate clone 13 (svA/svA), harbor virus for several months and exhibit suppressed T cell responses. In contrast, adult mice infected with a reassortant virus (svA/wtA) that contains the L segment of the spleen variant and the S segment of the parental wt Armstrong, make potent LCMV-specific CTL responses and clear the infection within 2-4 wk. These two viruses, spleen variant clone 13 and the reassortant svA/wtA, are identical in their noncoding regions and show no amino acid changes in any of their viral genes except for one substitution in the glycoprotein. The reassortant virus svA/wtA has a phenylalanine at amino acid residue 260 of the glycoprotein, whereas the spleen variant clone 13 has a leucine at this position. This study constitutes one of the first reports defining the genetic basis of viral persistence at the whole animal level, and identifying a single mutation that markedly increases the ability of a virus to persist in its natural host.


Background: Patient discomfort secondary to an indwelling urethral catheter in the post operative period can be very distressing. These symptoms resemble the overactive bladder (OAB) syndrome. Muscarinic receptor blockers have been successful in the management of OAB. However, information on the use of these drugs in the management of the postoperative catheter-related bladder discomfort (CRBD) in sub-Saharan Africa is still relatively sparse. Objective: To assess the efficacy of preoperative oral tolterodine in the management of CRBD in surgical patients in the immediate postoperative period. Methods: This was a double-blind placebo-controlled study consisting of 56 patients in each arm who underwent general anesthesia. Each patient was given oral tolterodine or placebo 1 hour before the induction of anesthesia. The patient was later assessed at the recovery room at intervals after recovery from anesthesia. The presence of CRBD was noted and graded. Results: The overall incidence of CRBD in both the tolterodine group and the control were 85.7% and 91.1%, respectively. Overall, tolterodine prophylaxis (TP) was associated with an absolute risk reduction (ARR) of 5.4%, relative risk reduction (RRR) of 5.8%, and a number needed to treat (NNT) of 19. The incidence of moderate-to-severe CRBD in the tolterodine and control groups were 10.7% and 78%, respectively, with an ARR of 74.5% with TP. Conclusion: TP does not significantly reduce the incidence of CRBD in the immediate postoperative period but appears to be efficient in the reduction of the severity of postoperative CRBD.


This article investigates how the U.S. military occupation of the German Rhineland after the First World War helped to reconstruct patriarchy in the occupied zone through the control of doughboys' and Frauleins' sexuality. The relative stability enjoyed in the American zone in turn enabled the United States to mediate conflicts and operate as a reconciling influence among the other, more quarrelsome occupying powers. The two systems of power and privilege—patriarchy and international relations—operated simultaneously to produce the desired result of maintaining the American international advantage in the postwar world.