"I teach only two things—suffering and the end of suffering," said the Buddha. Through the Dharma—truth or path to truth—he explained that suffering originates in the clinging mind, and that suffering is released by an enlightened mind. In The Buddha is Still Teaching, editors Jack Kornfield and Noelle Oxenhandler present material that answers the Buddha's call to continuously make the Dharma new, for new ages and new places. This compilation borrows and adapts work from seventy-five teachers, dating back to Gandhi (1939), Hesse (1951), and Krishnamurti (1969), but mostly excerpts work written during the past twenty years. Contributors come from both east (the Dalai Lama, Shunryu Suzuki, and Thich Nhat Hanh, among others) and west (including Philip Kapleau, Sharon Salzberg, and Alan Watts). The shortest entry is the cryptic line, "Your mind is all stories," from Dipa Ma, but most entries are several paragraphs or more. Several poems, most notably by Rick Fields and Gary Snyder, complement this collection. Jack Kornfield is a trained Buddhist monk and has earned a doctorate in clinical psyschology. Cofounder, in 1974, of the Insight Meditation Society, and author of several books, Kornfeld's influence in introducing Buddhism to the West has been considerable. Noelle Oxenhandler is also a longtime practicing Buddhist who has published several books of nonfiction and many articles in such periodicals as The New Yorker, Vogue, and The Oprah Magazine. The organization and style of these presentations will be appreciated by both the devotee and the uninitiated. Four sections—Wise Understanding, Compassion and Courage, Freedom, and Enlightenment (and the Bodhisattva Path)—arrange material that is at times dense and abstract, but is often illuminated by an allegory or illustration on a succeeding page. The grasping, clinging mind that the Buddhist associates with suffering, for example, is on one page compared to the ocean's surface, with its waves of varying sizes; on another, it is personified in the seven-year-old "who vigilantly watches to see who got more." Mindfulness training is compared to learning to swim, while, in another excerpt, a clear forest pool symbolizes the mind at rest. Parables and personal stories also serve as teaching tools. In one story, a Vietnam veteran recalls how a meditation retreat he attended, eight years after his tour had ended, helped him to "release the inner demons of war" by acknowledging the memories that he had previously been unable to face. "While the memories have stayed with me," he observes, "the nightmares have not." JOE TAYLOR (October 16, 2010)


This qualitative study utilized the phenomenological method, which focused on the experiences of retiring teachers in Angeles City, Pampanga during the shift to the online distance learning (ODL) modality at the time of the COVID-19 pandemic. The goal of the study is to explore how retiring teachers have perceived the new normal education, the changes they have observed, the challenges they have encountered, coping mechanisms they have utilized, support received and their learning experiences in general. There were six participants identified through the purposive sampling technique and qualified within the criteria set in the study. Data are analyzed through Content Analysis. Findings reveal that participants perceived ODL with negative perceptions. Most of the participants identified changes in the new normal education in terms of instructional materials and preparations, classroom environment, and learning modality. Challenges and struggles identified in instruction are technological, time management and delivery, and motivational challenges; in classroom management are student discipline, student engagement and motivation, and student attendance; while in at the assessment are academic dishonesty, insufficient assessment activities, and irresponsibility among students. As regards the participants' coping mechanisms, in instruction, adaptive instruction, teaching resilience, and social support are noted; in classroom management, enforcing classroom rules and routines, modeling ideal behaviors, home-school partnership, and building capacity; in assessment, assessment accommodations and modifications, positive attitudes towards students, and building capacity. Supports are also received by the participants like professional, social, administrative, and spiritual support. Further, retiring teachers had positive learning experiences in ODL. Based on the findings, it is suggested that support should be sustained, hence, professional support must be strengthened. Keywords: Retiring teachers, online distance learning, pedagogy, teaching


Hepatoblastoma is a paradox. Although it is the most common liver tumor in children, its incidence of only 1 in 1–1.5 million makes it an exceptionally rare tumor even within the rare group of pediatric solid organ cancers. For example, while there are roughly 700 new cases of neuroblastoma and about 600 new cases of Wilms tumor in the United States each year, there are only about 50 cases of hepatoblastoma in the same time period. Despite its rarity—and this is the seemingly paradox aspect of hepatoblastoma—this tumor has attracted a steep increase in scientific attention both within the field of pediatric oncology and surgery, but more importantly, way past their borders and into the field of cancer research in general. The general attention to this rare tumor stems from a successful implementation of three essential components for the development of innovative anticancer strategies over the last two decades: (I) international collaboration; (II) interdisciplinary cooperation; and (III) translational research.


This research followed the transition of twelve Chinese students (studying business or social science subjects) from different Chinese learning environments to a UK Higher Education environment situated within a UK satellite campus in China. Using an interpretive research methodology, the participants were interviewed at different stages of one year of master's study to discover their interpretations of the challenges they faced and their responses to these challenges. Drawing on the idea of learning dispositions and Bourdieu's concept of hysteresis, the thesis proposes a model for the process that Chinese students undergo when they transfer from a Chinese education system to a UKHE setting. !
The findings of the research show that while learning experiences before the master's study usually played a crucial part in the students' preparation, those at their Chinese institutions did not provide the dispositions required for UK academic study. Although use of English and subject knowledge were major challenges, the new ways of studying and thinking also caused significant difficulties. Given time to adapt their learning dispositions, however, the students were capable of succeeding in their new learning environment. For some participants, more time was needed to adjust to UK academic study before the start of the master's courses, while others needed less time because their learning experiences had already started to help their adjustment. Implications are drawn from the findings in relation to both students and institutions in support of the aim of achieving better teaching and learning experiences and outcomes.


Pulse oximetry has become the standard of care for the detection of hypoxemia during endoscopic procedures, despite the fact that significant alveolar hypoventilation may be undetected by measurement of arterial oxygen saturation (SPO2), particularly when supplemental oxygen is administered. Exhaled carbon dioxide (CO2) monitoring (capnography), may be a better option for respiratory depression in all patients who receive sedation, especially deep sedation. Recommendations from the American Society of Anesthesiologists suggest that monitoring for apnea using capnography is a useful adjunct in the assessment of ventilatory status of patients undergoing sedation and analgesia [2]. Qadeer et al. conducted a single-centered, randomized, double-blind study, which demonstrated that capnographic monitoring of respiratory activity improves patient safety by reducing the frequency of hypoxemia, severe hypoxemia, and apnea [1]. Patients undergoing elective endoscopic retrograde cholangiopancreatography (ERCP) or endoscopic ultrasonography (EUS) with procedural sedation using a combination of opioid and benzodiazepine were included. They were randomly assigned to either a study arm in which the endoscopy teamwas blinded to capnography or an open arm in which the team was prompted of capnographic changes as measured by an independent observer of the capnography system. The primary end point was the occurrence of hypoxemia, with secondary end points including occurrence of severe hypoxemia, apnea, and oxygen supplementation. For both primary (46% vs. 69%; P < 0.001;●" Fig. 1) and secondary end points, there was significant reduction in the open (capnography) arm. This study was well designed with an adequate sample size and used hypoxemia, a clinically relevant factor, as the primary end point. Hypoxemia has been used as a surrogate marker in previous studies, as it has been characterized as a sentinel critical event for subsequent adverse events [3]. Even more concerning is the higher rate of recurrent hypoxemic events in the non-capnography group after supplemental oxygen was administered (37.8% vs. 17.5%; P = 0.01). This study enrolled patients undergoing elective ERCP/EUS with ASA class 1–3 who were sedated using an opioid/benzodiazepine combination. Could similar results be confirmed for other endoscopic procedures, for ASA class 4–5 individuals, or for propofol sedation? Only additional studies can confirm if ventilation monitoring with capnography may be even more beneficial in sicker patients and those receiving propofol. Whether or not capnography is ready for widespread clinical implementation is unclear. In this study, the use of capnography required an independent observer to monitor for abnormalities. To incorporate this system into routine use, the endoscopy team would need to be trained to understand capnographic abnormalities, and further development of an automated computer interpretation with alarm signals would be required to alert the endoscopy team of abnormal readings. These challenges do not seem insurmountable and appear to deserve further study and development, as capnography does appear to have the potential to improve patient safety and outcomes.


Laboratory evidence suggests synergism of human papillomavirus (HPV) infection with cigarette smoking behaviors in enhancing the risk of cervical cancer. In this preliminary investigation, we tested the hypothesis that HPV infection may alter the metabolic activation of tobacco smoke carcinogens, such as benzo[a]pyrene (B[a]P), thereby playing a role in the etiology of cervical cancer. We examined in vitro the metabolism and DNA adduct formation of [3H]B[a]P in normal and HPV-16 immortalized human epithelial cervical cells in culture, and investigated the effect of [3H]B[a]P on growth of these cells. Cultures of normal human cervical cells and of HPV-16 immortalized cervical epithelial cells were exposed to 0.2 microM [3H]B[a]P for 24 and 48 h. [3H]B[a]P inhibited growth of both normal and HPV-16 immortalized cervical cells. However, the growth inhibition of normal cells was more profound than that of HPV-16 immortalized cells. Comparison of the metabolism of [3H]B[a]P in these cells indicated that they both metabolize [3H]B[a]P predominantly to [3H]trans-9,10-dihydroxy-9,10-dihydrobenzo[a]pyrene ([3H]B[a]P-9, 10-diol), [3H]r-7,t-8, 9,c-10-tetrahydroxy-7,8,9, 10-tetrahydrobenzo[a]pyrene ([3H]trans-anti-B[a]P-tetraol), and unknown polar products. Enzymatic hydrolysis of water-soluble metabolites indicated that the levels of glucuronide and sulfate conjugates in these cells are negligible. Similarly, both cell lines form similar [3H]B[a]P-DNA adducts. However, the level of the (+)[3H] anti-B[a]P diol epoxide (BPDE)-deoxyguanosine adduct in HPV-16 immortalized cells after 24 and 48 h exposures was 3.8 and 3. 1 pmol/mg DNA, respectively, which is 2.2-fold and 2.6-fold greater than the level of this adduct in normal cells. Under the conditions and within the time frame employed in these assays, both the cell growth and DNA damage induced by [3H]B[a]P appear to be higher in HPV-16 immortalized cells than those detected in normal cells. The results, although preliminary, suggest that HPV-16 immortalized cervical cells are more susceptible to DNA damage by BaP which, in part, may enhance their transformation to malignant cells.


Morphological aspects of the outgrowth of Bacillus subtilis strain w23 from heat-activated spores were examined by scanning electron microscopy. After 60 min incubation at 37 °C on agar medium, cracks appeared on the spore shells at their equatorial position and vegetative bacteria emerged by breaking open the cracks. In the following 180 min, the bacteria continued to grow without cell separation or the formation of flagella, so that, at 240 min, long filamentous forms of the vegetative bacteria were seen. Cell separation occurred at 300 min and simultaneously the development of flagella was observed. In liquid medium, the vegetative bacteria showed cell separation at an earlier stage (120 min) of outgrowth and flagella were visible at this stage. These results suggested that cell separation and flagella formation were closely related events. The role of autolytic enzymes in cell separation and flagella formation in relation to spore outgrowth is discussed.


OBJECTIVES
Correct and consistent condom use remains an important public health intervention against the spread of Human Immunodeficiency Virus and other sexually transmitted infections. There is paucity of information on sexual behaviour of in-school adolescents in Uganda. We, therefore, used secondary data of the Uganda Global School-based Health Survey (UGSHS) conducted in 2003 to determine the prevalence and correlates of condom use at last sexual intercourse in urban areas of Uganda.

METHODS
A two-stage cluster sampling technique was used to obtain a representative sample. Altogether 1709 students participated in the survey in urban areas of whom 179 (14.9% of males, and 7.9% of females) had sexual intercourse within 12 months before the survey.

RESULTS
Overall 77.3% (79.7% of male, and 72.3% of female) adolescents used a condom at last sexual intercourse. Adolescents who drank alcohol and used drugs were 64% (OR = 1.64, 95% CI 1.54, 1.75) and 68%, (OR = 1.68, 95% CI 1.56, 1.81) more likely to have used a condom, respectively. Meanwhile, adolescents who ever got drunk, and who reported to ever had 2 or more sex partners were 55% (OR = 0.45, 95% CI 0.42, 0.48) and 35% (OR = 0.65, 95% CI 0.62, 0.68) less likely to have used a condom compared to those who had never got drunk, and who ever had 1 sex partner, respectively. Finally, adolescents who reported receiving no parental supervision were 45% (OR = 0.55, 95% CI 0.53, 0.58) less likely to have used a condom compared to those who reported receiving parental supervision.

CONCLUSIONS
Parental supervision may be effective in promoting condom use among adolescents. Furthermore, drinking alcohol was associated with condom use probably due to peer pressure and easy access of condoms in drinking places as condoms are not actively promoted in schools. There is need for further research on how in-school adolescents could access condoms.


We present the propagation of cylindrical waves in the media whose permittivity varies with time abruptly or continuously. By the method of variable separation, we derive the general expression of electric field of TM-polarized waves in two-dimensional space with excitation of any point at any time. With this expression, the solution for a spatially and temporally distributed source can be obtained theoretically. The focusing of reflected waves in the cross section is shown when the media undergoes a sudden or continuous change. The wave propagation in time-invariant media can be considered as a special case of the media under exponential variance.


The report on the efficacy and safety of antibiotics in the treatment of acne vulgaris, which appears in this issue, should be read by all those interested in the therapy for acne as well as those concerned about the possible side-effects of chronic antibiotic usage. This article, which has been written by the Ad Hoc Committee on the Use of Antibiotics in Dermatology, Division of Research, National Program for Dermatology (of the American Academy of Dermatology), represents an analysis of material that has already been published by many different authors. The committee has been able to reach conclusions that probably could not be validly deduced from the individual reports. As stated in the report, 10% of all tetracycline produced for human use is consumed by those undergoing treatment of acne, and only pediatricians prescribe more oral anti-infective agents than dermatologists. Moreover, in contrast to the patient being treated by the


Objective . The aim of the study was to evaluate the trend of maternal hemodynamics in uncomplicated and complicated monochorionic diamniotic twin pregnancies (MCDA). Materials and Methods . 44 monochorionic diamniotic twin pregnancies were enrolled ( Figure 1 ) and were subjected to a non invasive hemodynamic evaluation with USCOM method. All the pregnant women were followed until delivery. Results . Compared to singleton pregnancies, MCDA twin pregnancies showed a higher heart rate and cardiac output and lower total vascular resistance values (p < 0.001) in the second trimester. On the contrary, during the third trimester the cardiac output and inotropy index were lower in MCDA twin pregnancies (p < 0.001) compared to singleton pregnancies. No significant differences were found from the comparison between hemodynamic values in complicated and uncomplicated MCDA, during the three trimesters. Conclusions . Our data underline that in MCDA twin pregnancies there is a marked haemodynamic adaptation to promote a correct utero-placental perfusion, expressed by increased cardiac output and heart rate. In the third trimester, however, the cardiac output and inotro-py index decrease. These conditions might be due to a mechanism of progressive exhaustion of the maternal cardiovascular system that has been subjected, in the previous trimesters, to a greater effort than normal.


Over the past several years, the press, trade publications and academic literature have reported with increasing frequency on the social concerns caused by ubiquitous computing---Information Technology (IT) embedded in artifacts, infrastructure and environments of daily life. Designers and researchers of ubiquitous computing (ubicomp) technologies have spent considerable efforts to address these concerns, which include privacy and data protection issues, information security and personal safety. Yet, designing successful ubicomp applications is still an unreliable and expensive endeavor, in part due to imperfect understanding of how technology is appropriated, the lack of effective design tools and the challenges of prototyping these applications in realistic conditions. I introduce the concept of proportionality as a principle able to guide design of ubiquitous computing applications and specifically to attack privacy and security issues. Inspired by the principle, I propose a design process framework that assists the practitioner in making reasoned and documented design choices throughout the development process. I validate the design process framework through a quantitative design experiment vis-a-vis other design methods. Furthermore, I present several case studies and evaluations to demonstrate the design method's effectiveness and generality. I claim that the design method helps to identify some of the obstacles to the acceptance of ubiquitous computing applications and to translate security and privacy concerns into research questions in the design process. I further discuss some of the inquiry and validation techniques that are appropriate to answer these questions.


We correlated clinical, computed tomographic (CT), and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) findings in 14 patients with cerebellar infarctions. Before MRI, the diagnosis of cerebellar infarction was made in only 7 patients on the basis of clinical and CT evidence. Cerebellar infarction was bilateral in 3 patients and was associated with brainstem infarction in 6. Infarction occurred in the territory of the posterior inferior cerebellar artery (PICA) in 12 patients. The territory of the superior cerebellar artery (SCA) was involved in 1 patient, and 1 infarction encompassed the watershed between the PICA and the SCA. In patients with infarction of the PICA territory, the medial and intermediate hemispheric segments were most frequently involved. Involvement of the lateral hemispheric segment was infrequent and was independent of brainstem involvement. Because of its fine demonstration of anatomical detail, its lack of bony artifact, and its ability to visualize infarctions readily within the first 24 hours, MRI is an excellent method for demonstrating cerebellar infarction.


The purpose of the present study is to evaluate the productivity of research at the Indian Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), Bhubaneswar, in the first eight years (2012-2019) of its establishment. In this study, the authors used a number of Scientometric indices to assess research productivity. The results of the study showed that in the selected period of 2019, most research publications appear with an average growth rate of 46.43%. Most of the comments were written by five or more authors. In addition, R.R. Das is recognized as the most prolific author, and the Journal of Clinical and Diagnostic Research is one of the most popular sources of publications, with the largest number of publications with the help of scientists from AIIMS. The UK and AIIMS New Delhi are the countries and institutions that work best together. In addition, the study also found that the Indian Medical Research Council is the leading research institution with AIIMS Bhubaneswar. The title of Maiti R "Metronomic Chemotherapy", published in the Journal of Pharmacology and Pharmacotherapeutics, received the most citations. this sentence is long and somewhat complicated. This study is useful for policymakers and stakeholders in medical institutions to improve their research prospects.


The maintenance of cell shape in Caulobacter crescentus requires the essential gene mreB, which encodes a member of the actin superfamily and the target of the antibiotic, A22. We isolated 35 unique A22‐resistant Caulobacter strains with single amino acid substitutions near the nucleotide binding site of MreB. Mutations that alter cell curvature and mislocalize the intermediate filament crescentin cluster on the back surface of MreB's structure. Another subset have variable cell widths, with wide cell bodies and actively growing thin extensions of the cell poles that concentrate fluorescent MreB. We found that the extent to which MreB localization is perturbed is linearly correlated with the development of pointed cell poles and variable cell widths. Further, we find that a mutation to glycine of two conserved aspartic acid residues that are important for nucleotide hydrolysis in other members of the actin superfamily abolishes robust midcell recruitment of MreB but supports a normal rate of growth. These mutant strains provide novel insight into how MreB's protein structure, subcellular localization, and activity contribute to its function in bacterial cell shape.


Formulations of fuzzy integral equations in terms of the Aumann integral do not reflect the behavior of corresponding crisp models. Consequently, they are ill-adapted to describe physical phenomena, even when vagueness and uncertainty are present. A similar situation for fuzzy ODEs has been obviated by interpretation in terms of families of differential inclusions. The paper extends this formalism to fuzzy integral equations and shows that the resulting solution sets and attainability sets are fuzzy and far better descriptions of uncertain models involving integral equations. The investigation is restricted to Volterra type equations with mildly restrictive conditions, but the methods are capable of extensive generalization to other types and more general assumptions. The results are illustrated by integral equations relating to control models with fuzzy uncertainties.


This paper explores the Audio Source Localization problem (ASL) using only the Direction of Arrivals (DOA) estimated by a Mobile Robot Sensor Network of a fixed single acoustic source. It also proposes a fast algorithm for localizing the 2D source position using the recent Gaussian Probability over DOA approach (GP-DOA). More specifically, the paper focuses on the analysis and explanation of the proposed algorithm that runs in Θ(log22 n) time instead of the state-of-art algorithm that 2 runs in Θ(n2). Several simulation tests varying the errors over the DOA estimation and over the position of the robots are done. Test results show that the proposed approach can reach the same precision of the GP-DOA approach in less time and outperforms the Weighted Least Square method (WLS-DOA) if the maximum error over the positions of the robots is under 0.4 m in a 100 m2 room. A real experiment using Microsoft Kinect as DOA-sensors and a Pioneer 3-AT robot within the ROS framework shows that the algorithm can be a powerful approach in robotics for ASL.


SMC1 (Structural Maintenance of Chromosomes protein 1), well known as one of the SMC superfamily members, has been explored to function in many activities including chromosome dynamics, cell cycle checkpoint, DNA damage repair and genome stability. Upon being properly assembled as part of cohesin, SMC1 can be phosphorylated by ATM and mediate downstream DNA damage repair after ionizing irradiation. Abnormal gene expression or mutation of SMC1 can cause defect in the DNA damage repair pathway, which has been strongly associated with tumorigenesis. Here we focus to discuss SMC1's role in genome stability maintenance and tumorigenesis. Deciphering the underlying molecular mechanism can provide insight into novel strategies for cancer treatment.


: A rapid multi-residue method for determination of pesticide residues in processed foods manufactured from agricultural products was examined. Five mL water was added to 5 g sample in a polypropylene tube, and the tube was left to stand at room temperature for 30 min. Then, 20 mL acetonitrile was added to the sample. The mixture was homogenized in a high-speed homogenizer, followed by salting out with 1 g NaCl and 4 g anhydrous MgSO4. After centrifugation, the organic layer was purified on a graphitized carbon/PSA cartridge column. After removal of the solvent, the extract was resolved in methanol-water and analyzed with LC-MS/MS. The recoveries of 93 pesticides fortified into 5 kinds of processed foods [Chinese cabbage kimchi, marmalade, raisin, umeboshi (pickled plum) and worcester sauce] were examined at the concentrations of 0.02 and 0.1 μg/g (n=5). The recoveries of 61 pesticides in all foods were 70-120% with relative standard deviation below 20% at both concentrations. Seventy-four processed foods obtained from markets in Japan were examined with this method. Pesticide residues over the maximum residue limit (0.01 μg/g) were detected in 2 processed foods.


Background: With the aging of the population, the incidence of elderly-onset ulcerative colitis (EOUC) is expected to increase. The aim of this study was to investigate clinical characteristics and outcomes of patients with EOUC. Methods: We retrospectively analyzed 3062 Korean UC patients who were diagnosed between 1977 and 2016 and managed at Asan Medical Center, Seoul, Korea. Characteristics and outcomes of EOUC patients, defined as age ≥60 years at diagnosis of UC, were compared with those of nonelderly-onset UC (NEOUC) patients. Results: Out of 3062 patients, 226 EOUC patients (7.4%, median age at diagnosis 66.0 [IQR, 60.0–90.5], male 58.4%) were identified. The frequency of EOUC increased from 3.9% between 1977 and 1999 to 9.7% between 2008 and 2014 (P < 0.001). There were more ex-smokers in the EOUC group (P < 0.001). In the EOUC group, extensive colitis at diagnosis of UC and extensive colitis as maximum extent was less common than in the NEOUC group (13.7% versus 22.6%, P 1⁄4 0.002, and 34.5% versus 42.5%, P 1⁄4 0.024, respectively). During follow-up (median 93.5 mo [IQR, 12.1–449.0]), the proportions of patients who were ever treated with corticosteroids and anti-TNF agents were similar, but, the use of thiopurine was less frequent in EOUC group (17.8% versus 24.6%, P 1⁄4 0.023). Cumulative probabilities of colectomy at 5, 10 and 20 years after UC diagnosis were 7.4%, 7.9% and 9.0%, respectively in the EOUC group, and 2.8%, 4.8% and 7.3%, respectively in NEOUC group (P < 0.001). Conclusions: The frequency of EOUC appears to be increasing in recent years. EOUC group is likely to show distinct features at diagnosis and during follow-up compared with NEOUC group. More attention and further studies are needed in this special group of patients.


Motivated by the large variety of enhanced properties of ultrafine and nanocrystalline materials such materials are under extensive investigation. Besides focusing on classical material parameters, like strength and ductility, the fracture toughness of these materials is also of great importance, especially when the damage tolerance is required. In this contribution an overview of the fracture behavior of different metals covering ultrafine-grained iron and nickel as well as a nanocrystalline steel processed via high pressure torsion (HPT) will be given. It will be shown that the specimen orientation can have a tremendous influence on the fracture behavior and toughness. Due to this toughness anisotropy an unexpectedly good combination of high strength and high fracture toughness can be achieved very often in these materials.


This article reveals the importance of the fuel and energy balance (FEB) for ensuring the country's energy security. The role of the fuel and energy complex (FEC) in the Russian economy is shown. FEB is considered as a possible efficient tool for managing the development of the FEC and, as a consequence, ensuring the country's energy security. The necessity to develop the methodological foundations of the FEB formation is substantiated. Proposals have been made concerning the expediency of building the process of forming the FEB on the basis of systemic contours. The author's interpretation of the term "systemic contour" is disclosed in the context of solving the issues on the formation of FEB. It is proposed to single out several major systemic outlines that reflect the situation of the world's energy and political systems, the social, economic, political and energy systems of the country, as well as in the FEC and other subsystems. Particular attention is paid to the issues of information support for the formation of FEB, taking into account the spatial coverage of the subsystems included in the consolidated FEB of the country. The need for attention on the part of the state to address the issue of forming unified information and analytical space and an early warning system is underlined. The emphasis is placed on the fact that it is these information systems that will allow timely monitoring of the changes in the subsystems of the FEC, and also taking appropriate proactive measures to stabilize the situation in the short and long term.


Extracorporeal membrane oxygenation in veno-arterial configuration (VA-ECMO) is a method widely used to support circulation during the most severe conditions of heart failure or refractory cardiac arrest. It frequently bridges this otherwise fatal status to recovery, therapeutic intervention or other circulatory support. However, the use of VA-ECMO in critical situations of severely impaired heart function is associated with specific limitations. One common complication is left ventricular overload and distension, primarily due to the increased afterload caused by extracorporeal blood flow. To date, various techniques has been proposed to decrease left ventricular distension and improve its function, including insertion of intra-aortic balloon pump or percutaneous left ventricular assist device, left atrial and left ventricular venting, or switch to surgically inserted left ventricular support with or without oxygenator. The present review summarizes current minimally invasive approaches to unload overloaded left ventricle during VA-ECMO support.


Gait is the manner of walking, and gait recognition concerns the identification of people in video sequences by the way they walk. There is a number of advantages that makes gait valuable as a biometric. For instance, it is possible to detect and measure gait even in low resolution video, where it is often difficult to get other modalities, e.g., face or iris information at high enough resolution for recognition purposes. In addition, gait is difficult to disguise or conceal. Psychophysical studies indicate that humans have the capability for recognising people from even impoverished displays of gait, revealing the presence of identity information in the gait. Henceforth, it is interesting to study the utility of gait as a biometric. The goal of this thesis is to extract the motion information contained in the video sequences of the human gait and to exploit these information in means that facilitate individual recognition. To that end, four model-free methods are proposed. The proliferation of Fourier descriptors in shape analysis inspires the creation of the gait representation incorporating Fourier descriptors. The second is a method that captures the recency of gait using motion history, described by the histograms of oriented gradients. Since gait is a spatiotemporal phenomenon, it is also intuitive to explore the possibilities of characterising these spatiotemporal patterns using temporal motion patterns and statistical distribution. This notion led to the third and fourth methods; the former encodes the transient binary patterns and the latter exploits the statistical mean and variance of the silhouette deformation in the gait cycle.


Heat-induced ifiness is preventable. Physicians, teachers, coaches, and parents must be made aware of the potential hazards of high-intensity exercise in hot climates and of the measures needed to prevent heat-related illness in preadolescents.
 Because of the following morphologic and functional differences, exercising children do not adapt to extremes of temperature as effectively as adults when exposed to a high-climatic heat stress.1
 1. Children have a greater surface area-mass ratio than adults, which induces a greater heat transfer between the environment and the body.
 2. Children produce more metabolic heat per mass unit than adults when walking or running.2
 3. Sweating capacity is not as great in children as in adults.3,4
 4. The capacity to convey heat by blood from the body core to the skin is reduced in the exercising child.4,5
 The foregoing characteristics do not interfere with the ability of the exercising child to dissipate heat effectively in a neutral or mildly warm climate. However, when air temperature exceeds skin temperature, children have less tolerance to exercise than do adults. The greater the temperature gradient between the air and the skin, the greater the effect on the child.4,6,7
 Upon transition to a warmer climate, any exercising individual must allow time for conditioning for heat (acclimatization). Intense and prolonged exercise undertaken before acclimatization may be detrimental to health and might even lead to fatal heat stroke.8 Although children can acclimatize to exercise in the heat,6,9 the rate of their acclimatization is slower than that of adults.1 Therefore, a child will need more exposures to the new climate to sufficiently acclimatize.


Knowledge in the world continuously evolves, and ontologies are largely incomplete, especially regarding data belonging to the so-called long tail. We propose a method for discovering emerging knowledge by extracting it from social content. Once initialized by domain experts, the method is capable of finding relevant entities by means of a mixed syntactic-semantic method. The method uses seeds, i.e. prototypes of emerging entities provided by experts, for generating candidates; then, it associates candidates to feature vectors built by using terms occurring in their social content and ranks the candidates by using their distance from the centroid of seeds, returning the top candidates. Our method can run iteratively, using the results as new seeds. as new seeds. In this paper we address the following research questions: (1) How does the reconstructed domain knowledge evolve if the candidates of one extraction are recursively used as seeds (2) How does the reconstructed domain knowledge spread geographically (3) Can the method be used to inspect the past, present, and future of knowledge (4) Can the method be used to find emerging knowledge


The threat of Geomagnetically Induced Currents (GICs) driven by severe Space Weather looms over technological systems such as power grids. Assessing their vulnerability is thus vital to avoid damages or even disruption of the electrical power supply. This endeavor, however, entails an interdisciplinary approach, ranging from the characterization of the geoelectrical structure of the Earth beneath and around the area of interest, or the modeling of the power network from its parameters and topology, and including the validation of the modeling process by means of (direct or indirect) GIC flow measurements. In this paper, we summarize our current achievements focused on mainland Spain, concentrating on the improvements reached after going from a homogeneous Earth's resistivity to an alternative 3D electrical resistivity distribution approach to geoelectric field computation, which is still in progress because new empirical impedance tensors are needed, mainly at sites in the west of the Iberian Peninsula. The second major achievement has come from the addition of the 220 kV level to the network model. The overall improvement has been validated against real GIC data in one area of the country. The new vulnerability maps show that in some nodes the predicted GIC has been substantially reduced by the sum of both effects. The assessment has been carried out down to the level of the individual windings of each transformer, and examples of the estimated GIC flow are given for substations with numerous power transmission lines converging to them at diverse orientations.


In 1943, Robert Oppenheimer, the brilliant, charismatic head of the Manhattan Project, recruited scientists to live as virtual prisoners of the U.S. government on a barren mesa thirty-five miles outside Santa Fe, New Mexico. Los Alamos was a secret city, a primitive barbed-wire-enclosed encampment whose makeshift dormitories and labs housed scientists, their young families, and some of the most advanced scientific equipment in the world. Thousands of men, women and children spent the war years sequestered in this top-secret military facility. They lied to friends and family about where they were going and what they were doing, and then disappeared into the desert. The women came to Los Alamos over the Army's objections. But Oppenheimer insisted it would be the only way to recruit the world-class physicists he needed and keep them reasonably sane and content during the many months - even years - it would take to create this new weapon. Conant shows how the stringent security, lack of privacy, spartan living conditions and loneliness of their isolated mountain hideaway drove some residents to the brink of despair. Yet only a handful gave up and left. Oppenheimer was a leader who, for all his flaws, inspired great devotion, and the author tells the story of the patriotism, sacrifice and triumph of the bomb project through the eyes of a young Santa Fe widow who was one of his first and most loyal recruits.


Abstract The present research work aimed to develop and characterize nanobubbles (NBs) for synergistic action in human cell line A549 using gefitinib and oxygen. NBs were prepared by loading oxygen in β-cyclodextrin-based inclusion complex (IC), whereas in nanosponges by polymer condensation method. Initially, the amino-functionalization was performed using (3-aminopropyl) triethoxysilane and then, underwent PEGylation to achieve site-specific action. The loading capacities of PEGylated and non-PEGylated NBs of gefitinib were found to be 85.11 ± 2.31% and 86.14±1.24%, respectively, whereas oxygen levels were found to be 2.8mg/L and 6.9mg/L, respectively. The synergistic effect of gefitinib NBs was observed by flow cytometry due to apoptosis of cell line A549 (with apoptotic rate ranged from 35.2±2.15% to 73.6±1.57%) by inhibiting EGFR pathway and further confirmed using western blotting technique. Dual delivery of gefitinib and oxygen from β-cyclodextrin-based nanosponges showed that NBs act as a novel therapy in the treatment of non-small cell lung cancer. Graphical Abstract


Improved, largely automated methods are described for the purification and analysis o peroxisomes, lysosomes, and mitochondria from the livers of rats injected with Triton WR-1339. With these new methods, it has become possible to obtain, in less than 6 hr and with reliable reproducibility, mitochondria practically free of contaminants, as well as the rarer cytoplasmic particles in amounts (about 100 mg of protein) and in a state of purity (95%) that make them suitable for detailed biochemical studies. The results obtained so far on these preparations have made more conclusive and precise previous estimates of the biochemical and morphological properties of the three groups of cytoplasmic particles. In addition, peroxisomes were found to contain essentially all the L-α-hydroxy acid oxidase of the liver, as well as a small, but significant fraction of its NADP-linked isocitrate dehydrogenase activity. Another small fraction of the latter enzyme is present in the mitochondria, the remainder being associated with the cell sap. The mitochondrial localization of the metabolically active cytoplasmic DNA could be verified. The relative content of the fractions in mitochondria, whole peroxisomes, peroxisome cores, lysosomes, and endoplasmic reticulum was estimated independently by direct measurements on electron micrographs, and by linear programming (based on the assumption that the particles are biochemically homogeneous) of the results of enzyme assays. The two types of estimates agreed very well, except for one fraction in which low cytochrome oxidase activity was associated with mitochondrial damage.


As its economic power, military strength and cultural influence expands, India draws ever closer to becoming a leading player in world politics. Yet relatively little is known about what Indians take to be the nature of international politics and, correspondingly, how their power and influence should be used. A survey of Indian political thought reveals sharp disagreements. Moralists wish for India to serve as an exemplar of principled action. Hindu nationalists want Indians to act as muscular defenders of Hindu civilization; strategists advocate cultivating state power by developing strategic capabilities; and liberals seek prosperity and peace by increasing trade and interdependence. This article argues that current trends indicate that India will increasingly prioritize its quest for prosperity and peace. But if this quest is thwarted by external threats, then calls to enhance India's military power will most probably grow louder, and be heeded more closely.


We present a systematic study of the ferromagnetic transition induced by the holes in nitrogen doped ${\mathrm{Zn}}_{1\ensuremath{-}x}{\mathrm{Mn}}_{x}\mathrm{Te}$ epitaxial layers, with particular emphasis on the values of the Curie-Weiss temperature as a function of the carrier and spin concentrations. The data are obtained from thorough analyses of the results of magnetization, magnetoresistance, and spin-dependent Hall effect measurements. The experimental findings compare favorably, without adjustable parameters, with the prediction of the Rudermann-Kittel-Kasuya-Yosida (RKKY) model or its continuous-medium limit, that is, the Zener model, provided that the presence of the competing antiferromagnetic spin-spin superexchange interaction is taken into account, and the complex structure of the valence band is properly incorporated into the calculation of the spin susceptibility of the hole liquid. In general terms, the findings demonstrate how the interplay between the ferromagnetic RKKY interaction, carrier localization, and intrinsic antiferromagnetic superexchange affects the ordering temperature and the saturation value of magnetization in magnetically and electrostatically disordered systems.


Ferrocement is a highly versatile form of reinforced concrete made up of wire mesh, sand, water, and cement, which possesses unique qualities of strength and serviceability. It displays a series of advantages compared to reinforced concrete. Now a days ferrocement is widely used in engineering application due to high performance regards to the resistance to extension, resistance to impact, ductility. Numerous studies were conducted to understand the behaviour of ferrocement panels. This paper presents the review of studies conducted about the behaviour of ferrocement panel under static, dynamic, cyclic loading.
Keywords- Ferrocement, cyclic loading, flexural behaviour, precast ferrocement wall, dynamic analysis, static analysis


Background: Inverse electrocardiographic mapping reconstructs cardiac electrical activity from recorded body surface potentials. This noninvasive technique has been used to identify potential ablation targets. Despite this, there has been little systematic evaluation of its reliability. Methods: Torso and ventricular epicardial potentials were recorded simultaneously in anesthetized, closed-chest pigs (n=5), during sinus rhythm, epicardial, and endocardial ventricular pacing (70 records in total). Body surface and cardiac electrode positions were determined and registered using magnetic resonance imaging. Epicardial potentials were reconstructed during ventricular activation using experiment-specific magnetic resonance imaging–based thorax models, with homogeneous or inhomogeneous (lungs, skeletal muscle, fat) electrical properties. Coupled finite/boundary element methods and a meshless approach based on the method of fundamental solutions were compared. Inverse mapping underestimated epicardial potentials >2-fold (P<0.0001). Results: Mean correlation coefficients for reconstructed epicardial potential distributions ranged from 0.60±0.08 to 0.64±0.07 across all methods. Epicardial electrograms were recovered with reasonable fidelity at ≈50% of sites (median correlation coefficient, 0.69–0.72), but variation was substantial. General activation spread was reproduced (median correlation coefficient, 0.72–0.78 for activation time maps after spatio-temporal smoothing). Epicardial foci were identified with a median location error ≈16 mm (interquartile range, 9–29 mm). Inverse mapping with meshless method of fundamental solutions was better than with finite/boundary element methods, and the latter were not improved by inclusion of inhomogeneous torso electrical properties. Conclusions: Inverse potential mapping provides useful information on the origin and spread of epicardial activation. However the spatio-temporal variability of recovered electrograms limit resolution and must constrain the accuracy with which arrhythmia circuits can be identified independently using this approach.


Amid the rising climate change concerns, California enacted Senate Bill 375 (SB 375) to tackle transportation greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. SB 375 requires Metropolitan Planning Organizations (MPOs) to develop a Sustainable Communities Strategy (SCS), a regional transportation and land use vision plan, to reduce GHG emissions. Meanwhile, a local government can develop a Climate Action Plan (CAP), a non-binding, voluntary plan to reduce GHG emissions that may align with the regional SCS. Recent progress reports indicate California is not making sufficient progress to meet SB 375 emissions reduction targets, which raises important questions: (1) Are the transportation and land use strategies and targets in SCS plans reflected in the local plans to build sustainable communities? (2) Does the alignment of regional and local transportation and land use strategies mitigate GHG emissions through vehicle trip reduction? (3) How different are the effects of independent local action and alignment of local and regional actions on vehicle trip reduction? Through an in-depth content analysis of plans and policies developed by five MPOs and 20 municipalities and a quantitative analysis of the impact of local and regional strategy alignment on vehicle trip reduction over time, this study shows that the patterns of local and regional climate policy are diverse across the state, but poor alignment is not necessarily a sign of limited climate action at the local level. Cities with a long climate-planning history and the capacity to act innovatively can lead regional efforts or adopt their own independent approach. Nonetheless, there are clear patterns of common strategies in local and regional plans, such as active transportation strategies and planning for densification and land use diversity. Well-aligned regional and local level climate-friendly infrastructure appear to have the most significant impact on vehicle-trip reduction, on average a 7% decrease in vehicle trips. Yet, many local-level strategies alone, such as for goods movement, urban forest strategies, parking requirements, and education and outreach programs, are effective in vehicle-trip reduction. A major takeaway from this research is that although local and regional climate policy alignment can be essential for reducing vehicle trips, local action is equally important.


Energy has recently emerged at the forefront of sustainable development. The United Nations Development Programme's World Energy Assessment (2000) linked energy and most of the ills of modern society in both developed and developing countries. The World Summit on Sustainable Development selected energy as one of its five major agenda issues, devising a Plan of Implementation emphasising the role of energy in eradicating poverty. That same plan calls for the establishment of policy and regulatory frameworks to promote the development and dissemination of alternative energy technologies. This ground-breaking publication should serve as an invaluable tool to facilitate the understanding of the relationship between energy law and sustainable development.


Gynecologic malignancies take an important part in female cancers. Ovarian cancer is the second most common gynecologic cancer with the highest mortality rate in developed countries. Most of the patients need an adjuvant chemotherapy regimen after the initial surgery. Despite their suppressive effect on tumor cells, much toxicity on healthy cells could be seen with these standard chemotherapeutics. In that manner a new way of tumor cell disruption with less toxicity and cancer selective effect is needed, which is called targeted therapy. Moreover this approach could prevent chemo-resistance and increase chemo-sensitivity of the disease. Primary cytoreductive surgery with platinum based chemotherapy shape the initial management of these tumors. However, recently we are on the edge of molecular therapy for this cancer. In this setting we need to identify a dominant biological pathway for tumor progression and discover a functional and structural molecule within this pathway. The new therapeutic modalities with targeted molecules should build up new perspectives insight tumor cell behaviour. Agents against angiogenesis and receptors of growth factors in addition to signalling cascades and intracellular enzymes could shape the individual treatment protocols for cancer survivors.


Background: Diabetes mellitus type 1 (DM1) is an autoimmune disease characterized by metabolic destruction of pancreatic cells responsible for insulin production, with treatment based on replacing insulin. Long-acting insulin analogs are indicated for patients with DM1 who exhibit important oscillations of their daily glycemia, despite its higher cost. Our study objective was to evaluate the effectiveness and safety of two long-acting insulins, insulin glargine and detemir, in treating patients with DM1. Methods: We undertook a systematic review with meta-analysis of observational studies (cohort and registry) available in the databases and the gray literature, and a complementary search in the Diabetes Care journal. Outcomes assessed were: glycated hemoglobin concentration; fasting plasma or capillary glucose; occurrence of episodes of severe hypoglycemia and occurrence of nocturnal hypoglycemia. The assessment of methodological quality was performed using the Newcastle score. The meta-analyses were performed on software Review Manager® 5.2. Results: Out of 705 publications, 8 cohort studies were included. The quality of these studies was classified as high. In the meta-analysis, results regarding episodes of severe hypoglycemia (p = 0.02) and fasting glucose (p = 0.01) were in favor of detemir. The glycated hemoglobin (p = 0.49; I2 = 89) showed high heterogeneity and no statistically significant difference between the two. The meta-analysis of total insulin dose favored glargine (p = 0.006; I2 = 75). The rates of nocturnal hypoglycemia (NH) were evaluated only for one study and showed a significant reduction of NH after therapy with detemir, (p < 0.0001). Conclusion: Although some outcomes were favorable to detemir insulin analog, it has not been possible to identify important differences of effectiveness and safety between the two analogs. These results can help in the current debate on the inclusion of long-acting analogs on the list of reimbursed medicines in Brazil, especially with the recent introduction of an insulin glargine biosimilar at a considerably lower price.


A new irradiation position has been constructed, characterized, and put into operation at the ANITA facility in The Svedberg Laboratory (TSL) for accelerated testing of components and systems for single event effects. Results of beam characterization measurements are reported. The energy-integrated neutron flux above 10 MeV, amounting to more than 107 cm-2 · s-1, is the highest among the facilities with atmospheric-like spectra. The employed characterization and simulation techniques are applicable for a broad class of neutron facilities.


Neuromorphic circuits, which usually use analog computation for vector-matrix multiplication (VMM) in neural networks (NN), are promising machine learning accelerators with much lower latency and power consumption than digital ones. Analog computation is expected to have a more efficient design space than digital computation since the signals are not digitized. Therefore, it is very suitable for Internet-of-Thing (IoT) applications that require ultra-low power consumption at a low cost. For IoT applications, sometimes it is also desirable to eliminate the digital circuits (such as adders, registers, shifters, multiplexers, and Analog-to-Digital Converters) between the VMM arrays to further reduce the power consumption. However, the optimization of a purely analog circuit is more difficult and requires full SPICE circuit simulations. In this paper, we present a software-circuit-device co-optimization framework using a python wrapper for automatic full circuit SPICE simulation and analysis for neuromorphic circuits. This framework allows users to experiment with how the NN design (software) affects the performance of the hardware neuromorphic circuits. It takes Verilog-A or SPICE models from calibrations or PDK in various technologies and emerging memories (such as ReRAM) without further calibration (unlike using behavior models). We show that the simulation time is reasonable even with hundreds of thousands of synapses under limited computation resources. Using ReRAM and a 45nm generic technology as an example, the effects of feedback network and OpAmp design, software ML architecture, and input data accuracy on the inference accuracy are studied.


Abstract. TOPKAPI is a physically-based, fully distributed hydrological model with a simple and parsimonious parameterisation. The original TOPKAPI is structured around five modules that represent evapotranspiration, snowmelt, soil water, surface water and channel water, respectively. Percolation to deep soil layers was ignored in the old version of the TOPKAPI model since it was not important in the basins to which the model was originally applied. Based on published literature, this study developed a new version of the TOPKAPI model, in which the new modules of interception, infiltration, percolation, groundwater flow and lake/reservoir routing are included. This paper presents an application study that makes a first attempt to derive information from public domains through the internet on the topography, soil and land use types for a case study Chinese catchment - the Upper Xixian catchment in Huaihe River with an area of about 10000 km2, and apply a new version of TOPKAPI to the catchment for flood simulation. A model parameter value adjustment was performed using six months of the 1998 dataset. Calibration did not use a curve fitting process, but was chiefly based upon moderate variations of parameter values from those estimated on physical grounds, as is common in traditional calibration. The hydrometeorological dataset of 2002 was then used to validate the model, both against the outlet discharge as well as at an internal gauging station. Finally, to complete the model performance analysis, parameter uncertainty and its effects on predictive uncertainty were also assessed by estimating a posterior parameter probability density via Bayesian inference.


the Amazon basin of Ecuador revisited San Sebastian et al reported an overall excess for all cancers in San Carlos, Ecuador (standardised incidence ratio (SIR) 2.26; 95% CI 0.97 to 4.46 for males), and an increased mortality due to cancers in males (standardised mortality ratio (SMR) 3.6; 95% CI 1.31 to 7.81). The authors concluded that there was an excess of cancer cases among the villagers linked to environmental pollutants stemming from oil production activities. Since clusters present many epidemiological biases, the Centers for Disease Control issued a set of guidelines in 1990 to investigate clusters. Under those guidelines, we reviewed the cluster of cancer cases reported in San Carlos. Cancer cases from 1989 to 1998 were obtained from the original article. Data on cancer occurrence and mortality in the region were obtained from the National Cancer Registry of Ecuador, Quito (1993–7), using GLOBOCAN. GLOBOCAN is a database built by the descriptive epidemiology group of the International Agency for Research on Cancer. The International Agency for Research on Cancer calculates cancer mortality from national mortality data (1998–2000) corrected for estimated completeness (72% for males, 68% for females from Ecuador) to avoid the effect of deaths not notified to health authorities. We obtained data on population for the village of San Carlos, Ecuador, from the 2001 Ecuador census, the first to include data on the population of San Carlos. San Sebastian et al underestimated the population of San Carlos by almost 50%. In the absence of census data, they estimated the population to be ''approximately 1000'' and assumed the population to be constant during the period 1989–98, which was not the case as shown in the 2001 census where population growth in the province of Orellana was 84% during the period 1990–2001 (from 46 781 to 86 493 people). Census data showed the average population was 1471 and that it grew by 84% in 11 years. In males there were 8 cases of cancer observed and, according to the 2001 census, 8.8 were expected (SIR 0.91; 95% CI 0.42 to 1.72). In females, there were 2 cases observed and 8.9 expected (SIR 0.22; 95% CI 0.04 to 0.42). In males, there were 6 deaths observed and 6.1 expected (SMR 0.98; 95% CI 0.40 to 2.03). No cancer deaths were reported in females. Using data from the 2001 census and applying the Centers for Disease Control cluster guidelines yielded no excess of cancer or cancer mortality in the village of San Carlos. Full details of the methodology used for the calculation can be obtained from the authors at http://www.riskmr.com.


Many of the philosophical questions raised in Latin America may seem to be among the perennial problems that have concerned philosophers at different times and in different places throughout the Western tradition, but they are not altogether the same--for Latin American thinkers have often adapted them to capture problems presented by new circumstances, and sought resolutions with arguments that are indeed novel. This book explains how well-established philosophical traditions gave rise in the New World to a characteristic form of thought not to be found in other cultures. There was no clean sweep of the past and an attempt to start over: rather, Latin American thinkers gradually adapted European ideas to their needs, sometimes borrowing on a larger scale, sometimes less. It is then no surprise that, under Iberian rule, Scholasticism became the accepted view and began to lose its grip only when the rulers did. But what does seem surprising is the radical way in which those traditions were on occasions challenged, as illustrated by the cases of Jose de Acosta, a Jesuit priest in Peru, and the Mexican nun, Juana Ines de la Cruz--each of whom spoke out against certain aspects of the official philosophy in colonial society. And when theories familiar elsewhere arrived to Latin America, as in the cases of positivism and Marxism, they were often seen differently in the light of new circumstances.But above all, this book shows that there is a body of interesting philosophical arguments offered by Latin Americans concerning problems that have arisen in Spanish- and Portuguese-speaking parts of the New World. In connection with this purpose, it examines how Latin Americans have thought about philosophical issues belonging to metaphysics, philosophy of science, cross-cultural psychology, feminist epistemology, ethics, and social and political philosophy. These are taken up in due course, paying special attention to questions of rationality, gender discrimination, justice, human rights, reparation for historically dispossessed native peoples, and relativism vs. universalism--all matters of continuing concern in Latin American thought, from its earliest stirrings to the present day. And among some specific issues that have generated heated controversies from the early twentieth century to the present, the book explores how Latin Americans and their descendants abroad think of their own cultural identity, examines their critique of US mass-culture and moral philosophy, and considers at some length the vexing problem of which name, if any, is the correct one to use to refer to all of this exceedingly diverse ethnic group. A closer look at the defining elements of Latin American identity has often led to questions concerning the characteristic features that might distinguish Latin Americans and their descendants abroad from other peoples of the world, the existence of a typically Latin American philosophy, and the correct name to refer to them. These, often conflated in the literature, are treated separately by the author, who favors a historically-based account of Latin-American identity. She also argues that the existence of a characteristically Latin American philosophy can be shown--though not by appealing to some standard but implausible reasons. And to resolve the question concerning a correct ethnic-group name, she proposes a new approach to the semantics of those names.


Two hundred (200) strains of S. aureus and P. aeruginosa were isolated from clinical samples collected from patients in Murtala Muhammad Specialist Hospital and Infectious Diseases Hospital, Kano. The confirmed isolates were tested for resistance to quinolones by the agar disk diffusion susceptibility test and the agar dilution minimum inhibitory concentration test. A resistance prevalence rate of 27% and 38% were seen in S. aureus and P. aeruginosa respectively. Eighteen S. aureus isolates were resistant to only one quinolone, while 9 had multiple resistances. 25 P. aeruginosa isolates were resistant to one quinolone, while 13 had multiple resistances. Nine resistance patterns were observed in all the isolates with S. aureus isolates having 8 while P. aeruginosa had 7. There was no significant difference (p>0.05) in the resistances observed in S. aureus and P. aeruginosa isolated from the male or female atients except in the case of 2 S. aureus isolates that were resistant to sparfloxacin. Quinolones could still be relied upon as effective antibiotics in treating S. aureus and P. aeruginosa infections. The need to emphasize enforcement of antibiotic use policies in developing countries is further justified by these findings.

Keywords: Resistance, Quionolones, S. aureus, P. aeruginosa,
Kano, Nigeria


Polymer composite materials, as advanced materials have been widely used worldwide, especially in the advanced technology field, due to their outstanding properties. Nowadays, a growing attention has been paid to the environmental corrosion failure of composites. Since it is environment related corrosion, the test parameters selected were temperature, humidity and ultraviolet. Among all the environmental factors, the temperature, especially acts with humidity, is the most affective factor. In order to get detailed information, the weight gains of the samples tested were measured regularly during the test. By the comparison, it can be seen that the water absorption rate had been affected remarkably due to the salt existence or the temperature change. The observation of the sample microstructure showed that there were many holes on the surface, indicating that the surface of the samples was destroyed by the test, and that there were some interactions between the surface layer and the absorbed component. It is that only the effect of temperature and humidity was discussed in this paper, the effect of the rest environmental factors will be discussed in following paper.


Labour mobility is a complex concept because people change jobs for a variety of reasons, in different ways and with different outcomes for their lives and careers. This study explores what motivates people to change jobs and examines the influence of their employer, occupation or industry, and investigates their geographic mobility on either a permanent or temporary basis. The project also explores the extent to which qualifications or licensing requirements represent a barrier for workers considering mobility, particularly in the mining and construction industries. Combining a broad literature review with a small qualitative analysis capturing the views of employers, labour hire and recruitment firms, this study reflects the diverse range of factors affecting the supply and demand for skills. The study finds that the majority of labour mobility decisions are driven by the personal priorities of the individual, including family commitments.


The electromagnetic phenomena around inflection points are studied from a new point of view in order to co-ordinate inflective shapes analytically. To obtain the exact solutions, new coordinate systems are defined. The family of these co-ordinate systems is, on the whole, collected as inflective co-ordinate systems. The differential equations obtained using these new coordinate systems are solved by extending the usual separation method. These extensions bring out new, special functions and series. The results achieved clarify the physics of inflection points. In addition, the electrostatic field is calculated around inflection points.


A long standing goal in neuroscience has been to elucidate the functional organization of the brain. Within higher visual cortex, functional accounts have remained relatively coarse, focusing on regions of interest (ROIs) and taking the form of selectivity for broad categories such as faces, places, bodies, food, or words. Because the identification of such ROIs has typically relied on manually assembled stimulus sets consisting of isolated objects in non-ecological contexts, exploring functional organization without robust a priori hypotheses has been challenging. To overcome these limitations, we introduce a data-driven approach in which we synthesize images predicted to activate a given brain region using paired natural images and fMRI recordings, bypassing the need for category-specific stimuli. Our approach -- Brain Diffusion for Visual Exploration ("BrainDiVE") -- builds on recent generative methods by combining large-scale diffusion models with brain-guided image synthesis. Validating our method, we demonstrate the ability to synthesize preferred images with appropriate semantic specificity for well-characterized category-selective ROIs. We then show that BrainDiVE can characterize differences between ROIs selective for the same high-level category. Finally we identify novel functional subdivisions within these ROIs, validated with behavioral data. These results advance our understanding of the fine-grained functional organization of human visual cortex, and provide well-specified constraints for further examination of cortical organization using hypothesis-driven methods.


The CO2 adsorption process using amine-grafted silica is a promising technology for reducing the CO2 emissions from the power and industry sectors. In this work, silica SBA-15 was functionalized using [3-(2-aminoethylamino)propyl] trimethoxysilane (AEAPTS) in supercritical CO2 (scCO2) modified with 10% mol methanol or ethanol. The functionalization experiments were carried out at 323 K and 12.5 MPa, and with reaction times of 2 and 3 h. The molar fraction of AEAPTS in scCO2 plus 10% mol alcohol ranged from 0.5 × 10−3 to 1.8 × 10−3. It was found that as the molar fraction of AEAPTS increased, the amino-grafting density steadily rose, and the pore volume, surface area and pore size of the functionalized silica SBA-15 also decreased gradually. The scCO2 functionalization method was compared to the traditional toluene method. The diamine-SBA-15 prepared in the scCO2 process shows a slightly lower amine-grafting density but a higher surface area and pore volume than the ones obtained using the traditional method. Finally, the excess CO2 adsorption capacity of the materials at different temperatures and low pressure was measured. The diamine-silica SBA-15 displayed moderate excess CO2 adsorption capacities, 0.7–0.9 mmol∙g−1, but higher amine efficiency, ca. 0.4, at 298 K, due to the chemisorption of CO2. These findings show that diamine-grafted silica for post-combustion capture or direct air capture can be obtained using a media more sustainable than organic solvents.


The last several years have seen an explosion of scholarly interest in slavery in the Islamic world and other global contexts. Recent contributions to this field include Jonathan A.C. Brown's Slavery in Islam and Mary Ann Fay's edited volume, Slavery in the Islamic World; a new edition of Orlando Patterson's seminal Slavery and Social Death has also recently been published with a new preface.
With his ambitious and erudite monograph, Possessed by the Right Hand: The Problem of Slavery in Islamic Law and Muslim Cultures, Bernard K. Freamon intervenes in this field from the perspective of a legal scholar. His legal focus emerges most strongly in the final two chapters, in which he urges Muslims and scholars of Islam to confront the continued legacy of slavery in the contemporary Islamic world. This exhortation is embedded within a broadly transhistorical and transregional study of slavery in the Middle East and Indian Ocean, ranging from ancient Persia to 19th-century Zanzibar to contemporary Arabia. Most of this historical material is based on a synthesis of secondary scholarship, rather than a new analysis of primary sources.
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An increased understanding of the uncertainties present in rainfall time series can lead to improved confidence in both short- and long-term streamflow forecasts. This study presents an analysis that considers errors arising from model input data, model structure, model parameters, and model states with the objective of finding a self-consistent set that includes hydrological models, model parameters, streamflow, remotely sensed (RS) soil moisture (SM), and rainfall. This methodology can be used by hydrologists to aid model and satellite selection. Taking advantage of model input data reduction and model inversion techniques, this study uses a previously developed methodology to estimate areal rainfall time series for the study catchment of Warwick, Australia, for multiple rainfall–runoff models. RS SM observations from the Soil Moisture Ocean Salinity (SMOS) and Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer for Earth Observing System (AMSR-E) satellites were assimilated into three different rainfall–runoff models using an ensemble Kalman filter (EnKF). Innovations resulting from the observed and predicted SM were analyzed for Gaussianity. The findings demonstrate that consistency between hydrological models, model parameters, streamflow, RS SM, and rainfall can be found. Joint estimation of rainfall time series and model parameters consistently improved streamflow simulations. For all models rainfall estimates are less than the observed rainfall, and rainfall estimates obtained using the Sacramento Soil Moisture Accounting (SAC-SMA) model are the most consistent with gauge-based observations. The SAC-SMA model simulates streamflow that is most consistent with observations. EnKF innovations obtained when SMOS RS SM observations were assimilated into the SAC-SMA model demonstrate consistency between SM products.


Breast cancer follow-up care can be provided by family physicians after specialists complete the primary treatment. Cancer Care Nova Scotia has developed a breast cancer follow-up Clinical Practice Guideline (CPG) targeting family physicians. In this paper we present a project to computerize and deploy the said CPG in a Breast Cancer Follow-up Decision Support System (BCF-DSS) for use by family physicians in a primary care setting. We present a semantic web approach to model the CPG knowledge and employ a logic-based proof engine to execute the CPG in order to infer patient-specific recommendations. We present the three stages of the development of BCF-DSS--i.e., (a) Computerization of the paper-based CPG for Breast Cancer follow-up; (b) Development of three ontologies--i.e., the Breast Cancer Ontology, the CPG ontology based on the Guideline Element Model (GEM) and a Patient Ontology; and (c) Execution of the Breast Cancer follow-up CPG through a logic-based CPG execution engine.


We analyze the phase monitor data from Chajnantor over the period 1996 2001 and infer the level of phase fluctuations that would be seen on 1030 m, typical baseline lengths for the Atacama Compact Array (ACA). On baselines of 10-30 m, fast switching phase compensation will be useless, but water vapor radiometry (WVR) could improve the phase stability marginally. We consider the effects of phase errors on imaging and on the flux scale, and determine that (a) the ACA will require dynamic scheduling in order to meet the ALMA scientific objectives, (b) given dynamic scheduling, the ACA will likely not require any sort of active phase correction such as WVR, and (c) by permitting high frequency ACA observations during conditions with the lowest opacities and less than optimal phase stability, WVRs could increase the ACA's efficiency, especially for high frequency observations, and can probably be justified on a cost-benefit basis. There is another reason why we would want phase calibration on the ACA – the 12 7 m dishes cannot calibrate themselves to the required accuracy in a reasonable amount of time. In order to calibrate accurately, we need to correlate the 7 m dishes with the four 12 m dishes dedicated to the ACA, or even better, with the full ALMA array. If we are correlating with the four nearby 12 m dishes, we do not need phase compensation on the ACA antennas, but if we plan to correlate with the full ALMA, we absolutely need WVR and fast switching capability.


INTRODUCTION
The supine sleep position is recommended to reduce sudden infant death syndrome risk. Swaddling may improve adherence with supine placement.

AIM
To assess knowledge, attitudes, and practice regarding swaddling among adult caregivers of 0- to 3-month-old infants.

METHODS
Cross-sectional descriptive survey.

RESULTS
All 103 adults interviewed had swaddled their infant. Common reasons for swaddling included infant comfort and warmth. Almost 80% of those who swaddled their infant found it effective, 80% believed it to be comfortable, and ~90% believed swaddling to be safe. Parents who routinely used swaddling were more likely to find it effective and to place their infant supine when swaddled (P < .01).

CONCLUSIONS
Parents often use swaddling to comfort the infant, and most find it effective. Parents who routinely use swaddling are more likely to place their infant supine if swaddled. Swaddling may be a strategy for parents of infants who have difficulty sleeping in the supine position.


The characteristics of multispectral (MS) and panchromatic (P) image fusion, or pansharpening, methods are investigated. Depending on the way spatial details are extracted from P, such methods can be broadly labeled into two main classes, roughly corresponding to component substitution (CS), also known as projection substitution, and methods based on multiresolution analysis (MRA), i.e. on digital filtering. Theoretical and experimental results carried out on QuickBird and Ikonos data sets evidence that CS-based fusion is far less sensitive than MRA-based fusion to registration errors, i.e. spatial misalignments between MS and P images, possibly originated by cartographic projection and resampling of individual data sets, and aliasing occurring in MS bands and deriving from a modulation transfer function (MTF) of each MS channel that is excessively broad relatively to the spatial sampling interval. Simulated misalignments carried out at full scale by means of a suitable quality evaluation protocol have evidenced the quality-shift tradeoff of the two classes: MRA methods yield a slightly superior quality in the absence of misalignments, but are more penalized, whenever shifts between MS and P are present, than CS methods producing a slightly lower quality in the ideal case, but that are intrinsically more shift tolerant.


The aim of this paper is to report the first presentation of type 2 thoracic diastematomyelia with concurrent syrinx, intradural intramedullary epidermoid cyst, and scoliosis, in which scoliosis correction was performed. The incidence of intraspinal anomalies in patients with congenital spinal deformity varies from 4.9% to 58% depending on the reports by the authors and diagnostic techniques. Most of these are tethered cord, diastematomyelia, and syringomyelia. Intramedullary epidermoid cysts of the spinal cord are very rare tumors, especially those associated with spinal dysraphism. Clinical manifestations of these anomalies may be absent at first; therefore, MRI is important at initial evaluation. Intervention for intraspinal anomaly and scoliosis correction can be performed separately or together as 1 procedure. A 12-year-old girl was brought to us because of progressive spinal deformity. The patient had a right thoracic curve at T5-T12 of 31 degrees. The curve was rigid and partial fusion at T6-T8 was noted. MRI of the spinal cord was taken to detect any neural axis abnormalities, and it revealed diastematomyelia at T5-T8 levels and adjacent syringomyelia superiorly. Neurological examination was normal. The patient underwent syrinx drainage and diastematomyelia resection together with scoliosis correction in 1 surgical procedure. A whitegray–colored tissue of 1 cm diameter and well-defined borders was detected in the syrinx cavity, and it was excised. There were no intraoperative or postoperative complications. The patient began ambulating on postoperative day 2. Postoperative Cobb angle was 5 degrees and the pathologic diagnosis of the lesion was an epidermoid cyst.


Modeling and development of control systems to deal with the congestion at intersection in urban traffic is a critical research issue. Several approaches have been used to develop the modeling and controlling phenomenon in the said problem. These approaches include, Petri net, Fuzzy Logic, Neural Network, Genetic Algorithms, Activity Theory, Multi Agent Systems and many more. This paper is a survey on the development of Urban Traffic Control Systems using techniques discussed above in the last decade.


Priority scheduling is a fundamental tool to provide service isolation for different jobs in shared clusters. Ideally, the performance of a high-priority job should not be dragged down by another with a lower priority. However, we show in this paper that simply assigning a high priority provides no isolation for jobs with dependent computations. A job, even receiving the highest priority, may give up compute slots to another before proceeding to the downstream computation, which is because of barrier, i.e., that the downstream computation cannot start until all the upstream tasks have completed. Such an interruption of execution inevitably results in a significant delay. In this paper, we propose speculative slot reservation that judiciously reserves slots for downstream computations, so as to retain service isolation for high-priority jobs. To mitigate the utilization loss due to slot reservation, we analyze the trade-off between utilization and isolation, and expose a tunable knob to navigate the trade-off. We also propose a complementary straggler mitigation strategy that uses the reserved slots to run extra copies of slow tasks. We have implemented speculative slot reservation in Spark. Evaluations based on both cluster deployment and trace-driven simulations show that our approach enforces strict service isolation for high-priority jobs, without slowing down the other jobs with a lower priority.


In an ideal world, elections should be two things: free and fair. Every adult, with a few sensible exceptions, should be able to vote for a candidate of their choice, and each single vote should be worth the same. Ensuring a free vote is a matter for the law. Making elections fair is more a matter for mathematicians. They have been studying voting systems for hundreds of years, looking for sources of bias that distort the value of individual votes, and ways to avoid them. Along the way, they have turned up many paradoxes and surprises. What they have not done is come up with the answer. With good reason: it probably doesn't exist.


The RAS/RAF/MEK pathway is a major driver of malignant progression, particularly in cancers arising from mutations in RAS, BRAF and NF1. Although both BRAF and MEK inhibitors have been approved for treatment of melanoma, their clinical activity is commonly limited by acquired resistance due to reactivation of the pathway downstream of their targets. Since the ERK1/2 kinases are the final node in the MAPK signaling pathway, they are not subject to the feedback reactivation mechanisms that can undermine RAF or MEK blockade, offering the possibility of clinical benefit in settings where earlier drugs are ineffective. Here we describe the characterization of KO-947, a potent and selective inhibitor of ERK1/2 kinases, in biochemical, cellular and in vivo antitumor activity assays. KO-947 was profiled in vitro in biochemical activity assays, competition binding assays, and a probe-based competition binding assay in cell lysates, and subsequently screened in a large panel of human tumor cell lines focused on MAPK-dysregulated tumor types. In vivo studies were carried out in well-characterized xenograft models of BRAF-, KRAS- and NRAS-mutant disease and subsequently extended to a large panel of early-passage patient-derived xenograft (PDX) models representative of a wide range of tumor types and molecular profiles. Biochemical assays reveal that KO-947 is a 10nM inhibitor of ERK with at least 50-fold selectivity against a panel of 450 kinases. KO-947 blocks ERK signaling and proliferation of tumor cells exhibiting dysregulation of MAPK pathway signaling, including mutations in BRAF, NRAS or KRAS, at low nanomolar concentrations. KO-947 is differentiated from other published ERK inhibitors by an extended residence time and high potency in cell engagement that translate into prolonged pathway inhibition in vitro and in vivo. In cell-line derived xenograft studies, the drug profoundly suppresses ERK signaling for up to five days after a single dose and induces regressions in RAS- and RAF-mutant melanoma, NSCLC and pancreatic cancer models on administration schedules ranging from daily to weekly. Intermittent dosing enables comparable antitumor activity at reduced dose-intensity. PDX screening confirms and extends these findings to include RAS and BRAF mutant colorectal, gastric and cervical carcinoma models, and robust activity is also seen on both weekly and Q2D schedules in tumor models lacking BRAF/RAS mutations but with other dysregulation of the MAPK pathway. Thus, the favorable ADME properties of KO-947 enable the achievement of optimal antitumor activity with intermittent dosing, which may provide an opportunity to maximize the therapeutic window with flexible administration routes and schedules. These results demonstrate the potential clinical utility of KO-947 in MAPK pathway dysregulated tumors. Citation Format: Francis Burrows, Linda Kessler, Jeffrey Chen, Xin Gao, Rasmus Hansen, Shuangwei Li, Carol Thach, Levan Darjania, Yvonne Yao, Yi Wang, Ata Zarieh, Ke Yu, Tao Wu, Jingchuan Zhang, Dana Hu-Lowe, Liansheng Li, Pingda Ren, Yi Liu. KO-947, a potent ERK inhibitor with robust preclinical single agent activity in MAPK pathway dysregulated tumors [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the American Association for Cancer Research Annual Meeting 2017; 2017 Apr 1-5; Washington, DC. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2017;77(13 Suppl):Abstract nr 5168. doi:10.1158/1538-7445.AM2017-5168


BACKGROUND
Management of neonatal parenteral protein intake for preterm infants is challenging and requires daily modifications of the dose to account for the infant's postnatal age, birth weight, current weight, and the volume and protein concentration of concurrent enteral nutrition. The objective of this study was to create and evaluate the Parenteral Protein Calculator (PPC), a clinical decision support system to improve the accuracy of protein intake for preterm infants who require parenteral nutrition (PN).

MATERIALS AND METHODS
We integrated the PPC into the computerized provider order entry system and tested it in a randomized controlled trial (routine or PPC). Infants were eligible if they were ≤3 days old, had a birth weight ≤1500 g, and had no inborn error of metabolism. The primary outcome was the appropriate total protein intake, defined as target protein dose ±0.5 g/kg.

RESULTS
We randomly allocated 42 infants for 221 PN days in the control group and 211 in the PPC group. Total protein intake in the PPC group was more accurate as compared with the control group (appropriate protein dosing: odds ratio = 5.8; 95% CI, 2.7-12.4). Absolute deviation from protein target was 0.41 g/kg (0.24-0.58) lower in the PPC group.

CONCLUSION
The PPC improved appropriate protein dosing for premature infants receiving PN. Further studies are needed to test whether clinical decision support systems will reduce uremia and improve growth and to replicate similar findings in the cases of other PN nutrients.


Innovation has the potential to address a number of development challenges such as combating poverty and delivering health services, but all too often technological progress has failed to consider the needs of the poor, and has actually served to increase inequalities, rather than sharing out the benefits of new technologies and economic growth. Inclusive Innovation for Development outlines a theory of justice in innovation, arguing that principles of equity, recognition and participation can guide the direction of contemporary innovation systems towards equalizing social relations in the production of knowledge and innovation, and meeting the basic needs of the poor.


Cultivation of human monocytes with recombinant IFN-gamma causes a 5-10- fold depression in their binding of EC3b or EC3bi. This effect is observed within 18 h and is expressed for 5 d in the presence of 100 U/ml IFN-gamma. The capacity of IFN-gamma-treated phagocytes to bind EC3b and EC3bi is fully restored if the phagocytes are allowed to spread for 45 min on surfaces coated with Fn. IFN-gamma-treated cells express normal levels of cell surface C3b and C3bi receptors as measured with monoclonal anti-receptor antibodies, and spreading on Fn does not alter receptor number. We conclude that cultivation with IFN- gamma causes a change in the nature of these receptors that prevents them from interacting with ligand. Immunoelectron microscopy shows that C3bi receptors are expressed on the apical surface of the IFN-gamma- treated MO and that these receptors exhibit normal capacity to migrate in the plane of the membrane. Thus, the nature of the change caused by IFN-gamma is not related to changes in receptor number, location, or mobility. While spreading of IFN-gamma-treated cells on Fn enables C3 receptors to bind ligand, it does not enable them to promote phagocytosis. Treatment of cells with PMA alone does not affect binding or phagocytosis, but treatment of cells with both Fn and PMA enables cells to phagocytose EC3b and EC3bi. These data indicate that the binding and signaling activities of C3 receptors are separately regulated. Fn enables receptors to bind ligand and PMA enables them to signal phagocytosis.


The point of departure for Managing to Care is widespread concern that the present delivery of health and social welfare services is fragmented, uncoordinated, inefficient, costly, wasteful, and ultimately detrimental to clients' health and wellbeing. Dill traces the evolution of case management from its start as a tool for integrating services on the level of the individual client to its current role as a force behind the most significant trends in health care. Those trends include the entrenchment of bureaucracy, the challenges of once dominant professions, and the rise of corporate control. The author's purpose in adopting this analysis is to invite further scrutiny of the case management profession, and at the same time to identify new possibilities for its application. This volume brings together thoughts developed over many years of observing and participating in case management programs. It provides a multilayered perspective of case management, showing linkages among its social and historical contexts and the ways it is practiced today in diverse service settings. The author emerged convinced about the essential need for care coordination, and that present ways of providing care can work against our highest objectives in doing so. The paradoxes and contraindications embedded in case management practice became a major theme of the book. Managing to Care is highly critical of the ways case management has come to absorb and reflect the organizational flaws of the very service systems it was intended to reform. Too often management of the case comes to dominate care. The author does not call for a rejection of professional systems in favor of a resurrected informal community. While much can and should be done to strengthen our ties to one another, there will always be people whose problems require more expert help. Dill argues here that case management can provide such help, and provide it well, but only if it is grounded in the human dimension of a caring relationship. Ann E. P. Dill, associate professor of sociology and gender studies at Brown University, is a medical sociologist and social gerontologist. Her research examines issues affecting the long-term provision of health care and social services, both in the United States and in countries formerly part of Yugoslavia.


A 62-year-old male with numerous subcutaneous nodules in the lower extremities was referred to The University of Tokyo Hospital. The patient suffered from systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE), diabetes mellitus, and persisting hepatic dysfunction, and had been treated for SLE with oral prednisolone 20 mg/day and oral cyclosporine 3 mg/kg/day. The culture of scales collected from the patient's skin surface on Sabouraud's dextrose agar medium showed features of Trichophyton rubrum. Topically applied bifonazole cream was effective for tinea corporis, but oral griseofulvin 500 mg/day was discontinued after 2-month administration because of deteriorated liver function. All the nodules were resected surgically. Histologically, resected granulomas showed dermal abscesses that were tightly encapsulated by fibrous capsules. Grocott staining revealed numerous fungal elements within abscesses. The patient's condition indicated the need to perform histopathological examination of granuloma trichophyticum in order to determine whether it is tightly encapsulated. Namely, the presence of cystic granuloma trichophyticum with abscesses encapsulated by fibrous capsules suggested that the patient should be treated by surgical resection of the lesions.


: To facilitate the study of mechanisms and patterns of proteinuria, radioimmunoassays for human lysozyme (LZM) and albumin (alb) were established to permit quantitation of physiologic amounts of these proteins in urine. Commercially available LZM and alb preparations were radiolabeled with I125, and single antibody, competitive protein binding assays were developed. Separation of free and antibody-bound radioprotein was achieved with 20 per cent polyethylene glycol. LZM and alb 24-hr excretion rates for 12 normal subjects were 7 to 64 microgram and 2.3 to 16.1 mg, respectively. Of 6 renal disease patients with undetectable urine LZM by bioassay, 5 were shown to have elevated LZM concentrations by radioimmunoassay. The ease of establishing and performing these assays and their reproducibility suggest that they may have clinical and investigative value.


Purpose: To correlate and compare anterior and posterior corneal surface parameters like Kflat, Ksteep, Kavg, R1, R2, Ravg and astigmatism in healthy eyes.
Study Design: Descriptive correlational study
Place and Duration of Study: This study was conducted at Mayo Hospital, Lahore from June 2020 to Dec 2020..
Methods: This study included 176 subjects (86 males and 90 females) with mean age of 28.06±9.68 and 28.13±8.24 respectively. The data was collected through non-random convenient sampling technique by self-made proforma after taking patients' consent. Anterior and posterior corneal parameters (Kflat, Ksteep, Kavg, R1, R2, Ravg and astigmatism) were measured with GALILEI G4. Pearson correlation test was used for correlation and independent sample t-test / Mann-Whitney U test was used for comparing means of anterior and posterior corneal parameters. Data was entered and analyzed in SPSS-21.
Results: Mean of anterior and posterior corneal curvatures was 44.21±1.01 D and -6.22±0.19 D[p<0.001], Kflat was 43.76±0.99 D and -6.08±0.19 D [p<0.001] and Ksteep was 44.66±1.08 D, -6.34±0.21 D, respectively [p<0.001]. The anterior and posterior corneal curvature Ravg was 7.63±0.17 mm, 6.44±0.200 mm [p<0.001], mean R1 was 7.71±0.17 mm, 6.58±0.21 mm, [p<0.001] and mean R2 was 7.56±0.18 mm, 6.31±0.21 mm, respectively [p<0.001]. Anterior posterior corneal astigmatism was 0.90±0.55 D and -0.25±0.11 D, respectively [p<0.001].Anterior corneal parameters also show strong correlation with posterior corneal parameters.
Conclusion: There are significant difference between corneal parameters of anterior and posterior surface. Strong correlation was also found in anterior and posterior corneal parameters except corneal astigmatism.


This dissertation is concerned with the latest class of the new designer drugs (NDDs) which overruns the world in the last few years as "legal high" drugs, under the name of bath salts or synthetic cathinones. Bath salts are a group of central nervous system stimulants that consists mainly of synthetic cathinone derivatives. In nature, cathinone (β-keto amphetamine) exists in the leaves of the Catha edulis plant which can be found easily in the region of northeast Africa and the Arabian Peninsula. All synthetic cathinone derivatives contain a chiral center and most probably sold out as a racemic mixture. Commonly, one of the enantiomers will have greater psychological effect in human biological system than the other one. Therefore it's important to distinguish between synthetic cathinone enantiomers. Enantiomeric separation and determination of these NDD's may give information about the source of these synthetic drugs and the raw materials that were used in the synthesis process and also facilitates the drug tracking. The main objective of this dissertation is to develop and validate sensitive and selective analytical methods that use direct and indirect chiral separation and quantitation for synthetic cathinones in real biological samples using chromatography coupled with mass spectrometer detector (MSD) and Diode Array detector (DAD). The study goals were achieved successfully by developing and validation of three different methods for chiral separation and quantitation for 65 compounds of synthetic cathinones. Enantiomer quantitation in urine and plasma were performed and reported for the first time in this study; also it's the first time to report the chiral viii separation of tertiary amine cathinones where we were able to separate 19 out 22 of them.


We present a high level overview of a virtual machine placement system in which an autonomic controller dynamically manages the mapping of virtual machines onto physical hosts in accordance with policies specified by the user. By closely monitoring virtual machine activity and employing advanced policies for dynamic workload placement, such an autonomic solution can achieve substantial cost savings from better utilization of computing resources and less frequent overload situations.