PURPOSE
The incidence of hematologic malignancies during pregnancy is 0.02%. However, this figure is increasing, as women delay conception until a later age. Systemic symptoms attributed to the development of a hematologic cancer may overlap with physiologic changes of pregnancy. A favorable prognosis is contingent upon early diagnosis and treatment. Therefore, a high index of suspicion is required by health care providers. Although timely, accurate diagnosis followed by appropriate staging is essential and should not be delayed due to pregnancy, management guidelines are lacking due to insufficient evidence-based research. Consequently, treatment is delayed, posing significant risks to maternal and fetal health, and potential pregnancy termination. This report provides guidelines for clinical management of hematologic cancers during the perinatal period, which were developed by a multidisciplinary team including an experienced hematologist/oncologist, a high-risk obstetrics specialist, a neonatologist, and experienced nurses, social workers, and psychologists.

METHODS
These guidelines were developed by experts in the field during the first International Consensus Meeting of Prenatal Hematologic Malignancies, which took place in Leuven, Belgium, on May 23, 2014.

RESULTS AND CONCLUSION
This consensus summary equips health care professionals with novel diagnostic and treatment methodologies that aim for optimal treatment of the mother, while protecting fetal and pediatric health.


Anxiety disorders are the most common form of mental illness in USA, affecting 40 million adults older than 18 years of age, or 18.1% of the population every year. Anxiety disorders are treatable, yet only 36.9% of those suffering receive treatment. Anxiety disorders develop from a complex set of risk factors, including genetics, brain chemistry, personality, and life events. It's not uncommon for someone with an anxiety disorder to suffer also from depression or vice versa. Nearly one-half of those diagnosed with depression are also diagnosed with an anxiety disorder. Depression is the leading cause of disability worldwide. Almost 75% of people with mental disorders remain untreated in developing countries, with almost one million people taking their lives each year. In addition, according to World Health Organization (WHO), 1 in 13 people suffers from anxiety globally. WHO reports that anxiety disorders are the most common mental disorders worldwide, with specific phobia, major depressive disorder and social phobia being the most common anxiety disorders.


We present the results of systematic numerical computations relating to the extreme value statistics of the characteristic polynomials of random unitary matrices drawn from the circular unitary ensemble (CUE) of random matrix theory. In particular, we investigate a range of recent conjectures and theoretical results inspired by analogies with the theory of logarithmically-correlated Gaussian random fields. These include phenomena related to the conjectured freezing transition. Our numerical results are consistent with, and therefore support, the previous conjectures and theory. We also go beyond previous investigations in several directions: we provide the first quantitative evidence in support of a correlation between extreme values of the characteristic polynomials and large gaps in the spectrum, we investigate the rate of convergence to the limiting formulae previously considered, and we extend the previous analysis of the CUE to the CβE which corresponds to allowing the degree of the eigenvalue repulsion to become a parameter.


: Thrombocytopenia in four healthy pregnant women proved to be spurious and caused by in vitro clumping of platelets (three) or adherence of platelets to granulocytes (one) in the presence of edetic acid used to anticoagulate the blood. All had normal vaginal deliveries without unusual bleeding. One of the newborns transiently exhibited the phenomenon of platelet clumping in vitro, probably due to transplacental transfer of the platelet agglutinin from the mother. Recognition of these laboratory artifacts is important to avoid unwarranted investigations and inappropriate management of the mother and infant. Careful examination of a blood smear in all thrombocytopenic patients is the best safeguard against being misled by spurious thrombocytopenia.


Our main goal in this paper is to give new insights and directions on how to improve existing methods of hiding secret messages, possibly by combining steganography and cryptography. We start by describing the main existing methods and techniques in steganography that allow us to hide the existence of a message, together with the mostly used steganalysis techniques to counter them. We then illustrate two different approaches that help us achieve a higher level of secrecy and security, together with their limitations. The first method is about combining steganography and cryptography in such a way to make it harder for a steganalyst to retrieve the plaintext of a secret message from a stego-object if cryptanalysis were not used. The second method does not use any cryptographic techniques at all and relies solely on steganographic ones.


Although there have been challenges to higher education in the past, these most recent calls for reform may provoke a fundamental change in higher education. This change may not occur as a direct response to calls for greater transparency and accountability, but rather because of the opportunity to reflect on the purpose of higher education, the role of colleges and universities in the new millennium, and emerging scientific research on how people learn. These disparate literatures have not been tied together in a way that would examine the impact of fundamental change from the policy level to the institutional level and to the everyday lives of college and university administrators, faculty and students. Now the time has come to create a second wave of institution building and of excellence in the fields of education, research and capability building. We need higher educated people who are skilled and who can drive our economy forward. When India can provide skilled people to the outside world then we can transfer our country from a developing nation to a developed nation. This paper covers the issue regarding quality of higher education and to improve the same in the present scenario.


For many decades, digital technologies have assisted humans in producing artworks and entertainment products. The role of digital technologies in these fields, however, is not limited to serving as a tool to implement human ideas. Artificial intelligence (AI) could lead to technology becoming a creator itself. Our focus here is on stories created by AI. We assume that the information that a fictional story was created by AI leads to a distancing response. This psychological distancing should go along with feelings of eeriness and should prevent recipients from being transported into the story world and from sharing the story with others. We conducted two experiments and examined user responses to fictional stories supposedly written by AI (versus a human author). Results of Experiment 1 (N = 321) suggest that the information that a short story was written by an AI has no significant effect on eeriness or the willingness to share. However, it reduces the recipients' experience of being transported into the story world. Experiment 2 (N = 489) replicates this finding within a 2 (author: AI vs. human) x 2 (genre: contemporary fiction vs. science fiction) design. Again, AI as an author reduced transportation. This effect was qualified by an interaction with story genre. The authorship effect disappeared when the narrative was a science fiction story.


This study was designed to test the effectiveness of glycinebetaine (an osmoprotectant purified from sugar beet and applied as a spray of 'Greenstim') in improving the yields of cotton under normal cultivation conditions in the Punjab of Pakistan. Field trials were conducted in replicated small plots at two sites over two years to determine the optimal timing and dose of glycinebetaine. CIM-240 was sown in 1996 at the Postgraduate Agricultural Research Station (PARS), Faisalabad but was badly affected by whitefly and cotton leaf curl virus. CIM-443 was sown in 1996 and 1997 at the Central Cotton Research Institute (CCRI), Multan. This was resistant to leaf curl virus, and was sown at PARS in 1997. Generally, glycinebetaine concentrations and time of application had little effect on physiological parameters. In 1996, glycinebetaine concentrations were significantly increased in the trial at Faisalabad, but not at Multan. In 1996 the highest yield of seed cotton at Faisalabad (136 % of the control) was obtained with 3-kg/ha glycinebetaine applied at squaring. At Multan, seed cotton yields were highest with 3 and 6 kg/ha glycinebetaine applied at squaring. Glycinebetaine dose and time of application had highly significant (P<0.001) effects on yield, total dry matter and bolls per plant. Glycinebetaine-treated plants also had more nodes at maturity than the controls. Mean boll weight, % flower and boll shedding were not affected. In 1997 the highest yields were obtained when glycinebetaine was applied at first flowering at PARS, but at the pre-squaring stage at CCRI.


Objective To define the key factors and constraints in public-private sector collaboration in establishing and delivering a young person's sexual health clinic within an existing commercial establishment. Consultation, planning and implementation phases Consultations were held between the Health Promotion Department, family planning and commercial outlets, resulting in the establishment of the UK's first sexual health service within commercial premises. Once the clinic had been operational for 6 months, a single researcher carried out semi-structured interviews with 13 staff representing all levels within the partner organisations. Post-implementation interviews There was agreement by all interviewees on the objectives of the clinic. The problems encountered during the establishment of the service were with the legislation pertaining to pharmacies and the adverse press coverage of a minority public view of the provision of sexual health services to young people. No respondent identified conflict between the aims of the clinic and the strategic objectives of their organisation. Recommendations Common aims are imperative for successful interagency working. Wider initial consultations may have helped to identify potential problems and confirm common aims at an earlier stage of the development of the project. The involvement of senior management may also have improved the smooth running of the project.


Objectives: Evidence-based medicine(EBM) advocates the use of up-to-date "best" scientific evidence from health care research as the basis for making medical decisions. EBM also has been applied to traditional Korean medicine(TKM), especially in the field of safety. Recently, the standard prescription for TKM by Korea Institute of Oriental Medicine was published based on toxic index from various toxicity tests. However, there are some limitations when the results from the study based on EBM are applied in clinics. To overcome these imitations, the term "evidence-based practical medicine" was developed and defined as clinically applicable results from the study based on EBM. And safety classification for TKM was suggested as an example of evidence-based practical medicine. Methods: For safety classification for TKM, the data for LD50(50% lethal dose), which was transformed to theoretical LD1(1% lethal dose), was analyzed as one of tools for EMB study and divided by maximum dose used in clinics. Results and Conclusions: As a result, human equivalent dose(HED)-based MOS(margin of safety) for korean traditional medicine was calculated and used for safety classification with 5 categories. These categories would be helpful for oriental medicine clinicians to decide the increase and decrease of dosage according to various factors such as patient's sensitivity, potential toxicity of herbal medicines, clinician's experience for better cure. Thus, this safety classification provides some evidences enough that evidence-based practical medicine should be not the same with EBM and defined differently from EBM.


ABSTRACT A study was conducted to compare four gravimetric methods of measuring fine particle (PM2.5) concentrations in air: the BGI, Inc. PQ200 Federal Reference Method PM2.5 (FRM) sampler; the Harvard-Marple Impactor (HI); the BGI, Inc. GK2.05 KTL Respirable/Thoracic Cyclone (KTL); and the AirMetrics MiniVol (MiniVol). Pairs of FRM, HI, and KTL samplers and one MiniVol sampler were collocated and 24-hr integrated PM2.5 samples were collected on 21 days from January 6 through April 9, 2000. The mean and standard deviation of PM2.5 levels from the FRM samplers were 13.6 and 6.8 μg/m3, respectively. Significant systematic bias was found between mean concentrations from the FRM and the MiniVol (1.14 μg/m3, p = 0.0007), the HI and the MiniVol (0.85 μg/m3, p = 0.0048), and the KTL and the MiniVol (1.23 μg/m3, p = 0.0078) according to paired t test analyses. Linear regression on all pairwise combinations of the sampler types was used to evaluate measurements made by the samplers. None of the regression intercepts was significantly different from 0, and only two of the regression slopes were significantly different from 1, that for the FRM and the MiniVol [β1 = 0.91, 95% CI (0.83–0.99)] and that for the KTL and the MiniVol [ = 0.88, 95% CI (0.78–0.98)]. Regression R2 terms were 0.96 or greater between all pairs of samplers, and regression root mean square error terms (RMSE) were 1.65 μg/m3 or less. These results suggest that the MiniVol will underestimate measurements made by the FRM, the HI, and the KTL by an amount proportional to PM2.5 concentration. Nonetheless, these results indicate that all of the sampler types are comparable if ~10% variation on the mean levels and on individual measurement levels is considered acceptable and the actual concentration is within the range of this study (5–35 μg/m3).


First principles calculations have been used to calculate the interlayer binding energy, the phonons frequencies, and the electronic structure of the In3X4 layered systems, with X = Se or Te. Using density functional theory corrected to take into account van der Waals interactions, the binding energy was found to be ∼ 41‐44 meV for In3Se4 and ∼ 53‐58 meV for In3Te4. Moreover, the absence of imaginary frequencies in the phonons bandstructures demonstrates the dynamical stability of the isolated layers. These facts suggest that isolated layers of In3Se4 and In3Te4 could be obtained by means of exfoliation from the bulk.


In squid axon, internal alkalinization from pH 7.1 to pH 10.2 results in a reversible decrease of the maximum inward current and the steady state sodium channel inactivation. Similar effects were observed after treatment of the axon with tetranitromethane or after iodination with lactoperoxidase. These results suggest that a tyrosine residue is an essential component of the inactivation process in this nerve.


Urinary tract infection (UTI) afflicts millions of patients globally each year. While the majority of UTIs are successfully treated with orally administered antibiotics, the impact of oral antibiotics on the host microbiota is under close research scrutiny and the potential for dysbiosis is a cause for concern. Optimal treatment of UTI relies upon the selection of an agent which displays appropriate pharmacokinetic-pharmacodynamic (PK-PD) properties that will deliver appropriately high concentrations in the urinary tract after oral administration. Alternatively, high local concentrations of antibiotic at the urothelial surface can be achieved by direct instillation into the urinary tract. For antibiotics with the appropriate physicochemical properties, this can be of critical importance in cases for which an intracellular urothelial bacterial reservoir is suspected. In this review, we summarise the underpinning biopharmaceutical barriers to effective treatment of UTI and provide an overview of the evidence for the deployment of the intravesical administration route for antibiotics.


The media's portrayal of health issues can have significant effects on the population it is targeting. This paper will evaluate how magazines that target young women portray profiles of people with Anorexia Nervosa. While there has been research on how media negatively influences people with or at risk for an eating disorder, there has been less research on how the magazines are actually presenting the disorders. This is significant because if magazines are inaccurately portraying specific aspects of the disorder, correcting these misrepresentations could lead to fewer barriers to help for anorexics. In this study, articles that profile a patient with anorexia were chosen from magazines with a large audience and an audience of primarily young women. These articles were then coded using a checklist that searches for specific aspects of describing the disorder. These results were compared to evidence already known about the reality of the disorder to see if any aspects of the disorder are misrepresented. As suspected, magazine portrayal of anorexia is inconsistent with the reality of the disorder. In the future, hopefully health care professions will learn the specific inconsistences between the magazine representation and the reality of anorexia and counteract this misinformation for at-risk or anorexic patients.


This paper reports the preliminary findings from an on-going research project that is exploring the resilience and sustainability of suranga irrigation technology found in the Western Ghats of south Karnataka and northern Kerala, India. The suranga are traditional adit water harvesting systems that tap ground waters. They have been constructed mainly by individual land owners to provide both drinking and irrigation water. This paper compares traditional suranga irrigation technology with that of more modern irrigation technology, first introduced during the green revolution, in terms of their impacts on livelihood strategies and water use efficiency. The paper also describes some of the recent adaptations made by farmers to suranga systems based on response to new crop growing opportunities and the availability of new conveyance and distribution technologies and materials. The paper concludes by exploring the resilience and sustainability of the traditional system from a catchment based perspective as the region faces the duel pressures of population increase and


Cryptococcus neoformans is a human fungal pathogen that is the causative agent of cryptococcosis and fatal meningitis in immuno‐compromised hosts. Recent studies suggest that copper (Cu) acquisition plays an important role in C. neoformans virulence, as mutants that lack Cuf1, which activates the Ctr4 high affinity Cu importer, are hypo‐virulent in mouse models. To understand the constellation of Cu‐responsive genes in C. neoformans and how their expression might contribute to virulence, we determined the transcript profile of C. neoformans in response to elevated Cu or Cu deficiency. We identified two metallothionein genes (CMT1 and CMT2), encoding cysteine‐rich Cu binding and detoxifying proteins, whose expression is dramatically elevated in response to excess Cu. We identified a new C. neoformans Cu transporter, CnCtr1, that is induced by Cu deficiency and is distinct from CnCtr4 and which shows significant phylogenetic relationship to Ctr1 from other fungi. Surprisingly, in contrast to other fungi, we found that induction of both CnCTR1 and CnCTR4 expression under Cu limitation, and CMT1 and CMT2 in response to Cu excess, are dependent on the CnCuf1 Cu metalloregulatory transcription factor. These studies set the stage for the evaluation of the specific Cuf1 target genes required for virulence in C. neoformans.


Abstract The western terrestrial garter snake (Thamnophis elegans) varies significantly in individual growth rates and life-history traits (maturation, reproduction, and survival) among adjacent populations in nature. This study focuses on assessing the genetic and environmental components of the substantial among-population variation in growth rates. Litters of neonates from nine populations inhabiting either mountain meadow or lakeshore habitat were reared for one year in a common-garden experiment with two temperature treatments. Diet, frequency of feeding, light exposure, and daytime temperatures were identical for all individuals. The two different nighttime temperatures (20°C and 25°C) were chosen to mirror field differences in nighttime thermoregulatory constraints for mountain-meadow and lakeshore snakes, respectively. Temperature and source habitat interacted to affect first-year growth rate. Neonates from meadow dams grew fastest in the cooler treatment, whereas those from lakeshore dams grew fastest in the warmer treatment. The observation that naive neonates, which were gestated and raised under identical conditions, grew fastest in environments characteristic of their natal population is evidence both that there are genetic differences among populations for growth and that these differences reflect adaptation to local habitats at a very small geographic scale. In addition, significant directional selection for large birthweight was measured for neonates from all populations. These results are considered in the context of population colonization history, migration and selection, and competing models for growth rate variation. Corresponding Editor: E. Brodie III


Mothers' and fathers' responses to their children's spontaneous sibling conflicts were observed using a wireless microphone system. Eighty-eight two-child, two-parent families participated in three home observations. Secondborn children were 3 to 5 years of age and firstborn children were 2 to 4 years older. Associations between parents' enactment of three categories of conflict management strategies (passive nonintervention, child-centered management, and parental control) and sibling interaction quality varied according to children's ages, gender of the monitoring parent, and type of strategy used. Passive nonintervention was highly associated with the occurrence of subsequent conflict. Younger sibling dyads, in particular, behaved more antagonistically when their parents did not intervene. In contrast, older sibling dyads were less involved and less close when their mothers intervened in any way. Results suggest that relatively younger sibling dyads may benefit more than older dyads from parental intervention.


The presented Model of Irrigation Management was designed for application on green spaces and leisure areas. The Model recognizes water as a production key-factor and optimizes its use on the irrigation of green spaces, giving particular attention to the temporal and spatial variation of input variables. Variables entered in the Model included existing or future target plant species, phenological phases, type of soil (i.e. location and physical characteristics), topography and climate factors. Model construction was similar to the methods outlined in FAO Report 56, namely: the method of Penman-Monteith for the calculation of reference evapotranspiration, the use of dual cultural coefficients to obtain cultural evapotranspiration MODELO DE GESTAO DE REGA EM ESPACOS VERDES 51 and the opportunity of irrigation according to the hydric balance. The Model integrates the programming of algorithms implemented in Visual Basic 6, VB6 and a Geographic Information System (GIS). The Model provides the irrigation parameters in real-time scale, the timings for irrigation, depth per irrigation, the period of irrigation, time between two irrigation episodes, and for the sprinkle irrigation, the mean application rate and the degree of pulverization. The Model is used in association with an automatic weather station and irrigation system. Key-words: Green spaces, irrigation management, irrigation on green spaces, garden irrigation.


A heterogeneous information network is an information network
 composed of multiple types of objects. Clustering on such a network may lead to better understanding of both hidden structures of the network and the individual role played by every object in each cluster. However, although clustering on homogeneous networks has been studied over decades, clustering on heterogeneous networks has not been addressed until recently.
 A recent study proposed a new algorithm, RankClus, for clustering on bi-typed heterogeneous networks. However, a real-world network may consist of more than two types, and the interactions among multi-typed objects play a key role at disclosing the rich semantics that a network carries. In this paper, we study clustering of multi-typed heterogeneous networks with a star network schema and propose a novel algorithm, NetClus, that utilizes links across multityped objects to generate high-quality net-clusters. An iterative enhancement method is developed that leads to effective ranking-based clustering in such heterogeneous networks. Our experiments on DBLP data show that NetClus generates more accurate clustering results than the baseline topic model algorithm PLSA and the recently proposed algorithm, RankClus. Further, NetClus generates informative clusters, presenting good ranking and cluster membership information for each attribute object in each net-cluster.


A new system named Home-Explorer that searches and finds physical artifacts in a smart indoor environment is proposed. The view on which it is based is artifact-centered and uses sensors attached to the everyday artifacts (called smart objects) in the real world. This paper makes two main contributions: First, it addresses, the robustness of the embedded sensors, which is seldom discussed in previous smart artifact research. Because sensors may sometimes be broken or fail to work under certain conditions, smart objects become hidden ones. However, current systems provide no mechanism to detect and manage objects when this problem occurs. Second, there is no common context infrastructure for building smart artifact systems, which makes it difficult for separately developed applications to interact with each other and uneasy for them to share and reuse knowledge. Unlike previous systems, Home-Explorer builds on an ontology-based knowledge infrastructure named Sixth-Sense, which makes it easy for the system to interact with other applications or agents also based on this ontology. The hidden object problem is also reflected in our ontology, which enables Home-Explorer to deal with both smart objects and hidden objects. A set of rules for deducing an object's status or location information and for locating hidden objects are described and evaluated.


Microbial precipitation of calcium carbonate takes place in nature by different mechanisms. One of them is microbially induced carbonate precipitation (MICP), which is performed due to bacterial hydrolysis of urea in soil in the presence of calcium ions. The MICP process can be adopted to reduce the permeability and/or increase the shear strength of soil. In this paper, a study on the use of Bacillus sp., which was isolated from tropical beach sand, to perform MICP either on the surface or in the bulk of sand is presented. If the level of calcium salt solution was below the sand surface, MICP took place in the bulk of sand. On the other hand, if the level of calcium salt solution was above the sand surface, MICP was performed on the sand surface and formed a thin layer of crust of calcium carbonate. After six sequential batch treatments with suspension of urease-producing bacteria and solutions of urea and calcium salt, the permeability of sand was reduced to 14 mm/day (or 1.6×10−7 m/s) in both cases of bulk and surface MICP. Quantities of precipitated calcium after six treatments were 0.15 and 0.60 g of Ca per cm2 of treated sand surface for the cases of bulk or surface MICP, respectively. The stiffness of the MICP treated sand also increased considerably. The modulus of rupture of the thin layer of crust was 35.9 MPa which is comparable with limestone.


We report the structural and magnetic properties of the 4d (M = Rh) based and 5d ( M = Ir) based systems Ba3MxTi3-xO9 ( nominally x = 0.5, 1). The studied compositions were found to crystallize in a hexagonal structure with the centrosymmetric space group P6(3)/mmc. The structures comprise of A(2)O(9) polyhedra [ with the A site ( possibly) statistically occupied by M and Ti] in which pairs of transition metal ions are stacked along the crystallographic c axis. These pairs form triangular bilayers in the ab plane. The magnetic Rh and Ir ions occupy these bilayers, diluted by Ti ions even for x = 1. These bilayers are separated by a triangular layer which is dominantly occupied by Ti ions. From magnetization measurements we infer strong antiferromagnetic couplings for all of the materials but the absence of any spin-freezing or spin-ordering down to 2 K. Further, specific heat measurements down to 0.35 K show no sign of a phase transition for any of the compounds. Based on these thermodynamic measurements we propose the emergence of a quantum spin liquid ground state for Ba(3)Rh(0.)5Ti(2.5)O(9), and Ba3Ir0.5Ti2.5O9, in addition to the already reported Ba3IrTi2O9.


The elastic constants of magnetic flux-line lattices in copper oxide superconductors have remained uncharacterized despite their essential role in determining important phenomena such as melting. Here the absolute values of the elastic moduli of flux-line arrays have been probed by correlating the positions of individual flux lines emerging from opposite sides of Bi2Sr2CaCu2O8 (BSCCO) superconductors. These experiments demonstrate that the compressional and shear moduli of the flux-line lattice are three orders of magnitude smaller than the values predicted by standard models. The origin of these changes in the moduli and the general applicability of this approach to other materials are discussed. In addition, there is a remarkable correspondence between the excitations of the flux-line arrays and those of superfluid helium.


The design of signal constellations for a communication system using multiple transmitter antennas over a Rayleigh-fading channel is considered under the assumption that no channel state information (CSI) is available at the transmitter and the receiver has acquired a CSI estimate with known error covariance. This setup encompasses the well-studied scenarios of perfect and no channel knowledge at the receiver and allows a smooth transition between these two cases. The data detection performance as a function of the CSI error covariance is analyzed and used to investigate the design of training blocks if such blocks are transmitted to provide CSI to the receiver. Moreover, two approaches to design constellations adapted to the error covariance of the receiver CSI are presented. Whereas the first approach is based on a generic gradient search method, the second approach uses an appropriate combination of constellations designed for perfect and no CSI at the receiver. Simulations confirm the benefits of the presented designs.


Water hyacinth (Eichornia crassipes) is one type of crop or weeds that normally live in the water, floating in the water, and develop shallow roots in the mud. This plant can grow exponentially, giving rise to many problems. Water hyacinth biogas has the potential to be made because it has C/N ratio of 25. Biogas is an alternative energy that is obtained from the fermentation of organic matter by anaerobic bacteria assistance so as to produce a mixture of methane (50-75%), carbon dioxide (25-45%), and some hydrogen, nitrogen, and hydrogen sulfide. In this study the materials used are water hyacinth and water. This study aims to determine the effect of the fermentation time and the additional volume of water in biogas production. Result of research shows that the highest biogas is obtained at volume ratio of 1:3 (water hyacinth to water) within 5 weeks of fermentation as much as 44.562 mL. It can be concluded that adding more volume of water will increase the biogas produced.


OBJECTIVE
To identify factors associated with psychosocial, physical and practical difficulties of daily living and distress among cancer survivors from a regional area in Australia.

DESIGN
Cross-sectional study.

SETTING
Riverina region of southern New South Wales.

PARTICIPANTS
The sample included 134 patients who completed treatment for breast, colorectal, lung or cancer at the Riverina Cancer Care Centre.

MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES
Distress was assessed by the Distress Thermometer. Psychosocial, physical and practical difficulties of daily living were assessed by the Patient-Reported Outcomes Measurement Information System questionnaires.

RESULTS
A high proportion of cancer survivors had abnormal scores for physical function, sleep disturbance, satisfaction with role, fatigue and pain interference, with many also displaying abnormal scores for anxiety, depression and distress. Survivors living in rural areas and those who had undergone surgery had higher odds of having abnormal scores for sleep disturbance than their counterparts. Living without a partner increased the odds of anxiety and depression. Having advanced disease increased the odds of anxiety and pain. Colorectal cancer and higher education were associated with depression.

CONCLUSION
Monitoring for abnormal physical and psychosocial issues after cancer treatment is essential to maintain or improve psychosocial well-being during survivorship. When developing survivorship care plans for patients residing in regional centres, health professionals should consider availability of high-quality and accessible support services in regional areas of Australia.


The lab made an effort to prepare some biological active cantharidinimines by heating the reactant 1 and 2a-g, 5h-i and 7j-r amines to suitable temperature with ethanol to provide 18 N-thiazolyl-, sulfanyl-, aminopyridyl-, bromopyridyl-, alkylpyridyl- and hydroxypyridylcantharidinimines 3a-g, 4a-c, 6h-i and 8j-r in yield of 4-77% (Chart 1). These cantharidinimine derivatives were tested for their capabilities to suppress growth of the human carcinoma cell lines, HL-60, MCF7, Neuro-2a and A549, because the incidence rate is more prominent in Asian countries than western countries. Compounds 3c-d and 6h-i were found to have some antitumor activity in HL-60 but less activity in MCF cell and compounds 8j-l displayed some inhibition effects to A549 cell line, but less effect to Neuro-2a cell line. Compounds 8m-r had no cytotoxic effect against both cell lines. The cytotoxic effects of these cantharidinimine compounds seemed to be better than the cantharidinimide compounds which we had mentioned several years ago.


ABSTRACT Assumptions about time, value, labour, and health coalesce in the policy decision to extend the pension eligibility age in Australia from 65 to 67 years. Acknowledging the multiple, often incompatible ways in which time is conceptualised and experienced, we question the expectation of extending Australians' working lives. Drawing on semi-structured interviews with 19 male and female bus drivers over the age of 55 in Australia, we illustrate that older blue collar workers may accumulate chronic health conditions that not only limit their ability to maintain the strict time-discipline required to remain in the workforce, but also introduce demands on their time beyond paid employment (including those required for the management of chronic health conditions). Poor health, and the multiple ways in which it constrains labour participation and time, fosters diverse, unequal, and uneven experiences of the final years of work for these blue collar workers, which may not allow them to meet the policy expectation to work until the age of 67. We argue that by failing to acknowledge the long-term health effects of blue collar work and its work-limiting bodily effects, raising the pension age devalues industrial work histories and manual labour. Finally, acknowledging the social milestone of retirement, we question the moral dimensions of extending the pension eligibility age.


This study investigated the use of a one-week urinary diary in the evaluation of incontinent women. The sample consisted of 50 community-dwelling women, ages 55 years and older, ambulatory, and mentally intact, who were volunteers in a clinical trial on behavioral management for urinary incontinence. All subjects kept a urinary diary for two consecutive weeks. An analysis of the immediate (one-week) test-retest variability and correlations on weekly diurnal micturition frequency, nocturnal micturition frequency, and urinary incontinent episodes were performed in subjects with sphincteric incompetence alone (N = 34) and in those with detrusor instability with or without concomitant sphincteric incompetence (N = 16). In addition, information obtained on history was compared with that obtained from the diary. Diurnal micturition frequency, nocturnal micturition frequency, and number of incontinent episodes were highly reproducible and did not differ by urodynamic diagnosis. Test-retest correlations were highest with diurnal micturition frequency and incontinent episodes. Lower correlations were observed with nocturnal micturition frequency, with a significant difference observed between diagnostic groups. Although modest, significant relationships between data collected by history and diary were observed in the overall sample, but there were significant differences between diagnostic groups. The results indicate that a one-week diary is a reliable method for assessing the frequency of voluntary micturitions and involuntary episodes of urine loss.


Theoretical model and solutions on power line harmonic radiation(PLHR) propagating in the ground, air, and anisotropic homogeneous ionosphere are presented. The theoretical model is verified by the PLHR events observed by the DEMETER satellite. Some propagation characteristics of PLHR based on the model are obtained. This paper is beneficial to quantitatively interpret the formation mechanism of PLHR phenomenon.


This Special Section on Encounters Between Violence and Media examines how these encounters are circulated, negotiated or contested, or altogether rejected. Violence enters our everyday life in various and unexpected forms from live-streamed mass shootings to news about sexual abuse. This thematic issue brings together scholars from media and communication studies, social sciences, and the humanities with contributions ranging from interrogations of the more visible and often spectacularized violence to the more invisible violence, gendered violence and violence against marginalized groups. Drawing on the philosophical and political science concept of recognition and problematizing regimes of visibility as regimes of power, the articles in this collection examine in what ways the different forms of violence are (in)visible in the media and what implications (in)visibility has for recognition, on the one hand, and marginalization on the other. The empirical contexts range from terrorist violence against marginalized groups to gendered violence and human trafficking. The collection highlights the need to recognize the violence and suffering experienced by those often existing on the social margins.


It is not clear whether and in what respects men and women differ in the experience of stress in the workplace. Previous research often showed that women report higher levels of occupational stress, but there are some conflicting results. Moreover, some research revealed that when demographic variables were accounted for, gender differences diminish. Two competing hypotheses attempt to explain gender differences: the hypothesis of differential vulnerability and hypothesis of differential exposure to stressors. The aim of this study was to examine the existence of gender differences in occupational stress. The study also attempted to examine whether the obtained differences remain significant when sources of stress and some demographic characteristics are accounted for. Several (both positive and negative) measures of occupational stress were used in the study: distress, burnout, turnover intentions, and organizational commitment. A convenient sample of 221 Serbian employees participated in the study. Results indicate that women scored higher on some of the indicators of occupational stress (distress and continuance commitment). Although the differences were not large, they remained significant even when sources of stress and some demographic characteristics were introduced in the equation. Most of the gender differences obtained in the study are in favor of the hypothesis of a differential vulnerability to stressors. Exception is the finding that single men and married women with highest level of education reported highest levels of occupational stress, which is more consistent with the differential exposure hypothesis. The last finding, however, should be interpreted with caution due to small number of respondents in the group with highest educational level.


Intermediate crack-induced debonding is one of the most dominant failure modes in FRP-strengthened RC beams. Different code models and provisions have been proposed to predict intermediate crack-induced debonding failure. Out of all the existing code provisions and models, four typical ones are investigated in the current study. A comprehensive comparison among these code provisions and models is carried out in order to evaluate their performance and accuracy. Test results of flexural specimens with intermediate crack-induced debonding failure collected from the existing literature are used in the current comparison. The effectiveness and accuracy of each model have been evaluated based on these experimental results. It is shown that the current recommendations are inadequite to effectively mitigate intermediate crack-induced debonding in flexurally strengthened members.


The centers of starburst galaxies may be characterized by a specific gas and ice chemistry due to their gas dynamics and the presence of various ice desorption mechanisms. This may result in a peculiar observable composition. We analyse the abundances of CO2, a reliable tracer of ice chemistry, from data collected as part of the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array large program ALCHEMI, a wide-frequency spectral scan toward the starburst galaxy NGC 253 with an angular resolution of 1.″6. We constrain the CO2 abundances in the gas phase using its protonated form HOCO+. The distribution of HOCO+ is similar to that of methanol, which suggests that HOCO+ is indeed produced from the protonation of CO2 sublimated from ice. The HOCO+ fractional abundances are found to be (1–2) × 10−9 at the outer part of the central molecular zone (CMZ), while they are lower (∼10−10) near the kinematic center. This peak fractional abundance at the outer CMZ is comparable to that in the Milky Way CMZ, and orders of magnitude higher than that in Galactic disk, star-forming regions. From the range of HOCO+/CO2 ratios suggested from chemical models, the gas-phase CO2 fractional abundance is estimated to be (1–20) × 10−7 at the outer CMZ, and orders of magnitude lower near the center. We estimate the CO2 ice fractional abundances at the outer CMZ to be (2–5) × 10−6 from the literature. A comparison between the ice and gas CO2 abundances suggests an efficient sublimation mechanism. This sublimation is attributed to large-scale shocks at the orbital intersections of the bar and CMZ.


In this study, the authors examine whether an advanced online technology can be used to give teacher trainees real-time feedback on their use of research-based classroom practices. Participants include 15 teachers enrolled in a field-based graduate special education teacher preparation program. Data include video-recorded teacher observations and written reflections by teachers about their experiences. Quantitative results indicate that the advanced online bug-in-ear technology is a practical and efficient way to provide immediate feedback to increase teachers' rate of praise statements and their use of proven effective instructional practices and that these improvements are accompanied by increases in students' on-task behavior. Overall, trainees view the advanced online technology as a powerful tool for improving the teaching and learning process but report the need for patience and perseverance in both the teachers and the supervisor, as well as teachers' need for constant reassurance.


Noisy multi-label learning has garnered increasing attention due to the challenges posed by collecting large-scale accurate labels, making noisy labels a more practical alternative. Motivated by noisy multi-class learning, the introduction of transition matrices can help model multi-label noise and enable the development of statistically consistent algorithms for noisy multi-label learning. However, estimating multi-label noise transition matrices remains a challenging task, as most existing estimators in noisy multi-class learning rely on anchor points and accurate fitting of noisy class posteriors, which is hard to satisfy in noisy multi-label learning. In this paper, we address this problem by first investigating the identifiability of class-dependent transition matrices in noisy multi-label learning. Building upon the identifiability results, we propose a novel estimator that leverages label correlations without the need for anchor points or precise fitting of noisy class posteriors. Specifically, we first estimate the occurrence probability of two noisy labels to capture noisy label correlations. Subsequently, we employ sample selection techniques to extract information implying clean label correlations, which are then used to estimate the occurrence probability of one noisy label when a certain clean label appears. By exploiting the mismatches in label correlations implied by these occurrence probabilities, we demonstrate that the transition matrix becomes identifiable and can be acquired by solving a bilinear decomposition problem. Theoretically, we establish an estimation error bound for our multi-label transition matrix estimator and derive a generalization error bound for our statistically consistent algorithm. Empirically, we validate the effectiveness of our estimator in estimating multi-label noise transition matrices, leading to excellent classification performance.


The Red Queen Hypothesis postulates that reciprocal selection arising from host-parasite interactions should accelerate evolutionary rates through the need for continual adaptation and counter-adaptation. A process driving such rapid reciprocal adaptation is referred to as negative frequency-dependent selection, in which the most common genotypes decrease over time because they have a higher probability of becoming infected by coevolving parasites. This proposed mechanism of host-parasite coevolution was commonly tested in laboratory experiments under controlled conditions. Regarding field investigations of natural populations, temporal changes in relative frequencies of genotypes were mostly tested for host only, because tracking parasite dynamics over time remained difficult. As parasite population dynamics are highly sensitive to environmental changes, studies under natural conditions are essential to understand host-parasite coevolution.
The commonly explored model system to address coevolutionary questions are the water
fleas of the genus Daphnia and their microparasites. In this PhD thesis, I analysed the population structure of two major microparasites of Daphnia: Caullerya mesnili (Chapters 2 and 3) and microsporidia (Chapter 4). First, in Chapter 2, I developed a new bioinformatic pipeline to analyse molecular data generated by next-generation-sequencing (NGS) platforms. C. mesnili populations from different water reservoirs in the Czech Republic were sequenced at the first internal transcribed spacer (ITS1) of the ribosomal gene cluster, analysed with this new pipeline and compared
with published results from the same populations but using cloning and Sanger sequencing method.
I detected that relative frequencies of C. mesnili ITS1 sequence types were similar when compared to other sequencing methods, thereby validating the bioinformatic pipeline, and showing the suitability of 454 platform to perform population biology analyses. After this validation, in Chapter 3, I analysed the population dynamics and host-genotype specificity of C. mesnili, in long-term samples collected from a single lake, and based on the sequence variations in the ITS1 region. I found that
the most abundant C. mesnili ITS1 sequence type decreased, while rare sequences increased over
the course of the study (4 years). The observed pattern is consistent with the negative frequency-dependent selection. However, only a weak signal of host-genotype specificity between C. mesnili and Daphnia genotypes was detected, which supports the lack of host-genotype specificity in this system. Finally, in Chapter 4, I described the patterns of geographical population structure, intraspecific genetic variation, and recombination of two Daphnia-infecting microsporidia: Berwaldia schaefernai and the unknown microsporidium MIC1. These patterns were used to predict the existence of secondary hosts in the life cycle of these microsporidia. I observed little variation among B. schaefernai parasite strains infecting different host populations; in contrast, there was significant
genetic variation among populations of MIC1. Additionally, ITS genetic diversity was lower in B. schaefernai than in MIC1. These findings suggest that the presumed secondary host for B. schaefernai is expected to be mobile, while in MIC1 the secondary host (if exists) does not appear to facilitate dispersal to the same degree. Finally, recombination analyses indicated cryptic sex in B. schaefernai and pure asexuality in MIC1. All these findings enable a more comprehensive understanding of the biology of Daphnia-infecting microparasites and the genetic basis of Daphnia-microparasites coevolution in natural populations.


Introduction: Sepsis is the leading cause of ICU admission. About 60% of patients with severe sepsis had acute kidney injury (AKI). To date, plasma Neutrophil-Gelatinase Associated Lipocalin (NGAL) is the most promising biomarker for AKI, however it is also increased with inflammation and infection.

Objectives: We aim to evaluate the utility of NGAL, Procalcitonin (PCT) and Interleukin-6 (IL-6) for AKI and sepsis.

Methods: This is an interim analysis of a prospective observational study of adult ICU patients with systemic inflammatory response syndroem (SIRS). PCT was measured using BRAHMS Kryptor compact assay, NGAL using TriageMeter, IL-6 using ELISA technique, and creatinine using Olympus AU2700TM analyser. Patients were classified according to the occurrence of AKI and sepsis.

Results: Of the 115 patients, 62 (54%) had AKI, of which 43 (69%) had sepsis, and in 19 (31%) non-infectious SIRS. NGAL and PCT were higher in patients with AKI-SIRS compared to No AKI-SIRS (p=0.001 and p=0.02, respectively), and in AKI-Sepsis compared to No AKI-Sepsis (p<0.0001 and p=0.001, respectively). However, there were no differences in plasma IL-6. NGAL had the highest AUC in diagnosing AKI (0.78 (0.69 to 0.86)). The AUC of NGAL in diagnosing AKI was 0.80 (0.66 to 0.93) in SIRS, and 0.76 (0.65 to 0.87) in sepsis. The optimal cut-off point was 84 ng/ml in SIRS and 256 ng/ml in sepsis. Addition of NGAL to the reference model, which includes age, weight, and SAPSII score, showed the largest improvement in risk assessment; with total IDI of 0.09 (0.02 to 0.28).

Conclusions: AKI is more common in sepsis patients. Of the biomarkers measured, NGAL had the highest diagnostic performance for AKI. The optimal cut-off point for diagnosing AKI in sepsis was higher than in non-infectious SIRS. The addition of NGAL improved the clinical model incorporating age, illness severity and weight in diagnosing AKI.


A method based on radius-dependent angular Fourier coefficients (circular harmonics) is used to analyze the point spread function (PSF) of any 2-D filter whose frequency response is separable in the polar-coordinate variables. The approach relies on the ability to express the PSF as the angular cyclic convolution of two functions related to the angular and radial characteristics of the frequency response, respectively. A general theory is developed and is subsequently specialized to the ideal, but important, case of fan filtering. In the general case, the exponential and Gaussian radial profiles are considered in detail, both because of their mathematical tractability and because of their usefulness for discussing fan filtering (uniform radial profile) through limiting arguments. Besides providing insight into the structure of the PSF for separable and fan filters, the theory leads to a synthesis procedure via FFT's, which is demonstrated in situations of interest.


A longstanding challenge in artificial intelligence is to create agents that learn, enabling them to interact with and adapt to a complex and changing world. A better understanding of the evolution of learning may help produce robust and adaptive agents, as well as shed light on open questions about the evolution of learning from biology. Evolutionary computation offers the benefits of precise experimental control, repeatability of experiments and rapid generational turnover – enabling experiments to test hypotheses that would be impossible or extremely time demanding to test in natural studies. The evolution of learning is influenced by the balance between the benefits offered by adaptivity and the costs (disadvantages) individuals pay for learning abilities. Such costs include forgetting previous knowledge, dangers of exploration and maintenance of neural structures for learning. This thesis focuses on how evolution regulates learning capacities to reap the benefits of being adaptive, while minimizing the costs of learning. The regulation of learning capacities is studied along three main axes: regulation through individual lifetimes, regulation within a population facing varying environments and regulation across neural modules. The study of learning regulation within individual lifetimes is inspired by the sensitive periods in learning observed in nature: limited periods within individuals' lives where learning is temporarily facilitated. Experiments herein demonstrate that sensitive periods can emerge to schedule learning in tasks where there are dependencies between the learning of sub-tasks, and further explore how the flexibility of evolved sensitive periods depends on assumptions about which factors regulate plasticity. On the population level, the evolution of learning efforts is known to be highly dependent on the variability of the environment and the reliability of environmental stimuli. Evolving the innate preferences and learning rates of individuals across a wide range of environmental variability demonstrates that environments changing too rapidly or too slowly discourage the evolution of learning. Further experiments show how independently varying the degrees of environmental stability and stimuli reliability leads to a refinement of this model of learning, which also acknowledges the fact that learning may be disruptive or inefficient when stimuli are not reliable. One cost of learning is the risk of losing old information as new information is gained, a problem known as catastrophic forgetting. Evolving individuals facing a task with potential for catastrophic forgetting, it is demonstrated how the addition of an evolutionary cost of neural connections leads to more modular networks, which forget old skills less when learning a new skill. Together, the findings herein demonstrate several ways to handle the so-called stabilityplasticity dilemma: how can an individual be realized which has the flexibility to adapt without risking unstable behaviors and forgetting of old skills? The findings suggest ways in which evolution may have solved this problem in natural learners, and ways to harness the powers of evolution to mitigate this problem in artificial agents.


This case report deals with the case history of a 45-year-old male patient who presented with an unusual case of a central odontogenic fibroma which destroyed and replaced the bone mass of the right maxilla. After clinical examination a biopsy was performed and histopathology was consistent with a central odontogenic fibroma with destructive growth. The treatment plan consisted of a surgical resection of the right maxilla. The histopathological evaluation showed a subtotal destruction of the maxillary bone mass by the odontogenic fibroma. Obvious problems concerning the differential diagnosis of odontogenic fibromas as well as current concepts regarding their exact designation and classification are discussed.


Ever since the Covid-19 vaccination rollout, governments have aimed for herd immunity. Yet, many countries are far from achieving this goal mainly due to vaccine refusal. Previous research has pointed to conspiracy beliefs and the role of trust in governments as predictors of vaccine acceptance, yet a more comprehensive explanatory model is still missing. Using data from a convenience sample of 377 residents in Portugal ( M age = 33.56, SD = 13.67), the present study extends previous research by proposing a serial mediation model in the prediction of vaccine acceptance. The results confirm the critical role of conspiracy beliefs mediating the link between perceived quality of government communication and general vaccine acceptance (Model 1) as well as national stereotypes and acceptance of the Sinovac vaccine from China (Model 2). The implications are discussed considering that Portugal is currently ranked the second country in the world with the highest vaccination rate.


ABSTRACT A 14-month longitudinal study was conducted on four dairy farms (C, H, R, and X) in Wisconsin to ascertain the source(s) and dissemination of Escherichia coli O157:H7. A cohort of 15 heifer calves from each farm were sampled weekly by digital rectal retrieval from birth to a minimum of 7 months of age (range, 7 to 13 months). Over the 14 months of the study, the cohort heifers and other randomly selected cattle from farms C and H tested negative. Farm R had two separate periods of E. coli O157:H7 shedding lasting 4 months (November 1995 to February 1996) and 1 month (July to August 1996), while farm X had at least one positive cohort animal for a 5-month period (May to October 1996). Heifers shed O157:H7 strains in feces for 1 to 16 weeks at levels ranging from 2.0 × 102 to 8.7 × 104 CFU per g. E. coli O157:H7 was also isolated from other noncohort cattle, feed, flies, a pigeon, and water associated with the cohort heifers on farms R and/or X. When present in animal drinking water, E. coli O157:H7 disseminated through the cohort cattle and other cattle that used the water source. E. coli O157:H7 was found in water at <1 to 23 CFU/ml. Genomic subtyping by pulsed-field gel electrophoresis demonstrated that a single O157:H7 strain comprised a majority of the isolates from cohort and noncohort cattle, water, and other positive samples (i.e., from feed, flies, and a pigeon, etc.) on a farm. The isolates from farm R displayed two predominant XbaI restriction endonuclease digestion profiles (REDP), REDP 3 and REDP 7, during the first and second periods of shedding, respectively. Six additional REDP that were ≥89% similar to REDP 3 or REDP 7 were identified among the farm R isolates. Additionally, the REDP of an O157:H7 isolate from a heifer on farm R in 1994 was indistinguishable from REDP 3. Farm X had one O157:H7 strain that predominated (96% of positive samples had strains with REDP 9), and the REDP of an isolate from a heifer in 1994 was indistinguishable from REDP 9. These results suggest that E. coli O157:H7 is disseminated from a common source on farms and that strains can persist in a herd for a 2-year period.


This paper explores the context in which skilled artisans introduced innovations in India around 1900 and suggests that such steps carried the potential for conflicts between the innovator and those affected by his actions. Conflicts could arise over the protection of knowledge, over the right to make a change, in the form of resistance, or as a choice between maintaining and diluting quality. Conflicts were absent when the mediation of social and political leaders was available and when skilled artisans emerged from unconventional backgrounds. By stressing the capacity of artisans to innovate and by suggesting that individuals were the agents of innovation, this paper refocuses attention on the skilled individual within a historiography that has been rather neglectful of both craftsmanship and the craftsman.


A series of mortalities among musculoskeletal tumour patients secondary to medical illnesses during the first few months of the pandemic highlighted the need to review our methods of communication with patients. Prominent among patients' concerns had been a fear of consulting at hospitals and a lack of ready access to health care. Recommendations are made for proactive consultation and patient education, identifying at-risk patients for follow-up and probing for possible co-morbidities. Telemedicine use is encouraged bearing in mind its inherent limitations. A network of physicians and pharmaceutical representatives is an added help we can offer our patients who may be isolated by community quarantine.


Large-scale empirical evidence indicates a fascinating statistical relationship between the estimated number of language users and its linguistic and statistical structure. In this context, the linguistic niche hypothesis argues that this relationship reflects a negative selection against morphological paradigms that are hard to learn for adults, because languages with a large number of speakers are assumed to be typically spoken and learned by greater proportions of adults. In this paper, this conjecture is tested empirically for more than 2000 languages. The results question the idea of the impact of non-native speakers on the grammatical and statistical structure of languages, as it is demonstrated that the relative proportion of non-native speakers does not significantly correlate with either morphological or information-theoretic complexity. While it thus seems that large numbers of adult learners/speakers do not affect the (grammatical or statistical) structure of a language, the results suggest that there is indeed a relationship between the number of speakers and (especially) information-theoretic complexity, i.e. entropy rates. A potential explanation for the observed relationship is discussed.


According to WHO, cancer represents a leading cause of death worldwide, accounting for 7.6 million deaths (around 13% of all deaths) in 2008. About 30% of cancer deaths are due to the following behavioral and dietary risks: high body mass index (BMI), low fruit and vegetable intake, lack of physical activity, tobacco and alcohol use. Currently, innovative cancer treatments and therapies are available, but it is important to consider that the burden of cancer can be reduced by implementing evidence-based strategies for cancer prevention, early detection of cancer and management of patients affected by the disease.


The objective of the study was to quantify the potential of a starch binding agent (BioProtectTM) to reduce in vitro rumen starch degradation of maize and sorghum particles that varied in size. Maize and sorghum grain samples were ground through 2-mm sieves with a Wiley mill and subsequently sieved to obtain these sizes: less than 250, 250 500, 500 1180, and 1180 2000 μm (i.e., very fine to coarse). All fractions were analysed separately for starch content. Samples were treated 24 hours before fermentation by spraying BioProtect onto the substrate. Both treated and untreated samples were fermented in vitro for 0, 6, 12 and 24 hours to quantify starch degradability. Rates of degradability (kd) were calculated with a first-order decay model. BioProtect was effective in decreasing starch degradability and rates of degradability for both grains (P <0.0001). The product was more effective with smaller particle size, by reducing starch degradability 17% for the smallest particles as opposed to 7% for the largest particles. A time interaction was observed (P <0.0001), which showed that the highest impact of BioProtect occurred after 12 hours of fermentation for both grains. The starch binding agent resulted in an effective decrease of in vitro starch degradation, but results were affected by particle size and fermentation time. Starch digestion could possibly be shifted to the small intestine with BioProtect. ______________________________________________________________________________________


The effectiveness of selenite cystine (SC) broth, tetrathionate (TT) broth, and Rappaport-Vassiliadis (RV) medium for recovery of Salmonella spp. from 8 highly contaminated foods was determined. RV medium prepared from individual ingredients and incubated at 42 degrees and 43 degrees C was compared with 2 commercial (Difco and Oxoid) media incubated at 42 degrees C. Naturally and artificially contaminated foods were tested under 2 protocols. For Protocol 1, each food was preenriched in the appropriate medium. After incubation, serial 10 fold dilutions of the preenriched foods were inoculated into selective enrichment media and incubated at 35 degrees, 42 degrees, or 43 degrees C. Effectiveness of these conditions was evaluated by most probable number determination of Salmonella spp. recovered. Productivity of selective enrichments did not differ significantly with this protocol, except that with Oxoid RV medium the number of Salmonella cells recovered from most of the foods was significantly reduced. For Protocol 2, twenty 25 g test portions from artificially inoculated foods were examined qualitatively for Salmonella spp. The effectiveness of the broth/temperature combinations was determined by the number of positive tests under each condition. RV medium prepared from individual ingredients and TT broth incubated at 43 degrees C yielded significantly more Salmonella-positive tests from frog legs and lettuce than did SC and TT broths incubated at 35 degrees C or commercial RV medium incubated at 42 degrees C. With pork sausage and ground beef, significantly fewer Salmonella-positive tests were found with Oxoid RV medium incubated at 42 degrees C and SC incubated at 35 degrees C than from other selective enrichments.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)


In the shallow water waveguide, matched field tracking methods use the continuity of the peak position of the moving source and the disorder of pseudo-peaks on the sequential ambiguity surfaces to track the underwater source trajectory. However, due to the dual influence of the space-time fluctuating shallow water waveguide environment and the complex sources motion scene, the existing matching field tracking methods are prone to track interruption, switches and false track phenomena, leading to discontinuous tracking results. Using the consistency of the peak position distance likelihood and peak amplitude likelihood of sequential ambiguity surfaces, a continuous matched field tracking method is proposed based on the trajectory Poisson multi-Bernoulli mixture filter in this paper. The proposed method is applied to SWellEx-96 experimental data and the tracking performance is measured by the linear programming metric. The results show that compared with the existing matching field tracking and multi-target tracking methods via random finite set, the proposed method achieves continuous tracking and accurate quantity estimation of moving sources trajectory. Among them, the prediction and updating steps in the trajectory space can avoid the phenomenon of trajectories interruption and switches in unvoiced periods. the prediction and updating steps in the trajectory space can avoid the phenomenon of trajectories interruption and switches in unvoiced periods.


Due to practical constraints in preventing phishing through public network or insecure communication channels, simple physical unclonable function (PDF)-based authentication protocol with unrestricted queries and transparent responses is vulnerable to modeling and replay attacks. In this paper, we present a PUF-based authentication method to mitigate the practical limitations in applications where a resource-rich server authenticates a device with no strong restriction imposed on the type of PUF designs or any additional protection on the binary channel used for the authentication. Our scheme uses an active deception protocol to prevent machine learning (ML) attacks on a device. The monolithic system makes collection of challenge response pairs (CRPs) easy for model building during enrollment but prohibitively time consuming upon device deployment. A genuine server can perform a mutual authentication with the device at any time with a combined fresh challenge contributed by both the server and the device. The message exchanged in clear does not expose the authentic CRPs. The false PUF multiplexing is fortified against prediction of waiting time by doubling the time penalty for every unsuccessful authentication.


The catches of Oratosquilla nepa along the South Kanara coast were maximum
during 1981-82, amounting to 2543.3 t at a catch rate of 16.5 kg|h at Mangalore
and to 1868.8 t at 16.7 kg|h at Malpe. The catch was high during January-
April. A mean growth of 7-8 mm|month was indicated. The species appear to
grow to it length of about 108 mm by the end of first year and to live for 15-16
months. In the development of the ovary, five maturity stages, ie., immature, early
maturing, late maturing, mature and spent|spent-recovering, have been recognised.
The size at maturity at 50% level is estimated at 95 mm. The spawning season
is found to be extending from December to October with peaks during March-June
and September-October. Females generally outnumbered males. Chi-square test
showed significant variation from 1:1 ratio in the distribution of sexes. The fecundity
is estimated at 6,78,200 in a female measuring 108 mm body length. The
growth parameters, 1 a, and c.k were estimated at 143 mm and 0.2877 respectively.
The mean.monthly Z values were 0.9767 for males and 0.923d for females.


Autism spectrum disorders (ASD) are a heterogenous group of neurodevelopmental disorders with a significant rate of increase over the last years. T. gondii is a ubiquitous intracellular pathogen affecting approximately 30-50% of human population, with special preference to the central nervous system (CNS). Accumulating evidence suggest that latent chronic toxoplasmosis play a role in triggering and development of many psychiatric and neurological disorders, but so far there is no clear epidemiological link with its prevalence in ASD. The aim of the study was therefore to estimate the seroprevalence of chronic toxoplasmosis among autistic children, determine the changes in serum levels of IFN- g and nitric oxide (NO) in T. gondii -positive and T. gondii -free patients, and evaluate the combined effect of both diseases on the Childhood Autism Rating Scale (CARS) score. Forty-six children with ASD (mean age 6.1 ± 2.2 years; 41 boys, 5 girls) were studied for anti- T. gondii IgG antibody seropositivity (ELISA kit, DRG Int), and their serum IFN- g (ELISA kit, Ray Biotech ) and NO (one-step enzymatic assay) concentrations were measured. Chronic toxoplasmosis was found in 23.9% of the studied patients (8 males, 3 females), while a mong 50 age-matched control children (45 boys, 5 girls) 4% (2 boys) were T. gondii -positive ( c 2 = 8.11; P < 0.0043) . Autistic children with toxoplasmosis had markedly increased both serum IFN- g and NO levels (11- and 5-fold median peak increases, respectively) compared with T. gondii- free participants. A statistically significant positive correlation was found between the serum IFN- g and NO levels (r = 0.79, P < 0.001). These molecular disturbances may exert harmful effects on further development of the CNS in the infected individuals, although no marked difference in the CARS score was detected, probably because of young age and immune function maturation of the participants. The obtained results strongly suggest that latent chronic T. gondii infection have an important impact on triggering and development of ASD, at least in a subset of autistic children, and this requires some modification(s) of its diagnostic procedures and treatment regimens.


Advertising (Ad) revenue is a major revenue source for many technology and e-commerce companies; most of the revenue optimization research has been around third party display ads or Cost-Per-Click based first party ads. This paper discusses the Cost-Per-Action ad product at eBay; and the challenge of balancing ad revenue and relevance. We proposed a new measurement that uses Kullback–Leibler (KL) divergence to both optimize ad revenue and improve buyer experience in item recommendations. KL divergence is adopted in the re-ranking algorithm as a constraint for revenue optimization and it is solved by a greedy grid search algorithm. In addition, we are able to approximate KL divergence with inventory based features, and that simplified a full greedy search operation to a regression. Overall, we designed and A/B tested three different approaches, all of them showed significant improvement over the baseline. Through effective re-ranking, we showed that we can achieve significant revenue gain in a sponsored listing recommendation system, even without making any improvement on conversion estimation. We launched one of the implementations to production that yielded more than 12% revenue lift with minimum impact on user experience. CCS CONCEPTS ˆ Information systems → Sponsored search advertising ; Content match advertising.


A reliable control plane plays a crucial role in creating high-level services in the next-generation transport network based on the generalized multiprotocol label switching (GMPLS) or automatically switched optical networks (ASON) model. Approaches to control-plane survivability, based on protection, and restoration mechanisms, are examined. Procedures for the control plane state recovery are discussed, including link and node failure recovery


Thromboembolic events including venous thromboembolism (VTE), arterial thromboembolism (ATE), and mortality from sub-clinical thrombotic events occur frequently in COVID-19 inpatients. Whether the risk extends post-discharge has been controversial. Our prospective registry included consecutive COVID-19 patients hospitalized within our multihospital system from March 1st - May 31st 2020. We captured demographics, comorbidities, laboratory parameters, medications, post-discharge thromboprophylaxis, and 90-day outcomes. Data from electronic health records, health informatics exchange, a radiology database, and telephonic follow-up were merged. The primary outcome was a composite of adjudicated VTE, ATE, and all-cause mortality (ACM). The principal safety outcome was major bleeding (MB). Among 4,906 patients (53.7% male) mean age was 61.7 years. Comorbidities included hypertension (38.6%), diabetes (25.1%), obesity (18.9%), and cancer history (13.1%). Post-discharge thromboprophylaxis was prescribed in 13.2%. VTE rate was 1.55%, ATE 1.71%, ΑCM 4.83%, and MB 1.73%. The composite primary outcome rate was 7.13% and was significantly associated with advanced age (OR: 3.66, 95%CI: 2.84-4.71), prior VTE (OR: 2.99, 95%CI: 2.00-4.47), ICU stay (OR: 2.22, 95%CI: 1.78-2.93), chronic kidney disease (CKD) (OR: 2.10, 95%CI: 1.47-3.0), peripheral arterial disease (OR: 2.04, 95%CI: 1.10-3.80), carotid occlusive disease (OR: 2.02, 95%CI: 1.30-3.14), IMPROVE-DD VTE score ≥4 (OR: 1.51, 95%CI: 1.06-2.14), and coronary artery disease (OR: 1.50, 95%CI: 1.04-2.17). Post-discharge anticoagulation was significantly associated with reducing the primary outcome (OR: 0.54, 95%CI: 0.47-0.81). Post-discharge VTE, ATE, and ACM occur frequently following COVID-19 hospitalization. Advanced age, cardiovascular risk factors, CKD, IMPROVE–DD VTE score ≥4, and ICU stay increase risk. Post-discharge anticoagulation reduced risk by 46%.


Interview by Lauren Constable, Commissioning Editor Giuseppe Orlando, MD, PhD, is a research scientist at the Nuffield Department of Surgical Sciences at the University of Oxford, in quality of Marie Curie International Outgoing Fellow. He obtained his degrees in medicine and general surgery from the Tor Vergata University of Rome (Italy), where he also obtained his PhD in transplant sciences. In addition, he trained at the Liver Unit of the Paul Brousse Hospital (Villejuif, France), at the General Surgery and Liver Transplant Unit of the Cliniques Saint Luc (Brussels, Belgium) and at the Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine (Winston Salem, NC, USA). He specialized in liver and kidney transplantation, and is currently specializing in engineering and regeneration of transplantable abdominal organs. His main fields of investigation are: minimal immunosuppression and clinical operational tolerance after abdominal organ transplantation; renal, pancreas, liver and intestinal bioengineering; the respinse of the immune system to bioengineered body parts. Dr. Orlando's main achievements have been in the field of steroid-free immunosuppression, immunosuppression minimization and clinical tolerance after liver transplantation and is on the board and a regular reviewer for a number of journals. He has authored or coauthored several research papers, review articles and book chapters on liver and kidney transplantation and regenerative medicine.


Cryptocurrency is a digital currency that is powered by blockchain technology. One of it is bitcoin, a system that is digitally created and traded tokens to which value is assigned. The level of adoption of bitcoin has accelerated due to several fiscal crises that leads to financial crashes that have affected the lives of millions of people. This has created a demand for new kinds of niche money. Issues need to be closely discussed before it is fully accepted by customers as a medium of exchange. Even though bitcoin is used as a medium of exchange, there is still no specific guidance and benefits to the users. The issues concernedare whether the customers will get the benefits of privacy, lower transaction costs and freedom in payment. Therefore, the aims of this paper are to identify the relationship between transaction cost, privacy and digital payment as a benefit of bitcoin as a medium of exchange. This research will be conducted in Klang Valley area and the questionnaires will be disseminated directly to respondents. These respondents will be identified using probability simple random sampling. A regression analysis will be conducted comprising 200 observations in Klang Valley, Malaysia. Partial least square-structural equation (PLS-SEM) will be used. In the measurement model, reliability will be assessed by examining the Composite Reliability (CR), while validity will be assessed by convergent validity and discriminant validity. Subsequently, structural model testing with 500 re-samples was applied to test the hypothesized relationships between exogenous variables and endogenous variable. Digital payment and privacy are statistically significant towards the benefit of using bitcoin as a medium of exchange. It was found that the digital payment contributes the highest benefit to the customers followed by privacy. The results provide interesting insight into the determinants for the customers benefit using bitcoin. Although the findings show significant results customers should always decide the good and bad thoroughly before finalizing their decisions on the usage of bitcoin. Therefore, it is hoped that this study will enrich the growing literature on the subject and future research needs to explore on the benefits of using bitcoin among the real users. This study is expected to give guidelines to the policymakers on the implementation of bitcoin as a medium of exchange. It is also expected that the results may provide interesting insight into the determinants of customer benefits using bitcoin. Simultaneously, it will contribute to the elements of industry, innovation and infrastructure.


When a new version of an information technology product or service appears in the market, consumers' usage experience with the prior version may influence their adoption patterns. However, this important determinant has been ignored in current research. This study uses mobile services to examine the role of usage experience. We empirically test our hypotheses by using actual field data from China. We find that, in addition to perceived usefulness and perceived enjoyment, usage experience with the prior version, that is the 2G service, has a significant influence on intentions to adopt the 3G service. Understanding the influence of usage experience is an important finding given that ICT vendors deliver successive versions of their products, and with this knowledge they could promote faster adoption and diffusion of new products. We discuss some practical implications, highlight factors that influence the adoption of newer generations of products, and delineate future research avenues.


This paper highlighted the key issues at stake by the proliferation of Library and Information Science schools in Nigeria without due regard to the established standards. In terms of physical infrastructure, location, staffing issues, curriculum, laboratories and programme(s). The paper pointed out the use of other departmental facilities, building, over-relying on institutions' library staff and part-time lecturers from other library schools. The newly established library schools are either located in institutions' libraries, under consultancy services unit or as a unit of a department with their curriculum produced from the harmonization of older library schools. Other key issues at stake include: inadequate or absence of laboratories, workshops and the use of university librarians or outgoing university librarians as the heads of library schools. Some library schools run diploma while some run degree and/or higher degree respectively. The implication include: provision of inadequate training and acquisition of the low level of skills, over utilization of other departments' facilities leading to failure in resource evaluation and accreditation. There should be quality control by the regulatory bodies such as National Universities Commission National Board for Technical Education, with Librarians' Registration Council of Nigeria/Nigerian Library Association. NUC, NBTE and LRCN should ensure quality control for polytechnics running library and information science programmes in Nigeria. This should be in the areas of: resource evaluation, resources, admission requirement/student population uniform/harmonized curriculum, accreditation commencement of programme at lower level (National Diploma and Bachelor Degree); assessment of academic staff duties in the areas of teaching, administration, research and community services. The paper recommended collaboration among in the development of minimum academic standard and uniform curriculum for Nigerian Polytechnics and similar tertiary institutions running LIS programmes.

 Key words: Proliferation, library schools, universities, polytechnics, standards, resources.


The farms included in the Dutch FADN (Farm Accountancy Data Network) are a sample of agricultural and horticultural companies from the Agricultural Census. The FADN is a European instrument for evaluating the income of agricultural holdings and the impacts of the Common Agricultural Policy. This report explains the background of the sample and the developments concerning the population and sample of 2016. All phases – from the determination of the selection plan, the recruitment of farms to the quality control of the final sample – are described in this report.


Dynamic and appropriate resource dimensioning isa crucial issue in cloud computing. As applications go more andmore 24/7, online policies must be sought to balance performancewith the cost of allocated virtual machines. Most industrialapproaches to date use ad hoc manual policies, such as thresholdbasedones. Providing good thresholds proved to be tricky andhard to automatize to fit every application requirement. Researchis being done to apply automatic decision-making approaches,such as reinforcement learning. Yet, they face a lot of problemsto go to the field: having good policies in the early phasesof learning, time for the learning to converge to an optimalpolicy and coping with changes in the application performancebehavior over time. In this paper, we propose to deal with theseproblems using appropriate initialization for the early stages aswell as convergence speedups applied throughout the learningphases and we present our first experimental results for these.We also introduce a performance model change detection onwhich we are currently working to complete the learning processmanagement. Even though some of these proposals were knownin the reinforcement learning field, the key contribution of thispaper is to integrate them in a real cloud controller and toprogram them as an automated workflow.


The need to increase agricultural sustainability has induced the government of India to promote the adoption of integrated pest management (IPM). An evaluation of cotton-based conventional and IPM farming systems was conducted in India (2002–2004). The farmers managing the IPM farms had participated in discovery-based ecological training, namely Farmer Field Schools (FFS). The evaluation included five impact areas: (1) the ecological footprint and (2) occupational hazard of cotton production; and the effects of IPM adoption on (3) labour allocation; (4) management practices; and (5) livelihoods. The analysis showed that a mix of approaches increased the depth and the relevance of the findings. Participatory and conventional methods were complementary. The study also revealed different impacts on the livelihoods of women and men, and wealthy and poor farmers, and demonstrated that the value of the experience can be captured also in terms of the farmers' own frames of reference. The evaluation process consumed considerable resources, indicating that proper budgetary allocations need to be made.


The effect of aberrations in the recording beams of a holographic setup is discussed regarding the deterioration of properties of a reflecting volume Bragg grating. Imperfect recording beams result in a spatially varying grating vector, which causes broadening, asymmetry, and washed out side lobes in the reflection spectrum as well as a corresponding reduction in peak diffraction efficiency. These effects are more significant for gratings with narrower spectral widths.


Effective regulations of the Federal Association of Health Insurance Physicians (Kassenärztliche Bundesvereinigung) require prompt evaluation of positive fecal occult blood tests (FOBTs) in the nationwide cancer screening programme using rectoscopy, double contrast barium enema and colonoscopy, the latter occasionally being recommended as a primary investigation. In symptomless screenees the prevalence of positive FOBTs is much higher than that of detected malignancies. Hence a major proportion of all follow-up investigations are negative. A simple model yields the following conclusion: waiving immediate and maximum follow-up efforts in favour of a two-stage screening procedure will result in a loss of some detectable cases; on the other hand, the number (and with it inconveniences, risks, and costs) of follow-up investigations may be reduced to such an extent that a two-stage screening programme along with some modifications of the FOBT itself should be tested.


The sorption enhanced steam reforming (SESR) technology has the potential to produce high purity hydrogen by Le Chatelier's principle. However, its practical applicability is limited by sorbent sintering and deactivation at high reaction/decarbonation temperatures. Herein, we propose a novel strategy to enhance the stability of the SESR of glycerol (SESRG), in which misfit layered materials, i.e. calcium cobaltates (CCO), were used as a dual-functional material combining CO2 absorption and catalytic reforming. Differing from the conventional approach of enhancing the robustness of catalysts/sorbents, we exploited the reversible phase change of CCO: Ca3Co4O9 ↔ Co + CaO, during the decarbonation and reaction steps respectively. By doing so, the sintering of the CaO sorbent and the Co catalyst could be suppressed because they were homogenized into CCO on an atomic level in every decarbonation stage. The CCO catalyst displayed a very stable performance for producing high purity H2 through SESRG for up to 120 reaction–decarbonation cycles, without noticeable changes in H2 production and CO2 absorption capacity. In situ XRD and microscopy studies demonstrated the reversible phase transition and the accompanied formation of hierarchical CCO micro-structures that facilitated the catalytic reforming and CO2 absorption, benefited from the complex phase equilibria among different CCO compounds. The results in this study shed light on a new paradigm for the design of materials working at high temperatures thus suffering from serious sintering.


Opiates such as morphine are the choice analgesic in the treatment of chronic pain. However their long-term use is limited because of the development of tolerance and dependence. Due to its impor-tance in therapy, different strategies have been considered for making opiates such as morphine more effective, while curbing its liability to be abused. One such strategy has been to use a combination of drugs to improve the effectiveness of morphine. In particular, (cid:2) opioid receptor ligands have been useful in enhancing morphine's potency. The underlying molecular basis for these observations is not understood. We propose the modulation of receptor function by physical association between (cid:1) and (cid:2) opioid receptors as a potential mechanism. In support of this hypothesis, we show that (cid:1) - (cid:2) interacting complexes exist in live cells and native membranes and that the occupancy of (cid:2) receptors (by antagonists) is sufficient to enhance (cid:1) opioid receptor binding and signaling activity. Furthermore, (cid:2) receptor antagonists enhance morphine-mediated intrathecal analgesia. Thus, heterodimeric associations between (cid:1) - (cid:2) opioid receptors can be used as a model for the development of novel combination therapies for the treatment of chronic pain and other pathologies.


This study aims to compare the effectiveness of case-based instruction over traditional instruction in improving 11th grade students' understanding of electrochemistry concepts, attitudes toward chemistry, chemistry self-efficacy beliefs, and motivation to learn chemistry. In total, 113 students (47 males and 66 females) from three high schools participated in this study. Two of the classes from each school were randomly assigned to be either the experimental or control group. The experimental group was instructed by case-based instruction while the control group was taught by traditionally designed instruction. The Electrochemistry Concept Test, Attitude toward Chemistry Scale, High School Chemistry Self-efficacy Scale, and Chemistry Motivation Questionnaire were applied as pre- and post-tests to students in both groups. Moreover, a feedback form was administered to students in the experimental group at the end of the study to get students' opinions about the case-based instruction. One-way Multivariate Analysis of Variance (MANOVA) revealed that case-based instruction was an effective method to improve students' understanding of electrochemistry concepts, attitude toward chemistry, and intrinsic motivation to learn chemistry. The qualitative data gathered from the feedback forms also supported the results of the inferential statistics. Students reported that chemistry lessons were more interesting and enjoyable via case-based instruction.


This study attempts to investigate the behavior of non-financial Islamic label firms towards usage of trade credit. In line with the previous literature, it is hypothesized that Islamic label "Sharīʿah Compliant" indicates higher use of trade credit by such firms, both demand and supply of trade credit. It is also hypothesized that trade credit is substitute of bank loan. The results are based on 338 non-financial firms listed on Pakistan Stock Exchange for 2008 to 2016 observation period. These include non-financial firms from all sectors. The study used random Generalized Method of Moment (GMM) estimation technique to explore the relationship of Islamic label and usage of trade credit as it is the most powerful method when sample size is large. The study found that Islamic label firms use more trade credit, as compared to conventional firms that have more access to bank loan. This study also found that firms with Islamic label prefer trade credit over the bank credit. The result of this study proves all stated hypotheses.


Chronic lung diseases, including chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, asthma, lung cancer and pulmonary fibrosis, are the second leading cause of death in the world. Currently, only limited therapeutic options exist for chronic lung diseases; in particular, causative therapeutic approaches are missing. Lung transplantation remains the only available therapy for many patients with end-stage lung disease; however, the number of patients listed for lung transplantation by far surpasses the number of suitable donor organs.

Beyond lung transplantation, several approaches to repair and regenerate lung tissue, with the aim of restoring lung function, have made substantial progress in recent years and hold great promise for future therapies. Importantly, advancement in our understanding of the underlying pathogenesis of distinct chronic lung diseases will be crucial for the development of novel, targeted therapeutic approaches.

The mission of the European Respiratory Society (ERS) is to alleviate suffering from respiratory disease and promote lung health through research, knowledge sharing, and medical and public education. In support of this mission, the ERS hosts the annual Lung Science Conference (LSC) in Estoril, Portugal, which brings together leading experts (basic scientists, physician scientists and clinicians alike) on distinct topics of relevance to respiratory medicine. In addition, the ERS is strongly committed to encourage, nurture and mentor future generations of world class respiratory scientists and clinicians. The LSC represents one of the main platforms to encourage debate and interaction between young doctoral and postdoctoral scientists with established investigators. In particular, this is facilitated by special mentoring sessions and the Young Investigator Competition, which enables younger delegates to present themselves and their work to established investigators.

In April 2012, an outstanding line-up of international experts met on the occasion of the 10th LSC in Estoril, Portugal, to present and discuss novel findings and exchange novel ideas and opportunities that promote our …


We conducted a randomized trial comparing expectant management versus immunotherapy with paternal leukocytes to improve obstetric outcome in women with unexplained recurrent abortion. Eligible for the study were women with unexplained recurrent abortion (three or more miscarriages and no live birth), negative findings of immunological screening and no inhibition of the mixed lymphocyte culture. These women were seen for the first time between October 1988 and March 1991 in a network of obstetric departments in Northern Italy. Subjects positive for HLA DR3 or with a partner positive for hepatitis virus B antigen were not eligible. A total of 44 women entered the study. Patients were randomly allocated to immunotherapy (22 women) or expectant management (22 women). Women allocated to immunotherapy were given 200 x 10(6) purified paternal lymphocytes before pregnancy. Median follow-up was 24 months (range 10-39) in the immunotherapy group and 25 months (range 11-38) in the expectant management group. Out of the 22 women randomized to immunotherapy, 16 became pregnant and the corresponding value was 14 in the expectant management group. Spontaneous abortion occurred in six out of the 16 pregnancies observed in the treated women. Among the 14 pregnancies observed in the expectant management group, two aborted and one late fetal death occurred. The cumulative proportions of women who became pregnant over 4 years were 37 and 45% in the immunotherapy and expectant management groups respectively; this difference was not significant. No adverse effect was observed in treated women.


Recent technologies are offering the power to share and grow knowledge and ideas in unprecedented ways. The CogEx software platform was developed to take advantage of the digital world with innovative ideas to support designers work in both industrial and academic contexts. This paper presents a qualitative study on the usage of CogEx during capstone design projects in mechanical engineering. It explores its potential to eventually supersede a paper logbook. This study combines three pilot projects where 15 undergraduate students used CogEx for one semester and discussed their experience in a final interview. The focus is limited to individual usage in this study. Results support that the platform has a good potential for engineering design education by replacing the paper logbook. The "extended concept mapping" structure was efficient to organize design work, and although the "concept-knowledge" separation needs refinement, it has good potential in building designer knowledge base.