Experiments are described in which a mass of iodine, corresponding approximately to the maximum iodine equilibrium core inventory of the Zenith reactor, was released as molecular vapor into the secondary containment. The releases were of stable I/sup 127/, labeled with radioactive I/sup 132/ and yielded initial iodine airborne mass concentrations of 0.3 to 0.8 mu g/m/sup 3/. The experimental conditions included those with and without forced ventiiation of the containment. The subsequent deposition and leakage behavior of the iodine was examined. In the unventilated condition the form of iodine remaining airborne changed with time. The molecular vapor plated out relatively quickly, with an effective deposition velocity ~ 4 x 10/sup -2/ cm/sec, leaving a mixture of particulate-carried and a nonmolecular vapor form of iodine, with the former predominant. Both these residual forms exhibited a similar effective deposition velocity of ~ 5 x 10/sup -3/ cm/sec. The results obtained were used to evaluate the maximum conceivable I/sup 131/ release from Zenith, and this is shown to be a small fraction of the core inventory. The results, and those of other workers using molecular vapor sources, are assessed for general applicability in reactor safety studies, bearing in mind that other potential formsmore » of iodine release from irradiated fuel must be considered. (auth)« less


We give an alternative construction of the duality between finite group actions and group gradings on rings which was shown by Cohen and Montgomery in [1]. This duality is then used to extend known results on skew group rings to corresponding results for large classes of group-graded rings. Finally we modify the construction slightly to handle infinite groups. Introduction. In the first section we give an alternate construction of the duality between finite group actions and group gradings on rings which was shown by Cohen and Montgomery in [1]. This duality is then used to extend results on skew group rings and their modules to corresponding results for large classes of groupgraded rings. In the second section we modify the construction slightly to handle infinite groups and apply it to a theorem on prime and semiprime infinite crossed products. I would like to thank my thesis advisor, D. S. Passman, for his guidance and encouragement throughout the writing of this paper. 1. Finite group-graded rings and the smash product. Let G be a multiplicative group. An associative ring with identity is said to be G-graded if (1) R= @ E R(x) xEc is a direct sum of additive subgroups R(x), with R(x)R(y) C R(xy). It follows that necessarily 1R E R(1) so that each R(x) is a unitary R(l)-bimodule. If r E R, we write r(x) for the component of r in R(x) so that r = EXGcr(x). R is said to be strongly G-graded if R(x)R(y) = R(xy) for all x, y E G. Throughout this section R is assumed to be G-graded, where G is a finite group with IGI = n. Let MC(R) denote the set of n X n matrices over R with the rows and columns indexed by the elements of G. If a c MG(R), we write ax y for the entry in the [x, y]-position of a. Then if a, ,1] c MC(R), the matrix product a,8 is given by (2) ( (X ) x y = E (XX, ZAZ, Y z E c If U c G is any subset of G, let R(U) = Ex,EuR(x). In particular, R = R(G). Now suppose H C G is a subgroup of G. We define R { H } c MC(R) by R{H} = { a E Ms(R)|aX y E R(xHy l)}, that is, R{H} = Ex yGcR(xHy-l)e(x, y), where e(x, y) is the matrix unit with 1R in the [x, y]-position and zeroes elsewhere. Note that R{G} = MC(R). Received by the editors September 27, 1984. 1980 Mathematics Subject Classification. Primary 16A03. (C)1985 American Mathematical Society 0002-9947/85 $1.00 + $.25 per page


Control Systems Group, TU Berlin, D-10587 email@example.com: QRtaiLab, RTAI Linux, Matlab Simulink Real-Time Workshop, SDH2, Shared MemoryAbstract: At the Institute for Process Control and Robotics reactive grasping skills are developed to enhance the Multi-fingered SCHUNK Dextrous Hand 2 (SDH2) in order to fulfill industrial needs. Therefore, RTAI Linux andMatlab - Simulink RTW are used as application development system (RTAI, 2010),(Mathworks, 2010). Theexchange of data between the Multi-fingered hand and the computer system is possible by means of a C++library. By reason that this SDH2 C++ library could not be used in Real-Time kernel programs this paperpresents an approach of how to combine Real-Time Simulink models (RTAI) with user-space tasks. Thereforea shared memory based interface within Simulink S-Functions is established. The RTAI Target LanguageCompiler remains unaffected. The designed interface is described in detail. It represents a contribution to thefurther development of RTAI. In addition a possibility of how to debug and visualize tactile sensor matriceswith QRtaiLab is presented.


Summary form only given. Femtosecond lasers with high average output power are of great interest for numerous applications such as simple and efficient nonlinear frequency conversion or multi-photon spectroscopy. Such lasers can be realized by combining a diode-pumped thin-disk laser head with a semiconductor saturable absorber mirror (SESAM) for passive mode locking. In this paper we present the first passively mode-locked thin-disk laser which is based on the novel gain medium Yb:KY(WO/sub 4/)/sub 2/ (Yb:KYW). This laser crystal has a larger amplification bandwidth than Yb:YAG and is therefore suitable for significantly shorter pulses. We obtained 240-fs pulses at 1028 nm with 22-W average power and 3.3-MW peak power. The pulse repetition rate is 24.6 MHz, and the pulse energy is 0.9 /spl mu/J. The beam quality is close to the diffraction limit, with M/sup 2/ = 1.1. Focusing the beam to a spot diameter of 2 /spl mu/m would result in a peak intensity of 2 /spl middot/ 10/sup 14/ Wcm/sup -2/.


The LHC relies on an injector chain of four synchrotrons and two LINACs. Besides solely being injectors, each of these accelerators has its own users and experiments to furnish with beams as well, and they can only do this in the time between subsequent injections to their larger neighbour. This presents quite a complex parallel-scheduling task, but it is vital that it is done well; any sub-optimality leaves CERN creating fewer useable beams per unit time than was actually possible, and any errors could cause serious problems. The task is made more challenging by the existence of numerous constraints on how beams can preceed/follow each other (e.g for avoiding remnant fields, or respecting hardware limitations) which must be obeyed, and also by the fact that the schedule is changed regularly (i.e. whenever any user in any accelerator changes their request). Scheduling problems are already approached very well by numerous heuristic algorithms, which overcome the overwhelming size of the permutation search-space using skillful guesswork, but at the expense of thoroughness. Here, we present a non-heuristic but practical scheduling algorithm which does not sacrifice thoroughness in its search. It fully maps the search-space of all valid schedules (up to topological equivalence) by compiling it into a navigable directed graph of localised decision points, and outputs a valid schedule which has truly optimal timeefficiency. Furthermore, if the algorithm finds no solutions, it can be trusted that the input request is indeed impossible to satisfy. We also demonstrate an implementation of the algorithm as a Java program, which will be used in regular operations at CERN for computing optimal schedules for the whole injector chain.


Objective To explore the correlation between the measurements of ASSR and pure tone audiometryin senior adults with normal hearing. Methods 32 senior adults with normal hearing were tested with ASSR and puretone audiometry at 0.5 kHz, 1 kHz, 2 kHz and 4 kHz. The coherence and correlation were compared between the twomeasures by t test and correlated modulus t test. Results The average thresholds of ASSR and pure tone audiometryin all tested frequencies ranged between 3.00~10.38 dB HL. There was no statistical significance between the resultsobtained by ASSR and pure tone audiometry in all frequencies (t test P0.05), except for 0.5 kHz and 1 kHz in leftears and 0.5 kHz in right ears (t test P0.05 ). The difference was significant between the results by ASSR and puretone audiometry in all frequencies (correlated modulus t test P0.01), using the correlated modulus t test, except for0.5 kHz and 1 kHz in left ears and 0.5 kHz in right ears (correlated modulus t test P0.05). The correlation was moreobvious with the increase of the frequencies. Conclusion In the middle or high frequencies, there was a good coherencebetween ASSR and pure tone audiometry. ASSR was available for the diagnosis of deaf diseases of senior adults inclinical treatment.


Acoustic emission (AE) is applied for the structural health evaluation of materials. It commonly uses piezoelectric sensors to detect elastic waves coming from energy releases within the material. Concerning cementitious composites as well as polymers, AE parameters have proven their potential to not only detect the existence of a defect, its location and the fracture mode, but also the developing strain field even before visible damage evolves. However, the wave propagation distance, wave dispersion due to plate geometry, heterogeneity and reflections result in attenuation and distortion of the AE waveforms. These factors render the interpretation more complex, especially for large samples. In this study, the effect of wave propagation on plain glass textile-reinforced cement (TRC) plates is investigated. Then, curved plates with different widths are mechanically loaded for bending with concurrent AE monitoring. The aim is to evaluate to what extent the plate dimensions and propagation distance influence the original AE characteristics corresponding to a certain fracture mechanism.


Abstract : This report examines the historical events, along with actions and decisions of key players in the U.S. government that led to American involvement in the Persian Gulf War. It uses a modified version of A Practitioner's Framework for Decision Making to discuss the roles played by the key participants in the national security decisions during the time period leading up to the beginning of the war. The American Government goes to war reluctantly and only after a comprehensive consideration of the consequences. The decision to fight was a logical result of an institutionalized process that involved the executive and legislative branches of the U.S. Government.


worldly existences, which God Almighty has created, are of two kinds . . . The copyist has written the word after Isfizarl without diacritical points, and I cannot read i t ; perhaps the copyist could not read it himself. I do not seem to know anything about the Khwaja, or his work. But from this passage, and from a comparison of the lists of phenomena given in it ' and in the Chahar Maqala, it appears clear that NizamI had the Nuzhatnama, or the original work of Khwaja Hakim Abu Hatim, before him. And it is to this that he refers in the


Abstract The dynamics of bile secretion was studied on 53 cannulated male Wistar rats in normal conditions and during intravenous infusions of gastrointestinal hormones. Both secretin and CCK (Boots) induced the greatest choleretic response. Bile diversion caused a significant fall in bile flow rates as compared with rats receiving constant intraduodenal infusion of Na‐taurocholate. In all the groups clear 1.5–2 hr oscillations, lasting much longer than the interdigestive motility cycles in this species, were observed. The significance of these oscillations was confirmed by the Fisher's test and the normalized periodogram values computed for the frequency band 0.2–0.33 (1.5–2.5 hr) period were significant in all the experimental groups. However, the significance of the frequency band decreased along with the increasing stimulation potency of the hormones. Thus, neither changes in bile acid secretion nor alternations in main gastrointestinal hormone levels seem to be responsible for the occurrence of the u...


Capture-recapture (CRC) is a way to estimate the size of a population by combining multiple incomplete lists of population units. Accurate estimators must model dependence between lists. One kind of dependence is unit-level list dependence, in which previous capture directly reduces the probability of subsequent capture. Another kind of dependence arises indirectly from the heterogeneity in capture probabilities across units. Existing nonparametric CRC methods do not allow both kinds of dependence to depend on covariates. We fill this gap with a new two-stage approach. In the first stage, we estimate the conditional densities of the capture pattern as a function of the covariates. In the second stage, we impute the conditional density of the unobserved capture pattern (no captures) by applying a log-linear models locally. A Horvitz-Thompson style population estimator follows.


Clouding phenomenon generally occurs with nonionic surfactants when the temperature of the system is raised to a certain value. This critical temperature is termed the cloud point (CP). The aqueous solutions of nonionic surfactants show complex phase behaviour including liquid-liquid phase separation at this temperature. The cloud point of aqueous surfactant solutions is influenced by the presence of other materials. In this study, we used cetyltrimethylammonium bromide (CTAB) as cationic surfactant and polyoxyethylene (10) lauryl ether (C12EO10) as nonionic surfactant. We report the effect of electrolytes (NaCl, KCl, CaCl2 and MgCl2) on the CP of nonionic surfactant and nonionic with cationic surfactant mixture. All the electrolytes have a large amount of effect on CP. INTRODUCTION Surfactants contain both hydrophobic and hydrophilic regions, which make possible molecular aggregate disolution in water. This amphiphilic molecules form dynamic aggregates namely micelles, which makes the solubilization of waterinsoluble molecules in an aqueous matrix possible [1, 2]. Clouding is a phenomenon familiar in nonionic surfactants; upon raising the temperature, the system becomes cloudy and phase-separates at a well-defined temperature. The phase separation in nonionic micellar solutions is due to the van der Waals attractive forces between the micelles, and there exists a temperature at which the degree of hydration of the hydrophilic portion is just insufficient to solubilize the remaining hydrocarbon portion. At this temperature, surfactant is no longer soluble in water and solution becomes hazy and cloudy. Nonionic surfactants are widely used as solubilizers, emulsifiers and detergents in many industrial processes. Furthaermore, they are used as auxiliaries improving dye adsorbtion and levelling or dispersing agents [3, 4, 5]. Therefore, the cloud point (CP) data are of considerable practical


Objective:To evaluate the technique of improving the image quality of DSA(Digital substraction angiography) in animal experiment and enhance the veracity of the experiment and its persuasion.Methods:In the experiment of pulmonary embolism with 85 canines,the parameter was selected with six frames per second to increase the chance of acquiring the best image.The contrast media of 75% high concentration was used to increase the contrast and definition.Before the angiography,the pressure on abdomen of canine was enhanced and 1~3 mL Diprivan was used to weaken the respiration of canine and make preparation for the angiograph.The techniques of brim enhancing and pixel shift were used to improve the image quality after exam.Results: The artifact of the DSA image was reduced when the above methods were used.The experiments were accomplished successfully and the image quality was improved.Conclusions: In the angiograph of the animal experimental,the DSA image quality can be improved and satisfactory effect can be acquired through selecting the parameter of the DSA and controlling the move and respiration of the animal using the methods of medication and physics.


Solving environmental problems associated with nitrate (NO3−) requires a better understanding of how NO3− moves through the soil profile. Transient unsaturated horizontal column experiments were conducted to assess processes affecting soil NO3− transport. Duplicate tests were conducted on four soils having different physicochemical and mineralogical properties. In each test, a 200 mg/L NO3−-nitrogen (NO3−-N) solution was applied at the inlet of the relatively dry soil columns, and the value of sorptivity kept constant at 0.0073 cm/sec0.5. Comparison of corresponding soil water content and soil solution NO3−-N concentration profiles from the column tests clearly indicated anion exclusion to be an important process impacting NO3− mobility under unsaturated flow conditions. Evidence of anion exclusion for all four soils included soil solution NO3−-N concentrations near the inlet that were 13% to 21% less than the concentration (200 mg/L NO3−-N) injected at the inlet. Further evidence of anion exclusion included peak soil solution NO3−-N concentrations up to twice the injected concentration near the wetting front for three of the four soils. The fourth soil, possibly because of a combination of dispersion processes, low pH, and the mixture of clay minerals present, behaved somewhat differently than the other soils by having a peak soil solution NO3−-N concentration above 200 mg/L located approximately halfway between the column inlet and wetting front. Overall, this research indicated that anion exclusion can be a key process affecting NO3− mobility in a variety of soil environments.


The indoor experiment in the control efficiency of 2 biological pesticides against Tirathaba rufivena Walker was carried out.The experimental results showed that Emamectin Benzoate and Heliothis armigera nuclear polyhedrosis virus(HaNPV) gave excellent control efficiency.The field trial results showed that applying 0.5% Emamectin Benzoate at the dosage of 450~675 g/hm2 and 2000 million PIB/g HaNPV at 360 g/hm2 all provided the control efficiency of more than 90.59%.So these 2 biological pesticides can replace chemicals for the control of Tirathaba rufivena.


The problem of the minimization of a convex, bounded below, Gateaux differentiable functional on a convex closed set is considered. A continuous regularization method for this problem is formulated in the form of the Cauchy problem for a second-order differential equation constructed by the heavy-ball method. Sufficient conditions for the convergence of this regularization method are obtained.


At this paper there were described procedure of powetrain with CVT transmission steering maps building taking into consideration economic and ecologic coefficients which were verified at some driving cycles like FTP72 and NEDC. Proposed maps conspicuous decrease simulation time and simultaneously makes a microprocessor steering basis.


In this work, a highly reversible Li/Li2S3 cell utilizing a self-weaving, free-standing nitrogen-doped carbon nanotube (NCNT) paper as an electrode is reported. The highly porous structure with a large surface...


Background and Purpose The management of adult patients with strabismus is often challenging. These patients usually require time-consuming evaluations. It is common for the patient to have a history of prior surgical interventions. Patients and Methods Selected evaluation methods and surgical techniques with particular application to the adult strabismus patient are reviewed. Five categories are considered: 1) Sensory testing; 2) Incomitant strabismus; 3) Reoperations and scarring of the extraocular muscles; 4) Anesthesia; 5) Adjustable sutures. Results Selected considerations are important in the management of adult patients with strabismus. Conclusion Adult strabismus management requires thoughtful analysis and special considerations, but can be done successfully in most cases with gratifying results both for the patient and for the management team.


ABSTRACT There have been increased opportunities for women and girls to play traditionally male-dominated sports. However, we do not know the impact of these opportunities on participation. The study aim was to investigate the changing sport participation trends of women and girls, and in particular the increasing rates of participation in traditional male-dominated sports. Australian community-level registered sport participant data from five sports (three male-dominated, one female-dominated, and one gender-neutral) was tracked over the three years 2016–2018. There were 513,270 participants in year 1, 160,178 female and 353,092 male. Over the three years there was considerable increase in number of female participants, a rise of 15,646, compared to a decrease of 13,397 in male participants. The study shows that in year 1 (2016), women and girls in the male-dominated sports were most likely 'new' to sport and not transitioning from other sports. Of women and girls transitioning into male-dominated sports many came from playing the female-only sport. In all years, many women and girls transitioned from female-only sport to male-dominated sports, reflecting increased opportunity and choices. However, men and boys more likely to be retained. The female transition trends raise the need for further growth and development strategies by the female-only sport, but also capacity and gender issues for the male-dominated sports. More broadly, sport organisations should consider retention strategies across both genders and age groups, as male retention rates still remain higher than female retention rates, and there remains a large drop-off in participation during adolescence.


Alkyl azides have been found to undergo an unexpectedly facile photodecomposition under mild conditions (laboratory light) and the reaction gives rise to small amounts of aldehydes and monoacyl aminal rearrangement products that can dramatically impact on the uses of azides in chemistry, biology and medicine.


The term epibulbar tumor is used here to signify tumors appearing in the conjunctiva on the anterior side of the bulbus oculi. They are ac cessible to direct inspection and external treatment. There are different clinical types, the most important one being the congenital, naevogenic tumors. Histologically, these are characterized by groups of naevus cells situated either under or within the epithelium. The cells vary in shape and size and have a comparatively large, darkcoloured nucleus. In some instances, the cells contain pigment showing negative iron reaction. This pigment may also lie outside the naevus cells, either freely in the connective tissue, or in the epithelial cells. In addition, unpigmented naevogenic tumors are to be met with. Different theories have been advanced regarding the origin of the naevogenic tumors, v. HKCKLINGHAUSEN considered them to have an endothelial origin. UXNA, among others, was of the opinion that they consist of epithelial cells which have been dislocated from the normal epithelium. IITBBKRT stated that their origin was mesoblastic. According to MASSON'S now almost generally accepted theory these tumors are neither epithelial nor mesoblastic, but of a neuro-ectodermal origin. All the transitions from the normal end organs of the nerves to the typical naevus cells can be seen. The naevogenic tumors are to be found, partly in a benign form which is defined as pigmented naevus, and partly in a malignant form which is suitably referred to as malignant melanoma. From a clinical point of view, a naevus is most often manifested in the form of a pigmented, sometimes multilocular tumor which in the majority of cases is localized close to the limbus. As a rule, it is superficial and can be displaced together with the conjunctiva towards the sclera. Its consistency is soft and the surface is even. In the surrounding parts, a


Henry James and the Poetics of Duplicity aims to advance the field of studies on the life and work of Henry James by fully exploring the author's use of duplicity, one of the key literary and rhetorical strategies within the author's vast and infamous arsenal of techniques of 'ambiguity'. The collection brings together essays by both long established and more recent Jamesian scholars from eleven different countries, the collective work of whom, through this publication, further enhances our grasp of the ever-elusive literary style of Henry James. The prefatory section of this volume provides a general overview of the myriad uses of 'duplicity' in the writings of Henry James. The collected essays are then divided into five sections, each providing an in-depth study of a particular use of duplicity as a rhetorical strategy. The first three sections focus on duplicitous devices employed within James's works of fiction - including the author's often underhanded use of undisclosed literary sources ('Duplicitous Subtexts'), his staging of characters who rely on subterfuge and outright lying ('Duplicitous Characters'), and his creation of doubles and doppelgangers - another key connotation of the term 'duplicity' - both within a single work and throughout his literary career ('Duplicitous Representation'). The two final sections then focus the poetics of duplicity employed in works of non-fiction by James, including his autobiographies and his reviews of other authors, as well as in his personal writings and correspondence. This includes James's guileful use of duplicity in his representation of himself, particular attention being paid to James's late works of self-assessment ('Duplicitous Self-Representation'), as well as in his assessments of other writers in his reviews or of certain places in his travel writing ('Duplicitous Judgements'). Henry James and the Poetics of Duplicity would thus be a great asset to scholars of James at all levels, from the student grappling with James's literary sleight of hand for the first time, to specialists in the field of James who have long studied the masterful art of James's literary trickery.


Introduction The development of arterial plaques, known clinically as atherosclerosis, is at the root of a significant number of deaths related to heart attack and stroke. The risk for cardiovascular disease (CVD) drastically increases for women when they reach the age of menopause. Estrogen deficiency results in an unfavorable alteration in lipid profiles, which increases risk for atherosclerosis and CVD. This study builds upon an ongoing study to examine the anti-atherogenic effects of flaxseed in a hamster model of postmenopausal atherosclerosis. The focus is to examine in vivo identification of plaques in the cerebral arteries and aorta of ovariectomized (ovx) hamsters with endogenous contrast using high field, high resolution in vivo imaging at 21.1 T. Furthermore, the impacts of functional foods, such as flaxseed, on plaque development are investigated.


By defining appropriate linear space and norm, giving the appropriate operator, using the contraction mapping principle and krasnoselskii fixed point theorem, respectively, the existence and uniqueness of solutions for boundary value problem of fractional order impulsive differential equations is investigated under the certain conditions that nonlinear term and pulse value is satisfied.


This paper addresses the H∞ output tracking problem for a class of nonlinear systems subjected to model uncertainties and with interval time-varying delay. The stability of the nonlinear time-delay system is analyzed with a novel delay-interval-dependent Lyapunov-Krasovskii functional. Compared to state-of-the-art criteria for linear and nonlinear time-delay systems, less conservative stability conditions are derived with the introduction of new delay-interval-dependent terms and the exploitation of the delay subintervals size. The proposed analysis considers that the delay derivative is either upper and lower bounded, bounded above only, or unbounded, i.e., no restrictions are cast upon the derivative. Numerical examples are provided to enlighten the importance and advantages of the present criterion which outperforms previous criteria in time-delay systems literature. Also, an additional example is provided to highlight the effectiveness of the proposed H∞ output tracking control design technique for complex nonlinear systems with time-varying delay.


"We could definitely make a flying car but that's not the hard part. The hard part is, how do you make a flying car that is super safe and quiet?" ELON MUSK While safety, reliability, fuel economy, and low running costs put them at the top of the list of what people consider to be the 'most important' in a car, more than a third (36%) of those tested online rank with the latest driving skills in the same fields. Driving technology includes steering or parking assist, adaptive cruise control, and wireless entry or ignition. More than a quarter (28%) of people online also account for having the latest passenger technology, which includes audio or video streaming and social networking, as 'most important' to them. Our team has developed a vehicle archetype which is incorporated of Azimuth Angle, trimming off the turning radius and anti-collision mitigation system like concepts with a single touch button. The underlying concept of the smart car is to free the driver from many of the mundane tasks associated with driving, making the act of driving


The purpose of present study was to compare the influence of Challenge and non-Challenge Games in dynamical environment on the dribbling and overarm throwing Skills development of (5-6) preschool children. Thirty children were selected from two kindergartens in Tehran and were two grouped according to pretest scores. The intervention was 15 days. Primary level skills before of intervention were assessed. The games were designed for developing manipulative skills in both groups; however, the task difficulty of these games was increased in challenging group according knowing the child from his/her own, while in non-challenging group it was kept constant. Test of Gross Motor Development – second version was used in the beginning and the end of the intervention and for fallow test. Results presented that challenge and non-challenge games cause the improvement of overarm throwing and dribbling skills development of children. But influence development challenge game relative to non-challenge game in overarm throwing is significant, but dribbling skill isn't significant. According to results, appear existence option and control for individuals about appointment task difficulty level, even in during childhood could the benefit; of course the effective depended to factors for example task complication.


The classical MHC class I and class II molecules play key roles in determining the antigenic‐specificity of CD8+ and CD4+ T‐cell responses—as such characterisation of the repertoire of MHCI and MHCII allelic diversity is fundamental to our ability to understand, and potentially, exploit how genetic diversity influences the outcome of immune responses. Cattle remain one of the most economically livestock species, with particular importance to many small‐holder farmers in low‐and‐middle income countries (LMICs). However, our knowledge of MHC (BoLA) diversity in the indigenous breeds that form the mainstay of cattle populations in many LMICs remains very limited. In this study we develop a MiSeq‐based platform to enable the rapid analysis of BoLA‐DQA and BoLA‐DQB, and combine this with similar platforms to analyse BoLA‐I and BoLA‐DRB repertoires, to study a large cohort of cattle (~800 animals) representing the 3 major indigenous breeds (Angoni, Barotse, Tonga) in Zambia. The data presented confirms the capacity of this high‐throughput and high‐resolution approach to provide a full characterisation of the MHCI‐MHCII genotypes of cattle for which little previous MHC sequence data has been obtained. The cattle in Zambia were found to express a diverse range of MHCI, MHCII and extended MHCI‐MHCII haplotypes. The combined MHCI‐MHCII genotyping now possible opens new opportunities to rapidly expand our knowledge of MHC diversity in cattle that could find applications in a related translational disciplines such as vaccine development.


Introduction: Dental and oral hygiene is one of the most important indicators of general healthcare. Promotion of oral health in elementary school students is very important due to lack of adequate dexterity in carrying out correct brushing movements and education is needed in this age group. The aim of this study was to compare roll and scrub brushing techniques in controlling dental plaque in 8-11 year-old students referring to the Department of Community Dentistry, Isfahan University of Medical Sciences. Materials and Methods: In this clinical trial 215 elementary school students were divided into 8-9 and 10-11 age groups based on age and gender. Half of the subjects in each group were instructed the roll technique and the other half the scrub technique. The subjects brushed their teeth using the techniques instructed. O'Leary's index was used to register the amount of plaque in each stage and compare the results. Data were analyzed with t-test and co-variance analysis. Results: The scrub brushing technique was significantly more effective in decreasing dental plaque compared to the roll technique (p value < 0.001). Conclusion: Under the limitations of the present study, the scrub brushing technique was significantly more effective in decreasing dental plaque compared to the roll technique in the two age groups evaluated. Older children were more efficient in removing dental plaque. In addition, boys were more efficient than girls in removing plaque. Key words: Dental plaque, Students, Toothbrushing.


Scene management is an important, yet under–researched aspect of paramedic practice. Using a grounded theory methodology, this qualitative inquiry acquired data from in-depth interviews with paramedics working in rural, suburban, and urban settings in Ontario, Canada to generate a theory of expertise in scene management. The methodology and rationale comprise an effective approach for exploring this area of paramedic practice.


This paper presents a region of interest (ROI) detection scheme utilizing the color information of image margins. The presented scheme applies the flood-fill technique to remove the background of the input image with the help of the color information of the image margin, and then discovers the ROI that contains the subject matter. The experimental results show that the presented scheme can effectively find the ROI in images. It can deal with images with low DOF as well as high DOF. Moreover, it can detect the subject matter with colors close to the background colors.


The objective of this experiment is studying the mixed composting process about bagasse and different nitrogen sources,such as cow dung,chicken manure and urine.Moreover,the experiment research the influence of activated sludge from city sewage treatment to maturity.The results show that the mixed compost of bagasse and different nitrogen source,including cow dung,chicken manure and urine,can satisfy the standard requirements of the composted maturity;To a certain extent,adding the activated sludge into the compost pile body can promote maturity and shorten composting time.Comprehensive considerations of the effects of various parameters on change of temperature,moisture content,pH,organic matter content and seed germination rate of in each compost process,it can make compost reduce the average time of 5~7 days.


River channels store large volumes of water globally, critically impacting ecological and biogeochemical processes. Despite the importance of river channel storage, there is not yet an observationa...


Copper is important to the national economy as a kind of raw material, the Copper metal with higher purity is got by electrolysis in generally. In order to ensure the uniform space between cathode and anode when they are in electro-groove, to attain the better quality of cathode copper and raising production efficiency, verticality of the cathode and anode must be well. So it is very necessary to straighten the Copper starting sheet to acquire the better verticality, this paper adopt the roller type straightening machine to straighten the Copper starting sheet by analysis and comparison according to the material and structure characteristic of Copper starting sheet . In order to test the straightening ,this paper will use the ANSYS/LS-DYNA to simulate straightening machine to meet the need of company.


Arsenic pollution is a major public health problem worldwide. Many countries are threatened by arsenic poisoning for years and residents in endemic arseniasis areas suffer from the arsenic poisoning. More remarkable, researchers have pointed out that nervous system is the major target of arsenic. Though some possible theories of arsenic neurotoxicity have been proposed but the exact molecular mechanism is not clear yet. Exploring the exact mechanism is important, as we can antagonize arsenic neurotoxicity effectively. Previous evidences have shown that arsenic can influence the expressions of phosphatase and tensin homologue deleted on chromosome 10(PTEN), protein kinase B(Akt) and cAMP-response element binding protein(CREB) in many tissues and organs, moreover, PTEN/Akt/CREB signaling pathway plays an important role in nervous system. Therefore, the dysfunction of PTEN/Akt/CREB signaling pathway induced by arsenic exposure is important to the research of the mechanism of arsenic neurotoxicity.

Key words:
Arsenic; Nervous system damage; Phosphatase and tensin homologue deleted on chromosome 10; Protein kinase B; cAMP-response element binding protein


Poly[2,2-(m-phenylene)-5,5-bibenzimidazole](mPBI)were synthesized by mixing 3,3',4,4'-tetraaminobiphenyl and isophthalic acid in 1-butyl-3-methylimidazolium chloride([BMIM]Cl).Intrinsic viscosity of mPBI polymers was 0.67 dL/g which was measured in 96%sulfuric acid.The polymer was characterized by Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy(FTIR),nuclear magnetic resonance(1H-NMR),and thermogravimetric analysis(TGA).The effects of polymerization conditions on the intrinsic viscosity of mPBI were investigated.It showed that the molecular weight of polymer mainly depended on pre-reaction time and reaction temperature.Comparison of structure and properties of mPBI synthesized in ionic liquids(ILs)and polyphosphoric acid was also reported.It indicates that the ionic liquids are a kind of good solvents in synthesis process of mPBI and ionic liquids mainly affect molecular weight of mPBI.


Prosody and discourse particles: On the functions of attenuation, enhancement as (im)polite values in conversational markers This research is part of the project, Phonopoliteness: the audio component in the verbal expression of politeness and impoliteness in colloquial Spanish (Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness , FFI2009-07034), interested in the ability of the audio component (both segmental and suprasegmental level) to encourage courteous or discourteous pragmatic effects in colloquial conversation. Within this general line of research, we analyse here the variety of prosodic realizations of so-called "focusers of otherness", and the implications these may have on assumption (im)polite pragmatic effects, mainly articulated through attenuation or enhancement of expression. In particular, within this group of markers we study the particles hombre, bueno, ?sabes? and ?eh?, since we understand that according to their prosodic realization the value of these markers in context may vary; such markers also are particularly common in conversation and often nuanced prosodically. For our analysis we have handled the general corpus of colloquial conversations Val.Es.Co. Group (Briz, A. & Val.Es.Co. Group, 2002: Corpus de conversaciones coloquiales . Anejo 1 de Oralia. Madrid. Arco Libros), revised and filtered for the Phonopoliteness project. Methodologically we have submitted the units referred to a thorough acoustic analysis, to see if, indeed, diverse prosodic realizations can determine polite or impolite pragmatic effects in their specific context. In this case study, we have adhered to contexts where these effects were manifest. Ultimately, our analysis attempts to show the communicative productivity of the Prosody-Markers-(Im)politeness interface, and thus contribute to a novel line of research in the field of phonopragmatic studies.


I have long admired Kathryn Sikkink's work on human rights for its argumentative rigour and empirical depth, and also for the passionate yet reasoned commitment to the cause of human rights that it...


The modelling of agriculture with ontologies has been of interest to many authors in the past years. However, no research, currently, has focused on building a knowledge base ontology for the Climate Smart Agriculture (CSA) domain. This study attempts to fill this gap through the development of a Climate Smart Agriculture Ontology (OntoCSA). Information was gathered from secondary sources including websites, published research articles and reports as well as related ontologies, to formalize the OntoCSA ontology in Description Logics (DLs). The OntoCSA ontology was developed in Web Ontology Language (OWL) with Protégé. Furthermore, the OntoCSA ontology was successfully validated with the HermiT reasoner within Protégé. The resulting OntoCSA ontology is a machine-readable model of CSA that can be leveraged in web-based applications for the storage, open and automated access and sharing of CSA information/data, for research and dissemination of best practices


The 57Fe Mossbauer spectra of a 3:1 thiourea ferrocene clathrate show an unusual temperature-dependent relaxation of the electric field gradient tensor. This is caused by anisotropic reorientation of the ferrocene molecules in the channels of the clathrate lattice. The theoretical equations appropriate to anisotropic relaxation have been developed and allow a full interpretation of the data.


The paper purports to examine the rationale in subsidizing healthcare in the developing economies solely from the standpoint of economic growth with the help of a three-sector, full-employment small economy model with exogenous labour market imperfection and a non-traded sector providing healthcare services. Consumption of healthcare services emanates positive externalities and raises the efficiency of workers. There is provision for providing public subsidy on the consumption of health services. The analysis finds that the socially optimal consumption subsidy on health is not necessarily positive and crucially hinges on factors like degree of labour market imperfection, quality of services provided by the healthcare sector and its production technology. These results lead to a few important policy implications in the context of the developing countries. Finally, this analysis provides a theoretical justification why the magnitude of public spending on healthcare services is significantly lower in the developing countries vis-a-vis the developed nations.


Background The recent (re-)discovery of geography by economists through the lens of the new economic geography literature (Krugman, 1991) has had its counterpart in policy making with the promotion of the idea that economic geography is central to understanding and influencing actual economic development. The culmination of this was the publication of the World Development Report (WDR) 2009 by the World Bank in late 2008 (World Bank, 2008). In this report, aptly titled Reshaping Economic Geography, the World Bank basically makes two related claims. Firstly, and very much based on the new economic geography literature, understanding and shaping economic geography is crucial for economic development. So, after its earlier emphasis on development factors such as governance and institutions or human capital, in the WDR, the World Bank adds economic geography to the list of key drivers of economic development. Secondly, once the crucial role of economic geography for development is recognized, the WDR forcefully argues that this has far-reaching policy implications. In particular, in as far as geography is a hindrance to development, policies should be aimed at stimulating economic integration, especially between countries. Within countries, the WDR advises policy makers to focus less on, using their terminology, place-based policies and more on people-centered policies. The WDR's policy recommendations have generated a considerable amount of debate as to whether governments should stop using placebased policies to tackle the problems of their more slowly growing areas. Central to the discussion has been the observation that the geography of economic development is uneven reflecting the economic advantages to nations and their populations of large agglomerations of economic activity. To try and stimulate the development of relatively lagging areas in a country outside these core agglomerations has been argued to be at best ineffective and at worst damaging to the economic growth of the nation as a whole. Thus, in his recent article on the blog www.voxeu.org, Indermit Gill, the World Bank's Chief Economist for Europe and Central Asia and the Director of the WDR, argues:


ABSTRACT Tuned Mass Damper (TMD) is one of the passive control approaches for structures which provides a significant reduction of structure response. Optimising the design parameters of the TMD is always a challenge in this field. In the present study, based on the equation of structure energy balance for a Single-Degree-of-Freedom (SDOF) model, a wise method has been developed. It finds the optimum parameters of the damper that reduce the maximum response of the system under harmonic and earthquake base accelerations. Decent agreement between the results of the present study and previous ones shows the validity of this method.


Wide power-performance adaptation is becoming crucial in always-on nearly real-time and energy-autonomous integrated systems that are subject to wide variability in the power availability and the performance target. Adaptation is indeed a prerequisite to assure continuous operation in spite of the widely fluctuating energy/power source (e.g., energy harvester), and to grant swift response upon the occurrence of events of interest (e.g., on-chip data analytics), while maintaining extremely low consumption in the common case. These requirements have led to the strong demand of a new breed of integrated systems having an extremely wide performance-power scalability and adaptation, beyond conventional voltage scaling or adaptive parallelism. In this context, systems being able to adapt to a wider performance-power range ("the fittest") allow true continuous operation and adjustment to the power-performance profile required by the application ("survival"). In this talk, new techniques that drastically extend the performance-power scalability of digital circuits and architectures are presented. Silicon demonstrations of better-than-voltage-scaling adaptation to the workload are illustrated for both the data path (i.e., microarchitecture) and the clock path. Adaptation to a very wide range of energy/power availability is also discussed, presenting demonstrations of always-on systems (e.g., microcontrollers, power management units) with power down to sub-nW, and duty-cycled operation down to pW range. As an orthogonal design dimension, "just-enough" adaptation to the application-level quality requirement is shown to further extend the performance-power range by an order of magnitude or more. Under this energy-quality scaling framework, quality is treated as an explicit knob, eliminating the quality slack that is traditionally imposed by worst-case design across different applications (e.g., machine learning), contexts, datasets, and the pessimistic design margin to counteract process/voltage/temperature variations. Several silicon demonstrations are illustrated to quantify the benefits offered by wide powerperformance adaptation, and identify opportunities and challenges for the decade ahead.


The article examines the historical aspects of the formation and development of a Special part of the Russian Criminal Law. The analysis is based on legal monuments of the X - beginning of the XX century and literary sources. The research is developing in three main directions: a) the ratio of the law and other forms of expression of criminal law prescriptions (here the process of transition from customs to the law as the only means of expressing criminal law norms is revealed); 2) types and system of criminal laws (here the transition from intersectoral laws to the formation of a specialized Criminal Code is shown); 3) systematization of criminal law regulations (here the issues of classification of crimes and structuring of criminal law institutions are revealed). As the main result, it is summarized that by the beginning of the XX century, the idea of creating an independent criminal law was not only implemented in the country, but also, firstly, the principle of its pandect structure was put into practice, suggesting the isolation of its Special part in the structure of the Code and, secondly, the principle of building the most Special part, based on the institutional structure of the industry and the content of goods protected by law.


The moisture condition of the active layer in Arctic regions can induce severe problems, such as ground subsidence and frost heave. Thus, the water content in the active layer needs to be estimated using a light and portable in-situ testing device. In this study, a penetration-type time domain reflectometry (PTDR) device is developed for the estimation of volumetric water content in the active layer. The developed PTDR is applied at a site for an electrical resistivity survey to characterize the water distribution along a measurement line. A PTDR consists of a PTDR module, connecting rods, and a guide with a hammer. The PTDR module can determine the dielectric constant of a material from the measurement of the travel time of electromagnetic waves. Using remolded soil samples, the dielectric constants measured from the PTDR are calibrated with the volumetric water content. The PTDR calibration demonstrates that the dielectric constant increases with the water content. For the temperature of 0.1 to 15.2 ◦C, the travel time only slightly depends on the temperature variance. For field application, a PTDR is pressed into the ground and measures the electromagnetic waves and temperature with depth. The results of the field tests show that the volumetric water content measured by the PTDR increases with depth due to the impermeable layer located underneath the active layer. The electrical resistivity survey conducted at the same site provides the electrical resistivity profile for a long distance and shallow depth soils. Furthermore, the electrical resistivity survey and PTDR establish a significant correlation between electrical resistivity and water content. The PTDR developed in this study can be effectively used as an advanced in-situ testing method to estimate the water distribution in the active layer.


Abstract Facial expressions can reflect people's inner emotions to a certain extent, and studying facial expressions can help psychologists capture expression information in time and understand patients' psychological changes quickly. In this paper, we establish a multi-channel convolutional neural network face expression recognition model based on the fusion of the attention mechanism. With the help of the attention mechanism and multi-channel convolutional neural network, we input expression images and perform average pooling and maximum pooling, output the features with high recognition after pooling, and identify the features with high recognition in expression images throughout the process. And with the help of multi-scale feature fusion, we improve the detection of subtle changes, such as the corners of the mouth and the eyes of the expression image target. The loss function is used to calculate the loss rate of facial expression images, which leads to the correct rate of facial expression recognition by a multi-channel convolutional neural network based on the fusion of attention mechanisms. It is demonstrated that the highest recognition correct rate of the multi-channel convolutional neural network faces expression recognition model with attention mechanism fusion is 93.56% on the FER2013 dataset, which is higher than that of the MHBP model by 23.2%. The highest correct recognition rate on the RAF-DB dataset is 91.34%, which is higher than the SR-VGG19 model by 19.39%. This shows that the multi-channel convolutional neural network face expression recognition based on the fusion of attention mechanisms improves the correct rate of facial expression recognition, which is beneficial to the research and development of psychology.


A 27-year-old 1-para 1-gravida had a bigeminal pregnancy after ICSI. In the 12 th gestational week febrile abortion of the first twin occurred. Following antibiotic treatment, restitution of the vaginal flora, strict rest in bed and magnesium per os, a cervical polyp was removed in the 15 th week of gestation. Histological examination showed a florid erosive infection. Beginning with the 28 th week of gestation, we started prophylaxis of the respiratory distress syndrome under protection of antibiotics. At the 38 th week, a pathologic Doppler flow in the arteria umbilicalis was found in association with a growth retardation of two weeks. As result of an oxytocin test, a vital girl was born per vias naturales. To our knowledge there is no case report on vaginal delivery of a second twin after febrile abortion of the first one in the 12 th week of gestation.


For this study, after editing the data, 87,372 Nelore cattle visual scores of conformation (C), precocity (P) and musculature (M) at weaning were utilized. The aim of this work were to study the effects of age of dam at calving, Julian date of birth and age of calf at weaning on conformation, precocity and musculature visual scores and to estimate adjustment factors for these effects. The model included fixed effects of contemporary group (herd, paddock, year and month of birth, sex and management group at birth and at weaning), and the effects of age of dam at calving (for each sex), Julian date of birth and age of calf at weaning as covariables. A quadratic quadratic segmented polynomial was utilized for age of dam at calving. For Julian date of birth a segmented polynomial with three quadratic segments was considered, whereas a quadratic ordinary polynomial was used for age of calf at weaning. Every effect included in the model significantly influenced the visual scores. Only including the month or season of birth in the contemporary group definition was not sufficient to adjust for differences in visual scores due to date of birth. For genetic evaluations of animals the visual scores at weaning must be adjusted for age of dam at calving, Julian date of birth and age of calf at weaning.


This paper addresses the effects of solid boundaries on the evolution of two-dimensional turbulence in a finite square domain, for the cases of both decaying and continuously forced flow. Laboratory experiments and numerical flow simulations have revealed the crucial role of the solid no-slip walls as sources of vorticity filaments, which may significantly affect the flow evolution in the interior. In addition, the walls generally provide normal and tangential stresses that may exert a net torque on the fluid, which can change the total angular momentum of the contained fluid. For the case of decaying turbulence this is observed in so-called 'spontaneous spin-up', i.e. a significant increase of the total angular momentum, corresponding to a large domain-filling circulation cell in the organized 'final' state. For the case of moderate forcing this phenomenon may still be observed, although the filamentary vortex structures advected away from the walls may cause erosion and possibly a total destruction of the central cell. This disordered stage – characterized by a significantly decreased total angular momentum – is usually followed by a re-organization into a large circulation cell (in either the same or opposite direction) with an increased total angular momentum. The scaling behaviour of vorticity structure functions and the probability distribution function of vorticity increments have been investigated for forced turbulence and indicate a strong anisotropy of the turbulent flow in the range of Reynolds numbers considered.


One subject for which the prolific Bernard Shaw is not known is the environment. He called attention to air pollution by factory smoke and deplored smoking tobacco. Aiming to eliminate or reduce the malignant effects of slums on health and life, he wrote, spoke, and acted on sanitation and other health problems. He opposed quarrying and was a pioneer in seeking sources of energy that were alternatives to coal. He addressed and tried to remedy environmental and public health problems, which are often interrelated and cannot be easily demarcated. Two decades after his death in 1950, the environmentalist movement took hold.


Effects of dehydration treatment on the texture and catalytic performance of HZSM-5 were investigated by 27Al MAS NMR, NH3-TPD and FT-IR. Being treated by water vapor at 371 ℃, the non-framework aluminum species, transformed from part of the framework aluminum, had much effects on shape-selective disproportionation of toluene. The acidity of HZSM-5 was due to the non-framework aluminum species, i.e., SiAl(OH). The intensity of acid sites of HZSM-5 declined while the quantity of acid sites increased with dehydration temperature, with optimal intensity and quantity of acid sites and maximum toluene conversion of 28.2% at dehydration temperature of 400 ℃. Introduction of toluene during the dehydration inhibited further dehydration of HZSM-5 catalyst and thus stabilized the active sites and hence enhanced stability of HZSM-5 catalyst.


Ler, encoded by the locus of enterocyte effacement (LEE) of attaching and effacing (A/E) pathogens, induces the expression of LEE genes by counteracting the silencing exerted by H‐NS. Ler expression is modulated by several global regulators, and is activated by GrlA, which is also LEE‐encoded. Typical enteropathogenic Escherichia coli (EPEC) strains contain the EAF plasmid, which carries the perABC locus encoding PerC. The precise role of PerC in EPEC virulence gene regulation has remained unclear, mainly because EPEC strains lacking the pEAF still express the LEE genes and because PerC is not present in other A/E pathogens such as Citrobacter rodentium. Here, we describe that either PerC or GrlA can independently activate ler expression and, in consequence, of LEE genes depending on the growth conditions. Both PerC and GrlA, with the aid of IHF, counteract the repression exerted by H‐NS on ler and can also further increase its activity. Our results substantiate the role of PerC and GrlA in EPEC virulence gene regulation and suggest that these convergent regulatory mechanisms may have represented an evolutionary adaptation in EPEC to co‐ordinate the expression of plasmid‐ and chromosome‐encoded virulence factors needed to successfully colonize its intestinal niche.


Congratulations to the BVA/RCVS Vet Futures and VN Futures project team on their decision to mark One Health Day with publication of their report One Health in Action ( VR , 2 November 2019, volume 185, pp 526-527). The six major themes selected highlight issues of relevance to One Health and which we encounter …


Adaptive filtering has found many applications in situations where the underlying signals are changing or unknown. While linear filters are simple from implementation and conceptual points of view, many signals are non‐linear in nature. Non‐linear filters based on truncated Volterra expansions can effectively model a large number of systems. Unfortunately, the resulting input auto‐moment matrix is ill conditioned, which results in a slow convergence rate. This paper proposes a class of block adaptive Volterra filters in which the input sequences are Hadamard transformed to improve the condition number of the input auto‐moment matrix and consequently improve the convergence rate. This is achieved by the decorrelation effect produced by the orthogonality of the transform. Since Hadamard transformation employs only ±1's, the additional required computational and implementation burdens are few. The effect of additive white Gaussian noise is introduced. Simulation experiments are given to illustrate the improved performance of the proposed method over the conventional Volterra LMS method. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.


This paper presents the European Manufacturing Platform for Zero-Defects build in the frame of the H2020 project entitled "Zero Defect Manufacturing Platform" (ZDMP). The ZDMP project combines state of the art technological approaches based on commercial grade standard or open-source or previous-project software with an innovative integration concept based on proven and integrating technologies. It provides Process and Product Quality support on top of a platform layer. These all can utilize ZDMP core services which can also be used to build ZD Apps which are placed on the ZD Marketplace.


March-April 2017 www.jcso-online.com Rucaparib was granted accelerated approval by the US Food and Drug Administration for the treatment of patients with BRCA1/2 mutant advanced ovarian cancer in January this year, making it the second drug in its class for this indication. It is a poly(ADPribose) polymerase inhibitor that works by blocking the repair of damaged DNA in cancer cells and triggering cell death. The approval was based on findings from 2 single-arm clinical trials in which rucaparib led to complete or partial tumor shrinkage in more than half of the patients enrolled. A pooled analysis included 106 patients from the phase 2 trials, Study 10 (NCT01482715; N = 42) and ARIEL2 (NCT01891344; N = 64), in which patients with BRCA1/2 mutation-positive ovarian cancer who had progressed on 2 or more previous chemotherapy regimens, received 600 mg rucaparib twice daily. Study 10 included only patients with platinum-sensitive disease and eligible patients were aged 18 years or older, with a known deleterious BRCA mutation, evidence of measurable disease as defined by Response Evaluation Criteria in Solid Tumors (version 1.1), sufficient archival tumor tissue, histologically confirmed high-grade epithelial ovarian, fallopian tube or primary peritoneal cancer and relapsed disease confirmed by radiologic assessment. Meanwhile, ARIEL2 had similar eligibility criteria, except that patients with platinum-sensitive, resistant, and refractory disease were included. Both studies excluded patients with active second malignancies, and for those with a history of prior cancer that had been curatively treated, no evidence of current disease was required and chemotherapy should have been completed more than 6 months or bone marrow transplant more than 2 years before the first dose of rucaparib. Patients who had previously been treated with a PARP inhibitor, with symptomatic and/or untreated central nervous system metastases, or who had been hospitalized for bowel obstruction within the previous 3 months, were also ineligible. Across the 2 trials, the median age of trial participants was 59 years, 78% were white, and all had an Eastern Cooperative Oncology Group performance status of 0 (fully active, able to carry on all pre-disease performance without restriction) or 1 (restricted in physically strenuous activity but ambulatory and able to carry out work of a light or sedentary nature). Both trials used a surrogate endpoint for approval, measuring the percentage of patients who experienced complete or partial tumor shrinkage, the overall response rate (ORR), while taking rucaparib. In Study 10, the ORR was 60%, including a complete response (CR) rate of 10% and a partial response (PR) rate of 50%, over a median duration of response (DoR) of 7.9 months, while in ARIEL2, the ORR was 50%, including a CR of 8% and a PR of 42%, over a median DoR of Rucaparib – second PARP inhibitor hits the market for ovarian cancer


We describe our design of hardware and software systems for a quadcopter robot, which we name "Phenox". Phenox is a palm-sized quadcopter robot that can fly fully autonomously without any external controller or supporting systems. In our previous studies, we proposed palm-sized and fully autonomous quadcopter robots. However, in the previous systems, almost all the capability of the CPU and FPGA was used only for autonomous flight, so it was hard to implement additional user applications on the robot. In the design of the Phenox, we adopted the Zynq 7000 Soc, which has dual-core CPUs and an FPGA in one chip, enabling the users of the robot to implement their own application programs on the robot. We describe how Phenox processes images and sound, estimates its position, controls its flight, runs Linux OS and executes the user application programs in combination with open-source libraries such as OpenCV and Julius.


This study assessed the adequacy of funding of Industrial Development Centres (IDCs) in Nigeria.The study was designed primarily to determine whether or not the IDCs were adequately funded to carry out   the roles assigned to them towards development of Small-Scale Businesses in Nigeria. The study indicated that each of the selected IDCs was not adequately funded to carry out the roles assigned to it towards the development of Small-Scale Businesses in the geographical areas it expected to offer its services. To overcome the problem of inadequate funding, it is recommended that IDCs should extend the sources of their funding. Keywords : Small-Scale Businesses, funding, Industrial Development Centres, Zones.


Mersam Health Center Mersam District Batanghari District in processing data on drug supply, drugacceptance, drug use, drug demand, drug distribution is still done manually, namely by recording everyday on the stock card. Then the drug data from the stock card is recapitulated and a LPLPO (UsageReport and Drug Request Sheet) is made using Microsoft Excel to request medication to the BatanghariDistrict Pharmacy Installation. With this process, the pharmacist assistant has difficulty causing errors inthe calculation of drug stocks, making it difficult to check the drug inventory, resulting in the length of thereport and the missing documents due to improper archiving of the data and not using the database. Thepurpose and benefits of this study are to analyze and study the problems of the drug supply informationsystem at Mersam Health Center, Mersam Subdistrict, Batanghari District and produce Prototype byusing object-oriented methods and can help the drug department employees in making drug inventorydecisions, drug management treatment is easy, fast and efficient. The design of information systems inthis study uses UML (Unified Modeling Language) tools such as use case diagrams, activity diagrams,and class diagrams. This study produced a prototype drug inventory information system that can presenta drug inventory report. This prototype needs to be developed for further research so that it can beapplied by completing a data security system (security).


The response of habanero pepper (C. chinense) cv. Chichen Itza to salt stress in a hydroponic system, given by four levels of salinity (6.6, 9.4 and 13.6 dS m-1) and two salt sources (NaCl and seawater), through the evaluation of morphometric parameters, physiological, mineral content in foliar tissue and the antioxidant biochemical response. The morphometric and growth variables (dry biomass in the root, stem, leaf, fruit, leaf area, growth rate, and root stem ratio) were found to decrease in the highest salinity levels of 9.4 and 13.6 dS m-1 in both sources of salinity. On the other hand, the variables to evaluate the physiological response such as chlorophyll fluorescence (SPAD), stomatal conductivity and intracellular CO2 concentration, shows differences by the salt concentration, the photosynthetic rate, and the transpiration rate don't show differences to the salinity levels evaluated. The concentration of minerals in the foliar tissue showed that the sodium content was higher in the treatments where the source of salinity was NaCl compared to the treatments with seawater. In general, it was found that the potassium content decreased as the salinity level increased. No significant differences were observed between the lowest level of salinity (6.6 dS m-1) and the control treatment. The interaction of salinity and saline levels showed significant differences for the content of sodium, potassium, magnesium, and calcium, while the ratio of sodium/potassium, sodium/calcium, and sodium/magnesium showed statistically significant differences. The results of the enzymatic antioxidant defense in leaf tissue indicate that there are statistically significant differences for the SOD activity for the electrical conductivity factor, presenting greater activity at 13.6 dS m-1 with NaCl as a saline source. The activity of POX was increased in the salinity level of 6.6 dS m-1 of the solutions from NaCl and seawater respectively. Lipid peroxidation increased due to the salinity level, reaching its maximum value in 13.6 dS m-1 of the solution with NaCl. The content of capsaicin in the pericarp of the fruits at the salinity level of 6.6 dS m-1 did not show differences in comparison to the control group. It is concluded that the differential response shown by the treatments studied depends mainly on the salinity level independently of the saline source. It is established that the threshold for habanero production is between the range of 3.6 and 6.6 dS m-1, indicating the possibility of the use of brackish water for the production of food under protected agriculture in a hydroponic system.


Metals oxides play an important role in many areas of chemistry, physics, and material science. The metal elements are able to form a large diversity of oxide compounds and can adopt a vast number of geometries with an electronic structure that can exhibit metallic, semiconductor, or insulator characteristics [1,2]. In the emerging field of the nanotechnology, a capital goal is to make nanoarquitectures with special properties with respect to bulk or single (e.g. isolated) species. Oxide nanoparticles can display unique chemical properties due to their limited size [2]. Oxide materials with technological implications, such as MgO, Al2O3, Fe2O3, ZnO, TiO2 or CeO2, can be used in single component configurations or as part of materials containing several phases/components and, particularly, as supported oxide systems. Among the first, the nanostructure allows the modulation of the structural and electronic properties of the systems, with consequences in their chemical activity, while in the second type of systems interface effects add complexity to the interpretation of the physico-chemical properties. In this talk we will analyze nanostructure effects on both types of systems, mono and multiphasic materials, giving relevance to the establishment of firm structure-activity relationships in order to interpret the chemical, particularly catalytic, properties of oxide systems. In a general review of the oxides properties, we will consider ceria as a proto-typical material to exemplify to current status of the art. Starting with the influence of the nanostructure on structural properties, we will discuss the intimate interplay occurring between the presence of (mostly punctual) defects and primary particle size, and the consequences on cell parameters/volume and strain. Similarly, consequences (of defects and primary particle size) in electronic properties will be also detailed and a brief list can include the modification of the metal-oxygen bond nature, the discretization of the electronic levels and subsequent band gap alteration, the presence of gap states and, finally, the absence of band bending at interfaces [2,3].


Preservation of the acromio-humeral distance in athletes is important to prevent
impingement of the rotator cuff tendons in the subacromial space. It is hypothesised
that during arm abduction, the acromio-humeral distance is maintained in the athletic
population, manifesting in a smaller percentage reduction of this measure when
compared with non-athletes. This study investigates whether differences exist in
percentage reduction of this space during arm abduction when comparing athletes
and non-athletes. Thirty male controls and 93 sportsmen met the inclusion criteria.
Thirty female controls and 30 sportswomen met the inclusion criteria. Measurements
of acromio-humeral distance in the coronal plane were taken with ultrasound in
two arm positions: one, shoulder neutral; and two, 60° of active abduction. Results
show a greater percentage reduction in acromio-humeral distance in male controls
compared with sportsmen when the arm is abducted to 60°, this does not achieve
significance in the dominant shoulder (Δ=0.80% STD 2.60%, p=0.77) but is significant
in the non-dominant shoulder (Δ=5.90% STD 2.50%, p = 0.02).A greater percentage
reduction in acromio-humeral is present in female controls compared with sportswomen
(Δ=10.76% STD 0.06%, p=0.01 dominant shoulder, Δ=15.54% STD 0.07%, p=0.02
non-dominant shoulder). The finding that elite athletes of both genders have a smaller
percentage reduction in acromio-humeral distance during 60° arm abduction when
compared with non-sporting controls may indicate an adaptive response in order to
maintain acromio-humeral distance in the shoulder of athletes.


Rock arts can be considered as the most ancient representation of human communities' artwork. Studying petroglyphs is a new research trend among the anthropologists, archeologists, ecologists and decorative arts researchers. Chapaqan complex is located in the northwest of Iran in the east part of Meshgin Shahr, a city near a famous river named ' Qarasu '. This complex is divided into two sections in Northern and Southern flanks. The discovered petroglyphs in Chapaqan contain goat (Ibex), deer, grooves and cupules. These petroglyphs are created by a stroking method and located nearby the permanent river of ' Qarasu '. The petroglyphs in Chapaqan have been examined in field and library-based studies and the motifs are categorized into two animal and geometric groups.


The invention relates to a heterojunction silicon crystal solar cell and a fabrication method thereof. The fabrication method includes the following steps that: a silicon semiconductor substrate is provided; a first mask and a second mask are formed on a first transparent conductive layer on the first surface of the silicon semiconductor substrate and a second transparent conductive layer on the second surface of the silicon semiconductor substrate respectively; the first transparent conductive layer and the second transparent conductive layer at the side wall surface of the silicon semiconductor substrate are removed through an etching gas; a first amorphous semiconductor layer, a second amorphous semiconductor layer, a first buffer layer and a second buffer layer at the side wall surface of the silicon semiconductor substrate are removed through an etching agent; and at least one electrode is formed on the first transparent conductive layer on the first surface and the second transparent conductive layer on the second surface, so that the heterojunction silicon crystal solar cell can be fabricated.


This paper presents some consequences of economic theory for the regulation of corporate accounting and disclosure under Geman accounting legislation (de lege lata) and in an international context. The following implications are discussed: (i) It is argued that the economic income conception provides means for a better understanding of the informational needs of accounting data-users and can serve as a guidance for the interpretation of legal rules concerning disclosure. (ii) From a Law and Economics-perspective the article develops a concept to comparing the economic content of different legal regimes in an international accounting environment. (iii) It is shown that – in the "new paradigm" of complementarities (Milgrom/Roberts) – regulation of disclosure standards can also be seen as a function of the institutional setting, e.g. of the (national) structure of corporate governance and the (national) financial system. (iv) The principle of full disclosure can be interpreted as a complementary element of the overall disclosure system in a country. Especially the fine tuning of the application of the principle of full disclosure in a national context depends on whether it figures as part of an insider control-system or an outsider control-system. (v) Finally, it is argued that the interpretation of extraordinary items in German accounting law, for the time being, does not satisfy the informational needs of market participants.


Abstract Pandemic-induced lockdowns, restrictions on commercial activities, and natural disasters can disrupt a supply chain for prolonged time periods. These disruptions signi_cantly impact the consumer demands, which in turn a_ect the capacity and pro_tability of a supply chain network. Economic survivability is the ability to maintain a net positive economic worth, or at least keeping it above a certain threshold, in the presence of sudden and prolonged disruptions that drastically reduce the product demands, prices, resource availability or others. We address the economic survivability of geographically distributed interconnected networks under demand disruptions. We formulate and incorporate the necessary conditions for ensuring economic survivability in supply chain design. The overall problem is formulated as a mixed-integer nonlinear program (MINLP). Increasing the economic survivability in general also increases the return-on-investment (ROI) and profitability. However, for multi-regional, distributed and interdependent supply chains, a more balanced distribution of investment portfolio is important to improve the local survivability of each region, but it comes at the expense of overall or global profitability. We also observe that the economic survivability is negatively impacted by over-designing a supply chain to meet excess demands (typically from spot markets). Decision-makers should balance the trade-offs between survivability and excess demand satisfaction by thoroughly assessing the probability of positive and negative demand uctuations.


Let G be the group GL(n) over a number field E and let A be the ring of adeles of E. In this paper we prove that the spectral side of the Arthur trace formula for G is absolutely convergent for all integrable rapidly decreasing functions on $G(A)^1$.


This paper analyses the extent and determinants of rural household poverty in the eastern highlands of Ethiopia. The study examines 216 households using a household consumption expenditure approach. The study was particularly interested in the effects of location-specific and institutional factors (networks) in determining the probability of being poor. The findings suggest that poverty is location-specific, depends on access to irrigated land (not land per se) and access to non-farm income. Results also indicate that household wellbeing is negatively affected by household size, and positively affected by age of household head. Involvement in governance, social and production related networks are also found to be strongly associated with the probability of a household being poor.

 Key words: Rural poverty, ordered probit, institutional factors, Eastern Hararghe, Ethiopia.


Reflection High Energy Electron Diffraction (RHEED) is a common in-situ monitoring device for crystal thin films, which can monitor the thin films in the process of growth in real time and without damage. This paper reports the RHEED and difference system principle, RHEED in the development of low vacuum and its application in the atomic layer deposition (ALD).


This article considers the pragmatic potential of the reporting category as a core component of the indirect evidentiality field. The purpose of the article is to determine methods of realization of the pragmatic function of reporting category informing. The article analyses examples taken from mass-media programs about information technologies news and determines 2 analysing strategies for pragmatic potential. The example analysis demonstrated that common pragmatic function of informing is a priori specific for mass-media news programs; in this case, examples of informing about latest news and updates in science and technology. The essence of informing process suggests retelling of another's information or the realization of the reporting category. In English, anonymous sources are represented less within the informing process and the category of inference is used. In the Russian language, information is often given as the fruits of labour, the achievement, the activity result of particular subjects who are suggested to be sources of information.


vol. 66, no. 1 diversification was only temporary. Only in Georgia did diversification succeed, but forces other than the myth of the boll weevil led to diversification. The monopoly of the landowners, the distrust of government and academic scientists, and the rampant racism in the South all existed before the arrival of the boll weevil. It is questionable whether the boll weevil myth, used so frequently to strengthen white authority, actually changed both the social and economic order. Nonetheless, Giesen's greatest strength lies in his ability to explain the local politics surrounding the boll weevil. Further, his work highlights the importance of the South as a region with diverse landscapes, each a facing a similar problem differently. Particularly, useful to agricultural historians, Boll Weevil Blues adds to the growing canon of environmental history in the South.


Purpose: This study aimed to examine the relationships between Sense of Coherence (SoC), Coping Strategies and Quality of Life (QoL) of parents of children with autism in Malaysia. Method: Purposive sampling was used to recruit parents of children with autism from 3 Autism Centres run by NGOs. The parents were asked to complete a questionnaire. Results: The results of the study show that SoC and cognitive reframing are important factors that are associated with QoL. Conclusions: It is recommended that policy-makers and programmers at the Autism Centres conduct more training workshops for parents of children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), so that their overall QoL can be improved. Limitations: Future studies could recruit more participants, especially parents at government centres.


This work presents and discusses different problems associated with the operation of ASDs based on active front end PWM rectifiers in power distribution systems. Problems generated with high frequency current harmonics, interaction with sensitive digital protection schemes, and the circulation of leakage grounding currents, are described. Practical problems generated by the interaction with existing ASDs based on diode rectifiers are also analyzed. Actual current and voltage waveforms associated with the operation of active front end based frequency changers in industrial power distribution systems illustrate the practical problems discussed in this paper.


Corrádi and Hajnal [Acta Math. Acad. Sci. Hungar. 14 (1963), 423–439] showed that if G is a graph of order at least 3k with minimum degree at least 2k then G contains k disjoint cycles. In this paper, we extend this result to disjoint cycles of length at least 4. We prove that if G is a graph of order at least 4k with k ≥ 2 and the minimum degree of G is at least 2k then with three easily recognized exceptions, G contains k disjoint cycles of length at least 4. We propose two conjectures for a graph to contain k disjoint cycles of length at least s for each s ≥ 5.


In safety related applications and in products with long lifetimes reliability is a must. Moreover, facing future technology nodes of integrated circuit device level reliability may decrease, i.e., counter-measures have to be taken to ensure product level reliability. But assessing the reliability of a large system is not a trivial task. This paper revisits the state-of-the-art in reliability evaluation starting from the physical device level, to the software system level, all the way up to the product level. Relevant standards and future trends are discussed.


TO THE EDITOR—Although treatment of asymptomatic bacteriuria (AB) in nonpregnant women has not shown positive effects [1] and is discouraged by clinical recommendations and guidelines, it is a major source of inappropriate use of antibiotics [2, 3]. On first glance, the recent article by Cai et al [4] as well as a previous article by the same authors [5] read as a strong argument in support of current recommendations against antibiotic treatment in AB. Unfortunately, several inconsistencies of the study may substantially limit its value. The authors refer to their first article for study design. In that article, they report the randomization of 699 women, of whom 673 had been analyzed, whereas in the recent article, they state that 673 women had been randomized. Distribution to the 2 study arms was unequal: 330 women had been allocated to arm A and 369 to arm B [5]. The authors provide no explanation for this substantial imbalance. Thus, one must suspect that the randomization process had not worked adequately. Only women aged 18–40 years should have been enrolled in the trial according to inclusion criteria [5].Although age ranges are not provided, the age distribution suggests that many women aged >40 years had been included (Table 1: median age 38.5 years, standard deviation 6.4 years in arm A and median age 38.9 years, standard deviation 7.2 years in arm B, respectively) [4]. If these data are correctly reported, then one can conclude that the study had not been conducted according to protocol. An important imbalance is present with regard to the number of women with more than 3 symptomatic urinary tract infections (UTIs) in their history (65.4% in A vs 88.1% in B) [4], which was not the case in the first trial (77.3% in A vs 79% in B) [5] and suggests that a selection bias occurred during follow-up. This imbalance is of special interest since it means that women in arm B had more exposure to antibiotics before being included in the prospective study. Therefore, the reported higher rates of antibiotic resistance could easily be explained by baseline differences in the 2 arms of the study population. This severe limitation is neither explained nor discussed by the authors. It is unclear how the authors dealt with multiple episodes of UTIs. They state in the Methods section that in those cases, all data were analyzed (ie, each single episode). Therefore, one would expect a higher number of episodes than of patients. However, a number of 301 is reported for both parameters. This also means that exactly 1 pathogen was identified in each symptomatic patient, which is a very unlikely clinical scenario. It is mentioned that the statistically significant difference in antibiotic resistance between the 2 arms was only present after 2 years of follow-up. No data for resistance rates at different time points are provided, and it remains unclear how this difference was calculated. Due to major deficiencies in design, reporting, and interpretation, this study cannot be taken as solid evidence against antibiotic treatment of AB.


Cultural factors influence how cancer patients interpret their illness. This paper explores the meanings haredi (strictly orthodox) Jewish breast cancer patients give to their illness. In-depth interviews were conducted with five haredi breast cancer patients. The full transcripts were subjected to interpretive phenomenological analysis. Participants' interpretations of their cancer were strongly influenced by their religious beliefs. Two interwoven themes emerged: the cancer came from God as part of a meaningful plan; the disease was a test. The implications these beliefs may have for healthcare behaviour in this group are discussed. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.


Let G be a finite p-group and let Aut_l(G) be the group of absolute central automorphisms of G. In this paper we give necessary and sufficient condition on G such that each absolute central automorphism of G fixes the centre element-wise. Also we classify all groups of orders p^3 and p^4 whose absolute central automorphisms fix the centre element-wise.


Report that describes the Oak Ridge National Laboratory Experimental Gas-Cooled Reactor, problems with the procurement and assembly of its components, and its economic feasibility.


Optimum conditions for extraction and precipitation of rapeseed proteins have been defined: 10% NaCl extracts 70% of the total nitrogen (Nt) of a laboratory defatted flour and 0.1 N-NaOH, 89% (but only 62% of the Nt of an industrial oil meal). The maximum precipitation of these proteins occurs at pH 3 (NaCl extract) and pH 6.5 (NaOH extract) with fairly low yields (22 and 51% of protein nitrogen, respectively). The explanation lies in the distinctive behaviour of two protein groups. The first one, composed of high molecular weight proteins, is readily precipitated by HCl; the second one, comprised of basic, low molecular weight proteins of excellent amino-acid composition, is precipitated with great difficulty (trichloroacetic acid). Furthermore, the low protein yields generally reported also originate in important differences in solubility between laboratory defatted flour and industrial meal proteins, probably due to the denaturing action of heat and moisture used in oil-processing.


Germination studies of five species of Ipomoea were investigated following chemical (conc. H 2 SO 4 , cone. HCl and 1% KMnO 4 ) and mechanical pretreatment. Cone. H 1 SO 4 significantly increased (P<0.001) the rate (RG) and percentage (%) of seed germination to optimal values (100%) in I. obscura (1.ORG), I. aquatica (0.62RG) and I. hederifolia (0.56RG). The values were below average in I. asarifolia (45%, 0.21RG) and I. involucrata (40%, 0.17 RG). On the basis of the computed effective time values for 50% of germinated exposed seeds (ET 50 ), I. obscura (ET,(, 8Ω hr.) had the fastest germinating seeds followed by I. aquatica (1 days), I. hederιfolia (c. 20 days), I. asarifolia (28 days) and I. involucrata (c. 79 days). The relative effectiveness of chemical treatment showed that cone. H 2 SO 4 promote germination 181x (times) in I. obscura, 34½ x in I. hederifolia and 3½ x in I. asurifolia faster than control (untreated) seeds of each species. The seeds of I. aquatica failed to germinate unless scarified by cone. H 2 SO 4 or mechanically. Cone. HCI and 1% KMnO 4 did not sufficiently improve germination in the species except HCI treated seeds of I. obscura (0.41RG, 6° days ET 50 . These treatments are to some extent detrimental in I. hederifolia and I. involucrata, lowering the germination potential. Mechanical scarification precludes other factors conferring dormancy apart from the testa. This treatment significantly increased (P<0.001) germination to 100% under 72 hours in all the species.


In this paper, a mathematical model of periodic oscillatory blood flow in arteries with local stenosis was developed, and the analytic expressions of axial velocity, radial velocity and shear stress of periodic oscilatory blood flow corresponding to the pressure gradient were obtained, and the variation of pressure gradient along the axis which is caused by local stenosis in arteries was discussed. As an example, assuming the geometry of the local stenosis as a cosine form, a detailed discussion is performed through numerical calculation, which helps estimating how the steady pressure gradient and different harmonic components of pressure gradient at the upstream uniform segment influence the velocity and shear stress in the constricted region. Numerical results indicate that in the stenotic region of the artery not only the average but also the pulsatile amplitude of the axial velocity of the oscillatory blood flow will increase apparently comparing with the uniform segment. And the radial velocity will no longer be zero, although its value is still rather small when compared with the axial one. Meantime, the shear stress is now caused by the radial velocity gradient as well as the axial velocity gradient, although the contribution to the wall shear stress along the flow directoin of the radial one is relatively small. Unlike the uniform segment where the wall 'shear stress remains constant along the axis, in the constricted region, the wall shear stress enhances corresponding to the increase of the height of the stenosis and attains the peak value at the maximum height of the stenosis ,and thus a considerable value of shear stress gradient is noticed along the flow direction.


Synthetic pyrethroids account for more than 30% of insecticides used worldwide in agricultural, domestic and veterinary applications. Although mainly used as insecticides, these compounds have a wider spectrum of action including mammalian toxicity. We conducted experiments to determine physiological and biochemical responses of Wistar rats orally exposed for 30 days, to sublethal doses of lambda-cyhalothrin (1/100 th and 1/10 th of the LD50). We also investigated the protective role of the antioxidant, L-carnitine. We observed that body weight was adversely affected by exposure to lambdacyhalothrin, as was the relative weight of testes; weights of liver and spleen, however, were significantly increased. Several haematological variables (total erythrocyte count, haemoglobin, serum protein) were negatively affected while total leukocyte count was increased. Plasma concentrations of glucose and urea were also elevated. Activities of metabolic enzymes (aspartate aminotransferase, alanine aminotransferase, acid phosphatase, alkaline phosphatase), were significantly enhanced in serum but suppressed in liver. Activity of lactate dehydrogenase was also increased in serum, and greatly increased in liver. Acetylcholinesterase activity in serum was not affected but activity of this enzyme in the brain was markedly suppressed. A significant increase was seen for several biochemical indicators of oxidative stress, such as thiobarbiturate-reactive substances in blood and liver and the concentrations of reduced glutathione in liver, testis, brain and kidney. The measurements taken together indicate that lambda-cyhalothrin causes a sublethal, dose-dependent syndrome of oxidative stress, with additional effects on haematopoiesis and carbohydrate metabolism. Most strikingly, simultaneous dosing of the anti-oxidant L-carnitine removed the oxidative stress status and eliminated the harmful effects in almost all cases. Our data confirm that sublethal mammalian toxicity of lambdacyhalothrin is dominated by oxidative stress, despite the fact that its use as a pesticide relies on neurotoxicity. The anti-oxidant L-carnitine has a strong protective effect against lambda-cyhalothrin toxicity.


According to the limitation of resources in Wireless Sensor Network (WSN), this paper presents a new key pre-distribution scheme based on plane grid. It helps not only to economize the space of storage and keep low consumption, but also ensure that all neighbors' nodes can establish pair-wise keys directly, however, has a poor safety performance. Then we extend the scheme to three-dimensional grid and propose a novel key pre-distribution called three-dimensional grid key pre-distribution scheme. The results of analysis indicate that the scalability and resilience of the scheme are much better.


In this paper, the mathematical relationships between matrix-formatted frequency-domain fluorescence decay data and the photokinetic transfer matrix are derived. These relationships reveal that procedures for analyzing the fluorescence spectra and photokinetic mechanism of excited state reactions without model assumptions can be developed when the fluorescence decay is described by first-order differential equations with constant coefficients and when the spectral emission profiles of the decaying fluorophores are distinct. The linear structure of wavelength-dependent frequency-domain decay data permits the simultaneous estimation of the emission spectra, relative initial concentrations, and the photokinetic transfer matrix describing the decay and interaction of multiple fluorophores. Data matrices acquired using a single sample are amenable to this approach, eliminating the necessity to measure probe lifetimes separately at low fluorophore concentration. Most importantly, this method does not require th...


Background: Reduced eGFR is associated with increased risk of cardiovascular disease and mortality. Methods: In a registry of 865 men with hypogonadism, 361 men (41.7%) had T2DM. 183 received TU 1000 mg every 12 weeks (T-group). 178 opted against treatment (CTRL). Changes over time between groups were compared and adjusted for age, weight, waist circumference, fasting glucose, blood pressure, lipids and quality of life to account for baseline differences between the groups. eGFR was calculated using the Modification of Diet in Renal Disease (MDRD) formula. Results: Mean follow-up 8.7±3.1, baseline age: 61.8±5.3 years. Creatinine decreased by 0.16±0.03 mg/dL (unadjusted from 0.95±0.16 to 0.83±0.09) at 12 years in the T-group and increased by 0.33±0.03 mg/dL (1.00±0.14 to 1.26±0.42) in CTRL (p Conclusions: Long-term testosterone therapy in men with hypogonadism and T2DM prevents age-related deterioration in GFR. Disclosure K. S. Haider: Other Relationship; Self; Bayer AG. A. Haider: Other Relationship; Self; Bayer AG. F. Saad: Consultant; Self; Bayer AG, Stock/Shareholder; Self; AbbVie Inc., Bayer AG, Novo Nordisk. Funding Bayer AG