Elderly patients are at a higher risk for inappropriate antidiuretic hormone secretion when treated with antidepressants. In response to severe depressive symptoms, we initiated treatment with citalopram of an 81-year-old female patient with slightly reduced sodium and chloride levels. The sodium and chloride levels decreased continuously during treatment with citalopram; six days after the citalopram was discontinued, sodium and chloride levels returned to normal. We then switched treatment to mirtazapine. Close monitoring revealed that the patient's sodium and chloride levels never decreased and the patient did not relapse for more than two months. This case study indicates that treatment with citalopram may worsen preexisting hyponatremia. Mirtazapine appears to be safe for use in high-risk, elderly patients.


Electron beam lithography (EBL) is very important for semiconductor manufacturing process, especially for making photo-masks and ASIC devices. EBL is also important for fabricating MEMS, MOES and so on. In this paper, we used hydrogen silsesquioxane (HSQ), which acts as a negative resist (Namatsu, 1998). And we fabricated three-dimensional HSQ resist structure by changing the EB acceleration voltage.


An advanced power-saving mechanism based on a combination of a cyclic sleep function and an adaptive link rate (ALR) function for 10 Gbit/s Ethernet passive optical network (10G-EPON) systems is proposed. The cyclic sleep function varies the sleep period to optimise power-saving performance according to frame inter-arrival time. The ALR function has dual-threshold policy to prevent the frequent switching of link rates. The proposed hybrid mechanism provides effective power-saving performance on the basis of traffic conditions.


Abstract Conclusion: The usefulness of addition of positron emission tomography/computed tomography (PET/CT) in decisions as to whether to perform neck dissection in patients with T1-T2 lingual squamous cell carcinoma (SCC) might be limited, but adding the condition of lymph nodes with a maximum standardized uptake value (SUVmax) >4.5 to existing criteria would be helpful. Objectives: The purpose of this study was to investigate the usefulness of PET/CT for performing neck dissection in patients with T1-T2 lingual SCC. Methods: This retrospective review surveyed 19 patients with T1-T2 lingual SCC who underwent neck dissection after meeting one or more of the following criteria: (1) clinically positive nodes; (2) >4 mm thickness; (3) ≥ 3 cm longest diameter of the primary tumor. Focal 18F-fluorodeoxyglucose (FDG) uptake was considered to indicate PET-positive nodes (PET + Ns). The relation between pathologically positive nodes (p + Ns) and PET + Ns was estimated. Results: There were 14 PET + Ns at 12 of 66 levels (18%) in 8 of the 19 (42%) patients. There were also 6 p + Ns (1%) among 412 nodes at 5 cervical lymph node levels (8%) in 5 patients (26%). The sensitivity and specificity for PET/CT were 80% and 64%, respectively. The SUVmax was measured, and receiver operating characteristic (ROC) analysis was undertaken to obtain better accuracy. The sensitivity and specificity were 60% and 100% when the SUVmax cut-off value was set at 4.5.


Context Patients with craniopharyngioma (CP) and hypothalamic lesions (HL) have cognitive deficits. Which neural pathways are affected is unknown. Objective To determine whether there is a relationship between microstructural white matter (WM) alterations detected with diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) and cognition in adults with childhood-onset CP. Design A cross-sectional study with a median follow-up time of 22 (6–49) years after operation. Setting The South Medical Region of Sweden (2.5 million inhabitants). Participants Included were 41 patients (24 women, ≥17 years) surgically treated for childhood-onset CP between 1958–2010 and 32 controls with similar age and gender distributions. HL was found in 23 patients. Main outcome measures Subjects performed cognitive tests and magnetic resonance imaging, and images were analyzed using DTI of uncinate fasciculus, fornix, cingulum, hippocampus and hypothalamus as well as hippocampal volumetry. Results Right uncinate fasciculus was significantly altered (P ≤ 0.01). Microstructural WM alterations in left ventral cingulum were significantly associated with worse performance in visual episodic memory, explaining approximately 50% of the variation. Alterations in dorsal cingulum were associated with worse performance in immediate, delayed recall and recognition, explaining 26–38% of the variation, and with visuospatial ability and executive function, explaining 19–29%. Patients who had smaller hippocampal volume had worse general knowledge (P = 0.028), and microstructural WM alterations in hippocampus were associated with a decline in general knowledge and episodic visual memory. Conclusions A structure to function relationship is suggested between microstructural WM alterations in cingulum and in hippocampus with cognitive deficits in CP.


This paper shows the implementation of different algorithms that are used to detect audio patterns. The present work focuses on the detection of fundamental pitch, a pattern found in the voice, determining voice issues and object distance. The comparative basic tone detection is performed with algorithms working in the time domain (autocorrelation, autocorrelation optimized), frequency domain (Cepstrum, HPS (Harmonic Product Spectrum)) and Joint Implementation (Wavelet). A sound bank selecting the phoneme 'A' and 'a' because it has a wide open vowel phoneme is used. The existence of the fundamental tone can be easily detected allowing a definition of the algorithm that presents the best noise or distortion response.


The workload assessment system for the prototype multimodal command and control watchstation (MMWS) contains five modules that examine operator state, operator activity, and environmental variables to derive an integrated workload measure in near real time. The task workload estimation module obtains estimated workload data from tasks appearing on a task manager list, modified by tactical complexity and other factors (e.g., system failures). Two operator activity modules, a verbal activity module and a keypress/function usage module, measure operator speaking variables (rate and pitch changes) and console interaction variables, respectively. Finally, information regarding operator state is obtained from separate eye activity modules dedicated to the assessment of drowsiness and high workload. These modules derive real-time moving mean estimates of pupil diameter, blink rate and duration, and fixation dwell times and frequencies. Experimental data and issues concerning the development of the modules are di...


In the article the inflow of foreign direct investment (FDI) into the economy of the Lao is examined, in particular, the evolution of the policy, methods and rules of FDI attraction and regulation, as well as the dynamics and sectoral structure of FDI inflows. In result of Lao's targeted proactive government policy, the FDI inflow since 2005 have risen substantially, owing primarily to domestic and foreign investments in hydropower and mining. Since the 3rd five-year National Plan for 1991-1995, the promotion of FDI has become a priority for the government. Since 2005, the annual rate of economic growth has exceeded 5%, and by 2020, the poverty of the people has dropped significantly. Through continuous, inclusive and sustainable economic growth the country managed to get out of "least developed countries" status by 2020. The Lao PDR government continues to improve the legal framework and law enforcement practice in the field of FDI.
China, Thailand and Vietnam lead the investment process among the 10 most active foreign investors. Lao government clearly defined the desirable industries for foreign direct investment, which meet national interests - hydropower, mining, infrastructure facilities, industrial and agricultural enterprises, tourism.  In this article an overview of the most important FDI sectors in Laos is provided.
Authors have come to conclusion that the scope, volume and focus of implemented  and ongoing FDI projects has benefited the Laos in terms of socioeconomic growth, foreign exchange earnings, job creation, as well as modern equipment, technology and skills transfer. The attention of the Lao government to practical details of foreign investment in important national projects contributes to successful use of external resources for national goals.


BACKGROUND
Facial scales are used in the assessment of emotional states. The scales present different numbers of faces to measure the varying levels of intensity of children's emotional responses. This paper seeks to analyze the whether the subjects are able to match the appropriate descriptors of a degree of anxiety with the corresponding facial image.

METHOD
A sample of 463 children aged 6 to 12 years was taken from the Autonomous Communities of Murcia and the Balearics.

RESULTS
Significant differences were obtained among the six-year-olds, M = 2.58 ( SD = 0. 85), in the three-face scale and M = 2.98 ( SD = 1.52) in the five-face scale. From 7 years on, there were no significant differences in the number of correct responses between the two scales. In general, girls scored higher than boys on both the three-face scale ( M = 2.89, SD = 0.50 vs. M = 2.75, SD = 0.70) and the five-face scale ( M = 4.08, SD = 1.41 vs. M = 3.76, SD = 1.56).

CONCLUSION
The three-face scale is more appropriate for the correct matching of descriptors to different degrees of anxiety for children aged 6 to 12 years, whereas the five-face scale is more suited to children over 6 years.


Continued use and investment into fossil fuels pose significant global financial risks to fossil fuel companies and the global economy. With commitment by the international community to the unequivocal target of stopping the earth's atmosphere from warming by more than 2°C, these investments in costly ventures will clash with international climate goals and may never be viable. As the world increasingly limits carbon emissions and moves to alternative energy sources, investments in fossil fuels may take a huge hit. Despite the growth in the fossil financial market in recent decades, energy undertakings could lose value on stock exchanges, when investors realise that a large part of fossil fuel reserves cannot be burned, leading to a carbon bubble. A divestment movement in fossil fuels, concerned with effects of fossils in the global climate system, is taking shape to discourage investments in fossil fuel companies. East African countries of Tanzania, Kenya and Uganda are amenable to these risks, having discovered substantial and commercially viable quantities of oil, gas and coal.


The mission of the National Reference Centre for Staphylococcal Toxemia (CNRTS) is to participate in the epidemiological surveillance of staphylococcal toxemia in France. As these syndromes do not have to be declared, the data collected remain incomplete. Comparison of the clinical data with the results of molecular analysis of the causal strains has nonetheless enabled advances in our understanding of the present-day epidemiology of these syndromes, a clearer knowledge of their pathophysiology and isolation of a hitherto unknown entity, staphylococcal necrotizing pneumonia.


Efficient identification of fault equivalence relations is essential for effective diagnostic test pattern generation. In this paper, we present efficient techniques for identifying functionally equivalent faults in combinational circuits. The techniques are based on implication of faulty values, and evaluation of faulty functions in cones of dominator gates of fault pairs. This is enhanced by utilizing circuit redundancy information. Both static and dynamic methods are developed to exploit relations among inputs of dominator cones and further speed up the identification of equivalent fault pairs. Experimental results for all ISCAS'85 circuits, full scan versions of ISCAS'89 circuits, and ITC'99 circuits show that most of the equivalent fault pairs are identified. Significant reductions are obtained in the runtime needed to prove equivalence and the runtime for diagnostic test pattern generation compared to previously proposed approaches.


Head and neck cancer is a growing worldwide public health problem, accounting for approximately 1,500,000 new cases and 500,000 deaths annually. Substance P (SP) is a peptide of the tachykinin family, which has roles related to a large number of physiological mechanisms in humans. The implications of SP in carcinogenesis have recently been reported through the stimulation of the neurokinin 1 receptor (NK1R), or directly, through the effects derived from the constitutive activation of NK1R. Consequently, SP/NK1R seems to play relevant roles in cancer, upregulating cell proliferation, cell migration and chronic inflammation, among other oncogenic actions. Furthermore, there is growing evidence pointing to a central role for SP in tumour progression, singularly so in laryngeal and oral squamous cell carcinomas. The current narrative review of the literature focuses on the relationship between the SP/NK1R system and chronic inflammation and cancer in the head-and-neck region. We described a role for SP/NK1R in the transition from chronic inflammation of the head and neck mucosa, to preneoplastic and neoplastic transformation and progression.


Recent advances in high brightness rf gun technology, coupled with novel laser systems and architecture have enabled the development of a new class of compact, tunable, monochromatic light sources capable of producing MeV photons with unprecedented brightness. Such new sources rely on Thomson scattering of incident photons produced by a TW-class laser off a bright relativistic electron beam to generate Doppler-upshifted photons in a highly collimated beam. Scaling laws [1] show that a frequency-doubled, 532 nm wavelength, 1 J, 10 ps Fourier transform-limited drive laser pulse interacting with a 250 MeV, 1 nC, 10 ps, 1 mm.mrad normalized emittance, with 0.1% relative energy spread, can yield a 2.24 MeV γ-ray flash with a peak brightness exceeding 10 23 photons/[mm 2 x mrad 2 x s x 0.1% bandwidth]. This number is > 15 orders of magnitude beyond the output of a third-generation synchrotron at the same photon energy. Above ~ 100 keV, the photons can interact with nuclei, and nuclear applications become viable. In this paper, we present a technical overview of TREX sources and their capabilities, and give a few examples of potential applications of interest.


Recent observations have shown that most of the attacks are fruits of collaboration among attackers. In this work we have developed a coalition formation game to model the collusive behavior among attackers. The novelty of this work is that we are the first to investigate the coalition formation dynamics among attackers with different efficiency. Most of the related works have modeled the attacker as a single entity. We define a new parameter called friction to represent the unwillingness of an attacker to collude. We have shown that the proportion of attackers in the Maximum Average Payoff Coalition (MAPC) decreases with efficiency. We have also shown that as the friction increases, size and heterogeneity of MAPC decrease. We show, using text analysis on a hacker web forum chat data, that the hacker collaboration network shows a strong small-world characteristics. We identify the leaders in these coalitions. The cluster compositions of the hacker collaboration network agree with our model. We also develop method to estimate the friction parameters for the attackers to decide optimal coalition to join. As this model provides insight into coalition formation among attackers, e.g., leaders, composition, and homogeneity, this model will be helpful to develop better defender strategies.


Manure applied to cropland may serve as a source of weed introduction and dispersal. In 36 manure samples from 20 farms, apparently-viable seeds from 13 grasses and 35 broadleaf plants were found. Common lambsquarters was on more than half the farms, yellow foxtail on 35%, common chickweed and dandelion on 30%, and wild mustard, redroot pigweed, and barnyardgrass on 25%. Four farms had manure with no seeds at all; the remainder averaged 75 100 per 1000 kg manure. Twelve milking-cow and heifer barns on six farms with large velvetleaf infestations also were sampled with an average of 133 000 seeds per 1000 kg manure. Only one barn contained velvetleaf seeds. When compared to soil seedbank numbers, manure is not an important seed source for New York farms. However, problems may arise with imported feeds heavily infested with weed seed or which contain even small numbers of noxious weeds.


We present a theoretical investigation of a model clay dispersion in 1-1 salt solutions by varying the particle volume fraction and ionic strength as well as the charge distribution on the clay platelets. The platelets are modeled as discs with charged sites distributed on a hexagonal lattice. The edge sites can be positively charged while the remaining sites are negative giving rise to a strong charge anisotropy. Simulations are carried out using a Monte Carlo method in the canonical ensemble. The interactions between the platelet sites are described with a screened Coulomb potential plus a short range repulsive potential. Simulations show a complex phase behavior. When the charge anisotropy is strong, i.e. all edge sites are positively charged, a fluid phase dominated by repulsion is found at low volume fraction and ionic strength. When increasing the latter an attractive liquid phase forms. At these volume fractions the platelets aggregate in an "Overlapping Coins" configuration. With increasing volume fraction the dispersion becomes unstable and the pressure goes through a van der Waals loop. A liquid crystalline phase, Smectic B, forms in the thermodynamically unstable region. On the other side of the van der Waals loop a stable gel phase is found. A phase separation between a fluid and a gel is thus predicted. The threshold value of the volume fraction at which the phase separation occurs is found to increase with the salt concentration. The gel structure is a mixture of "Overlapping Coins" and "House of Cards" configurations. When the charge anisotropy is intermediate, no phase separation occurs. Instead, a gel forms from a sol of clusters of individual particles randomly oriented that progressively grow with the volume fraction. These results are discussed in light of experimental observations on clay suspensions.


The typically poorer level of performance of the NHS in England in winters will soon be normal in summer months if current trends continue, a new analysis has concluded.

The study by the health charities the Nuffield Trust and the Health Foundation analysed data from the past five years to assess the root causes of the "winter pressures" that have left the NHS struggling to cope.1

The researchers observed that problems that usually occur only in winter such as slow ambulance response times and long waits for admission to a ward were increasingly occurring at other times of year. They said that this caused the service to enter last winter (2014-15) from a historically poor starting point, and they warned that the trend could cause a "downward spiral" in NHS performance if it continued.

Despite the mild weather conditions in winter 2014-15, the report said that that winter was …


Dr Chin and co-workers 1 have described an approach to addressing drug interactions using adapted dosing which targets a presumed therapeutically beneficial plasma concentration range. They also proposed this approach for the described interaction between the prototypic CYP3A4/P-gp inducer rifampicin and the direct reversible thrombin inhibitor dabigatran etexilate.

We would like to raise our concerns over this approach for the following reasons. Firstly we demonstrated a reduction in exposure to one-third (or in other words by about two-thirds of the reference exposure) in a formally designed drug–drug interaction study [2], which would imply that the dose would have to be increased by a factor of ∼3. This would require a very large dose of 3 × 150 mg twice daily or 900 mg day−1, which is a dosing regimen that has never been given to any human. Furthermore, one also does not have data using rifampacin concomitantly with dabigatran etexilate in patients, when they often will not have been fasting (as done in the phase I study) and would be expected to take all of their medications at the same time of day (again different from the phase I study).

More importantly, from a clinical point of view, rifampicin is not a chronic treatment and, after cessation of rifampicin therapy, the inductive effect will decay over time. This would preferably require a tiered dose reduction. There is, however, the possibility that this dose adaptation after rifampicin treatment cessation would not be accomplished appropriately or could even be completely forgotten. Since the prevention of strokes is the primary goal of the administration of any anticoagulant, prior to the use of a simple dosing paradigm as proposed in the comment of Dr Chin and coworkers 1, we strongly suggest that human patient data be developed.

Thus, we are of the strong opinion that the current label recommendation warning against concomitant dabigatran etexilate and rifampicin use is appropriate in order to ensure the therapeutic efficacy and safety of dabigatran etexilate.


Contextual bandits provide an effective way to model the dynamic data problem in ML by leveraging online (incremental) learning to continuously adjust the predictions based on changing environment. We explore details on contextual bandits, an extension to the traditional reinforcement learning (RL) problem and build a novel algorithm to solve this problem using an array of action-based learners. We apply this approach to model an article recommendation system using an array of stochastic gradient descent (SGD) learners to make predictions on rewards based on actions taken. We then extend the approach to a publicly available MovieLens dataset and explore the findings. First, we make available a simplified simulated dataset showing varying user preferences over time and how this can be evaluated with static and dynamic learning algorithms. This dataset made available as part of this research is intentionally simulated with limited number of features and can be used to evaluate different problem-solving strategies. We will build a classifier using static dataset and evaluate its performance on this dataset. We show limitations of static learner due to fixed context at a point of time and how changing that context brings down the accuracy. Next we develop a novel algorithm for solving the contextual bandit problem. Similar to the linear bandits, this algorithm maps the reward as a function of context vector but uses an array of learners to capture variation between actions/arms. We develop a bandit algorithm using an array of stochastic gradient descent (SGD) learners, with separate learner per arm. Finally, we will apply this contextual bandit algorithm to predicting movie ratings over time by different users from the standard Movie Lens dataset and demonstrate the results.


The conditions for the optimal non-reciprocal operation of longitudinally magnetised ferrite-coupled line (FCL) are obtained for the first time from the scattering-matrix treatment, and the necessary conditions for the multicomponent reciprocal network joint with a FCL section to be a circulator are specified. Using these optimal conditions, the minimum length of the FCL is also found. A self-biasing circulator with the minimum length of FCL at millimetre-wave frequency is reported and its scattering characteristics are simulated and discussed.


Wavelet packet energy (WPE) features are usually used to detect power quality disturbances (PQDs) in recent literatures, but by computing, we find that WPE features are not valid to detect faint disturbances. In this paper, wavelet packet energy entropy (WPEE) and weighted support vector machines (WSVMs) are utilized to detect and classify PQDs automatically. Electric power quality is an aspect of power engineering that has been with us since the inception of power systems. The types of concerned disturbances including voltage sag, swell, harmonics, flicker and interruption. Wavelet packet are utilized to decompose the signals into different special frequency bands, then to obtain five common features for sampling PQ disturbances including energy entropies of frequency bands. WSVMs are designed and trained for making a decision regarding the type of the disturbances. Simulation illustrates the algorithm feasibility and effectiveness.


Chemical treatments of paraffin and asphaltene deposition by means of cleaning fluids were carried out in this research project. Research focused on the characterization of asphaltene and paraffin materials and dissolution of asphaltene and paraffin deposits using surfactant/micellar fluids developed early in the project. The key parameters controlling the dissolution rate were identified and the process of asphaltene/paraffin dissolution were examined using microscopic apparatus. Numerical modeling was also carried out to understand the dissolution of paraffin deposits. The results show that fused chemical reaction systems are a promising way of removing paraffin deposits in subsea pipelines. The fused system may be in the form of alternate pulses, emulsions systems or encapsulated catalyst systems. Fused reaction systems, in fact, are extremely cost-effective--less than 10% of the cost of replacing entire sections of the blocked pipeline. The results presented in this report can have a real impact on the petroleum industry and the National Oil Program, if it is realized that the remediation technologies developed here can substantially delay abandonment (due to asphaltene/paraffin plugging) of domestic petroleum resources. The report also sheds new light on the nature and properties of asphaltenes and paraffin deposits which will ultimately help the scientific and research community to develop effective methods in eliminating asphaltene/paraffin deposition problems. It must also be realized that asphaltene remediation technologies developed and presented in this report are a real alternative to aromatic cleaning fluids currently used by the petroleum industry.


ABSTRACT T he Indigenous Prohibited Forest of Rumbio provide benefits for the community in the form of non-timber forest products and environmental services in the form of water resources, but amid the increasing demand for land and economic demands put pressure on forests that threaten forest sustainability. Therefore, this study examines the factors that influence the participation of surrounding communities in conservation and environmental management activities and environmental services incentive system that can be adopted in the Indigenous Prohibited Forest of Rumbio. The method used in this research is survey method with questionnaire and in-depth interviews . Data analysis is descriptive using AHP method and multiple linear regression. This study result in that developed incentive programs for people around T he Indigenous Prohibited Forest of Rumbio in the framework of forest conservation are employment (24.17%), subsidy in second rank  (20.15%) and improvement of conservation techniques in third rank (18 . 90%) . Factors that significantly influence the participation of respondents are education, knowledge, level of dependence on forests, customary institutions. Incentives are directed to the payment of environmental services by granting rights in the management of environmental services such as water use, non-timber forest product development, and tourism and education activities involving the community. Keywords: system , incentives, environmental services, participation, preference


Cyber-Physical System (CPS) applications in lower-extremity bony-fracture rehabilitation systems require real-time biophysical data. Emerging and interesting solutions are microwave approaches that provide good contrast between hard and soft tissues and between local anomalies inside tissues. Preliminarily some contacting non-invasive planar methods have been investigated in their feasibility of detecting human tissues variations with promising results. In this work we introduce two new microwave planar sensors for a new approach of hip fracture healing follow-up tool. They are designed for improved resolution and penetration at frequencies between 1 to 3 GHz in detecting variations in bone, muscle or fat tissues that are expected during a rehabilitation process. The resonant devices are optimized using Frequency Domain Reflectometry and CST® environment and validated using clinical trials with volunteers. The new approach is validated using clinical trials with volunteers and patients. These outcomes further emphasize the feasibility of devising systems for fracture rehabilitation.


The theory of comparative advantage has two facets which should be clearly distinguished: 1) positive; and, 2) welfare. The former relates to the formulation of hypotheses to explain the pattern of trade; the latter concerns the advantages to be derived from the possibility of various forms of tradel . This paper examines the status of the welfare propositions of trade theory in relation to 1) some features of underdeveloped countries; and, 2) the phenomenon of growth.


Objective: To assess mavacamten's role in hypertrophic cardiomyopathy treatment. Data Sources: In addition to clinical guidelines, package inserts, and general reviews, we searched PubMed using the term mavacamten from inception to June 11, 2022. Study Selection and Data Extraction: English language studies describing mavacamten's mechanism of action, pharmacokinetics, drug interactions, clinical and economic outcomes, and adverse events. Data Synthesis: Mavacamten reduces left ventricular outflow obstruction and New York Heart Association functional class while improving Kansas City Cardiomyopathy Questionnaire-Clinical Summary Scores in patients with obstructive hypertrophic cardiomyopathy. With an acquisition cost of $245.20 per capsule, it would cost $1.2 million for every additional quality-adjusted life year. In those with unobstructive hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, there were improvements in N-terminal probrain natriuretic peptide and high-sensitivity cardiac troponin biochemical markers. Mavacamten is a substrate for CYP2C19 and CYP3A4, and a CYP enzyme inducer. Relevance to Patient Care and Clinical Practice: Patients with obstructive hypertrophic cardiomyopathy and an ejection fraction ≥55% have a new option if they remain symptomatic despite maximally tolerated β-blocker or non-dihydropyridine calcium channel blocker therapy. It is an alternative to disopyramide therapy, which has poor patient tolerance, or septal reduction therapies, which are invasive. However, mavacamten is not cost-effective and its role in nonobstructive hypertrophic cardiomyopathy is not well established. Conclusions: Mavacamten is a new option for patients with refractory obstructive hypertrophic cardiomyopathy and an ejection fraction ≥55% but its pricing makes therapy not cost-effective. Final health outcomes are not fully elucidated and additional studies are needed to determine long-term effects.


After distalization of maxillary molars, retaining it in the new position is of utmost importance. There are various methods available to avoid taxing freshly distilized molars. We have discussed various methods to reinforce anchorage post-molar ditalization. We have introduced a new appliance that is a modified Nance palatal button for continuous distally directed force on the molars.


Abstract Constructional sedimentary history of coastal barriers can provide insights regarding meteorological and oceanographic processes, and relative sea-level changes. We investigated the Holocene evolution of a segment of the Rio Grande do Sul Coastal Plain in southernmost Brazil. Data were obtained from ground-penetrating radargrams, optically stimulated luminescence dating, altimetry measurements, Google Earth imagery, and aerial photographs. These data allowed a qualitative and quantitative analysis of the beach profiles recorded in the radargrams. From which eolian, backshore/foreshore, breaker bars, and upper and lower shoreface radar facies were identified. The beach-related radar facies are recorded in twenty-eight progradational sand units (sigmoidal bodies). These units record increments of relatively steady deposition bounded by erosional surfaces produced by anomalous, high-magnitude storm events taking place about every 250 years. The upper shoreface strata include two to three breaker bars. Several pieces of evidence (number of breaker bars, upper shoreface gradient and progradation rate) suggest an alternation between dissipative and intermediate stages of barrier morphodynamics and a decrease of wave energy from 2 ka onwards. The barrier prograded during the last 7.1 ka, and initially, barrier progradation occurred because of a normal regression during a relative sea-level rise followed by a stillstand. Later, barrier progradation took place as a forced regression driven by a relative sea-level fall.


Since proof-nets for MLL- were introduced by Girard (1987), several studies have appeared dealing with its soundness proof. Bellin & Van de Wiele (1995) produced an elegant proof based on properties of subnets (empires and kingdoms) and Robinson (2003) proposed a straightforward generalization of this presentation for proof-nets from sequent calculus for classical logic. In 2014 it was presented an extension of these studies to obtain a proof of the sequentialization theorem for the fragment of N-Graphs with conjunction, disjunction and negation connectives, via the notion of sub-N-Graphs. N-Graphs is a symmetric natural deduction calculus with multiple conclusions that adopts Danos-Regnier's criterion and has defocussing switchable links. In this paper, we present a sequentization for full propositional classical N-Graphs, showing how to find a split node in the middle of the proof even with a global rule for discharging hypothesis.


The current competitive health care market includes consumers and payers who are demanding that providers demonstrate and validate the effectiveness of their interventions in promoting patient outcomes. Collaboration in the form of interdisciplinary teams is an effective mechanism for enhancing patient outcomes. The CPT acts as the vehicle for driving the outcomes management process. Seven skills used by CPT members enhance collaboration: clinical competence, credibility, consistency, assertiveness, structured meetings, valuing of time, and marketing of the CPT. Change is inevitable, and strategies for change will be useful in achieving the outcomes of carefully planned objectives and goals.


The salt-induced microheterogeneity (MH) formation in binary liquid mixtures is studied by small-angle x-ray scattering (SAXS) and liquid state theory. Previous experiments have shown that this phenomenon occurs for antagonistic salts, whose cations and anions prefer different components of the solvent mixture. However, so far the precise mechanism leading to the characteristic length scale of MHs has remained unclear. Here, it is shown that MHs can be generated by the competition of short-ranged interactions and long-ranged monopole-dipole interactions. The experimental SAXS patterns can be reproduced quantitatively by fitting to the derived correlation functions without assuming any specific model. The dependency of the MH structure with respect to ionic strength and temperature is analyzed. Close to the demixing phase transition, critical-like behavior occurs with respect to the spinodal line in the phase diagram.


This study aimed to evaluate the morphophysiological characteristics of irrigated Pennisetum purpureum cv. Cameroon subjected to doses of an organic compost from waste generated by production and slaughter of small ruminants. The experiment was carried out in a grassland, during four growth cycles of 60 days. The area is located in the Embrapa Caprinos e Ovinos unit, in Sobral - CE, Brazil. Treatments consisted of organic compost doses (0, 13.3, 26.6, 39.9, 53.2 and 79.8 Mg ha-1) plus a mineral fertilization (nitrogen and potassium) at doses equivalent to 720 and 900 kg ha-1 year-1, respectively. The experimental design was arranged in completely randomized blocks, totaling four blocks with seven treatments each, in a split plot scheme with repeated readings over time. The plots corresponded to seven doses of an organic compost and an additional treatment (mineral fertilizer), and subplots to four growth cycles. The variables analyzed were total herbage biomass (THB), canopy height (CH), tiller population density (TPD) and water use efficiency for green leaf biomass production (WUEGLB) and green stem biomass (WUEGSB). In the first cycle, TPD decreased linearly with increasing doses of the compost, with 47 tillers m2 at the dose of 79.8 Mg ha-1, while THB and WUEGLB variables behaved quadratically, with a maximum point of 23.53 Mg DM ha-1 cycle-1, and 16.33 kg DM mm-1 for the doses of 66.52 and 62.94 Mg ha-1 of the organic compost. We concluded plant structural characteristics and water use efficiency were responsive to applications of the organic compost, and we recommend the dose of 67.7 Mg ha-1.


The high-temperature superconductor Bi2Sr2 CaCu2Oy (Bi-2212) is a viable candidate for low-temperature, high-field (>; 20 T) superconducting magnet applications due to its high irreversibility field and ability to be formed into a high-current, round multifilamentary wire. However, after over 20 years of research, a clear understanding of current flow within these round wires remains elusive. We present here a model for current flow in these round wire conductors based on a microstructural feature that is continuous along the wire axis. Scanning and transmission electron microscopy along with micro X-ray computed tomography were used to define key microstructural features and establish relationships between the structure and superconducting properties. A model was developed based on the layer of well-formed Bi-2212 that is found next to the silver sheath. This model correctly predicts observed trends with increasing Jc with smaller filament diameters and provides a basis for developing new experiments to understand and improve this important high-temperature superconducting conductor.


Sapphire (the Screen Allocation Package Providing Helpful Icons and Rectangular Environments) is a powerful window manager running on the PERQ personal workstation. Following some background material, the author provides a tutorial on Sapphire's screen allocation package, focusing on its icons and user commands. The icons in Sapphire are intended to enhance the user's productivity when executing multiple tasks concurrently. Therefore, they present six pieces of information about the process being run, as well as two pieces of information about the status of the window. Thus, the user can easily tell whether the process running in the window has an error or wants attention and what percentage of the task has been completed. The user interface provides full functionality from both the pointing device and the keyboard and is easy for the novice while providing simple and powerful operations for experts. All commands are available from pop-up menus, but accelerators allow the most common commands to be executed with a single button press. The picture in the tracking symbol changes to show the operation that will be performed. This user interface promotes experimentation, since there is always appropriate feedback, and it is always possible to abort an operation once it has been started.


BaTi2O5 film was prepared on MgO (100) substrate by laser ablation, and the structure and electric property of the film were investigated. The film was b-axis oriented and epitaxially grown on the substrate along two in-plane directions with the a-axes ([100]-orientation) perpendicular to each other. The b-axis oriented BaTi2O5 film exhibited a sharp permittivity maximum (~ 2000) and had a high Curie temperature (750 K). The electrical conductivity increased with temperature and showed the Arrhenius relationship having an activation energy of 1.25 eV.


Objective: This study was planned to assess the distribution of yeasts and moulds in different types of cheese, and to study the effect of natamycin on their survival during manufacture of Feta cheese and its storage.
Materials and methods: A total of 150 samples of local manufactured cheese were collected randomly from markets of Qena city in Egypt which were subjected for mycological examination by traditional microbiological examinations. The effects of different concentrations of natamycin on survival of yeasts and moulds in Feta cheese at room temperature, refrigeration condition, and pH values were evaluated.
Results: Highest yeasts and moulds contaminations were recorded in Kareish cheese with a mean value of 2.40x106±9.72x105 and 4.64x102±1.18x102, respectively. The isolated moulds were mostly Cladosporium, Penicillium and Aspergillus, while yeast genera were species of Candida and Debaryomyces hansenii. Yeasts and moulds could not be detected after 24 h, and after curd in Feta cheese samples containing natamycin (at 0.2% or 0.4%) when the cheese samples were stored either at room or refrigeration temperature. Gradual decrease of pH value was also recorded in the cheese.
Conclusion: Natamycin has strong antifungal activity and can extend cheese shelf-life during storage period.


Dr. David Sugarbaker has often been described as a force of nature. His passion for clinical excellence drove him to establish the modern day paradigm for thoracic surgical education in the United States and abroad. Dr. Sugarbaker advanced the field of invasive interventions for mesothelioma and other thoracic malignancies and established world premier programs at the Brigham & Women's Hospital in Boston and, more recently, at Baylor St. Luke's Medical Center in Houston.


Among the numerous interpretations of Walter Benjamin, the short sketch "Naples" – collaboration with Anna Lācis or Asja – has become particularly renowned. However, Asja as a co-author has frequently been overlooked. This article makes an attempt to provide an interpretation on the collaboration of Asja and Benjamin by using the method of reading proposed in the conclusion of Borges's short story "Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote", which allows one to re-read "Odyssey" as if it were written after "Aeneid". Likewise, we might analyse "Naples", looking at it from the perspective of Benjamin's unfinished work "The Arcades Project". Thus, a great number of notes relevant to the methodology of "The Arcades Project" can be seen fully implemented in the seemingly superficial travel description of "Naples". Asja's influence on Benjamin might be related to the theatre, and the theatricalism of the life in Naples is brilliantly conveyed in their text. Likewise, the Italian author Kurzio Malaparte builds the scene of the description of the stairs of Gradoni di Chiaia in Naples in his typical surreal style, as a tragicomic farce, and that is yet another view of Naples, which highlights the significance of Asja and Benjamin's work. Part of this significance is the influence of Asja's theatrical thinking on Benjamin's methodology, which, in all likelihood, is never to be fully verified.


Abstract In the past years, social network analysis (SNA) techniques got disseminated to a large number of fields, such as, disease spread, animal group behaviour, organization dynamics, and the like. A particular use for SNA is to help in understanding how organizations work. It focuses not only on issues relative to how to manage organizations, but how people accomplish their work and share their knowledge by means of their work networks. Understanding how people actually work in an organization helps managers to diagnose gaps in communication and collaboration, and consequently improve work efficiencies and effectiveness. In this paper we present some challenges in using SNA techniques to understand how work is done in a large IT service delivery organization. Using SNA it is possible to attain a better understanding of the working environment as well as diagnose some of the issues workers face everyday. Some major technical and methodological challenges are: to define the importance of each media and that there are a few SNA algorithms that can work with multi-edges or weighted graphs. Thus, a computational challenge in organization data rests on how to merge the different media available and how to measure the importance and consequently give value for e-mail, instant messenger, traces of work, hierarchical structure, collaborative documents, intern communities, and face-to- face communications, for example. In sum, this paper discusses some of these challenges that emerged in our exploration of work networks, and suggests a few techniques and approaches to tackle them.


OBJECTIVE
To study complex visual hallucinations in visually impaired individuals.

METHODS
A prospective comparative study involving structured history taking and cognitive assessment in 48 consecutive visually impaired individuals with best-corrected visual acuity of 20/200 or worse and an age-matched cohort of 48 consecutive patients with visual acuity of 20/40 or better in at least 1 eye.

RESULTS
Thirty visually impaired subjects (63%) experienced hallucinations, unrelated to specific ocular pathology. None volunteered the symptom; 2 admitted hallucinations on nonleading questioning and 28 on direct questioning. All displayed insight into the unreality of their hallucinations, although 18 (60%) achieved this after initial deception. Seventeen (57%) expressed concern; 7 (23%) experienced disturbing images. Nineteen (63%) feared being labeled as insane were they to admit to hallucinations, while 10 (33%) were fearful of impending insanity. Sixteen (94%) of 17 concerned patients derived comfort from sympathetic reassurance that their hallucinations did not represent sinister pathology. In contrast, none of the individuals with normal vision experienced any hallucinations (P<.001). Cognition was intact in all groups.

CONCLUSIONS
Complex visual hallucinations with insight commonly occur in visually impaired, cognitively intact individuals due to acquired visual impairment and are unrelated to chronological age. Hallucinatory experiences are almost invariably admitted to only on direct questioning, due to fears of being considered insane. Although generally pleasant, hallucinations may cause distress, because of content or implications of the hallucinatory activity. Sympathetic explanation affords significant emotional relief.


Wild plants are creation of nature which are source of food, fuel,shelter,fibers,gum,andherbal medicine. Present study was carried out to investigate the biochemicals and phytochemicals of wild and micropropagated Rhazya stricta plant. The present investigation was aimed to promote the benefits of wild plants. For this purpose, in-vitro micropropagation of Rhazya stricta (family Apocynaceae) was successfully achieved. 20% extract was prepared in acetone, ethanol and water solvents from stem, root, fruit and leaf of Rhazya stricta(collected from Jamshoro district) and root, stem and leaves from micropropagated plant which were investigated to analyze the phytochemical and biochemicals. Result showed that highest anti-oxidants were observed from acetone extract of leaves (in-vivo) as 13.60mg/ml, flavonoids form ethanol extract of fruit as 1.98mg/ml, total phenolics from ethanol extract of leaves (in-vivo) as 0.84mg/ml, tannin from acetone extract of stem(in-vitro) as 0.61mg/ml, reducing power from ethanol extract of stem (in-vitro) as 1.82mg/ml, protein from acetone extract of leaves (in-vivo) as 9.91mg/ml, total sugar from acetone extract of leaves (in-vitro) as 8.00mg/ml and reducing sugar from ethanol extract of leaves(in-vitro) as 0.99mg/ml were found from under investigation plants.


Enhancement of electrical properties of carbon fiber reinforced (CFR) epoxy matrix composites was aimed by incorporating varying amounts (0.5, 1, 2, 4, 7, 10, and 15 wt% - percentage by weight) of carbon nanoparticles (CNPs) into the resin [CNPs used were multi walled carbon nanotubes (MWCNTs) and graphene oxides (GOs)]. Besides, within these CNP percentages, MWCNT to GO composition ratio was also changed (100:0, 80:20, 50:50, 20:80, and 0:100) in order to investigate the synergy between these two type of CNPs. Carbon fiber/epoxy composites were produced via prepregging technique, followed by compression molding method. The change in electrical conductivity of the composites was examined in three directions: Fiber direction, transverse direction, and through-thickness direction. Additionally, mechanical property investigation was carried out by determining the interlaminar shear strength (ILSS) of composites by conducting short beam shear tests (SBS). Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and energy-dispersive x-ray spectroscopy (EDS) analyses were performed for morphology investigation and element characterization of the CNP surfaces. The results revealed up to 5.8 (for 15wt% and 100:0), 217 (for 0.5wt% and 100:0), and 34 (for 0.5wt% and 20:80) fold increases in conductivity values in fiber, transverse, and thickness directions, respectively, when compared to that of the neat composite. For the thickness direction, the synergy between the NPs was obvious while some other high values were also achieved for other CNP compositions. Also, approximately 87% increase in ILSS value (for 0.5wt% and 100:0) was achieved by CNP addition.


Declaration of interest None. The aims of this paper are to discuss the measures used to evaluate the merits of psychiatric biomedical research, and to propose a new approach using a multidimensional selection of appropriate measures. Such measures can be used, for example, to inform decisions on the allocation of research funds (Lewison et al, 1998) within an institution or nationally, or on academic promotions. The choice of which indicators to use is critical. Different single or combined measures can produce entirely different results and implications. We propose that quantitative evaluations of scientific merit in a particular field of biomedical research need a fair set of relevant standardised indicators, chosen according to the type of research being evaluated. The set relevant for each sub-field of research can combine established bibliometric assessments (e.g. impact factors or citation indices); derived measures such as the 'world scale' score discussed below; and new indicators based on journal peer esteem, impact on clinical practice, medical education or health policy. Our approach comprises three steps, beginning with a clear definition of scientific 'domains' with an agreed set of boundaries, which are then translated into 'filters' to identify relevant publications from bibliometric databases, finally leading to the creation of standardised measures of merit in biomedical research. A domain can be defined at three levels:


SummaryThe polymerase chain reaction was used to amplify polymorphic DNA using ten random primers on ten red raspberry cultivars. Nine of the primers successfully amplified DNA fragments from all of the cultivars. Each primer could identify between one and eight cultivars and using the nine primers which generated bands, specific fingerprints could be produced for cultivar identification. The relationship between the cultivars was examined using a similarity index and the results compared with those produced from the published ancestry of these cultivars.


In creating a pattern classifier, feature selection is often used to prune irrelevant and noisy features to producing effective features. Manually developing a feature set can be a very time consuming and costly endeavor. In this paper, an efficient feature selection algorithm based on improved binary particle swarm optimization and support vector machine Algorithm (IBPSO-SVM) was used. First a population of particles (feature subsets) were randomly generated, and then optimized by IBPSO-SVM wrapper algorithms; finally the best fitness feature subset was applied to SVM classification. The simulation experiment results have proved that the feature subset selection algorithm based on IBPSO-SVM is very effective.


The study of water resources' dynamics and vulnerability in Rusizi national Park aimed to achieve the following objectives: (1) to identify, characterize and map water bodies, (2) to analyze and explain their periodical evolutions and (3) to analyze the spatial transformation processes affecting them. It is a contribution to the knowledge of the Park's water resources for the development of monitoring systems and the sustainability of their functions as strategic ecosystems. It is based on the diachronic analysis of land cover from multi-date Landsat images of years 1984, 1990 and 2011 (TM), 2000 (ETM+) and 2015 (OLI-TIRS), landscape ecology tools and socio-economic and climate data. Supervised classification of images allowed the identification of 9 to 10 land cover classes including water bodies, according to years. A total number of 17 water bodies were detected from 1984 to 2015. During this period, regularly detected and dried up water bodies represent 18.2% and 54.6% respectively. The rates of water bodies' drying up were 69.2% in 2000 and 64.2% in 2015. Water bodies are experiencing a great deterioration in number, size and stability. The Park's water coverage has decreased from 3.56% in 1984 to 2.43% in 2015. This corresponds to a decline of 31.2%. The water bodies' stability, which was 75.70% between 1984 and 1990, represents only 42.78% between 1984 and 2015. The stability of individual water bodies is decreasing as well while low spatial connectivities are being observed between some close water bodies. The spatial transformation processes carrying these dynamics are patch enlargement, patch creation, patch attrition and patch dissection, depending on the period. Global warming, rainfall variability and farming activities like land drainage and irrigation are the most important threats to water resources.


Purpose. To gather consumer input about approaches to providing energy composition information for foods on fast-food restaurant menus. Design. We asked a subset of individuals (n = 150) in an experimental study about the influence of nutrition labeling on fast-food meal choices to evaluate calorie information on mock fast-food menus in various formats. Setting. Three community sites in the Minneapolis-St. Paul, Minnesota, metropolitan area. Subjects. Adolescents and adults who ate fast food at least once per week were recruited. Measures. Via a series of open- and close-ended questions, participants gave feedback about several formats for providing energy composition information for foods on fast-food restaurant menus. Analysis. Means and frequencies were calculated, and χ2 tests were conducted. Results. When asked to compare a menu that provided calorie information for each menu item with a menu that provided the number of minutes of running that would be required to burn the calories contained in each menu item, 71.0% of participants preferred the calorie information over the physical activity information. Participants also compared two approaches to providing caloric reference information on the menu (average daily calorie needs per day vs. per meal), and 61.3% preferred the calorie needs—per-meal format. Conclusion. Our results may be useful in designing approaches to providing energy composition information for foods on fast-food restaurant menus.


Distance sampling is a survey technique for estimating the abundance or density of wild animal populations. Detection probabilities of animals inherently differ by species, age class, habitats, or sex. By incorporating the change in an observer's ability to detect a particular class of animals as a function of distance, distance sampling leads to density estimates that are comparable across different species, ages, habitats, sexes, and so on. Increasing interest in evaluating the effects of management practices on animal populations in an experimental context has led to a need for suitable methods of analyzing distance sampling data. We outline a two-stage approach for analyzing distance sampling data from designed experiments, in which a two-step bootstrap is used to quantify precision and identify treatment effects. We illustrate this approach using data from a before—after control-impact experiment designed to assess the effects of large-scale prescribed fire treatments on bird densities in ponderosa pine forests of the southwestern United States.


Abstract Aim: The aim of the study is to measure the vasoactive peptides, urotensin II (UII), endothelin (ET) and adrenomedullin (ADM) in a well-characterized population of normal controls and patients with essential hypertension, and to study their association with this disease. Methods: The contents of plasma UII, ET and ADM were measured by radioimmunoassay in 40 normal controls and 120 patients with essential hypertension. Echocardiographic examinations were performed using an ultrasonic system, and the left ventricular end diastolic diameter (LVEDd) along with the left ventricular posterior wall thickness (LVPWT) and interventricular septal thickness (IST) were determined. The left ventricular mass index (LVMI) was calculated according to the method reported by Devereux et al. Results: Plasma UII, ET and ADM contents were increased in patients than healthy controls (3.28 ± 1.257 pmol/L vs. 1.80 ± 0.639 pmol/L, p < 0.01), and correlated with the severity of hypertension in patients. Besides, all the three vasoactive peptides in plasma had significant correlations with SBP, IST, LVPWT, LVMI (p ≤ 0.05), while they showed insignificant associations with LVEDd (p > 0.05). UII was remarkably associated with ADM content, while the association of UII level with LVEDd and ET content were not significant. Conclusion: The vasoactive peptides UII, ET and ADM may be involved in the pathophysiologic process of essential hypertension, and function as the indicators for severity of this disease.


OBJECTIVE
Evaluation of clinical and biochemical differences between various forms of thyroid dysgenesia in children.

METHODS
The study involved 102 children at the age between 4.8 and 14.2 years who were born with congenital hypothyroidism (CH), as diagnosed by neonatal screening examinations. In all the children diagnosis was settled and the levothyroxine (L-T4) administration was started by the 19th day of life. Out of the examined children, 79 were selected with following three forms of developmental thyroid disorders: Group I--athyroidism (thyroid aplasia or agenesis), Group II--thyroid hypoplasia, Group III--thyroid ectopy. On the basis of neonatal TSH (nTSH) levels obtained by screening and serum TSH, FT4 and Tg concentrations, the severity of hypothyroidism was determined at the time of diagnosis. Physical and mental development of the children was evaluated on the basis of growth and bone age indices and Wechsler's scale, respectively.

RESULTS
Developmental disorders were diagnosed in 79 cases (77.4% CH) which included 45 cases (44.1%) of athyroidism, 31 cases (30.4%) of thyroid hypoplasia and 3 cases (2.9%) of thyroid ectopy. The physical and mental development in the studied groups was evaluated as normal.

CONCLUSIONS
In the group of children with athyroidism, significantly lower growth indices and IQ values were found in comparison with respective values observed in the other study groups. However, the indices of physical and mental development in all the studied groups were within the normal values for children population. An early diagnosis and early administration of hormonal replacement therapy by L-T4 ensure normal development of children with CH, regardless of underlying causes and associated with them severity of congenital hypothyroidism.


Biofuels are currently produced from agricultural crops, and an increasing use of crops for this application is expected in the EU in the years to come. The dominating crops cultivated in the EU for biofuel production today have a relatively large environmental impact. The European Energy Agency has identified several lignocellulosic crops, including industrial hemp, as more sustainable potential alternatives. However, the biofuel yield from industrial hemp was largely unexplored before the work presented in this thesis was initiated. In this thesis work, the focus was on the potential of using hemp for methane production through anaerobic digestion.
The biomass yield per hectare and the specific methane yield were determined at four different hemp harvest times. The specific methane yield did not change with harvest time, the average yield was 234 ± 35 m3/t volatile solids. The most suitable harvest time was therefore at the time of highest biomass yield, in this study found in the beginning of September to the beginning of October. The biomass energy yield was 186 GJ/ha and the methane energy yield 88 GJ/ha. The effect of storing hemp as silage on the methane yield was investigated. It was found that ensiling conserved the energy efficiently as the same methane yield was achieved before and after more than 3 months storage. It was shown that the methane yield of ensiled crops could easily be overestimated when the dry matter was measured with a standard method. The standard method does not include correction for volatile organic compounds formed during ensiling and lost by evaporation during dry matter determination. A previously developed method for correcting dry matter was demonstrated to be useful in avoiding this error.
The effect of chopping, grinding and using acid-catalysed steam pretreatment prior to methane production from hemp, and the effect of combining ethanol and methane production were investigated and compared to methane or ethanol production alone. Methane production or co-production of ethanol and methane gave twice the biofuel yield of ethanol production alone. The use of steam pretreatment gave a similar methane yield to that from ground hemp, but higher than that from chopped hemp. Addition of external cellulolytic enzymes in a separate hydrolysis step after steam pretreatment, prior methane production, did not give a higher methane yield, than direct anaerobic digestion after steam pretreatment. The experimental data on production of these biofuels was combined with heat and power production in techno-economical modelling of a large-scale plant. Methane production or co-production of ethanol and methane production together with combined heat and power production showed high energy efficiencies and similar economic performance. Chopped and steam-pretreated hemp performed similarly economically in biogas production when combined with heat and power production. The co-production of methane, heat and power satisfied the energy requirements of the process and yielded a surplus of sellable products such as methane, electricity and district heating corresponding to 71–75% of the energy of the biomass. Despite high energy efficiencies none of the processes analysed would be economically viable today. The cost of the feedstock accounted for more than half of the total process cost. For the co-production of biogas, heat and power to be economically viable, the total cost would have to be reduced by one third. Alternatively, the methane sale price would have to increase by more than 50% to 3.6 SEK/m3. The yields of methane and ethanol were found to influence the process economy considerably. The production of electricity and heat had a significant influence on the energy efficiency but less on the process economy.


The literary distinction between the poetry of Amos and its prophetic update is matched by a difference in the form of the two works. Amos composed a dramatic piece, and its plot structure has the downward movement of tragedy. His commentator changed the tragic poetry into a historical piece, and its narrative structure has the upward movement of comedy. Each narrative movement takes on a definite but contradictory form, and the form structures each literary text as a whole and also shapes its individual components. Understanding the tragic and comic forms in Amos is the way to capture the flow and meaning and interwoven complexities of the whole book. The idea that Amos composed a dramatic monologue or tragic monody for recitation before an audience is supported by the literary evidence and corroborated by the wider cultural background of the Mediterranean world. The comic author, in common with Greek comic writers, commented on the tragic poet and his poetry by way of parody, imitation, quotation and allusion.


This book is the first single-volume comprehensive study of the political system of every country in the world with supportying information on political groupings, classifications and voting systems. The book is divided into three major sections. Part 1 makes a comparative assessment of political systems of government and ideologies throughout the contemporary world. Part II is the largest section, giving the politcal profiles of all the nation states of the world. Information on each country covers up-to-date social and economic data (including ethnic, religious and political features), political history, current political system in operation and biographical details of major political figures since the war. Part III is devoted to colonies dependencies and semi-sovereign states plus an examination of the world's political and defence associations and groupings. All the material is supported with a wealth of maps, tables and data sources.


After the discovery and the research developed in the last twenty years, it has been possible to announce, in 2010, a convincing attribution for the manuscript brought to the attention of the public as Vitruvio Ferrarese . The author is Giacomo Andrea da  Ferrara. Luca Pacioli defined him a great expert on Vitruvius and a very close friend of Leonardo da Vinci (" suo quanto fratello "). The discovery of the author was possible just because of the profound relationships between the drawings of Giacomo Andrea and Leonardo in the creation of the famous Vitruvian Man. The reconstructed phases of the drawing process show that the beginning of the formation of the images took place on the folios of the manuscript by Giacomo Andrea with an intense collaboration with Leonardo. Notwithstanding the creative team work, taking place between the two artists in Milan at the end of XV century, Giacomo and Leonardo ended up representing rather different ideal men. The tragic death of Giacomo Andrea in 1500 has obscured his role in the culture of the Renaissance.


The LLC resonant converter topology is widely used in dc-dc converter applications due to its advantages in achieving high efficiency and high power density. However, due to the complexity in the analysis, the converter lacks a clear design guideline on the selection of resonant tank parameters. In this paper, an optimization method is developed based on the operation mode analysis and peak gain placement. Following this approach, the converter can minimize the conduction loss while maintaining the required gain range. A 400-W, 400-V output and 25-38 V input LLC converter is built using the proposed method, which achieves above 98% peak efficiency. As a comparison, the conventional searching method is used to reselect the LLC parameters for the same specifications, and the experimental results show that the optimal design has better performance.


Monitoring and analysis of streaming data, such as social media, sensors, and news feeds, has become increasingly important for business and government. The volume and velocity of incoming data are key challenges. To effectively support monitoring and analysis, statistical and visual analytics techniques need to be seamlessly integrated; analytic techniques for a variety of data types (e.g., text, numerical) and scope (e.g., incremental, rolling-window, global) must be properly accommodated; interaction, collaboration, and coordination among several visualizations must be supported in an efficient manner; and the system should support the use of different analytics techniques in a pluggable manner. Especially in web-based environments, these requirements pose restrictions on the basic visual analytics architecture for streaming data. In this paper we report on our experience of building a reference web architecture for real-time visual analytics of streaming data, identify and discuss architectural patterns that address these challenges, and report on applying the reference architecture for real-time Twitter monitoring and analysis.


In the present study, grain boundary (GB) mobility was determined by molecular dynamics (MD) simulations using two different techniques: the applied strain method and the adapted interface random walk method. The first method involves a driving force while the second method does not. Nevertheless, both methods led to essentially the same values of the GB mobility. This shows that the GB mobility is independent of the nature of the driving force, provided that it is low enough that the linear velocity–driving force relationship is properly sampled. The case studied here can be viewed as a validated reference case that can be used in future studies to test new techniques to determine the GB mobility. For this purpose we provide the full information about the interatomic potential we employed and the initial atomic configurations. Finally, we use the obtained results to discuss whether any existing MD simulation data agree with experimental data on pure metals.


The role of stable transcription complexes in initiating and consolidating programs of gene expression during lineage specification has been extensively studied. Despite the progress made in the identification of key molecules of tooth initiation and patterning, the mechanisms leading to cell differentiation during odontogenesis are unknown. Odontoblasts are exclusive dentin-producing cells that are phenotypically and functionally distinct from osteoblasts. However, not much is known about the precise determinants of odontoblast terminal differentiation-in particular, how the fate of these cells becomes delineated from that of osteogenic mesenchyme. Cbfa1(-/-) mice completely lack osteoblasts and bone, while tooth development arrests at the time of odontoblast differentiation. The purpose of this paper is to overview our studies on the role of Cbfa1 in odontoblast determination and differentiation using the Cbfa1(-/-) mouse model and various experimental approaches. Our expression analyses confirm the down-regulation of Cbfal expression in newly differentiated and functional odontoblasts. Second, we demonstrate that Cbfa1(-/-) incisor organs arrest at a later stage than molars, and that al(I) :ollagen, a marker of odontoblast differentiation shared in common with osteoblasts, is not significantly affected by the absence of the transcription factor. Interestingly, Dspp expression in Cbfa1(-/-) appeared markedly down-regulated in putative odontoblasts. The overexpression of Cbfa1 in an odontoblast cell line (MDPC-23) results in the selective down-regulation of Dspp and not type I collagen. It is likely that, in addition to its influence on tooth epithelial morphogenesis, Cbfa1 plays a non-redundant and stage-specific role in the lineage determination and terminal differentiation of odontoblasts from dental papilla mesenchyme.


Droop control is a conventional method for operation of local distributed sources. Typical issues for droop control schemes include current sharing mismatch and voltage deviation, both likely to occur in a Microgrid (MG) setting. This paper proposes an adaptive droop scheme in d-q coordinates to compensate for current sharing mismatch at primary control level and voltage deviation compensation at secondary control. The droop resistances are adjusted for both d and q subsystems to eliminate the current sharing mismatch, and the droop voltage shifting method has been implemented to compensate for the voltage deviation. The dynamics of the proposed control is demonstrated for a three-phase reduced-order MG system using OpenModelica.


We investigated SARS-CoV-2 variants circulating, from November 2020 to March 2022, among military and civilian personnel at an Air Force airport in Italy in order to classify viral isolates in a potential hotspot for virus spread. Positive samples were subjected to Next-Generation Sequencing (NGS) of the whole viral genome and Sanger sequencing of the spike coding region. Phylogenetic analysis classified viral isolates and traced their evolutionary relationships. Clusters were identified using 70% cut-off. Sequencing methods yielded comparable results in terms of variant classification. In 2020 and 2021, we identified several variants, including B.1.258 (4/67), B.1.177 (9/67), Alpha (B.1.1.7, 9/67), Gamma (P.1.1, 4/67), and Delta (4/67). In 2022, only Omicron and its sub-lineage variants were observed (37/67). SARS-CoV-2 isolates were screened to detect naturally occurring resistance in genomic regions, the target of new therapies, comparing them to the Wuhan Hu-1 reference strain. Interestingly, 2/30 non-Omicron isolates carried the G15S 3CLpro substitution responsible for reduced susceptibility to protease inhibitors. On the other hand, Omicron isolates carried unusual substitutions A1803V, D1809N, and A949T on PLpro, and the D216N on 3CLpro. Finally, the P323L substitution on RdRp coding regions was not associated with the mutational pattern related to polymerase inhibitor resistance. This study highlights the importance of continuous genomic surveillance to monitor SARS-CoV-2 evolution in the general population, as well as in restricted communities.


Subsurface flow within forest hillslopes is not well understood. A soil pit containing macropores was prepared and instrumented for subsurface flow measurements at the Hitachi Ohta Experimental Watershed. The subsurface flow from the soil profile was divided into five groups: the porous (including macropores) organic‐rich soil layer; three macropore groups in the mineral soil layer; and the mineral soil matrix excluding visible macropores. The outflow from the organic‐rich soil layer coincided with rainfall and depended strongly on rainfall intensity. Such a response is related to the location of the organic‐rich layer in the uppermost portion of the soil profile. One macropore in the mineral soil was connected directly to a hydraulically active fracture in the bedrock. Therefore, the flow from this macropore group was high and delayed relative to rainfall even though the group is located in the upper left portion of the mineral soil layer. Most of the hillslope discharge occurred from the soil matrix excluding visible macropores. Preferential flow pathways in the mineral soil, as evidenced by staining tests, contributed to stormflow. The flow from two macropores just above bedrock was generally very low and responded gradually to rainfall inputs. This minor outflow was influenced by preferential flow above bedrock. Four macropores in the upper right portion of the mineral soil layer did not connect to preferential flow pathways. Therefore, outflow from this group was measured only when large rain events occurred. Soil moisture, amounts and intensities of rainfall, and bedrock topography affected heterogeneous outflow from the soil profile. The expansion and extension of macropore networks might contribute to stormflow. Results indicate that hydrometric measurements are needed to support inferences derived from end member mixing analysis and topographic‐based hydrologic models related to complex preferential flow pathways in forest catchments. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.


Proceedings: AACR Annual Meeting 2014; April 5-9, 2014; San Diego, CA

Poly(ADP-ribose) glycohydrolase (PARG) is the only enzyme known to catalyse hydrolysis of the O-glycosidic linkages of ADP-ribose polymers, thereby reversing the effects of poly(ADP-ribose) polymerases. Total PARG deficiency leads to cell death whilst PARG depletion, using RNAi, leads to pleiotropic effects such as PAR chain persistence, progression of single- to double-strand DNA lesions and NAD+ depletion.

Whilst efforts to develop small molecule inhibitors of PARG activity have generally been hampered by poor physiochemical properties, off-target pharmacology and a lack of cell permeability, we have now developed a series of PARG inhibitors which have proved to be useful biological tool compounds.

Displaying selective activity in both biochemical and, more importantly, cellular assays of PARG function, these derivatives have allowed an exploration of the phenotypes resulting from reversible, pharmacological PARG inhibition.

Citation Format: Dominic James, Allan Jordan, Nicola Hamilton, Alison McGonagle, Kate Smith, Alexandra Stowell, Ian Waddell, Bohdan Waszkowycz, Donald Ogilvie. Pharmacological characterisation of cell active inhibitors of Poly(ADP-ribose) glycohydrolase (PARG). [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the 105th Annual Meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research; 2014 Apr 5-9; San Diego, CA. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2014;74(19 Suppl):Abstract nr 2745. doi:10.1158/1538-7445.AM2014-2745


Author(s): Doddawadamath, Swaroop Shivanand | Advisor(s): Mosallam, Ayman S | Abstract: The thesis focuses on the experimental, analytical and finite element modeling results of structural evaluation of hybrid LDPE/FRP composite beams. Two composite reinforcement details were evaluated in this investigation. In addition, results of axial tensile and compression coupon tests to characterize the short-term mechanical properties of LDPE/FRP matrix are presented and discussed. Test results of two large-scale beam specimens subjected to quasi-static four-point loading are discussed. Results obtained from the experimental tests showed that due to the hybrid nature of the beam specimens and the viscoelastic/elastoplastic behavior of the LDPE matrix, flexural stiffness of the two beams were dependent on the stress level as well as on the loading rate as expected. The change in the stiffness can also be attributed to the initial cyclic loading that was performed up to 10 kips (44.5 kN) which typically will result in a slight permanent set similar to the typical behavior of other construction materials including similar reinforced concrete members. Due to the absence of ASTM and Caltrans procedures for experimentally calculating the flexural stiffness of these hybrid beams, the flexural stiffness was calculated at different loading level. The behavior of the specimen was linear up to about 80% of the ultimate load, after which the behavior became non-linear up to the ultimate load. In all tests, no failure or cracks were observed in the plastic matrix, and the governing mode of local damage could be observed in the form of relative slippage of the FRP rebars at the ends, especially the top compressive reinforcements that resulted in stiffness degradation. The maximum load for the tests was limited by the maximum actuator stroke. An analytical model developed by Mosallam (2005) is described and verified with the experimental results. In addition finite element models were developed for different beam geometry and results are discussed. Conclusions and recommendations for future research in this area are also presented.


Penetration of liquid pesticides through textile materials is a criterion for determining the performance ofprotective clothing used by pesticide handlers. The pipette method is frequently used to apply liquid pesticides onto textile materials to measure penetration. Typically, analytical techniques such as gas chromatography (GC) are used to measure percentage penetration. These techniques are labor intensive and costly. A simpler gravimetric method was developed, and tests were conducted to compare the gravimetric and GC methods of analysis. Three types of pesticide formulations and 4 fabrics were used for the study. Diluted pesticide formulations were pipetted onto the test specimens and percentage penetration was measured using the 2 methods. For homogeneous formulation, the results of the 2 methods were fairly comparable. However, due to the filtering action of the textile materials, there were differences in the percentage penetration between the 2 methods for formulations that were not homogeneous.


As several new spectrum bands are opening up for shared use, a new paradigm of Diverse Band-aware Dynamic Spectrum Access (d-DSA) has emerged. d-DSA equips a secondary device with software defined radios (SDRs) and utilize whitespaces (or idle channels) in multiple bands, including but not limited to TV, LTE, Citizen Broadband Radio Service (CBRS), unlicensed ISM. In this paper, we propose a decentralized, online multi-agent reinforcement learning based cross-layer BAnd selection and Routing Design (BARD) for such d-DSA networks. BARD not only harnesses whitespaces in multiple spectrum bands, but also accounts for unique electro-magnetic characteristics of those bands to maximize the desired quality of service (QoS) requirements of heterogeneous message packets; while also ensuring no harmful interference to the primary users in the utilized band. Our extensive experiments demonstrate that BARD outperforms the baseline dDSAaR algorithm in terms of message delivery ratio, however, at a relatively higher network latency, for varying number of primary and secondary users. Furthermore, BARD greatly outperforms its single-band DSA variants in terms of both the metrics in all considered scenarios.


Apoptosis is a major mechanism of cancer cell destruction by chemotherapy and radiotherapy. The anthracycline class of antitumor drugs undergoes redox cycling in living cells producing increased amounts of reactive oxygen species and semiquinone radical, both of which can cause DNA damage, and consequently trigger apoptotic death of cancer cells. We show here that MCF-7 cells overexpressing thioredoxin (Trx) were more apoptotic in response to daunomycin. Trx overexpression in MCF-7 cells increased the generation of superoxide anion (\batchmode \documentclass[fleqn,10pt,legalpaper]{article} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amsmath} \pagestyle{empty} \begin{document} \(\mathrm{O}_{{\dot{2}}}^{-}\) \end{document}) in anthracycline-treated cell extracts. Enhanced generation of \batchmode \documentclass[fleqn,10pt,legalpaper]{article} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amsmath} \pagestyle{empty} \begin{document} \(\mathrm{O}_{{\dot{2}}}^{-}\) \end{document} in response to daunomycin inTrx-overexpressing MCF-7 cells was inhibited by diphenyleneiodonium chloride, a general NADPH reductase inhibitor, demonstrating that Trx provides reducing equivalents to a bioreductive enzyme for redox cycling of daunomycin. Additionally Trx increased p53-DNA binding and expression in response to anthracyclines. MCF-7 cells expressing mutant redox-inactive Trx showed decreased superoxide generation, apoptosis, and p53 protein and DNA binding. In addition, down-regulation of endogenous Trx expression by small interfering RNA resulted in decreased expression of caspase-7 and cleaved poly(ADP-ribose) polymerase expression in response to daunomycin. These results suggest that endogenous Trx is required for anthracycline-mediated apoptosis of breast cancer cells. Taken together, our data demonstrate a novel pro-oxidant and proapoptotic role of Trx in anthracycline-mediated apoptosis in anthracycline chemotherapy.


Environmental cues associated with drugs often elicit withdrawal symptoms and relapse to drug use. Such cues also modulate drug tolerance. The contribution of drug-associated stimuli to withdrawal and tolerance is emphasized in a Pavlovian-conditioning analysis of drug administration. Conditional responses occur in the presence of cues that have been associated with the drug in the past, such as the setting in which the drug was taken. These conditional responses mediate the expression of tolerance and withdrawal symptoms. Recently, it has become apparent that internal predrug cues, as well as environmental cues, elicit pharmacological conditional responses that contribute to tolerance and withdrawal. Such internal cues include cognitive or proprioceptive cues incidental to self-administration, drug-onset cues that are experienced shortly after administration, and emotional cues. According to the conditioning analysis, addiction treatment should incorporate learning principles to extinguish the association between stimuli (environmental and internal) present at the time of drug administration and the effects of the addictive drug.


This paper demonstrates an effective application of artificial neural networks for online identification of a multimachine power system. The paper presents a recurrent neural network as the identifier of the benchmark two area, four machine system. This neural identifier is trained using the static Backpropagation algorithm. The trained neural identifier is then tested using datasets generated by simulating the system under consideration at different operating points and a different loading condition. The test results clearly establish a satisfactory performance of the trained neural identifier in identification of the power system considered.


Integer programs (IPs) are a commonly researched class of decision problems. These problems are used in various applications to help companies, governments, or individuals make better decisions by determining optimal resource allocations. While IPs are practical tools, they require an exponential amount of effort to solve, unless P = NP . This fact has led to much research focused on reducing the time required to solve IPs. Cutting planes are a commonly used tool for reducing IP solving time. Lifting, a process of changing the coefficients in an inequality, is often employed to strengthen cutting planes. When lifting, the goal is often to create a facet defining inequality, which is theoretically the strongest cutting plane. This thesis introduces two new lifting procedures for the Node Packing problem. The Node Packing problem seeks to select the maximum number of nodes in a graph such that no two nodes are adjacent. The first lifting method, the Simultaneous Lifting Expansion, takes two inequalities and combines them to make a stronger cut. It works for any two general classes of inequalities, as long as the requisite graph structures are met. The second method, the Cliques On Odd-holes Lifting (COOL) procedure, lifts from an odd-hole inequality to a facet defining inequality. COOL makes use of the Odd Gap Lifting procedure, an efficient method for finding lifting coefficients on odd holes. A computational study shows COOL to be effective in creating cuts in graphs with low edge densities.


Selenium is an element necessary for good animal health. No information
is available on inheritance of Se concentration in tall fescue
(Festuca arundinacea Shreb.). Therefore, the purpose of this
investigation was to determine the nature of genetic variation of Se
concentration in tall fescue. To accomplish this objective, 15 parental
clones were randomly chosen from a broad-based population, and
their half-sib (HS) progenies were generated using a polycross mating
design. Selenium analysis was determined flourometrically by
digesting dried, ground herbage samples in 3:1 HNO3/HCIO4 . Significant
genetic variation was observed among HS families in the
fall for Se concentration. Heritability, calculated using parent-offspring
(PO) regression, gave estimates of 18% for summer and 68%
for the fall. Heritability and genetic gain estimates were maximized
in the fall, as compared with the summer, largely because of a large
environmental component. Genetic gain, expressed as a percentage
of the mean of parents, predicted an advance of 1 9 % for fall herbage.
Progress in selecting for improved concentrations of Se in the fall
in this population of tall fescue is likely.


with the dramatically quick and explosive growth of information available over the Internet, World Wide Web has become a powerful platform to store, disseminate and retrieve information as well as mine useful knowledge. Due to the properties of the huge, diverse, dynamic and unstructured nature of Web data, Web data research has encountered a lot of challenges. To overcome this so many researchers proposed various techniques but still there is a requirement. To fulfill this, in this paper we demonstrate the BioNav system, a novel search interface for biomedical databases, such as PubMed. BioNav enables users to navigate large number of query results by categorizing them using MeSH; a comprehensive concept hierarchy used by PubMed. Once the query results are organized into a navigation tree, BioNav reveals only a small subset of the concept nodes at each step, selected such that the expected user navigation cost is minimized. Keywords--Web Mining, World wide web, Web Personalization, BioNav System, MeSH;


High financial performance is the primary goal of all companies, including agricultural companies. In practice, the impact caused by various problems related to accounting policies of biological assets, principles of good corporate governance, knowledge about renewable energy and size of the company. This study aims to prove empirically whether there is an influence of biological asset accounting policy implications, good corporate governance practices and company size on financial performance along with the moderating role of knowledge about renewable energy in agricultural sector companies. Research data were collected through questionnaire instruments, face-to-face interviews and group discussion forums which were conducted in several places in Indonesia by sampling with non-probability sampling. Data were analyzed using Structural Equation Model (SEM). The results showed that the implications of biological asset accounting policies, good corporate governance practices and company size had positive effects on financial performance and knowledge about renewable energy is playing a moderating role among the links. The plantation and forestry sector which is the unit of analysis is a limitation of this study because the agricultural industry includes not forests and gardens, but livestock and fisheries are also included in those who have biological transformed assets.


Images contained in scientific publications are widely considered useful for educational and research purposes, and their accurate indexing is critical for efficient and effective retrieval. Such image retrieval is complicated by the fact that figures in the scientific literature often combine multiple individual subfigures (panels). Multipanel figures are in fact the predominant pattern in certain types of scientific publications. The goal of this work is to automatically segment multipanel figures—a necessary step for automatic semantic indexing and in the development of image retrieval systems targeting the scientific literature. We have developed a method that uses the image content as well as the associated figure caption to: (1) automatically detect panel boundaries; (2) detect panel labels in the images and convert them to text; and (3) detect the labels and textual descriptions of each panel within the captions. Our approach combines the output of image‐content and text‐based processing steps to split the multipanel figures into individual subfigures and assign to each subfigure its corresponding section of the caption. The developed system achieved precision of 81% and recall of 73% on the task of automatic segmentation of multipanel figures.


The Bcr-Abl oncogene is present in 30-40% of adult patients with acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL). Therapy with imatinib has become standard for Ph+ ALL but resistance to the tyrosine kinase inhibitor occurs for the majority of patients. In about 80% of patients with acquired resistance mutations in the tyrosine kinase domain (TKD) have been found. In contrast, primary resistance to imatinib appears to be multifactorial and precise mechanisms have been incompletely elucidated. We have established an imatinib-resistant cell line (SupB15RT) which was derived from the previously well characterized SupB15 cell line (SupB15WT) by gradually increasing the exposure to imatinib. We found that several commonly implicated mechanisms of imatinib resistance, i.e. Bcr-Abl gene amplification, point mutations in the TKD, Bcr-Abl overexpression, up-regulation of multidrug resistance gene proteins or ineffective inhibition of Bcr-Abl tyrosine phosphorylation do not play a role in conferring the imatinib-resistant phenotype in SupB15RT cells. Thus, the SupB15RT cells represent a suitable model for the analysis of resistance mechanisms in Ph+ ALL with primary imatinib resistance. Interestingly, SupB15RT cells show cross-resistance to the second generation Abl kinase inhibitors Nilotinib and Dasatinib. Analysis of signal transduction pathways downstream of Bcr-Abl revealed that imatinib exposure was not associated with down-regulation of pSTAT-5 and pErk in the imatinib-resistant SupB15RT cells, in contrast to SupB15WT. Phosphorylation of Akt was inhibited by 0.5μM imatinib in SupB15WT cells, whereas imatinib in concentrations up to 5μM failed to suppress Akt phosphorylation in SupB15RT cells, indicating constitutive activation of Akt kinase during imatinib treatment. By comparative gene expression analysis of SupB15WT vs. SupB15RT cells using Affimetrix-Microarrays, we identified 29 differentially regulated (at least 3-fold) genes. One of the most highly up-regulated genes in imatinib-resistant SupB15RT cells was Autotaxin (ATX), a nucleotide pyrophosphatase/ phosphodiesterase 2. This exo-enzyme was originally identified as a tumor cell autocrine motility factor, which is involved in tumor progression and migration in various tumor cell types. ATX is a lysophospholipase D which is involved in the synthesis of lysophosphatidic acid (LPA), a signaling molecule that promotes survival, growth, differentiation, and motility. We investigated if LPA imparted imatinib resistance in SupB15WT cells by modulation of growth, survival and migration. When SupB15WT cells were treated with LPA, alone or in combination with imatinib, SupB15WT cell proliferation was increased both in the absence as well as in the presence of imatinib. The dose-dependent increase of proliferation after LPA treatment was 1.9–2.6-fold (1–10μM LPA) in the presence of 1μM imatinib. In addition we performed migration experiments using Transwell assays. We detected a 3-fold increase in migration of SupB15RT vs. SupB15WT cells. We found no influence on apoptosis in imatinib treated SupB15WT cells treated with LPA compared with cells not treated with LPA. Taken together, our results indicate a role of ATX in imatinib-resistant SupB15RT cells, preferentially by stimulating proliferation and migration through LPA signaling via LPA receptors and activation of PI3K and Akt.


This article aims to get the main factors affecting knowledge sharing and their influencing route so that to promote knowledge implementation through theory analysis and empirical test. The paper collects almost all the factors that have significant influence on knowledge sharing from a large amount of relative researches, and classifies the effect of factors as direct, indirect, mediate and moderate effect. Based on the deep review and analysis, the paper selects top management support, organization culture, social relationship, attitude to knowledge sharing, self-efficacy, trust, motivation, intention to knowledge sharing, IT, and training as the major influential factors and proposes a comprehensive relational model according to the effects of the factors. Finally, the paper verifies the model and examines the effects of the factors by empirical test through the data collected from questionnaires. The findings can give some guidance to managers and scholars. A Comprehensive Relational Model of Factors Influencing Knowledge Sharing: An Empirical Study


ARIADNE is a 1-ton two-phase liquid argon (LAr) time projection chamber (TPC) featuring a novel optical readout. Four electron-multiplying charge-coupled device (EMCCD) cameras are mounted externally, and these capture the secondary scintillation light produced in the holes of a thick electron gas multiplier (THGEM). Track reconstruction using this novel readout approach is demonstrated. Optical readout has the potential to be a cost effective alternative to charge readout in future LArTPCs. In this paper, the technical design of the detector is detailed. Results of mixed particle detection at the CERN T9 testbeam (representing the first ever optical images of argon interactions in a twophase LArTPC at a beamline) and cosmic muon detection at the University of Liverpool are also presented.


BACKGROUND
There have been few reports on primary cicatricial alopecias (PCR) especially from Asia (PCA).

AIMS
To study the clinical, pathological and dermoscopic characteristics of PCA among Chinese patients.

METHODS
A retrospective analysis of the clinical data of 59 patients with PCA was conducted and the dermoscopic, pathological, treatment and prognosis characteristics analyzed. Fisher's Chi-square exact test, Kruskal-Wallis and Spearman rank correlation test were performed.

RESULTS
The ratio of neutrophilic to lymphocytic cicatricial alopecias was about 1.3:1 in this group. The most frequent disorder was folliculitis decalvans. Follicular openings were absent on dermoscopy in all cases except alopecia mucinosa. Patulous follicular openings were characterisitc of alopecia mucinosa. After treatment, an increase in short vellus hairs was the earliest feature, while telangiectasia, epidermal scale, follicular hyperkeratosis, pustules and hair diameter diversity gradually decreased or even disappeared. Improvement in the areas of hair loss after treatment was seen more often in discoid lupus erythematosus, folliculitis decalvans and dissecting cellulitis than in patients with classic pseudopelade of Brocq. Nine patients (13.6%) relapsed after cessation of therapy. Female patients needed longer treatment times. Long duration, large areas of hair loss and shorter treatment courses were the major factors in relapses.

CONCLUSIONS
Dermatoscopy provides a rapid, practical and useful aid for the diagnosis of PCA and also to assess disease activity. Patulous follicular openings are a specific dermoscopic sign of alopecia mucinosa. Lichen planopilaris is less common in China than in the West.