BackgroundAfrica accounts for one-fifth of low- and middle-income countries' contributions to the global road traffic mortality, and Nigeria reported > 25% of this. Over the years, the trends in road traffic crashes (RTCs) in Nigeria have a slow decline. This study describes the magnitude and distribution of RTCs and injuries in Nigeria and determines if the sustainable development goal (SDG 3.6) target set in 2011 was achieved in 2016. MethodsRTCs surveillance data from the Federal Road Safety Corps (FRSC) 2013 - 2016 was analyzed. Variables like date of the crash, route of the crash, location of the crash, the probable cause of the crash, age and sex of people involved, injured, or killed, road users type and make of vehicles were anonymized and abstracted on Microsoft Excel worksheet. RTCs outcome were classified as minor, moderate, and fatal. The road traffic injury (RTI) fatality rate is the proportion of persons killed in RTC per 100,000 population. Data analyzed for frequency, proportions, and ratio but presented in tables, trend, and charts.ResultsThere were 42,813 RTCs involving 56,331 vehicles and 283,949 persons. Fatal RTCs were 12,031 (28.1%) and 23,412 (8.2%) persons died. Male to female ratio was 3:1. North-Central zone (NCZ) reported 16,097 (37.6%) of the RTCs while South-West zone (SWZ) had the highest proportion of RTCs that were fatal 2,474/6,902 (35.8%). RTI fatality rate was highest in NCZ followed by SWZ with 23.8 and 12.7 deaths per 100,000 population, respectively. The States with the highest fatal RTCs were Oyo 631/1209 (52.0%), Yobe 114/269 (42.4%), Ondo 446/1073 (41.6%) and Kogi 566/1368 (41.4%). The commonest causes of RTCs were speed violation and loss of vehicle control. From 2011 to 2016, reduction in RTC and Fatal RTC were 27.4% and 7.8%, respectively and SDG 3.6 target not met.ConclusionsRTCs remains a major public health in Nigeria where fatal RTCs, injuries, and RTI fatality rate are differentially distributed in states and geo-political zones. RTI fatality rate was highest in NCZ and SWZ, and SDG 3.6 target was not met. Therefore, a context-specific RTCs preventive strategies should be designed and implemented in Nigeria.


OBJECTIVE
To determine whether specific psychosocial interventions can ease discomfort in palliative care (PC) patients, particularly in those with high levels of pain or emotional distress.

METHODS
Changes in the psychological parameters of 8333 patients were assessed in a quasi-experimental, prospective, multicenter, single group pretest/post-test study. Psychosocial care was delivered by 29 psychosocial care teams (PSTs; 137 professionals). Pre- and post-intervention changes in these variables were assessed: mood, anxiety, and emotional distress. Patients were classified as complex, when presented with high levels of anxiety, mood, suffering (or perception of time as slow), and distress (or unease, or discomfort), or noncomplex. These groups were compared to assess changes in suffering-related parameters from baseline.

RESULTS
Psychosocial interventions reduced patients' suffering. These interventions were more effective in complex patients.

CONCLUSIONS
After successive psychosocial interventions, the level of suffering in complex patients decreased until close to parity with noncomplex patients, suggesting that patients with major complexity could benefit most from specific psychosocial treatment. These findings support the importance of assessing and treating patients' psychosocial needs.


The documents emerging from the secret police archives of the former Soviet bloc have caused scandal after scandal, compromising revered cultural figures and abruptly ending political careers. Police Aesthetics offers a revealing and responsible approach to such materials. Taking advantage of the partial opening of the secret police archives in Russia and Romania, Vatulescu focuses on their most infamous holdings-the personal files-as well as on movies the police sponsored, scripted, or authored. Through the archives, she gains new insights into the writing of literature and raises new questions about the ethics of reading. She shows how police files and films influenced literature and cinema, from autobiographies to novels, from high-culture classics to avant-garde experiments and popular blockbusters. In so doing, she opens a fresh chapter in the heated debate about the relationship between culture and politics in twentieth-century police states.


The conceptual design is closely related to a product functional structure and the search of solution principles for its definition. This work exposes an accumulative method for the traceability of the functional structure that implements the guided conceptual synthesis of solutions in the preliminary analysis of this designing process stage. The method constitutes a contribution to Pahl's and Beitz's classic design model. In it, the functional information system is manipulated, providing the designer with a help so that he can examine the different solutions that are obtained, giving him the possibility of selecting the most convenient one. The guided analysis of the accumulative solutions synthesis is illustrated by means of the conceptual design of an efficient stove working with biomass.


The revised edition of Dr. Taussig's Congenital Malformations of the Heart will replace the first edition as the reference book for those interested in this field of medicine. The book is divided into 2 volumes. Volume I is concerned with the fundamental principles in the clinical diagnosis and medical care of patients with cardiovascular defects. Volume II is concerned with specific malformations. The book differs from the first edition in that it is more comprehensive and has several new chapters added. A summary at the end of each chapter has also been included in this edition. An outstanding feature is the Visual Index. This section is designed to show at a glance the salient features of the various congenital heart malformations. The book contains little of the physiological studies of the various congenital heart malformations. The surgical aspect of the various anomalies is discussed, only briefly as a means of


"Continuous Assessment – Rubrics and Uncovering Student Misconceptions "Module EE4011, "Radio Frequency Integrated Circuit Design", an optional final-year module in the B.E. (Electrical) programme at UCC, incorporates a computer-based assignment which accounts for 20% of the final marks. In 2007/8, a detailed marking scheme in the form of a rubric was given to the students with the assignment to allow them to clearly see where effort should be expended in the assignment itself and in the written report on which the marks would be based.The final grades for the continuous assessments were determined by systematically evaluating how closely each student had met the standards of performance as specified in56the rubric. By concentrating on the rubric for the purposes of evaluation, the assessor was not as distracted by small errors or misconceptions in the student reports as could possibly occur when grading the reports without the help of the detailed rubric. In fact, by concentrating on the rubric for grading purposes, the assessor felt a certain leeway to re-evaluate the reports from a student learning perspective in order to gain insights into minor misconceptions which occasionally appeared. These minor misconceptions could subsequently be clarified in a follow-up tutorial. Thus, the rubric-based approach, while primarily targeted in this instance at determining a grade, created clarity at grading time and allowed a separation between the task of grading and the search for misconceptions which could hinder student learning, with the latter being an unexpected but welcome bonus. Challenging assumptions with final year occupational therapy students Phil McGowan, University College Cork Final year occupational therapy students in University College Cork complete a research project from idea-generation and ethics submission stage through to fieldwork in messy reality onto finally making their own argument or case in a research paper and poster. Throughout the various stages of this research process, the professional and personal assumptions of the students are being challenged. This may range from challenging their theoretical and personal views on local society, indicated through their chosen inclusive or exclusive criteria for participants, to questions asked within their research projects. Finally, the unstated assumption of many, that either qualitative research with people is easy is also well challenged through this learning project. This project also enables students to learn much about the administration and professional disciplinary realities of local or regional life, thereby challenging their assumptions about the role of professionals in health and social care in Ireland today. The involvement of service-users whenever possible in these research projects also assists to challenge certain assumptions of our own professional literature. All of the above continues within a framework of maintaining and developing even greater passion for their work as future occupational therapists in Ireland.While our department continues to educate and/or prepare professional citizens, occupational therapy graduates in this case, these under-graduate research projects assist local clinical staff, academic staff and students to learn more about contemporary occupational therapy practice in Ireland. Some of the issues expressed or features exposed through our student projects above may be the basis of further professional development or post-graduate programmes in our new, small but energetic Department within University College Cork. Thus, learning, research and teaching are intertwined throughout the undergraduate and post-graduate modules.


In this work, we present a novel technique for ultrasound image processing (2D signals). The moving average hybrid FIR filter (MAH-FIR) which it work with two different FIR filter, the moving average (MA) and median hybrid (FMH) filters. We experimented with continuous linear regression function and Lagrange multiplier to obtain the approximation of the MA-FIR and FMH-FIR filters, respectively. Furthermore, we showed both filters composed into a block diagram. Finally, we present evaluations qualitative and quantitative of ultrasound image processing.


In recent years, with the rapid growth of photovoltaic (PV) power development and utilization, part of the PV power could not be transmitted to the power grid owing to the impact of PV power fluctuation on power quality, leading to a serious PV power rejection in some areas in China. A high‐order model of a hydro‐PV power plant is developed in this paper not only to predict hydropower compensation for PV power fluctuation but also to consider the impact of complementary regulation on power quality. Compared with the existing complementary models, the presented model accurately reveals the effect of water hammer on power quality, low‐frequency power oscillation, and power antiregulation phenomenon during the complementary regulation. Although the complementary control of the hydro‐PV power plant helps to suppress power fluctuation, when the PV power and objective power are negative covariation, the hydropower needs more regulation, which will cause an increase in frequency fluctuation. Moreover, with the increase of the ratio of hydro‐PV power in the power grid, the frequency fluctuation amplitude increases accordingly. Especially, when PV power exceeds the regulation ability of the hydropower, the system frequency deviation will increase rapidly. These problems are worth the attention to the future development of PV power.


This article proposes a solution of the Lambertian shape from shading (SFS) problem in the case of a pinhole camera model (performing a perspective projection). Our approach is based upon the notion of viscosity solutions of Hamilton-Jacobi equations. This approach allows us to naturally deal with nonsmooth solutions and provides a mathematical framework for proving correctness of our algorithms. Our work extends previous work in the area in three aspects. First, it models the camera as a pinhole whereas most authors assume an orthographic projection, thereby extending the applicability of shape from shading methods to more realistic images. In particular it extends the work of E. Prados et al. (2002) and E. Rouy et al. (1992). Second, by adapting the brightness equation to the perspective problem, we obtain a new partial differential equation (PDE). Results about the existence and uniqueness of its solution are also obtained. Third, it allows us to come up with a new approximation scheme and a new algorithm for computing numerical approximations of the "continuous" solution as well as a proof of their convergence toward that solution.


Previous studies showed that EGR3 gene located in chromosome 8p21.3 was involved in the etiology of schizophrenia. However, the finding failed to be replicated in several case-control studies. To investigate the genetic role of the EGR3 gene in Chinese psychiatric patients, we genotyped five single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) in EGR3 gene locus using 93 nuclear families in Han Chinese, and performed transmission disequilibrium test (TDT). In this study, two SNPs (rs1996147 and rs3750192) showed significant association with schizophrenia (c2>4.40, P<0.05). In the linkage disequilibrium analysis, the significant association was also found in two- (rs3750192-rs35201266), three- (rs1877670- rs3750192-rs7009708) and four-SNP (rs1996147-rs1877670-rs3750192-rs7009708) tests of haplotype analyses (c2>7.10, global P<0.05). Overall, the results suggested that EGR3 gene may play an important role in schizophrenia susceptibility in the Han Chinese population, and further functional exploration of the EGR3 gene will contribute to the underlying molecular mechanism for schizophrenia pathogenesis.


This paper proposes a novel global harmony search algorithm (NGHS) to solve 0–1 knapsack problems. The proposed algorithm includes two important operations: position updating and genetic mutation with a small probability. The former enables the worst harmony of harmony memory to move to the global best harmony rapidly in each iteration, and the latter can effectively prevent the NGHS from trapping into ccepted 25 July 2010 vailable online xxx


Hydrocarbons being natural fluid have drawn much attention of the scientists and researchers for the application as a sustainable material for the vapor compression refrigeration system. This paper presents a comparison of the energetic and exergetic performances of a domestic refrigerator using pure butane and isobutane as refrigerants. The thermodynamic performances such as exergy destruction or losses, exergy efficiency, and coefficient of performances (COP) were investigated. These parameters were measured at varied operating conditions. Exergy and energy efficiencies of isobutane were found to be 50% and 175% higher than that of R-134a. The analysis shows that the performances of butane and isobutane as refrigerants are comparable with HFC134a. It has also been found that at higher evaporating temperatures, the exergy losses are minimal. The maximum exergy loss occurred in the compressor and the value was 69% of the whole losses in the system. Highest sustainability index was found for butane compared to that of R134a and R600a, respectively.


Venetian music print culture of the mid-sixteenth century is presented here through a study of the Scotto Press, one of the foremost dynastic music publishers of the Renaissance. For over a century, the house of Scotto played a pivotal role in the international book trade, publishing in a variety of fields including philosophy, medicine, religion, and music. This book examines the mercantile activities of the firm through both a historical study, which illuminates the wide world of the Venetian music printing industry, and a catalogue, which details the music editions brought out by the firm during its most productive period. A valuable reference work, this book not only enhances our understanding of the socio-economic and cultural history of Renaissance Venice, it also helps to preserve our knowledge of a vast musical repertory.


The ability to reproduce the structure of water around the sodium and potassium ions as determined by experiment is a key test of the quality of interaction potentials due to the central importance of these ions in a wide range of important phenomena. Here, we simulate the Na+ and K+ ions in bulk water using the recently developed strongly constrained and appropriately normed (SCAN) functional and compare with experimental X-ray diffraction (XRD) and X-ray adsorption fine structure (EXAFS) measurements to demonstrate that it accurately reproduces important structural details of the hydration structure of the sodium and potassium cations. We demonstrate that it performs substantially better than the generalized gradient approximation (GGA) based dispersion corrected revised Perdew, Burke, and Ernzerhof functional (revPBE-D3) and is even better than the random phase approximation level for potassium. Both of these functionals have been demonstrated to accurately reproduce the structure of bulk water. This improved performance compared with revPBE-D3 is attributed to smaller fluctuations of the mean error of ion-water cluster binding energies utilizing a novel benchmark for testing functionals.


The new technologies of broadcasting, sports coverage, sports casters, and sports analysis, especially in Europe, have attracted many local sports players and fans to enjoy and imitate famed European players. The globalization of football (soccer) has affected sports culture in Kuwait. In-depth interviews with 17 interviewees including sports academics, experts, practitioners, coaches, sports players, fans, and sports reporters revealed that the English Premier League not only entertained the fans in Kuwait but also affected their popular culture behavior and local football league performance and attendance. The English Premier League also affected fandom lifestyle and expenditure through expensive sports subscriptions or even traveling to Europe to attend football matches.


BACKGROUND
Chronic dialysis exposes patients to several procedures that may influence lifestyle and quality of life. These hidden costs, however, have never been evaluated.

AIM AND METHODS
To compare the costs related to diagnostic and therapeutic procedures between not-for-profit (nFP) and for-profit (FP) dialysis care systems, we mailed to Italian nephrology units a questionnaire on modalities of medical prescriptions and reservations, waiting time for tests and modalities of drugs distribution.

RESULTS
247 centers (42%) replied to the questionnaire: 177 nFP (72%) and 70 FP (28%). The response rate was 54% of nFP and 26% of FP centers. All centers provided hemodialysis (in satellite units, 42% nFP and 14% FP, p<0.001; at home, 23% nFP and 1% FP, p<0.001). Peritoneal dialysis was offered by 60% nFP and 6% FP (p<0.001). Centers provided dialysis care for 15,294 patients, 85% in nFP and 15% in FP. At least 1 general practitioner prescription for dialysis, diagnostic tests, specialist consultations and drugs, was requested to patients in 50% of nFP and 95% of FP centers (p<0.001). Reservations for tests and specialist visits were made by patients in 6% of nFP and 20% of FP centers (p<0.001). In nFP and FP centers, waiting time for tests was 2 vs. 4 days for lung x-ray (p<0.01), 7 vs. 11 days for gastroscopy (p<0.05) and 14 vs. 13 days for echocardiography (NS). Erythropoietin, phosphate binders and nutritional supplements, were supplied by patients in 7%, 46% and 37% of nFP centers, and 86%, 86% and 90% of FP centers (p<0.001).

CONCLUSIONS
The dialysis care system charges patients a high hidden cost, represented by procedures related to dialysis. Higher costs and reduced choice of treatment modalities may characterize the for-profit dialysis system.


Direct-type catalytic Mannich reactions of amides with imines proceeded smoothly using barium phenoxide as a catalyst to afford the desired adducts in high yields with high anti selectivities.


Nitric oxide (NO), an endothelium-derived relaxing factor synthesized from L-arginine by the enzyme NO synthase, has been identified as an important, short-acting, endogenous vasodilator. In patients with pulmonary hypertension, inhaling a low dose of NO as a gaseous vasodilator has been shown to induce selective vasodilation in ventilated lung areas. It achieves this without the disadvantages attributed to systemically infused vasodilators e.g. systemic vasodilation and an increase in pulmonary right-to-left shunt with a consecutive fall in PaO2. Thus, inhaled NO reduces pulmonary hypertension in the severe adult respiratory distress syndrome and in persistent pulmonary hypertension of the newborn, and improves arterial oxygenation by redistributing pulmonary blood flow away from the shunt and towards areas with almost normal ventilation/perfusion ratios. The bronchodilatory effect of NO may be an alternative therapy for treating asthma and bronchospasm.


Depending on the parameters of a fixed ground station and on the orbital parameters of a non-geosynchronous satellite, different visibility times are offered to fixed ground stations. In this paper, the focus is on the mean visibility time of a non-geosynchronous satellite with non-repeating ground track as seen by a fixed ground station with a finite sensor range. A mathematical analysis is provided for the calculation of the mean visibility time. There are several possible application areas of these visibility statistics, like optimizing a gateway's latitude to maximize the mean visibility time of a satellite, thus maximizing the average amount of data that can be uploaded to or downloaded from a satellite during passes. The calculations show a good match with simulation results at all latitudes and the underlying mathematical approach is foreseen to be useful for analyzing and designing complete satellite constellations.


The paper presents theoretical and experimental studies of energy dissipation in a model of a conical sleeve-pivot joint. Energy dissipation between cooperating surfaces of a friction pair including structural friction, elastic and frictional effects between its elements and Lame's problem are taken into account. A comparative analysis was conducted to compare the theoretical results obtained from numerical simulations and direct experimental data acquired from the MTS testing machine. The analysis of the influence of geometrical and material parameters, external loading on the dissipation of energy is presented too. This paper shows an outline of theoretical considerations; the method for conducting tests as well as selected comparative results.


ABSTRACT There is a dearth of comparative information about how women from diverse social locations think about, talk about, and experience the various types of reproductive aging. In this article I analyze racial-ethnic differences in attitudes toward surgically induced menopause (hysterectomy) utilizing data from an interview study of 130 menopausal women. African American women in this study were more suspect of doctors' initial offers of hysterectomies than European American women, with the former group of interviewees still fearing a legacy of racial-ethnic discrimination within medical institutions. Only after seeking a second opinion or finding a trustworthy doctor did African American women feel comfortable accepting a hysterectomy. European American interviewees were not as wary as their African American counterparts and sometimes reported wishing for a hysterectomy. I argue that attitudes toward hysterectomy must be contextualized within women's experiences of racial-ethnic oppression and privilege to be fully understood.


This thesis has been taking a starting point from a micro-level that focuses social structures, ethnic segregation and processes of development as phenomena from different levels of perspectives. The research focuses on housing-conditions in the urban room and take a starting-point in 1992 when an increased number of immigrant households, depending on social welfare, moved into Herrgarden (Manor-House), a narrow area within Rosengard (about 16.000 inhabitants) in Malmo (about 245.000 inhabitants) with about 3.800 inhabitants. A concentration of the households that moved in to this area was located to a private real-estate. They moved into three nearby standing storey-buildings containing 150 apartments. The Gypsies were a large group of the total number of tenants, the authorities together with the massmedia therefore named the real-estate as "Gypsygarden". In this work the formal name has been transformed to the time of the fieldwork (1994-1996) Gypsies started to move out in favour of the Arabic households. It developed an ethnically based concurrence in the neighbourhood which revealed a social order based on ethnicity. With a little help from the representatives from the pu blic sphere, some of the tenants have been able to take the positions as ethnical entrepreneurs. The legitimacy of their vertical positions is built up by ethnicity as a picture of homogeneity combined with deep differences to the majority and other minority-groups, which is an operating base for the ethnical entrepreneurs. They should be diverged from the group of people that could be named ethnical diplomats which take their positions in a horizontal plane. These positions is taking its places is a social order based on ethnicity that includes and excludes the surrounding populations, which is not judged by their own references or according to the references used by other minority-groups. It is a paradox that the social order emerges from the Swedish population, who are excluded by their absence and only being represented by the institutionalised forms of social life. (Less)


We have created a new benchmarking dataset for testing non-rigid 3D shape retrieval algorithms, one that is much more challenging than existing datasets. Our dataset features exclusively human models, in a variety of body shapes and poses. 3D models of humans are commonly used within computer graphics and vision, and so the ability to distinguish between body shapes is an important shape retrieval problem. In this track nine groups have submitted the results of a total of 22 different methods which have been tested on our new dataset.


Institutions from basic to higher education in Mexico that offer courses of English as a Foreign Language rely heavily on the administering of assessment, usually a formal type of assessment. However, the literature shows how important it is the involvement of other types of assessment in the classroom for effective language learning to take place. For instance, assessment for learning, which consist of a continuous assessment where learners receive feedback so greater learning occurs, what is more, it enables teachers to modify their teaching ways as they reflect on the learners' progress. To show how assessment is carried out in our context, this research project focuses on a case study within the CAADI from FOD in the UANL.


The development and fabrication of reliable high temperature-high strength silicon nitride rotors by Garrett Ceramic Components (GCC) for the Advanced Turbine Technology Applications Project (ATTAP) is discussed. GCC's progress will be presented, including mechanical properties characterization, in-process monitoring development, and extensive NDE analysis. The current status of material, process, and part properties of the rotors being developed will be compared to properties required for implementation and successful operation of advanced gas turbine engines at 2500°F.© 1991 ASME


Recent microarray gene expression profiling studies have identified gene signatures predictive of outcome, so-called "indicator" genes, for diffuse large B-cell lymphoma (DLBCL) and follicular lymphoma (FL). However, measurement of these genes in routine practice remains difficult. We applied real-time polymerase chain reaction (PCR) to polyA cDNAs prepared from 106 archived human frozen lymph nodes (63 of FL, 25 of DLBCL, 10 reactive lymph nodes, and cases with paired samples of FL [4] and subsequent DLBCL [4]). Reverse transcription and polyA reverse transcriptase (RT)-PCR was performed, and resultant cDNA was probed by real-time PCR for 36 candidate indicator genes, selected from microarray studies. Nine genes showed statistically significant different expression between FL and DLBCL, including cyclin B, COL3A1, NPM3, H731, PRKCB1, OVGL, ZFPC150, HLA-DQ-a, and XPB. Of these, cyclin B, NPM3, and COL3A1 were higher in DLBCL. Six genes showed statistically significant higher expression in the neoplastic nodes compared with reactive nodes, namely PRKCB1, BCL-6, EAR2, ZFX, cyclin B, YY1. High levels of YY.1 were associated with a shorter survival interval in both FL and DLBCL. The method is simple, sensitive, and robust, facilitating routine use and may be used as a platform for clinical measurement of prognostic gene signatures.


INTRODUCTION
Functional results of four surgical techniques to resolve the IIIB-IV Litchman's stage of the Kienböck disease were analyzed. We observed the evolution from 2000 to 2015.

MATERIAL AND METHODS
Transversal retrospective study of 33 patients treated with different surgical techniques and evaluated with Quick-DASH scale, dynamometer and EVA.

RESULTS
Less functional limitation was found in the patients who underwent the intercarpal fusion with or without neurotomy of the posterior interosseous.

DISCUSSION
It was shown that the fact of making a less aggressive surgery is enough to evolve into an increase in symptoms and a decrease in function and strength; therefore, the intercarpal fusion performed at the right time of the natural history of the disease can achieve better results than other methods used previously and endorsed by international associations.

CONCLUSIONS
The surgical technique of choice in our series to prevent disease progression was the intercarpal fusion and neurotomy of the posterior interosseous nerve.


Multipactor is a resonant nonlinear electron multiplication effect that may occur in high power microwave devices at very low pressures, such as those operating in particle accelerators and satellite subsystems. In this research, multipactor of a rectangular waveguide was analyzed using the commercially available, numerical simulation software "Spark3D." The electromagnetic wave in the simulation was a TE10 mode-2.85 GHz wave of varying power, fed into the impedance transformer waveguide. At the lowest threshold, multipactor is generated in the minimum height region in the impedance transformer and nowhere else. More precisely, the multipacting electrons have a continuous energy distribution since the emitted secondary electrons carry a random initial velocity distribution. We observed that there are cases where the impact electron energy decreases despite an increase in power due to growing non-resonance of the microwave field and electron oscillations, resulting in not only two threshold points where secondary emission yield (SEY) = 1 but several more. As a consequence, it was uncovered that when the average SEY in the highest field region is close to or less than one, multipactor may be caused in a lower field region where the SEY is effectively higher than one. The numerical results are compared with data from the experiment. While there is some deviation between the thresholds obtained from Spark3D and the experiment, the results at higher power levels are consistent with the experiment in the view of the SEY for each power level.


Morphogenesis is the process that underpins the self-organised development and regeneration of biological systems. The ability to mimick morphogenesis in artificial systems has great potential for many engineering applications, including production of biological tissue, design of robust electronic systems and the co-ordination of parallel computing. Previous attempts to mimick these complex dynamics within artificial systems have relied upon the use of evolutionary algorithms that have limited their size and complexity. This paper will present some insight into the underlying dynamics of morphogenesis, then show how to, without the assistance of evolutionary algorithms, design cellular architectures that converge to complex patterns.


The purpose of this study was to develop quantitative structure-activity/pharmacokinetic relationships (QSAR/QSPKR) for 11 selected corticosteroids in man. Multiple linear regression analysis with an automatic forward step-wise inclusion algorithm was used to construct QSAR/QSPKR models from molecular and submolecular descriptors that were generated using the SYBYL and KowWin computer programs. The final equations describing steroid relative receptor affinity, systemic clearance, volume of distribution, fraction unbound in plasma, and percent of oral absorption, all showed significant correlations (R(2) range 0.841 to 0.977). These relationships were crossvalidated using the leave-one-out method, and appeared to have good predictive performance (Q(2) range 0.715 to 0.912). In addition, a general method for integrating QSAR/QSPKR data to predict the time course of pharmacologic effects is presented. This approach, termed quantitative structure-pharmacodynamic relationships modeling, was successfully applied to predict the rapid cortisol suppressive effects of triamcinolone acetonide after a 2-mg intravenous bolus dose in healthy volunteers.


We investigated the torque characteristics and the motor efficiency of interior permanent magnet synchronous motors (IPMSM), in which a rotor core consists of high-strength nonoriented electrical steel, as-cold-rolled nonoriented electrical steel, and conventional nonoriented electrical steel with various bridge widths. Furthermore, we analyzed deformation behavior of the rotor core during operation by finite element method. The motor of the high-strength nonoriented electrical steel generated greater magnet torque than that of the conventional nonoriented electrical steel. Although the high-strength nonoriented electrical steel had much higher iron loss than the conventional nonoriented electrical steel, the motor efficiency decreased only slightly. A reduction in the bridge width of the rotor core significantly enhanced the torque characteristics and the motor efficiency of IPMSM. The high-strength nonoriented electrical steel effectively suppressed the deformation of the rotor core with its excellent mechanical properties, and the suppression enabled us to reduce the bridge width sufficiently. Accordingly, a magnetically optimum rotor core design will be realized with the high-strength nonoriented electrical steel, and the performance of IPMSM will be significantly enhanced, particularly in traction motors for electric vehicles and hybrid electric vehicles and compressor motors for energy-efficient air conditioners.


Parkinson's disease (PD) is the second most common neurodegenerative disorder, afflicting over 1% of the population of age 60 years and above. The loss of dopaminergic (DA) neurons is the substantia nigra pars compacta (SNpc) is the primary cause of its characteristic motor symptoms. Studies using Drosophila melanogaster and other model systems have provided much insight into the pathogenesis of PD. However, little is known why certain cell types are selectively susceptible to degeneration in PD. Here we describe an approach to identify vulnerable subpopulations of neurons in the genetic background linked to PD in Drosophila, using the split-GAL4 divers that enable genetic manipulation of a small number of defined cell population. We identify a subtype of DA neurons selectively vulnerable in the model of the leucine-rich repeat kinase 2 (LRRK2)-linked familial PD, demonstrating the utility of this approach. We also show an unexpected caveat of the split-GAL4 system in aging-related research: the age-dependent increase in the number of GAL4-labeled cells.


This paper introduces anchor levels as a new tool for multiattribute utility theory. Anchor levels are attribute levels whose values are not affected by other attributes. They allow for new interpretations and generalizations of known representations and utility measurement techniques. Generalizations of earlier techniques can be obtained because cases with complex interactions between attributes can now be handled. Anchor levels serve not only to enhance the generality, but also the tractability, of utility measurements, because stimuli can better be targeted toward the perception and real situation of clients. In an application, anchor levels were applied to the measurement of quality of life during radiotherapy treatment, where there are complex interactions with what happens before and after. Using anchor levels, the measurements could be related exactly to the situation of the clients, thus simplifying the clients' cognitive burden.


Little acknowledged by literary criticism, Alfredo Gallis (1859-1910) was a prolific writer in the period between the 19th and 20th centuries, having published more than a dozen texts with an expressive readership both in Portugal and in Brazil. This essay intends to develop some reflections on the novel O marido virgem (1900), with a reading that emphasizes an avant-garde treatment of themes related to sexuality and gender, in a context where Naturalistic aesthetics, monarchical thinking and conservatism still remained in the most different areas of knowledge and behavior. To do so, I take as a starting point his approaches on virginity and its different performances in his fiction, and how they can be understood as forms of expression of dissidence in the scenario of the 19th and 20th centuries.


The cell walls of Fusarium sulphureum have a microfibrillar component that is randomly arranged. X-ray-diffraction diagrams of the microfibrils are consistent with a high degree of crystallinity and show that they are chitin. The chitin microfibrils of the peripheral walls envelop the hyphal apex and extend across the septae. During the first 8h in culture, the conversion of conidial cells to chlamydospores is evidenced by a swelling of the cells and the original microfibrils remain randomly arranged. Within 24h new wall material is deposited as the cells expand and the wall thickens. The new microfibrils are indistinguishable from those of the original conidial cells. After 3 days in culture, the chlamydospores are fully developed and have the characteristic thick wall which is a continuous layer of randomly arranged microfibrils. Chlamydospores maintained in a conversion medium for 8 days have microfibrils identical with those in 3-day-old cultures; thus a further change in the microfibril orientation did not occur during that period. Alkaline hydrolysis of the walls removes most of the electron-dense staining constituents from the inner wall layer and leaves the outer wall layer intact. This treatment also reveals some of the wall microfibrils. An additional treatment of the walls with HAc/H2O2 completely removes the wall components that react positively to heavy metal stains. The results are discussed in relation to the structure of other fungal cell walls.


A number of ecologists have put forward various proposals that ecology has laws, yet they have not explicated what role laws play in ecological explanations. Marcel Weber (1999), Lev Ginzburg and Mark Colyvan (2004) correct this deficiency and also make their case for laws of ecology: the principle of competitive exclusion and Malthus's law of exponential growth respectively. According to Weber, the principle of competitive exclusion explains phenomena (1) by direct application, or (2) by describing a default state from which observed phenomena deviate and mechanisms are called to account for the discrepancy. Independently of Weber, Ginzburg and Colyvan articulate a role similar to (2) for Malthus's law. I argue that Weber's proposition of explanation by direct application is not consistent with Gause's account of "bottle experiments" that he uses to support it and does not do justice to ecologists' explanatory practice. To address these problems, I articulate an alternative account of explanation by direct application—the covering-law model—based on a proposal by Elgin and Sober (2002) and show that even in this proposal mechanisms play a key explanatory role. I also demonstrate how the covering-law model accounts for how Malthus's law can explain by direct application and for its role of descriptor of a default state. Finally, I argue that the views on laws as components in covering-law model explanations or as descriptors of default states do not give sufficient attention to the prominent explanatory role of mechanisms and to the demanding task of identifying and describing them, and ought to be corrected.


left and the right, from within and without, questions are being raised about its conduct, its nature, its raison d'être. One of the founders of its professional society, the American Society of Bioethics and Humanities, resigned last year to protest the organization's failure to develop formal mechanisms for protecting the professional autonomy of members and standards of professional conduct—accreditation and competency standards, a code of professional ethics, and the like. Critics from without point to the same lack of standards, observing that bioethicists serve as ethics consultants to the very parties who sign their paychecks and pay their consultation fees. In the absence of any professional standards of accountability or responsibility, critics allege, these financial arrangements suggest that a field that originally envisioned itself as a watchdog, protecting patients, research subjects, and the public against the powerful and the privileged, has become the paid poodle, the lap dog, of the very powers it set out to watch. Addressing the critics' challenge requires, among other things, some reflection on the history of bioethics. Unfortunately, though, the field has been so fixated on present and future problems in biomedicine that it has tended to neglect its own past. Only four monographs on its history have been published. David Rothman's Strangers at the Bedside (Basic Books, 1992) and Albert Jonsen's The Birth of Bioethics (Oxford, 1998) offer a "watchdog" narrative, portraying a field conceived as a constraint on a technologically driven biomedical and research establishment run by a professional elite unresponsive to concerns of patients and the public. Two accounts by sociologists offer "lap dog" narratives. M.L. Tina Stevens argues that "the growth in bioethics does not represent a genuine shift in who rules medicine. It represents [biomedicine's] endeavor to limit potential threats to its ultimate control" (Bioethics in America, Johns Hopkins, 2000, 107). John Evans concurs, "there seems not to have been a single moment when a mainstream scientist wanted to conduct an experiment and bioethicists said no . . . [except] out of concern for safety" (Playing God? Chicago, 2001, 195). Not surprisingly, bioethicists envision their past—and thus their present and future—differently. Who is correct? Few publications have addressed these questions to those who founded the field. Fortunately, in spring 2002 two graduate students at Georgetown University, Jennifer Walter and Eran Klein, organized a conference celebrating the thirtieth anniversary of the Kennedy Institute of Ethics, at which they asked founding figures to reflect on their own work and on the field generally. More fortunately still, Richard Brown, director of Georgetown University Press, entrusted these two graduate students with editing a book based on the conference. The result is a handsome, carefully edited, and thoughtfully indexed volume offering authors' reflections on their seminal works. Contributors include Tom Beauchamp, Lisa Cahill (for Richard McCormick), Jim Childress, Charles Curran, Tris Engelhardt, Patricia King, William May, Ed Pellegrino, Warren Reich, and Bob Veatch—with an insightful postscript on the history of the Kennedy Institute and its founder, André Hellegers, by LeRoy Walters. To anyone interested in the history of bioethics, or looking for insights into seminal works that guided the field during its first three decades, this is a "must read." The chapters by Cahill, Curran, and Walters, for example, illuminate one of the least understood aspects of the history of bioethics—its Catholic heritage. Before the presidency of John F. Kennedy, Catholics, like Jews, "Negroes," and other minorities, were excluded from the mainstreams of American life. To cite one instance, when Edmund Pellegrino, director of the Kennedy Institute of Ethics from 1983 to 1988, applied to medical school, "a letter from one Ivy League school . . . declined his application stating that he would be 'happier with his own kind.'" Pellegrino's academic advisor remarked that "Italians . . . were no more welcome than Jews in the major medical schools, and he might fare better if he changed his name. Pellegrino refused" (see the profile of Pellegrino by Karen Geraghty, available at http://www.ama-assn.org/ ama/pub/category/6572.html). It is against this background that The Joseph and Rose Kennedy Center for the Study of Human Reproduction and Bioethics—as the Kennedy Institute was originally called—was funded by America's leading Catholic family, the Kennedys (specifically, Eunice and Sargent Shriver), at a Jesuit institution, Georgetown University, in response to a request by a Dutch Catholic scientist, André Hellegers—nicknamed "The


Transmucosal application of implants of dense hydroxylapatite has been studied in a long-term animal experiment. Implants were loaded with crowns or removable restorations. It appeared that transmucosal implants adhered to bone similarly as in the submucosal application. The clinical aspect of gingival tissues around the implants was the same as that around the adjacent natural teeth. Histologically, there were indications for a good attachment of gingival tissues to the implants. Implants fractured due to fatigue failure of the ceramic material. Prestressing of the implants may be the solution to this problem. Failing implants can clinically be treated by submerging, removal, or substitution.


Abstract The 16 highest‐scored Roche vaults (G1) performed during the 2000 Olympic Games were compared with those receiving the 16 lowest‐scores (G2). A 16‐mm motion picture camera operating at 100 Hz recorded the vaults during the competition. The results of t tests (p < .05) indicated G1, compared to G2, had (a) shorter time of board support, greater normalised average upward vertical force and backward horizontal force exerted by the board, greater change in the vertical velocity while on the board, and greater vertical velocity at board take‐off, (b) comparable linear and angular motions in pre‐flight, (c) smaller backward horizontal impulse exerted by the horse, smaller loss of the horizontal velocity while on the horse, and greater horizontal and vertical velocities at horse take‐off, (d) greater height and larger horizontal distance of post‐flight, (e) higher body mass centre at knee release, and (f) higher mass centre, greater normalised moment of inertia, and smaller vertical velocity at mat touchdown. Therefore, gymnasts and coaches should focus on sprinting the approach; blocking and pushing‐off the take‐off board rapidly and vigorously; departing the board with a large vertical velocity; exerting large downward vertical force and small forward horizontal force from the handstand position while on the horse; departing the horse with large horizontal and vertical velocities; and completing the majority of the double salto forward near the peak of trajectory and releasing the knees above the top of the horse to prepare for a controlled landing.


MEMS ultrasonic transducers device(MUT) is a new type of ultrasonic transducer which is the use of microelectronics and micromachining technology to manufacture.Compared with conventional ultrasound transducer,the MUT has the advantage of small size,light weight,low cost,low power consumption,high reliability,flexible control of frequency,frequency bandwidth,high sensitivity and easy with the integrated circuit,and implement intelligent.MUT is one of the important research directions of the ultrasonic transducers.MUT research mainly includes two aspects of the piezoelectric MUT(PMUT) and the capacitive MUT(CMUT).This article provides an overview of the development process and research findings of the PMUT,and future research and application prospects of PMUT.


Little is known about the movements of Long-tailed Weasels (Mustela frenata) in alfalfa (Medicago spp.) fields inhabited by Northern Pocket Gophers (Thomomys talpoides). In central Alberta, I intermittently followed the movements of Long-tailed Weasels during two consecutive winters. Three types of movements were observed: straight-line movements across the fields; sinuous movements along the edges of the field; and arc movements within the field, over concentrations of Northern Pocket Gopher burrow systems. Arc movements were 0.6-28-m-wide at their base, and extended from 6 to 45 m into the field. Movements of Long-tailed Weasels into the fields were accompanied by fresh diggings in Northern Pocket Gopher burrow systems, which became inactive thereafter. This study suggests that Long-tailed Weasels may have a cognitive map of the distribution of Northern Pocket Gophers in their home range.


Classic analog of the electromagnetically induced transparency (EIT) in metamaterials has been demonstrated extensively by its attractive potential applications in light storage, slow light and sensing. However, the counterpart of EIT, electromagnetically induced absorption (EIA) has been studied rarely in coupled metamaterial systems. Here, we present the observation of the EIA effect in a vertically coupled three-resonator metamaterial. A well-defined absorption resonance is developed in the EIT window enabling a unique double-peak transparency, due to the magnetic resonance induced by the near-field coupling of the three resonators. The analog of EIA opens up a new route to advanced photonics devices.


Climate change is one of the most salient challenges to society, both today and in the near future. Considering the complexity, uncertainties, and scale of possible global climate change (GCC) impacts, there is agreement that urban planning has the capacity to facilitate the development and implementation of adaptation as well as mitigation strategies. The land use planning system provides a framework to reduce greenhouse gas emissions considerably by addressing central issues such as community design, transportation networks and use, and increasing development density. Planning can also play an important role in impacting public behavior, thus slowing the pace of GCC and allowing the development and implementation of adaptation measurements. The purpose of this article is to examine the important role of the planning profession in developing and successfully implementing mitigation and adaptation strategies. There is a growing sense that planning will receive increasing attention as an important policy instrument for addressing both the causes and impacts of climate change. This work also supports the argument that climate action plans can be a vital instrument in confronting the challenges of climate change and that planners need to be more involved in the development and implementation process of such plans.


Forty-seven patients with metastatic or unresectable renal cell carcinoma were treated with interleukin-2 (IL-2) and lymphokine-activated killer (LAK)-cell therapy, using a hybrid IL-2 regimen. IL-2 was administered initially by intravenous bolus (10(5) U/kg [Cetus Corp, Emeryville, CA] every 8 hours for 3 days) during the priming phase, and subsequently by continuous infusion (3 x 10(6) U/m2 for 6 days); during this second treatment period, in vitro-generated LAK cells were administered. Despite selection of patients for good performance status (PS) (29, PS 0; 18, PS 1) prior nephrectomy (43 of the 47 patients), and low tumor burden, the response rate was low (two complete [CRs] and two partial responses [PRs], for an overall objective response rate of 9%). Toxicity was comparable to that experienced with the high-dose bolus regimen. These results suggest that the dose and schedule of IL-2 administration may influence the likelihood of response to IL-2 in renal cell carcinoma.


Background Nutrition is believed to be very essential for socio economic development of the country and is an essential component of sustainable development goals. Malnutrition is a major public health problem in Nepal and is more common among under-five year children. Malnutrition among children is complex problem globally, affecting the physical, mental and social development. Objective To estimate the prevalence and explore the associated factors of malnutrition in study population. Method It was a community based cross-sectional study conducted among rural population of Nepal. Wards were selected by simple random sampling technique and household in each ward were selected by systemic random sampling. The mothers of 302 participants aged 12 to 59 months were interviewed for requisite information using pretested questionnaire and anthropometric measurements were taken using standard technique for each participant. Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) version 16.0 was used for data analysis. Result The prevalence of underweight, stunting and wasting was 36.8%, 37.5%, and 14.6% respectively. We found statistical significant association between underweight and children in lower age group, larger family size, lower level of mother's education and illness in past one month. Factors that are significantly associated with stunting are children in lower age group, lower level of mother's education and illness in past one month and wasting is significantly associated with children in lower age group. Conclusion This study showed the prevalence of malnutrition is high in study population. Factors associated with malnutrition were child's age, family size, mother's education and illness in past one month.


In this paper, we treat polynomials with coefficients of floating-point numbers. The conventional concept of ideal breaks down for such polynomials, and we first define a concept of "approximate ideal''. Then, introducing "accuracy-guarding reductions'', we define approximate Groebner bases and give an algorithm for computing the approximate Groebner bases. We prove several theorems showing basic properties of approximate Groebner bases. The algorithm has been implemented, and we explain the approximate Groebner bases concretely by instructive examples.


With the advent of predictive genetic tests, individuals will have the option to investigate their future risk of developing diseases like Alzheimer's disease (AD). This knowledge can benefit people as they start to prepare themselves as well as their families for the disease process. The use of predictive genetic tests will likely increase as technology and genetic marker identification continues to advance. Thus, aligning the clinical practice of predictive genetic testing for Alzheimer's disease with patient values and preferences has the potential to improve healthcare delivery. Several issues have been identified in this review regarding people's preference when making a decision to test for AD, which include prediction value (i.e. false-positive/false-negative results), availability of treatments that would prevent or delay onset of AD, and anonymity/confidentiality. Literature indicates the most relevant issues regarding consumer preference for AD genetic testing is predictive value (accuracy). While fewer studies have discussed the effects of treatment availability or anonymity on consumer preference, these issues may become more important as technology continues to advance and public awareness of these issues increases. Future research in the area of consumer behavior with regard to predictive genetic testing is suggested. Most previous studies regarding consumer intent and preference for AD genetic tests have used small samples, convenience samples, or samples which were predominantly Caucasian, female and high socioeconomic status. Additionally, effects of most socio-demographics on the preference for AD genetic test are unclear in the literature. Conflicting results have been found regarding gender, education, income, and culture. An extension of the previous work using a larger and randomized sample may help to provide clearer relationship between these socio-demographics and consumer preference for AD genetic test.


Motivation -- This research aims at investigating emerging roles and forms of participation fostering design-use mediation during the Open Source Software design process
 Research approach -- We compare online interactions for a successful "pushed-by-users" design process with unsuccessful previous proposals. The methodology developed, articulate structural analyses of the discussions (organization of discussions, participation) to actions to the code and documentation made by participants to the project. We focus on the user-oriented and the developer-oriented mailing-lists of the Python project.
 Findings/Design -- We find that key-participants, the cross-participants, foster the design process and act as boundary spanners between the users and the developers' communities.
 Research limitations/Implications -- These findings can be reinforced developing software to automate the structural analysis of discussions and actions to the code and documentation. Further analyses, supported by these tools, will be necessary to generalise our results.
 Originality/Value -- The analysis of participation among the three interaction spaces of OSS design (discussion, documentation and implementation) is the main originality of this work compared to other OSS research that mainly analyse one or two spaces.
 Take away message -- Beside the idealistic picture that users may intervene freely in the process, OSS design is boost and framed by some key-participants and specific rules and there can be barriers to users' participation.


▪ Abstract We review recent experimental tests of the gravitational inverse-square law and the wide variety of theoretical considerations that suggest the law may break down in experimentally accessible regions.


Microglia, the parenchymal tissue macrophages in the brain, surround amyloid plaques in brains of individuals with Alzheimer's disease (AD) but are ineffective at clearing amyloid to mitigate disease progression. Recent studies in mice indicate that microglia are derived exclusively from primitive yolk sac hematopoiesis and self-renew without contribution from ontogenically distinct monocytes/macrophages of definitive adult hematopoietic origin. Using a genetic fate-mapping approach to label cells of definitive hematopoietic origin throughout life span, we discovered that circulating monocytes contribute 6% of plaque-associated macrophages in aged AD mice. Moreover, peripheral monocytes contributed to a higher fraction of macrophages in the choroid plexus, meninges, and perivascular spaces of aged AD mice versus WT control mice, indicating enrichment at potential sites for entry into the brain parenchyma. Splenectomy, which markedly reduced circulating Ly6Chi monocytes, also reduced abundance of plaque-associated macrophages of definitive hematopoietic origin, resulting in increased amyloid plaque load. Together, these results indicate that peripherally derived monocytes invade the brain parenchyma, targeting amyloid plaques to reduce plaque load.


Focusing on the treatment irregular migrants have received in Greece since the early 1990s, this article seeks to advance critical scholarship on how European countries have responded to migration from impoverished or otherwise disadvantaged parts of the globe over recent decades. The article first draws attention to ways in which purportedly exclusionary approaches to irregular migration control may be imperfect by design, insofar as restrictions are imposed on outflows to secure an exploitable workforce that serves important labour market needs and, by extension, dominant political interests in the 'host' state. Moving on to address the precise ways in which labour exploitation of irregular migrants is brought into effect, the article demonstrates how seemingly unrelated state policies and practices regarding matters of migration, welfare, employment and criminal justice, as well as certain manifestations of anti-migrant violence by non-state actors, may act in combination with one another to this end.


The coal gangue (CG) is a noncombustible waste mechanically separated from coal during the sorting or coal washing phase of mining. Because of the negative implications of unscientific disposal of CG, there is a need to utilize it in bulk civil engineering works. More precisely, the application of CG in earthworks facilitates its bulk application. The present study aims to evaluate the unconfined compressive strength (UCS) characteristics of lime- and gypsum-treated CG. The lime and gypsum dosages were varied from 2 to 6 % and 0.5 to 1.5 %, respectively. The influence of lime and gypsum addition on the UCS was evaluated for varying curing periods (CPs) of 7, 14, and 28 days. An exponential model is developed to evaluate UCS based on the experimental data using lime content, gypsum content, and CP. Further, attempts were made to estimate the optimum amounts of lime and gypsum content for satisfactory UCS performance of stabilized CG using target reliability-based design optimization (TRBDO). Furthermore, carbon footprint analysis (CFA) was performed to quantify the environmental benefits attainable by applying CG as subbase material in the pavement. The results showed that the maximum dry density increased from 1.74 to 1.84 g/cc for 4 % lime addition. The UCS of CG linearly increased with an increase in lime dosage, gypsum dosage, and CP. The highest increment of 1,050 % was attained for 1.5 % gypsum and 6 % lime addition. The CFA results indicate that CG's procurement (embodied) emissions are substantially higher, with an 88 % share in overall emissions. From the reliability studies, it is noted that the TRBDO is helpful in predicting the optimum dosages of lime and gypsum for the satisfactory performance of pavements.


This paper focuses on the problem of robust H∞ filtering for a class of nonlinear uncertain singular systems with time-varying delay. First of all, the dermition of robust H∞ filter is given. Considering the nonlinear disturbance link to uncertain singular systems with time-varying delay effects, we come up with the design idea of full order robust H∞ filter based on the Lyapunov stability theory. Under the condition that nonlinear uncertain functions satisfy Lipschitz condition, using Lyapunov stability theory and linear matrix inequality (LMI) methods, a sufficient condition of such nonlinear uncertain delayed filtering error singular systems which are asymptotically stable and satisfy the robust H∞ performance is obtained. Finally, two numerical examples are given to show the applicability of the proposed method.


Physical model tests are an invaluable asset to naval architecture and ocean engineering research, development, and education. However, the actual value of laboratory testing depends not only on the physical plant and technology available but also on the experience and expertise of the users. Recognizing this, the authors have undertaken a three-year effort to develop a high-quality record of numerous laboratory experiments performed within several naval architecture and ocean engineering courses at the U.S. Naval Academy (USNA).
 The archive includes more than a dozen experiments performed in the Hydromechanics Laboratory (Hydro Lab) at USNA, ranging from ship maneuvering to. sediment transport studies. Each experiment record includes background information, experimental setup descriptions, and details, data records with analyses, as well as high-quality photos and video recordings of the experiments underway. An archive of this depth and quality has never been assimilated and it is anticipated that the naval architecture and ocean engineering community both inside and outside USNA will be able to reap many benefits from it. In order to provide the widest and easiest access to the work, a website is being created so as to make all of the products accessible via the Internet. This paper discusses the project, its development, and some of the details of the results obtained.


This study were carried to investigate to the effects of diet supplemented with pine needle powder on pH, total phenol contents, DPPH (1,1-diphenyl-2-picrylhydrazyl) radical scavenging activity, TBARS (thiobarbituric acid reactive substance), WHC (water holding capacity), shear force, sensory evaluation, meat color, and fatty acid composition of chicken meat. Broiler chicks were fed the corresponding diets containing 0% pine needle powder (Control), 0.3% pine needle powder (T1), 0.6% pine needle powder (T2), or 0.9% pine needle powder (T3) for five weeks. The pH and TBARS was significantly decreased by the supplementation of pine needle powder compared to the control (P<0.05). The total phenol contents and DPPH radical scavenging activity were significantly increased by the supplementation of pine needle powder compared to the control (P<0.05), and T3 showed the most effective (P<0.05) more effective in improving self-life compared to the other treatment groups. The CIE a* value of treatment groups showed significantly higher value compare to the control, however, CIE L* values was decreased. In fatty acid composition, the level of oleic acid in chicken meat was significantly (P<0.05) increased by the supplementation of pine needle powder compared with the control group. In conclusion, dietary supplementation of pine needle powder was effective in decreasing pH and TBARS, and increasing total phenol contents and DPPH radical scavenging activity in broiler meats.


The U.S. Geological Survey on 29 April released a comprehensive review of the 169 U.S. volcanoes, and established a framework for a National Volcano Early Warning System that is being formulated by the Consortium of U.S. Volcano Observatories. The framework proposes an around-the-clock Volcano Watch Office and improved instrumentation and monitoring at targeted volcanoes.

The report, authored by USGS scientists John Ewert, Marianne Guffanti, and Thomas Murray, notes that although a few U.S. volcanoes are well-monitored, half of the most threatening volcanoes are monitored at a basic level and some hazardous volcanoes have no ground-based monitoring.


Enlarging upon work of Nicorovici, McPhedran & Milton (Nicorovici et al. 1994 Phys. Rev. B 49(12), 8479–8482), a rigorous proof is given that in the quasistatic regime a cylindrical superlens can successfully image a dipole line source in the limit as the loss in the lens tends to zero. In this limit it is proved that the field magnitude diverges to infinity in two sometimes overlapping annular anomalously locally resonant regions, one of which extends inside the lens and the other of which extends outside the lens. The wavelength of the oscillations in the locally resonant regimes is set by the geometry and the loss, and goes to zero as the loss goes to zero. If the object or source being imaged responds to an applied field it is argued that it must lie outside the resonant regions to be successfully imaged. If the image is being probed it is argued that the resonant regions created by the probe should not surround the tip of the probe. These conditions taken together make it difficult to directly probe the potential in the near vicinity of the image of a source or object having small extent. The corresponding quasistatic results for the slab lens are also derived. If the source is too close to the slab lens, i.e. lying within the resonant region, then the power dissipation in the lens tends to infinity as the loss goes to zero, which makes the lens impractical for imaging such quasistatic sources. Perfect imaging in a cylindrical superlens is shown to extend to the static equations of magnetoelectricity or thermoelectricity, provided they have a special structure which makes these equations equivalent to the quasistatic equations.


BackgroundWe have demonstrated previously that, when repeated reperfusion is performed after reocclusion, there is a decrease in the amount of myocardial salvage, despite early reperfusion. Treatment with nisoldipine induced a beneficial effect by reduction of infarct size in this experimental model. ObjectiveTo study the effect of HEPES buffer on infarct size, using a repeated‐reperfusion model. MethodsThe left anterior descending coronary artery was occluded in anesthetized dogs. Thirty minutes after the occlusion, dogs were allocated randomly to either the treatment group (n  = 7; HEPES 0.64 mmol/l infused intravenously throughout the experiment) or the control group (n  = 8; saline). Occlusion was maintained for 2 h, followed by 1 h of reperfusion, then 1 h of reocclusion and 2 h of second reperfusion. An in‐vivo area at risk was determined by gentian violet staining, and infarct size was defined and quantitated by triphenyl‐tetrazolium chloride staining. ResultsHemodynamic measurements were similar in both groups. Mass of necrosis/mass at risk was significantly smaller in the HEPES group (30.7 ± 1.6%, mean ± SEM) compared with controls (50.6 ± 3.8%, P  < 0.001). ConclusionTreatment with HEPES induces a beneficial effect by reduction of infarct size in repeated coronary reperfusion.


Recent advances in single-cell RNA sequencing (scRNA-seq) have endowed researchers with the ability to detect and analyze the transcriptomes of individual cancer cells. In the present study, 16,128 tumor cells from EGFR wild-type and EGFRvIII mutant cells were profiled by scRNA-seq. Analyses of scRNA-seq data from both U87MG and U87MG-EGFRvIII libraries revealed inherent heterogeneity in gene expression and biological processes. The cells stably expressing EGFRvIII showed enhanced transcriptional activities and a relatively homogeneous pattern, which manifested as less diverse distributions, gene expression levels and functional annotations compared with those of cells expressing the nonmutated version. Moreover, the differentially expressed genes between the U87MG and U87MG-EGFRvIII groups were mainly enriched in DNA replication, DNA repair and angiogenesis. We compared scRNA-seq data with bulk RNA-seq and EGFRvIII xenograft RNA-seq data. RAD51AP1 was shown to be upregulated in all three databases. Further analysis of RAD51AP1 revealed that it is an independent prognostic factor of glioma. Knocking down RAD51AP1 significantly inhibited tumor volume in an intracranial EGFRvIII-positive GBM model and prolonged survival time. Collectively, our microfluidic-based scRNA-seq driven by a single genetic event revealed a previously unappreciated implication of EGFRvIII in the heterogeneity of GBM and identified RAD51AP1 as an oncogene in glioma.


INTRODUCTION
The aim of this study was to evaluate the value of Visual Analog Scale (VAS) in evaluating vertigo and dizziness in patients with benign paroxysmal positional vertigo (BPPV).

MATERIALS AND METHODS
226 adult patients suffering from a BPPV and undergoing repositioning maneuvers were included in this prospective study. Vertigo (V) and dizziness (D) were separately evaluated from day 0 to 5 by VAS. V and D scores decreased both exponentially but with different constants. D scores were not correlated to V suggesting the independency of the ratings. D was related to the dizziness intensity level expressed at interrogation. Both D and V scores were related to patients' global satisfaction.

CONCLUSION
VAS allows differentiating vertigo from dizziness and provides coherent results with other clinical indicators.


The bold careers of Henry James, D.H. Lawrence, James Joyce, and Samuel Beckett--writers with profoundly unsettled cultural identities--spark Margery Sabin's investigation of values carried through inherited forms of speech. The Dialect of the Tribe offers fresh readings of such great novels as The Golden Bowl, Women in Love, Ulysses, and the Beckett trilogy which illustrate how complex attitudes toward the speech forms of language inform the most varied social, psychological, and aesthetic structures in modern fiction. Sabin explores the powerful tension in these writers between appreciation for the resources of common speech in English and contrary longings for a freedom associated with abstraction, system, and foreign or private language. Her own critical procedures transcend restrictive and reductive polarizations, as she lucidly analyzes the biases of both the Anglo-American critical tradition and the challenge to that tradition in French literary theory and practice. Written in a jargon-free, accessible style, The Dialect of the Tribe argues that the ambiguous cultural positions of the great modern novelists in English emerge as a major source of their strength--the rich traditions of the English language give enlivening power to writers also remarkable for their drive toward radical independence and skepticism.


Finger-touch based interactions with capacitive touchscreen devices in cars are becoming increasingly common. As such, it is critical to understand the basic human factors of target acquisition (pointing/touching) in this context. We describe a simulator study that aims to build Fitts' Law relationships for predicting the visual demands (mean glance duration and total glance time) associated with finger-touch pointing tasks as a function of target size, location and design. The observed data show strong linear relationships between all visual demand measures and Fitts' index of difficulty, indicating that finger-touch pointing tasks conform well with the Fitts' Law model under conditions of divided attention. The derived equations are discussed in the context of designing in-vehicle touchscreen interfaces for minimal visual demand.


For pt. I see Proc. 1st IEEE Workshop on Signal Proc. Advances in Wireless Comm., 1997. This paper studies the constant modulus (CM) criterion specifically for the case where the time span of the fractionally-spaced equalizer (FSE) is less than that of the channel. Hence, there necessarily exists an error in the equalized signal. Results for the binary case (Part I) are extended to multi-level signalling. This analysts is connected with the previous work of Fijalkow et al. (see IEEE Trans. on Signal Proc., 1995) on misadjustment of a CM receiver to suggest a finite interval of acceptable FSE length which shows that a longer FSE may not be better than a shorter FSE-in some cases, matching the FSE length to that of the channel may not reduce the MSE to a prescribed threshold, while a shorter FSE may be successful in achieving this threshold.


Background: Docetaxel (D) is a clinically used front-line chemotherapeutic agent for castration resistant advanced prostate cancer. However, its long-term benefits are limited with most patients eventually progressing because of inherent or acquired drug resistance. The treatment of advanced prostate cancer is a significant challenge and there are no effective treatments that stably suppress the disease. The mechanisms behind resistance to Docetaxel are not fully understood. Since in vivo Docetaxel cytotoxicity is directed not only to cancer cells, we hypothesize that the response of prostate stromal cells exposed to chemotherapeutic agents could modify drug response or therapeutic outcome in prostate cancer. One of cellular responses to chemotherapy is NF-kB activation and inflammatory signaling. NF-κB activation has been proposed as an important event in PCa development, castration-resistant progression and resistance to chemotherapy. Objective: In this study, we examined the response of prostate stromal (WPMY- 1) cells to Docetaxel. Current Results: Cellular proliferation was analyzed by MTT assay. The IC50 of Docetaxel for WPMY-1 cells was 10nM. Cell cycle profiles were assessed by flow cytometry. The analysis showed that Docetaxel (10-100nM) induced prominent G2-M arrest in these stromal cells within 24 hours, especially in the higher dose ranges. Interestingly lower doses of Docetaxel (10nM), in contrast to higher doses, consistently resulted in accumulation of sub-G1 population (28% 10nM vs 6% in 100nM) of cells suggestive of fragmented DNA associated with apoptotic process. We show that Docetaxel exhibits strong anti-proliferative effects on prostate stromal WPMY-1 cells. Conclusions: These preliminary results show that stromal cells are sensitive to Docetaxel. Why lower doses of the drug induce sub-G1 (apoptotic) accumulation while higher doses preferentially induce G2-M arrest is currently unknown. Future Steps: We will compare responses to D between prostate cancer cells and stromal cells in individual and co-culture models. NF-kB activity following D treatment or radiation, and the expression of genes in NF-kB pathway in D treated cells will be examined. Citation Format: Dominique Gales, Brionna McMcmeans, Temesgen Samuel. Docetaxel-induced growth and cell cycle phenotypes in prostate stromal cells. [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the Sixth AACR Conference: The Science of Cancer Health Disparities; Dec 6–9, 2013; Atlanta, GA. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Epidemiol Biomarkers Prev 2014;23(11 Suppl):Abstract nr C39. doi:10.1158/1538-7755.DISP13-C39


This research studied inhibition and adsorption using thiosol-2-carboxylic acid as an anti-corrosive for copper in an acidic environment. The aim of the study was to evaluate the inhibition efficiency of chemical inhibitors through two methods of weight loss, anode and cathode polarization, when concentrations of the inhibitor ranged from 100 to 250 ppm and at temperatures ranging from 40–60°C. The results showed that greater concentration of the inhibitor resulted in less corrosion and increased inhibition efficiency. This indicates the effectiveness of the inhibitor. By forming a layer on the copper surface and through the occurrence of adsorption due to the presence of nitrogen, sulfur and hydroxyl groups, the inhibitor transfers electrons from these groups to the surface of the metal, thus creating a protective layer that protects it from external influences.


In a paper on "The Physical Conditions under which the Cambrian and Lower Silurian Rocks were probably deposited over the European Area," Mr. Hicks has recently put forth some opinions on the lowest fossiliferous rocks of Scandinavia and Russia, and their relations, as to age and stratigraphical characters, to those of Britain, which I think ought to be somewhat modified. The chief assertions in Mr. Hicks's paper are, that at the Pre-Cambrian period a large continent existed in Europe; that a subsidence began in the south-western part, and gradually extended to the north-eastern, which was not submerged until the Tremadoc group had been deposited over the western areas; and, finally, that the marine faunas migrated from the south-west. In order to prove these generalizations, Mr. Hicks makes a comparison between the most important Cambrian districts of Europe. He thinks that the British Cambrian rocks are the oldest, that the lowest Swedish beds are probably equivalent to the British Menevian group, and that the Russian are not older than the Arenig. Though the scantiness of the organic remains in some instances makes it very difficult, or, indeed, impossible to parallelize with certainty the oldest deposits of the various countries, it seems, however, from the palæontological facts already known, quite unquestionable that the lowest rocks of Scandinavia and Russia are older than Mr. Hicks has supposed them to be in comparison to those of Britain.


Organic compound-based sensors are used in a variety of significant fields, including medical research, azeotropic calibration, vegetable oil extraction, the shoe industry and geothermal power plants. Here, a high-performance, two-dimensional material-based organic compound sensor has been proposed using a surface plasmon resonance (SPR) nanostructure consisting of a BK7 glass prism, Ag, BaTiO3, Ag, graphene and sensing layer. The reflectivity curves of the SPR device have been investigated when the sensing media are Pentane, n-Hexane, n-Heptane and n-Octane. The thickness of the BaTiO3 layer and the number of graphene sheets have been optimized to maximize the sensitivity. The highest sensitivity attained is 220.83 deg/RIU for n-Octane with 45 nm silver/10 nm BaTiO3/8 nm silver and four layers of graphene. We believe that the SPR-based sensors are simple and can replace the spectrometry, chromatography and electrochemical based sensors. The proposed design is extremely effective for diverse applications in biological, industrial and chemical detection because of its simple structure and great performance.


Cellular automata are regular uniform networks of locally-connected finite-state machines. They are discrete systems with non-trivial behaviour. Cellular automata are ubiquitous: they are mathematical models of computation and computer models of natural systems. The book presents results of cutting edge research in cellular-automata framework of digital physics and modelling of spatially extended non-linear systems; massive-parallel computing, language acceptance, and computability; reversibility of computation, graph-theoretic analysis and logic; chaos and undecidability; evolution, learning and cryptography. The book is unique because it brings together unequalled expertise of inter-disciplinary studies at the edge of mathematics, computer science, engineering, physics and biology.


Over the past two decades there has been a huge increase in the amount of data being stored in databases as well as the number of database applications in business and the scientific domain. This explosion in the amount of electronically stored data was accelerated by the success of the relational model for storing data and the development and maturing of data retrieval and manipulation technologies. While technology for storing the data developed fast to keep up with the demand, little stress was paid to developing software for analysing the data until recently when companies realized that hidden within these masses of data was a resource that was being ignored. The huge amount of stored data contains knowledge about a number of aspects of their business waiting to be harnessed and used for more effective business decision support. Database Management Systems used to manage these data sets at present only allow the user to access information explicitly present in the databases i.e. the data. Contained implicitly within this data is knowledge about a number of aspects of their business waiting to be harnessed and used for more effective business decision support. This extraction of knowledge from large data sets is called Data Mining or Knowledge Discovery in Databases and is defined as the non-trivial extraction of implicit, previously unknown and potentially useful information from data. The obvious benefit of Data Mining has resulted in a lot of resources being directed towards its development. __________________________________________________*****_________________________________________________


This community service aims to provide knowledge to the community about various fish management and good packaging methods to make it more modern, durable and hygienic. The establishment of a Cakalang fish processing product center to become Shredded, increases the ability of business management in the community. While the methods used are counseling, practice and discussion. The result of this program is the increasing ability of the community in managing fish into various processed, nutritious and high economic values, as well as evaluation efforts such as taste quality, marketing strategies, halal certification and product permits. This program is a medium for sharing and changing the perspective of the community to jointly increase community empowerment to be prosperous and have a better income.


Sovereignty is simultaneously one of the more revered and reviled concepts in International Relations (IR). Long taken for granted as the ontological founding concept of the discipline, sovereignty has gradually become the locus of debates about the conditions of possibility of change and transformation, limits of politics and agency. 'Articulations of sovereignty' considers sovereignty as a practice which is worked upon and in turn works with and against other practices.How does sovereignty function in international politics, what limits, subjectivities, and dominations it reproduces and what 'margins, silences and bottom rungs' (Enloe 1996) it excludes from the purview of politics?


It is well known that the interannual variability of the stratospheric winters over the Arctic is very large. On the basis of data for more than 60 winters, this variability has been studied with the aim of understanding and possibly forecasting the type of the coming winter, in the stratosphere and also in the troposphere. Today, there is general agreement that the variability of the stratospheric circulation during the Arctic winters is influenced by different forcing mechanisms: by the tropospheric planetary waves which penetrate into the stratosphere, by the Quasi‐Biennial Oscillation (QBO) and the Southern Oscillation (SO) in the tropics which influence the stratospheric polar vortex, and by the 11‐year sunspot cycle which interacts with the QBO and probably also with the SO. For the winter 2008/2009, all of the known signals pointed to a stable, cold stratospheric polar vortex throughout the winter, but in the real atmosphere a major midwinter warming developed in January and February with record‐breaking temperatures. The synoptics of this winter will be discussed in the context of all of the above‐mentioned forcing mechanisms.


There are mainly two types of needs for the ventilator users with severe neurological diseases: respiratory related needs include mode of ventilation selection, mode of ventilator prescription, maintaining lung recruitment and good airway clearance; non-respiratory related needs include substantial nursing care, adequate nutrition, accessible communication and psychological support. All these are important to maintain the quality of life of these patients.


Abstract The purposes of this study were to construct a novel tissue engineered bone composed of 3D-printed bioactive glass block/chitosan nanoparticles (BD/CSn) composites loaded with Nel-like Type I molecular-1 DNA (pDNA-NELL1) and/or bone marrow mesenchymal stem cells (BMSCs), and study their osteogenic activities by repairing bone defects in rhesus monkeys. CSn with NELL1 gene plasmid and rhesus monkey BMSCs were composited with a BD scaffold to prepare the tissue-engineered bone. Four adult female rhesus monkeys with 10- to 12-years old and 5–7 kg in weight were used in animal experiments. The first and second premolar teeth from four regions of each monkey were removed to form bone defects with size of 10 × 10 × 5 mm, which were then implanted with above-mentioned tissue engineered bone. At 12 weeks after the implantation, gross observations, X-ray and micro-CT observations revealed that the new bone was extremely close to normal bone in mass, density, hardness, and structure. The bony cortex was smooth and closely connected to the surrounding normal bone. Histological observations revealed moderate inflammation in the repair area, and the new bone tissues were similar to normal ones. In conclusion, tissue engineered bone of this study exhibited good osteoconductivity for promoting the formation of new alveolar bone tissue, and NELL1 gene played a promotional role in bone regeneration.


Internet has made the world become so close to each other and people are now exposed to every kind of information. Well why not, today the best way to advertise or share is internet. But it has its own drawbacks, the fear of copying and clam of ownership. This has made users reluctant to share there own digital work on internet.Works such as songs, movies, pictures, books, and magazines can be made available for immediate download. While the digital domain in the general sense has made it much easier for authors and legitimate distributors of multimedia works to create, manipulate, distribute and archive their property, it has also complicated the matter of copyright enforcement. Digital watermarking attempts to encode a logo (image) into a digital data to provide a means by which legitimate copies can be identified. Digital watermarking is an effective solution to prevent duplication illegally, to enforce IP rights and distribution of multimedia data.


This article aims to address the wind-farm power tracking problem, which requires the farm's total power generation to track time-varying power references and, therefore, allows the wind farm to participate in ancillary services such as frequency regulation. A novel preview-based robust deep reinforcement learning (PR-DRL) method is proposed to handle such tasks which are subject to uncertain environmental conditions and strong aerodynamic interactions among wind turbines. To our knowledge, this is for the first time that a data-driven model-free solution is developed for wind-farm power tracking. Particularly, reference signals are treated as preview information and embedded in the system as specially designed augmented states. The control problem is then transformed into a zero-sum game to quantify the influence of unknown wind conditions and future reference signals. Built upon the $H_\infty$ control theory, the proposed PR-DRL method can successfully approximate the resulting zero-sum game's solution and achieve wind-farm power tracking. Time-series measurements and long short-term memory networks are employed in our DRL structure to handle the non-Markovian property induced by the time-delayed feature of aerodynamic interactions. Tests based on a dynamic wind-farm simulator demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed PR-DRL wind-farm control strategy.


L-Adrenaline belongs to a group of compounds known as catecholamines, which play an important role in the regulation of the physiological process in living organisms. In the present study, the inhibitory effect of L-adrenaline on lactoperoxidase was examined. Lactoperoxidase (E.C.126.96.36.199) was purified from bovine milk with three consecutive steps: Amberlite CG-50 resin, CM-Sephadex C-50 ion-exchange, and Sephadex G-100 gel filtration chromatography. Lactoperoxidase was purified with a yield of 42.18%, a specific activity of 30.33 EU/mg proteins, and 20.77 purification fold. Enzyme purity was determined with SDS-PAGE, where a single band was observed. The Rz (A412/A280) value for lactoperoxidase was 0.9. The effect of L-adrenaline on lactoperoxidase was determined using ABTS as a chromogenic substrate. The half maximal inhibitory concentration (IC50) value and an inhibition constant (Ki) values for L-adrenaline were 34.5 and 2.26 μM, respectively. L-Adrenaline was found to be a non-competitive inhibitor.


ABSTRACT What are the capacities of the state to facilitate a comprehensive sustainability transition? It is argued that structural barriers akin to an invisible 'glass ceiling' are inhibiting any such transformation. First, the structure of state imperatives does not allow for the addition of an independent sustainability imperative without major contradictions. Second, the imperative of legitimation is identified as a crucial component of the glass ceiling. A distinction is introduced between 'lifeworld' and 'system' sustainability, showing that the environmental state has created an environmentally sustainable lifeworld, which continues to be predicated on a fundamentally unsustainable reproductive system. While this 'decoupling' of lifeworld from system sustainability has alleviated legitimation pressure from the state, a transition to systemic sustainability will require deep changes in the lifeworld. This constitutes a renewed challenge for state legitimation. Some speculations regarding possible futures of the environmental state conclude the article.


This report describes the clinical characteristics of psychotic patients who received a 6-month longitudinal research diagnosis of psychosis not otherwise specified (NOS) or for whom no consensus diagnosis was reached. The reasons why these subjects could not be classified into a specific DSM-III-R category, their classification under the proposed DSM-IV criteria, their reclassification at 24-month follow-up, and differences between these groups and patients with schizophrenia and affective disorders in demographic characteristics, initial clinical features, and short-term course are explored. Data were drawn from the first phase of the Suffolk County Mental Health Project. Longitudinal consensus procedures were used to derive 6- and 24-month DSM-III-R diagnoses based on information from a structured diagnostic interview, an interview with the patient's clinician, the medical record and discharge summary, and significant others. Thirteen subjects (4.7%) received a diagnosis of psychosis NOS, and 12 (4.3%) had no consensus diagnosis. Seven with psychosis NOS had an acute onset with rapid remission; this subgroup met DSM-IV criteria for brief psychosis without stressors. As a group, the psychosis NOS subjects were significantly older and had a lower rate of lifetime alcohol abuse/dependence than the schizophrenic and affective disorder groups. Their short-term course was significantly better than that of the schizophrenics and similar to that of patients with an affective disorder. Subjects with no consensus diagnosis were more likely to have lifetime drug abuse/dependence than the other two groups. Compared with patients with an affective disorder, these subjects showed poorer psychosocial functioning before and 6 months after hospitalization; these levels of functioning were not significantly different from those of schizophrenic subjects. —J Nerv Ment Dis 183:207-213, 1995


Elders from a remote Aboriginal community have embraced multimedia as a way to fight substance abuse amongst their young people.


Introduction The management and follow-up of pulmonary embolism (PE) is delivered by various specialities resulting in both under and over investigation for suspected chronic thromboembolic pulmonary hypertension (CTEPH). To standardise our approach to long-term PE management a "one-stop" clinic was established in Sheffield in March 2010 to review all patients approximately 3 months after their presentation with acute PE. The aim of this study was to evaluate the incidence and severity of CTEPH identified from a one-stop clinic using an investigative strategy based on careful clinical assessment Methods Consecutive patients attending the one-stop PE clinic following hospital admission with acute PE were identified. During the one-stop consultation a haematologist and respiratory physician reviewed the patient jointly. The need for further investigation was based on clinical assessment. CTEPH was defined as mean pulmonary artery pressure (mPAP) at right heart catheterisation ≥25 mmHg and required multimodality imaging (isotope perfusion scanning, CT pulmonary angiography and MR imaging including MRA and MR perfusion mapping) demonstrating classical features of CTEPH. Results Over a 3-year period between March 2010 and March 2013, 616 patients (mean age 67.7 years, 50% male) attended the one-stop PE clinic approximately 3 months following their acute presentation. 16 patients were diagnosed with CTEPH. An overall diagnostic rate of CTEPH of 2.6% for patients seen at the clinic and an annual incidence of 8.9/million/year was observed based on a referral population of 600,000. This compares to an annual incidence of CTEPH of 4.8/million/year in patients referred to the SPVDU over the same time period, based on a referral population of 15 million. The 16 patients with CTEPH had mPAP 37 ± 11 mmHg, pulmonary vascular resistance (PVR) 362 ± 240 dynes, significantly lower than patients with CTEPH diagnosed at the SPVDU until 2010 (n = 242) mPAP 48 ± 11 mmHg and PVR 735 ± 389 dynes (Hurdman et al Eur Respir J 2012:39(4):945–955). Conclusion Introduction of a one-stop PE clinic for routine follow-up of patients with acute pulmonary embolism identifies patients with higher rates of CTEPH with less severe pulmonary haemodynamic changes.


Abstract Context Despite the abundance of knowledge regarding high-altitude pulmonary edoema (HAPE) and high-altitude pulmonary hypertension (HAPH), their prevalence continues to be on the rise. Thus, there is an urgent need for newer safe, effective, and relatively economic drug candidates. China is particularly known for the use of medicinal plants. Objective This review summarizes the medicinal plants used for HAPE and HAPH in the past 30 years, as well as some potential plants. Methods Publications on HAPE and HAPH from 1990 to 2020 were identified using Web of Science, PubMed, SCOPUS, Springer Link, Google Scholar databases, Chinese Clinical Trial Registry and CNKI with the following keywords: 'medicinal plants,' 'hypoxia,' 'high altitude pulmonary edema,' 'high altitude pulmonary hypertension,' 'pathophysiology,' 'mechanisms,' 'prevention,' 'treatment,' 'human,' 'clinical,' 'safety,' and 'pharmacokinetics.' Results We found 26 species (from 20 families) out of 5000 plants which are used for HAPE and HAPH prevention or treatment. Rhodiola rosea Linn. (Crassulaceae) is the most widely utilized. The most involved family is Lamiaceae, which contains 5 species. Discussion and Conclusions We mainly reviewed the medicinal plants and mechanisms for the treatment of HAPE and HAPH, and we also assessed related toxicology experiments, pharmacokinetics and bioavailability. Potential medicinal plants were also identified. Further research is needed to determine the pharmacological effects and active ingredients of these potential medicinal plants.