bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Molecular cloning and in silico characterization of two alpha-like neurotoxins and one metalloproteinase from the maxilllipeds of the centipede Scolopendra subspinipes mutilans
Authors: Xia Xichao , Liu Yang , Huang Jianxin , Yu Xiaozhu , Chen Zhiguo , Zheng Xinhua , Wang Fuan , Zhang Junfeng , Xue Shipeng , Cheng Zhaofei 
Published: March 2018

Abstract

Aims
In order to shed light of characterizations of centipede Scolopendra subspinipes mutilans venom, a two novel full-lengths of alpha-like-neurotoxin and one metalloproteinase cDNAs derived from the maxilllipeds RNA of centipede S. subspinipes mutilans were isolated, and, respectively, named as SsuTA1, SsuTA2 and SsuMPs.

Materials and methods
The SsuTA1, SsuTA2 and SsuMPs were cloned from the S. subspinipes mutilans using the rapid amplification of cDNA ends methods.

Results
In the current study, SsuTA1 and SsuTA2 were, respectively, composed of 82 amino acid residues and 106 amino acid residues. Deduced protein sequence of SsuTA1 shared high homology with that of SsuTA2, one major difference was the C-terminal 24-residue extension in SsuTA2. An abundance of cysteine residues and several adjacent beta-sheets were observed in SsuTA1 and SsuTA2. SsuMPs had 594 amino acid residues containing with a molecular mass of 68.29 kDa. The primary sequence analysis indicated that the SsuMPs contains a zinc-binding motif (HEIGHSLGLAHS) and methionine-turn motif (YIM). Phylogenetic analysis revealed early divergence and independent evolution of SsuTA1 and SsuTA2 from other α-neurotoxins.

Conclusion
The results suggested that centipede S. subspinipes mutilans is an ancient member of venomous arthropods, but its venom exhibits novel scenario.
Evidence for Photo-Switchable Carrier Mobilities in Blends of PbS Nanocrystals and Photochromic Dithienylcyclopentene Derivatives
Authors: Schedel Christine , Peisert Heiko , Chassé Thomas , Scheele Marcus 
Published: March 2018

Abstract
We use derivatives of the photochromic molecule 1,2-bis(5′-carboxy-2′-methylthien-3′-yl)-cyclopentene in combination with semiconducting PbS nanocrystals to probe the feasibility of solid-state optical switching in hybrid nanostructured thin films. X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy is applied to differentiate between the different constituents in the blends, while field-effect transistor measurements in the dark reveal the effect of prior illumination with visible or ultra-violet light on the transport properties. By analyzing the response of the electric conductivity, the carrier concentration and mobility separately, we are able to distinguish between the effect of additional photo-excited charge carriers and photo-induced changes of the electronic structure of the semiconducting film. Our results suggest that coupling between the nanocrystals and the photochromic molecule is weak but also provide evidence that photochromism of the molecules may be partially preserved.
Testing and Evaluation of Bond Surface Profile Influencing the CFRP Strengthening of Steel Members
Authors: Cyril Thomas A. , Baskar K. 
Published: March 2018

Abstract
The strengthening of steel structures using Fiber-Reinforced Polymers (FRP) is one of the most effective strengthening techniques based on recent research. Usually, FRP has good characteristics with regard to a high strength-to-weight ratio, chemical resistance, and corrosion resistance. Generally, steel-structure strengthening is accomplished by changing the inherent property of the section. Comparatively, the FRP strengthening technique has simplicity, lighter weight, higher strength, and greater durability. The strength of the FRP-strengthened steel member depends on the bond between the FRP and steel substrate. In the present experimental investigation, the bond strength between the FRP and steel substrate is studied for different surface profiles (SA 2, SA 21/2, and SA 3), which are prepared with two different types of blasting, namely, sand blasting and copper slag blasting. A series of pull-off and pull tests have been carried out to assess the bond strength between FRP and steel substrate. From the pull-off test results, the maximum average bond-strength values of copper slag–blasted test specimens are 39.37 (SA 2), 35.71 (SA 21/2), and 31.44 % (SA 3) higher than those of the test specimens prepared with sand blasting. In the pull test, the maximum average tensile strength values of the copper slag–blasted test specimens are 20.95 (SA 2), 29.51 (SA 21/2), and 37.30 % (SA 3) higher than those of the sand-blasted test specimens prepared with the same profiles. Thus, the performance of test specimens prepared with the SA 3 surface profile with copper slag blasting is potentially stronger than other surface profiles.
The Development of Retrogression and Re-aging to Manage Environmental Degradation in Australian Defence Force Aircraft
Authors: Crawford Bruce R. , Shekhter Alexandra , Loader Chris 
Published: March 2018

Abstract
This article describes a project in which the Retrogression and Re-aging (RRA) heat treatment was demonstrated to be a viable means of improving the corrosion resistance of 7075-T651 components of the Royal Australian Air Force AP-3C and C-130J-30 aircraft while maintaining the mechanical properties above the material’s A-Basis and preserving component functionality. This was achieved by a phased development process starting with the determination of the mechanical properties of the RRA-treated material and culminating in technology demonstrators on thick-section C-130J-30 lower ring segment components and a thin-section AP-3C component. This article describes the results obtained and the lessons learned during the process.
Instrumented Impact Testing of Miniaturized Charpy Specimens of AM Ti-6Al-4V
Authors: Lucon Enrico , Hrabe Nikolas 
Published: March 2018

Abstract
An investigation on the impact toughness properties of wrought and additively manufactured (AM) Ti-6Al-4V was conducted at National Institute for Standards and Technology (NIST) Boulder by means of instrumented impact tests on miniaturized Charpy specimens. Full transition curves for absorbed energy and lateral expansion were obtained by performing tests in the temperature range between −196°C and 700°C. The effect of various parameters was investigated for AM specimens, namely specimen orientation, hot isostatic pressing (HIPing), and notch configuration (printed or machined). Our results indicate that AM specimens exhibit equivalent or better impact toughness than wrought material after HIPing and that the material is more resistant to cracks growing in the plane perpendicular to the build direction than in the plane containing the build direction. HIPing has a significantly beneficial effect for the AM material, while no effect of notch configuration was observed from the results obtained.
Non-parathyroid hypercalcemia associated with paraffin oil injection in 12 younger male bodybuilders: a case series
Authors: Sølling Anne Sophie Koldkjær , Tougaard Birgitte G , Harsløf Torben , Langdahl Bente , Brockstedt Helle Kongsbak , Byg Keld-Erik , Ivarsen Per , Ystrøm Ina Karstoft , Mose Frank Holden , Isaksson Gustaf Lissel , Hansen Morten Steen Svarer , Nagarajah Subagini , Ejersted Charlotte , Bendstrup Elisabeth , Rejnmark Lars 
Published: March 2018

Introduction
Injection of paraffin oil to augment muscles size is a troubling phenomenon known to cause a foreign body reaction with formation of granulomas. In a few case reports, long-term side effects have been reported in terms of hypercalcemia and renal failure.

Methods
We identified a case series of 12 male bodybuilders presenting with non-parathyroid hypercalcemia who previously had injected paraffin oil to increase muscles size.

Results
At admission, all patients had moderate-to-severe hypercalcemia with suppressed PTH levels and impaired renal function. Calcitriol levels were within the normal range or slightly elevated. Follow-up measurements showed marked hypercalciuria with nearly normal levels of bone turnover markers. A correlation was found between levels of peptidyl dipeptidase and calcitriol (R = 0.812, P = 0.050). Treatment with antiresorptive agents seemed less effective than glucocorticoids, which resulted in a significantly lowering of ionized calcium levels and improved renal function, although no patients were cured by this treatment. Immunosuppression with azathioprine or mycophenolate may have a glucocorticoid-saving effect. One patient had surgery with removal of affected muscle tissue, without any apparent effect on plasma calcium levels.

Conclusion
The hypercalcemia and associated hypercalciuria seems to be due to an intestinal hyperabsorption of calcium. It remains to be elucidated, whether an increased calcitriol synthesis within granulomas is the only (main) mechanism by which intestinal calcium absorption is increased. Glucocorticoids seem most appropriate as the first choice for treatment. Bodybuilders should be warned against use of intramuscular oil injections (and other substances), as this may have severe adverse health consequences.
Microstructural white matter alterations and hippocampal volumes are associated with cognitive deficits in craniopharyngioma
Authors: Fjalldal S , Follin C , Svärd D , Rylander L , Gabery S , Petersén Å , van Westen D , Sundgren P C , Björkman-Burtscher I M , Lätt J , Ekman B , Johanson A , Erfurth E M 
Published: March 2018

ContextPatients with craniopharyngioma (CP) and hypothalamic lesions (HL) have cognitive deficits. Which neural pathways are affected is unknown.ObjectiveTo determine whether there is a relationship between microstructural white matter (WM) alterations detected with diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) and cognition in adults with childhood-onset CP.DesignA cross-sectional study with a median follow-up time of 22 (6–49) years after operation.SettingThe South Medical Region of Sweden (2.5 million inhabitants).ParticipantsIncluded were 41 patients (24 women, ≥17 years) surgically treated for childhood-onset CP between 1958–2010 and 32 controls with similar age and gender distributions. HL was found in 23 patients.Main outcome measuresSubjects performed cognitive tests and magnetic resonance imaging, and images were analyzed using DTI of uncinate fasciculus, fornix, cingulum, hippocampus and hypothalamus as well as hippocampal volumetry.ResultsRight uncinate fasciculus was significantly altered (P ≤ 0.01). Microstructural WM alterations in left ventral cingulum were significantly associated with worse performance in visual episodic memory, explaining approximately 50% of the variation. Alterations in dorsal cingulum were associated with worse performance in immediate, delayed recall and recognition, explaining 26–38% of the variation, and with visuospatial ability and executive function, explaining 19–29%. Patients who had smaller hippocampal volume had worse general knowledge (P = 0.028), and microstructural WM alterations in hippocampus were associated with a decline in general knowledge and episodic visual memory.ConclusionsA structure to function relationship is suggested between microstructural WM alterations in cingulum and in hippocampus with cognitive deficits in CP.
Physicians' Perceptions of Barriers to Equal Access to Reproductive Health Promotion for Women with Mobility Impairment
Authors: Joseph Meera , Saravanabavan Sujen , Nisker Jeff 
Published: March 2018

In Canada, 15% of women report having a disability, most frequently mobility-related. Research with women with disabilities has for decades brought attention to barriers to reproductive health promotion. Research with physicians regarding why these barriers exist and how they can be dissolved has not occurred. Physicians were recruited through email and pamphlets to participate in 30-45 minute in-person interviews, audiotaped and transcribed verbatim. Charmaz-based qualitative analysis was supported by NVivo10TM software. Twenty-five interviews were conducted before theoretical sufficiency. Six themes were co-constructed: I-Physicians’ Perceptions of Barriers; II-Physicians' Perceptions of Consequences of Barriers; III-Resolving Barriers; IV-Physicians’ Sub-Understanding of Legal Right to Accommodation; V-Obligation of Physicians to Advocate for Accommodation; and VI-Language Suggesting Physicians’ Lack of Understanding of How Persons with Disabilities See Themselves and Want to be Seen. Physicians identified physical access barriers previously identified in critical disability studies literature, but did not identify the barriers of physician attitudes and lack of information provision as reported in this literature. Physicians perceived their additional time for pap smears and other surveillance strategies as barriers, particularly when not remunerated. Physicians were unaware of their legal obligation to accommodate under human rights codes, perceiving that taking extra time to provide accommodation was doing so out of the "goodness of your heart". Physicians used language illustrating many were unaware of how disabled persons see themselves and want to be seen. Education regarding disability rights and culture must be introduced immediately and prominently into all levels of medical education, with the educators being people with disabilities.
Development of oil, freeze, high temperature resistant and flame retardant rubber compounds for high performance hydrolic hose
Authors: KARADENİZ Kemal 
Published: March 2018

The high
performance hydrolic rubber hose should resist to hydrolic oils and can run at
temperature interval from –55 0C to 150 0C. In addition
to these properties, for some areas such as mining should also be flame
retardant. In this study, compound formulations having properties mentioned
above were developped, mechanical properties, hydrolic oil and low, high
temperature resistance performances were measured. Flame retardant tests were
also been performed. Hoses were built using these newely developped compounds
and then their burst tests were performed. The best performer compound for low
temeperature performance hose was the one prepared with the blends of acrylonitrile
butadiene (NBR), stirene-butadiene (SBR)
and cis-butadiene (CBR) rubbers along with plasticizer diisononylphthalate (DINP).
One of the compounds preapared with the blending of SBR, NBR rubbers, aluminium
hydroxide, tricrezyl phoshate (TCP) and zinc borate was the best for the flame
retardant hose. The best performer high temeperature resistant compound was
preapred using MT N990 carbonblack and plasticizer paraplex G50 with blending
of SBR 1502, NBR 2860 and NBR 3360 rubbers.
La traversée de l’Atlantique ou la mort ? Une réflexion critique sur la notion d’échange
Authors: Mwepu Patrick Kabeya 
Published: March 2018

rossing the Atlantic or dying? Critical reflexion on the concept of exchange
This paper investigates the validity of the concept of "cultural exchange" through a few African novels, comparing different perspectives of journeys. While some African writers attempt to depict their most immediate environment, making themselves appear as nationalist as possible, one can notice however that more and more other African writers choose to encapsulate their literary universe in changing geographic settings: Their writing depicts the mobility of characters aiming at reaching new frontiers. These new spaces, always to be discovered, provide African writers with a platform to depict subjectivities that cognitively enrich themselves on contact with newer and different world visions. However, the crossing into the other world (on the other bank of the river) seems not always to offer a space for mutual cultural exchange; it might be fatal and lead to identity "assassination" , "a journey of death".
The writing of Arthur Fula: modernity, language, place and religion
Authors: Willemse Hein 
Published: March 2018

Arthur Fula's debut novel Jôhannie giet die beeld (Lit: Johannesburg moulds the graven image) was well received in the beginning of 1954 but has in recent years been largely forgotten. The novel was promoted as the first "by a Bantu in Afrikaans", a designation that differentiated him, a third language speaker, from the typical Afrikaans writer who was ordinarily a white, first language speaker. The novel registers, in the tradition of the ˜'Jim-comes-to Jo'burg novels', the migration of black characters to the urban areas with the persistent struggle between indigenous traditions and the presence of an unknown, even threatening Western modernity. In his second novel Met erbarming, O Here (With Compassion, Oh Lord, 1957) Fula made peace with the permanency of urban black Africans and their aspirations. This essay introduces the emergence of the autodidact Fula's authorship amidst a period of profound change and adaptation in South Africa during the 1950s, tracing his personal history, the circumstances of his writing and choice of language, and the reception of his debut novel.
Indigeneity in modernity. The cases of Kgebetli Moele and Niq Mhlongo
Authors: Rafapa Lesibana 
Published: March 2018

The study of South African English literature written by black people in the postapartheid period has focused, among others, on the so-called Hillbrow novels of Phaswane Mpe and Niq Mhlongo, and narratives such as Kgebetli Moele's Book of the Dead (2009) set in Pretoria. A number of studies show how the fiction of these writers handles black concerns that some critics believe to have replaced a thematic preoccupation with apartheid, as soon as political freedom was attained in 1994. However, adequate analyses are yet to be made of works produced by some of these black writers in their more rounded scrutiny of the first decade of democracy, apart from what one may describe as an indigenous/traditional weaning from preoccupation with the theme of apartheid. This study intends to fill this gap, as well as examine how such a richer social commentary is refracted in its imaginative critique of South African democratic life beyond its first decade of existence.Â I consider Mhlongo's novels Dog Eat Dog (2004) and After Tears (2007); together with Moele's narratives reflecting on the same epoch Room 207 (2006) and The Book of the Dead (2009). For the portrayal of black lives after ten years of democracy, I unpack the discursive content of Mhlongo's and Moele's novels Way Back Home (2013) and Untitled (2013) respectively. I probe new ways in which these postapartheid writers critique the new living conditions of blacks in their novelistic discourses. I argue that their evolving approaches interrogate literary imaginaries, presumed modernities and visions on socio-political freedom of a postapartheid South Africa, in ways deserving critical attention. Â I demonstrate how Moele and Mhlongo in their novels progressively assert a self-determining indigeneity in a postapartheid modernity unfolding in the context of some pertinent discursive views around ideas such as colourblindness and transnationalism. I show how the discourses of the author's novels enable a comparison both their individual handling of the concepts of persisting institutional racism and the hegemonic silencing of white privilege; and distinguishable ways in which each of the two authors grapples with such issues in their fiction depicting black conditions in the first decade of South African democratic rule, differently from the way they do with portrayals of the socio-economic challenges faced by black people beyond the first ten years of South African democracy.
Discrete-Continuous Approach and Terminology: Description of Energy-Information Interaction
Authors: Lopatiev A. , Pytyn M. , Bernatowski A. 
Published: March 2018

The objective is to study definitions that describe energy-information interactions under a discrete-continuous approach to the model of person.
Materials and methods. The research used the general scientific methodology of systems analysis. According to it, a scientific and theoretical study does not consider relatively independent components separately, but in a combination, in a system with others. A systems approach made it possible to reveal integrative, systematic features and qualitative characteristics absent in individual elements forming the system. To define the terminology that describes energy-information interactions, the research used a discrete-continuous approach. The research object was the existence of appropriate terminology that meets the requirements of modern science.
Results. The paper presents a model describing a person in the form of a discrete-continuous system, with the focus on energy aspects and information technology. Information technology systemizes knowledge representation, creates logical and computational tools for establishing regularities from primary information arrays, constructs information systems. The research clarified the following terms: infotomation is obtaining information knowledge on the layer-by-layer structure of the study object organization; information indicators are natural indicators transformed into a normalized relative form, according to the natural indicator position on the scale of its change. The form makes it possible to obtain an information evaluation of the system state by this indicator; information model is an information knowledge in a formula or algorithmic form.
Conclusions. The research studied the definitions that describe energy-information interactions for the systems of material points and continuous medium.
Evaluation of clinicopathological profile of subjects with intrauterine fetal death
Authors: Pandey Sunil Kumar , Porwal Surabhi 
Published: March 2018

Background: Intrauterine foetal death is an immense emotional burden for everyone concerned specially in the last trimester. Therefore, it is very important to find out, what has happened. Evaluation of clinical and pathological profile of women presenting with intrauterine foetal death has evoked great interest among the obstetricians.Methods: The prospective observational study was conducted in the department of Obstetrics and Gynaecology N.S.C.B. Medical College Jabalpur during 1st June 2012 to 31st October 2013. A total of 155 intrauterine foetal death subjects admitted during this period were evaluated. Clinically and laboratory profile of subjects done. Histomorphology of placenta was performed in each case. Full HPR finding were then correlated with clinical and laboratory findings of subjects. Results: Poor vascularity of villi and fever were significantly associated (p<0.01). Hypertension and Convulsion and fibrinoid necrosis, syncytial knot and placental infarcts were significantly associated (p<0.001) Premature placenta is associated with cytotrophoblastic layer (p<0.01). Conversely post mature placenta is associated with calcification and infarction. (p<0.01). Conclusions: All placentae associated with foetal death have either gross or microscopic abnormalities. Present study is a step towards understanding and extrapolating the already known causes of intrauterine foetal death in the perspective of Jabalpur and its adjoining districts.