There are many spheres of life that can lead to people's happiness and satisfaction or dissatisfaction. Some of them are related with the material areas, such as state of economy or income level, the other are related with the social and emotional aspects of life, such as trust in people and public institutions, and the other cover the areas of the physical-productive quality of life, for example, satisfaction with the state of education. The paper examines the variations of subjective quality of life among the largest cities of Lithuania. The central thesis of this paper is that the information of subjective quality of life is important in order to develop the strategies for improving quality of life at the local level (municipality, city, neighbourhood, etc.). We argue that knowing of the objective parameters is not enough. So, it is important to understand how people value and how they are happy and satisfied with different aspects of their life. The profiles of the largest cities of Lithuania that represent all these spheres of subjective quality of life are presented in this paper. The research is based on data gathered through European Social Survey which has been conducted every two years since 2001, in a number of the European and other countries. This survey conducted in Lithuania during 2008-2009 and covered the largest cities of the country. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5755/j01.ss.78.4.3235


Lipid droplets (LDs) are neutral lipid aggregates surrounded by a phospholipid monolayer and specific proteins. In plants, they play a key role as energy source after seed germination, but are also formed in vegetative tissues in response to developmental or environmental conditions, where their functions are poorly understood. To elucidate these, it is essential to isolate LDs with good yields, while retaining their protein components. LD isolation protocols are based on their capacity to float after centrifugation in sucrose gradients. Early strategies using stringent conditions and LD-abundant plant tissues produced pure LDs where core proteins were identified. To identify more weakly bound LD proteins, recent protocols have used low stringency buffers, but carryover contaminants and low yields were often a problem. We have developed a sucrose gradient-based protocol to isolate LDs from Arabidopsis leaves, using Tween-20 and fresh tissue to increase yield. In both healthy and bacterially-infected Arabidopsis leaves, this protocol allowed to identify LD proteins that were later confirmed by microscopy analysis.


Recent deregulation initiatives enable cellular providers to sell excess spectrum for secondary usage. In this paper, we investigate the problem of optimal spot pricing of spectrum by a provider in the presence of both non-elastic primary users, with long-term commitments, and opportunistic, elastic secondary users. We first show that optimal pricing can be formulated as an infinite horizon average reward problem and solved using stochastic dynamic programming. Next, we investigate the design of efficient single pricing policies. We provide numerical and analytical evidences that static pricing policies do not perform well in such settings (in sharp contrast to settings where all the users are elastic). On the other hand, we prove that deterministic threshold pricing achieves optimal profit amongst all single-price policies and performs close to global optimal pricing. We characterize the profit regions of static and threshold pricing, as a function of the arrival rate of primary users. Under certain reasonable assumptions on the demand function, we show that the profit region of threshold pricing can be far larger than that of static pricing. Moreover, we also show that these profit regions critically depend on the support of the demand function rather than specific form of it. We prove that the profit function of threshold pricing is unimodal in price and determine a restricted interval in which the optimal threshold lies. These two properties enable very efficient computation of the optimal threshold policy that is far faster than that of the global optimal policy.


We propose a recurrent radial basis function network-based (RBFN-based) fuzzy neural network (FNN) to control the position of the mover of a field-oriented control permanent-magnet linear synchronous motor (PMLSM) to track periodic reference trajectories. The proposed recurrent RBFN-based FNN combines the merits of self-constructing fuzzy neural network (SCFNN), recurrent neural network (RNN), and RBFN. Moreover, it performs the structureand parameter-learning phases concurrently. The structure learning is based on the partition of input space, and the parameter learning is based on the supervised gradient descent method, using a delta adaptation law. Furthermore, all the control algorithms are implemented in a TMS320C32 DSP-based control computer. The simulated and experimental results due to periodic reference trajectories show that the dynamic behaviors of the proposed recurrent RBFN-based FNN control system are robust with regard to uncertainties


Nepal represents a unique biodiversity which is associated with higher topographic variation and regional climate. The landscape 60 m above sea level reaching its maximum elevation up to 8.8 kilometers, strong monsoon system entering from south east of Nepal and westerly entering from the west contribute to considerable variety of life forms in the relatively smaller land area. The rich biodiversity not only forms the part of many ecological systems in the region but also provides varieties of ecosystem service in the region. Realizing the efficacy of conservation of biological and natural resources, the early conservation efforts were initiated in Nepal in the early 1970s when the concept of Protected Area (PAs) was in its rudimentary stage. Since then PA management achieved its greater heights in Nepal marching to include 30% land area of Nepal under PAs, which is perfectly following AICHI Target of 2030. In this communication, we have accessed the achievements and lapses in PAs management in Nepal. It is claimed the considerable increase in land areas and types of protected areas, and visible lapses in PAs management. Basically, it is very critical to pinpoint biodiversity hotspots and species endemism before setting aside protected areas for conservation. It emphasizes that it has been a high time to initiate the conservation of several small protected areas in order to complement the existing single large protected area system. Further, I recommend the equal conservation consciousness for areas outside conservation areas in Nepal with more focus on educating people for caring Mother Nature.


Financial statements are an integrated report, which used by company's management as a tools to present useful financial information. One of them is to get additional fond from the investor. In order to make the information useful,
consistency as a base of comparability must be applied, which relevancy must be watched Mining industries has been chosen because their high risk and indeterminancy nature. This study aims to give an opinion of consistency concepts in evaluate the mining's industry financial statements, which firing listed on the Indonesia Stock Exchange in 2007-2009.
This study use descriptive-comparative method, which used 13 sample companies and selected by using purposive sampling method Source of data is secondary data consisting audited financial. Data were analyzed by compare
2007-2009 financial statement, analyze the calise of changes and grouping the analysis results. The results of the study show that all of the company applied
consistency on their financial statement presentation, although accounting changes like restatement and account reclassification happened That indicate a consistency isn't always static, but sometime changes needed to improve
relevancy and comparability offinanciai information.


The low prevalence of ciprofloxacin-resistant (Cp) Streptococcus pneumoniae isolates carrying recombinant topoisomerase IV genes could be attributed to a fitness cost imposed by the horizontal transfer, which often implies the acquisition of larger-than-normal parE-parC intergenic regions. A study of the transcription of these genes and of the fitness cost for 24 isogenic Cp strains was performed. Six first-level transformants were obtained either with PCR products containing the parC quinolone resistance-determining regions (QRDRs) of S. pneumoniae Cp mutants with point mutations or with a PCR product that includes parE-QRDR–ant–parCQRDR from a Cp Streptococcus mitis isolate. The latter yielded two strains, T6 and T11, carrying parC-QRDR and parE-QRDR–ant–parC-QRDR, respectively. These first-level transformants were used as recipients in further transformations with the gyrA-QRDR PCR products to obtain 18 second-level transformants. In addition, strain Tr7 (which contains the GyrA E85K change) was used. Reverse transcription-PCR experiments showed that parE and parC were cotranscribed in R6, T6, and T11; and a single promoter located upstream of parE was identified in R6 by primer extension. The fitness of the transformants was estimated by pairwise competition with R6 in both one-cycle and two-cycle experiments. In the one-cycle experiments, most strains carrying the GyrA E85K change showed a fitness cost; the exception was recombinant T14. In the two-cycle experiments, a fitness cost was observed in most first-level transformants carrying the ParC changes S79F, S79Y, and D83Y and the GyrA E85K change; the exceptions were recombinants T6 and T11. The results suggest that there is no impediment due to a fitness cost for the spread of recombinant Cp S. pneumoniae isolates, since some recombinants (T6, T11, and T14) exhibited an ability to compensate for the cost.


A nonlinear auto-disturbance rejection controller (ADRC) has been developed to ensure high dynamic performance of induction motors in this paper. By using the extended state observer (ESO), ADRC can accurately estimate the derivative signals and precise decoupling of induction motors is achieved. In addition, the proposed strategy realizes the disturbance compensation without accurate knowledge of induction motor parameters. The simulation and experimental results show that the proposed controller ensures good robustness and adaptability under modeling uncertainty and external disturbance. It is concluded that the proposed topology produces better dynamic performance, such as small overshoot and fast transient time, than the conventional proportional/integral/derivative (PID) controller in its overall operating conditions.


Analysis of ozone pollution in the Shuaiba Industrial Area of Kuwait was performed over a period of 12 months, from December 1994 to November 1995. The Shuaiba Industrial Area houses several large scale industries which include a petroleum refinery, a complex of petrochemical plants, cement plant, chlorine and soda factory, desalination plant, power station, and shipping port for oil export. Measurements were performed by a mobile station capable of measuring 18 pollutants and meteorological parameters. Measurements were made at 5 minute intervals and were stored on a data station. Variables used in the analysis included measured concentrations for ozone, nitrogen oxides, and non‐methane hydrocarbons. In addition, the meteorological parameters, which included air temperature, wind speed and direction, and solar radiation were used in the analysis. The collected data were averaged on hourly basis, which were used to generate a monthly hour‐averages. Reported data are shown to be consistent with literature data for similar urban pollution data. In this regard, the maximums of the hourly‐averages for ozone concentration coincided with the minimums for the concentrations of nitrogen oxides and non‐methane hydrocarbons. Ozone maximums occurred on daily basis during the period from 12 pm to 2 pm. Formation rates of ozone were found to decrease during the very hot summer season and the mild winter season. The highest ozone concentrations were measured during the spring, early summer, and fall periods.


A nodavirus (tentatively named PvNV, Penaeus vannamei nodavirus) that causes muscle necrosis in P. vannamei was found in Belize in 2004. From 2004 to 2006, shrimp samples collected from Belize exhibited clinical signs, white, opaque lesions in the tails and histopathology similar to those of shrimps infected by infectious myonecrosis virus (IMNV). Histological examination revealed multifocal necrosis and hemocytic fibrosis in the skeletal muscle. In addition, basophilic, cytoplasmic inclusions were found in striated muscle, lymphoid organ and connective tissues. However, IMNV was not detected in these shrimps by either RT-PCR or in situ hybridization, suggesting that these lesions may be caused by another RNA virus. Thus, a cDNA library was constructed from total RNA extracted from hemolymph collected from infected shrimp. One clone (designated PvNV-4) with a 928 bp insert was sequenced and found to be similar (69% similarity when comparing the translated amino acid sequences) to the capsid protein gene of MrNV (Macrobrachium rosenbergii nodavirus). The insert of PvNV-4 was labeled with digoxigenin-11-deoxyuridine triphosphate (dUTP) and hybridized to tissue sections of P. vannamei with muscle necrosis collected in Belize and from laboratory bioassays. The samples were positive for PvNV infection. Positively reacting tissues included skeletal muscle, connective tissues, the lymphoid organ, and hemocytes in the heart and gills. In addition, we experimentally infected both P. vannamei and P. monodon with PvNV prepared from Belize samples. A nested RT-PCR assay developed from the PvNV-4 cloned sequence showed that both species are susceptible to PvNV infection.


At the early stage of a new technology development, Ground Rule (GR) calculations are performed assuming design targets are met, and all the process variations are within certain process assumptions. However, as technology matures, it is expensive, and time consuming to verify these assumptions for all the designs allowed by the rules. Thus, there's a loop hole in the GRs if these assumptions are not met on the design. This issue becomes even worse for 2D dense design such as SRAM, where the design target and wafer image are so different due to all the corners, jogs, line ends etc, and the process variations are much larger for the 2D designs. As a result, SRAM designs almost never follow a standard GR approach but its own unique rules. In fact, for SRAM designs of slightly different style, the rules will be significantly different. On the other hand, Process Variation (PV) contours offer much more details of process variations even though their usage is very limited. One reason for that is that off-nominal conditions having larger risks from rule point of view but have lower probability at the same time, making it a dilemma for us. In this talk we propose a method to incorporate PV contours in GR calculation, and each PV contour are used in Monte-Carlo calculation in accordance with its own probability. We apply this method in SRAM layout optimization as an example. This work was performed at the IBM Semiconductor Research Center, Albany NY 12203


Title of Thesis: UNCERTAINTY AND SENSITIVITY ANALYSES OF THE MUSKINGUM-CUNGE CHANNEL ROUTING MODEL Stephen Scott Reid, Master of Science, 2008 Thesis directed by: Professor Richard H. McCuen Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering Two widely used channel routing models are the Muskingum and MuskingumCunge (M-C) models. However, no significant research has been conducted on how input parameter uncertainty and model sensitivity affect the accuracy of the downstream hydrograph. Therefore, the goal of this research was to perform uncertainty and sensitivity analyses of the Muskingum and M-C models. The results of the sensitivity analyses show that neither model is particularly sensitive to variations in channel routing input parameters, although the Muskingum method is slightly more sensitive. The results of the uncertainty analyses indicate that in all models uncertainty in the channel routing input parameters introduce only a moderate amount of error in the downstream hydrograph; whereas uncertainty in the upstream hydrograph could introduce significant errors. Finally, the M-C method gave negative outflows in the first few time steps, in agreement with other widely reported results in the literature; however, while others have claimed that negative outflows do not have a significant effect on the downstream hydrograph, the results presented herein suggest that this is not always true. UNCERTAINTY AND SENSITIVITY ANALYSES OF THE MUSKINGUM-CUNGE CHANNEL ROUTING MODEL


Denial of Service (DOS) and (DDOS) Distributed Denial of Service attacks have become a major security threat to university campus network security since most of the students and teachers prepare online services such as enrolment, grading system, library etc. Therefore, the issue of network security has become a priority to university campus network management. Using online services in university network can be easily compromised. However, traditional security mechanisms approach such as Defense-In-Depth (DID) Model is outdated in today's complex network and DID Model has been used as a primary cybersecurity defense model in the university campus network today. However, university administration should realize that Defense-In-Depth (DID) are playing an increasingly limited role in DOS/DDoS protection and this paper brings this fact to light. This paper presents that the Defense-In-Depth (DID) is not capable of defending complex and volatile DOS/DDOS attacks effectively. The test results were presented in this study in order to support our claim. The researchers established a Defense-In-Depth (DID) Network model at the Central Luzon State University and penetrated the Network System using DOS/DDOS attack to simulate the real network scenario. This paper also presents the new approach Defense-through-Deception network security model that improves the traditional passive protection by applying deception techniques to them that give insights into the limitations posed by the Defense-In-Depth (DID) Model. Furthermore, this model is designed to prevent an attacker who has already entered the network from doing damage.


We combine census and establishment-level data for 2001--2017 to study the impact of mass layoffs of big manufacturing plants on city-level population and its composition in Canada. We find that manufacturing plant closures and downsizing lead to a decline in subsequent population growth, especially among the young, those of working age, migrants, and the less skilled. There are also sizable negative effects on the local employment in other industries, which can explain why such negative local labor demand shocks affect population dynamics. Public services (health and education) and cultural and recreational amenities are shown to make cities more resilient and help them retain population following negative local labor demand shocks. JEL Classification: J10, R11, R12, R23


A study of deaths related to drug abuse, based on information available in France and Europe, shows that data on such deaths are divergent and difficult to compare between countries because the definition of "death related to drug abuse" may vary from country to country. For this reason, the author attaches little importance to the use of such data as an indirect indicator for assessing the incidence and prevalence of drug abuse. The author carried out an in-depth study of 99 deaths of this type recorded by the police in the Paris area in 1983, which showed that 80 per cent of the cases involved heroin that had been injected intravenously. An analysis of the biographical background of persons who had died as a result of drug abuse revealed that, in addition to severe drug intoxication, the length of drug abuse and psychopathological disorders, a number of so-called "risk situations" were important factors contributing to their deaths. The risk situations included use of heroin for a long period of time, recent discontinuation of heroin use, regular and intensive use of psychotropic substances and alcohol, and injection of drugs in public places where there was no way of testing the drugs beforehand.


This paper demonstrates that an array of cantilever sensors can be operated simultaneously at resonance using a single actuator and a single photodetector. Self-sustained oscillations (SSOs) of cantilevers can be achieved in a feed-back loop using gain saturation mechanism in the electronics. Multiple cantilevers require separate saturation mechanisms and separate sensing electronics for each channel. We introduced optical non-linearity using diffraction gratings at the tip of each cantilever which provide separate saturation non-linearity, enabling a single detector based oscillator array. Two-cantilever SSO operation is investigated analytically, and the multiple frequency oscillation criteria are established. Cross-coupling between the oscillation frequencies has been investigated by using this multi cantilever model. The proposed model will be helpful to design dynamic-mode MEMS (Micro-electro-mechanical nterferometric readout iffraction grating systems) cantilever sensor arrays with the desired functionality and cross-talk levels. This multiple SSO operation can be used in conjunction with dense cantilever arrays for various biosensor applications. Moreover, the model can also be useful to understand the operation of any kind of multiple simultaneous oscillator systems, which employs a single feed-back loop. We also present experimental results that confirm our model. © 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.


The feasibility of co-culturing hematopoietic stem/progenitor cells (HSPCs) and mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) derived from human umbilical cord blood (UCB) using cytodex-3 microcarriers was investigated in this paper in order to assess this as a possibility for future clinical therapies. Considering the safety requirements of clinical applications, we have tried to use human autologous serum (HAS), collected from UCB, to replace the widely used fetal bovine serum (FBS). Moreover, both UCB-hematopoietic stem cells (HSCs) and UCB-MSCs could be harvested simultaneously after their ex vivo culture. In addition, the two different types of stem cells could be easily separated by sedimentation after the co-culture due to the distinct weight differences between cytodex-3 microcarriers (containing adherent MSCs) and the suspended HSCs. To optimize the culture conditions, we have assessed the effect of the concentration of HAS (2.8, 5.6, 8.3 and 11.1%) on the expansion of UCB-MSCs and UCB-HSCs. The results have indicated that the expansion of UCB-HSCs supplied with 5.6% autoserum was at least (1.88 ± 0.33)-fold, better than in the other groups, while it had no to little effect on the expansion of UCB-MSCs. We hence conclude that the optimal concentration of HAS for the co-culture conditions herein reported is 5.6%. Finally, the co-culture system we have developed and herein report is feasible to provide expanded UCB-HSPCs and UCB-MSCs for clinical applications, especially the former. © 2010 Curtin University of Technology and John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.


Abstract A new hybrid microsoroid fern, Microsorum × tohieaense (Microsorum commutatum × Microsorum membranifolium) from Moorea, French Polynesia is described based on morphology and molecular phylogenetic analysis. Microsorum × tohieaense can be distinguished from other French Polynesian Microsorum by the combination of sori that are distributed more or less in a single line between the costae and margins, apical pinna wider than lateral pinnae, and round rhizome scales with entire margins. Genetic evidence is also presented for the first time supporting the hybrid origin of Microsorum × maximum (Microsorum grossum × Microsorum punctatum), and possibly indicating a hybrid origin for the Hawaiian endemic Microsorum spectrum. The implications of hybridization for the taxonomy of microsoroid ferns are discussed, and a key to the microsoroid ferns of the Society Islands is provided.


Bicanalicular lacerations have been traditionally managed using bicanalicular nasal intubation or annular stents. The Mini Monoka monocanalicular stent has been described for the management of monocanalicular lacerations. A bicanalicular laceration can also be successfully managed using two Mini Monoka monocanalicular stents, and this technique has several advantages. We report this simple and minimally invasive alternative in the management of bicanalicular laceration.


Blockchain is increasingly deployed in a broad range of sectors, ranging from banking and finance to manufacturing to energy to transportation, and so on. While many technological and business related blockchain developments and challenges have been identified, many of these engineering and management challenges have not been addressed. The ongoing interest in this topic is also partly evidenced by the large number of submissions we received in this special issue. Of the 200 submissions, only 39 articles were eventually accepted after several rounds of rigorous reviews (i.e., acceptance rate of 19.5%). In this editorial, we report on the findings from the first 36 articles on a broad range of topics (e.g., supply chain, financial technology, Internet of Things, smart city, healthcare, security, privacy, and blockchain building blocks such as consensus algorithms). Hopefully, the findings reported in these 36 accepted articles will provide sustainable solutions for existing and future blockchain systems and platforms.


Cancer Immunotherapies designed to generate a cell-mediated immune response against tumors are emerging as frontline treatment options for cancer; however, concerns regarding efficacy, safety and cost efficacy have limited the use of these treatments. To address these weaknesses, we have developed a novel immunotherapy capable of delivering previously encountered antigenic peptides specifically to cancer cells and facilitating their presentation through the MHC class I pathway. Our therapy utilizes a modular synthetic nanoparticle delivery system comprising of three components: a neutral stealth liposome, encapsulated synthetic immunogenic HLA class I restricted peptides derived from measles virus (MV), and a tumor-targeting peptide on the external surface of the liposome. The targeting peptide results in accumulation of the liposomes specifically inside cancer cells and facilitates presentation of the MV-derived immunogenic peptides in HLA class I molecules. We refer to this system as TALL (Targeted Antigen Loaded Liposomes). Therefore, TALL can generate a secondary immune response specifically against the targeted tumor cells in a patient who has been previously vaccinated against or infected by MV. In short, we are attempting to trick the immune system into responding as though the cancer cell is infected with MV without the use of a viral particle. We have demonstrated that this approach leads to a cancer-specific CD8+ T cell response which requires all three components of the TALL system. The lead cancer-targeting peptide has been optimized for affinity, cellular uptake, hydrophobicity, and stability. The TALL liposomes home to tumors in vivo. We have demonstrated a significant reduction in subcutaneous tumor growth using P-TALL in aggressive LLC1 and 4T1 murine models. Citation Format: Indu Venugopal, Claire Gormley, Michael J McGuire, Kathlynn C Brown. A novel cell-mediated immunotherapy for treatment of lung and breast cancer [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the AACR-NCI-EORTC International Conference on Molecular Targets and Cancer Therapeutics; 2019 Oct 26-30; Boston, MA. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Mol Cancer Ther 2019;18(12 Suppl):Abstract nr B061. doi:10.1158/1535-7163.TARG-19-B061


It is widely believed that theory is useful in physics because it describes simple systems and that strictly empirical phenomenological approaches are necessary for complex biological and social systems. Here, we prove based on an analysis of the information that can be obtained from experimental observations that theory is even more essential in the understanding of complex systems. Implications of this proof revise the general understanding of how we can understand complex systems including the behaviorist approach to human behavior, problems with testing engineered systems, and medical experimentation for evaluating treatments and the Food and Drug Administration approval of medications. Each of these approaches are inherently limited in their ability to characterize real world systems due to the large number of conditions that can affect their behavior. Models are necessary as they can help to characterize behavior without requiring observations for all possible conditions. The testing of models by empirical observations enhances the utility of those observations. For systems for which adequate models have not been developed, or are not practical, the limitations of empirical testing lead to uncertainty in our knowledge and risks in individual, organizational, and social policy decisions. These risks should be recognized and inform our decisions. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Complexity, 2015


BACKGROUND
Wide variations in the prevalence of asthma, rhinitis and eczema have been reported between regions within Canada and between different countries. The International Study of Asthma and Allergies in Childhood (ISAAC) was developed to provide a standardized tool and methodology to ascertain the prevalence of asthma and allergies in different regions. Comparisons of prevalence rates across geographic regions and at different times may help to identify factors that contribute to the development of these conditions in individuals.

METHODS
Two Canadian centres, Hamilton and Saskatoon, participated in the ISAAC. A standard questionnaire was distributed through schools and completed by 13- and 14-year-old children and by the parents of 6- and 7-year-old children. Prevalence rates and 95% confidence intervals were calculated for asthma, wheezing, rhinitis and eczema.

RESULTS
The overall response rates were 75.1% among the children 6 and 7 years old and 68.6% among those 13 and 14 years old. Among the younger children, the lifetime prevalence of asthma was 17.2% in Hamilton and 11.2% in Saskatoon; the corresponding rates among the older children were 19.2% and 12.2% respectively. The prevalence of wheezing in the 12 months before the survey in the younger group was 20.1% in Hamilton and 14.1% in Saskatoon; in the older group it was 30.6% and 24.0% respectively. The prevalence of rhinitis in the 12 months before the survey was 28.6% in Hamilton and 22.6% in Saskatoon in the younger group and 45.8% and 33.8% respectively in the older group. The prevalence of eczema was slightly higher in Saskatoon in both age groups.

INTERPRETATION
High prevalence rates of asthma, rhinitis and eczema exist among school children in Hamilton and Saskatoon, similar to rates in other Western countries. Further studies are required to determine the factors associated with the high rates in the 2 regions and possible reasons for the higher rates in Hamilton.


The filling process and solidification of Al based alloy linkage by suction casting was studied via numerical simulation. The shrinkage defect of Al based alloy linkage casting was predicted by using FEM software ProCAST. The results indicate the cold shut will be decreased with the increase of graphite suction opening diameter and the pouring temperature. With the decrease of the coefficient of heat transfer, the cold shut is reduced. The Al based alloy linkage are obtained by this method. The simulated result tallies well with the actual cast experiment, and lays down a foundation for improving the cast technology of the Al based alloy casting.


The present investigation deals with the fecundity study of Barilius bendelisis collected from the river Manas. Relationship of fecundity with body weight (TW), total length (TL), ovary length (OL) and ovary weight (OW) was calculated and found to be linear. The value of correlation coefficient (r) was estimated to be 0.72, 0.61, 0.042 and 0.807 respectively for the above relationships. As indicated by the value of 'r' (0.807), the fecundity is more closely related to ovary weight and hence the ovary weight may be a better index of fecundity compared to the other studied parameters.


: The paper deals with the study of production of tumour necrosis factor (TNF), the key mediator of inflammation and immune responses of the organism, under experimental and staphylococcus infection (Staphylococcus aureus, st. 209) on mice of C57B16 line. It is established that staphylococcus infection of animals lead to TNF induction. Dynamics of this cytokinin synthesis by peritoneal macrophages and splenocytes under the infection of mice with S. aureus in different doses differed in time and as to absolute values. In animals infected by staphylococcus in a dose of LD30 the TNF production was high as compared to the control for 72 h after the infection and was normalized on the 4-6th day of the experiment. When using staphylococcus in a dose of LD50, spontaneous production of this cytokinin was higher than that in the control for the whole period of observation.


Background: In Iran, methyl alcohol poisoning rarely occurs accidentally and usually occurs through abuse of contaminated ethanol. However, with proper and timely treatment complications and mortality of methanol poisoning can be prevented. In this study, the epidemiological profile of methanol poisoning in the Iranian society was investigated. Methods: In this prospective cross-sectional study, 28 methanol poisoned patients referred to the department forensic medicine and toxicology of Loghman Hakim and Baharlu Hospitals were examined and their data were collected. Results: Most of the patients (82.1%) were men. Mean age of patients was 29.3 ± 4.57 years. The most common cause of poisoning was drinking unknown contaminated alcoholic beverage (82.1%) without knowing the effects and risks. Most patients (57.1%) had mild decreased level of consciousness. 14.3% of patients developed toxic complications (blindness) at discharge and 17.9% of patients died at the hospital despite receiving appropriate treatment. Conclusion: Considering the high frequency of methanol poisoning in young men without knowing the side effects and risks, it is necessary to educate youths about the effects of alcohol and alcoholic beverages, with special attention recognition of its potential complications. It is also essential to train medical staff, especially emergency physicians about symptoms, diagnostic keys and early treatment of alcohol poisoning to prevent sever complications such as visual loss and brain damage.


abstract Legislative treatment of homosexual citizens of Uganda was variously categorised as vitriolic homophobia by the international LGBTIQ movement and human rights advocates. Extreme proposed penalties (including death, extradition and life imprisonment) contained in the Anti-Homosexuality Bill (2009), which was amended and then passed as the Anti-Homosexuality Act (2014), sought to institutionalise State-inspired homophobia through legislation. Scholarship of the legal regime governing non-heteronormative sexualities in Uganda narrowly focuses on interpreting the law and its implications on individual homosexuals. Less analytical attention is focused on diverse appropriations of power and powerlessness by varied actors within the societal, national and international contexts in which this law was negotiated. Based on triangulation of ethnographic fieldwork conducted by an anthropologist and social justice activism by a legal scholar, this article critically analyses the social and political dynamics of the deeply polarised recriminalisation of homosexuality to move and sway diverse citizenry within and outside of Uganda. After discussing the contents, context and historical developments of the anti-homosexuality laws, as well as the constitutional petition that led to its annulment, we analyse the attendant contestations and debates within Parliament, the executive, judiciary and society. The varied, contradictory and opposing standpoints towards recriminalising homosexuality highlight the practical impossibility of generalising any social unit within Uganda as homogenously homophobic or universally opposed to same-sex practices. While proponents of anti-homosexuality legislation mobilised their position to sway candidates to give them votes during elections, opponents of the law built their social-political acumen as defenders of minority human rights, and stewards of good governance in the country. This legislative process was appropriated for political expediency by diverse actors. In conclusion, we assert that the anti-homosexuality law became a paradoxical symbol for nationalism, sovereignty, economic autonomy, Africanness, traditional culture, Christian conservatism, progressiveness, propriety, defiant sexualities, foreign intervention, and neo-imperialism.


The Kramis deep-sea fan extends over 45 km at the base of the western Algerian continental slope between 2000 and 2550 m water depth and covers an area of approximately 1200 km2. The Kramis Fan was initiated after Messinian time, evolved during the Plio- Quaternary, and, is still active, as proved by submarine cable breaks during the 1954 Orleansville earthquake. The Kramis Fan is fed by two perpendicular canyons: the Kramis Canyon and the Khadra Canyon, merging in a single E-W-oriented channel confined at the foot of the slope. It is strongly asymmetric with a super-developed levee on the right-hand side of the channel, the Kramis Ridge. Based on recent multibeam, side-scan sonar, and sediment core data (Maradja, 2003 and 2005, Prisma, 2004, and Prisme, 2007 cruises), we describe the morphology and internal structure of the fan and particularly the sediment ridge, showing marked lateral changes in the sediment-wave morphology and their association with a series of large scours in the intermediate part of the ridge aligned in the continuity of the Khadra Canyon direction. Overall, the Kramis Ridge is formed by turbidity currents overspilling the ridge crest, which is 100 m above the channel floor, with two exceptions. In the distal part of the ridge the subdued ridge-crest height probably causes continuous overspill, testified by sediment waves migrating parallel to the channel. The scours occur in the intermediate part of the ridge where the ridge height is only 50-60 m; scours are interpreted as the result of cyclic steps due to flow stripping of currents provided by the intersection of the Khadra Canyon with the Kramis Canyon and Channel system. The scours probably postdate the main growth of the Kramis Ridge and induce the local erosion of the ridge, which could correspond to a new channel initiation cutting the ridge. The superposition or the interaction of flows with different directions is responsible of the amplification of the size of the sediment waves with erosional downside flanks and their transformation in scours. The Kramis Fan provides a clear example of flow interaction to explain the presence of large sediment waves and scours on modern submarine fans.


Abstract As an initial step toward the generation of a murine model for mucopolysaccharidosis type I, we have identified and characterized a full-length murine α- l -iduronidase cDNA. Expression of the murine cDNA in COS-1 cells results in the production of α- l -iduronidase enzyme activity at a level 20-fold higher than that of the endogenous gene. The murine cDNA shows strong homology with the coding region of both the human and the canine homologs with 78 and 75% nucleotide sequence identity, respectively. In contrast to the coding region, significant diversity of sequence exists for the 5′ and 3′ untranslated regions between the murine and both the human and the canine sequence. The 3′ UTR of the murine transcript is 1193 bp in length, as compared to the human (100 bp) and canine (139 bp), and contains a CA dinucleotide repeat not seen in either the human or the canine genes. A portion of the murine iduronidase coding sequence overlaps with sequence reported for the 3′ UTR of the murine SAT-1 cDNA. The sequence overlap involves the proposed exon II of murine iduronidase and covers 141 bp of sequence with the transcripts generated in opposite orientation. We report here the characterization of murine α- l -iduronidase cDNA and its relationship to SAT-1.


Horizon Environmental Services, Inc. (Horizon) was selected by the City of Dripping Springs to conduct an intensive cultural resources inventory survey and assessment of the proposed Dripping Springs Wastewater System Improvements Project (EID 1) in Dripping Springs, Hays County, Texas (USACE Project No. SWF-2020-00075). This survey represents the first phase of a larger project involving the proposed construction of wastewater system improvements in Dripping Springs. The current phase of the project would involve three separate components—the West Interceptor segment, which extends approximately 3.7 kilometers (2.3 miles) in length along Onion Creek west of Farm-to-Market Road (FM) 12; the Reclaimed Water Line segment, which extends approximately 1.3 kilometers (0.8 mile) in length between Needham Road and the intersection of FM 12 and FM 150; an approximately 2.3-hectare (5.7-acre) effluent pond located south of an existing water reclamation facility south of FM 150; and the proposed expansion of the existing water reclamation facility adjacent to the proposed effluent pond, which together cover 3.3 hectares (8.0 acres). The linear rights-of-way (ROW) of proposed pipeline segments would measure a maximum of 30.5 meters (100.0 feet) in width, and the proposed project components would cover a combined area of approximately 18.5 hectares (45.6 acres). The proposed undertaking would be sponsored by the City of Dripping Springs, a public subdivision of the state of Texas. As a political subdivision of the state of Texas, the project would fall under the jurisdiction of the Antiquities Code of Texas (Natural Resources Code, Title 9, Chapter 191). In addition, the project would utilize funding provided by the Clean Water State Revolving Fund (CWSRF) program, which is a federal-state partnership between the US Environmental Protection Agency (US EPA) and the state of Texas. As the US EPA is a federal agency, the project would also fall under the jurisdiction of Section 106 of the National Historic Preservation Act (NHPA) of 1966, as amended. As the proposed project represents a publicly sponsored undertaking, the project sponsor is required to provide the Texas Historical Commission (THC), which serves as the State Historic Preservation Office (SHPO) for the state of Texas, with an opportunity to review and comment on the project's potential to adversely affect historic properties listed on or considered eligible for listing on the National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) under the NHPA and for designation as State Antiquities Landmarks (SAL) under the Antiquities Code of Texas. From October 1 to 3, on November 4, and on November 22, 2019, Horizon archeologists Jesse Dalton, McKinzie Froese, Amy Goldstein, Elizabeth Sefton, and Jared Wiersema conducted an intensive cultural resources survey of the project area, including pedestrian walkover with shovel testing and backhoe trenching. The survey was performed under the supervision of Jeffrey D. Owens, who served as Principal Investigator, under Texas Antiquities Permit No. 9114. The purpose of the survey was to locate any significant cultural resources that potentially would be impacted by the proposed undertaking. Horizon's archeologists traversed the project area on foot and thoroughly inspected the modern ground surface for aboriginal and historic-age cultural resources. Overall, vegetation across the entire project area generally consisted of short- to medium-length grasses interspersed with mature live oak and cedar trees, which afforded fair to good ground surface visibility (30 to 60%). Within the riparian zone of Onion Creek, vegetation consisted of tall, dense grass and mature honey mesquite, cedar, live oak, and hackberry trees, which provided poor ground surface visibility (<30%). The West Interceptor segment runs along the gravelly terraces of Onion Creek. Topographically, this segment of the project area consists of steep limestone steps and rocky outcrops that give way to flat, open fields. The proposed interceptor crosses Onion Creek at three locations, and the lower stream terraces of the creek have extensive gravel bars and debris associated with high-energy flooding. Soil profiles typically consist of a shallow A horizon of hard, calcareous clay loam underlain by dense gravelly deposits; however, in the southeastern portion of the West Interceptor, deeper clayey loam alluvium underlain by limestone bedrock was encountered. The Reclaimed Water Line segment traverses the west-facing hillslopes of upland ridges east of Onion Creek. Approximately the southeastern half of this segment of the project area would be constructed within the existing ROW of FM 12 west of the roadway, and construction, use, and ongoing maintenance of the roadway and associated facilities has resulted in extensive prior disturbances. Evidence of ground disturbance resulting from land clearing for housing developments and a transmission line were also noted within the northwestern portion of the proposed Reclaimed Water Line segment. The far northwestern end of the proposed Reclaimed Water Line segment skims the edge of the floodplain associated with a tributary of Onion Creek. Sediments on the terraces of this stream channel consist of calcareous loamy alluvial deposits, while soils across the upland portions of the segment consist of shallow deposits of gravelly clay and clay loam underlain by naturally degrading limestone bedrock. The water reclamation facility expansion and effluent pond segment are located on the upper terraces northeast of Onion Creek. The water reclamation facility is an existing industrial facility surrounded by septic fields, and prior disturbances from construction, use, and ongoing maintenance of the facility are extensive. The proposed expansion area to the north of the existing facility is currently utilized as a septic field. Sediments within this segment of the project area consist of shallow, gravelly, calcareous loamy to clayey loam alluvium underlain by naturally degrading limestone bedrock. In addition to a pedestrian walkover, the Texas State Minimum Archeological Survey Standards (TSMASS) require a minimum of 16 subsurface shovel tests per 1.6 kilometers (1.0 mile) for each 30.5-meter- (100.0-foot-) wide transect (or fraction thereof) for linear surveys unless field conditions warrant more shovel tests (e.g., in cultural high-probability areas) or fewer shovel tests (e.g., on steep slopes, in areas with excellent ground surface visibility). For block-area surveys, the TSMASS require two shovel tests per 0.4 hectare (1.0 acre) for project areas between 1.2 and 4.0 hectares (3.0 and 10.0 acres) in size. As such, a minimum of 37 shovel tests would be required within the West Interceptor segment, 13 shovel tests would be required within the Reclaimed Water Line segment, and 16 shovel tests would be required within the proposed water reclamation facility expansion and effluent pond area, for a total of 66 shovel tests for the project area as a whole. Horizon excavated a total of 106 shovel tests during the survey, including 82 shovel tests within the West Interceptor segment, 13 shovel tests within the Reclaimed Water Line segment, and 11 shovel tests within the facility expansion and effluent pond area. The shovel tests within the proposed facility expansion and effluent pond area were not all excavated directly within the final proposed construction footprint as the boundaries of this portion of the project area had not been firmly determined at the time of the survey, and no shovel tests were excavated within the existing water reclamation facility due to the extent of observable prior disturbances within this area. Overall, Horizon exceeded the minimum number of shovel tests required for the project area as a whole, and it is Horizon's opinion that shovel testing was capable of fully penetrating sediments with the potential to contain subsurface archeological deposits (with the exception noted below where backhoe trenches were excavated along a portion of the West Interceptor segment). In addition to shovel testing, Horizon excavated four backhoe trenches within the southeastern portion of the proposed West Interceptor segment. The trenches were excavated at roughly 100.0-meter (328.0-foot) intervals along the proposed centerline to depths ranging from 105.0 to 350.0 centimeters (41.3 to 137.8 inches) below surface. Sediments observed within trench profiles typically consisted of moderately deep deposits of grayish-brown fine clay loam over yellowish-brown fine sandy loam. Dense deposits of river cobbles and/or naturally degrading limestone bedrock were observed at the base of three of the four trenches, and it is Horizon's opinion that backhoe trenching was capable of fully penetrating sediments with the potential to contain archeological deposits. One chert flake was recorded in a shovel test (ST AG30) at a depth of 0.0 to 30.0 centimeters (0.0 to 11.8 inches) below surface at the far northwestern end of the West Interceptor project segment. Supplemental delineation shovel tests excavated around this initial discovery failed to produce any additional evidence of prehistoric cultural activity at this location, so the chert flake was recorded as an isolated artifact occurrence but was not documented as an archeological site. No other cultural resources of prehistoric or historic age were recorded within the project area during the pedestrian survey, shovel testing, or backhoe trenching. Based on the results of the survey-level investigations documented in this report, no cultural resources would be affected by the proposed undertaking. In accordance with 36 CFR 800.4, Horizon has made a reasonable and good-faith effort to identify historic properties within the project area. No cultural resources were identified within the project area that meet the criteria for designation as SALs according to 13 TAC 26 or for inclusion in the NRHP accordi


Evidence is presented to support the validity of the basal cell hamartia hypothesis as an explanation for the histogenesis of jaw cysts (keratocysts) in the basal cell nevus syndrome. Possible implications for surgical management are outlined.


The possibilities of replacing slaughterhouse byproduct meals (blood meal, poultry-by products, meat and bone meal) into menhaden fish meal in salmonid (rainbow trout fry) diets were economically analyzed in this study. Fish meal levels of diets were balanced as 30% and 45%, and 10 test diets with average 34% (first five diets) and 41% (last five diets) protein and about 3500 kcal/kg metabolic energy were made by replacing 0, 25, 50, 75 and 100% slaughterhouse byprolucts into these categories of fish meal. As a control feed, a commercial feed with 55% protein (min.) and 2900 kcal ME/kg was used. Rainbow trout fry with an average 1.75 ± 0.08 g initial weights were fed with prepared test diets and control diet as three replicates (in total 33 tanks) for a period of 150 days ( 140 feeding days). In aspects of the economic analysis of the feeds, various profits obtained from the groups, and the differences between the profits were statistically significant (p


The uptake of organic vapors by 4-20 nm H(2)SO(4) particles has been investigated to assess the role of organics in atmospheric nanoparticle growth. Sulfuric acid nanoparticles are generated from homogeneous binary nucleation of H(2)SO(4) and H(2)O vapors in a laminar flow chamber. The growth factor of H(2)SO(4) nanoparticles exposed to methyglyoxal, ethanol, 1-butanol, 1-heptanol, and 1-decanol is measured using a nanotandem differential mobility analyzer (nano-TDMA). The measured growth factor is close to unity when nanoparticles are exposed to methylglyoxal, ethanol, 1-butanol, 1-heptanol, and 1-decanol, indicating no apparent growth within the experimental uncertainty. In addition, spectroscopic evolution of functional groups in H(2)SO(4) particles of ∼40 nm diameter size, deposited on ZnSe crystal and subsequently exposed to glyoxal and 2,4-hexadienal, is studied using attenuated total reflection-Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (ATR-FT-IR). The ATR-FT-IR measurements present the first spectroscopic signatures of high molecular weight aldol and oligomer products and show that polymerization and oligomerization reactions are partially reversible. The implications of the present results to nanoparticle growth in the atmosphere are discussed.


A very simple test/monitor circuit is presented which emulates the hot-carrier induced degradation of those critical circuits which are most susceptible to hot-carrier induced aging in a large system on chip. Delay-time degradation, as opposed to current degradation, is devised as a more realistic measure for monitoring long-term circuit reliability, and a simple method is presented for measuring this degradation. The hot-carrier aging monitor is capable of issuing a warning signal (flag) when the amount of hot-carrier induced transient performance degradation in critical circuits on the chip exceeds a pre-determined limit value. The monitor circuitry occupies a very small silicon area; and it can be added to any large-scale design with a minimum of extra cost, at the end of the design cycle.


The average sound absorption coefficients for the interior surfaces of eight halls, in which all finishes were completed before installation of seats, were determined from reverberation measurements. When the chairs were installed, their absorption coefficients, both occupied and unoccupied, were also determined from RT data. Five of these halls have lightly upholstered seats, one has medium upholstered seats, and two have heavily upholstered seats. The data are compared with the 15‐hall data of Chap. 5 in Beranek [Concert and Opera Halls: How They Sound, Acoustical Society of America (1996)]. A survey of the chair design in those 15 halls has produced a correlation between chair construction and the words: ''lightly,'' ''medium,'' and ''heavily'' upholstered. The new data permit more accurate estimation of reverberation times as a function of frequency than previously found by comparing the details of a hall‐in‐planning with the constructions and seats of these eight halls.


Traditional compression methods including network pruning, quantization, low rank factorization and knowledge distillation all assume that network architectures and parameters are one-to-one mapped. In this work, we propose a new perspective on network compression, i.e., network parameters can be disentangled from the architectures. From this viewpoint, we present the Neural Epitome Search (NES), a new neural network compression approach that learns to find compact yet expressive epitomes for weight parameters of a specified network architecture end-to-end. The complete network to compress can be generated from the learned epitome via a novel transformation method that adaptively transforms the epitomes to match weight shapes of the given architecture. Compared with existing compression methods, NES allows the weight tensors to be independent of the architecture design and hence can achieve a good trade-off between model compression rate and performance given a specific model size constraint. Experiments demonstrate that, on ImageNet, when taking MobileNetV2 as backbone, our approach improves the full-model baseline by 1.47% in top-1 accuracy with 25% MAdd reduction, and with the same compression ratio, improves AutoML for Model Compression (AMC) by 2.5% in top-1 accuracy. Moreover, taking EfficientNet-B0 as baseline, our NES yields an improvement of 1.2% but has 10% less MAdd. In particular, our method achieves a new state-of-the-art results of 77.5% under mobile settings (<350M MAdd). Code will be made publicly available.


Nonspecific protein-DNA interactions play an important role in a variety of contexts related to DNA packaging, nucleoprotein complex formation, and gene regulation. Biophysical characterization of nonspecific protein-DNA interactions at the atomic level poses significant challenges owing to the dynamic nature of such complexes. Although NMR spectroscopy represents a powerful tool for the analysis of dynamic systems, conventional NMR techniques have provided little information on nonspecific protein-DNA interactions. We show that intermolecular (1)H paramagnetic relaxation enhancement (PRE) arising from Mn(2+) chelated to an EDTA-group covalently attached to a thymine base (dT-EDTA-Mn(2+)) in DNA provides a unique approach for probing the global dynamics and equilibrium distribution of nonspecific protein-DNA interactions. For nonspecific DNA binding, similar intermolecular (1)H-PRE profiles are observed on the (1)H resonances of the bound protein when dT-EDTA-Mn(2+) is located at either end of a DNA oligonucleotide duplex. We demonstrate the applicability of this approach to HMG-box proteins and contrast the results obtained for nonspecific DNA binding of the A-box of HMGB-1 (HMGB-1A) with sequence-specific DNA binding of the related SRY protein. Intermolecular (1)H-PRE data demonstrate unambiguously that HMGB-1A binds to multiple sites in multiple orientations even on a DNA fragment as short as 14 base pairs. Combining the (1)H-PRE data with the crystal structure of the HMGB-1 A-box/cisplatin-modified DNA complex allows one to obtain a semiquantitative estimate of the equilibrium populations at the various sites.


Public transportation in Sidenreng Rappang Regency faces various problems that affect the achievement of tax collection effectiveness. One phenomenon that is often encountered in matters relating to the public transportation tax system is the emergence of an unofficial terminal, irregular tax collection processes, lack of motivation and guidance to tax management officers so that they are less professional in their field duties and public transportation facilities and infrastructure are not yet optimal. For this reason, planning for priority strategies is needed to increase local revenue (PAD). The purpose of this study is to design a priority strategy for increasing local revenue (PAD) through public transportation taxes in Sidenreng Rappang Regency. The research method used is a mixed-methods method. Data were collected through observation and in-depth interviews with stakeholders. Then the data were analyzed using stakeholder analysis methods and process hierarchy analysis. Stakeholders involved in increasing public transport taxes in Sidenreng Rappang Regency are divided into two groups. The first group is the key players. Key player's group stakeholders must be more actively involved in planning and evaluating policy. The second group is the actors. Stakeholder group can bring risks, so their existence needs to be monitored and managed properly. To optimize the role of stakeholder actors, it is necessary to coordinate with key stakeholder groups in determining policy. The priority scale of the policy in increasing public transport taxes is as follows: 1) optimizing training and education programs in improving the quality of human resources and increasing the dissemination to taxpayers; 2) improve public transportation terminal facilities; 3) evaluating Regional Regulation Number 10 of 2010 concerning tax tariffs; and 4) cooperation between other agencies.


I want to thank Dr. Yadranko Ducic for serving as guest editor for this issue of Seminars in Plastic Surgery on "Skull Base Reconstruction".We also appreciate the effortsmadebyeach outstanding author for sharing with us their knowledge. Dr. Yadranko Ducic was born in the former Yugoslavia and movedwith his parents to Canada at the age of 6. He grew up in the beautiful city of Ottawa, the capital of Canada, where he completed much of his training. He moved to the United States to complete a Fellowship in Facial Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery at the University of Minnesota. Dr Ducic then moved to the Dallas–Fort Worth Metroplex. Dr. Ducic is a plastic surgeon in Fort Worth, Texas and is affiliated with multiple hospitals in the area, including Baylor All SaintsMedical Center at FortWorth andMethodist Medical Center at Dallas. He received his medical degree from the University of Ottawa, Faculty of Medicine and has been in practice for more than 20 years. He is board certified in both Facial Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery and Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery. He has published a large number of articles in the fields of cosmetic surgery (including rhinoplasty, chin augmentation, face lift, lip augmentation, laser resurfacing, and ear shaping surgery), reconstructive surgery (including several different flaps to assist in restoring the face and neck), maxillofacial trauma, and skull base surgery (including various approaches to access lesions of the skull base as well as several techniques to optimize appearance postoperatively). Dr. Yadro has four children: Aleksa, Luka, Nikola, and Nadia. Dr. Ducic enjoys spending time with his family and likes sports and travelling.


Abstract South Africa participated in the Third International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) in 1995 and again in 1999 (TIMSS-Repeat) and in both studies the performance was extremely low compared to the other countries in the studies. In both studies more than 70% of the pupils wrote the achievement tests in their second or third language. A national option, an English test, was included together with the TIMSS-R mathematics and science tests in an attempt to ascertain the level of the pupils' language proficiency. Furthermore, additional questions pertaining to the pupils and their teachers' exposure and usage of English both within and outside of school were also included in the background questionnaire. In this research project that included more than 8 000 pupils in 200 schools, all the items pertaining to English proficiency and language usage and their relationship to mathematics achievement were explored. Partial Least Square analysis was used to explore the relative contribution of these factors to pupils' achievement together with other background variables from the student, teacher and principal questionnaires, resulting in the presentation of a school-level, a classroom-level model, a student-level model and a combined class and school-level model. Multi-level analysis was employed whereby a 2-level model (school and class-level and the student-level) was analysed in order to investigate the main factors explaining achievement of South African pupils in mathematics. The study revealed that the pupils' proficiency of English was a strong predictor of their success in mathematics. A number of other background variables on student and class-level were found to be significant. However, home language and class size were amongst those that were not found to have significant effect on achievement, whilst the effect of socio-economic status had a lesser effect once certain class-level factors were taken into consideration.


OBJECTIVES
While the pathophysiology of bipolar disorder (BD) remains to be elucidated, postmortem and neuroimaging studies have suggested that abnormalities in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) are implicated. We compared the levels of specific brain chemicals of interest measured with proton magnetic resonance spectroscopy ((1)H MRS) in medication-free BD subjects and age- and gender-matched healthy controls. We hypothesized that BD subjects would present abnormal cellular metabolism within the DLPFC, as reflected by lower N-acetyl-aspartate (NAA) and creatine + phosphocreatine (Cr + PCr).

METHODS
Thirty-two medication-free BD subjects (33.8 +/- 10.2 years) and 32 matched controls (33.8 +/- 9.0 years) underwent a short echo-time (TE = 30 ms) (1)H MRS. An 8-cm(3) single voxel was placed in the left DLPFC, and individual concentrations of NAA, Cr + PCr, choline-containing compounds (GPC + PC), myo-inositol, and glutamate were obtained, using the water signal as an internal reference.

RESULTS
BD subjects had lower Cr + PCr [F((1,62)) = 5.85; p = 0.018; one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA)] and lower GPC + PC [F((1,62)) = 5.79; p = 0.019; one-way ANOVA] levels in the left DLPFC. No significant differences were observed for other brain metabolites.

CONCLUSIONS
These findings provide further evidence that the pathophysiology of BD involves impairment in the DLPFC. Our findings can be interpreted as evidence for reduced cellular energy and phospholipid metabolism, consistent with the hypothesis of mitochondrial dysfunction in BD.


Motivated by, the problem of understanding the limitations of neural networks for representing Boolean functions, the authors consider size-depth tradeoffs for threshold circuits that compute the parity function. They give an almost optimal lower bound on the number of edges of any depth-2 threshold circuit that computes the parity function with polynomially bounded weights. The main technique used in the proof, which is based on the theory of rational approximation, appears to be a potentially useful technique for the analysis of such networks. It is conjectured that there are no linear size, bounded-depth threshold circuits for computing parity.<<ETX>>


The flexibility coming along with the simplicity of their base primitive and the support by todays graphics hardware, have made triangular meshes more and more popular for representing complex 3D objects. Due to the complexity of realistic datasets, a considerable amount of work has been spent during the last years to provide means for the modification of a given mesh by intuitive metaphors, i.e. large scale edits under preservation of the detail features. In this paper we demonstrate how a hierarchical structure of a mesh can be derived for arbitrary meshes to enable intuitive modifications without restrictions on the underlying connectivity, known from existing subdivision approaches. We combine mesh reduction algorithms and constrained energy minimization to decompose the given mesh into several frequency bands. Therefore, a new stabilizing technique to encode the geometric difference between the levels will be presented.


Data integrity becomes paramount as the number of Internet of Things (ioT) sensor deployments increases. Sensor data can be altered by benign causes or malicious actions. Mechanisms that detect drifts and irregularities can prevent disruptions and data bias in the state of an IoT application. This paper presents LE3D, an ensemble framework of data drift estimators capable of detecting abnormal sensor behaviours. Working collaboratively with surrounding ioT devices, the type of drift (natural/abnormal) can also be identified and reported to the end-user. The proposed framework is a lightweight and unsupervised implementation able to run on resource-constrained IoT devices. Our framework is also generalisable, adapting to new sensor streams and environments with minimal online reconfiguration. We compare our method against state-of-the-art ensemble data drift detection frameworks, evaluating both the real-world detection accuracy as well as the resource utilisation of the implementation. Experimenting with real-world data and emulated drifts, we show the effectiveness of our method, which achieves up to 97% of detection accuracy while requiring minimal resources to run.


THE 11TH WORKSHOP on Pattern Recognition in Remote Sensing (PRRS) of the International Association for Pattern Recognition (IAPR), co-sponsored by ISPRS, has been postponed from September 2020 to January 2021. It will be held in conjunction with the 25th International Conference on Pattern Recognition (co-sponsored by IEEE and IEEE Computer Society). PRRS has an emphasis on the application of pattern recognition methods to remotely sensed data. Applying the latest methods of machine learning and pattern recognition for automated analysis of remote sensing data, this workshop will provide an ideal forum for exchanging the latest experiences of international researchers. Topics will include: hyperspectral and multispectral image analysis; extraction, selection, learning and reduction of features; deep learning for earth observation data; clustering; active and transfer learning; multimodal and multitemporal analysis; image analysis of SAR and airborne thermal data; recognition of manmade objects from aerial and space platforms; novel pattern recognition tasks in remote sensing applications; and technical reviews on related topics.


The aim of this work is to develop a microcontroll er - based solar tracking system and assess the value of using single and dual - axis solar trackers as means for improving the performance of photovoltaic generation systems. Two experimental t est setups were designed, implemented and used to collect the evaluation results at a site that is located at 28° N latitude, 31° E longitude. One of the test setups included a monocrystalline photovoltaic (PV) panel that is f ixed at a reference inclination angle of 28° with respect to the horizon, and facing due south. Whereas, the other experimental setup included an identical photovoltaic panel that is equipped with a solar tracking system, which enables it to c ontinuously follow the sun trajectories. The solar tracking syst em has been designed and developed using a set of light dependent resistors (LDR) serving as solar radiation intensity sensors and an Arduino microcontroller (RB - Ard - 11) on which the trac king algorithm was programmed. This study showed that the net power produced by the photovoltaic panel increased by about 23.15 % and 29 % when equipped with single - axis and dual - axis solar tracker, respectively, as compared to the reference case of a fixed mount panel. An analytical model is used to characterize PV cells. The used expressions, based on explicit methods, allow the current an d the voltage at key operational points, (i.e., in particular at the maximum power point) to be calculated using the single - diode model as a function of cell temperature, irradiance and common manufacturers data.


The decaying sound field in rooms is typically described by energy decay functions (EDFs). Late reverberation can deviate considerably from the ideal diffuse field, for example, in multiple connected rooms or non-uniform absorption material distributions. This paper proposes the common-slope model of late reverberation. The model describes spatial and directional late reverberation as linear combinations of exponential decays called common slopes. Its fundamental idea is that common slopes have decay times that are invariant across space and direction, while their amplitudes vary across both. We explore different approaches for determining the common slopes for large EDF sets describing different source-receiver configurations of the same environment. Among the presented approaches, the k-means clustering of decay times is the most general. Our evaluation shows that the common-slope model introduces only a small error between the modeled and the true EDF, while being considerably more compact than the traditional multi-exponential model. The amplitude variations of the common slopes yield interpretable room acoustic analyses. The common-slope model has potential applications in all fields relying on late reverberation models, such as source separation, dereverberation, echo cancellation, and parametric spatial audio rendering.


AIMS
This literature review examines the effectiveness of the family interventions (FIs) targeted at the primary caregivers of people diagnosed with schizophrenia on improving the knowledge level of schizophrenia and health-related outcomes.

METHODS
A total of nine studies were reviewed from December 1999 to May 2017. The methods described by the Center for Reviews and Dissemination were used to guide this review.

RESULTS
The FIs showed consistent improvement in the knowledge level of schizophrenia among participants for various follow-up intervals. In addition, FIs were found to be superior to treatment as usual in influencing health-related outcomes.

CONCLUSIONS
Implications of the findings for mental healthcare practice to include primary caregivers with the patient in the treatment process.


Scales on Censorship: Real Life Lessons from School Library Journal contains Pat R. Scales collected columns, all written in response to active book challenges or questions of intellectual freedom and library ethics. These columns have a ripped from the headlines immediacy even as they reflect the core values and policies of librarianship. They are organized by topic and each is framed with a brief new introductory essay. Scales' powerful reputation and practical ethically-based solutions has made her a key spokesperson and support for librarians working under a censorship siege.


The role of ERK, Jun N-terminal kinase (JNK), p38, and c-Src in GnRH-stimulated FSHbeta-subunit promoter activity was examined in the LbetaT-2 gonadotroph cell line. Incubation of the cells with a GnRH agonist resulted in activation of ERK, JNK, p38, and c-Src. The peak of ERK activation was observed at 5 min, whereas that of JNK, p38, and c-Src at 30 min, declining thereafter. ERK activation by GnRH is dependent on protein kinase C (PKC), as evident by activation, inhibition, and depletion of 12-O-tetradecanoylphorbol-13-acetate-sensitive PKC subspecies. Ca(2+) influx, but not Ca(2+) mobilization, is required for ERK activation. GnRH signaling to ERK is partially mediated by dynamin and a protein tyrosine kinase, apparently c-Src. ERK activation by GnRH in LbetaT-2 cells does not involve transactivation of epidermal growth factor receptor or mediation via Gbetagamma or beta-arrestin. Once activated by GnRH, ERK translocates to the nucleus. We examined the role of ERK, JNK, p38, and c-Src in GnRH-stimulated ovine FSHbeta promoter, linked to a luciferase reporter gene (-4741oFSHbeta-LUC). The PKC activator 12-O-tetradecanoylphorbol-13-acetate, but not the Ca(2+) ionophore ionomycin, stimulated FSHbeta-luciferase (LUC) activity. Furthermore, down-regulation of PKC, but not removal of Ca(2+), inhibited the GnRH response. Cotransfection of FSHbeta-LUC and the constitutively active forms of Raf-1 and MEK stimulated FSHbeta-LUC activity, whereas the dominant negatives of Ras, Raf-1, and MEK and the selective MEK inhibitor PD98059, abolished GnRH-induced FSHbeta-LUC activity. The dominant negatives of CDC42 and JNK reduced the GnRH response by 36 and 49%, respectively. Incubation of the cells with the p38 or the c-Src inhibitors SB203580 and PP1 also reduced the GnRH response. Surprisingly, two proximal activator protein-1 sites contribute very little to the GnRH response. Thus, PKC, ERK, JNK, p38, and c-Src, but not Ca(2+), are involved in GnRH induction of the ovine FSHbeta gene.


The equilibrium alluvial stream channel has a geometry that allows it to pass the water and sediment supplied from the watershed. At the same time, the equilibrium alluvial channel is built and maintained by the flows and sediment delivered to it. A prerequisite for understanding the creation of the equilibrium channel is an understanding of the sediment conveyance and competence of the flows the channel receives. This study describes the bed-load transport regime as it is linked to hydrology and geomorphology in 23 headwater gravel-bed streams in snowmelt-dominated parts of central and northern Idaho. At sites, drainage areas range from 1.29 to 381 km 2 , stream gradients range from 0.0042 to 0.0747, and median bed surface particle sizes range from 4 to 207 mm. Stream architecture includes riffle-pool, planar, and step-pool beds. The bed load is much finer than the surface and subsurface material, suggesting selective transport of the finer sizes. Nonetheless, the majority of the load is sand at all flow discharges. Progressively coarser sediment was collected as flow discharge increased, and painted rock experiments documented the transport of coarser particles at higher discharges. The supply of sediment to the streams appears limited, as indicated by observed clockwise hysteresis in bed-load transport rates during each spring snowmelt and by the coarse surface armor observed at sites. Flows above bankfull discharge move 37% of the bed load, whereas flows between mean annual discharge and bankfull move 57% of the bed load. The bed-load effective discharge has a recurrence interval that averages 1.4 yr and the magnitude of effective discharge averages 80% of bankfull discharge. The recurrence interval of bankfull discharge averages 2.0 yr. The ratio of effective discharge to bankfull discharge is independent of basin size, grain size, and gradient, although the ratio increases with the relative magnitude of large infrequent events.


Suboptimal effort is a threat to the validity of neuropsychological evaluations. Numerous papers have been devoted to this subject and a large number of measures have been developed in an attempt to detect suboptimal effort. To date, however, the clinical literature has focused almost exclusively on identifying suboptimal effort in adults, whereas suboptimal effort among children has not been addressed thoroughly in the clinical neuropsychological literature. The present study investigated whether or not already established effort measures could be used with children. The Test of Memory Malingering (TOMM) and the Rey-15-item test were administered to 128 children in two sites, the USA and Cyprus. The results indicated that the TOMM has the potential to be used as a measure for identifying children who do not put forth maximal effort during neuropsychological evaluations. In contrast, the Rey-15-item test does not appear to be a promising measure of effort for use with children, especially younger children.


The customer experience of online shopping is largely contingent on the accuracy of product classification. Considering the amount of products and all the possible categories, it is desirable to construct a framework to auto-assign products into correct categories at scale. Machine learning based systems often suffer from poor data quality, such as incomplete item descriptions, adversarial noise in the training data, etc., causing low precision/recall of predictions. To overcome these difficulties, we propose a deep hierarchical product classifier based on BERT pretrained knowledge. Additionally, we propose several learning strategies, e.g., bootstrap learning, negative sampling, soft label and semantic augmentation, to capture consistent knowledge hidden behind noisy data to prevent overfitting. Experiments on a large data set with different data configurations prove the effectiveness of the proposed model.


The present study describes the development of novel block copolymer nanocarriers of the phytocannabinoid cannabidiol (CBD), designed to enhance the solubility of the drug in water while achieving high encapsulation efficiency and prolonged drug release. Firstly, a well-defined amphiphilic block copolymer consisting of two outer hydrophilic polyglycidol (PG) blocks and a middle hydrophobic block of poly(ε-caprolactone) bearing pendant cinnamyl moieties (P(CyCL-co-CL)) were synthesized by the click coupling reaction of PG-monoalkyne and P(CyCL-co-CL)-diazide functional macroreagents. A non-modified polyglycidol/poly(ε-caprolactone) amphiphilic block copolymer was obtained as a referent system. Micellar carriers based on the two block copolymers were formed via the solvent evaporation method and loaded with CBD following two different protocols—loading during micelle formation and loading into preformed micelles. The key parameters/characteristics of blank and CBD-loaded micelles such as size, size distribution, zeta potential, molar mass, critical micelle concentration, morphology, and encapsulation efficiency were determined by using dynamic and static multiangle and electrophoretic light scattering, transmission electron microscopy, and atomic force microscopy. Embedding CBD into the micellar carriers affected their hydrodynamic radii to some extent, while the spherical morphology of particles was not changed. The nanoformulation based on the copolymer bearing cinnamyl moieties possessed significantly higher encapsulation efficiency and a slower rate of drug release than the non-modified copolymer. The comparative assessment of the antiproliferative effect of micellar CBD vs. the free drug against the acute myeloid leukemia-derived HL-60 cell line and Sezary Syndrome HUT-78 demonstrated that the newly developed systems have pronounced antitumor activity.


Cryosurgery is the destruction of undesired tissue by freezing. Modern cryosurgery is performed by strategically inserting a number of cooling probes (cryoprobes) shaped like long hypodermic needles into the target region. Minimally invasive cryosurgery presents unique challenges to the clinician associated with the use of ultrasound (US) as the imaging modality, the selection of the cryoprobe configuration, the accurate placement of the cryoprobes, and the monitoring of the procedure through imaging and temperature measurements. Currently the cost of training clinicians to perform cryosurgery is exceptionally high because the procedure itself is very complex, and the learning process consists of a long residency period. The work presented in this thesis is part of an ongoing project between the Biothermal Technology Laboratory and the Computational Engineering and Robotics Laboratory at Carnegie Mellon University, to develop a computerized training platform that will teach clinicians how to perform the minimally invasive cryosurgery effectively and efficiently. This work uses prostate cryosurgery as a developmental model for verification and benchmarking of all algorithms. Towards that goal, this work provides many of the tools needed to create a virtual training environment. A cryosurgical training framework was presented to enable the diverse functionality of such a computerized training system. Next, a method for generating synthetic ultrasound images from a small library of samples was presented. This method is based off of a texture synthesis technique called "Image Analogies". The algorithm generates realistic 3D ultrasound images from a small library of samples. Then, an improvement was made to an efficient bioheat transfer simulator. The implementation used GPU computing to achieve a 15x increase in performance over the previous state of the art approach. The enhanced bioheat simulator was leveraged in a cryosurgically relevant ultrasound simulator. The ultrasound simulator uses nonlinear ray-tracing and a novel energy propagation step to simulate imaging artifacts associated with cryoprobe insertion and the thermal field in real-time. Finally, an enhancement to the cryoprobe placement algorithm "bubble packing" was performed to enable the addition of geometric constraints. These geometric constraints allow more clinically relevant plans to be generated. It is the hope of the author that these tools will be the foundation of a fully immersive surgical simulator.


Background The orthopedic surgery workforce constitutes a vital role in the healthcare system, with data being scarce. Therefore, through this study, we share an overview of the orthopedic workforce distribution, demographic trends, and changes over the past decade in Saudi Arabia. Methods All practicing orthopedic surgeons in Saudi Arabia from January 1, 2010, to December 31, 2021, were included in the study. Data regarding orthopedic surgeons' demographics and numbers were obtained from the Saudi Commission for Health Specialties (SCFHS), whereas the data related to the geographical distribution of orthopedic surgeons was obtained from the Ministry of Health Statistical Yearbook of 2020. Results The ratio of orthopedic surgeons per 100,000 people was 5.42 in 2010, which grew subsequently to 12.29 in 2021. The number of Saudi orthopedic surgeons has been noticeably rising through the years, while a slowly growing pattern can be seen among non-Saudi orthopedic surgeons. In addition, the highest ratios of orthopedic surgeons per 100,000 were in Makkah (1.72), Riyadh (1.26), and the Eastern Region (1.06). Conclusion In this study, we demonstrate the progress of the orthopedic workforce in Saudi Arabia over a period of 12 years. The number of orthopedic surgeons per 100,000 people showed a significant rise due to several factors, one of which is road traffic accidents. Also, although the number of female orthopedic surgeons has been rising lately, they are still much fewer than males in this field. In addition, Saudi Arabia has been developing a new healthcare system via the privatization of some of the governmental hospitals, which will lead to changes in the future workforce and its accommodations.


Abstract Prostate cancer is the most common non-cutaneous cancer and the second leading cause of cancer-related mortality among men in the USA. Growing evidence suggests that oxidative stress is involved in the development and progression of prostate cancer. In this study, the association between antioxidants from diet and supplements and biomarkers of oxidative stress in blood (n 278), urine (n 298) and prostate tissue (n 55) were determined among men from the North Carolina-Louisiana Prostate Cancer Project. The association between antioxidant intake and oxidative stress biomarkers in blood and urine was determined using linear regression, adjusting for age, race, prostate cancer aggressiveness and smoking status. Greater antioxidant intake was found to be associated with lower urinary 8-isoprostane concentrations, with a 10 % increase in antioxidant intake corresponding to an unadjusted 1·1 % decrease in urinary 8-isoprostane levels (95 % CI −1·7, −0·3 %; P value<0·01) and an adjusted 0·6 % decrease (95 % CI −1·4, 0·2 %; P value=0·16). In benign prostate tissue, thioredoxin 1 was inversely associated with antioxidant intake (P=0·02). No significant associations were found for other blood or urinary biomarkers or for malignant prostate tissue. These results indicate that antioxidant intake may be associated with less oxidative stress among men diagnosed with prostate cancer.


In this study, single-wall carbon nanotube (SWCNT) mixed with hydrous ruthenium oxide was co-deposited on titanium substrate by cathodic deposition method. Titanium substrate was first cleaned thoroughly by acetone and followed by chemical etching of 5%HF for 5 minutes and 50%HCl for 15 minutes. The purpose of acid etching is to increase the adhesion between the coating layer and the Ti substrate. SWCNT has been dispersed by ultrasonic method to avoid agglomeration during deposition processes. The concentration of SWCNT added in the deposition process was 0.05 wt%. The time of specimens which were immersed into the deposition bath is varied from 5minutes to 60 minutes. The electrical capacity characteristics of specimen were examined by cyclic voltammetry. The microstructure of hydrous ruthenium oxide coating is elucidated by high resolution transmission electron microscopy (HRTEM). Combination of amorphous and nanocrystalline structure of hydrous ruthenium oxide was investigated in this study. Nano-sized particles (about 2-3nm) were found embedded in the amorphous matrix. The capacitance was found increased when the deposition time was increased. The maximum capacitance of hydrous ruthenium oxide coating was measured to be 556.7F/g.


Pascal famously argued that practical reasoning should lead people to try to form within themselves a commitment to religious practice and obedience, based upon a belief in God. I propose to take a less ambitious argument, which I call the Sensible Argument, and use it to present The Puzzle. I argue that there is a huge puzzle here, about the radical dissonance between the beliefs and practices of many of the purportedly religious. There are, I will argue, good reasons to doubt, concerning many (clearly not all or indeed most) purported religious believers, whether they are indeed believers, or at least whether their beliefs are strong; and religion seems to greatly increase the risks of deception, duplicity, and hypocrisy, as well as self-deception and inauthenticity. By turning towards a religious form of life, one will therefore be adding great morality-related risks. Arguably, if there is a God who deeply cares about individual moral behaviour, he would punish religious moral transgressors more than the secular ones. One is unlikely to be saved from hell (or other severe divine punishment) by becoming religious. If one is going to wager, it seems much more sensible to wager on the secular side.


Wikipedia is widely used for finding general information about a wide variety of topics. Its vocation is not to provide local information. For example, it provides plot, cast, and production information about a given movie, but not showing times in your local movie theatre. Here we describe how we can connect local information to Wikipedia, without altering its content. The case study we present involves finding local scientific experts. Using a third-party taxonomy, independent from Wikipedia's category hierarchy, we index information connected to our local experts, present in their activity reports, and we re-index Wikipedia content using the same taxonomy. The connections between Wikipedia pages and local expert reports are stored in a relational database, accessible through as public SPARQL endpoint. A Wikipedia gadget (or plugin) activated by the interested user, accesses the endpoint as each Wikipedia page is accessed. An additional tab on the Wikipedia page allows the user to open up a list of teams of local experts associated with the subject matter in the Wikipedia page. The technique, though presented here as a way to identify local experts, is generic, in that any third party taxonomy, can be used in this to connect Wikipedia to any non-Wikipedia data source.


Schopenhauer's pessimistic philosophy is a depressing read. He writes many pages about how suffering is the norm, and any happiness we feel is merely a temporary alleviation of suffering. Even so, his account of suffering rings true to many readers. What are we to do with our lives if Schopenhauer is right, and we are doomed to suffer? In this paper, I use William James' pragmatic method to find practical implications of Schopenhauer's pessimism. I provide a model for how we are to live our lives in a suffering world, a model that provides means to reduce suffering.


Scientists have long been interested in recording data from freely moving animals. For larger animals, several telemetric techniques are available not only for following the movement of unrestrained animals in the wild (White and Garrott, 1990) but also for transmitting measures of heartbeat, body temperature, wingbeat, respiration, etc. (e.g. Lord et al. 1962; Butler and Woakes, 1980; Funk et al. 1993; for an overview, see Amlaner and Macdonald, 1980). Because of the size of such transmission devices, however, data acquisition has been restricted to larger animals. The development of lightweight batteries and microchips has only recently facilitated efforts to transmit data from smaller animals such as insects. Such data should greatly enhance our understanding of the processes involved in the neuronal control of unrestricted behaviour. Eventually it should be possible to monitor the activity of individual units (neurones, muscles) under closed-loop conditions, which closely resemble free movement. It is to be expected that this new approach will surpass previous studies involving intact but surface-bound animals implanted with long flexible electrodes (for crickets, see Kutsch, 1969) or animals tethered in a windstream (for improvement of the flight balance device, compare Weis-Fogh, 1956, with Dombrowsky, 1991). Increased freedom has been achieved in experiments on 'free flight' of large insects (Mohl, 1988; Stolley, 1990), although even these animals were restricted to a short or stationary flight handicapped by several implanted flexible electrodes.


The type three effector AvrRpm1Pma from Pseudomonas syringae pv. maculicola (Pma) triggers an RPM1-mediated immune response linked to phosphorylation of RIN4 (RPM1-interacting protein 4) in Arabidopsis. However, the effector-resistance (R) gene interaction is not well established with different AvrRpm1 effectors from other pathovars. We investigated the AvrRpm1-triggered immune responses in Nicotiana species and isolated Rpa1 (Resistance to Pseudomonas syringae pv. actinidiae 1) via a reverse genetic screen in Nicotiana tabacum. Transient expression and gene silencing were performed in combination with co-immunoprecipitation and growth assays to investigate the specificity of interactions that lead to inhibition of pathogen growth. Two closely related AvrRpm1 effectors derived from Pseudomonas syringae pv. actinidiae biovar 3 (AvrRpm1Psa ) and Pseudomonas syringae pv. syringae strain B728a (AvrRpm1Psy ) trigger immune responses mediated by Rpa1, a nucleotide-binding leucine-rich repeat protein with an N-terminal coiled-coil domain. In a display of contrasting specificities, RPA1 does not respond to AvrRpm1Pma , and correspondingly AvrRpm1Psa and AvrRpm1Psy do not trigger the RPM1-mediated response, demonstrating that separate R genes mediate specific immune responses to different AvrRpm1 effectors. AvrRpm1Psa co-immunoprecipates with RPA1, and both proteins co-immunoprecipitate with RIN4. In contrast to RPM1, however, RPA1 was not activated by the phosphomimic RIN4T166D and silencing of RIN4 did not affect the RPA1 activity. Delivery of AvrRpm1Psa by Pseudomonas syringae pv. tomato (Pto) in combination with transient expression of Rpa1 resulted in inhibition of the pathogen growth in N. benthamiana. Psa growth was also inhibited by RPA1 in N. tabacum.


In this paper we present a low power temporal-difference image sensor with wireless communication capability designed specifically for imaging sensor networks. The event-based image sensor features a 64 × 64 pixel array and can also report standard analog intensity images. An ultra-wide-band radio channel allows to transmit digital temporal difference images wirelessly to a receiver with high rates and reduced power consumption. The sensor can wake up the radio when it detects a specific number of pixels intensity modulation, so that only significant frames are communicated. The prototype chip was implemented using a 2-poly 3-metal AMIS 0.5 μ m CMOS process. Power consumption is 0.9 mW for the sensor and 15 mW for radio transmission to distance of 4 m with rates of 1.3 Mbps and 160 fps.


Neuromarketing, consumer neuroscience and neuroaesthetics are a broad research area of neuroscience with an extensive background in scientific publications. Thus, the present study aims to identify the highly cited papers (HCPs) in this research field, to deliver a summary of the academic work produced during the last decade in this area, and to show patterns, features, and trends that define the past, present, and future of this specific area of knowledge. The HCPs show a perspective of those documents that, historically, have attracted great interest from a research community and that could be considered as the basis of the research field. In this study, we retrieved 907 documents and analyzed, through H-Classics methodology, 50 HCPs identified in the Web of Science (WoS) during the period 2010–2019. The H-Classic approach offers an objective method to identify core knowledge in neuroscience disciplines such as neuromarketing, consumer neuroscience, and neuroaesthetics. To accomplish this study, we used Bibliometrix R Package and SciMAT software. This analysis provides results that give us a useful insight into the development of this field of research, revealing those scientific actors who have made the greatest contribution to its development: authors, institutions, sources, countries as well as documents and references.


ABSTRACT Comparison of planar and trough cross-stratification directions from several fluvial formations and modern ephemeral streams shows significant differences in the distribution pattern of the two types of cross-stratification. Trough cross-stratification of all sizes is unimodal, coincident with the channel direction, and has a small degree of scatter. In contrast, planar cross-stratification generally is either unimodal with wide scatter or bimodal with subequal modes at 50° to 60° to both sides of the channel direction. Trough cross-stratification is thus a reliable and precise paleocurrent indicator, requiring relatively few measurements to reconstruct the true channel direction. In contrast, planar cross-stratification must be used with caution, and a relatively large number of measurements are needed to reconstruct the paleocurrent system.


Background: Fever, dry cough and fatigue are the most common symptoms of the coronavirus disease-2019 (COVID-19). During the COVID-19 pandemic in China, we treated a patient with fever and finally diagnosed congenital heart disease.Case presentation: An 18-year-old lady came to the fever clinic with a complaint about the symptoms of fever, dry cough and dyspnea for 15 days. She had a travel history of epidemic area two weeks ago. She had a low fever and dry cough accompanied with chest tightness and fatigue. Eventually she diagnosed ventricular septal defect complicated by infective endocarditis. Two months after surgery, the patient returned to normal social life and physical activity.Conclusion: Early surgical treatment is an effective strategy for ventricular septal defect patients complicated with IE, which can improve the early survival rate of patients.