Individuals with male factor infertility resulting from idiopathic oligo-, astheno- or teratozoospermia are frequently offered IVF in an attempt to increase their chances of having a child. A concern remains whether these infertile males have an elevated risk of transmitting chromosomal abnormalities to their offspring. Sperm chromosomal complements from these men were assayed using the human sperm/hamster oocyte fusion system and fluorescence in situ hybridization (FISH) on sperm nuclei. For each of 5 infertile patients, 100 sperm karyotypes were analyzed and multicolour FISH analysis was performed on a minimum of 10,000 sperm nuclei for each chromosome-specific DNA probe for chromosomes 1 (pUC1.77), 12 (D12Z3), X (XC) and Y (DYZ3). As a group, the infertile patients showed increased frequencies of both numerical ({chi}{sup 2}=17.26, {proportional_to} <0.001) and total abnormalities ({chi}{sup 2}=7.78, {proportional_to} <0.01) relative to control donors when ...
The scope of radioanalysis can be enlarged substantially by preconcentration. The minimal concentration factor required depends on the concentration to be determined, the limit of determination of the analytical technique and the maximal acceptable sample-weight. Simultaneously, the preconcentration step may cause a decontamination. In post-irradiation chemistry this is usually the crucial parameter. The present paper proposes the classification of (pre-) concentration techniques by the relation between the concentration-factor X and the decontamination-factor Y. In addition, three other criteria here are used to judge the applicability in combination with the analytical technique chosen. They stem from the minimal representative and the maximal acceptable sample-weights and the maximal acceptable dose-rate. The features of a particular combination of (pre-) concentration and analytical technique can be visualized in an X-Y graph. (author).
Health education and awareness involves providing knowledge about causes of illness and choices to promote a change in individual behaviour and, thus, improves survival of individuals. Studies have,...Full Text Available
ObjectiveTo examine the extent to which the regional and neighborhood distribution of HIV in Tanzania is caused by the differential distribution of individual correlates...Full Text Available
Diseases of man caused by the virus of herpes simplex fall into two broad categories. The primary disease occurs only once in any individual's life and is caused by transmission of virus from an already...Full Text Available
Retinal degenerative diseases, such as retinitis pigmentosa and Leber congenital amaurosis, are a leading cause of untreatable blindness with substantive impact on the quality of life of affected individuals...Full Text Available
Cryptococcus neoformans is a pathogenic yeast that often causes devastating meningoencephalitis in immunocompromised individuals. We have previously identified the C. neoformans...Full Text Available
Air pollution abatement measures are not an end in themselves, and undesirable side effects should be taken into account. The proposed emission index takes into account the total emissions caused by a technical project as well as the effects of the individual pollutants.
Carney-Stratakis syndrome, an inherited condition predisposing affected individuals to gastrointestinal stromal tumor (GIST) and paraganglioma, is caused by germline mutations in succinate dehydrogenase...Full Text Available
Johne disease, caused by Mycobacterium avium, subspecies paratuberculosis (MAP) is becoming increasingly widespread on dairy farms worldwide, due in part, to the absence...Full Text Available
BackgroundTraffic injuries can cause physical, psychological, and economical impairment, and affected individuals may also experience shortcomings in their post-accident care and...Full Text Available
Structural variants which cause changes in copy numbers constitute an important component of genomic variability. They account for 0.7% of genomic differences in two individual genomes, of which...Full Text Available
The Japanese medaka fish Oryzias latipes has an XX/XY sex-determination system. The Y-linked sex-determination gene DMY is a duplicate of the autosomal gene DMRT1, which encodes a DM-domain-containing...Full Text Available
The authors suggest a method of calculation of the isotherms of the spinodal and the heterogeneous equilibria in four-component systems in the framework of a unified thermodynamic model of the solution. The results of their calculations predict the existence of extended regions of immiscibility in the solid phase in the interval of temperatures usually used to obtain epitaxial layers of InAs/sub x/P/sub y/Sb/sub 1-x-y/ and AlAs/sub x/P/sub y/Sb/sub 1-x-y/.
We have at hand the tools for development of both a single amino acid substitution and a gene loss type assay for somatic cell mutations in human red cells. We are close to being able to assess the assays as possible means for screening the human population for individuals who may be a risk of acquiring abnormally high frequencies of mutant cells. The cause for such a high frequency of mutant cells could be a prior exposure of the individual to large amount of mutagen, or it could indicate a member of a vulnerable subpopulation that may have poor DNA repair systems. Either of these cases could well be an indication that the particular individual is at high risk that exposure to mutagens could lead to potential pathology. In the near future we expect to determine the reliability of the assays and to perform experiments to confirm the validity of flow cytometry in measuring real somatic mutagenic events ...
In defining criteria for good protection against ionizing radiation, it is important to assess quantitatively the likely risk of any radiation exposure. The 'somatic' risks to the individual result mainly from induction of cancer in the organs irradiated, and these risks can now be estimated on the basis of numerous detailed epidemiological surveys of exposed human populations. Estimates of the risk of hereditary effects, from genetic changes induced in germ cells, are based largely on the frequency with which such effects are induced in other species. In both cases the risk at very low dose can be inferred using knowledge of the way in which radiation damage is caused in tissues. Coherent systems of radiation protection are based on a restriction of doses to the whole body and to individual organs, such that the induction of cancer and genetic harm is infrequent, and the threshold dose for causing ...
The concept of the minimum propagating zone (MPZ) is used to examine the causes of quenches in ISABELLE cosine theta superconducting dipole magnets. The size of disturbances large enough to exceed the MPZ and initiate quenches is estimated and compared with the size of disturbances which may be produced in the magnets. A suggestion for reducing the size of these disturbances through individual support of the coil block is outlined.
Statistical data on individual types of foreign NPPs including reliability and safety indices are given. It is noted that capacity factors (CF) in 1985 were higher for PWRs. Japan has the highest CF-98.5% in the world. One of main causes of NPP shutdown remains the primary circuit equipment failure in connection with different corrosion types (intercrystalline, pitting, denting-corrosion etc.). Effect of all volatile treatment on enhancement of NPP reliabiity is shown. Technical BWR characteristics are presented.
This paper describes a simple analysis procedure that transforms a set of beamline orbit data into a set of harmonic orbits of first, second, and third order or higher. Each harmonic orbit can be studied individually to identify errors of the specific order with minimum interference from other orders. Effectively these are orbits caused by kicks, due to harmonic errors, propagated through linear lattice. Examples from accelerator study will be presented. The application and inherent limitations of this analysis procedure are discussed.
It is shown that the section of the energy surface corresponding to the longitudinal mode by the principal xy-plane for the A-15 compounds will degenerate into four points at the corners of a square at very low temperatures in the cubic phase. When the quasi-shear mode propagating along the (110) direction becomes soft, simultaneously the longitudinal mode will exhibit unusually high phonon focussing. (author).
Abstract It is well established that ageing handicaps the ability of prey to escape predators, yet surprisingly little is known about how ageing affects the ability of predators to catch prey. Research into long-lived predators has assumed that adults have uniform impacts on prey regardless of age. Here we use longitudinal data from repeated observations of individually-known wolves (Canis lupus) hunting elk (Cervus elaphus) in Yellowstone National Park to demonstrate that adult predatory performance declines with age and that an increasing ratio of senescent individuals in the wolf population depresses the rate of prey offtake. Because this ratio fluctuates independently of population size, predatory senescence may cause wolf populations of equal size but different age structure to have d...
Individuals with sickle cell disease (SCD) demonstrate an increased susceptibility to invasive bacterial infections (IBI). The most common organisms causing IBI are Streptococcus pneumoniae, nontyphi Salmonella species and Haemophilus influenzae type b (Hib). IBI are the most common causes of death in children below 5 years of age with SCD. Increased susceptibility to IBI is because of several factors including dysfunctional antibody production and opsonophagocytosis as well as defective splenic clearance. Early diagnosis of Hib and pneumococcal infections combined with antibiotic prophylaxis and immunization programs, could lead to significant improvements in mortality, especially in Africa. Pediatr Blood Cancer. 2010;55:401-406. Copyright 2010 Wiley-Liss, Inc.
Apart from presenting the marginal legal conditions the research program contains a brief description of current pollution abatement measures, representative heating systems and individually suitable pollution abatement technologies and an account of the determination of the concentration of major pollutants. The comparative evaluation of heating systems assesses their environmental effects, i.e. air pollution caused by heating systems. The determination of the costs of available heat is followed by an overall evaluation of the results obtained with special regard to the costs involved by pollution abatement measures.
For 170 years, scientists have attempted to explain why consistent temporal patterns of death are observed among individuals within populations. Historical efforts to identify a {open_quotes}law of mortality{close_quotes} from these patterns ended in 1935 when it was declared that such a law did not exist. These empirical tests for a law of mortality were constructed using mortality curves based on all causes of death. We predicted that patterns of mortality consistent with the historical concept of a law would be revealed if mortality curves for species were constructed using only senescent causes of death. Using data on senescent mortality for laboratory animals and humans, we demonstrate that patterns of mortality overlap when compared on a biologically comparable time scale. These results are consistent with the existence of a law of mortality following sexual maturity as asserted by Benjamin Gompertz and Raymond Pearl. ...
for 170 years, scientists have attempted to explain why consistent temporal patterns of death are observed among individuals within populations. Historical efforts to identify a `law of mortality` from these patterns ended in 1935 when it was declared that such a law did not exist. These empirical tests for a law of mortality were constructed using mortality curves based on all causes of death. We predicted patterns of mortality consistent with the historical concept of a law would be revealed if mortality curves for species were constructed using only senescent causes of death. Using data on senescent mortality for laboratory animals and humans, we demonstrate patterns of mortality overlap when compared on a biologically comparable time scale. The results are consistent with the existence of a law of mortality following sexual maturity. The societal, medical, and research implications of such a law are discussed.
Introduction Gastrointestinal bleeding is a common life-threatening problem, causing significant mortality, costs and resource allocation. Its management requires a dynamic multidisciplinary approach that directs diagnostic and therapeutic priorities appropriately. Materials and methods Articles published within the past 15 years, related to gastrointestinal bleeding, were reviewed through MEDLINE search, in addition to current guidelines and standards. Results Decisions of ICU admission and blood transfusion must be individualized based on the extent of bleeding, hemodynamic profile and comorbidities of the patient and the risk of rebleeding. A secure airway may be required to optimize oxygenation and to prevent aspiration. Doses of induction agents must be reduced due to the changes in v...
Ascochyta blight causes significant yield loss in pulse crops worldwide. Integrated disease management is essential to take advantage of cultivars with partial resistance to this disease. The most effective practices, established by decades of research, use a combination of disease-free seed, destruction or avoidance of inoculum sources, manipulation of sowing dates, seed and foliar fungicides, and cultivars with improved resistance. An understanding of the pathosystems and the inter-relationship between host, pathogen and the environment is essential to be able to make correct decisions for disease control without compromising the agronomic or economic ideal. For individual pathosystems, some components of the integrated management principles may need to be given greater consideration tha...
Malnutrition?in the form of insufficient energy intakes?affects millions of people worldwide and the negative impact of this kind of hunger is well acknowledged, not least by agronomists trying to increase yields to ensure a sufficient supply of food. This review focuses on another, more particular and ?hidden? form of malnutrition, namely mineral malnutrition. It illustrates the burden of disease that is caused by mineral deficiencies and the social and economic consequences they bring about. Mineral malnutrition has a considerable negative impact on individual well-being, social welfare and economic productivity. Agricultural scientists should keep the nutritional qualities of food in mind and?next to optimizing the agricultural properties of crops that are paramount for their adoption b...
Failure of multiple components due to a common cause represents one of the most important issues in evaluation of system reliability or unavailability. The frequency of such events has relatively low expectancy, when compared to random failures, which affect individual components. However, in many cases the consequence is a direct loss of safety system or mitigative safety function. For this reason, the modeling of a common cause failure (CCF) and its presentation in fault tree structure is of the uttermost importance in probabilistic safety analyses (PSA). Amongst the different techniques available to reduce the impact of common cause failures, the most important operations related technique, is that of staggered testing. In the TAPP 3,4 Level-1 PSA it was found that the contribution of Common Cause Failures to the Core Damage Frequency (CDF) was significant. The Common ...
New oxomolybdenum(V) complexes MoOClL (where LH/sub 2/ = Schiff base) derived from ethanolamine and salicylaldehyde, 5-chlorosalicylaldehyde, 5-bromosalicylaldehyde, 5-nitrosalicylaldehyde, 3-ethoxysalicylaldehyde and 2-hydroxy-1-naphthaldehyde have been synthesized and characterised by elemental analyses, conductance, molecular weight, I.R. and electronic spectra and magnetic measurements. The Schiff bases behave as dibasic tridentate ONO donor ligands. The complexes are non-electrolytes and dimers. The complexes exhibit subnormal magnetic moments and are involved in antiferromagnetic exchange with S = 0 ground state. The complexes exhibit electronic spectral bands at ca. 13000 and ca. 17000 cm/sup -1/ due to the transitions dsub(xy)- > dsub(xz,yz) (/sup 2/B/sub 2/- > /sup 2/E) and dsub(xy)- > dsub(x2-y2) (/sup 2/B/sub 2/- > /sup 2/B/sub 1/), respectively. The ..nu..(Mo = O) frequency of the complexes is observed in the 900-970 ...
New oxomolybdenum(V) complexes MoOClL (where LH_2 = Schiff base) derived from ethanolamine and salicylaldehyde, 5-chlorosalicylaldehyde, 5-bromosalicylaldehyde, 5-nitrosalicylaldehyde, 3-ethoxysalicylaldehyde and 2-hydroxy-1-naphthaldehyde have been synthesized and characterised by elemental analyses, conductance, molecular weight, i.r. and electronic spectra and magnetic measurements. The Schiff bases behave as dibasic tridentate ONO donor ligands. The complexes are non-electrolytes and dimers. The complexes exhibit subnormal magnetic moments and are involved in antiferromagnetic exchange with S = 0 ground state. The complexes exhibit electronic spectral bands at ca. 13000 and ca. 17000 cm"-"1 due to the transitions dsub(xy)->dsub(xz,yz) ("2B_2->"2E) and dsub(xy)->dsub(x2-y2) ("2B_2->"2B_1), respectively. The #nu#(Mo=O) frequency of the complexes is observed in the 900-970 cm"-"1 region. On the basis of the magnetic susceptibility, ...
Experiments were conducted to confirm the isotropic spatial resolution of multislice CT with a 0.5 mm slice thickness. Isotropic spatial resolution means that the spatial resolution in the transaxial plane (X-Y plane) and that in the longitudinal direction (Z direction) are equivalent. To obtain point spread function (PSF) values in the X-Y-Z directions, three-dimensional voxel data were obtained by helical scanning of a bead phantom. The modulation transfer function (MTF) values were then obtained by three-dimensional Fourier transform of the PSF. Evaluation of the spatial resolution in the X-Y-Z directions by the MTF values showed that the spatial resolution in the Z direction does not depend on the reconstruction kernel used. It was also found that the spatial resolution in the Z direction, as compared with that in the X-Y plane, is superior with the standard kernel for the abdomen and is inferior with the high-definition kernel for the ...
Abstract Series of typical -type and pseudo--type halogen-bonded complexes BClY and BBrY and hydrogen-bonded complex BHY (B = C2H4, C2H2, and C3H6; Y = F, Cl, and Br) have been investigated using the MP2/aug-cc-pVDZ method. A striking parallelism was found in the geometries, vibrational frequencies, binding energies, and topological properties between BXY and BHY (X = Cl and Br). It has been found that the lengths of the weak bond d(X)/d(H), the frequencies of the weak bond (X)/(H), the frequency shifts (XY)/(HY), the electron densities at the bond critical point of the weak bonds c(X)/c(H), and the electron density changes c(XY)/c(HY) could be used as measures of the strengths of typical -type and pseudo--type halogen/hydrogen bonds. The typical -type and pseudo--type halogen bond and hyd...
The present invention provides a compound of the formula (Cat).sup.+.sub.z[M.sup.++(5-nitro-1H-tetrazolato-N2).sup.-.sub.x(H.sub.2- O).sub.y] where x is 3 or 4, y is 2 or 3, x+y is 6, z is 1 or 2, and M.sup.++ is selected from the group consisting of iron, cobalt, nickel, copper, zinc, chromium, and manganese, and (Cat).sup.+ is selected from the group consisting of ammonium, sodium, potassium, rubidium and cesium. A method of preparing the compound of that formula is also disclosed.
The present invention provides a compound of the formula (Cat).sup.+.sub.z[M.sup.++(5-nitro-1H-tetrazolato-N2).sup.-.sub.x(H.sub.2- O).sub.y] where x is 3 or 4, y is 2 or 3, x+y is 6, z is 1 or 2, and M.sup.++ is selected from the group consisting of iron, cobalt, nickel, copper, zinc, chromium, and manganese, and (Cat).sup.+ is selected from the group consisting of ammonium, sodium, potassium, rubidium and cesium. A method of preparing the compound of that formula is also disclosed.
Due to the 'novel forest diseases' the political parties of the Federal Republic of Germany unanimously attend to the reduction of emissions. The transportation sector is considered to be a major emission source. A study discussed in the publication abstracted did therefore aim at giving a detailed account and description of the recently ratified technical requirements and tax credits expected to reduce vehicle exhaust gas air pollution. Moreover, the study researches into the regulations' importance as to the low emission properties of individual automobiles. Based on the results obtained the study arrives at assumptions as to emissions to be expected from the transportation sector. It tries to assess the financial import with respect to the individual citizen, overall internal revenues and federal motor vehicle taxes. The introductory chapter is followed by a review of emissions caused by ...
This is the final report of the Finnish Research Programme on Climate Change (SILMU). This report includes the final results and conclusions made by the individual research groups. The aim of this report is to lay out the research work, and to present the main results and conclusions obtained during the six-year work. The Finnish Research Programme on Climate Change (SILMU) was a multidisciplinary national research programme on climate and global change. The principal goals of SILMU were: (1) to increase our knowledge on climate change, its causes, mechanisms and consequences, (2) to strengthen the research on climate change in Finland, (3) to increase the participation of Finnish researchers in international research programmes, and (4) to prepare and disseminate information for policy makers on adaptation and mitigation. The key areas of the research were: (1) quantification of the greenhouse effect and the magnitude of anticipated climatic ...
The purpose of organization and management development activities in the commercial nuclear power industry is to foster high levels of power plant performance and safety through improved human performance. The NRC has been working to develop assessment tools to assay the effects of organizational factors on plant safety. The utility industry has been working on initiatives targeting individual accountability, the improvement of plant performance and the elimination of the items identified through the NRC assessment process. Organization and management activities do not focus on industry organizational charts, but on the personnel processes and dimensions (factors) that affect safety and economic performance. As individual terms these activities are often combined and referred to as organizational factors. As an area of study, organizational factors has become more prominent as the industry emphasis has switched in recent years from hardware ...
Environmental monitoring at the Hanford Site, located in southeastern Washington State, is conducted by Battelle Memorial Institute, Pacific Northwest Division, as part of its contract to operate the Pacific Northwest Laboratory (PNL) for the US Department of Energy. The data collected provide a historical record of radionuclide and radiation levels attributable to natural causes, worldwide fallout, and Hanford operations. Data are also collected to monitor several chemicals. Pacific Northwest Laboratory publishes an annual environmental report for the Hanford Site each calendar year. The Hanford Site Environmental Report for Calendar Year 1990 is a summary of offsite and onsite environmental monitoring data collected during 1990 by PNL`s Environmental Monitoring Program. The data summaries included in the annual report were created from individual surface and river monitoring results. This volume contains the individual ...
Environmental monitoring at the Hanford Site, located in southeastern Washington State, is conducted by Battelle Memorial Institute, Pacific Northwest Division, as part of its contract to operate the Pacific Northwest Laboratory (PNL) for the US Department of Energy. The data collected provide a historical record of radionuclide and radiation levels attributable to natural causes, worldwide fallout, and Hanford operations. Data are also collected to monitor several chemicals. Pacific Northwest Laboratory publishes an annual environmental report for the Hanford Site each calendar year. The Hanford Site Environmental Report for Calendar Year 1990 is a summary of offsite and onsite environmental monitoring data collected during 1990 by PNL's Environmental Monitoring Program. The data summaries included in the annual report were created from individual surface and river monitoring results. This volume contains the ...
The thermal performance monitoring and optimization system TEMPO is developed at the OECD Halden Reactor Project. The system supports staff of nuclear power plants in identification and correction of problems, which cause small decreases in plant efficiency but which may lead to significant economical losses. The system-wide physical model consists of mathematical description of individual components, such as the reactor, the pumps, the heat exchangers, or the turbines, etc. TEMPO code has recently been extended with new steam generator (SG) models. The present paper summarizes the thermal-hydraulic modelling aspects of the vertical and the horizontal SG. The heat balance equations and their solution are shown with the appropriate initial and boundary conditions. The method of the calculation of the pressure losses are also introduced. The vertical SG model is based on a U-tube structure and treated as a 1D flow channel. The horizontal approach ...
The study evaluates 160 cases of positive spermioculture taken from 522 sterile individuals examined by the authors at the Couple Sterility Outpatient unit in Department A of the Institute of Gynecology and Obstetrics at Turin University during the period between January 1984 and December 1993. The germs responsible for infection were assayed in order to evaluate the strains which showed the highest incidence every year. Whereas there was no significant change in the absolute number of cases of sterility over the period, the number of cases caused by infection increased significantly during the second five-year period. It was found that the germs predominantly implicated in the genesis of male sterility formed part of the so-called mixed flora group, responsible in women for syndromes of often asymptomatic bacterial vaginosis which are not identified and consequently not treated. PMID:8559444
Larsen syndrome is an autosomal-dominant disorder characterized by multiple joint dislocations, vertebral anomalies and dysmorphic facies. Both autosomal-dominant and autosomal-recessive forms of the disorder have been proposed. Individuals with autosomal-dominant Larsen syndrome have characteristic ''cylindrical-shape'' thumbs caused by broad, shortened phalanges. Autosomal-dominant Larsen syndrome results from heterozygosity for mutations in filamin B, a cytoskeletal protein involved in multicellular processes. We report here a patient with a duplicated or accessory distal thumb phalanx and multiple large joint dislocations who was shown to be heterozygous for a filamin B mutation predicting the amino acid substitution G1691S. This adds a new radiographic finding, duplicated or accessory distal phalanx, to the radiographic abnormalities seen in this rare dominant disorder. (orig.)
There are mainly two protocols in isoflavone analysis, one that involves hydrolysis prior to HPLC analysis and the other direct HPLC analysis. In this study, three different hydrolysis methods were systematically re-evaluated, and compared with direct HPLC analysis. Acidic hydrolysis (1.2-3M HCl in ethanol at 80^oC) showed a maximum conversion of ca. 92% from glucosides to aglycones in 2h; however, longer reaction caused degradation of genistein. Alkaline hydrolysis using 2M NaOH converted acetylglucosides and malonylglucosides to their respective glucosides within 10min. Glucuronidase from H. pomatia effectively converted isoflavone glucosides and acetylglucosides to aglycones. Quantification of the total isoflavones in various soy food products showed no significant difference among dire...
New isotopic age determinations carried out with the rubidium-strontium method on granodioritic basement rocks from the Mecsek Mountains in Southeastern Transdanubia give further support to assumptions on a polyphase development of the Mecsek crystalline. As shown by initial Sr isotopic ratios, the protolith of the granodioritic assemblage of polymetamorphic-anatectic origin must have been strongly basic in its composition. The scatter of individual model ages obtained on total rock samples reflects the polymetamorphic-polytectonized character of the basement, and suggests that following a primary granitization process secondary events might have led to the total or partial recrystallization of the rocks in question. The tectonic development of the basement crystalline as reflected in the isotopic age data closed at about 270+-20 million years ago, with processes causing retrograde changes in the crystalline as a whole but leading to the ...
Incongruent auditory and visual stimuli can elicit audiovisual illusions such as the McGurk effect where visual /ka/ and auditory /pa/ fuse into another percept such as/ta/. In the present study, human brain activity was measured with adaptation functional magnetic resonance imaging to investigate which brain areas support such audiovisual illusions. Subjects viewed trains of four movies beginning with three congruent /pa/ stimuli to induce adaptation. The fourth stimulus could be (i) another congruent /pa/, (ii) a congruent /ka/, (iii) an incongruent stimulus that evokes the McGurk effect in susceptible individuals (lips /ka/ voice /pa/), or (iv) the converse combination that does not cause the McGurk effect (lips /pa/ voice/ ka/). This paradigm was predicted to show increased release fro...
To mitigate damages caused by agricultural runoff, private lake owners' associations are paying for inlake and instream pollution abatement measures and on land-conservation practices. This phenomenon supports the notion that individuals who benefit from improved water quality should be willing to pay part of the abatement costs. The research suggests that on land-conservation measures can substantially reduce sediment delivery at low cost. The Sediment Economics (SEDEC) model was modified and then used to select and to site management systems that achieved stated sediment goals at least cost. Other resource policies such as T value, no-till, and contouring were compared with the least-cost frontier and shown to be more costly. The noncropland areas substantially reduced sediment delivery to water channels and lowered abatement costs. Further research is needed for long-range watershed-planning models such as SEDEC.
Meningococcal disease is an infection caused by Neisseria meningitidis. Genetic factors contribute to host susceptibility and progression to disease, but the genes responsible for disease development are largely unknown. We report here a genome-wide association study for host susceptibility to meningococcal disease using 475 individuals with meningococcal disease (cases) and 4,703 population controls from the UK. We performed, in Western European and South European cohorts (consisting of 968 cases and 1,376 controls), two replication studies for the most significant SNPs. A cluster of complement factor SNPs replicated independently in both cohorts, including SNPs within complement factor H (CFH) (rs1065489 (p.936D
Abstract The benthic marine worm Xenoturbella is frequently contaminated with molluscan DNA, which had earlier caused confusion resulting in a suggested bivalve relationship. In order to find the source of the contaminant, we have used molluscan sequences derived from Xenoturbella and compared them to barcodes obtained from several individuals of the nonmicroscopic molluscs sharing the same environment as Xenoturbella. Using cytochrome oxidase 1, we found the contaminating sequences to be 98% similar to the bivalve Ennucula tenuis. Using the highly variable D1-D2 region of the large ribosomal subunit in Xenoturbella, we found three distinct species of contaminating molluscs, one of which is 99% similar to the bivalve Abra nitida, one of the most abundant bivalves in the Gullmarsfjord where...
These three separate pamphlets provide background information, brief discussions of research findings, and guidelines and recommendations concerning selected aspects of diet. The first pamphlet discusses food additives and hyperactivity, focusing on both the Feingold theory and controlled experiments which do not support Feingold's clinical observations and case reports. (The Feingold theory claims that artificial food flavors and colors and antioxidant preservatives cause hyperactivity in genetically predisposed individuals.) The second pamphlet discusses fast food and the American diet as they are related to sound nutritional principles. The third pamphlet, focusing on alcohol use during pregnancy, lists principles and associated features of the fetal alcohol syndrome and presents research findings and recommendations concerning alcohol use during pregnancy. (RH)
ObjectivesThe development of novel formulations of nanoparticles in the nanotechnology industry and their increasing importance and use in industry means there is certainty of human environmental exposures in both the workplace and the general environment. The pulmonary route of exposure to airborne nanoparticles is a major one, as nanoparticles are handled in industry, escape from workplaces and products containing nanoparticles undergo attrition in the environment. There is a substantial problem for ris [continued...]DescriptionNanoparticles are extremely small particles, each individual particlel being less than one ten millionth of a metre in size. We are exposed to nanoparticles in busy streets as they are present in traffic exhaust produced from combustion of fuel and such nanoparticles are considered to be important in causing the harmful effects associated with exposure to air pollution. There are other situations where nanoparticles ...
The iron hormone hepcidin is inhibited by matriptase-2, a liver serine-protease encoded by TMPRSS6 gene. Cleaving the BMP-coreceptor hemojuvelin, matriptase-2 impairs the BMP/SMAD signaling pathway, downregulates hepcidin and facilitates iron absorption. TMPRSS6 inactivation causes iron-deficiency-anemia refractory to iron administration both in humans and mice. Genome wide association studies have shown that the SNP rs855791, which causes the matriptase-2 V736A amino acid substitution, is associated with variations of serum iron, transferrin saturation, hemoglobin and erythrocyte traits. Here we show that in vitro matriptase-2 736(A) inhibits hepcidin more efficiently than 736(V). Moreover, in a genotyped population, after exclusion of samples with iron deficiency and inflammation, hepcidin, hepcidin/transferrin saturation and hepcidin/ferritin ratios were significantly lower and iron parameters were consistently higher in homozygotes 736(A) ...
Combined energy plants operating on the Brayton-Rankine cycle have gained wide acceptance as the most efficient energy conversion system. The technology is well proven and numerous research activities are underway to develop it further past its present plateau of performance. In developed and emerging economies alike, the current situation in the global economic market has caused the liberalisation of the energy industry in some countries, and in others it is causing a rethink of economic and energy policies. A result is that electric utility companies that have enjoyed a monopoly in power generation and distribution are seeing this privilege being eroded. This is opening up opportunities for independent power production and, consequently, for gas/steam turbine plants because of the technical merits of the technology and its ability to fill the vacuum being created in the energy industry. An economic model has been developed for carrying out ...
Gallstone is a common disease with a 10% prevalence in the United States and Western Europe. However, it is only symptomatic in 20-30% of patients, with biliary pain "colic" being the most common symptom. Complications of asymptomatic gallstone disease are generally rare, with an incidence of <1 %/yr. The most common complications of gallstone disease are acute cholecystitis, acute pancreatitis, ascending cholangitis, and gangrenous gallbladder. Less frequent complications include Mirizzi syndrome, cholecystocholedochal fistula, and gallstone ileus. Mirizzi syndrome and cholecystocholedochal fistula are two manifestations of the same process that starts with impaction of a gallstone in the gallbladder neck that results in obstruction of the bile duct, causing jaundice. The gallstone may erode into the bile duct, causing cholecystocholedochal fistula. Gallstone ileus refers to small bowel obstruction resulting from the impaction of one or ...
Oryctes agamemnon (Burmeister 1847) (Coleoptera, Scarabaeidae) was accidentally introduced in the southwestern oases of Tunisia (Tozeur) around 1980 and spread to the Rjim Maatoug region. In these areas O. agamemnon was specific to date palm trees causing severe damage that can result in potential danger due to collapse of the tree. This study was conducted from April 2004 to March 2006 in 4 sites in the region of Rjim Maatoug. Different levels of palm tree attack were determined, ovioposition sites were identified, and pest damage was described in detail to specify their relative importance and to indicate factors governing palm tree attack. Eggs were individually oviposited in the attacked parts. Dead parts of palm trees were the main target of O. agamemnon including the respiratory roots, tough, trunk bark, dry petiole and the periphery of the crown. The crown itself was not attacked. Feeding by larvae caused significant ...
Female rats were given tritiated drinking water (3 microCi/ml) from 30 days before mating up to and throughout pregnancy. At this low dose, the course and the outcome of pregnancy were normal. The differences between newborn body and cerebral weights of the treated rats and those of control animals were on the borderline of significance. In contrast, cerebral DNA and cerebral protein were highly significantly lower. In 30-35% of the treated population the DNA and protein values were more than 2 standard deviations (SD) below the mean values for the control population. Thus the number of the progeny of the mothers exposed to tritiated water that were considered to have outstandingly low levels of DNA and protein was 14-17 times greater than in the control group. The irradiated population also had 3-5% of severely affected individuals with cerebral DNA and protein values more than 2 SD below the mean of the experimental population. However, even in this irradiated ...
It is evident that, in the cost elements for blast furnace coke, the specific importances of the fixed portions are not the same for the Dnepr area and Donbass area plants. An even greater difference is observed between the indices for the individual plants. Analysis of the data shows that the specific importance of the fixed portion in the costs of manufacturing products is a function of plant structure, its level of technical development, condition of the equipment and many other factors. From analysis of the data and calculations it was possible to isolate the fixed portion in the costs extra to manufacturing. The mean value of the stable portion of costs extra to manufacturing in the Ukrkoks is equal to 38.6% with individual plants varying within the limits 36.6 to 40.0%. It has also been possible to establish the specific importance of the fixed portion of costs in the total estimated costs for producing coking products. The average for ...
We present a proof-of-concept analysis of the measurement of the health damage of ozone (O_3) produced from nitrogen oxides (NO_x=NO+NO_2) emitted by individual large point sources in the eastern United States. We use a regional atmospheric model of the eastern United States, the Comprehensive Air quality Model with Extensions (CAMx), to quantify the variable impact that a fixed quantity of NO_x emitted from individual sources can have on the downwind concentration of surface O_3, depending on temperature and local biogenic hydrocarbon emissions. We also examine the dependence of resulting O_3-related health damages on the size of the exposed population. The investigation is relevant to the increasingly widely used 'cap and trade' approach to NO_x regulation, which presumes that shifts of emission over time and space, holding the total fixed over the course of the summer O_3 season, will have minimal effect on the environmental outcome. By ...
The whole equipment consists of three separate portable parts: a detector case, a microprocessor and a graphic TV monitor. Magnetic tape memory and an x-y recorder can be connected for recording the measured spectra. The analyzer contains two built-in exchangeable excitation radionuclides. Fluorescence and scattered radiation is detected using a proportional detector. The detected pulses are analyzed by a 256-channel analyzer and the results are shown on the display. The device may be used in mining laboratories, coal and ore dressing plant control rooms or in mining fields of open cast mines for quick detection of the quality of mined or dressed raw materials. (E.S.). 1 fig.
This paper describes the design and operating experience with a high performance control system tailored to the requirements of the SuperHILAC accelerator. A large number (20) of the latest 16-bit microcomputer boards are used in a parallel-distributed manner to get a high system bandwidth. Because of the high bandwidth, software costs and complexity are significantly reduced. The system by its very nature and design is easily upgraded and repaired. Dynamically assigned and labeled knobs, together with touch-panels, allow a flexible and efficient operator interface. An X-Y vector graphics system provides for display and labeling of real-time signals as well as general plotting functions. This control system allows attachment of a powerful auxiliary computer for scientific processing with access to accelerator parameters.
From May, 1999 to August, 2006, we performed laparoscopic diagnosis and treatment for 103 cases of impalpable testes. Among those we found 5 cases of male pseudohermaphroditism of different etiologies. Three males presented by impalpable testes with ambiguous genitalia and 2 females presented by primary amenorrhea. All of them have 46-XY normal male chromosomal pattern. In the first 3 cases, the etiology was complete gonadal dysgenesis, and 2 cases with persistent Mullerian syndrome. Timed gonadectomy for the first case and laparoscopic orchiopexy for the other 2 cases were performed. For the other 2 female cases, the etiology was complete androgen insensitivity syndrome and laparoscopic bilateral orchiectomy was performed for both of them. All the procedures were done without complications with satisfactory results. PMID:18319558
The ground state of a three-dimensional (3D) rotating trapped superfluid Fermi gas in the BCS-BEC crossover is mapped to finite N v -body vortex states by a simple ansatz. The total vortex energy is measured from the ground-state energy of the system in the absence of the vortices. The vortex state is stable since the vortex potential and rotation energies are attractive while the vortex kinetic energy and interaction between vortices are repulsive. By combining the analytical and numerical works for the minimal vortex energy, the 2D configurations of N v vortices are studied by taking into account of the finite size effects both on xy-plane and on z-direction. The calculated vortex numbers as a function of the interaction strength are appropriate to the renew experimental results by Zwier...
In the present study, human neonatal fibroblasts were isolated from a two-month-old human male. The purpose of the present investigation was the analysis of the morphology (light and transmission electron microscopy), karyotype and growth characteristics of the human neonatal fibroblast cell culture B-HNF-1. Moreover, STR typing and mitochondrial DNA amplification and sequencing was also performed. Analysis of chromosomes count showed that B-HNF-1 cell culture is diploid and has normal male karyotype 46, XY, which was stable during cultivation. The transmission electron microscopy demonstrated the ultra-structure of the B-HNF-1 cells; they have typical morphological features of proteosynthesis-active cells. Large number of fibroblasts bearing different shapes and surface characteristics ad...
The widespread use of building materials with relatively high radium concentrations may increase population exposure. A method is presented for measuring effective diffusion coefficients and exhalation rates of radon from such materials. Equations for use in the experimental determination of these values are obtained theoretically. The experimental set-up consists of a container which is hermetically sealed to a slab of the building material. Nitrogen is blown through the container and then through an ionization chamber which is connected to an electrometer and X-Y plotter, and the radon concentration is measured continuously. Exhalation rates of radon from some major building materials measured by this method will be used as reference levels. The method can also be used to determine other properties such as porosity. (author).
Progressive multifocal leukoencephalopathy (PML) is a demyelinating disease of the central nervous system caused by the JC virus (JCV), a human papovavirus. PML is a relatively rare disease seen predominantly in immunocompromised individuals and is a frequent complication observed in AIDS patients. The significantly higher incidence of PML in AIDS patients than in other immunosuppressive disorders has suggested that the presence of human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1) in the brain may directly or indirectly contribute to the pathogenesis of this disease. In the present study the authors have examined the expression of the JCV genome in both glial and non-glial cells in the presence of HIV-1 regulatory proteins. They find that the HIV-1-encoded trans-regulatory protein tat increases the basal activity of the JCV late promoter, JCV{sub L}, in glial cells. They conclude that the presence of the HIV-1-encoded tat protein may positively ...
In the convolution/superposition method of photon beam dose calculations, inhomogeneities are usually handled by using some form of scaling involving the relative electron densities of the inhomogeneities. In this paper the accuracy of density scaling as applied to primary electrons generated in photon interactions is examined. Monte Carlo calculations are compared with density scaling calculations for air and cork slab inhomogeneities. For individual primary photon kernels as well as for photon interactions restricted to a thin layer, the results can differ significantly, by up to 50%, between the two calculations. However, for realistic photon beams where interactions occur throughout the whole irradiated volume, the discrepancies are much less severe. The discrepancies for the kernel calculation are attributed to the scattering characteristics of the electrons and the consequent oversimplified modeling used in the density scaling method. A technique called the ...
Solubilization of lignite including a large amount of oxygen containing functional groups was attempted using HF/BF3, and the behavior of oxygen containing functional group, one of the important factors for coal liquefaction, was studied. In experiment, the cooled slurry of Yallourn coal specimen and solvent (toluene, isopentane) was filled into a vacuum autoclave together with HF/BF3. Reaction was performed under spontaneous pressure at 50, 100 or 150{degree}C for 3 hours. The distribution of oxygen containing functional groups in each coal specimen was determined by quantification of carboxyl group, hydroxyl group and carbonyl group. As the experimental result, the superacid mixture of HF and BF3 considerably improved the solubility of coal specimens into solvent as compared with individual HF and BF3. The solubility was 68wt% into benzene, 96% into THF and 99% (nearly 100%) into pyridine. It was suggested that production of Broensted acid with strong acidity ...
The visual outcomes of Acanthamoeba keratitis, a rare cause of corneal infection, can be devastating. This paper reports two contact lens wearers with severe pain and photophobia who presented to the emergency room. Biomicroscopy revealed radial keratoneuritis in both individuals. Tissue culture on a nonnutrient agar plate with Escherichia coli overlay resulted in a heavy growth of Acanthamoeba. The inpatient treatment included 0.02% polyhexamethylene biguanide, chlorhexidine, neomycin/polymyxin B/bacitracin (Neosporin), and oral fluconazole, which successfully controlled the corneal infection and improvement in the best corrected visual acuity in both patients. Infection did not recur during the 12-month follow-up period. Acanthamoeba keratitis can present as radial keratoneuritis, mimicking other common corneal infections resulting in diagnostic and treatment delays. Early diagnosis and prudent treatment of Acanthamoeba keratitis are the keys ...
Despite its great usefulness in the performance of the recording procedures prescribed by the X-Ray Ordinance the dose-area product is much less frequently measured for X-ray exposures than during fluorscopic examinations. The great multitude of measuring units, mainly on account of different scales of the measuring equipments themselves, is a cause of uncertainty in clinical routine and should be eliminated as far as the circumstances would permit. As the determination of the organ dose is relevant only in very few cases and does not necessarily require previous measurements of the dose-area product, these are of limited practical value in the assessment of individual radiation exposures during radiographic examinations. The measurements may, however, be very helpful in determinations of the radiation dose to the total population, if the future retrievability of the values obtained is ensured. In addition to some measuring values showing past ...
The term {open_quotes}hazardous{close_quotes} waste is used primarily in reference to potential hazards to human health and, to a lesser decree, hazards to wildlife and the ecosystem. Many of the chemicals associated with hazardous waste sites are also widely distributed throughout the environment; therefore, the health hazards associated with hazardous waste sites are not different from those associated with general environmental contamination. Until recently, it was generally assumed that cancer was the human disease of greatest concern associated with toxic chemicals. In fact, most governmental regulations related to exposure are designed on the basis of presumed cancer risks. Since the evidence that hazardous chemicals can cause cancer is strong, it is appropriate to be concerned about cancer risk. Recent evidence, however, has triggered a reevaluation of the assumption that only cancer is of concern. New evidence suggests that noncancer endpoints may occur ...
Radon-222 was shown to be useful in-situ tracer for studying thermodynamic, geologic, and transport properties of geothermal reservoirs. The relationships to reservoir properties are based on steady-state and non-steady-state models which incorporate the thermodynamic state and relative mobility of the fluids, and partitioning between the fluid phases. The steady-state thermodynamic models assume equilibrium between radon emanation from the reservoir rock and the geofluid concentration. The non-steady-state model solves the partial differential equations describing radon transport under transient two-phase geothermal flow conditions. Radon concentrations of fluids from nine geothermal reservoirs showed strong correlations to the specific volume of the reservoir fluid. Lowest values were associated with all-liquid wells at Cerro Prieto, Wairakei, and Los Azufres reservoirs, and the highest values for steady-producing wells at Serrazzano, Geysers, and Matsukawa reservoirs. Greater ...
The in-flight wavelength calibration for the Ozone Monitoring Instrument is discussed. The observed variability in the wavelength scale is two orders of magnitude larger than caused by temperature changes in the instrument. These wavelength variations are the result of rapid changes in time in the radiance levels during an individual observation in the presence of clouds or snow and ice. We have developed a data processing method to account and correct for these changes. In February 2005 this correction was implemented in the official data processing stream. We explain in detail how and how accurately this method works. Before correction, the error in the wavelength scale can be as much as a few tenths of a pixel; after correction it is mostly less than 1/100th of a pixel, which is the required preflight accuracy. This means that higher-level products such as the total column amounts of ozone, NO2, and SO2 are not significantly affected. It is ...
Annual medical examinations are conducted by Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL) for a population of Marshallese who were accidentally exposed to radioactive fallout in 1954, for a comparison population, and for all inhabitants of the atolls of Rongelap and Utirik. Disease surveillance includes analysis of serum samples. Elevated serum uric acid (SUA) levels are common along Pacific populations, and modifying environmental factors have been investigated as a cause for this finding. The authors have studied SUA levels of people living in the Marshall Islands, and have found elevated values similar to those reported for other Micronesian populations. The nearly Gaussian distribution of individual serum uric acid values for men, and for women less than or equal to45 years of age, indicates that the elevation is due to a regularized increase in serum uric acid rather than to a subpopulation that has pathologic hyperuricemia. The higher serum uric ...
There is increasing concern among the dental community regarding the damage caused to teeth by the acids in soft drinks. Enamel dissolution in acidic solution can be reduced by addition of calcium and/or phosphate salts to increase the degree of saturation with respect to hydroxyapatite (DS sub H sub A), or by an increase in pH. In soft drinks, however, both of these approaches are associated with a reduced taste quality. The separate effects of each parameter are not known. In the work presented here, enamel dissolution was studied in citric acid solutions with compositions typical of soft drinks. Nanoindentation and atomic force microscopy (AFM) were used to investigate very early stages of enamel dissolution, with typical exposure times of 30-600 s. Preliminary investigations of the application of SIMS, ESEM and XPS to enamel dissolution studies are also reported. The individual effects of DS sub H sub A , pH and calcium and phosphate ...
Cervical cancer is emerging as a leading cause of morbidity and mortality in women worldwide. Toll-like Receptor (TLR) gene polymorphisms may contribute to subsequent inter-individual variability in cancer susceptibility. The present study aimed to identify the role of TLR 3 (c.1377C/T) [rs3775290] and TLR 9 (G2848A) [rs352140] gene polymorphisms in the risk of developing cervical cancer in North India. Peripheral blood samples were collected from 200 histopathologically confirmed cervical cancer patients from North India and 200 unrelated, cancer-free, age-matched healthy female controls of similar ethnicity. Genomic DNA was extracted using the salting-out method, and genotyped for TLR 3 and TLR 9 using polymerase chain reaction-based restriction fragment length polymorphism (PCR-RFLP). O...
The neutral Higgs boson is expected to have a mass in the region 90 endash 150thinspGeV /c"2 in various schemes within the minimal supersymmetric extension of the standard model. A first generation muon collider is uniquely suited to investigate the mass, width, and decay modes of the Higgs boson, since the coupling of the Higgs boson to muons is expected to be strong enough for it to be produced in the s channel mode in the muon collider. Because of the narrow width of the Higgs boson, it is necessary to measure and control the energy of the individual muon bunches to a precision of a few parts in a million. We investigate the feasibility of determining the energy scale of a muon collider ring with circulating muon beams of 50thinspGeV energy by measuring the turn by turn variation of the energy deposited by electrons produced by the decay of the muons. This variation is caused by the existence of an average initial polarization of the muon ...
Design of energy efficient schemes for data gathering is an important concern for lifetime enhancement of wireless sensor networks. Variation in the distances of nodes from the Base Station and differences in inter-nodal distances are primary factors causing unequal energy dissipation among the nodes. Thus energy difference between the various nodes increases with time resulting in degraded network performance. The LEACH and PEGASIS schemes which provided elegant solutions to the problem suffer basic drawbacks due to randomization of cluster heads and greedy chain formation respectively. In this paper, we propose an Optimized Lifetime Enhancement (OLE) Scheme which shows enhanced performance over these schemes. OLE increases the network performance by ensuring a sub-optimal energy dissipation of the individual nodes despite their random deployment. It employs modern heuristics like particle swarm optimization instead of the greedy algorithm as ...
Persons with a thermolabile form of the enzyme 5,10 methylenetetrahydrofolate reductase (MTHFR) have reduced enzyme activity and increased plasma homocysteine which can be lowered by supplemental folic acid. Thermolability of the enzyme has recently been shown to be caused by a common mutation (677C{sup {r_arrow}}T) in the MTHFR gene. We studied 41 fibroblast cultures from NTD-affected fetuses and compared their genotypes with those of 109 blood specimens from individuals in the general population. 677C{sup {r_arrow}}T homozygosity was associated with a 7.2 fold increased risk for NTDs (95% confidence interval: 1.8-30.3; p value: 0.001). These preliminary data suggest that the 677C{sup {r_arrow}}T polymorphism of the MTHFR gene is a risk factor for spina bifida and anencephaly that may provide a partial biologic explanation for why folic acid prevents these types of NTD. 13 refs., 1 fig., 1 tab.
The Carassius auratus complex in natural populations includes diploid triploid and polyploidy individuals. Diploid individuals belong to the species Carassius auratus...Full Text Available
In areas where radiation dose monitoring has not been performed, it is essential to use material available in the environment be able to rapidly assess doses to individuals for immediate emergency medical care or for general estimation of the radiological consequences. It was shown that certain types of telephone cards containing microchips have the potential to be used as individual radiation dosimeters in emergency situations to detect doses over 250 mGy by luminescence measurements. In order to understand the dosimetric properties of chip cards, the components obtained from INFINIEON Company at various stages of production were used for luminescence measurements. It is found that the protecting layer used above the chips so called 'globe top' is the main source of radiation induced signal in chip cards. The globe top produced by INFINIEON at that stage is found to contain SiO2 and Epoxy. In order to improve the dosimetric properties of the ...
Although polybrominated naphthalenes (PBNs) are contaminants of the commercial fire retardant fireMaster BP-6, the individual PBN isomers have not been identified. In order to study PBNs possessing an analogous level of bromination to those found in fireMaster BP-6, three synthetic PBN mixtures, averaging 5.0, 5.3, and 5.6 bromines per naphthalene were synthetized and partially characterized. The PBN mixtures were administered to immature male Wistar rats and found to be potent inducers of cytochrome P-450-dependent monooxygenases. At the lowest dose tested, 30 mumol X kg-1, each PBN mixture caused maximal induction of benzo(a)pyrene hydroxylase activity. On the basis of enzyme activities, ligand-binding spectra and sodium dodecyl sulfate-polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis, the PBN mixtures were determined to be 3-methylcholanthrene-type inducers of cytochrome P-450 (P-448), resembling qualitatively the most toxic polyhalogenated biphenyls, ...
Exposure to crystalline silica dust causes multiple diseases, but silicosis and silica dust-associated tuberculosis (TB), in particular, are the two diseases that remain high on the list of occupational health priorities in low-income countries and that still occur in some high-income countries. The prevalence of silica-related TB is exacerbated by the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) epidemic in low-income countries. This review describes the morphology of silica and the variable potency of the different forms. Sources of crystalline silica are discussed, with emphasis on less commonly recognised sources, such as small-scale mining operations and agriculture. Trends in the prevalence of silicosis are also presented. Although efforts have been made for many years in most countries to reduce silica dust levels, silicosis continues to occur even in young people. The clinical and pathological features and diagnosis of silicosis, with emphasis on chest radiography, ...
A performance assessment analysis was completed for the 200 East Area Low-Level Burial Grounds (LLBG) to satisfy compliance requirements in DOE Order 5820.2A. In the analysis, scenarios of radionuclide release from the 200 East Area Low-Level waste facility was evaluated. The analysis focused on two primary scenarios leading to exposure. The first was inadvertent intrusion. In this scenario, it was assumed that institutional control of the site and knowledge of the disposal facility has been lost. Waste is subsequently exhumed and dose from exposure is received. The second scenario was groundwater contamination.In this scenario, radionuclides are leached from the waste by infiltrating precipitation and transported through the soil column to the underlying unconfined aquifer. The contaminated water is pumped from a well 100 m downstream and consumed,causing dose. Estimates of potential contamination of the surrounding environment were developed and the associated ...
Familial Angelman syndrome (AS) can result from mutations in chromosome 15q11q13 that, when transmitted from father to child, result in no phenotypic abnormality but, when transmitted from mother to child, cause AS. These mutations therefore behave neither as dominant nor as recessive mutations but, rather, show an imprinted mode of inheritance. The authors have analyzed two sibling pairs with AS and a larger family with four AS offspring of three sisters with several recently described microsatellite polymorphisms in the AS region. AS siblings inherited the same maternal alleles at the GABRB3 and GABRA5 loci, and the unaffected siblings of AS individuals inherited the other maternal alleles at these loci. In one of the AS sibling pairs, analysis of a recombination event indicates that the mutation responsible for AS is distal to locus D15S63. This result is consistent with a previously described imprinted submicroscopic deletion ...
A Task Group of the International Commission on Radiological Protection (ICRP) has finished a report Biological Effects after Prenatal Irradiation (Embryo and Fetus) which has been approved by the Main Commission and Will be Published. Some new important scientific data shall be discussed in this contribution. During the preimplantation period lethality of the mammalian embryo is the dominating radiation effect. However, in mouse strains with genetic predispositions it has been shown that also malformations can be caused. This effect is genetically determined and its mechanisms is different from the induction of malformations during major organogenesis. Radiation exposures during this prenatal period leads ato an increase of genomic instability of cells in the normal appearing fetuses. These radiation effects can be transmitted to the next generation. A renewed analysis of individuals with severe mental retardation after exposures during the ...
PLZT-7/65/35 is a ferroelectric ceramic with strong electrooptic properties and memory; it is switched through transparent electrodes when mechanically strained. Matrix addressed x-y page composers for interfacing electrical and coherent optical systems are being fabricated with PLZT. Switching voltages are 50-300 V. Optical efficiencies greater than 40% have been achieved. Strains near 2.4 x 10(-3) mm/mm permit half-wave retardation switching in 100-micro-thick plates with 80-V read-in and 190-V erase levels (60 Hz hysteresis data). A 128 x 128 element array can operate at 10(7) bits/sec with 10-microsec switching in a row at a time mode. Half-select disturbances affect contrasts. Applications in displays are also feasible. PMID:20111514
This work assesses the performance of a modified two-dimensional gamma scan system in spent fuel pin studies. The techniques for a two-dimensional gamma scan studied have been developed at the Hot Cell of Institute of Nuclear Energy Research (INER). Samples are acquired from the spent fuel pin, TPC-SP-C1, which was irradiated in a commercial reactor core (the first of its kind in Taiwan) for 2 years and then deposited in a cooling pool for 10 years. The spent fuel pin was then transferred into INER for further examination. The gamma scanning system was driven by a step motor which had an accuracy within 0.1 mm in both X-Y directions. Data obtained from this system are presented in both an isotopic distribution and contour plot. Results in this study closely correspond to those in other investigations, thereby confirming the effectiveness of this modified system. (author)
DC resistivity, dc magnetization, and specific heat of eight Sc{sub 5}Co{sub 4}Ge{sub 10}-type crystal-structure compounds R{sub 5}T{sub 4}Ge{sub 10} for R = Dy, Ho, Er, Tm, and T = Rh and Ir are presented. The resistivity, single-crystal magnetization, and specific-heat results show that in all those compounds, the magnetic moments order antiferromagnetically in the c direction at low temperature. However, in the Er and Tm compounds, the magnetizations along x-y hard directions do not show any anomalies above 2.0 K. This suggests that the ordered Er and Tm ions, which have positive quadrupole coefficients, interact with a crystal field that has an electronic potential valley along the c axis. The fitting of the hard axis magnetizations to Curie-Weiss law suggests that the resulting antiferromagnetic-like {theta} reflects the strength of the crystal-field torque on the magnetic moments rather than the strength of antiferromagnetic exchange.
DC resistivity, dc magnetization, and specific heat of eight Sc/sub 5/Co/sub 4/Ge/sub 10/-type crystal structure compounds R/sub 5/T/sub 4/Ge/sub 10/ for R = Dy, Ho, Er, Tm, and T = Rh and Ir are presented. The resistivity, single crystal magnetization, and specific heat results show that in all those compounds, the magnetic moments order antiferromagnetically in the c direction at low temperature. However, in the Er and Tm compounds, the magnetizations along x-y hard directions do not show any anomalies above 2.0 K. This suggests that the ordered Er and Tm ions, which have positive quadrupole coefficients ..cap alpha../sub j/, interact with a crystal field that has an electronic potential valley along the c axis. The fitting of the hard axis magnetizations to Curie-Weiss law suggests that the resulting antiferromagnetic-like theta reflects the strength of the crystal field torque on the magnetic moments rather than the strength of antiferromagnetic exchange. 123 ...
Contents The aim of this study was a cytogenetic analysis of stallions semen to find sex chromosome aberrations and to determine if there was an association between stallion-s age and aberration frequency for the sex chromosomes. Sperm samples were collected from 22 stallions of various age from 3 to 23-years. Multicolour FISH was performed on each sample, using probes for the sex chromosomes and EGFR gene, localized on 4p12 in domestic horse. A total of 26199 sperm cells were analysed (from 1 070 to 1 532 per animal). Among the analysed cells, there were 50.318% with X chromosome, 48.543% with Y chromosome and 1.139% with aberrant chromosomes. The frequency of aberrations was: sex chromosomes nullisomy (0.466%), XY aneuploidy (0.454%), XX disomy (0.146%), YY disomy (0.041%), diploidy (0.0...
The alloying effects on K to L shell vacancy transfer probabilities (?KL) in 3d transition metals have been carried out by X-ray fluorescence studies of various alloy compositions. K X-ray intensity ratios of Ti, Cr, Fe, Co, Ni, and Cu elements in the FexNi1?x, FexCr1?x, NixCr1?x, FexCryNi1?(x+y), TixNi1?x, TixCo1?x, and CoxCu1?x alloys have been measured following excitation by 22.69keV X-rays from a 10 mCi 109Cd radioactive point source and ?KL values for alloying elements have been determined from these ratios. The spectrum of characteristic K-X-ray photons from samples were detected with a high resolution Si(Li) detector coupled to a 4 K multichannel analyzer. The present investigation makes it possible to ...
Institutional and organizational models ... Review individual centre institutional and organizational models in the light of the tasks to be performed by
One case of esophagitis caused by oral medication of Tetracycline is reported. The cause and factors predisposing to this uncommon complication of oral medication are discussed.
BackgroundWe examined the effects of short-term consumption of whey protein isolate on muscle proteins and force recovery after eccentrically-induced muscle damage in healthy individuals.MethodsSeventeen...Full Text Available
A common property of aging in all animals is that chronologically and genetically identical individuals age at different rates. To unveil mechanisms that influence aging variability, we identified markers...Full Text Available
Between 1970 and 1975, the incidence of new Schistosoma mansoni infections was reduced in 5 villages after each household was provided with its individual water supply and community...Full Text Available
We use high-density single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) genotyping microarrays to demonstrate the ability to accurately and robustly determine whether individuals are in a complex genomic DNA mixture....Full Text Available
ABSTRACTPurpose: To describe previously reported locomotor muscle and whole-body composition factors related to mobility in older individuals.Methods:...Full Text Available
The following subjects are dealt with: physics of indoor air flow, flow in individual rooms, exchange of air and pollution between individual building zones and with the outside world, thermal coupling with the building shell, thermal comfort and air quality, evaluation of the ventilation. figs., tabs., refs.
Using a theoretical framework of social support, and content analysis, the content and pattern of support in messages posted in a 4-week period on a commercial health network for individuals concerned...Full Text Available
Background/AimsTo explore different definitions of intra-individual variability (IIV) to summarize performance on commonly utilized cognitive tests (Mini Mental State Exam; Clock...Full Text Available
Individuals from families recruited for the Long Life Family Study (LLFS) (n= 4559) were examined and compared to individuals from other cohorts to determine whether the recruitment targeting longevity...Full Text Available
... 16223, 16292, and 16295, which classify them as haplogroup W (Richards et al. 2000). The sample that was ... belonged to haplogroup B, 2 individuals belonged to haplogroup W, and 1 individual belonged to ...
In the context of social dilemmas, previous research has shown that human cooperation is mainly based on the social norm of conditional cooperation. While in most cases individuals behave according...Full Text Available
Proposals that adaptation with left-shifting prisms induces neglect-like symptoms in normal individuals rely on a dissociation between the post-adaptation performance of individuals trained...Full Text Available
... Tanzania, and the attack on the USS COLE. ... vis another has no bearing on the legality of the attack. If the person attacked is a combatant, the use of ...
Sep 16, 2010 ... Taking military operations as an example, there is evidence that stress-related behavioral disorders and mental conditions such as anxiety, ...
... A classic example is rewriting the missionaries and cannibals (M and C) problem [Ama68] phrased in terms of individuals into a formulation that is ...
Genomic instability can be produced by ionising radiation, so-called radiation-induced genomic instability, and chemical mutagens. Radiation-induced genomic instability occurs in both germinal and somatic cells and also in the offspring of irradiated individuals, and it is characterised by genetic changes including chromosomal rearrangements. The majority of studies of trans-generational, radiation-induced genomic instability have been described in the male germ line, whereas the authors who have chosen the female as a model are scarce. The aim of this work is to find out the radiation-induced effects in the foetal offspring of X-ray-treated female rats and, at the same time, the possible impact of this radiation-induced genomic instability on the action of a chemical mutagen. In order to achieve both goals, the quantity and quality of chromosomal damage were analysed. In order to detect trans-generational genomic instability, a total of 4806 metaphases from foetal ...
Conventional plasma carburizing or nitriding for austenitic stainless steels results in a degradation of corrosion resistance. However, a low temperature plasma surface treatment can improve surface hardness without deteriorating the corrosion resistance. The 2-step low temperature plasma processes (the combined carburizing and post nitriding) offers the increase of both surface hardness and thickness of hardened layer and corrosion resistance than the individually processed low temperature nitriding and low temperature carburizing techniques. In the present paper, attempts have been made to investigate the influence of the introduction of Ar gas (0#approx#20%) in nitriding atmosphere during low temperature plasma nitriding at 370 .deg. C after low temperature plasma carburizing at 470 .deg. C. All treated specimens exhibited the increase of the surface hardness with increasing Ar level in the atmosphere and the surface hardness value reached up to 1050 HV_0_._1, ...
The water soluble, photolabile nitrene precursor, azidonaphthalene-2,7-disulfonic acid (ANDS) was encapsulated in small unilamellar, isoelectric (egg PC) or negatively charged (egg PC + dihexadecylphosphate) liposomes. The individual and combined effects of heme-proteins and UV irradiation on the fluorescence of these vesicles under aerobic conditions were studied. Consistent with the catalytic action of heme-proteins on lipid peroxidation and peroxide decomposition, addition of cytochrome c (positively charged) or catalase (negatively charged) to the vesicles elicited immediate formation of a fluorescence band at 470 nm, characteristic of Schiff bases that form from aldehyde byproducts of decomposing hydroperoxides. Ultraviolet irradiation of liposomes caused no significant changes in the fluorescence spectrum, in spite of the radiolysis of ANDS inside the vesicles with consequent formation of nitrene radicals. When isoelectric vesicles were ...
Colorectal cancer is the third most common malignant tumor and the fourth-leading cause of cancer death worldwide. The crucial role of fatty acids for a number of important biological processes suggests a more in depth analysis of inter-individual differences in fatty acid metabolizing genes as contributing factor to colon carcinogenesis. We examined the association between genetic variability in 43 fatty acid metabolism-related genes and colorectal risk in 1225 CRC cases and 2032 controls participating in the European Prospective Investigation into Cancer and Nutrition study. 392 single nucleotide polymorphisms were selected using pairwise tagging with an r(2) cutoff of 0.8 and a minor allele frequency of >5%. Conditional logistic regression models were used to estimate odds ratios and corresponding 95% confidence intervals. Haplotype analysis was performed using a generalized linear model framework. On the genotype level, HPGD, PLA2G6, and ...
The invention concerns a method for the graduated introduction of finely-particulate and especially pulverously-particulate solid substance, in particular coal dust, from a pressurised proportioning tank containing a supply of solid matter into an industrial furnace with several supply points, in particular a shaft furnace such as a blast furnace or a cupola furnace, the solid matter being conveyed to the individual supply points in a flow of carrier gas heavily charged with solid matter, through a separate transport line for each supply point, the carrier gas being conveyed to the lower end section of the proportioning tank in a current which causes a local loosening in the lower section of the supply of solid matter, with the transport lines opening into the loosened area, whilst the proportioning tank that contains the solid matter is weighed continuously, the actual weight of the proportioning tank being compared with the latter's ...
Transducin {alpha} subunits are members of a large family of G-proteins and play an important role in phototransduction in rod and cone photoreceptors. We report the localization of the human cone {alpha} transducin (GNAT2) gene using fluorescence in situ hybridization (FISH) on chromosome 1 in band p13. The recent assignment of a gene for Stargardt`s disease to the same chromosomal region by linkage analysis prompted us to investigate the possible role of GNAT2 in the pathogenesis of this disease. Stargardt`s disease is characterized by degeneration in late childhood or early adulthood of the macula of the retina, a region rich in cones. We screened patients with Stargardt`s disease, with or without peripheral cone involvement as monitored by the full-field ERG, for mutations in this gene. We investigated 66 unrelated patients including 22 with peripheral cone dysfunction for mutations in the coding region of the GNAT2 gene using polymerase chain reaction-single strand conformation ...
Resistance to thyroid hormone (RTH) is an autosomal dominant disease caused by mutations in the human thyroid receptor beta gene on chromosome 3. Individuals with RTH have an increased incidence of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). The purpose of this study was to search for developmental brain malformations associated with RTH. Forty-three subjects (20 affected males [AM], 23 affected females [AF]) with resistance to thyroid hormone and 32 unaffected first degree relatives (18 unaffected males [UM], 14 unaffected females [UF]) underwent MRI brain scans with a volumetric acquisition that provided 90 contiguous 2 mm thick sagittal images. Films of six contiguous images beginning at a standard sagittal position lateral to the insula were analyzed by an investigator who was blind with respect to subject characteristics. The presence of extra or missing gyri in the parietal bank of the Sylvian fissure (multimodal association cortex) ...
Exposures from most natural and artificial sources, with the exception of those from medical radiology, are received at average dose rates of only a few microsieverts a day. Such risks as may be caused by these exposures are most unlikely to be determined with precision directly by epidemiological studies of populations exposed at these low rates. They may, however, be reliably inferred from the observed risks of exposure to rather larger doses delivered at higher dose rates in the light of the increasing knowledge of the phenomena involved in the initial cellular damage, the extent to which such damage is incorrectly repaired, and the processes which intervene between the genetic or other harm to cells and the likelihood of its final expression in inherited abnormality, in cancer development, or in defective foetal or embryonic growth. Current studies are of great importance, therefore, in examining the circumstances in which coding sections of the chromosomal DNA ...
A thermal model is formulated for the determination of the emergency transient ampacities of a three phase, horizontally spaced underground cable system. The model is based on a finite difference heat transfer analysis and the principle of superposition which permits the summation of the temperature rise of individual heat sources to eventually provide for the temperature rise of a multiple cable system. The thermal model is transformed into a complex computer program that is capable of calculating the real time cable temperature for any change in conductor current. The program is used to calculate the response of conductor temperatures caused by both ramp and step changes in currents for four conductor sizes between 4/0 and 1500 kcmil. The amount of time to reach conductor temperatures of 100/sup 0/C and 120/sup 0/C from a steady conductor temperature of 75/sup 0/C is calculated for the different conductor sizes and for different emergency ...
A study of mine-waste contamination effects on Methow River habitat on the eastern slopes of the north Cascade Mountains in Washington state, U.S.A., revealed impacts at ecosystem, community, population, individual, tissue, and cellular levels. Ore deposits in the area were mined for gold, silver, copper and zinc until the early 1950's, but the mines are now inactive. An above-and-below-mine approach was used to compare potentially impacted to control sites. The concentrations of eleven trace elements (i.e., Al, As, B, Ba, Cd, Cr, Cu, Mn, Pb, Se, and Zn) in Methow River sediments downstream from the abandoned mine sites were higher than background levels. Exposed trout and caddisfly larvae in the Methow River showed reduced growth compared to controls. Samples of liver from juvenile trout and small intestine from exposed caddisfly larvae were examined for evidence of metal accumulation, cytopathological change, and chemical toxicity. Morphological changes ...
The release of {sup 14}C as {sup 14}CO{sub 2} from partly failed spent fuel containers has been analyzed by the flow of gases into and out of the containers. This flow of gases is driven by pressure differences, which are in turn caused by heating by the spent fuel. In this analysis, the timing and size of holes in the containers are assumed to be given. A better means of predicting the time distribution and sizes of penetrations in nuclear waste containers is needed. For the purposes of far-field transport calculations, we have adopted release rates that are shown to be bonding for the large range of hole sizes studied. The transport of released {sup 14}CO{sub 2} has been analyzed by transport in equivalent porous medium. The peak {sup 14}CO{sub 2} concentration in pore gas at 350 m above the repository does not depend on the time of hole occurrence, although the time of penetration obviously affects the arrival and duration of exposure to {sup 14}C. Nor does ...
The authors report the individual monitoring data management system (IDOSE) at Daya Bay Nuclear Power Station. The components of the individual monitoring system, the design requirements of IDOSE, the characteristics and application of this computerized management system are mainly presented. Its application shows that IDOSE meets the requirements of the concerning occupational standards of the state and matches with the requirements of IAEA/ISOE.
This paper introduces an occupational exposure information system in detail, which is developed and in operation presently by Daya Bay nuclear power plant. It is presented in the paper that individual dose monitoring items and method, design and classification of database configuration, statistics and analysis of individual dose, and management of staff entering and exiting controlled area. The system is instructive to analysing individual dose and optimizing radiation protection measures. (authors)
... It is well camouflaged and each individual has unique back pattern markings. It eats mainly spiders and insects. The Eastern Lined Earless Dragon is a small dragon lizard measuring up to 21cm in length. It is well camouflaged and each individual has unique back ... It is well camouflaged and each individual has unique back pattern markings. It eats mainly spiders and insects. It lives in and around grass tussocks as well as small holes in the ground that are also used by invertebrates such as wolf spiders and crickets....
We consider a general, neutral, dynamical model of biodiversity. Individuals have i.i.d. lifetime durations, which are not necessarily exponentially distributed, and each individual gives birth independently at constant rate \\lambda. We assume that types are clonally inherited. We consider two classes of speciation models in this setting. In the immigration model, new individuals of an entirely new species singly enter the population at constant rate \\mu (e.g., from the mainland into the island). In the mutation model, each individual independently experiences point mutations in its germ line, at constant rate \\theta. We are interested in the species abundance distribution, i.e., in the numbers, denoted I_n(k) in the immigration model and A_n(k) in the mutation model, of species represented by k individuals, k=1,2,...,n, when there are n individuals in the ...
Autonomous robots or remotely operated vehicles have raised high hopes in the military and industrial communities because of the potential safety improvement and gain of productivity they may provide. Waste management on nuclear sites, pallet manipulation in factories, interventions on battle-fields, etc., are actively studied. A lot of these applications require powerful four-wheel vehicles, the kinematics of which is similar to that of a car. Such vehicles have three degrees of freedom: the (x,y) positions in a plane and the orientation of the vehicle. Path planning is often understood as only changing the position of the vehicle, whereas the tasks performed by this kind of robot requires a perfect orientation of the vehicle: forklifting a pallet or docking at a loading or unloading station requires accuracy in the orientation of the vehicle. It is this requirement and the kinematic constraints of the motion mode which have led to the path-planning algorithm ...
We present a femtosecond Laser Two-Photon Polymerization (LTPP) system of large scale three-dimensional structuring for applications in tissue engineering. The direct laser writing system enables fabrication of artificial polymeric scaffolds over a large area (up to cm in lateral size) with sub-micrometer resolution which could find practical applications in biomedicine and surgery. Yb:KGW femtosecond laser oscillator (Pharos, Light Conversion. Co. Ltd.) is used as an irradiation source (75 fs, 515 nm (frequency doubled), 80 MHz). The sample is mounted on wide range linear motor driven stages having 10 nm sample positioning resolution (XY--ALS130-100, Z--ALS130-50, Aerotech, Inc.). These stages guarantee an overall travelling range of 100 mm into X and Y directions and 50 mm in Z direction and support the linear scanning speed up to 300 mm/s. By moving the sample three-dimensionally the position of laser focus in the photopolymer is changed and one is able to write ...
During Phase 2 of our study of the CIXS conceptual design we have tackled additional important issues that are unique to the ITER environment. These include the thermal control of the crystal and detector enclosures located in an environment with a 100-250 C ambient temperature, tritium containment, and the range of crystal and detector movement based on the need for spectral adjustments and the desire to make measurements of colder plasmas. In addressing these issues we have selected a ''Dewar''-type enclosure for the crystals and detectors. Applying realistic view factors for radiant heat and making allowance for conduction we have made engineering studies of this enclosure and showed that the cooling requirements can be solved and the temperature can be kept sufficiently constant without compromising the specification parameters of the CIXS. We have chosen a minimum 3 mm combined thickness of the six beryllium windows needed in a Dewar-type enclosure and showed that a single window ...
In 2009 the European Space Agency satellite mission GOCE (Gravity Field and Steady-State Ocean Circulation Explorer) was launched. Its objectives are the precise and detailed determination of the Earth's gravity field and geoid. Its core instrument, a three axis gravitational gradiometer, measures the gravity gradient components V xx , V yy , V zz and V xz (second-order derivatives of the gravity potential V) with high precision and V xy , V yz with low precision, all in the instrument reference frame. The long wavelength gravity field is recovered from the orbit, measured by GPS (Global Positioning System). Characteristic elements of the mission are precise star tracking, a Sun-synchronous and very low (260 km) orbit, angular control by magnetic torquing and an extremely stiff and thermally stable instrument environment. GOCE is complementary to GRACE (Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment), another satellite gravity mission, launched in 2002. While ...
How do people understand questions about cause and prevent? Some theories propose that people affirm that A causes B if A's occurrence makes a difference to B's occurrence in one way or another. Other theories propose that A causes B if some quantity or symbol gets passed in some way from A to B. The aim of our studies is to compare these theories' ability to explain judgements of causation and prevention. We describe six experiments that compare judgements for causal paths that involve a mechanism, i.e. a continuous process of transmission or exchange from cause to effect, against paths that involve no mechanism yet a change in the cause nevertheless brings about a change in the effect. Our results show that people prefer to attribute cause when a mechanism links cause to effect. In contr...
brain Printer-friendly version Email this page to a friend Share Primary lymphoma of the brain is cancer of the lymph cells that starts in the brain. Causes The cause of primary...
BackgroundEmphysematous cholecystitis is a variant of acute cholecystitis which is generally caused by gas-forming organisms. Emphysematous cholecystitis may cause gas spreading...Full Text Available
BackgroundThe aim of this report was to describe duodenal obstruction caused by a rubber foreign body in a cow.Case PresentationThe clinical, biochemical...Full Text Available
Cutaneous scarring can cause patients symptoms ranging from the psychological to physical pain. Although the process of normal scarring is well described the ultimate cause of pathological scarring...Full Text Available
BackgroundCystinuria is the most common inherited cause of urinary tract stones in children. It can lead to obstructive uropathy, which is a major cause of renal...Full Text Available
Full text of publication follows: The TUV NORD e.V. is an independent Technical Support Organisation (TSO) performing safety assessments in almost every field of technology. In nuclear safety the TUV can look back on more than 40 years of experience. In the last years in Germany PWR safety analyses were focussed on boron dilution events with the potential of reactivity transients. The possibility of coolant with a low boron concentration collected in localized areas of the reactor coolant system (RCS) can be caused by injection of coolant with less boron content from interfacing systems (external dilution) as well as separation of borated reactor coolant into highly concentrated and diluted fractions (inherent dilution). Inherent dilution can e.g. occur after reflux-condenser heat transfer after a small break loss of coolant accident (SBLOCA) with a limited operability of the emergency core cooling (ECC) systems. The TUV Nord e.V. was charged by German supervisory ...
Purpose: Patients with ataxia-telangiectasia (A-T) show greatly increased radiation sensitivity and cancer predisposition. Family studies imply that the otherwise clinically silent heterozygotes of this autosomal recessive disease run a 3.5 to 3.8 higher risk of developing cancer. In vitro studies suggest moderately increased cellular radiation sensitivity of A-T carriers. They may also show elevated clinical radiosensitivity. We retrospectively examined patients who presented with severe adverse reactions during or after standard radiation treatment for mutations in the gene responsible for A-T, ATM, considering a potential means of future identification of radiosensitive individuals prospectively to adjust dosage schedules. Material and Methods: We selected 20 cancer patients (breast, 11; rectum, 2; ENT, 2; bladder, 1; prostate, 1; anus, 1; astrocytoma, 1; Hodgkins lymphoma, 1) with Grade 3 to 4 (RTOG) acute and/or late tissue radiation side effects by reaction ...
The important role of thyroid hormones in growth and development, maintenance of body temperature, digestion, cardiac function, and normal brain development can be disrupted by environmental contaminants like polychlorinated biphenyls (PCB). Polychlorinated biphenyls are environmental contaminants that are widespread, persistent, lipophilic, and bioaccumulate through food webs, concentrating in adipose tissue. Placental and lactational PCB exposure of offspring causes metabolic and endocrine disruptions including hypothyroxinemia, spatial learning and memory deficits, neurochemical and neurobehavioral alterations, and reproductive problems. Previous studies in our lab using the individual congeners PCB 47 (2,2',4,4'-tetrachlorobiphenyl, ortho-substituted) and PCB 77 (3,3',4,4'-tetrachlorobiphenyl, non-ortho-substituted) have demonstrated alterations in thyroid hormone levels, alterations in brain choline acetyltransferase (ChAT) activity, and ...
Seven years ago 164 governments, together with partner organizations from around the world, made a collective commitment to dramatically expand educational opportunities for children, youth, and adults by 2015. Participants at the World Education Forum in Dakar, Senegal, endorsed a comprehensive vision of education, anchored in human rights, affirming the importance of learning at all ages and emphasizing the need for special measures to reach the poorest, most vulnerable and most disadvantaged groups in society. This sixth edition of the "Education for All (EFA) Global Monitoring Report" assesses the extent to which these commitments are being met. There is clearly a "Dakar effect," evidence that rallying around common goals can mobilize countries to empower individual lives. Partly because of the abolition of tuition fees, more children are enrolled in school than in 2000, with the sharpest increases in the regions farthest from the goals set in Dakar. Many ...
We investigated activity patterns of 17 elementary school students aged 10-12, and 19 high school students aged 13-17, in suburban Los Angeles during the oxidant pollution season. Individuals' relationships between ventilation rate (VR) and heart rate (HR) were calibrated' in supervised outdoor walking/jogging. Log VR was consistently proportional to HR; although calibrations' were limited by a restricted range of exercise, and possibly by artifact due to mouthpiece breathing, which may cause overestimation of VR at rest. Each subject then recorded activities in diaries, and recorded HR once per minute by wearing Heart Watches, over 3 days (Saturday-Monday). For each activity the subject estimated a breathing rate--slow (slow walking), medium (fast walking), or fast (running). VR ranges for each breathing rate and activity type were estimated from HR recordings. High-school students' diaries showed their ...
Individual laser cooled atoms are delivered on demand from a single atom magneto-optic trap to a high-finesse optical cavity using an atom conveyor. Strong coupling of the atom with the cavity field allows simultaneous cooling and detection of individual atoms for time scales exceeding 15 s. The single atom scatter rate is studied as a function of probe-cavity detuning and probe Rabi frequency, and the experimental results are in good agreement with theoretical predictions. We demonstrate the ability to manipulate the position of a single atom relative to the cavity mode with excellent control and reproducibility.
The individuality of production devices should be taken into account when statistical models are designed for parallelized devices. In the present work, a new clustering method, referred to as NC-spectral clustering, is proposed for discriminating the individuality of production devices. The key idea is to classify samples according to the differences of the correlation among measured variables, since the individuality of production devices is expressed by the correlation. In the proposed NC-spectral clustering, the nearest correlation (NC) method and spectral clustering are integrated. The NC method generates the weighted graph that expresses the correlation-based similarities between samples, and the constructed graph is partitioned by spectral clustering. A new statistical process monit...
BackgroundDuplications of stretches of the genome are an important source of individual genetic variation, but their unrecognized presence in laboratory organisms would be a confounding...Full Text Available
flow and changing scheulingparameters during real-time ..... illustrative purposes, only two minimum separation ..... Individual Flights and Air Traffic, AGARD. No. ...
In the wake of the 2010 earthquake in Haiti, medical relief organizations and individual practitioners mobilized to provide assistance. Here, an emergency medicine physician who worked with a Louisiana-based...Full Text Available
To evaluate the contribution of genetic influences on the individual variation in plateau serum salicylate levels, salicylate metabolism was studied in seven pairs of identical and six pairs of fraternal...Full Text Available
ContextCorticotropin-releasing hormone (CRH), through the hypothalamic pituitary adrenal (HPA) axis and other brain stress systems, is involved in the emotional dysregulation...Full Text Available
This issue is the collection of the papers on progress of researches by common utilization of JAERI nuclear facilities. The 43 of the papers are indexed individually. (J.P.N.)
Several recent studies have documented that non-human primates can individuate objects according to property and/or kind information in much the same way as human infants do from around one year of age when they begin to acquire language. Some studies suggest, however, that only some properties are used for the individuation of food items: color, but not shape. The present study investigated whether these findings reveal a true competence problem with shape properties in the food domain or whether they merely reveal a performance problem (e.g., lack of attention to shapes). We tested 25 great apes (chimpanzees, bonobos and gorillas) in two food individuation tasks. We manipulated subjects? experience with differences in color and shape properties of food items. Results indicated (i) that a...
Costs of parasitism are commonly measured by comparing the performance of infected groups of individuals to that of uninfected control groups. This measure potentially underestimates the cost of parasitism...Full Text Available
Age-associated changes within an individual are inherently complex and occur at multiple levels of organismal function. The overall decline in function of various tissues is known to play a...Full Text Available
your eye to the SCN in your brain, so that light ... Owls are individuals who go to bed late, like to get up late in the moming. And the moming types, ...
Individual strains of the plant pathogenic bacterium Pseudomonas syringae vary in their ability to produce toxins, nucleate ice, and resist antimicrobial compounds. These phenotypes...Full Text Available
The identification of individuals at risk for Alzheimer's disease (AD) is essential for the timely administration of treatment approaches aimed at slowing the onset or progression of the disease....Full Text Available
... system size exhibit a stochastic decomposition property ... to manage congestion in the primary queue. ... video at individual computer network terminals. ...
The purpose of this article is to critically review the available evidence pertaining to occupational, environmental, and individual factors that can affect the development of occupational asthma (OA)....Full Text Available
The muscles of three different arthropods, a mite, a fly, and an ostracod, show variations in the length of the A region within a given individual. There is no indication that the observed differences...Full Text Available
Primary sclerosing cholangitis (PSC) is a rare cholestatic liver disease with major morbidity and mortality. Therapeutic management is difficult, due to lack of conclusive data and individual disease...Full Text Available
new technologies being evaluated by the ADTT. (d) Prepare the ... (g) Have final approval of the individual nominated for the position of Deputy. ADTT. (4) The ...
Apr 18, 2008 ... The FSS was produced by point-source filtering the individual detector data ... a 1-sigma noise map; and a coverage map giving the count of ...
Jan 12, 2010 ... Visual simulation of offshore liquefied natural gas (lng) terminals in a decision-making context. Baird, Brian E.; Sheppard, Stephen R. J.; ...
Genetics, Genomics, and Molecular Biology USGS scientists develop and integrate new genetic and molecular techniques into systematic analyses to describe individuals and populations of fish .....
BackgroundGender is a critically important moderator of psychopathology. However, gender similarities and differences in body dysmorphic disorder (BDD) have received...Full Text Available
Excessive dietary phosphorus may increase cardiovascular risk in healthy individuals as well as in patients with chronic kidney disease, but the mechanisms underlying this risk are not completely understood....Full Text Available
Even when a healthy individual is studied, his/her erythrocytes in capillaries continually change their shape in a synchronized erratic fashion. In this work, the problem of characterizing the cell...Full Text Available
Ether extracts of cultures of 29 strains representing 6 species of Bacillus, and of individual strains of Escherichia coli, Aerobacter aerogenes, and Pseudomonas...Full Text Available
Does the cultural background influence the success with which genetically unrelated individuals cooperate in social dilemma situations? In this paper, we provide an answer by analysing the data of Full Text Available
BackgroundInternet-based depression communities provide a forum for individuals to communicate and share information and ideas. There has been little research into the health status...Full Text Available
AimsThis article provides a brief review of recent cross-cultural research on personality traits at both individual and culture levels, highlighting the relevance...Full Text Available
Prolonged disability is best understood as an illness that exists independently of the initiating disease. The disabled individual goes through predictable stages of disability before resolution occurs....Full Text Available
Aging can be defined as a progressive decline in physiological efficiency regulated by an extremely complex multifactorial process. The genetic makeup of an individual appears to dictate this rate...Full Text Available
Previous research with individuals undergoing surgery or diagnostic procedures provided a conceptual framework for analysis of radiation therapy, a common form of cancer treatment. The present...Full Text Available
Measurements of the taste thresholds of blowflies for a wide variety of carbohydrates, presented individually and in combination, showed that the stimulating effects of the compounds are not always...Full Text Available
The authors reviewed the literature on psychological and psychosocial outcomes for individuals undergoing cosmetic surgery, to address whether elective cosmetic procedures improve psychological...Full Text Available
Air Show. The exhibit will feature 16 fuel companies showcasing cutting-edge alternative jet fuel technologies. In addition to individual company exhibits, the Showcase will...
Extensive investigations and detailed analysis of the failure reason of 9DVN002ZV fan in Daya Bay Nuclear Power Station showed that the fan destroy was caused by the failure of non-drive end bear. The direct cause of this bearing' failure was its improper assembly caused by improper maintenance procedure, and the root cause was too small internal radial clearance after mounting. The factor affecting bearing internal radial clearance, the relationship between clearance and operating life time and fan failure process were discussed. (authors)
It is proved that the mid-point grid, which is composed of samples obtained at ground track locations midway between crossover points (thus a subset of the full sampling), has the same resolving power as the full set; i.e., they resolve the same three-dimensional spectral space. The resolving power of the mid-point grid as derived previously by Tai (1995, 1998) is characterized by the Nyquist frequency ? c=? /T (where T is the repeat period of the exact-repeat satellite), and by (in local Cartesian coordinates) the zonal and meridional Nyquist wavenumber kc=2? /X and lc=2? /Y respectively (where X and Y are the east-west and north-south separation between adjacent parallel ground tracks). Here we re-derive this result in simplified terms. First, it is shown through the sampling theorem as demonstrated previously by Tai (1999) that even though samples of the real mid-point grid are not taken simultaneously, they resolve the same frequency range as that of a hypothetical mid-point grid, ...
Addition of the silane PPh[sub 2]CH[sub 2]CH[sub 2]SiMe[sub 2]H (chelH, 1a) to Pt(COD)[sub 2] (COD = cycloocta-1,5-diene) affords in high yield the cis-bis chelate Pt(chel)[sub 2] (2); formation of the same product from Pt(COD)(X)Y (X = Y = Me; X = Me, Y = Cl) has been shown by NMR spectroscopy ([sup 1]H, [sup 31]P, [sup 195]Pt) to proceed via prior coordination of chelH through P to afford Pt(chelH)[sub 2](X)(Y) (cis and trans isomers) and through intermediacy of PtH(chel)[sub 2]Cl (22) in which P trans to Si at Pt(IV) leads to an exceptionally low [sup 2]J(Pt-P) = 1084 Hz. Cleavage of Pt-Si bonds in 2 by HCl can be controlled to give the monochelate species Pt(chel)(chelH)Cl (7), from which chelH is displaced by PMe[sub 2]Ph, or trans-PtH(PPh[sub 2]CH[sub 2]SiMe[sub 2]Cl)[sub 2]Cl (9). Products related to 9 result from Pt-Si bond cleavage by I[sub 2] or MeI. Using the analogue PPh[sub 2]CH[sub 2]CH[sub 2]SiMe(Ph)H (1c) of 1a, the analogue Pt-[PPh[sub 2]CH[sub ...
A system and method for enabling human beings to communicate by way of their monitored brain activity. The brain activity of an individual is monitored and transmitted to a remote location (e.g. by satellite). At the remote location, the monitored brain activity is compared with pre-recorded normalized brain activity curves, waveforms, or patterns to determine if a match or substantial match is found. If such a match is found, then the computer at the remote location determines that the individual was attempting to communicate the word, phrase, or thought corresponding to the matched stored normalized signal.
This patent describes a system for controlling erosion of the slope between the waterline of a shoreline. The system comprises an elongated conduit; means to pivotably secure the conduit to the shoreline approximately at the waterline; a plurality of individual armor bags attached to the conduit; and means for filling all of the individual armor bags with a grout material whereby the armor bags when filled with the grout material will be positioned as a unit onto the slope below the waterline.
The Commission of the European Communities has submitted a directive for the protection against microwaves. According to this directive, exposures above the upper limit established for the protection of individuals and the general population are permissible only if the respective individuals are required to submit to occupational medical control. An introductory overview is presented giving information on microwaves, applied techniques and available protective means.
Evaluation procedures used to produce sets of evaluated data for the 33 heavy isotopes that fall in the range Z = 90 to Z = 98 are described. At the beginning of the discussion for each individual isotope, a computer-generated listing is given which summarizes the main properties of the data sets that are contained in the evaluation. (RWR)
The concept of frailty offers a convenient way to introduce unobserved heterogeneity and associations into models for survival data. In its simplest form, frailty is an unobserved random proportionality factor that modifies the hazard function of an individual or a group of related individuals. "Frailty Models in Survival Analysis" presents a comprehensive overview of the fundamental approaches in the area of frailty models. The book extensively explores how univariate frailty models can represent unobserved heterogeneity. It also emphasizes correlated frailty models as extensions of
Abstract The success of software projects is quite subjective in nature and is fettered by many risks, the perception of which varies from individual to individual and largely depends on the demographic characteristics of the executives and even the characteristics of the project. This study aims to identify and gauge the software risk dimensions and analyze the differences of perception among executives toward software risks. The contributions of this study untangle the issues underlying risks in the software industry and associates these issues with the perception of the -human- factor present in the industry.
The low potency of many man-made estrogenic chemicals, so-called xenoestrogens, has been used to suggest that risks arising from exposure to individual chemicals are negligible. Another argument used...Full Text Available
Atypical hemolytic uremic syndrome (aHUS) is a heterogeneous disease that is caused by defective complement regulation in over 50% of cases. Mutations have been identified in genes encoding both complement...Full Text Available
BackgroundRoad traffic crashes are considered by the WHO to be the most important global cause of death from injury. However, this may not be true for large areas of rural Asia where...Full Text Available
Sugarcane rusts, brown (caused by Puccinia melanocephala) and orange (caused by P. kuehnii), are agronomically important diseases in Florida. Cultivar resistance is the best means of managing these diseases. Unfortunately, natural infection of brown rust is not always efficient in determining resist...
This study assesses the contribution of smoking to all-cause mortality among a primarily minority cohort of urban transit operators. Survey and medical exam data, obtained from 1,785 workers (61% African...Full Text Available
The in vivo antichlamydial activities of sparfloxacin and reference drugs were examined in a experimental model of pneumonia caused by Chlamydia pneumoniae in leukopenic mice; their in vitro activities...Full Text Available
AimTo estimate the prevalence and causes of blindness and visual impairment in the population aged 40 years and over in Muyuka, a rural district in the South West Province...Full Text Available
We report the first case of human infection by Phaeoisaria clematidis. This fungus caused a corneal ulcer in a Brazilian man who had previously suffered an eye injury. Diagnosis was...Full Text Available
Organisms in the genus Mycobacterium cause a variety of human diseases. One member of the genus, M. ulcerans, causes a necrotizing skin disease called Buruli ulcer....Full Text Available
Polycystic kidney disease (PKD) is one of the leading causes of end-stage renal disease in humans and is characterized by progressive cyst formation, renal enlargement, and abnormal tubular development....Full Text Available
BackgroundMethamphetamine (METH), an addictive psycho-stimulant drug with euphoric effect is known to cause neurotoxicity due to oxidative stress, dopamine accumulation and glial...Full Text Available
Vesical diverticula frequently result from bladder outlet obstructions. However, giant vesical diverticula which cause acute abdomen or intestinal obstruction are very rare. Our review of the English...Full Text Available
Candida albicans frequently causes superficial infections by invading and damaging epithelial cells, but may also cause systemic infections by...Full Text Available
BackgroundAlzheimer's Disease (AD) is the most common neurodegenerative disease and the leading cause of dementia among senile subjects. It has been proposed that AD can be caused...Full Text Available
BackgroundOur motor actions normally generate sensory events, but how do we know which events were self generated and which have external causes? Here we use temporal adaptation...Full Text Available
White, W. G., and Vickers, H. R. (1970).Brit. J. industr. Med.,27, 167-169. Diethyl thiourea as a cause of dermatitis in a car factory. Fifteen...Full Text Available
Biliary obstructions are rarely caused by a foreign body and have received sparse attention. We present an unusual case with pruritis and abdominal pain caused by impacted full length surgical gauze...Full Text Available
Enterotoxigenic Escherichia coli (ETEC) is a leading cause of diarrhea in travelers to countries where the disease is endemic and causes a major disease burden in the indigenous population,...Full Text Available
BackgroundRegistered data can provide valuable information regarding blindness. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the main causes and 3-year incidence of registered blindness...Full Text Available
Chagas disease, caused by infection with Trypanosoma cruzi, is an important cause of cardiovascular disease. It is increasingly clear that parasite-derived prostaglandins potently modulate...Full Text Available
Frontotemporal lobar degeneration is a progressive neurodegenerative syndrome that is the second most common cause of early-onset dementia. Mutations in the progranulin gene are a major cause of familial...Full Text Available
Difficulty in recalling the names of people is very common in the early stages of Alzheimer's disease and in mild cognitive impairment (MCI). However, it is not known whether the difficulty in naming people in MCI reflects problems associated with lexical access or with semantic access. The aims of the present study were to investigate semantic and phonological access to proper names by use of a Tip-of-the-tongue (TOT) task in individuals with multidomain amnestic MCI, individuals with amnestic MCI, and healthy controls, as well as to study the relationships between TOT production and performance in a free recall verbal memory test. In the individuals with multidomain amnestic MCI, the main process affected was phonological access; failures in phonological access were related to deficits i...
Previous research demonstrates that we tend to derogate individuals who are perceived to be in a social relationship with stigmatized persons. Two experiments examined whether this phenomenon also occurs for individuals seen in the presence of an obese person and whether a social relationship is necessary for stigmatization to spread. The results from both experiments revealed that a male job applicant was rated more negatively when seen with an overweight compared to a normal weight female and that just being in the mere proximity of an overweight woman was enough to trigger stigmatization toward the male applicant. Experiment 2 examined possible moderating effects of the proximity finding. Applicants seated next to heavy (vs. average weight) individuals were denigrated consistently regardless of the perceived depth of the relationship, the participant's anti-fat attitudes or gender, and whether or not positive information ...
This paper outlines an approach to develop estimates of individual customer contestability using a combined statistical and engineering analysis. The approach is targeted for use for mid-size commercial and industrial customers who are not being considered for individual flexible pricing contracts. Contestability is defined as the potential lost revenue associated with customers leaving the utility or significantly reducing electricity purchases. Contestability is modeled from the customer`s perspective using a two-stage decision process. In the first stage, the customer decides if he will continue to purchase electricity from the utility (referred to as customer retention), and in the second stage, the customer determines the amount of electricity purchased (referred to as load retention). Measures of individual customer contestability will be key factors in developing market segments and new rate offerings in future ...
Radiation damage is considered to be the major problem that still prevents imaging an individual biological molecule for structural analysis. So far, all known mapping techniques using sufficient short wave-length radiation, be it X-rays or high energy electrons, circumvent this problem by averaging over many molecules. Averaging, however, leaves conformational details uncovered. Even the anticipated use of ultra-short but extremely bright X-ray bursts of a Free Electron Laser shall afford averaging over 10^6 molecules to arrive at atomic resolution. Here we present direct experimental evidence for non-destructive imaging of individual DNA molecules. In fact, we show that DNA withstands coherent low energy electron radiation with deBroglie wavelength in the Angstrom regime despite a vast dose of 10^8 electrons/nm^2 accumulated over more than one hour.
Aim: This paper aims to describe self-rated health (SRH) status among older adults in a rural community of Vietnam, and examine individual and household-level factors associated with good health rating among the study populations. Methods: The study was carried out in the Bavi district, a rural community located 60 km west of Hanoi, the capital, within the Epidemiological Field Laboratory of Bavi (FilaBavi) in Vietnam in 2006. All people aged 50 years and over who lived within the district were surveyed. Face-to-face household interviews were conducted by trained surveyors using standard World Health Organization/INDEPTH network questionnaire-summary version. A logistic multilevel modeling approach was applied to analyze the association between SRH and both individual and household-level f...
The biological half-life of "1"3"7Cs in the total body of human subjects was determined in 23 individuals of Japanese male adult in their normal works by measuring amount of "1"3"7Cs in both their total body and daily urine in the same period. For the group, the value was determined by averaging the half-lives for individuals, by comparing the mean body burden and the mean daily urinary excretion, or by applying a curve fitting method to the body burden estimate. The biological half-life averaged 86 days, ranging from 50 to 161 days. The averages of the biological half-lives for the group were 83, 87 and 82 days in the different periods of observation. By the curve fitting method, 85 days was found for the group. The biological half-life for the individuals depended on both body weight and age, to a lesser extent, of the subjects. (author).
The objective of this study was to develop full body CAD geometry of a seated 50th percentile male. Model development was based on medical image data acquired for this study, in conjunction with extensive data from the open literature. An individual (height, 174.9?cm, weight, 78.6???0.77?kg, and age 26?years) was enrolled in the study for a period of 4?months. 72 scans across three imaging modalities (CT, MRI, and upright MRI) were collected. The whole-body dataset contains 15,622 images. Over 300 individual components representing human anatomy were generated through segmentation. While the enrolled individual served as a template, segmented data were verified against, or augmented with, data from over 75 literature sources on the average morphology of the human body. Non-Uniform Rational...
ABSTRACT Purpose: There is a consensus in the community of dental research that the selection of undersized artificial maxillary anterior teeth offers an unnatural appearance to the denture. Several methods to select the adequate width of these teeth are of questionable validity, and many dentures have an obviously artificial appearance. This article assessed the relationship between the individual and the combined width of maxillary anterior teeth. Materials and Methods: Impressions were made of the anterior dentition of 69 dentate undergraduate students with rubber impression silicon, and casts were formed. The individual widths of the maxillary anterior teeth were measured by using a digital caliper (SC-6 digital caliper, Mitutoyo Corporation, Tokyo, Japan), and the combined width was r...
Summary Large body size hinders locomotor performance in ways that may lead to trade-offs in predator foraging ability that limit the net predatory benefit of larger size. For example, size-related improvements in handling prey may come at the expense of pursuing prey and thus negate any enhancement in overall predatory performance due to increasing size. This hypothesis was tested with longitudinal data from repeated observations of 94 individually known wolves (Canis lupus) hunting elk (Cervus elaphus) in Yellowstone National Park, USA. Wolf size was estimated from an individually based sex-specific growth model derived from body mass measurements of 304 wolves. Larger size granted individual wolves a net predatory advantage despite substantial variation in its effect on the performance ...
Individual photophysical parameters of the chromophore of a fluorescent protein mRFP1 and its two mutants (amino-acid substitution at position 66 - mRFP1/ Q66C and mRFP1/Q66S proteins) are determined. For this purpose, apart from conventional methods of fluorimetry and spectrophotometry, nonlinear laser fluorimetry is used. It is shown that the individual extinction coefficients of the chromophore of proteins correlate (correlation coefficient above 0.9) with the volume of the substituted amino-acid residue at position 66 (similar to the positions of the absorption, fluorescence excitation and emission maxima). (laser biology and medicine)
Abstract: In many biological processes heterogeneity within clonal cell populations is an important issue. One of the most striking examples is a population of cancer cells in which after a common, identical death signal some cells die whereas others survive. The reason for this heterogeneity is intrinsic and extrinsic noise. In this paper we present a mechanistic multi-scale modeling framework for cell populations, in which the dynamics of every individual cell is captured by a parameter dependent stochastic differential equation (SDE). Heterogeneity among individual cells is accounted for by differences in parameter values, modeling extrinsic influences. Based on the statistical properties of the extrinsic noise and the SDE model for the individual cell, a partial differential equation (...
Driving is a complex task that can be a significant challenge for individuals with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). A slight lapse in attention or inhibition while driving (not uncommon in individuals with ADHD) can result in hazardous consequences for these individuals and their families. This is also an interesting clinical scenario for the treating physician, who is always trying to optimize the various treatment options for the patient. Despite such potentially perilous consequences for society, this subject only recently has received researchers? attention. This review paper highlights the psychological differences between drivers with and without ADHD and examines differences between these groups in various driving simulation models. Research updates involving pharmac...
The rod drop time event of the Daya Bay Nuclear Power Plant is caused by the malfunction of the guide tube developed by Framatome. Three temporary solutions were implemented successively and the long term solution was found in the process of searching for the root cause. The different solutions and the root cause are introduced. The safety analysis and license of the solutions are mainly discussed. Experiences and lessons are drawn by summarizing the important items related to nuclear safety.
Sugarcane orange rust is an economically important disease in Florida and has caused yield losses in the major cultivar, CP 80-1743 since it was introduced in 2007. Orange rust has caused susceptible cultivars to be discarded from the CP-cultivar development program and is also causing yield losses....
Hemorrhagic cystitis is a disorder which causes bleeding from diffusely inflammatory bladder mucosa. Here we present a case of severe hemorrhagic cystitis caused by melphalan. A 70-year-old man with...Full Text Available
Social learning (learning through observation or interaction with other individuals) is widespread in nature and is central to the remarkable success of humanity, yet it remains unclear why...Full Text Available
Mating signals are often directed at numerous senses and provide information about species identity, gender, receptiveness, individual identity and mate quality. Given the diversity of colourful body...Full Text Available
BackgroundCongenital microcoria (CMC) is due to a maldevelopment of the dilator pupillae muscle of the iris, with a pupil diameter of less than 2 mm. It is associated with juvenile...Full Text Available
ObjectivesUse of prescription opioids for chronic pain is increasing, as is abuse of these medications, though the nature of the link between these trends is unclear....Full Text Available
HIV-1 nonsubtype B variants account for the majority of HIV infections worldwide. Drug resistance in individuals who have never undergone antiretroviral therapy can lead to early failure and...Full Text Available
While it has been established that microRNAs (miRNAs) play key roles throughout development and are dysregulated in many human pathologies, the specific processes and pathways regulated by individual...Full Text Available
Demographic and health surveillance (DS) systems monitor and document individual and group-level processes in well-defined populations over long periods of time. The resulting data are complex...Full Text Available
A community health survey of 438 individuals was taken to detect health problems related to high voltage electrical transmission among an adjacent residential population. Results revealed no significant...Full Text Available
OBJECTIVE. This study examines variations in the efficient use of hospital resources across individual physicians. DATA SOURCES AND SETTING. The study is conducted over a two-year period (1989-1990)...Full Text Available
Chronically elevated interleukin-6 (IL-6) affects lipid and lipoprotein metabolism. Individuals genetically predisposed to higher IL-6 secretion may be at risk of dyslipidemia, especially during the...Full Text Available
Introduction:Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is a major public health problem. It imparts a substantial economic burden on individuals and society. Acute exacerbations...Full Text Available
The University of North Carolina Comprehensive Pain Center, which has been in existence since 1972, is a pain evaluation, treatment and research program based upon individual diagnosis, comprehensive...Full Text Available
The clinical management of adults with low-grade gliomas (LGGs) remains a challenge. There is no curative treatment, and management of individual patients is a matter of deciding optimal timing as well...Full Text Available
The fungal pathogen Candida albicans is one of the leading causative agents of death in immunocompromised individuals. It harbors an arsenal of cell wall anchored factors that are implicated...Full Text Available
BackgroundPatients’ general tendency to adhere to health care provider-recommended treatments is associated with a number of health outcomes, but whether it influences pain...Full Text Available
The ice cover in high mountain lakes breaks up and disappears in about an hour, in part because it has been divided into fragile vertical spindles, which are individual crystals. Contributing to this...Full Text Available
BackgroundThe variety of ways in which faces are categorized makes face recognition challenging for both synthetic and biological vision systems. Here we focus on two face processing...Full Text Available
AbstractIndividual informed consent is a key ethical obligation for clinical studies, but empirical studies show that key requirements are often not met. Common recommendations to strengthen...Full Text Available
BackgroundThe molecular mechanisms of variations in individual longevity are not well understood, even though longevity can be increased substantially by means of diverse experimental...Full Text Available
Current concepts of the pathogenesis of sarcoidosis suggest that the expanded numbers of activated T-helper/inducer cells at sites of disease activity result, at least in part, from their proliferation...Full Text Available
This article examines social stratification in individual health trajectories for multiple cohorts in the context of China’s dramatically changing macro-social environment. Using data...Full Text Available
Significant asymptomatic bacteriuria is a risk factor for symptomatic urinary infection and septicemia among predisposed individuals such as diabetics. We investigated the pattern of asymptomatic bacteriuria...Full Text Available
Sexual conflict is a conflict between the evolutionary interests of individuals of the two sexes. The sexes can have different trait optima but this need not imply conflict if their optima can be attained...Full Text Available
How an individual’s sex and genetic background modify cardiac adaptation to increased workload is a topic of great interest. We systematically evaluated morphological and physiological...Full Text Available
BackgroundSeverely disabling chronic pain in the adult population is strongly associated with a range of negative health consequences for individuals and high health care costs,...Full Text Available
This report for the month of June 1995 presents information on the typical topics of tritium processing, environmental studies, waste management issues, and miscellaneous projects. The document consists many small reports by individuals or small groups.
The classic evolutionary theory of aging explains why mortality rises with age: as individuals grow older, less lifetime fertility remains, so continued survival contributes less to reproductive fitness....Full Text Available
Individuals with major depressive disorder (MDD) often exhibit impaired executive function, particularly in experimental tasks that involve response conflict and require adaptive behavioral...Full Text Available
It has been suggested that individual recognition based on song may be constrained by repertoire size in songbirds with very large song repertoires. This hypothesis has been difficult to test...Full Text Available
While making economic choices, individuals assign subjective values to the available options. Values computed in different behavioral conditions, however, can vary substantially. The same person...Full Text Available
In a Swedish community-based program for the treatment of dental phobic patients, a clinical trial was performed among 99 severely phobic individuals with long-standing avoidance of dental treatment....Full Text Available
The paper reviews the main observational data on pulsars, both the individual characteristics of pulsars and the properties they possess as members of the Galaxy. Consideration is then given to pulsar ages and to pulsar initial periods. An attempt is made to clarify the 'true' ages of pulsars.
Forty species of anaerobes were screened for the ability to produce an ether-extractable mutagen which is present in the feces of 15 to 20% of individuals in populations at high risk for colon cancer....Full Text Available
Medical treatment of heroin addiction with methadone and other pharmacotherapies has important benefits for individuals and society. However, regulatory policies have separated this treatment from the...Full Text Available
In terms of managing thrombotic disorders, genotype-based individualized patient care emerged as early as 1994 when the association of factor V Leiden (G1691A), and later, prothrombin (G20210A),...Full Text Available
The analysis of individual molecules is evolving into an important tool for biological research, and presents conceptually new ways of approaching experimental design strategies. However, more...Full Text Available
Pain and pain-related interference with physical function have not been thoroughly studied in individuals who have undergone knee-disarticulation amputations. The principal aim of this study...Full Text Available
Sewage waste disposal facilities in the Florida Keys include septic tanks and individual package plants in place of municipal collection facilities in most locations. In Key Largo, both facilities discharge...Full Text Available
The in vitro response of melatonin synthesis was assessed by incubation of individual whole pineal glands for 4 hr without or with different concentrations of isoproterenol in the medium. Pineals were taken either at the end of the 14-hr light phase (day)...
The number of nuclear pore complexes (NPCs) in individual nuclei of the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae was determined by computer-aided reconstruction of entire nuclei from electron...Full Text Available
...Quality = $290,604 to improve permit compliance and appropriate preservation of wetlands by providing a spatial dataset to locate individual wetland permits on a property using high resolution imagery within specific regions of Virginia; this data set will be compared with the permit Comprehensive Environmental Database System that is currently used ...
BackgroundIndividuals living in malaria endemic areas generally harbour multiple parasite strains. Multiplicity of infection (MOI) can be an indicator of immune status. However,...Full Text Available
A number of studies have examined the functional roles of individual muscles during normal walking, but few studies have examined which are the primary muscles that respond to changes in external...Full Text Available
Method for description of X-ray radiation dose distribution based on semiempirical description of dose fields is suggested. At that dose field description parameters can be easily individualized for concrete X-ray device.
Equipped with terahertz sensors, the Aura mission will see far more ... We introduce you to a few amazing individuals, all sharing the dubious title of rocket scientist . And a ..... similar thing happens with incoming light. Astronomers call it the ...
BackgroundA key question in the risk assessment of exposures to multiple chemicals is whether mixture effects may occur when chemicals are combined at low doses which individually...Full Text Available
IntroductionThe presence of erectile or ejaculatory dysfunction may indicate physical problems; however, individual perceptions (e.g., sexual satisfaction) may reflect...Full Text Available
A short survey of the energy situation in Iran is given with the aid of some interesting figures. Following remarks on the national and international energy policy, the developments regarding individual energy sources and electricity production are described.
Segments of the chick basilar papilla were isolated and maintained in culture medium. The sensory hair bundle of individual hair cells was observed with light microscopy and stimulated with a water...Full Text Available
Chromatin immunoprecipitation followed by high-throughput sequencing (ChIP-seq) allows researchers to determine the genome-wide binding locations of individual transcription factors (TFs) at high resolution....Full Text Available
BackgroundIn retrospective studies of the health effects of home and garden pesticides, self-reported information typically forms the basis for exposure assessment. Study participants...Full Text Available
While levels of weight bias vary among individuals, it is not clear why one person possesses stronger anti-fat attitudes than another person. This investigation examined whether individual differences commonly associated with greater anti-fat bias are also associated with a greater preference for thinness among people of varying levels of weight. Young adults (62% women; 84% Caucasian) recruited from psychology classes (N=308) rated four male and female figures with approximate BMIs of 18.5, 25, 30, and 40, on measures of dislike and personality characteristics and completed measures assessing weight controllability, attitudes toward the obese, and perceptual reliance. Greater negative attitudes, weight controllability beliefs, and perceptual reliance were positively associated with greater dislike and negative personality attributes among obese/severely obese figures, but inversely related among low normal weight figures. ...
BackgroundMuch of our current understanding of the epidemiology of Ascaris lumbricoides infections in humans has been acquired by analyzing worm count data. These...Full Text Available
SummaryMycobacterium tuberculosis has 10 universal stress proteins, whose function is unknown. However, proteomic and transcriptomic analyses have shown that a number...Full Text Available
Research programs, presented at the contractor's review meeting on indirect liquefaction, are presented on the following topics: oxygenates (methanol) synthesis; Fischer-Tropsch synthesis; product upgrading; and process support engineering evaluations. A total of 18 reports are included. Individual projects are processed separately for the data bases. (CBS)
This volume contains the proceedings of a symposium entitled In Vivo Imaging of Neurotransmitter Function in Brain, Heart, and Tumors'' held August 24--25, 1990 in Montreal Canada. The six individual papers contained herein are separately abstracted and indexed for the database.
BackgroundThe prevalence of tobacco use among individuals with mental illness remains a serious public health concern. Tobacco control has received little attention in community...Full Text Available
Life history theory proposes that early-life cues induce highly integrated responses in traits associated with energy partitioning, maturation, reproduction, and aging such that the individual phenotype...Full Text Available
BackgroundAtrial fibrillation (AF) substantially increases the risk of ischemic stroke but this risk varies among individual patients with AF. Existing risk stratification...Full Text Available
The full impact of secondary stigma (stigma directed at family) on an HIV-positive individual is unknown. This qualitative research explores perceptions of secondary stigma in the Vietnamese...Full Text Available
In the State Laboratory of North Rhine-Westphalia for Food, Pharmaceutical and Environmental Chemistry (Chemisches Landesuntersuchungsamt), more than 600 individual human milk samples have been analyzed...Full Text Available
The compromised abilities to localize sounds and to understand speech are two hallmark deficits in aged individuals. The auditory cortex is necessary for these processes, yet we know little...Full Text Available
Emissions of sulphur and nitrogen oxides are continuing to fall in Europe but rise in Asia, according to calculations based on individual countries' predictions of economic development. The upward trend is slower than in previous predictions. 2 refs., 2 figs., 2 tabs.
DNA from the peripheral blood mononuclear cells of 17 different individuals infected with human T-cell lymphoma/leukemia virus type II (HTLV-II) was successfully amplified by the polymerase chain reaction...Full Text Available
Exercise is essential for health, yet the amount, duration, and intensity that individuals engage in are strikingly variable, even under prescription. Our focus was to identify the locations and effects...Full Text Available
Concern is building about high rates of schizophrenia in large cities, and among immigrants, cannabis users, and traumatized individuals, some of which likely reflects the causal influence of environmental...Full Text Available
We present an algorithm to identify individual neural spikes observed on high-density multi-electrode arrays (MEAs). Our method can distinguish large numbers of distinct neural units, even when spikes...Full Text Available
BackgroundAlthough ivermectin is distributed free of charge through the African Programme for Onchocerciasis Control (APOC), not all eligible individuals within communities receive...Full Text Available
ObjectiveTo examine the role of first trimester bacterial vaginosis (BV) and level of BV-associated microorganisms diagnosed using the Nugent’s Gram stain...Full Text Available
BackgroundA goal of human genetics is to discover genetic factors that influence individuals' susceptibility to common diseases. Most common diseases are thought to result from the...Full Text Available
The development of rapid and specific diagnostic tests to identify individuals infected with malaria is of paramount importance in efforts to control the severe public health impact of this disease....Full Text Available
Antibodies to extractable nuclear antigens (ENA) are found in a variety of collagen vascular diseases. Determining the individual specificities of these antibodies is extremely useful in establishing...Full Text Available
Genome-wide association studies are designed to discover SNPs that are associated with a complex trait. Employing strict significance thresholds when testing individual SNPs avoids false positives at...Full Text Available
Both deficiency and excess of growth hormone (GH) are associated with increased mortality and morbidity. GH replacement in otherwise healthy subjects leads to complications, whereas individuals with...Full Text Available
Chemoprevention strategies to prevent the development of lung cancer in at-risk individuals are a key component in disease management. In addition to being highly effective, an ideal chemopreventive...Full Text Available
IntroductionRadiotherapy outcomes might be further improved by a greater understanding of the individual variations in normal tissue reactions that determine tolerance. Most published...Full Text Available
Research programs on coal liquefaction are presented. Major topics include: coprocessing, two-stage liquefaction, low severity liquefaction, coal/catalyst and liquefaction chemistry. Individual projects are processed separately for the data bases. (CBS)
Research programs, presented at the contractor's review meeting on direct liquefaction, are presented under the following topics: two-stage liquefaction; coprocessing; and advanced research on coal liquefaction. A total of 20 reports are included. Individual projects are processed separately for the data bases. (CBS)
Humans are remarkably adept at identifying individuals by the sound of their voice, a behavior supported by the nervous system’s ability to integrate information from voice and speech...Full Text Available
BackgroundStudies conducted in developed countries using economic models show that individual- and household- level variables are important determinants of health insurance ownership....Full Text Available
BackgroundLung volume reduction surgery is effective at improving lung function, quality of life, and mortality in carefully selected individuals with advanced emphysema. Recently,...Full Text Available
Accurate prediction of the pathogenic effects of specific genotypes is important for the design and execution of clinical trials as well as for meaningful counseling of individual patients. However,...Full Text Available
BackgroundManagement of nightlife in UK cities focuses on creating safe places for individuals to drink. Little is known about intoxication levels as measuring total alcohol consumption...Full Text Available
Nuclear transfer (NT) is a procedure by which genetically identical individuals can be created. The technology of pig somatic NT, including in vitro maturation of oocytes, isolation and treatment of...Full Text Available
BackgroundIn classical mathematical epidemiology, individuals do not adapt their contact behavior during epidemics. They do not endogenously engage, for example, in social distancing...Full Text Available
BackgroundThere is a dearth of data relating UK general practice workload to personal and social markers of individual patients.AimTo test whether there is a significant association...Full Text Available
BackgroundIn animal groups such as herds, schools, and flocks, a certain distance is maintained between adjacent individuals, allowing them to move as a cohesive unit. Proximate...Full Text Available
The objectives of this study were to characterize the changes of VOC material emission profiles over time and develop a method to account for such changes in order to enhance a source identification technique that is based on the measurements of mixed air samples and the emission signatures of individual building materials determined by PTRMS. Source models, including powerlaw model, doubleexponential decay model and mechanistic diffusion model, were employed to track the change of individual material emission signatures by PTRMS over a ninemonth period. Samples of nine typical building materials were tested individually for nine months and later in combination to obtain actual mixture emissions. VOC emissions from each material were measured in a 50liter smallscale chamber. Chamber air was sampled by PTRMS over a 28day period to determine their emission rate decay characteristics as well as to establish the initial profile ...
The report provides and overview of calculation models for the simulation of airflows and deals comprehensively with field and multi-zone models as well as the coupling of individual zone and multi-zone models. Examples of calculations are given. figs., tabs., refs.
BackgroundComplex situations that follow war and natural disasters have a psychosocial impact on not only the individual but also on the family, community and society. Just as the...Full Text Available
Psychopathic individuals are generally unresponsive to motivational and emotional cues that facilitate behavioral regulation. A putative mechanism for this deficiency is Gray’s (1971)...Full Text Available
Results of feasibility experiments for determining the mineral content of individual stains on special Sensitized Paper are presented. The stains were formed on the paper by the impaction of laboratory generated salt water droplets. Of the techniques exam...
The use of cementless threaded cups in THA is a well-established treatment. Fractures of the cups are rare complications recorded in individual cases with material defects being discussed as the primary...Full Text Available
BackgroundThe occurrence of diabetes has greatly increased in low- and middle-income countries, particularly in Asia, as has the prevalence of overweight and obesity; in European-derived...Full Text Available
The tendency for some individuals to partake in high-risk behaviors (eg, substance abuse, gambling, risky sexual activities) is a matter of great public health concern, yet the characteristics and neural...Full Text Available
In Iran, microscopic examination of skin scrapings from 2202 individuals with clinically diagnosed cutaneous leishmaniasis (CL) lesions revealed the presence of amastigotes in 1123 cases (51.0%). Bacteriological...Full Text Available
Objective: Determine and compare the prevalence of known risk factors for cardiovascular disease among unselected individuals presenting with their first ever episode of...Full Text Available
Background:Erectile dysfunction in type-2 diabetes may be an independent marker for coronary artery disease. Present study was undertaken to investigate whether type-2 diabetic...Full Text Available
Validation of body-mass relationships requires a careful statistical analysis of data of normal weight individuals. BMI (ratio between body mass and square of body height) and BSI values (ratio between...Full Text Available
Human IgG specific for beta-endorphin was identified by enzyme-linked immunoabsorbent assay and isolated by affinity chromatography. From a sample of 27 subjects, three individuals with major depression...Full Text Available
Numerous epidemiological studies have consistently demonstrated that individuals who eat more fruits and vegetables (which are rich in carotenoids) and who have higher serum β-carotene levels...Full Text Available
Signatures of natural selection occur throughout the human genome and can be detected at the sequence level. We have re-sequenced ABCE1, a host candidate gene essential for...Full Text Available
ContextWhile opioids are increasingly used for chronic non-cancer pain (CNCP), we know little about opioid dosing patterns among individuals with CNCP in usual care...Full Text Available
Decreased cognitive performance reduces independence and quality of life for aging individuals. Healthy brain aging does not involve significant neuronal loss, but little is known about the...Full Text Available
Even in healthy individuals, aging leads to deterioration in visual acuity, contrast sensitivity, visual field, and dark adaptation. Little is known about the neural mechanisms that drive the...Full Text Available
Objectives.To understand how “cumulative inequality” (CI), expressed as individual advantage and choice, and “external social supports” contribute...Full Text Available
We describe the Phase II HapMap, which characterizes over 3.1 million human single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) genotyped in 270 individuals from four geographically diverse populations and...Full Text Available
The sequences of the peptide binding domains of 33 70 kd heat shock proteins (hsp70) have been aligned and a consensus secondary structure has been deduced. Individual members showed no significant...Full Text Available
ObjectiveMaintaining weight loss is a major challenge in obesity treatment. Individuals often indicate that waning motivation prompts cessation of effective weight...Full Text Available
"The focus of this study was to examine the structural, social, and attitudinal factors that influence an individual?s decision to choose an IT career. The findings revealed many differences among male and female high school students? attitudes and intentions. Although many stereotypes existed among the male and female students, perceptions appeared to be similar within the population. For boys, computer and technical skills had a stronger association with attitudes toward IT than for girls. For girls, social issues showed a strong association with attitudes toward IT. Overall, the intention to pursue IT as a career was most likely to prevail within the population of the high school boys."
Search engine researchers typically depict search as the solitary activity of an individual searcher. In contrast, results from our critical-incident survey of 150 users on Amazon's Mechanical Turk service suggest that social interactions play an important role throughout the search process. Our main contribution is that we have integrated models from previous work in sensemaking and information seeking behavior to present a canonical social model of user activities before, during, and after search, suggesting where in the search process even implicitly shared information may be valuable to individual searchers.
The determinants of the velocity of money have been examined based on life-cycle hypothesis. The velocity of money can be expressed by reciprocal of the average value of holding time which is defined as interval between participating exchanges for one unit of money. This expression indicates that the velocity is governed by behavior patterns of economic agents and open a way to constructing micro-foundation of it. It is found that time pattern of income and expense for a representative individual can be obtained from a simple version of life-cycle model, and average holding time of money resulted from the individual's optimal choice depends on the expected length of relevant planning periods.
The discussion focuses on the ways in which the 3 panelists in their lives and work embody fourth wave feminism, which combines politics, psychology, and spirituality in an overarching vision of change. Jane Fonda's emphasis on the importance of making narratives of gender a central organizer for personal and societal transformation, Hedda Bolgar's insistence that psychoanalysts recognize the complex dialectic between unconscious dynamics and sociocultural realities in order not to conflate conflicts rooted in social inequalities with individual issues, and Sue Shapiro's understanding of the ambiguous role of individual therapy in situations of historical and social trauma such as the tsunami in Indonesia are all examples of fourth wave feminism in practice. The unfinished business of the ...
Transdifferentiation of an individual's own cells into functional differentiated cells to replace an organ's lost function would be a personalized approach to therapeutics. In this two part series, we will describe the progress toward establishing functional transdifferentiated adrenal cortical cells. In this article (Part 2), we describe the disorders of the adrenal cortex, therefore establishing why there is the need for personalized cell-based therapy for individuals with these disorders. We then present our pilot studies of cell transdifferentiation toward an adrenal cortical fate using genes described in the first article of this pair (Part 1).
The importance of radiation management for nuclear facilities including nuclear power plants has increased as the general public understanding has progressed, and necessary information for management must be processed exactly and quickly. In nuclear power plants, radiation management is performed by each individual operation, and collected information is managed by the system of each operation. The distributed-processing radiation management system has been developed aiming to use a general-purpose LAN and make quick and efficient use of information managed by individual operations. This paper describes the system configuration and functions. (author)
The conceptual design of the support structures of the EM muon chambers is presented. On each side of the detector the EM chambers are arranged in four layers: one layer of MDTs and the three layers of TGCs. The chambers are mounted on four individual wheel structures per side. The four wheels are inclined by 1.23% and suspended from two longitudinal beams parallel to the beam axis. In order to allow for the opening of the ATLAS detector the wheels can be displaced longitudinally over a distance of 6 m. In addition individual wheels can be separated from each other by up to 1 m for maintenance purposes.
The compressive and torsional buckling behavior of carbon nanotube bundles at room temperature is examined with classical molecular dynamics simulation. The critical compressive load and stiffness of a single carbon nanotube in the bundle are found to be similar to those of individual carbon nanotubes. However, the critical torsional moment and stiffness of a single carbon nanotube in the bundle are found to be higher than those of individual carbon nanotubes. In addition, this study demonstrates that van der Waals interactions between the nanotubes in the bundle significantly affect the critical compressive load of the nanotube bundle.
Abstract The white sea bream, Diplodus sargus (Teleostei, Sparidae), is a species with a high commercial importance in Mediterranean aquaculture. There is currently little information available about the genetic characteristics of cultured populations. In this survey, we have developed eight polymorphic microsatellites for the white sea bream using an enriched genome library protocol. All of them were polymorphic in the 67 individuals tested, 32 of which were wild specimens, and 35 were individuals from a captive F1 broodstock. These markers can potentially be useful tools for use in population genetic studies.
Atrial natriuretic peptide (ANP) causes relaxation in the opossum lower esophageal sphincter. The effects of dendroaspis natriuretic peptide (DNP) and other natriuretic peptides in the lower esophageal sphincter were not known. We measured the relaxation of transverse strips from the guinea pig lower esophageal sphincter caused by DNP, ANP, brain natriuretic peptide (BNP), C-type natriuretic peptide (CNP), and a natriuretic peptide receptor-C agonist des[Gln^1^8, Ser^1^9, Gly^2^0, Leu^2^1, Gly^2^2]ANP(4-23) amide (cANF(4-23)) in vitro. In resting strips of the guinea pig lower esophageal sphincter DNP and BNP caused marked relaxations. Furthermore, in both sarafotoxin S6c and carbachol-contracted lower esophageal sphincter strips, DNP caused marked and BNP caused moderate, concentration-de...
Methods and apparatus for detecting the presence of explosives by analyzing a vapor sample from the suspect vicinity utilize at least one microcantilever. Explosive gas molecules which have been adsorbed onto the microcantilever are subsequently heated to cause combustion. Heat, along with momentum transfer from combustion, causes bending and a transient resonance response of the microcantilever which may be detected by a laser diode which is focused on the microcantilever and a photodetector which detects deflection of the reflected laser beam caused by heat-induced deflection and resonance response of the microcantilever. 2 figs.
This patent describes an ignition system of an internal combustion engine which consists of: a permanent magnet supported by a rotary member of the engine adapted to rotate in synchronism with a rotary shaft of the engine; a generating coil for generating an electromotive force to produce an electric current as the permanent magnet acts on the generating coil during the rotation of the rotary member; an ignition capacitor charged by the electric current generated by the generating coil; a thyristor caused to turn on by a counter electromotive force generated by the generating coil to thereby cause the ignition capacitor to begin to discharge; and an ignition coil generating a high voltage as the ignition capacitor begins to discharge, to cause a spark discharge to take place in an ignition plug of the internal combustion engine.
Evaluates displacement of a railway bridge element of the Walbrzych-Klodzko railway line. The bridge, consisting of three truss sections supported by two pillars made of reinforced concrete, was influenced by longwall mining. Longwalls were perpendicular to the bridge axis. Three coal seams situated in the bridge safety pillar were 550 cm thick. Ground subsidence after seam extraction was 400 cm. Ground subsidence did not cause truss section deformation, nor did it cause additional stresses in truss bridge construction. 2 refs.
Steam generators in PWR plants have been subject to denting corrosion as a result of nonprotective magnetite forming on the carbon steel support plate causing the voluminous corrosion product that eventually crimps (dents) the heat transfer tube at the support plate interface. This project was designed to determine the causes of denting and the usefulness of water chemistry changes meant to arrest denting. This volume of the final report describes laboratory research on the correlation of water chemistry, superheat, and oxygen ingress with denting in steam generators.
We present a sample preparation method for measuring magnesium in individual whole lymphocytes by electron probe X-ray microanalysis. We use Burkitt's lymphoma cells in culture as the test sample and compare X-ray microanalysis of individual cells with atomic absorption analysis of pooled cell populations. We determine the magnesium peak-to-local continuum X-ray intensity ratio by electron probe X-ray microanalysis and calculate a mean cell magnesium concentration of 39 +/- 19 mmol/kg dry weight from analysis of 100 cells. We determine a mean cell magnesium concentration of 34 +/- 4 mmol/kg dry weight by atomic absorption analysis of pooled cells in three cell cultures. The mean cell magnesium concentrations determined by the two methods are not significantly different. We find a 10% coefficient of variation for both methods of analysis and a 30% coefficient of variation in magnesium concentration among individual cells by ...
We present a sample preparation method for measuring magnesium in individual whole lymphocytes by electron probe X-ray microanalysis. We use Burkitt's lymphoma cells in culture as the test sample and compare X-ray microanalysis of individual cells with atomic absorption analysis of pooled cell populations. We determine the magnesium peak-to-local continuum X-ray intensity ratio by electron probe X-ray microanalysis and calculate a mean cell magnesium concentration of 39 +- 19 mmol/kg dry weight from analysis of 100 cells. We determine a mean cell magnesium concentration of 34 +- 4 mmol/kg dry weight by atomic absorption analysis of pooled cells in three cell cultures. The mean cell magnesium concentrations determined by the two methods are not significantly different. We find a 10% coefficient of variation for both methods of analysis and a 30% coefficient of variation in magnesium concentration among individual cells by ...
[music] Narrator: New treatments can limit the disability caused by a stroke, but you need to know the signs and act in time. Here are the signs to ...
Violence in both community and county hospitals in the USA is increasing. It caused significant physical, emotional and economic hardship to many emergency department employees. We describe an incident...Full Text Available
Mitochondrial superoxide production is an important source of reactive oxygen species in cells, and may cause or contribute to ageing and the diseases of ageing. Seven major sites of superoxide...Full Text Available
BackgroundLow back pain (LBP) is the most prevalent musculoskeletal condition and one the most common causes of disability in the developed nations. Anecdotally, there is a general...Full Text Available
Background:Spina bifida presents a significant cause of childhood morbidity in lower- and middle-income nations. Unfortunately, there is a paucity of literature examining...Full Text Available
A floating boardwalk was constructed from the shore to ...... Irrespective of whether we could tie the outlier to a cause, a simple linear interpolation was ...
Some biological effects of hypoglycin-A, a compound isolated from the fruit of Blighia sapida, have been investigated. Administration of this compound to animals caused drowsiness...Full Text Available
Streptococcus agalactiae continues to be a major cause of subclinical mastitis in dairy cattle and a source of economic loss for the industry. Veterinarians are often asked to provide information on...Full Text Available
Species invasions are a principal component of global change, causing large losses in biodiversity as well as economic damage. Invasion theory attempts to understand and predict invasion success and...Full Text Available
the southern Arabian Gulf region left its signature on the heterogeneous aerosol .... Arabian Gulf region, since large differences in ? may be caused by ...
Sinonasal malignancy is a cause of otorhinolaryngologic morbidity and mortality in West Africa. However, there is a dearth of information in the literature on its clinicopathologic presentation in West...Full Text Available
IntroductionShoulder pain covers a wide range of problems and affects up to 20% of the population. It is not a specific diagnosis. Shoulder pain can be caused by problems with the...Full Text Available
We report a 55-year-old woman with coccydynia due to a sacral mass. The histological diagnosis was haemangioma. The MRI findings and the unusual location of this lesion are discussed. (orig.)
Objectives:Myocardial infarction (MI) is a leading cause of death in both the industrialized and developing countries globally. The economic evaluation of MI is undertaken...Full Text Available
Age-related alterations in the cellular composition of the B lineage are a major cause of the poor antibody response to vaccination and to infectious agents among the elderly population. The mechanisms...Full Text Available
Prematurity is by far the commonest cause of neonatal morbidity and mortality. The management of premature labour is empirical because little is understood about the mechanism of labour. Effective...Full Text Available
A strain of Pseudomonas syringae was recently identified as the cause of a new foliar blight of impatiens. The bacterium was resistant to copper compounds, which are used on a variety...Full Text Available
Standard pancreatic resections, such as pancreaticoduodenectomy, distal pancreatectomy, or total pancreatectomy, result in an important loss of normal pancreatic parenchyma and may cause impairment...Full Text Available
Periventricular white matter injury (PWMI), is the leading cause of chronic neurologic injury among survivors of preterm birth. The hallmark of PWMI is hypomyelination and a lack of mature,...Full Text Available
PurposeCataracts are often considered to be an unavoidable consequence of aging. Oxidative damage is a major cause or consequence of cortical and nuclear cataracts, the most common...Full Text Available
... switching off all the pixels causes all the spectrum lines to disappear (top of Figure 6), next, that switching off one ... Acousto-optic spectrum analyser ...
Deforestation farther inland causes delayed reactions. When roots no longer hold soil in place, it ends up muddying streams, rivers, and coastal waters. ...
Obesity is characterized by the abnormal or excessive deposition of fat in the adipose tissue. Its consequences go far beyond adverse metabolic effects on health, causing an increase in oxidative stress,...Full Text Available
Congenital isolated pleural effusion is a rare cause of respiratory distress in neonates. It is usually chylous. Herein, we report a rare case of nonchylous congenital idiopathic pleural effusion.
BackgroundSoft tissue foreign bodies are a common cause of orthopedic consultation in emergency departments. It is difficult to confirm their existence because conventional radiology...Full Text Available
A single enhancing lesion in the brain parenchyma, also called an inflammatory granuloma, is a frequent neurologic diagnosis. One of the commonest causes of this lesion is human neurocysticercosis,...Full Text Available
Sepsis has continuously been a leading cause of neonatal morbidity and mortality despite current advances in chemotherapy and patient intensive care facilities. Neonates are at high risk for...Full Text Available
Aging is the most significant risk factor for a range of degenerative disease such as cardiovascular, neurodegenerative and metabolic disorders. While the cause of aging and its associated diseases...Full Text Available
Many mutations associated with retinal degeneration lead to the production of misfolded proteins by cells of the retina. Emerging evidence suggests that these abnormal proteins cause cell death...Full Text Available
BackgroundBorrelia lonestari infects Amblyomma americanum, the tick species that is the most common cause of tick bites in southeast...Full Text Available
Methylisothiazolinone (MI) used alone is a new preservative causing a high prevalence of contact allergy. The eliciting threshold of MI is unknown. The combination of MI and phenoxyethanol enhances the antimicrobial efficacy of MI.
The causes of autoimmune responses leading to human kidney pathology remain unknown. However, environmental agents such as microorganisms and/or xenobiotics are good candidates for that role. Metals,...Full Text Available
The physical demands of performing on musical instruments can cause pain, sensory loss, and lack of coordination. Five cases illustrate common problems. Knowledge of the interaction between the technique...Full Text Available
Stabbing paroxysmal pain due to neurological disease can often be controlled by anticonvulsants, whereas steady burning pain is often responsive to tricyclic antidepressants, and to neuroleptics. Overuse...Full Text Available
There is considerable evidence to suggest that the identification and treatment of dyslipidaemia will reduce the risk of premature CHD, i.e. before the age of 65. Diagnosis of the cause of raised plasma...Full Text Available
Congestive heart failure (CHF) is a leading cause of morbidity and mortality. CHF is marked by atrial and ventricular enlargement and reduced cardiac contractility, as well as an association...Full Text Available
In order to promote environmental damage monitoring and environmental impacts assessment caused by mining in China, the most significant project that uses advanced Earth Observation technology to assess environmental impacts caused by mining, namely MINEO (assessment and monitoring the environmental impact of mining activities in Europe using advanced Earth Observation technology) was introduced and its enlightenment to China were investigated. It was proposed that an integrated technical framework of monitoring environmental impacts caused by mining be designed, quantitative inversion of biological and environmental parameters from RS data be emphasised, hyperspectral Remote Sensing be applied, RS and GIS be integrated with professional models, multi-object applications of RS be implemented, and related standards and specification be drawn up based on typical case study sites. 23 refs., 1 fig.
Francisella tularensis is a gram negative facultative intracellular bacterium that causes the zoonotic disease tularemia. Free-living amebae, such as Acanthamoeba and...Full Text Available
Causal paradoxes arising in the tachyon theory have been systematically solved by using the reinterpretation principle as a consequence of which cause and effect no longer retain an absolute meaning. However, even in the tachyon theory, a cause is always seen to chronologically precede its effect, but this is obtained at the price of allowing cause and effect to be interchanged when required. A recent result has shown that this interchange-ability of cause and effect must not be unlimited if heavy paradoxes are to be avoided. This partial recovery of the classical concept of causality has been expressed by the conjecture that transcendent tachyons cannot be absorbed by a tachyon detector. In this paper the directional properties of the flow of information between two observers in relative motion and its consequences on the logical self-consistency of the theory of superluminal particles are analyzed. It ...
Cerebral periventricular white matter injury stands as a leading cause of cognitive, behavioral and motor impairment in preterm infants. There is epidemiological and histopathological evidence...Full Text Available
Although the cause and development of most inflammatory and fibrotic interstitial lung diseases are unknown, both the antigenic stimuli and the immunopathogenic mechanisms that produce the syndrome...Full Text Available
Francisella tularensis is a Gram-negative bacterium capable of causing the zoonotic disease tularaemia in a large number of mammalian species and in arthropods. F. tularensis...Full Text Available
The cause of the female urethral syndrome has previously been obscure, as it has been associated by definition with a lack of objective findings but a plethora of subjective complaints of retropubic...Full Text Available
BackgroundMutations that disrupt the conversion of prelamin A to mature lamin A cause the rare genetic disorder Hutchinson-Gilford progeria syndrome and a group of laminopathies....Full Text Available
Legionella causes severe pneumonia in humans. The pathogen produces an array of effectors, which interfere with host cell functions. Among them are the glucosyltransferases Lgt1, Lgt2...Full Text Available
BackgroundThe National Cancer Institute has concluded that exposure to smoking in movies causes adolescent smoking and there are similar results for young adults.Full Text Available
Mutation of the gene drop-dead (drd) causes adult Drosophila to die within 2 weeks of eclosion and is associated with reduced rates of defecation...Full Text Available
Cystic dilatation of Cowper's gland ducts (Cowper's syringocele) is uncommon in children and is frequently asymptomatic, but it may cause urinary infection, haematuria, dysuria, and obstructive voiding...Full Text Available
SummaryCongenital lobar emphysema (CLE) characterized by over distension and air-trapping in the affected lobe is one of the causes of infantile respiratory distress requiring...Full Text Available
This BCRS project demonstrates the use of SAR interferometry for measuring and monitoring land subsidence caused by underground coal fires and underground mining in a remote area of north west China. China is the largest producer and consumer of coal in the world. Throughout the N.W., N. and N.E. of China, the coal-seams are very susceptible to spontaneous combustion, causing underground coal fires. As the thick coal seams are burned out, the overburden collapses, causing land subsidence, and producing new cracks and fissures, which allow more air to penetrate and continue the fire to spread. SAR interferometry, especially differential interferometry has been shown to be able to measure small differences in surface height caused by such land subsidence. This report describes the problems, the test area, the procedures and techniques used and the results obtained. It concludes with a description of some ...
We compared the incidence of nasopharyngeal colonization by Streptococcus pneumoniae, the serotypes causing mucosal and invasive diseases, and the antibiotic resistance of these strains...Full Text Available
The most frequent ultimate cause of death is myocardial arrest. In many cases this is due to myocardial hypoxia, generally arising from failure of the coronary macro- and microcirculation to deliver...Full Text Available
The immune system plays a crucial role in maintaining health; however, accumulating evidence indicates that this system can be the target for immunotoxic effects caused by a variety of chemicals including...Full Text Available
Antimony toxicity occurs either due to occupational exposure or during therapy. Occupational exposure may cause respiratory irritation, pneumoconiosis, antimony spots on the skin and gastrointestinal...Full Text Available
SummaryBackgroundMalaria, a non-fatal disease if detected promptly and treated properly, still causes many deaths in malaria-endemic countries with...Full Text Available
Cholera is a severe diarrheal disease caused by specific serogroups of Vibrio cholerae that are pathogenic to humans. Cholera can become epidemic and deadly without adequate medical...Full Text Available
Snakebite envenomation is an uncommon condition in the northern hemisphere, but requires high vigilance with regard to both the systemic effects of the venom and the locoregional impact on the soft...Full Text Available
What genes are related to AEC syndrome? AEC syndrome is caused by mutations in the TP63 gene. This gene provides instructions for making a protein known as p63, which plays an...
Hereditary hyperferritinemia cataract syndrome (HHCS) is a rare condition caused by mutations in the gene coding for the light chain of ferritin; it does not lead to iron overload, but it is associated...Full Text Available
BackgroundMycobacterium avium subspecies paratuberculosis causes systemic infection and chronic intestinal inflammation in many species including...Full Text Available
Malformations of the cerebral cortex are recognized as a common cause of developmental delay, neurological deficits, mental retardation and epilepsy. Currently, the diagnosis of cerebral cortical...Full Text Available
With more women entering the labor market, concern about adverse effects of occupational exposure on reproductive health has been increasing. Of special importance are those agents which might cause...Full Text Available
The pressurized Heavy Water Reactor (PHWR) consists of horizontal calandria vessel containing a large number of pressure tubes (fuel channels) connected to the reactor inlet and outlet headers by individual feeders. Coolant flow distribution among the pressure tubes play a vital role in extraction of thermal power. For these reactors one of the design objectives is to achieve uniform coolant outlet temperatures by providing coolant flows according to the channel power. This is achieved by the design process known as feeder sizing. This basically consists of accounting for the individual channel power and centre line geometry of individual feeder and iteratively adjusting the feeder hydraulic resistances within the design constraints such as limiting flow velocities, channel flows. Recently, the first unit of 540 MWe i.e Tarapur Atomic Power Project (unit 4) has been commissioned. This paper discusses the verification of the ...
Safety assessments for clearance of H-beam and valves, main radioactive metal wastes in Kori nuclear power plants, were carried out to derivate a decontamination factor for satisfying the dose limits of clearance level (Maximum individual dose: 10 {mu}Sv/y, collective dose: 1 man{center_dot}Sv/y) in Korea. Maximum individual dose and collective dose were evaluated by internal dose conversion factor which based on the concept of effective dose in ICRP publication 60. The results of maximum individual dose and collective dose is 139 {mu}Sv per year and 0.166 man{center_dot}Sv per year about H-beam, and 158 {mu}Sv per year and 0.468 man{center_dot}Sv per year about valves respectively. Demand decontamination factor satisfied with, which is respectively more than 13.9 and 15.8 for satisfying clearance level.
Safety assessments for clearance of H-beam and valves, main radioactive metal wastes in Kori nuclear power plants, were carried out to derivate a decontamination factor for satisfying the dose limits of clearance level (Maximum individual dose: 10 #mu#Sv/y, collective dose: 1 man#centre dot#Sv/y) in Korea. Maximum individual dose and collective dose were evaluated by internal dose conversion factor which based on the concept of effective dose in ICRP publication 60. The results of maximum individual dose and collective dose is 139 #mu#Sv per year and 0.166 man#centre dot#Sv per year about H-beam, and 158 #mu#Sv per year and 0.468 man#centre dot#Sv per year about valves respectively. Demand decontamination factor satisfied with, which is respectively more than 13.9 and 15.8 for satisfying clearance level.
A series of studies conducted to identify the factors that block and unblock problem solving is described. Through the construction of an isomorph of the classic "water jar" problems developed by A. S. Luchins (1942) as a dynamic graphic micro-world, several factors involved in producing blocked states were identified. Subjects included 10 individuals and 10 pairs of subjects. By comparing the behavior of individuals tackling the "missionaries and cannibals" problem to that of pairs of subjects solving this problem, a study identified means by which problem solvers operating in a social context are able to overcome blocks that discourage individuals. These studies point to the importance of "reflection" (evaluation of problem-solving results) for flexible problem solving. This research suggests that teaching students to analyze what they have done will help them develop flexibility in using a new approach when blocked. The ...
Individual monitoring of personal exposure to inhalation of uranium oxides throughout the manufacture of fuel for pressurized water reactor (PWR) includes lung gamma-spectrometry, fecal analysis and urine analysis. Examination of the results shows the following: internal exposure is the consequence of repeated intake incidents as revealed by early peaks of urinary and particularly fecal elimination; a shift is often observed with the results of aerosol concentration measured through air collectors; the measured variations of uranium lung incorporations are relatively fast (apparent mean period 165 d). Correct evaluation of the effective dose equivalent from inhalation requires further information concerning the aerosol size distribution at work stations, the physico-chemical characteristics of the product leading to an estimate of its actual biological solubility, and the measurement of the fraction of aerosol liable to intake with an ...
Preschool-age children hold negative attitudes toward overweight peers (i.e., anti-fat attitudes), but little is known about individual differences in these attitudes. The current study investigated actual weight status and perceived body size in relation to preschool-age children's anti-fat attitudes. Sixty-nine 4-6 year-olds (61% girls) were individually interviewed about their body size perceptions using a figure rating scale and anti-fat attitudes using multiple methods (including an adjective rating scale and ratings of acceptability for different body shapes). Results suggested that children's perceived body size, not actual body size, was related to their attitudes about an overweight figure and the number of figures rated as acceptable. Children who perceived themselves as heavier held fewer anti-fat attitudes. Perceived and actual body size ratings were not related to ratings of a thin figure. This study suggests the importance of ...
A technique has been developed for high resolution alpha particle spectroscopy from track length determination in CR-39 plastic. On individual tracks an energy resolution deltaE close to the range straggling limit is obtainable. For 6 MeV alpha-particle deltaE is proportional 35 keV on individual particles and for groups of particles deltaE proportional 20 keV can be achieved using certain data selection criteria. At 100 keV on individual particles deltaE is proportional 20 keV. The analysis requires 1) a knowledge of the track-etch rate (Vsub(T))-range relationship and 2) a theoretical understanding of alpha-particle track structure in CR-39 as a function of particle energy, dip angle and degree of etching. The structure of alpha-particle etched tracks in CR-39 is described and two methods of analysis discussed. Examples are given of the resolution attainable on tracks of alpha-particles as natural decay energy and from ...
The Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) operates a number of research and development (R and D) facilities for the Department of Energy on the Hanford Site. According to DOE Order 5400.1, a Facility Effluent Monitoring Plan is required for each site, facility, or process that uses, generates, releases, or manages significant pollutants or hazardous materials. Three of the R and D facilities: the 325, 331, and 3720 Buildings, are considered major emission points for radionuclide air sampling and thus individual Facility Effluent Monitoring Plans (FEMPs) have been developed for them. Because no definition of ''significant'' is provided in DOE Order 5400.1 or the accompanying regulatory guide DOE/EH-0173T, this FEMP was developed to describe monitoring requirements in the DOE-owned, PNNL-operated facilities that do not have individual FEMPs. The remainder of the DOE-owned, PNNL-operated facilities are ...
A contamination event in a water distribution system can result in adverse health impacts to individuals consuming contaminated water from the system. Assessing impacts to such consumers requires accounting for the timing of exposures of individuals to tap-water contaminants that have time-varying concentrations. Here we present a probabilistic model for the timing of ingestion of tap water that we developed for use in the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's Threat Ensemble Vulnerability Assessment and Sensor Placement Tool, which is designed to perform consequence assessments for contamination events in water distribution systems. We also present a statistical analysis of the timing of ingestion activity using data collected by the American Time Use Survey. The results of the analysis provide the basis for our model, which accounts for individual variability in ingestion timing and provides a series of ...
It has recently been found that many buildings in Taiwan were constructed with radioactively contaminated rebar, which raised great concern among the residents as well as governmental officials. In order to investigate the possible cytogenetic damage to the residents of contaminated buildings, a G-banding method was carried out on the lymphocytes of 30 radiation-exposed individuals from four families and one office building, as well as 15 control individuals from laboratory personnel. The estimated cumulative radiation doses for the exposed people range from 19.63 to 280.50 mSv. Altogether, 13 females and 17 males belonging to the radiation-exposed group, and 7 females and 8 males in the control group, were included in this study. With the exception of one sample, at least 500 metaphase spreads were scored and analyzed for each individual. All the recognizable structural aberrations of chromosomes or chromatids were ...
It has recently been found that many buildings in Taiwan were constructed with radioactively contaminated rebar, which raised great concern among the residents as well as governmental officials. In order to investigate the possible cytogenetic damage to the residents of contaminated buildings, a G-banding method was carried out on the lymphocytes of 30 radiation-exposed individuals from four families and one office building, as well as 15 control individuals from laboratory personnel. The estimated cumulative radiation doses for the exposed people range from 19.63 to 280.50 mSv. Altogether, 13 females and 17 males belonging to the radiation-exposed group, and 7 females and 8 males in the control group, were included in this study. With the exception of one sample, at least 500 metaphase spreads were scored and analyzed for each individual. All the recognizable structural aberrations of chromosomes or chromatids were ...
Objectives This paper examines the determinants of the insureds decision to use their health insurance card when seeking outpatient and inpatient health care in Vietnam. Methods Uses Vietnams latest Household Living Standard Survey data and random-intercept logistic regression to assess the influence of the observed individual, household and commune/ward factors on the insureds decision to access health insurance benefits while controlling for the unobserved commune/ward-specific factors. Results Compared to the compulsory enrollees, the voluntary enrollees and the beneficiaries of the Health Care Fund for the Poor are less likely to use their card when seeking inpatient care. An individuals likelihood of accessing insurance benefits varies inversely with income and the level of education,...
In this article based on extensive ethnographic interviewing of eighty-six Japanese adults, I analyze the different ways in which they understand life after death, and consider the societal implications of their views. I examine senses of life after death as based in communion with departed family members as linked to practices of ancestor veneration and ideologies of Japaneseness. I consider heaven/hell or reincarnation as linked, through the idea of impartial judgment of the individual, to meritocracy and the examination system. I examine agnosticism and relativism in senses of life after death as linked to the idea that individual freedom of choice may exist in the next world if not necessarily within the constraints of this Japanese world. I examine disbelief in any realm beyond the gr...
Woven Kevlar fabrics exhibit a number of beneficial mechanical properties which include strength, flexibility, and relatively low density. The desire to engineer or design Kevlar fabrics for specific applications has stimulated interest in the development of theoretical models which relate their effective mechanical properties to specific aspects of the fabric morphology and microstructure. In this work the author provides a theoretical investigation of the large deformation elastic response of a plane woven Kevlar fabric and compares these theoretical results with experimental data obtained from uniaxially loaded Kevlar fabrics. The theoretical analysis assumes the woven fabric to be a regular network of orthogonal interlaced yarns and the individual yarns are modeled as extensible elastica, thus coupling stretching and bending effects at the outset. This comparison of experiment with theory indicates that the deformation of woven fabric can be quite accurately ...
Individuals with Asperger syndrome (AS) have problems in following conversation, especially in the situations where several people are talking. This might result from impairments in audiovisual speech perception, especially from difficulties in focusing attention to speech-relevant visual information and ignoring distracting information. We studied the effect of visual spatial attention on the audiovisual speech perception of adult individuals with AS and matched control participants. Two faces were presented side by side, one uttering /aka/ and the other /ata/, while an auditory stimulus of /apa/ was played. The participants fixated on a central cross and directed their attention to the face that an arrow pointed to, reporting which consonant they heard. We hypothesized that the adults wi...
Identity is one of the most important matters in social theory, especially in recent decades. Identity is a fluid phenomenon which forms in the process of every day activities. Individuals get practical knowledge of society to do intentional practices. They operate actively in identitizing process. Gender identity is one of important dimensions of individual identities constituting in social relations to others. Different socio-economic classes experience different social relations and engage in different identity processes. This research studies the formation process of feminine identity in the process of marriage (in contrast with the concept of virginity) in lower socio-economic classes of Bam. Body as site of identity and focus of close contact between agency and structure becomes the ...
This study examined the psychometric properties of the Anti-fat Attitudes Scale (AFAS), a 5-item instrument developed by the authors to measure negative attitudes toward overweight individuals. A total of 4 studies were conducted among Canadian adolescents (n = 1,452) and university students (n = 424). Results suggested that the AFAS possessed a unidimensional factor structure and satisfactory reliability for both men and women. As predicted, men obtained higher scores than women on the AFAS, and antifat attitudes were positively associated with authoritarianism, homonegativity, and political conservatism. Participants who were overweight had lower scores on the AFAS than participants who were thin or average weight. Responses on the AFAS did not appear to be contaminated by social desirability bias. PMID:10457760
One of the central issues in radiation protection consists in determining what weight should be given to individual doses in relation to collective or aggregated doses. A mathematical framework is introduced in which such assessments can be made precisely in terms of comparisons between alternative distributions of individual doses. In addition to evaluation principles that are well known from radiation protection, a series of principles that are derived from parallel discussions in moral philosophy and welfare economics is investigated. A battery of formal properties is then used to investigate the evaluative principles. The results indicate that one of the new principles, bilinear prioritarianism, may be preferable to current practices, since it satisfies efficiency-related properties better without sacrificing other desirable properties.
An imaging position sensitive detector for charged particles, neutrons, X-and gamma rays has been developed. The novel feature of this scintillation imaging radiation detector is its ability to detect individual nuclear particle scintillations with a h igh degree of spatial resolution. The key elements of this detector system are a high gain, low noise image intensifier tube, a CCD camera and commercially available image processing hardware and software. This detector system is highly effective for applications such as low fluence and real time neutron radiography, mapping of radioactive contamination in nuclear reactor fuel rods, X-ray diffraction imaging, high speed autoradiography and in general position sensitive detection of nuclear radiation. Results of some of the exploratory experiments carried out using this detector system are presented in this paper. (orig.).
A methodology and hypothetical case study are presented for incorporation of uncertainty and variability into calculations of human health risk appropriate for regional, or basin-scale, groundwater management problems. Uncertainty in well water concentration is introduced through complex contaminant migration patterns in the subsurface. Variability is considered in parameters related to individual behavior patterns and biological effects and to groundwater extraction and distribution networks. A joint uncertainty and variability (JUV) analysis is used to generate a two-dimensional distribution or risk surface that spans both transport uncertainty as well as individual variability. Cuts in this distributional surface (fractiles of variability and percentiles of uncertainty) are presented and discussed. Comparisons with alternative approaches based upon deterministic transport models are also made. In addition, important distinctions are made ...
Objective This report investigates epidemiologically whether exposure to silica is associated with lung cancer risks in individuals without silicosis. Methods We searched the PubMed reference data base from 1966 through 1/2007 for reports of lung cancer in silica-exposed persons without and with silicosis. To explore heterogeneity between studies, a multi-stage strategy was employed. First, fixed-effect summaries (FES) and corresponding 95% confidence intervals (CI) for various combinations of studies were calculated, weighting individual results by their precision. The homogeneity of the contributing results was examined using ?2 statistics. Where there was evidence of substantial heterogeneity, the CI around the FES was increased to take account of the between-study variability. Random-e...
The current research addressed age differences in internet use among Same Sex Attracted (SSA) individuals. In general, online communities are found to be a source of social support, especially for minority group members. However, it is unclear whether younger and older SSA people differ in their use of these communities. The present research examined age differences in use of online communities, hypothesizing that young SSA people primarily use these for social interaction and support, whereas older SSA people use online communities to seek sexual contacts. Study 1 examined age differences in motives to start using these websites. Study 2 examined age differences in use of online profiles and online social support. Results of both studies confirmed our hypotheses. Younger compared to older...
The research project had the aim to develop a standard for measuring individual, inner stresses from polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) at work. The employed method was by characterizing PAHs and metabolites of PAHs to be identified in urine with a view to developing a biological monitoring of professionally exposured persons. Using a number of PAHs relevant to work, the following questions were studied in cell culture systems and different animal-experimental models: Which metabolites are formed from the PAHs used in cell culture systems and the different animal-experimental models, and what are their ratios in percent? What percentage of a PAH is excreted by experimental animals in their urine and faeces on the first, second, and third day following different forms of application? What is the scale of the individual range of variation of PAH mass excretion? Are these results transferable to man? (orig.).
Abstract Copy number variants (CNVs) are known to be associated with complex neuropsychiatric disorders (e.g., schizophrenia and autism) but have not been explored in the isolated features of aggressive behaviors such as intermittent explosive disorder (IED). IED is characterized by recurrent episodes of aggression in which individuals act impulsively and grossly out of proportion from the involved stressors. Previous studies have identified genetic variants in the serotonergic pathway that play a role in susceptibility to this behavior, but additional contributors have not been identified. Therefore, to further delineate possible genetic influences, we investigated CNVs in individuals diagnosed with IED and/or personality disorder (PD). We carried out array comparative genomic hybridizati...
The contribution examines whether the construction of high-voltage transmission lines without formal participation of local authorities is permissible. In this connection the question is also treated to what extent municipal co-determination in transmission line construction represents a precondition for the permissibility of compulsory purchase measures. The individual issues treated are: the formal legal situation and current practice in the construction of electricity pylons; individual legal protection in connection with compulsory purchase; the construction of pylons without a construction licence as an infringement of the municipal right to self-government of local authorities; and the effects on the execution of compulsory purchase procedures of the illegality under Building Law of pylons constructed without approval. (RST).
This paper aims to estimate the prevalence of cigarette smoking among students in Vietnam ages 13-15 and examines its relationship with compositional and contextual factors. The data used in this paper were obtained from the 2007 Global Youth Tobacco Survey conducted in nine provinces in Vietnam. A multilevel logistic regression model was applied to analyse the association between the current incidence of cigarette smoking and factors on both the individual and school level. The prevalence of cigarette smoking among students was 3.3% overall. The prevalence of smoking among male students (5.9%) was higher than that among females (1.2%). Parental smoking was a significant risk factor for smoking among the students. Having a friend who smoked was the strongest predictor of smoking status amo...
Background: Ventricular repolarization (VR) is strongly influenced by heart rate (HR) and autonomic nervous activity, both of which also are important for arrhythmogenesis. Their relative influence on VR is difficult to separate, but might be crucial for understanding while some but not other individuals are at risk for life-threatening arrhythmias at a certain HR. This study was therefore designed to assess the -pure- effect of HR increase by atrial pacing on the ventricular gradient (VG) and other vectorcardiographically (VCG) derived VR parameters during an otherwise unchanged condition. Methods: In 19 patients with structurally normal hearts, a protocol with stepwise increased atrial pacing was performed after successful arrhythmia ablation. Conduction intervals were measured on averag...
Summary 1.-Traditional views of ecological disturbance emphasize the role that physical disturbances play in reducing competition between populations and maintaining species coexistence. I present an alternative view that employs a simple Lotka-Volterra model to demonstrate how disturbance resistance, disturbance resilience and resource storage can increase competition between individual perennial plants of similar growth form along a resource supply gradient. 2.-In contrasting the growth of individual genets of two hypothetical species, I assumed that traits associated with inherently low module (i.e. plant part) mortality in infertile soils resulted in greater resource storage, but traded off with maximum potential net photosynthesis rates and thus disturbance resilience. 3.-The species ...
The stock market has been known to form homogeneous stock groups with a higher correlation among different stocks according to common economic factors that influence individual stocks. We investigate the role of common economic factors in the market in the formation of stock networks, using the arbitrage pricing model reflecting essential properties of common economic factors. We find that the degree of consistency between real and model stock networks increases as additional common economic factors are incorporated into our model. Furthermore, we find that individual stocks with a large number of links to other stocks in a network are more highly correlated with common economic factors than those with a small number of links. This suggests that common economic factors in the stock market can be understood in terms of deterministic factors.
In many online systems, individuals provide services for each other. Typically, the recipient of the service obtains a benefit while the provider of the service incurs a cost. Assuming that benefit exceeds cost, provision of the service increases social welfare and should therefore be encouraged -- but the individuals providing the service gain no (immediate) benefit from providing the service and hence have an incentive to withhold service. This paper studies the design of a system to encourage provision of service; the emphasis is on how the system designer should choose a protocol -- a supply of tokens and suggested strategies -- to maximize social welfare. In choosing this protocol, the system designer must take into account that agents are self-interested, and hence will comply with the protocol if and only if it is in their interests to do so. Moreover, we insist that the chosen protocol must be consistent with (small) errors in the ...
Both cultural inheritance and cultural diversification of diets may play an important role in animal evolution. Here we studied how diet innovation and cultural change relate to cultural inheritance in a changing environment. We did this by studying diet cultures in group foragers adapting to environmental change through learning, and the consequences this has for diet differentiation between groups. We used an individual-based model of `monkeys' that learn what to eat in a rich environment, and we changed resource species that are available in the environment. Relative to social influences on learning that arise spontaneously in groups, we found that more direct social learning, in the sense of observing another individual and copying what it eats, helps groups deal with high levels of en...
Objective Over recent years the Internet has become an increasingly popular source of support and information for infertility, with a growing number of online support groups now available to individuals affected by fertility problems. The aims of the present study were therefore to explore the online experiences of individuals accessing infertility support groups via the Internet. Methods Ninety-five participants who were recruited from several online infertility support groups completed an online questionnaire containing a series of open-ended questions. Responses to the open-ended questions were analysed using inductive thematic analysis. Results The thematic analysis revealed five recurrent themes, which were labelled: `unique features of online social support', `improved relationship w...
In conjunction with the constellation of lawsuits within the administrative court system, and based on modern environmental protection laws, emission control laws, and foremost, the atomic energy laws, we are confronted with a variety of constitutional and administrative problems. However, the fundamental questions of individual rights within the potentially incriminating environmental utilization or exploitation by individuals could be relatively clearly answered by observing the basic principles of our legal order. It is to be expected that the administrative courts will arrive at acceptable decisions reflecting the full protection of the law and the basic constitutional principles, and that these - once made - may serve as orientation in superior court actions.
AbstractBACKGROUND: Disparities in treatment and mortality for colorectal cancer (CRC) may reflect differences in access to specialized care or other characteristics of the area where an individual lives. METHODS: Surveillance, Epidemiology and End Results Program-Medicare data for seniors diagnosed with CRC were linked to area measures of the sociodemographic characteristics and the capacity of surgeons, medical oncologists, and radiation oncologists. Outcomes included receipt of stage-appropriate CRC care and mortality. RESULTS: After adjustment, blacks and Hispanics were less likely than whites to undergo surgery (odds ratio [OR] 0.57, 95% confidence interval (CI) 0.52-0.63 and OR 0.82, 95% CI 0.70-0.95, respectively). Individuals who lived in areas with the highest tertile of surgeon c...
Adventure based counselling is a short-term experiential psychotherapeutic approach, which utilises adventurous activities and being in natural environmental in order to facilitate therapeutic change in clients. The present paper critically appraises the results of a qualitative study that investigated how clients with self-reported anxiety and depression experienced participating in an innovative counselling intervention with combined individual counselling with such an adventurous outdoor transaction. Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis, as described by Smith and Osborn (2008), was used in order record and analyse the experiences of four male and six female students who were treated at the Teesside's University Counselling Service. Interviewees perceived the counselling sessions as ...
The most common causes of omental sac collections (OSC) are necrotic pancreatitis (90%) and pancreatic trauma (10%). Acute OSC is a form of local peritonitis in acute pancreatitis, subacute OSC are caused by internal pancreatic fistulas. The clinical and radiological signs, enzymatic activity of the exudate, morphological features of peritonitis were investigated. Treatment of acute OSC included conservative measures, of subacute OSC-surgical procedures. PMID:9163152
The failure of receivers has been one of the main operating problems at the White Cliffs solar thermal power plant. This Technical Note reports the results of an initial investigation that identifies the cause as having been their thermal fatiguing of the tube walls. The fatigue appears to be caused by unstable heat transfer at vapor qualities below the point where critical heat flux is generally exceeded. Methods for avoiding this problem are tested.
A survey was conducted of experience with steam generator tubes at nuclear power stations during 1976. Failures were reported at 25 out of 68 water-cooled reactors. The causes of these failures and the repair and inspection procedures designed to cope with them are summarized. Examination of the data indicates that corrosion was the major cause of steam generator tube failures. Improvements are needed in steam generator design, condenser integrity and secondary water chemistry control. (author).
Plants often synthesize secondary metabolites that are enantiomers. Enantiomers can cause very different physiological responses. Ammodendrine (1) and anabasine (2) are teratogens that can cause congenital malformations in livestock and enantiomeric forms of each have been found in Lupinus spp. an...
Substances which exercise a pulmonary toxic action will first of all produce alveolar and perivascular oedemas followed by fibrosis. Differential diagnosis is explained on the basis of two cases of a fatal mitomycin fibrosis of the lung, as well as the observation of fibrous changes following the administration of Bleomycin and Metothrexat. The course of pulmonary fibroses caused by paraquat is described for two cases of fatal paraquat intoxications. (orig.).
Substantial damages at main components of steam turbines do not have to result inevitably in an exchange of the components concerned. Rather a preliminary or final repair is possible which also considers the cause of the damage. An important condition with the technically complex questions is an appropriate qualification and experience of all involved persons. The common task of operators, manufacturers and insurance companies is to preserve the balance from costs, expenditure of time and risk.
With reference to three hypotheses on the causes of forest decline, the manifold uses of forest decline surveys are demonstrated. Hypothesis no. 1: Forest disease from high-voltage transmission lines; hypothesis no. 2: Forest disease as the consequence of damage from micorrhizas; hypothesis no. 3: Radioactivity as the cause of the increased incidence of forest disease. (orig./MG)
Retinitis pigmentosa (RP) is a heterogeneous group of inherited retinal degenerations caused by mutations in at least 45 genes. Using homozygosity mapping, we identified a ∼4 Mb homozygous region...Full Text Available
Outbreaks of disease attributable to human error or natural causes can provide unique opportunities to gain new information about host-pathogen interactions and new leads for pathogenesis research....Full Text Available
In view of the widespread cracks discovered in the reinforced-concrete circulating water culvert of Daya Bay Nuclear Power Station, cause analysis for the cracks is made in terms of construction and design. It is concluded that the cracks mainly resulted from shrinkage and temperature. Corresponding countermeasures are put forward thereafter for reference of similar projects
BackgroundOmega-3 fatty acid (n-3 FA) blood levels and intakes have been inversely associated with risk for sudden cardiac death, but their relationship with all-cause...Full Text Available
A 72-year-old man was exposed to the sarin gas attack in a Tokyo subway on March 20 th, 1995. After exposure, he noticed eye discomfort, chest tightness, headache and weakness of the lower limbs and oropharyngeal muscles. Despite these symptoms, he visited a hot spring on the same day with his family. On March 25 th, his muscle weakness progressed, and a low grade fever appeared. His muscle weakness disappeared 8 days after exposure to sarin, but respiratory failure rapidly developed, necessitating artificial ventilation within four day after hospitalization on March 28th. Chemotherapy with erythromycin, imipenem/cilastatin, and steroid pulse therapy was begu. PCR and culture of sputum collected by bronchofiberscopy were positive for Legionella pneumophila, serogroup I. His respiratory state improved, but subsequent infection with Pseudomonous aeruginosa. Enterobacter cloacae, and Candida tropicalis/glabrata caused his death 71 days after admission. Oropharyngeal ...
Power quality problems are caused by activities normal to utility operations such as maintenance outages and capacitor switching or events that are abnormal such as lightning strikes and equipment failures. Disconnection and reconnection of transmission lines and transformers can cause switching surges, and are more severe on extra high voltage transmission lines than high voltage lines. Capacitor switching can cause transients and harmonics that may affect sensitive equipment, and are the source of 3rd, 5th, 7th and 9th harmonics in the hundreds of hertz ranges. Overload, sudden loss of generating capacity and transmission line faults are typical problems affecting system stability. Fault interruptions and reclosings can cause surges in the distribution system, and lightning strikes may cause voltage surges or dips due to arrester sparkover. Blackouts, brownouts, voltage ...
Ice jamming, known to cause high water levels at even moderate river flows, is described as both the main and least understood source of ice-related bridge damages. This paper describes a joint study by the New Brunswick Department of Transportation, the Department of the Environment, local governments, and the National Water Research Institute, designed to address problems associated with the interaction of ice jams and bridges. The study consists of collecting information at each of four sites in New Brunswick including: historical data on ice jam locations, causes, and water levels; channel bathymetry, width and slope within each study centred at the respective bridge; and documentation of ice conditions throughout the ice season, including measurement of ice cover thickness, observation of breakup mechanisms, times, causes, characteristics and possible impacts of ice jam release. Data analysis will include determination ...
The most typical kinds of corrosion of brasses are selective corrosion (dezincification) and stress corrosion. Prevention against these kinds of corrosion lies in application of arsenic alloy addition and appropriate heat treatment removing internal stresses as well as in maintaining the arsenic and phosphorus contents on a proper level. The most typical corrosion of cupronickels is the local corrosion. Selective corrosion occurs less often and corrosion cracking caused by stress corrosion in sea water does not usually occur. Crevice corrosion is found especially in places of an heterogeneous oxidation of the surface under inorganic deposits or under bio-film. Common corrosive phenomena for brasses and cupronickels are the effects caused by sea water flow and most often the impingement attack. Alloy additions improve resistance to the action of intensive sea water flow but situation in this field requires further improvement, especially if the ...
The differing susceptibility of individuals to the toxic effects of chronic lead exposure has never been fully understood. As the major intake of lead in the human is from food and beverages, any variation between individuals of the quantity of lead absorbed from the gut, and of the distribution and excretion of this lead, may account for the differences in individual susceptibility. The food and beverages themselves may have an influence, and to investigate their effects on absorption, distribution and excretion of lead, experiments were performed on normal subjects using a short lived radionuclide of lead, "2"0"3Pb, and instruments generally available in Nuclear Medicine. Lead absorption between different individuals showed a wide variation when "2"0"3Pb was taken as a single dose between meals. Minerals were found to be mainly responsible for affecting absorption when one subject ingested "2"0"3Pb in ...
A self-selected sample of 417 urban and 379 rural preschool children attending the under-5s clinics was weighed in Sierra Leone. The individual weights were related to the weight-for-age Harvard 3rd...Full Text Available