BACKGROUND
Increasing evidence suggests that circRNAs are involved in the pathogenesis of multiple kinds of cancer. Nevertheless, the differential expression of circRNAs in prostate cancer (PCA) is rarely reported.

MATERIAL/METHOD
In our present analyses, circRNAs expression profiles were identified in PCA, based on 5 pairs of PCA and matched non-PCA tissues using circRNA chips.

RESULTS
A number of 749 differential circRNAs were expressed between PCA tumor and paracancerous tissues (Fold Change, FC ≥ 2.0 and P < 0.05): 261 were upregulated, whereas 487 were downregulated in PCA tissues. Gene ontology and KEGG pathway analyses indicated that many of the circRNAs are related to carcinogenesis. Circ_0033074 and circ_0016064 both showed changes of maximum magnitude among differentially expressed circRNAs.

CONCLUSIONS
Our study detected a relative comprehensive differential map of circRNAs in PCA, which may become novel biomarkers for diagnosis, treatment and follow-up in the future.


This paper is concerned with noninvasive monitoring of human larynx using subject's questionnaire data. By applying random forests (RF), questionnaire data are categorized into a healthy class and several classes of disorders including: cancerous, noncancerous, diffuse, nodular, paralysis, and an overall pathological class. The most important questionnaire statements are determined using RF variable importance evaluations. To explore multidimensional data, t-Distributed Stochastic Neighbor Embedding (t-SNE) and multidimensional scaling (MDS) are applied to the RF data proximity matrix. When testing the developed tools on a set of data collected from 109 subjects, 100% classification accuracy was obtained on unseen data coming from two — healthy and pathological — classes. The accuracy of 80.7% was achieved when classifying the data into the healthy, cancerous, and noncancerous classes. The t-SNE and MDS mapping techniques facilitate data exploration aimed at identifying subjects belonging to a "risk group". It is expected that the developed tools will be of great help in preventive health care in laryngology.


Multiple imputation (MI) has increasingly received attention as a flexible tool to resolve missing data problems both in observational and controlled studies. Our goal has been to develop a valid and efficient MI procedure for the Diabetes Prediction and Prevention Nutrition Study, in which the diet of a cohort of newborn children with HLA‐DQB1‐conferred susceptibility to type 1 diabetes is repeatedly measured by 3‐day food records over early childhood. The estimation of risk is based on a nested case‐control design setup within the cohort. We have used an iterative procedure known as the fully conditional specification (FCS) to generate appropriate values for the missing dietary data, here playing the role of time‐dependent covariates. Our method extends the standard FCS to repeated measurements settings with the possibility of non‐monotone missingness patterns by being doubly iterative over the follow‐up time of the individuals. In addition, our proposed procedure is nonparametric in the sense that the variables can have distributions deviating strongly from normality: it makes use of quantile normal scores to transform to normality, performs imputations, and transforms back to the original scale. By the use of a moving time window and stepwise regression procedures, the two‐fold FCS method operates well with a great number of variables each measured repeatedly over time. Extensive simulation studies demonstrate that the procedure together with the proposed transformations and variable selection methods provides tools for valid and efficient statistical inference in the nested case‐control setting, and its applications extend beyond that. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.


Intelligent software agent technology has been widely used in manufacturing to make plants more agile and dynamic to satisfy frequently changed requirements from market. After illustrating agent applications in measurement and manufacturing, a multi-agent architecture for measurement system for advanced manufacturing with characteristics of distribution, collaboration and openness is presented, which enables not only to perform measurement dynamically and autonomously but also to facilitate optimization of global production goal. Such agent based measurement system is exemplified by size measurement system of train wheel. The existing software for data acquisition, motor driving is edited into DLL and reused in agent system. Some future works are also listed in the end of paper


Two filters with identical topologies and components can exhibit a significant difference in filter effectiveness when the layouts are different. The goal of this paper is to examine the effects of parasitic couplings among the filter components and the coupling between the filter components and the ground plane of printed circuit board (PCB). Specifically, six different coupling effects are investigated: the couplings between the inductor and capacitors, a filter inductor and trace loops, two filter inductors, two capacitor parasitic inductances, a filter inductor and ground plane, and two trace loops. Experiments were performed, theories were developed to investigate and characterize these parasitic couplings.


Age, growth parameters and food of Pterois volitans (Linnaeus, 1758) Red lionfish were studied. A total of 254 lion fishes (P. volitans and Pterois miles) were collected from commercial drift net, angling fisheries and diving with hand net southern coast of the Iskenderun Bay between March 2018 and March 2019. 29.53% of sample was P. volitans. Age was determined by reading whole sagittal otoliths. Fish ranged from 14.2 to 35.3 cm in total length, which corresponded to fish between 1 to 7 years old. The sex ratio (1:1.07) was biased toward males (P<0.05). The length–weight relationships were W=0,0042×L3.3514 (R²=0,92) and W=0,0108×L3.0423 (R²=0,94) for females and males, respectively. Growth parameters were estimated using the standard von Bertalanffy growth model (K=0.1507, 64, L∞=47.58 cm and to =-2.0506 for combined sexes. The diet was composed of fishes and crustaceans.


Purpose

This paper aims to illustrate how business ethics research is progressing in the tourism and hospitality (T/H) industries and suggest a research agenda.

Design/methodology/approach

This study applies bibliometric analysis to articles related to business ethics topics in the T/H fields published between 1995 and 2014 in six, nine and five leading hospitality-, tourism- and business ethics-oriented journals, respectively.

Findings

This study provides a broad view on business ethics research in the T/H fields based on leading authors, institutions, themes and methods used over the past two decades.

Research limitations/implications

This study assesses the progress of business ethics research in the hospitality and tourism fields. Only articles published in select, prominent Social Sciences Citation Index journals were analyzed.

Practical implications

This analysis focuses on published articles related to business ethics in the T/H fields. As such, it facilitates researchers, academic scholars and professionals in contributing to the field more effectively and advancing scientific progress in the literature. It aids practitioners by evaluating the extent to which scholars have investigated key issues in the field.

Originality/value

This study is the first to utilize bibliometric analysis to assess business ethics research focusing on T/H activities published in leading tourism, hospitality and business ethics journals.


If the recently observed anomaly in the PVLAS experiment is due to the axion, then the powerful beams of synchrotron photons, propagating through high magnetic field of the HERA beamline, become strong axion sources. This gives a unique opportunity of detection of the axion-photon interactions by installing a small detector in the HERA tunnel, and to corroborate the axion hypothesis within a few days of running. Comment: 5 pages, 1 figure


Pancreatic Ductal Adenocarcinoma (PDAC) is nearly always associated with mutant K-Ras. Nevertheless, targeting oncogenic K-Ras has so far proved ineffective in treating this form of cancer and pancreatic cancer cell lines can become K-Ras independent. Other forms of Ras are rarely mutated but wild type N-Ras and H-Ras have been shown to be present alongside functional K-Ras mutations and have been demonstrated to increase responsiveness to growth factors. Beyond this little evidence had previously been gathered on the activity or function of N-Ras and H-Ras in PDAC. Therefore, this thesis aimed to determine if other Ras isoforms are active in PDAC cell lines and what effect they may have on controlling cell division, oxidative metabolism, cytokine expression and the phospholipid composition of the membrane.
The presence of active N-Ras and K-Ras was identified in three of the four human PDAC cell lines tested. Only active K-Ras was detected in a cell line derived from a mouse model of pancreatic cancer driven by heterologous expression of mutant KRAS. N-Ras was shown to be functioning alongside K-Ras to control the relative level of oxidative metabolism in the Suit-2 and a faster growing variant of the Panc-1 cell lines, but K-Ras acts alone in the slow growing Panc-1 cell line that does not contain N-Ras. N-Ras and K-Ras were shown to have different effects on the levels of cytokines, although K-Ras is largely independent of N-Ras in its regulation of phospholipid composition.
A novel N-Ras independent mechanism for K-Ras transcriptional control of cyclin B1 was demonstrated. When K-Ras is depleted cyclin B1 and cyclin A are decreased. Cyclin B1 transcription can be rescued by inhibition of the Proteasome. A model is proposed whereby an unknown protein or proteins activates cyclin B1 transcription in a cell-cycle independent fashion and is protected from proteasomal degradation by K-Ras.
These results suggest that mutant K-Ras can act in conjunction with wild-type N-Ras, but also can function independently to regulate G2 cyclins.


A nonadditive generalization of Klimontovich's S-theorem [Bagci, 2008] has recently been obtained by employing Tsallis entropy. This general version allows one to study physical systems whose stationary distributions are of the inverse power law in contrast to the original S-theorem, which only allows exponential stationary distributions. The nonadditive S-theorem has been applied to the modified Van der Pol oscillator with inverse power law stationary distribution. By using nonadditive S-theorem, it is shown that the entropy decreases as the system is driven out of equilibrium, indicating self-organization in the system. The allowed values of the nonadditivity index q are found to be confined to the regime (0.5,1].


Present-day numerical relays provide remarkable capabilities such as monitoring, recording and communication. These capabilities are considered as secondary priority whereas speed and reliability are the two most important characteristics of a protective relay. Even though present-day numerical relays have provided considerable capabilities and advantages, they have not improved speed of operation in comparison to their solid-state counterparts. The idea of applying mixed signals processing using advanced analogue and digital technology in several applications has started. Use of advanced programmable analogue technology, which is known as field programmable analogue arrays (FPAAs), seems to have the potential to be used in protective relays. Hybrid hardware using both digital signal processor (DSP) and FPAAs is proposed to implement mho distance relay considering capacitor voltage transformer (CVT) transient supervision for low and high system impedance ratio (SIR) systems. Test results are reported and compared with a commercial relay test results.


The present research work was undertaken with the objective to study leptin gene polymorphism using Polymerase Chain Reaction-Restriction Fragment Length Polymorphism (PCR-RFLP) in Surti and Jaffarabadi buffaloes. Fifty Surti buffaloes maintained at Livestock Research Station under Navsari Agricultural University, Navsari, Gujarat and 50 Jaffarabadi buffaloes from field areas of Junagadh district of Gujarat. Genomic DNA was isolated from 5ml whole blood sample by phenol chloroform method. From the purified genomic DNA, a 522 bp region spanning over a part of intron 2 and exon 3 and a 94 bp region of exon 2 of the leptin gene was amplified using two different set of primers. The 522 and 94 bp PCR products were digested using BsaAI and Kpn2I restriction enzymes, respectively. For the 522 bp PCR leptin fragment, three BsaAI digestion patterns were found in both the breed groups indicating three genotypes; the frequency of AA, AB and BB genotypes were observed as 0.42, 0.52 and 0.06 in Surti and 0.42, 0.44 and 0.14 in Jaffarabadi buffaloes, respectively. In case of 94 bp PCR products, the Kpn2I digestion revealed two alleles (A and B) and two genotypes; The frequency of BB and AB genotypes were 0.96 and 0.03; 0.94 and 0.06 in Surti and Jaffarabadi buffaloes, respectively. We found that the 522 bp leptin gene fragment was fairly polymorphic, while the 94 bp leptin gene was less polymorphic in both buffalo populations under study.


A low level of CD4+ lymphocyte cells makes end-stage HIV/AIDS patients highly susceptible to microbial infections. We have adopted the next generation sequencing method to identify the spectrum of bacterial plasma and viral elements that might be present in these patients. The HIV/AIDS plasma microbiome was dominated by bacterial elements in the taxonomical order Pseudomonadales, while healthy people carried fewer bacterial DNA in the plasma. We have found that many of the bacterial elements in HIV/AIDS plasma are similar to those of the microbes found in the human gut, suggesting potential acquisition of microbial elements from the gut. The HIV/AIDS and normal plasma DNA virome shared some similarities in the presence of common ubiquitous eukaryotic viruses. The normal DNA virome was mainly composed of viruses from Anelloviridae. In contrast, the HIV/AIDS DNA virome contained a large proportion of bacteriophages, endogenous retroviruses and a non-human virus. In addition, several sequences, which might belong to novel bacteria or endogenous retroviruses, were identified. Taken together, the use of high-throughput sequencing technology in unveiling microbial metagenomics may facilitate future research in combating HIV/AIDS and its associated microbial complications.


Sulphur poisoning and regeneration of NOx trap catalysts have been studied in synthetic exhausts and in an engine bench. Sulphur gradually poisoned the NO x storage sites in the axial direction of the NO x trap. During sulphur regenerations, hydrogen was found to be more efficient than carbon monoxide in removing the sulphur from the trap. The sulphur regeneration became more efficient the richer the environment (λ<1) and the higher the temperature (at least 600°C). H2S was found to be the main product during the sulphur regeneration. However, it was possible to reduce the H2S formation and instead produce more SO2 by running with lambda close to one or by pulsing lambda. Even if a relatively large amount of sulphur was removed from the NOx trap, these methods gave a much less efficient regeneration per sulphur atom removed than when running relatively rich constantly. Finally, a model that could explain this observation was proposed.


The physical factors are important in the regulation of immunological functions. The primary immunological process maintaining a neuroimmunological disease is influenced by the physical state. In this paper the natural killer activity was demonstrated at 50 patients with definite multiple sclerosis. One fifth of them was depressed. Significantly lower natural killer activity was found in this group unrelated to the disease activity. In the group of patients without depression significantly higher natural killer activity was present in the remission comparing the relapse. Our findings confirmed the frequent appearance of HLA DR2 configuration in multiple sclerosis. HLA differences were not found between the depressed and non-depressed groups. This results concern the role of physical factors in the disease process, but refer to other factors linked to the disease activity.


In The Fourth Gospel and the Scriptures, Bynum presents new insights from ancient biblical manuscripts 4QXII and the Minor Prophets Scroll that help unlock the mystery of John's unique form of scriptural citation.


Based on the work of Cytron, we employ the concept of Dominance Frontier Inverse (DFI) to present an iterative algorithm to simultaneously place phi –nodes for all variables of a function. The set DFI(x) is a set of the nodes N whose dominance frontier is x. Two important properties of the set DFI(x) make this algorithm faster: (1) The set DFI(x) is empty if x has a single predecessor, that is only the DFI set of the join nodes may not be empty; (2) The nodes in the set DFI(x) must be nodes whose level is no smaller than the level of x on the dominator tree. After the DFI sets are calculated, the algorithm travels bottom-up on the dominator tree by levels, and iteratively computes a fixed point for the DFI sets of the join nodes with the same level, and after a fixed point is reached for the DFI sets of the level, the phi -nodes for multi-variable are placed on these join nodes. The advantage of this algorithm is that the phi -nodes doesn't need to be placed for each variable separately. Experimental results of the C Specint2000 show that this algorithm is about 13.0% faster than Cytron's algorithm on average, and especially for 176.gcc benchmark, the improvement is 20.7%, while it is 0.7% in Das.


Commit Classification (CC) is an important task in software maintenance, which helps software developers classify code changes into different types according to their nature and purpose. It allows developers to understand better how their development efforts are progressing, identify areas where they need improvement, and make informed decisions about when and how to release new software versions. However, existing models need lots of manually labeled data for fine-tuning processes, and ignore sentence-level semantic information, which is often essential for discovering the difference between diverse commits. Therefore, it is still challenging to solve CC in fewshot scenario. To solve the above problems, we propose a contrastive learning-based commit classification framework. Firstly, we generate $K$ sentences and pseudo-labels according to the labels of the dataset, which aims to enhance the dataset. Secondly, we randomly group the augmented data $N$ times to compare their similarity with the positive $T_p^{|C|}$ and negative $T_n^{|C|}$ samples. We utilize individual pretrained sentence transformers (ST)s to efficiently obtain the sentence-level embeddings from different features respectively. Finally, we adopt the cosine similarity function to limit the distribution of vectors, similar vectors are more adjacent. The light fine-tuned model is then applied to the label prediction of incoming commits. Extensive experiments on two open available datasets demonstrate that our framework can solve the CC problem simply but effectively in fewshot scenarios, while achieving state-of-the-art(SOTA) performance and improving the adaptability of the model without requiring a large number of training samples for fine-tuning. The code, data, and trained models are available at https://github.com/AppleMax1992/CommitFit.


Hind limbs undergo dramatic changes in loading conditions during the transition from quadrupedal to bipedal locomotion. For example, the most early diverging bipedal jerboas (Rodentia: Dipodidae) are some of the smallest mammals in the world, with body masses that range between 2–4 g. The larger jerboa species exhibit developmental and evolutionary fusion of the central three metatarsals into a single cannon bone. We hypothesize that small body size and metatarsal fusion are mechanisms to maintain the safety factor of the hind limb bones despite the higher ground reaction forces associated with bipedal locomotion. Using finite-element analysis to model collisions between the substrate and the metatarsals, we found that body size reduction was insufficient to reduce bone stress on unfused metatarsals, based on the scaled dynamics of larger jerboas, and that fused bones developed lower stresses than unfused bones when all metatarsals are scaled to the same size and loading conditions. Based on these results, we conclude that fusion reinforces larger jerboa metatarsals against high ground reaction forces. Because smaller jerboas with unfused metatarsals develop higher peak stresses in response to loading conditions scaled from larger jerboas, we hypothesize that smaller jerboas use alternative dynamics of bipedal locomotion to reduce the impact of collisions between the foot and substrate.


Temperature elevations, depths of cuts and structural changes produced by 2.94 micron pulsed Erbium:YAG laser radiation of hard dental tissues, at different power levels and exposure times of the laser, were studied. The depth of cut produced was found to vary significantly as a function of power level and exposure time on dry teeth. The mean temperature rise with laser radiation was also influenced both by power level and time of exposure. The effect of water flow on the teeth during laser exposure was evaluated; the results indicate that the ablation efficiency was better, temperature elevations lower and structural changes minimal to absent in the presence of water as compared to teeth that were dry during laser radiation.


This study aims at exploring the attitudes of managers in the public hospitals of the northern region in Jordan toward the organization climate dimensions (leadership, decision making, communication, relations among employees, salary and wages policy, and organizational commitment). This study also tries to explore the effect of respondents' demographic variables on organization climate. A total of (220) questionnaires were distributed, (200) of them were returned, with a response rate of (91%). The most salient finding of this study shows that the level of organization climate in the public hospitals under study is moderate (mean= 3.21). Organization commitment dimension is ranked the first in terms of managers' satisfaction (mean= 3.64), while salary and wages policy is ranked the last (mean =2.60). There is no statistically significant difference among managers toward the level of organization climate as a whole due to variables of gender, social status, age and income, whereas statistical difference is present only due to the number of years in service. This study also shows statistical differences of managers' view toward the satisfaction level of salary and wages policy dimension due to education level, graduation country, age and number of years in service. In addition, a statistical difference is reported regarding managers' attitudes toward the satisfaction level of leadership salary and wages policy due to the number of years in service. Based on the findings, several recommendations are proposed to enhance organization climate in public hospitals such as: a closer study of salaries and wages of public hospitals' employees, enhancing the role of leadership to improve the organizational climate in public hospitals in Jordan, and a continuous institutional evaluation of the organization climate to improve better health care services to Jordanian citizens


Summary
• The effects of 7 yr enhanced nitrogen (N) deposition (3.5–14 g N m−2 yr−1) in combination with phosphorus (P) additions, on growth, shoot N and P content, and root-surface phosphomonoesterase (PME) activities were determined along with mycorrhizal infection rates in seedlings of a sedge (Carex flacca), grass (Koeleria macrantha) and forb (Leontodon hispidus).
• Seedlings were grown for 14–28 d in mesh-walled cores inserted into turfs from treated field plots enabling complete root recovery.
• After 14 d, root-surface PME activity was typically more than doubled by 3.5 and 14 g N m−2 yr−1, and by 28 d the N treatments consistently gave dose-dependent effects. PME activity was reduced by P additions in the sedge and grass by 55 and 65%, respectively, and correlated with soil and shoot N and P concentrations, again most strongly in the sedge and grass. Mycorrhizal infection was least in the sedge (1%) and greater in the grass (49%) and forb (76%).
• Long-term N enrichment of calcareous grassland stimulates root-surface PME in representatives of the three major higher-plant functional types. PME response to P additions was greatest in least mycorrhizal-dependant species with roots more adapted for direct P uptake.


Gastric cancer is one of the most common types of cancer in the world, usually diagnosed at an advanced stage. Despite the advances in specific anticancer agents' development, the survival rates remain modest, even in early stages. In 15%-20% of cases, the human epidermal growth factor receptor 2 (HER2) overexpression was identified. We conducted a general review to summarize the progress that has been made in the targeted treatment of HER2-positive esogastric junction or gastric adenocarcinoma. According to our findings, trastuzumab is the only validated anti-HER2 agent in locally advanced or metastatic disease and its adjuvant effectiveness is assessed in a RTOG phase III study. In a previously treated advanced disease, the maytansine derivate TDM 1 failed to be approved as a second-line regimen, and the tyrosine kinase inhibitor, lapatinib, shows modest results. The antiangiogenics have not been analyzed in specific populations and targeting the mesenchymal-epithelial transition factor (MET) receptor, overexpressed in up to 46% of the advanced disease, seems encouraging. Regarding the checkpoint inhibitors, based on KEYNOTE 059 multilevel ongoing trial, stratified according to the HER2 and programmed death-ligand (PD-L) 1 status, pembrolizumab was approved for third-line treatment of gastric or gastroesophageal junction adenocarcinoma.


In a recent article [Mertz 2001] in this journal I argued for the virtues of a realist ontology of relation instances (unit attributes). A major strength of this ontology is an assay of ontic ('material') predication that yields an account of individuation without the necessity of positing and defending 'bare particulars'. The crucial insight is that it is the unifying agency or combinatorial aspect of a relation instance as predicable that is for ontology the principium individuationis [Mertz 2002; 1996]. Or in short, what is ontically predicable, precisely as such, is the cause of individuation. As a preface to this positive doctrine I offered arguments against the coherence of bare particulars as defended in an article by J. P. Moreland [1998]. In a reply contained in this issue Moreland and Timothy Pickavance (hereafter M/P) propose to answer my objections [2002]. The response that follows provides reasons why, I contend, M/P have not succeeded in parrying my objections to bare particulars.


1. The aim of this study was to evaluate the effect of supplementation of the layer diet with olive leaves (Olea europea L.) on lipid oxidation and fatty acid profile of α-linolenic acid enriched eggs during refrigerated storage, and to compare this effect with α-tocopheryl acetate supplementation. 2. A total of 72 brown Lohmann laying hens, equally allocated to 3 groups, were fed on diets supplemented with 40 g/kg linseed oil, or linseed oil and olive leaves at 10 g/kg or linseed oil and α-tocopheryl acetate at 200 mg/kg. Collected eggs were analysed for fatty acid profile and lipid oxidation either fresh or following 60 d storage at 4°C. 3. Results showed that olive leaves or α-tocopheryl acetate supplementation reduced lipid hydroperoxide concentration in fresh eggs but had no effect on their fatty acid profile and malondialdehyde (MDA) content compared to controls. 4. Refrigerated storage for 60 d decreased the proportions of PUFAs but increased those of MUFAs in eggs from the control diet, whilst it had no effect on the fatty acid composition of eggs from the diets supplemented with olive leaves or α-tocopheryl acetate, which in turn showed decreased concentrations of lipid hydroperoxides and MDA.


The snakes Bothriopsis bilineatus and Bothrops atrox are sympatric vipers in the Amazon. While B. atrox is common, Bothriopsis bilineatus is considered relatively rare. Both species are dietary generalists, with B. atrox foraging mostly on the ground while B. bilineatus is more arboreal. Here, we describe habitat use and activity patterns for these two snakes in Amazonian forest near the Moa River, Cruzeiro do Sul (Acre). This study was based on observations during both time constrained visual searches and opportunistic encounters along trails that included both seasonally flooded and terra firme forests. During a total of 360 hours of time constrained visual search, 11 B. bilineatus and six B. atrox were found, while one B. bilineatus and six B. atrox were found during opportunistic encounters. All 12 B. bilineatus were found on vegetation above the ground, while only five B. atrox were on vegetation, and these were all juveniles. Thus, during time constrained visual searches B. bilineatus was more common (0.03 snake/hour) than B. atrox (0.016 snake/hour). These two species use different habitats. Bothriopsis bilineatus was most commonly found in upland terra firme forests, with many palms and free from seasonal floods. Bothrops atrox was most commonly found in lower, wetter seasonally flooded areas. Perhaps structural differences in the vegetation in these two forest types influence the distribution of these two species, possibly due to a related influence on prey abundance, besides historical factors. Both species are found more often during the rainy season, rarely being found during the dry season, when their amphibian prey are less abundant. In most of the Amazon, B. bilineatus seems less common than B. atrox, but in the present study, the former was the most frequent snake during time constrained visual search.


Epidermal peels isolated from sunflower hypocotyls provide a convenient model to study the relationship between cortical microtubule orientation and strain rate. Extension of peels can be modulated using chemical treatment and mechanical stress, i.e., by adding a chemical to the incubation medium and applying a load exceeding the yield threshold for irreversible (plastic) strain. In this study, peels were pre-incubated for ca. 12 h (long-term pre-incubation) or for 1 h (short-term pre-incubation). In the long-term pre-incubated peels, fusicoccin applied to the medium neither enhanced the rate of longitudinal plastic strain of loaded peels, nor affected microtubule orientation. However, fusicoccin increased the strain rate of short-term, pre-incubated peels and affected microtubule orientation in both extending (loaded) and non-extending (unloaded) peels. Without fusicoccin, microtubule orientation was generally longitudinal or steep, whereas in fusicoccin-treated unloaded peels it was transverse and oblique microtubules in peel portions corresponding to the apical part of the hypocotyl. Although the frequency of transverse orientation was increased through loading, there was no strong correlation between the rate of fusicoccin-induced strain and microtubule orientation. It is hypothesized that the insensitivity of long-term pre-incubated peels to fusicoccin with respect to strain rate is due to a lack of active plasma membrane H(+) -ATPases. Thus, the sensitivity of short-term, pre-incubated, unloaded (non-extending) peels to fusicoccin, with respect to microtubule orientation, indicates that orientation might be affected by electric currents resulting from fusicoccin stimulation of H(+) -ATPases.


© 2017. The copyright of this document resides with its authors. We propose a real-time and lightweight multi-task style ConvNet (termed a Factored ConvNet) for human body parsing in images or video. Factored ConvNets have isolated areas which perform known sub-tasks, such as object localization or edge detection. We call this area and sub-task pair an X factor. Unlike multi-task ConvNets which have independent tasks, the Factored ConvNet's sub-task has direct effect on the main task outcome. In this paper we show how to isolate the X factor of foreground/background (f/b) subtraction from the main task of segmenting human body images into 31 different body part types. Knowledge of this X factor leads to a number of benefits for the Factored ConvNet: 1) Ease of network transfer to other image domains, 2) ability to personalize to humans in video and 3) easy model performance boosts. All achieved by either efficient network update or replacement of the X factor whilst avoiding catastrophic forgetting of previously learnt body part dependencies and structure. We show these benefits on a large dataset of images and also on YouTube videos.


In this paper we would like to summarize and formulate the research on processing of dynamic contrast enhanced MRI (DCE-MRI) sequences for mamography. DCE-MRI is a kind of examination where a sequence of MRI images is captured and changes through the sequence are analysed. General background of medical imaging techniques is mentioned shortly. Then we introduce our case study, the processing of dynamic contrast enhanced magnetic resonance breast image sequences. We state that the basic tool for this task is an accurate registration of soft tissues based on physical properties. Recent research in related fields is presented and we explain how our case study differs from the others. Finally, our ideas for our future work on this unique task are suggested.


Background During the last years there have been numerous reports and discussions concerning the diagnostic value of ultrasonography of salivary glands for assessment of salivary gland involvement in patients suspected with primary Sjögren's Syndrome (pSS). Modern ultrasound techniques, such as acoustic radiation force impulse (ARFI) imaging, real time tissue elastography (RTTE) and virtual touch tissue imaging (VTTI), could gain in importance lately and became part of the clinical routine in various specialties. Objectives Can modern ultrasound techniques provide further information in the assessment of salivary gland involvement in patients suspected with pSS in addition to B-mode ultrasonography (BMUS)? Methods The diagnostic value of modern ultrasound techniques was evaluated in 50 patients with pSS, diagnosed according to the AECG criteria. Patients underwent high-resolution ultrasonography (THI, 9-14 MHz) of the parotid and submandibular gland. Results of BMUS, RTTE, VTTI – each graded by using appropriate ultrsonographic scoring systems – and ARFI quantifications were compared to 50 patients with sicca symptoms but not fulfilling the AECG criteria. Results In BMUS, 41/50 parotid glands in patients with pSS and 20/50 in the control group had abnormal findings (p<0.001). 42/50 patients with pSS showed abnormal findings in submandibular gland BMUS compared to 31/50 in patients without confirmed pSS (p<0.001). Evaluation of parotid and submandibular RTTE did not show any difference (p=1.0 and p=0.06), nor did the evaluation of parotid and submandibular VTTI (p=0.251 and p=0.835). ARFI imaging of the parotid (mean: 2.99m/s2) and submandibular glands (mean: 2.54m/s2) showed significant higher values than parotid (mean: 2.16m/s2) and submandibular glands (mean: 2.04m/s2) in the control group (p<0.001 and p=0,008). Conclusions In contrast to B-mode ultrasonography in patients suspected with primary Sjögren's Syndrome, which is proved to be useful in visualization and subjective assessment of structural glandular alterations, ARFI imaging enables the objective measurement of glandular stiffness and might therefore be considered in the diagnostic algorithm of pSS. Disclosure of Interest : None declared DOI 10.1136/annrheumdis-2014-eular.5901


Several proteomic database search engines that interpret LC-MS/MS data do not identify the same set of peptides. These disagreements occur even when the scores of the peptide-to-spectrum matches suggest good confidence in the interpretation. Our study shows that these disagreements observed for the interpretations of a given spectrum are almost exclusively due to the variation of what we call the "peptide space", i.e., the set of peptides that are actually compared to the experimental spectra. We discuss the potential difficulties of precisely defining the "peptide space." Indeed, although several parameters that are generally reported in publications can easily be set to the same values, many additional parameters-with much less straightforward user access-might impact the "peptide space" used by each program. Moreover, in a configuration where each search engine identifies the same candidates for each spectrum, the inference of the proteins may remain quite different depending on the false discovery rate selected.


Introduction. The development of land relations in Ukraine has led to changes in land management. The redistribution of land as the main national wealth of our state have exacerbated the economic and environmental problems of agricultural land use. Ukrainian agricultural producers must to ensure effective competition, production of environmentally friendly products, focus on the world market and determine the need to improve environmental and economic management of land resources.

The purpose of article. The purpose of the study is the theoretical and methodological justification of ecological and economic management of land resources in the structure of zonal approaches to the formation and development of agricultural enterprises and the development of practical recommendations for improving the efficiency of land use by agricultural producers.

Methods. The research used scientific and methodological foundations of natural-agricultural zoning of the territory of Ukraine, the allocation of taxonomic units of zoning and their main characteristics.

Results of work. The scientific novelty of the obtained results concerns the improvement of ecological and economic management of land resources of agricultural enterprises in the conditions of zoning, taking into account the potential of agricultural areas.

Economic and ecological management of land resources of agricultural enterprises should be considered as an activity in agricultural production aimed at providing the population with food and other sectors of the national economy with raw materials at the optimal level of investment in resources and their maximum return in compliance with environmental goals and programs.

Agricultural zoning as a branch in the agricultural sector of the economy is highlighted, its component structure is revealed. The agrarian zone includes homogeneous land massifs with the corresponding production potential and level of ecological and anthropogenic loading and allows public administration bodies to be defined with potential possibilities of production activity of the agrarian enterprises. Within the Sumy region, four agricultural zones were identified, and in the Kharkiv region, three. Depending on the affiliation of land use to the agrarian zone, the agricultural enterprise receives information on zoning crops most suitable for cultivation on its territory, types of crop rotations, technological measures for land use and protection, restrictions on growing certain crops. Economic indicators of enterprise development, such as specialization, concentration and integration of production, with skillful application will help increase the efficiency of land use. Socio-economic classification features of agricultural zoning will determine the level of labor efficiency and the integration of labor. To economically justify the coefficients of the optimal ratio of land using a zonal approach and to take into account the area of eroded, unproductive and contaminated land located in the administrative-territorial units, the optimal ratio of land was determined (arable land: natural forage lands: forests and other forests): in the Sumy region: 1.00: 0.43: 0.39; in the Kharkiv region: 1.00: 0.23: 0.25.

When introducing research into production, we take into account that ecological zoning restricts the cultivation of certain crops, taking into account local characteristics.


Abstract First-principles calculations within the local density and pseudopotential approximations were performed to investigate the effects of pressure on the energetics and structural behavior of charged vacancy defects in MgO. The simulations were performed for a supercell containing 216 atoms with their positions being fully optimized. In particular, the formation and migration energies of cation and anion vacancies were shown to substantially increase over the pressure regime of the Earth.s mantle. Our results thus suggest that pressure should suppress intrinsic diffusion mediated by ionic vacancies in MgO over the mantle pressure regime. The calculated three-dimensional data sets for atomic displacements and electron charge density were explored in detail using an interactive visualization system. Although the atomic and electronic structures are highly distorted in the close vicinity of the defects (i.e., in the region covering up to the nearest and next-nearest atoms), the effects are not negligible at farther distances


The Internet has evolved significantly over the past few decades. There are many reasons behind this explosive growth in web traffic. Just about every website has some form of navigation. Unfortunately, navigation of every website is not good. Most of the time a websites navigation is put together by web designers who know a lot about making pretty websites, but very little about marketing a website or creating a website built from the users point of view, which results into navigation-related web usability problems for users. In this paper on Enhancing web navigation usability using web usage mining we are discussing in detail about developing solution model to users navigation related web usability problems and evaluating comparison between actual and anticipated usage behavior which will be useful to users to provide better effectiveness that is higher task completion rate and efficiency that is less time for given tasks. Keywords— Web Server log, Web navigation Usability, Usage pattern Extraction, Web Usage mining, Cognitive User Model.


This paper proposes a weakly- and self-supervised deep convolutional neural network (WSSDCNN) for contentaware image retargeting. Our network takes a source image and a target aspect ratio, and then directly outpues a retargeted image. Retargeting is performed through a shift reap, which is a pixet-wise mapping from the source to the target grid. Our method implicitly learns an attention map, which leads to r content-aware shift map for image retargeting. As a result, discriminative parts in an image are preserved, while background regions are adjusted seamlessly. In the training phase, pairs of an image and its image-level annotation are used to compute content and structure tosses. We demonstrate the effectiveness of our proposed method for a retargeting application with insightful analyses.


Purpose: This study investigated the efficacy of task-related circuit training aimed at improving balance in individuals discharged from rehabilitation facilities following a stroke. Methods: We recruited 12 stroke patients (34-66 years of age) to participate in a task-related circuit training program. Baseline assessment included a history of stroke and an assessment using the Mini-Mental State Examination Korea (MMSE-K). After a baseline assessment, follow-up assessments were administered pre- and post-training. These included Berg Balance Scale (BBS), Functional Reach Test (FRT), and the Time Up & Go Test (TUG). Physiotherapists trained study subjects under the one-to-one supervision of students from the department of physical therapy. Circuit class study participants attended 90-minute treatment sessions, one day a week for 12 weeks (from September to December 2008). The program consisted of a light warm-up period (10 min), physical exercises for improving balance (20 min), tasks focused on improving balance (50 min) and a cool-down period (10 min). Results: Scores for the BBS assessment increased significantly (from 43.2 to 49.7) after the training (p 0.05). The average time on the TUG test decreased significantly (from 23.7 sec to 19.5 sec) after the training (p<0.05). Conclusion: The task-related circuit training program improved the balance and mobility of subjects, indicating that such a group program is useful for stroke patients who are discharged from the hospital. More such task-related programs set in a community environment should be developed.


The management of brain aneurysms and vascular malformations has evolved rapidly in recent years. More of these lesions are being diagnosed due to higher fidelity imaging, treatment has become more refined and often less invasive, and patients have become more integrated in their own care due to advances in informationtechnology. This article reviews the clinical characteristics and therapeutic options for patients harboring these lesions, with a particular focus on recent advances in the field.


1-(2-Chloroethyl)-3-isobutyl-3-(beta-maltosyl)-1-nitrosourea (TA-077) was hydrolyzed to its glucosyl metabolite TA-G by homogenates of guinea pig organs, rabbit VX-2 carcinoma and rat Yoshida sarcoma. The rate of TA-G formation by the kidney was the highest among the tissues examined and that by the diluted blood was undetectably low, reflecting their maltase activities. TA-077 was also hydrolyzed by suspensions of Yoshida sarcoma, AH130 hepatoma, L1210 leukemia, P388 leukemia and DBLA-10/C leukemia cells. The rate of TA-G formation was increased 10 fold by homogenizing the tumor cells. TA-G was taken up by the tumor cells much more efficiently than TA-077, explaining the higher sensitivities of the cultured tumor cells to TA-G than to TA-077. However, neither the maltase activity nor the membrane permeability to the drugs was a factor influential enough to explain the differences in drug sensitivity among the tumor cell lines.


Objectives To explore the relationship between Fatty Liver disease and Gender, Age, body mass index (BMI) in order to provide evidence for its early intervention. Methods A total of 2386 cases were included in this study which was carried out using our hospital Mobile Physical Examination Vehicle in July 2012, with complete information developed. The physical examination results were analysed with statistical method. Results 1) There were 356 persons diagnosed of Fatty Liver disease by B-type ultrasonic scanning in this study. The total prevalence rate of fatty liver was 14.9%. Men had a higher prevalence than women (16.1% vs 4.5%, P < 0.01). The trend of prevalence of Fatty Liver was growing with the age increasing (P < 0.01). 2) For each age group, the prevalence rate of Fatty Liver increased with level growth of BMI (normal, overweight, obesity, p < 0.01). The difference of prevalence rate among all age sub-groups proved statistically significant (p < 0.01) for both normal weight group and overweight group, while p > 0.05 for obesity group. 3) Single factor analysis showed that BMI, blood pressure, blood lipid, FBG, UA and ALT from the fatty liver group was significantly higher than that of the non fatty liver group (P < 0.01). 4) Prevalence of metabolic syndrome was higher in fatty liver group than in non fatty liver group (P < 0.01). 5) Multiple regression analysis showed that Age, FBG, TG, HDL-C, DBP, UA, Overweight and Obesity were risk factors for fatty liver (OR: 1.032, 1.215, 1.379, 1.703, 1.036, 1.005, 6.347, 30.543, respectively). Conclusions High blood pressure, overweight, obesity, dyslipidemia and increasing of UA are closely correlated with fatty liver disease. This is to provide an important evidence for early health management program of Fatty Liver.


This paper analyses the influence of service quality and satisfaction in future behavioral intentions in health and wellness tourists. Service quality was defined by Parasuraman, Zeithaml e Berry (1985) through the SERVQUAL scale with five dimensions: tangibility, reliability, responsiveness, assurance, and empathy. To analyse the future behavioral intentions, we considered the return and recommend intentions. A survey was conducted at five health and wellness tourism units situated in the central region of Portugal and the sample was constituted by a total of 268 users. The result analysis permitted to verify that service quality and satisfaction influences future behavioral intentions. It appears to be evident that the dimensions of assurance and empathy are the ones that most influence future behavioral intentions. In what concerns to satisfaction, we verify that it's related with these both intentions, but mainly with the intention to return and to and reuse those health and wellness services. These results and the implications for health and wellness tourism organizations are discussed.


A geometrically invariant concept of singularly perturbed systems of ordinary differential equations (singularly perturbed vector fields) is proposed in this paper. Singularly perturbed vector fields can be represented locally as singularly perturbed systems (for corresponding coordinate system choice. The paper focuses on possible ways of fast and slow directions/manifolds evaluations. A special algorithm for the evaluation is proposed. The algorithm is called as a global quasi-linearization procedure. A practical application of the proposed algorithm for numerical simulations is the main issue of the paper.


The gravel fraction of the bottom sediment on the Spitsbergen Bank, located south of Svalbard in the NW Barents Sea, is composed predominantly of clastic sedimentary rocks, especially sandstone and shale. Between sampling stations the proportion of eight lithologic types is markedly different, ruling out the possibility of large-scale transport of the gravel by ice-rafting. Striated pebbles occur in small numbers: a few are exotic in composition, but most are similar to a non-striated rock-type at a given station. This suggests that the gravel was formed by reworking of previously deposited glacial material, which tends to be locally derived. The sandstone pebbles in the gravel include a variety of petrographic types, most of which are identical or similar to sandstones of known stratigraphic position on Svalbard. Observations on Mesozoic rocks on Bjørnøya, Hopen and southern Spitsbergen, and on the distribution of pebbles as described herein, suggest that the Spitsbergen Bank is underlain by nearly flat-lying Mesozoic sedimentary rocks similar to those known on Svalbard. The overall structure is a gentle syncline; a southward continuation of the dominant regional structure of Spitsbergen.


We describe an Oracle database application for general use within virtual chemistry. The application functions as a central hub and repository for chemical data with interfaces to external calculators. It deals with the general problems of merging data from disparate sources and with scheduling of computational tasks for parallel or sequential execution in a mixed environment. The central database is used for the storage of input, intermediary, and final data as well as for job control. A calculation job is split into distinct tasks, or units of work, which are put in a queue. Tasks are dequeued and handled by specialized calculators. These calculators are in-house or commercial programs for which adaptor modules for connection to the database must be written. Tasks are handled in a transactional fashion, so that uncompleted or failed tasks are left in the queue. This makes the system stable to many types of disturbances. Sorting, filtering, and merging operations are handled by the database itself. Usage is very general, but some specific examples are (1) as a back end for a chemical property calculator Web page, (2) in an automated quantitative structure-activity relationship system, and (3) in virtual screens.


Objectives: Medicinal plants are a rich source for a variety of natural antioxidants and antidiabetic and have a considerable role in the treatment of many diseases throughout the world. Presently, due to beneficial effects of antioxidants and antidiabetic, particularly natural antioxidants and antidiabetic, in the treatment and prevention of diseases, there has been a considerable interest in finding natural antioxidants and antidiabetic from plant sources. The main purpose of this study was to evaluate the antioxidant and antidiabetic value and the potential of inhibiting α-amylase and α-glucosidase of Farsetia jacquemontii in district Bannu, Pakistan. Methods: Antioxidant activity was performed by using reagents; 1,1-diphenyl-2-picrylhydrazyl stable free radicals (DPPH), 2,2'-azino-bis ethylbenzthiazoline-6-sulfonic acid (ABTS) radical cation, hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) and sodium molybdate (Na2MoO4). The antidiabetic activity was performed by inhibition of α-amylase and α- galactosidase with IC50 values of 290 μg/ml and 240 μg/ml respectively. Results: The extract was found to possess antioxidant potential depending on concentration in a cell-free system. Antioxidant potential was highest against ABTS with IC50 followed by 98 μg/mL, MoO4 100 μg/mL, DPPH 149 μg/mL and H2O2 250 μg/mL. The antidiabetic activity was due to inhibition of α-amylase and α-galactosidase with IC50 values of 290 μg/ml and 240 μg/ml respectively. Conclusion: Based on the results, it can be concluded that Farsetia jacquemontii have antioxidant and antidiabetic potential.


We have evaluated the disaster contingency plans for 62 out of 69 Norwegian hospitals with surgical, acute emergency functions. Page volume varied from 2-115, mean 33 pages. Only nine hospitals had pocket size printed documents (A5). At the rest of the hospitals the plans had an A4-format and consisted of photocopied pages. Illustrations were few and of low quality. Too much text contained general information with no practical relevant instruction. Readability varied for different groups of health workers. Doctors received the best instructions for their tasks. Hospitals should seek professional assistance to edit, illustrate and produce the plans, and a certain degree of standardization of the plans should be aimed at. National health authorities should encourage the hospitals in this work.


Summary This paper reports the blood-borne mammary tumor virus activity of C3H/Crgl female virgin mice previously fed phenylalanine-deficient diets. Whole blood was removed from three groups of female virgin C3H/Crgl mice previously fed semipurified diets containing, respectively, 0.075, 0.120, and 0.300% phenylalanine for 8 months. The blood was twice diluted and 0.3 ml was injected into each C3HfBALB/cCrgl test mouse which was then subjected to the standard noduligenesis test for viral activity. The mammary glands of each test mouse were stimulated for 12 to 13 weeks by two pituitary isografts implanted under the kidney capsule. The percentage of phenylalanine in diet of donor mice/% of donor mice bearing spontaneous hyperplastic alveolar nodules (HAN)/% of test mice bearing induced HAN are: 0.075/0/40, 0.120/16/37, and 0.300/100/39. Negative control test mice that did not receive blood but were subjected to the noduligenesis test had 6.7% incidence of HAN. The formation of spontaneous HAN in the original donor mice was completely inhibited when phenylalanine in the diet was lowered to 0.075%. However, the data reported herein show that such inhibition was not due to an absence of blood-borne mammary tumor virus. Although the relative amounts of mammary tumor virus in the donor mice was not tested, the uniformity of response of the test mice suggests that large differences would not be expected.


Ritual landscapes at sea are marked in the cognitive world of coastal people by a primary antagonism between sea and land. This contrast is negotiated by liminal 'foreign' agents, selected for their symbolic adherence to either part. The primary source of maritime culture is fishing as a survival of past hunter‐gatherer societies. Forms of religious or magical management of this contrast are manifold, from recent superstitious magic to powerful symbols in ancient worship, objects, art, architecture and cult. Also described are ways of using the sea on land as a magic metaphor and a fundamental point of reference. Related dichotomies and ways of negotiating them, such as the liminal agent, exist elsewhere in the cognitive world of pre‐industrial societies, so these ideas could have applications in archaeology. © 2005 The Nautical Archaeology Society


This aircraft has been owned and operated by a major aviation insurance adjusting firm for the last decade. It has been meticulously maintained. Aircraft is located Addison Airport, Dallas, Texas. All offers or trades considered.


Objective : To determine the prevalence of faecal incontinence in children in Calabar. Methods : A study of children who were admitted for faecal incontinence at the University of Calabar Teaching Hospital and the Faith Foundation Specialist Clinic in Calabar over a seven year period from January 1994 to December 200 was done. Results : Faecal incontinence in children was common as a result of previous anorectal surgery. The modal age at presentation was the 6 to 10 years age group; this corresponds with the time when the societal embarrassment of soilage at school became obvious. The expensive surgical operation for this condition was avoided as the patients were rather offered the simple conservative management consisting of diet manipulations, daily enema and training of sphincter muscles. To these was added a simple but effective surgical narrowing of the anorectal junction. This procedure complemented with psychotherapy was effective in improving continence to various degrees in 90% of the patients. Conclusion : Faecal Incontinence is a societal problem and before school age is not taken seriously as diapers may be applied in the home environment. Orient Journal of Medicine Vol. 18(1&2) 2006: 30-34


Rapid urbanization imposes significant pressure on land resources and land use structures. Therefore, comprehensive studies should be applied to support urban land use management in the world and particularly in developing countries. This research is aimed at providing a critical analysis of weighted linear combination method applied to urban land use management in Tehran Province, Iran. An analysis is developed through the combination of a suite of existing methods and tools: geographical information system (GIS), Delphi method, and spatial decision support tools namely multi-criteria evaluation (MCE), analytical hierarchy process (AHP), and weighted linear combination method (WLC).


Background A large number of patients with sicca syndrome not fulfilling Sjögren's syndrome (SS) classification criteria, present manifestations of autoimmunity, like arthritis, Raynaud's, rash or hematologic disturbances, and have anti-nuclear antibodies, lacking however more specific antibodies. The designation Undifferentiated Connective Tissue Disease was coined to refer to those patients, and some will eventually progress to a definite disease, of which SS would be a likely candidate. Immune cell disturbances could be progression markerr, since diseases like pSS have distinct lymphocyte profiles. Objectives We aim to study the circulating lymphocyte subsets in non-Sjögren sicca patients (n-SS), and compare them with pSS and healthy controls. Methods We included 65 n-SS patients, 53 pSS patients (2002 AECG criteria) and 22 healthy controls. Lymphocyte subsets were characterized by flow cytometry, including follicular and regulatory T cells and naïve, mature, memory, plasmablasts and regulatory B cells. Statistical analysis was performed with GraphPad, and significance was considered for p<0.05 Results Comparing to controls, n-SS patients had lower counts of T cells (p=0.016), with lower CD4 (p=0.0028), however that difference was not as pronounced as between SS and controls. n-SS patients had higher percentages of CD4 (p=0.0005) and lower CD8 percentages (p=0.0009) than pSS. Additionally, there was a decrease in absolute counts of Tregs (p=0.0028) in n-SS patients compared to controls, which was less pronounced than the comparison between SS and controls (p=0.0008). Th17 cells were decreased in SS compared to controls (p=0.0005), but not in-SS patients. Compared with controls, both n-SS and SS patients presented decreased absolute count (p=0.0001 and p<0,0001, respectively) of CXCR5+ Tfh cells, with no differences between n-SS and SS patients. However, higher levels of IL21+CD4 T cells and Tfh1 cells were found comparing SS patients with both controls (p=0,0209 and p=0,0092 respectively) and n-SS patients (p=0,0051 and 0,0028 respectively). Absolute counts of memory, unswitched and switched memory cells in n-SS patients present intermediate levels between controls with significantly higher levels, and SS patients with significantly lower levels. Accordingly, using the Bm1–5 classification, we have found decreased Bm1 (p=0.004), eBm5 (Abs, p=0.0273) and Bm5 cells (Abs, p=0.0444) in n-SS patients compared to controls. Though not significant, there was an increase in eBm5 (Abs, p=0.063) and Bm5 cells (Abs, p=0.05) in n-SS compared to SS patients. Again, CD24+CD27+ Bregs were also decreased in n-SS patients compared to controls (p=0.036), but increased in n-SS compared to SS patients (p=0,0007). Conclusions Our data showed that n-SS patients present immune disregulation, represented by alterations in the B cell compartment but also in Tfh subset, known to modulate the humoral immune response. Although less pronounced, these modifications resemble the ones found in SS patients. Wether n-SS is a stage in the evolution to SS remains to be clarified. The identification of a characteristic disregulation of the immune system in n-SS could be usefull for diagnostic and prognostic purposes. Disclosure of Interest None declared


The objective of this study was to determine the effect of supplemental milk replacer on sow and litter performance. The study was conducted in 12 farrowing groups (171 litters) over a 3.5-yr period (October 1990 to April 1994). Commercial milk replacer was prepared fresh daily (150 g/L) and offered with ad libitum access in the farrowing crates within 24 h of parturition and was continued through weaning (d 21). Average pig weight (control, 5.5 kg/pig; supplemented, 6.4 kg/pig; P < .001) and total litter weight (control, 52.2 kg/litter; supplemented, 60.9 kg/litter; P < .001) at weaning were greater for litters receiving supplemental milk replacer. There was no effect (P > .2) of supplemental milk replacer on feed intake, backfat thickness, or body weight loss in the sow. Consumption of milk replacer varied greatly among litters. A portion of this variation in intake was accounted for by differences in ambient temperature among farrowing groups. Average milk replacer intakes (liters per pig) from birth to d 21 were 2.5 L/pig (.375 kg dry matter) and 9.9 L/pig (1.49 kg dry matter) for pigs born during the cool and warm seasons, respectively (P < .001). The weaning weight advantage conferred by milk replacer was most evident during the warmer months. Sow feed intakes averaged 5.8 and 3.9 kg/d over the same periods (P < .001). These results demonstrate the advantage of milk replacer on weaning weight and indicate that the greatest benefit from the supplement is during the warmer months when sow feed intake and subsequent milk production are lower.


Objective To determine the effect of glycemic control on growth velocity in children with insulin-dependent diabetes mellitus. Research Design and Methods One hundred twenty-two children with insulin-dependent diabetes mellitus were studied over a 5-yr period. Every 4 mo, glycemic control was assessed by measuring total glycosylated hemoglobin (GHb), pubertal status was determined by physical examination, and height was measured with a stadiometer. Height measurements were normalized for age and sex by converting them to Ζ scores (the number of SD above or below the mean for age and sex). Alterations in growth velocity were determined by the change in Ζ scores (ΔΖ) between visits (i.e., no change in tau score = normal growth velocity; decrease in Ζ score = growth deceleration; and increase in Ζ score = growth acceleration). Results A linear relationship was seen between GHb levels and the change in Ζ scores (r = −0.117, P = 0.001). GHb values < 8% were associated with growth acceleration (ΔΖ = +0.10 ± 0.03), and the greatest growth deceleration occurred when GHb was > 16% (ΔΖ =−-0.07 ± 0.03). The level of GHb at which growth suppression occurred (mean ΔΖ became negative) was dependent on pubertal status: Tanner stage 1 ≤ 10%, Tanner stages 2 and 3 ≤ 8%, Tanner stages 4 and 5 ≤ 16%. Conclusions Linear growth velocity in children with insulin-dependent diabetes mellitus is heavily related to metabolic control. Children who are prepubertal or in the early stages of puberty are the most vulnerable to growth suppression. Once puberty is well established, growth suppression does not occur until marked hyperglycemia (GHb > 16%) exists.


Objectives Mental workload is a condition which can negatively influence the overall health of workers. In this study, we aimed to investigate the risk factors for the onset of mental workload, including working conditions, cardiovascular comorbidities and lifestyle habits, in a working population. Methods This is a cross-sectional study including 408 workers from a risk prevention service of small/medium companies in Murcia (Spain). Workers from the secondary and tertiary sectors or primary/secondary sectors with administrative management tasks who underwent a routine medical examination between 1 January 2017 and 31 April 2017 were included. Workers from the primary sector and construction were excluded to avoid a sex and age bias. Results From 408 workers, 206 (50.5%) were females; with mean age 36.8±10.4 years. 164 (40.2%) workers had a moderate to significant risk of mental workload. Based on multivariate logistic regression analyses, independent predictors of mental workload were age ≥30 years (OR 2.42, 95% CI 1.22 to 4.80; p=0.012), working in tertiary (OR 7.89, 95% CI 3.59 to 17.31; p<0.001) or administrative sectors (OR 87.57, 95% CI 35.22 to 217.79; p<0.001) and alcohol consumption (OR 2.08, 95% CI 1.16 to 3.73; p=0.014). Smoking habit (OR 0.47, 95% CI 0.26 to 0.85; p=0.012) was found as a protective variable so non-smoking was considered as a risk factor. Conclusion In the present study from a risk prevention service including workers of small/medium companies from the secondary and tertiary sectors and workers with administrative tasks, the labour sector, age, alcohol consumption and smoking habits, are independently associated with a higher risk of developing moderate to significant mental workload.


"Oxford Reading Tree: Fireflies" has 60 titles on wide range of topics linked to the curriculum. There are 10 stages, one for each term from KS1 Year R Term 1 to KS2 Year 3 Term 1 (P1 to P4 in Scotland and N Ireland). It is colour-coded to show "Oxford Reading Tree" and bookband stages. It is linked to curriculum and "Oxford Reading Tree" themes. It provides teaching Notes for every stage, and a Guided Reading Card and a Take-Home Card to go with each book. It also provides cross references to other OUP resources - and curriculum links for "Stage 2": Is this too much?: Bookband level - 1; Curricular subjects - maths; ORT links - The Big Box.


I. Schemes of Classification In the paper on the Speeton fauna, forming a part of the work which I wrote in conjunction with Mr. G. W. Lamplugh, I attempted to correlate the Upper Jurassic and the Lower Cretaceous horizons of Speeton with their equivalents in Russia and in different parts of Europe, and to give a general scheme of classification of these beds.This scheme may be briefly stated as follows. The Kimeridgian zone of Hoplites pseudomutabilis and Aspidoceras acanthicum is common to different countries of Europe. Above this zone in the Meridional province repose the marine beds of the Tithonic stage, terminating the Jurassic.These beds comprise two substages—the Lower Tithonic, which contains two fossil-zones; and the Upper Tithonic, also containing two zones. To this Tithonic stage corresponds in Southern England the Portland stage sensu lato, including the Lower marine series (Portland, sensu stricto, or Bononian Series), and the Upper freshwater Portland or Purbeck. In Northern France and partly in Southern England three fossil-zones can be distinguished in the marine Portland, namely, the zone of Ammonites portlandicus and Bleicheri, the zone of Virgati, and the zone of A. giganteus. In Yorkshire the equivalents of this series are condensed, and moreover the freshwater Purbeck is replaced by marine beds with Belemnites lateralis, deposited in a separate boreal marine basin. To designate these uppermost horizons of the Jurassic in its marine development, I proposed the name 'Aquilonian' stage or substage, including in this term the zone or zones of Ammonites fragilis and nodiger


The process of developing oil palm cultivation is closely associated with the availaibility of quality seed. Quality seed is very determining the growth and production of such commodities. Supply of cocoa peel's compost into the soil may increase the availability of nutrient elements both macro and micro. The research is aimed to know the influence of of cocoa peel's compost on the growth of the oil palm seeds in the main nursery. The research was carried out experimentally by using Completely Randomized Design (CRD) with consists of four treatments and three replication . The results of research that application of cocoa peel's compost to the oil palm seed is significantly to seed height increment, but not significantly to the number of leaves, diameter of excrescence, the ratio of the editorial root and dry weight. The application of cocoa peel's compost with increasingly high doses tend to increase diameter of excrescence and dry weight of oil palm seed, while on parameters the number of leaves and the ratio of the editorial root not tend to increase of growing oil palm seed. The application 150 g compost/polybag or same with 37,5 ton/ha, shows the best growth of oil palm seed. Key Word : Cocoa Peel's Compost, Oil Palm Seed


By representing the states of the atomic f shell as the result of coupling four similar but independent quasiparticles, the Coulomb energy matrix can be calculated by extending standard angular-momentum theory from SO(3) to SO(7), where SO(7) is the special orthogonal group of transformations among the seven orbital states of an f electron. Both S (the total spin) and N (the number of f electrons) are good quantum numbers, and the coupled quasiparticle states can be put into a one-to-one correspondence with the classic states of Racah (1942). Each quasiparticle spans the elementary spinor (1/21/21/2) of SO(7). Only one of the four quasiparticle operators changes sign under the spin-quasispin interchange, and this is reflected in the properties of Racah's operators e2 and e3, the second of which decomposes into symmetric and antisymmetric parts. The selection rule Delta S=0 often reappears as a property of 9-W symbols, the analogues in SO(7) of the familiar 9-j symbols of SO(3). Several examples are worked out to illustrate the method.


Bacterial cytoskeletal protein FtsZ binds and hydrolyzes GTP, and assembles into dynamic filaments that are essential for cell division. Here, we used a multi-scale computational strategy that combined all-atom molecular dynamics (MD) simulations and coarse-grained models to reveal the conformational dynamics of assembled FtsZ. We found that the top end of a filament is highly dynamic and can undergo T-to-R transitions in both GTP- and GDP-bound states. We observed several subcategories of nucleation related dimer species, which leading to a feasible nucleation pathway. In addition, we observed that FtsZ filament exhibits noticeable amounts of twisting, indicating a substantial helicity of the FtsZ filament. These results agree with the previously models and experimental data. Anisotropy network model (ANM) analysis revealed a polymerization enhanced assembly cooperativity, and indicated that the cooperative motions in FtsZ are encoded in the structure. Taken together, our study provides a molecular-level understanding of the diversity of the structural states of FtsZ and the relationships among polymerization, hydrolysis, and cooperative assembly, which should shed new light on the molecular basis of FtsZ's cooperativity.


Recently, data-dependent permutations (DDP) that are very suitable for intelligent multimedia and ubiquitous computing systems have been introduced as a new cryptographic primitive for the design of fast encryption systems. The CIKS-128 and CIKS-128H block ciphers are the typical examples of DDP-based encryption algorithms. In this paper, we show that CIKS-128 and CIKS-128H are vulnerable to related-key differential attacks. We first describe how to construct their full-round related-key differential characteristics with high probabilities and then we exploit them to break the full-round CIKS-128 and CIKS-128H with 2^44, and 2^48 data/time complexities, respectively.


Abstract This article is aimed to prepare the blends of poly(vinyl alcohol) (PVA) with fatty acids (lauric, myristic, palmitic, and stearic acids) as shape-stabilized phase change material (PCM), to prove the miscibility of fatty acids with the PVA by microscopic investigation and infrared (IR) spectroscopy, and to measure their melting temperature and the latent heat of fusion by differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) analysis methods. In the blends, the fatty acids, which are dispersed in the solid network of the polymer, act as latent heat thermal energy storage (LHTES) material during its solid-liquid phase change when the polymer (PVA) has function of supporting material because of its structural strength. Therefore, the shape-stabilized fatty acids can keep the same shape in a solid shape without leakage of liquid fatty acids by aid of PVA in solid state. The maximum mixture ratio for all fatty acids in the shape-stabilized form was found as 50 wt%. By using DSC analysis method, the melting temperatures and latent heats of the shape-stabilized lauric, myristic, palmitic and stearic acids were determined as 39.8, 50.2, 56.2, and 67.4°C and 96.4, 105.3, 121.6, and 132.6 J/g, respectively. The results indicate that the PVA/fatty acids blends as shape-stabilized PCM have great potential for passive solar LHTES applications in terms of their satisfactory thermal properties and utility advantage of without encapsulation.


At the end of the 1970s, under the pressure of worsening external disequilibrium, the Hungarian authorities decided on important changes in economic policy, the most remarkable being the abandonment of the old strategy of economic growth, and embarked on some systemic changes including a competitive price system, the weakening of the hierarchical system and the expansion of small firms. This trend also continued in the beginning of the 1980s; its most important product was the expansion of the private sector. It soon became clear that all these systemic changes were not sufficient to create an environment in which enterprises could enjoy autonomy and which would force them to behave rationally (Antal, 1983). Pressure for further changes led to the April 1984 resolution of the Central Committee of the Party (hereafter the changes resulting from this resolution are called '1985 provisions') which, in its conceptual outlines means a consistent return to the principles of the reform of 1968 and which, in many respects, goes beyond that reform.1


In this study the concepts of reliability are used to derive blast load factors. First, some objective criteria are proposed for the proper interpretation of pressure data gathered in arena tests. These criteria are applied to the pressure–time histories recorded during field tests involving live explosive detonated in contact with the ground. Three major shock wavefront parameters, including peak pressure, impulse, and positive phase duration are calculated. Next, statistical analysis is performed on these metrics to estimate their probability density functions and goodness-of-fit tests are carried out to gauge the appropriateness of each estimate. Using the best-fitting distribution for each wavefront metric, load factors are derived on the basis of two approaches. The first approach employs the percentiles of the three load metrics, each estimated using the pertinent probability distribution. The second approach uses concepts of reliability and presents load factors for low, medium, and high level of p...


A novel three-dimensional beam propagation method (BPM) based on the variable transformed Galerkin's method is introduced for simulating optical field propagation in three-dimensional dielectric structures. The infinite Cartesian x-y plane is mapped into a unit square by a tangent-type function transformation. Consequently, the infinite region problem is converted into the finite region problem. Thus, the boundary truncation is eliminated and the calculation accuracy is promoted. The three-dimensional BPM basic equation is reduced to a set of first-order ordinary differential equations through sinusoidal basis function, which fits arbitrary cladding optical waveguide, then direct solution of the resulting equations by means of the Runge-Kutta method. In addition, the calculation is efficient due to the small matrix derived from the present technique. Both z-invariant and z-variant examples are considered to test both the accuracy and utility of this approach.


Developing a humanoid robot is not adding intelligence to any mechanical solution; in our opinion it is developing together" body and mind" of the robot to obtain a system intrinsically able to adapt to real situations and to share the same solutions of the human user. In this paper we present the main architectural solutions of our humanoid robot. In particular we describe its unique mechanical construction, fully based on McKibben actuators. Starting from a biomimetic design, we will explain the controlling strategy and discuss about performance.


Diesel engines are becoming more popular owing to their low fuel consumption and low emissions. The performance and emissions of diesel engines are strictly influenced by the injection pattern and the induced air quality. Utilization of diesel engines with mechatronic systems together with the advent of common-rail injection systems, which promotes the flexibility of injection control, has further increased diesel engine favourability and decreased the level of relevant emissions and noise. Development of mechatronic systems is a hierarchical procedure; in particular, in the case of common-rail diesel engine control, the extent and diversity of involved topics lead to a complex multi-stage development procedure. Many research studies have been carried out, thereby providing much literature in this field, which addresses different aspects of the development procedure for diesel engine management systems. Investigation of the existing literature will help researchers in the field to obtain a better understanding of the whole development procedure of diesel engine management systems and to make them familiar with new trends, state-of-the-art technologies and research fields. In this article, the control strategy development of common-rail diesel engine management systems is considered using the existing literature, i.e. the related literature was collected and categorized into the five main categories of modelling, sensitivity analysis, controller design, estimation and calibration. A brief description of every category followed by the relevant literature is given in the paper, and the common methods as well as the state-of-the-art techniques are discussed in each section. Finally, the strengths and weaknesses of the existing methods and the potential for further advancement are mentioned for each stage of the development of the engine management system, and a road map for the development of a common-rail diesel engine management system is presented.


The baking conditions of walnut kernels were optimized based on different cultivars and baking methods. The influence of the different baking techniques on the chemical properties of walnut oils was determined. The results showed that acid value, peroxide value and induction period (IP) all significantly increased in the baked samples compared to the unbaked ones. The highest increase in IP was from 6 to 17 h indicating that baking can improve the oxidative stability of walnut oils and prolong their shelf-life. Several aroma components increased after baking. However, among the different baking conditions, the strongest aroma in walnut oil was observed after baking was done for 20 min with sucrose (107%) at 153 ℃. Nevertheless, baking had little effect on the fatty acid composition of walnuts.


Solar flares are a fundamental component of solar eruptive events (SEEs; along with solar energetic particles, SEPs, and coronal mass ejections, CMEs). Flares are the first component of the SEE to impact our atmosphere, which can set the stage for the arrival of the associated SEPs and CME. Magnetic reconnection drives SEEs by restructuring the solar coronal magnetic field, liberating a tremendous amount of energy which is partitioned into various physical manifestations: particle acceleration, mass and magnetic-field eruption, atmospheric heating, and the subsequent emission of radiation as solar flares. To explain and ultimately predict these geoeffective events, the heliophysics community requires a comprehensive understanding of the processes that transform and distribute stored magnetic energy into other forms, including the broadband radiative enhancement that characterises flares. This white paper, submitted to the Heliophysics 2050 Workshop, discusses the flare impulsive phase part of SEEs, setting out the questions that need addressing via a combination of theoretical, modelling, and observational research. In short, by 2050 we must determine the mechanisms of particle acceleration and propagation, and must push beyond the paradigm of energy transport via nonthermal electron beams, to also account for accelerated protons&ions and downward directed Alfven waves.


A story's plot is the series of events that make up the story. Plot entertains readers to turn the pages of a literary work. Setting refers to the time and space in which the events of the plot happen. It means that in analysing the setting, one should analyse the main event in the plot arranged in a story. Sometimes discussing the plot and setting there is still in the analysis that needs to be explained more deeply and incomplete according to the story in the movie. This study aimed to identify the plot's elements and analyse in detail the setting in every sequence in Raya And The Last Dragon movie. The theories applied DiYanni (2004)'s theory of plot and Kenny's theory (1966) of setting were both used in this study. Data of this study was taken from observation and taking note of the movie, and script of the movie, the method applied was a qualitative method. The collected data were selected and put into plot and type of setting categories, which were descriptively analysed based on the theory applied. The results of this study show that the plots of this movie consist of five parts, namely exposition, complication, turning point or climax, falling action, and is ended by a resolution (denouement). The setting of this story can be analysed in terms of the type of setting which includes a neutral setting and a spiritual setting.


As a preliminary towards a complete integration of the Newman-Penrose equations governing the gravitational perturbations of the Kerr black hole, the perturbations in the spin coefficients and in the components of the Weyl tensor, which vanish in the stationary state, are considered. The manner of treatment of the basic equations yields Teukolsky's equations expressed directly in terms of the basic derivative operators of the theory and, further, suggests a preferred gauge in which two of the components of the Weyl tensor are governed by the same equations as a Maxwell field. Various identities and relations that are needed in subsequent work are assembled. In two appendixes, the solution of Maxwell's equations in Kerr geometry and the perturbations of the charged Kerr-Newman black hole are considered.


Abstract. We report the spatial variations of dissolved carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4), and nitrous oxide (N2O) concentrations in the lowland part of the Congo River network obtained during ten field expeditions carried out between 2010 and 2015, in the eastern part of the basin (Democratic Republic of Congo). Two transects of 1,650 km were carried out from the city of Kisangani to the city of Kinshasa, along the longest possible navigable section of the river, and corresponding to 41 % of the total length of the mainstem. Additionally, three time series of CH4 and N2O were obtained at fixed points in the mainstem of the middle Congo (2013–2018, biweekly sampling), in the mainstem of the lower Kasaï (2015–2017, monthly sampling), and in the mainstem of the middle Oubangui (2010–2012, biweekly sampling). The variations of dissolved N2O concentrations were modest, with values oscillating around the concentration corresponding to saturation with the atmosphere, with N2O saturation level (%N2O) ranging between 0 % and 561 % (average 142 %). The relatively narrow range of %N2O variations was consistent with low NH4+ (2.3±1.3 µmol L−1) and NO3− (5.6±5.1 µmol L−1) levels in these near pristine rivers and streams with low agriculture pressure on the catchment (croplands correspond to 0.1 % of catchment land cover of sampled rivers), dominated by forests (~ 70 % of land cover). The co-variations of %N2O, NH4+, NO3−, and dissolved oxygen saturation level (%O2) indicate N2O removal by sedimentary denitrification in low O2, high NH4+ and low NO3− environments (typically small and organic matter rich streams) and N2O production by nitrification in high O2, low NH4+ and high NO3− (typical of larger rivers that are poor in organic matter). Surface waters were very strongly over-saturated in CO2 and CH4 with respect to atmospheric equilibrium, with values of the partial pressure of CO2 (pCO2) ranging between 1,087 and 22,899 ppm (equilibrium ~ 400 ppm), and dissolved CH4 concentrations ranging between 22 and 71,428 nmol L−1 (equilibrium ~ 2 nmol L−1). Spatial variations were overwhelmingly more important than seasonal variations for pCO2, CH4 and %N2O, and than diurnal (day-night) variations for pCO2. The wide range of pCO2 and CH4 variations was consistent with the equally wide range of %O2 (0.3–122.8 %) and of dissolved organic carbon (DOC) (1.8–67.8 mg L−1), indicative of intense processing of organic matter that generated these two greenhouse gases. However, the emission rate of CO2 to the atmosphere from riverine surface waters was on average about 10 times higher than the flux of CO2 produced by aquatic net heterotrophy (as evaluated from measurements of pelagic respiration and primary production). This indicates that the CO2 emissions from the river network were sustained by lateral inputs of CO2 (either from terra firme or from wetlands). The pCO2 and CH4 values decreased and %O2 increased with increasing Strahler order, showing that stream size explains part of the spatial variability of these quantities. In addition, several lines of evidence indicate that lateral inputs of carbon from wetlands (flooded forest and aquatic macrophytes) were of paramount importance in sustaining high CO2 and CH4 concentrations in the Congo river network, as well as driving spatial variations: the rivers draining the Cuvette Centrale Congolaise (CCC) (a giant wetland of flooded forest in the core of the Congo basin) were characterized by significantly higher pCO2 and CH4 and significantly lower %O2 and %N2O values than those not draining the CCC; pCO2 and %O2 values were correlated to the coverage of flooded forest on the catchment. The flux of GHGs between rivers and the atmosphere averaged 2,469 mmol m−2 d−1 for CO2 (range 86 and 7,110 mmol m−2 d−1), 12,553 µmol m−2 d−1 for CH4 (range 65 and 597,260 µmol m−2 d−1), 22 µmol m−2 d−1 for N2O (range −52 and 319 µmol m−2 d−1). The estimate of integrated CO2 emission from the Congo River network (251 TgC (1012 gC) yr−1) corresponded to nearly half the CO2 emissions from tropical oceans globally (565 TgC yr−1) and was nearly two times the CO2 emissions from the tropical Atlantic Ocean (137 TgC yr−1). Moreover, the integrated CO2 emission from the Congo River network is more than three times higher than the estimate of terrestrial net ecosystem exchange (NEE) on the whole catchment (77 TgC yr−1). This shows that it is unlikely that the CO2 emissions from the river network were sustained by the hydrological carbon export from terra firme soils (typically very small compared to terrestrial NEE), but most likely, to a large extent, they were sustained by wetlands (with a much higher hydrological connectivity with rivers and streams).


In this paper, we propose a low complexity scheme for adaptive MIMO-OFDM system. A new method for calculating the process gain is developed to reduce the complexity and avoid pseudo inverse operations in the transmitter. The computation method is derived for the adaptive V-BLAST architecture which is based on the ZF-SIC detection algorithm and adaptive modulation and bit loading algorithm. The proposed process gain algorithm is proved equal to the ZF-SIC based process gain computation algorithm. So the proposed algorithm can achieve the same result as the ZF-SIC algorithm, which is proved through simulation methods in the paper. Also the complexity analysis is presented.


Vertical Seismic Profiling (VSP) is often used to provide high resolution seismic images near a wellbore. A new borehole seismic technique, the TOMEX® survey (Rector, et al., 1988), uses the vibrations produced by a drill bit as a downhole seismic energy source to produce inverse VSP data. No downhole instrumentation is required to acquire the data, and the data recording does not interfere with or delay the drilling process. Hence, there is no loss of rig time in performing the survey. These characteristics offer a method to acquire SWD (seismic-while-drilling) borehole seismic surveys. In addition, 3-D imaging around a well can be obtained at significant savings compared to conventional offset VSP imaging. The continuous signals generated by the bit during drilling are monitored with a reference sensor attached to the top of the drillstring, and the reference sensor signals are crosscorrelated with signals from surface-positioned geophones to produce inverse VSP data. Deconvolution and time shifts are then performed to remove the effects of recording the source reference trace at a location that is a considerable distance from the source. Results from tests demonstrate that these processed drill-bit source data are virtually identical to conventional forward VSP data. In using the drill bit as a downhole seismic source for inverse VSP, many of the limitations of conventional VSP are overcome. Several applications for VSP that were previously considered to be prohibitively expensive are now feasible. Furthermore, this seismic-while-drilling technique offers the potential for the explorationist to make real-time drilling decisions at the well site.


In this study we analysed pressure nystagmus three-dimensionally in subjects with labyrinthine fistulae. The fistulae were localized in the lateral canal in five patients, in the posterior canal in one patient and in both lateral and anterior canals in two patients. The eye velocities during the fistula test in patients with lateral canal fistula and in a patient with posterior canal fistula were closely aligned with the anatomical axes. On the other hand, pressure nystagmus in cases with fistulae of both the lateral and anterior canals were not aligned with the anatomical axes of the combination of both canals.


A fast heuristic algorithm is presented for the constructive placement of standard cells based on the so-called constrained multistage graph (CMSG) model, which has a linear time complexity in the number of cells. The first step of this algorithm performs the row assignment of each cell by converting the circuit connectivity into the CMSG, where each stage of the CMSG corresponds to a cell-row in the final layout. In the second step, called the line sweep method, the position of each cell within the row is determined one by one so that the local channel density is minimized. Experimental results on benchmark circuits show that the proposed algorithm yields very competitive results in terms of the number of feedthrough cells and channel density, which was verified by the comparison of the proposed algorithm with the simulated annealing (SA) and other iterative methods such as pairwise interchange, or generalized force-directed relaxation. A theoretical time complexity analysis performed show that the complexity of the proposed algorithm is O(n), where n denotes the number of cells. This result is substantiated with experimental results. >


Fluoride contamination in water, soil and plants is a serious health problem throughout the world. We studied the effect of aqueous solutions of 0, 10, 20, 30, 40 and 50 ppm sodium fluoride on seed germination, seedling growth and biochemical parameters of Abelmoschus esculentus. The experiment was conducted as factorial with completely randomized design with five replicates. The percentage of seed germination decreased up to 62 percent with increasing sodium fluoride treatment. The seedling growth parameters (root length, shoot length and vigor index) and biochemical parameters i.e., chlorophyll, nitrogen and protein content as well as the Fluoride uptake by the germinated seedlings were estimated after 20 days of treatment.


The concentrations of perfluoroalkyl acids (PFAAs) were determined in precipitation from three locations across the Great Lakes between 2006 and 2018 and compared to those in surface water. Perfluorooctane sulfonate (PFOS) and perfluorooctanoate (PFOA) concentrations generally decreased in precipitation, likely in response to phase-outs/regulatory actions. In comparison, concentrations of shorter-chained PFAA, which are not regulated in Canada did not decrease and those of perfluorohexanoate and perfluorobutanoate (PFBA) recently increased, which could be due to their use as replacements, as the longer-chained PFAAs are being phased-out by industry. PFOS and PFOA concentrations were greater in Lake Ontario precipitation than in precipitation from more remote locations. In comparison, PFBA concentrations were comparable across locations, suggesting greater atmospheric transport either through its more volatile precursors and/or directly in association with particles/aerosols. In Lake Ontario, the comparison of PFAAs in precipitation to those in surface water provides evidence of sources (e.g., street dust and wastewater effluent) in addition to wet deposition to surface water, whereas wet deposition appears to be dominant in Lakes Huron and Superior. Our results suggest that source control of shorter-chained PFAAs may be slow to be reflected in environmental concentrations due to emissions far from the location of detection and continued volatilization from existing in-use products and waste streams.