Datasets:

hac541309

/

minipile_filtered_5percent

like 1

As integrated circuit clock frequencies and circuit densities continue to scale dramatically upward, the importance of a stable power supply voltage becomes critical for reliable operation. Power supply current demand and therefore voltage fluctuation is affected by changes in power consumption on the chip. Sustained changes of on-chip switching activity for more than one clock cycle change the average current demand (ΔI) of CMOS chips and create power voltage noise in the mid-and low frequency range. Thus, switched bypass resistors are often connected directly to the power supply. The power supply noise is created because the power supply and voltage regulation functions are physically displaced from the chip, resulting in additional power loading on the power supply. Chip modules, circuit card assemblies (CCA) and printed circuit boards (PCB) often combine to present a complex distribution network for on-chip power supply regulation. The un-avoidable inductances in the power delivery network routed from the power supply to the on-chip circuits are a primary source of power supply noise. Increased switching activity causes a drop of the on-chip supply voltage and decreasing switching activity can result in voltage supply overshoot. The on-chip voltage fluctuations are attributable to high switching activity of a large percentage of active devices and their corresponding capacitive loads. This type of fluctuation in power supply voltage tends to occur over a period of about 5 nanoseconds. Power supply noise impacts chip performance and can cause false switching in logic circuits. Power supply noise becomes more and more critical with increasing ΔI and decreasing supply voltage because noise margins for low voltage circuits are commensurately reduced. Large leakage currents in the range of about 70 A can operate to reduce power supply noise in CMOS integrated circuits due to a damping effect in supply perturbations and also because of the relatively small dependency of the supply voltage to leakage resistance. However, in current process technologies, leakage currents present a major source of power dissipation as well as unique challenges to chip cooling, thereby mitigating any reliance on leakage currents as a means for reducing power supply noise. Another common practice to reduce power supply noise is to place decoupling capacitors on-chip as well as on the module, CCA or PCB. On-chip decoupling capacitors are most efficient for mid-frequency power supply noise reduction, but the total amount of decoupling capacitance is limited by the chip size. Moreover, the path inductances of the power delivery network and of the decoupling capacitors themselves are reduced by appropriate design and technology. However, low inductance capacitors (LICA) placed on the module are significantly more expensive than general purpose capacitors.

This invention is in the field of temporary or portable roadways, and in particular such roadways that are suitable for use in sensitive environments and soft ground. It is often required for construction, exploration, and like purposes to construct roadways through rough territory including soft ground. These roadways are often temporary and in the interests of preserving the environment, it is desired to have a roadway wherein heavy equipment can enter an area to do a job as required and leave the area with as little damage to the ground surface as possible. The military, emergency measures organizations and the like also have occasion to move equipment quickly into areas where no roads are available. Temporary air strips must sometimes be made under adverse conditions as well as roadways. Also in soft ground vehicles get stuck and are unable to proceed until pulled by a tractor or the like, and even then they may not be able to proceed. The tractor further damages the ground, making ruts and so forth. Corduroy roads, wherein logs and so forth are laid lengthwise across the path of the road have been used in the past to cross soft areas of ground. Improvements to the well known corduroy road have also been known, for example as disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 5,282,692 to McLeod. The McLeod patent discloses a series of parallel members joined together and extending substantial perpendicular to the path of the roadway. A problem with such prior art apparatuses for roadways is that the members are substantially perpendicular to the path of vehicles travelling on the roadway with the result that the wheels of the vehicles pass suddenly and directly from one lateral member to the next, causing significant impact loading. The weight of a vehicle on each member, combined with the impact loading, also causes the same to sink somewhat relative to the next adjacent member where no weight is present, and as the wheel rolls, it must climb up onto the next adjacent member to progress down the roadway, decreasing the efficiency of the vehicle. This effect also causes the wheels of the vehicle to push against the members of the roadway, putting added stress on the links holding one member to the next. It is an object of the present invention to provide an apparatus that can be laid on the ground, including soft ground, as a roadway to facilitate travel by vehicles over the apparatus. It is a further object of the present invention to provide such an apparatus that reduces damage caused to the ground surface by the vehicles. It is a further object of the present invention to provide such an apparatus that enables a temporary roadway to be hauled to a site and quickly assembled for use. The present invention addresses these objectives by providing a flexible roadway with advantages over apparatuses currently employed in the art. The apparatus comprises a number of sections held adjacent to each other by a retainer. Each of these sections comprises a top surface, a bottom surface, a front face and a back face. The front face of a section mates with the back face on an adjacent section to form an interface. The interface of the mating faces is at a non-perpendicular angle to the direction of travel substantially along its length. This invention addresses the problem created by prior art roadways, which consist of members substantially perpendicular to the path of the vehicle, where the weight of the wheel passing over the sections causes an impact load on each section in turn. In the present design, the interface between adjacent sections is not perpendicular to the path of the vehicle so that the weight of the vehicle is applied gradually to each adjacent section rather than suddenly loading it. While even a minor deviance from the perpendicular will effect some reduction in impact loading, the greater the angle the more gradual the weight transfer. For practical design purposes, it is anticipated that an angle between 40 and 50 degrees will be most suitable for most applications. The reduction in impact loading will reduce the amount each member sinks in relation to the adjacent members. The present invention may further include a system to interlock a section to adjacent sections. The back face of one section may contain a groove that interlocks with a corresponding tongue contained in the front face of the adjacent section. Thus downward force on one section will exert a downward force on the adjacent sections, thereby increasing the area of the ground surface the force is being applied to, and further reducing the amount each section sinks. The apparatus may also include hollow vertical tubes passing through the sections. These tubes brace the top surface of each section, reduce damage to the ground beneath the roadway by releasing pressure built up under the sections, and provide somewhat improved traction for the vehicle wheels on the surface of the apparatus. Where the apparatus is made from a hollow formed plastic, the apparatus could be made light enough to be easily moved and quickly placed in position.

The core of Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj's teaching is the knowledge of one's own identity. This knowledge is indeed the pivotal point around which moves everything. It is the crucial truth. And the apperception of this truth arisesonly from intense personal experience, not from a study of religious texts, which according to Maharaj, are nothing but 'hearsay.' Taking his stand on the bedrock of incontrovertible facts and totally discarding all assumptions and speculations, he often address a new visitor in the following words: "You are sitting there, I am sitting here, and there is the world outside -- and, for the moment, we may assume that there must be a creator, let us say God. These three/four items are facts or experience, not 'hearsay.' Let us confine our conversation to these items only." This basis automatically excludes along with the 'hearsay' the traditional texts too, and therefore there is always an exhilarating sense of freshness and freedom to Maharaj's talks. His words need no support from someone else's words or experiences which, after all, is all that the traditional texts can mean. This approach completely disarms those 'educated' people who come to impress the other visitors with their learning, and at the same time hope to get a certificate from Maharaj about their own highly evolved state. At the same time it greatly encourages the genuine seeker who would prefer to start from scratch. ...Maharaj tells the visitors that it is only about this consciousness or I-am-ness that he always talks.

Leg ulcer induced by hydroxycarbamide in sickle cell disease: What is the therapeutic impact? Major sickle cell disease syndrome (SCD) is a set of potentially serious and disabling constitutional haemoglobin pathologies characterised by chronic haemolysis and vaso-occlusion phenomena. If expression takes the form of acute vaso-occlusive crisis, SCD is currently considered to be a chronic systemic pathology, primarily associated with vasculopathy and ischaemia-reperfusion phenomena. The haemolytic aspect of the disease may be associated with endothelial dysfunctional complications, including leg ulcers, which are a classic spontaneous complication of major SCD. Their frequency, all aetiologies combined, varies considerably according to the series under consideration. Hydroxycarbamide has become the standard treatment for some SCD phenotypes, but has classically been described as one of the causes of leg ulcer. This causality is widely debated and is still difficult to establish because it is a specific complication of the disease. Comorbidity factors (eg, iron deficiency) are also often implicated as causal or aggravating factors so research into all the potential aetiologies of leg ulcers in a sickle cell patient must be exhaustive. We discuss the aetiologies of a leg ulcer in a patient treated by hydrocarbamide for major SCD. The imputation of the drug was established, followed by a marrow allograft in this patient.

A major barrier to HIV eradication is the existence of a small pool of long-lived latently-infected, resting memory CD4[+] T cells carrying an integrated form of the viral genome. Memory T cells encompass a variety of cell subsets all endowed with specific survival and differentiation properties. We have recently demonstrated that the privileged cell type where HIV establishes its resen/oir is the central memory T cell (T{CM}) and its immediate progeny, the transitional memory T cell (T{TM})- IL-7 is one of the cytokines that is responsible for sustaining low levels of proliferation in T{CM} and T{TM}. Harnessing IL-7 interactions with its receptor on TCM could provide a strategy to prevent the survival and proliferation of these cells, and to prevent the persistence of the HIV reservoir. Another cytokine known to play a major role in memory T cell survival is IL-15. We have recently demonstrated that IL-15 engagement with its receptor on resting CD4[+] T{CM} that harbor latent virus will induce their differentiation into short-lived effector memory T cells (T{EM}) that can proliferate and produce virus. We propose to exploit this capacity of IL-15 so that the pool of resting, infected T{CM} cells can be depleted in vitro and in vivo. We will first determine the relative impact of IL-7 and IL-15 on HIV persistence in vivo and in vitro by measuring the contribution of these cytokines to the maintenance of the pool of latently infected cells in blood and tissues obtained from subjects receiving suppressive ART and by evaluating their capacity to induce viral reactivation (Specific Aim 1). We will then test the hypothesis that blocking the IL-7 pathway or, conversely, administrating IL-15 to optimally-treated macaques could be used as strategies to deplete the latent viral reservoir (Specific Aim 2). Our proposed interventions target the major cellular source of persistent virus during treatment, and although they may not work alone in eradicating HIV, they could complement other interventions by transiently reversing the host factors that are critical in maintaining latently infected cells.

The present invention relates to a supporting device for prefabricated units, in particular for buildings having a metallic structure. Supporting devices for prefabricated units made of concrete or the like are known. In the field of buildings having a concrete supporting structure, appropriate brackets are sometimes provided in order to support prefabricated units which are also made of concrete, such as for example prefabricated panels; such brackets are formed monolithically with the supporting element or with the supported element, protrude from it, and are meant to engage in seats provided for this purpose in the supported element or in the supporting element, or simply form a resting surface for the supported element or for the supporting element. Other devices for supporting prefabricated units are constituted by brackets which are rigidly coupled, during installation, by welding or bolting, to steel inserts embedded beforehand in the units. These supporting devices for prefabricated units have the problem of difficulty in performing installation and of poor precision in positioning the prefabricated unit with respect to the supporting structure. EP-423,660 in the name of these same Applicants discloses a supporting and anchoring device for prefabricated units in particular made of concrete or the like, which is substantially constituted by a bush-like seat formed in one face of the supporting element and by a supporting element which is detachably inserted in the seat and protrudes from the seat and from the face of the supporting element, so as to form a resting region for the prefabricated unit to be connected to the supporting element. The device is provided with adjustment means which allow to vary the distance of the resting region with respect to the face of the supporting element and the elevation of the resting region, so as to allow, in a simple and rapid way, a very precise positioning of the prefabricated unit with respect to the supporting structure. Since this device requires, inside the supporting element, a bush-like seat which must be provided during the production of the supporting element, it cannot be used in buildings having a metallic supporting structure and whenever it is not possible or convenient to form a bush-like seat inside the body of the supporting element, even if said element is made of concrete. The aim of the present invention is to provide a supporting device for prefabricated units which does not require the preliminary provision of a bush-like seat inside one of the two units to be mutually connected and accordingly is particularly adapted for use in the field of buildings having a metallic supporting structure. Within the scope of this aim, an object of the present invention is to provide a device which can in any case be used also to connect prefabricated units made of concrete if it is impossible or not convenient to provide a bush-like seat in one of the two prefabricated units to be mutually connected. Another object of the present invention is to provide a device which in any case allows very precise adjustment, during installation, of the position of one unit with respect to the other. Another object of the present invention is to provide a device which allows particularly simple installation of prefabricated units. Another object of the present invention is to provide a device which offers good resistance in case of seismic events. These and other objects which will become better apparent hereinafter are achieved by a supporting device for prefabricated units, characterized in that it comprises a main body which can be fixed to an outer face of a first unit and a supporting element having a portion which forms a resting region for a second unit to be connected to said first unit; said supporting element being detachably associated with said main body and-being movable along said main body in order to vary the position of said resting region with respect to said first unit.

Early diastolic peak velocity of left ventricular wall segment lying in isovolumic relaxation period as determined by tissue Doppler imaging. The early diastolic peak velocity of left ventricular (LV) wall segment has always been regarded as appearing in the rapid filling phase. However, we find some segments of which early diastolic peak velocities appear in the isovolumic relaxation period (PVIVR segments). The present study aimed to investigate the characteristics of PVIVR segments. Tissue Doppler imaging was performed in each of the 16 segments of LV wall in 99 patients with known or suspected coronary heart disease and 50 normal subjects. Early diastolic velocity pattern was classified as PVIVR, post-systolic shortening (PSS) and normal pattern. The multivariate logistic regression analyses showed that the significant echocardiographic predictors of the presence of PVIVR in a patient were transmitral E/A ratio and isovolumic relaxation time. Segmental early diastolic velocity pattern was significantly associated with actual coronary stenosis, relative coronary stenosis and wall motion score. PVIVR segments had a lower early diastolic peak velocity than other segments. PVIVR segments more frequently appear in the territory with the relatively mildest coronary stenosis, whereas PSS segments more frequently appear in the territory with the relatively most severe coronary stenosis. Patients with PVIVR have lower global LV diastolic function. A decreased early diastolic peak velocity of PVIVR segments does not necessarily mean impaired myocardial relaxation.

Personality, attachment and sexuality related to dating relationship outcomes: contrasting three perspectives on personal attribute interaction. Although people can bring personal attributes to their relationships that affect how satisfying and enduring those relationships are, it is more often personal attribute interaction that directly determines romantic relationship outcomes. In this study, three general perspectives on personal attribute interaction-similarity, complementarity and exchange perspectives-were contrasted empirically in their ability to predict dating relationship outcomes. Based on questionnaires completed by a sample of 44 heterosexual dating couples, feelings of relationship satisfaction were most closely associated with the interaction of socially valuable attributes, generally supporting the exchange perspective. Similarity of personal attributes was also connected with relationship satisfaction; however, this association was in the negative direction. That is, couples with dissimilar personality traits, attachment styles and sexual strategies were significantly more satisfied with their dating relationships. Complementarity of personal attributes had no link to satisfaction, but complementary couples experienced significantly higher ratings of relationship commitment, especially couples with complementary personalities. Discussion focused on the differences between personal attribute connections with romantic satisfaction and commitment and on the limitations of the present study.

The invention relates to the field of templates for use in forming openings in surfaces such as floors, walls or ceilings for heating/cooling forced air systems. Openings in surfaces such as floors, walls or ceilings for heating/cooling forced air systems are often done using a tape measure and straight edge, typically a framing (right angle) square. A spotting or pilot hole is drilled in desired bay (i.e., area of space located between floor joists or studs), generally 16″ is the distance located between adjacent joists from center-to-center of the joist. With the reference point in installer determines where the center of the opening must be located by way of viewing the opposite side of surface that was drilled. The new location is marked without the use of a template or guide, and measured out from the reference point taking into account the size of desired opening using a tape measure. The desired distances are now marked and then using a straight edge the installer connects markings to form desired opening size. While marking the distances the installer must make certain that each corner of the desired opening are square with one another to assure proper fitting of supply or return duct boots. This technique of using a tape measure and a framing square is relatively slow and inaccurate. There is a need for a template to facilitate the accurate and efficient forming of openings in surfaces such as floors, walls or ceilings for heating/cooling forced air systems.

Development of hydration strategies to optimize performance for athletes in high-intensity sports and in sports with repeated intense efforts. Hypohydration - if sufficiently severe - adversely affects athletic performance and poses a risk to health. Strength and power events are generally less affected than endurance events, but performance in team sports that involve repeated intense efforts will be impaired. Mild hypohydration is not harmful, but many athletes begin exercise already hypohydrated. Athletes are encouraged to begin exercise well hydrated and - where opportunities exist - to consume fluid during exercise to limit water and salt deficits. In high-intensity efforts, there is no need, and may be no opportunity, to drink during competition. Most team sports players do not drink enough to match sweat losses, but some drink too much and a few may develop hyponatremia because of excessive fluid intake. Athletes should assess their hydration status and develop a personalized hydration strategy that takes account of exercise, environment and individual needs. Pre-exercise hydration status can be assessed from urine markers. Short-term changes in hydration can be estimated from the change in body mass. Sweat salt losses can be determined by collection and analysis of sweat samples. An appropriate drinking strategy will take account of pre-exercise hydration status and of fluid, electrolyte and substrate needs before, during and after exercise.

This invention relates to particle emission control techniques for use in the control of airborne particles separated from a two component powder which has been agitated in a partially open container as, for example, the development system of an electrostatographic processor. In a conventional electrostatographic printing process of the type described in Carlson's U.S. Pat. No. 2,297,691 on "Electrophotography", a uniformly charged imaging surface is selectively discharged in an image configuration, thereby forming a latent electrostatic image. That image is then developed by applying a finely divided, electroscopic coloring material, called "toner", to the imaging surface. Sometimes the process is carried out in a "non-transfer mode", meaning that the imaging surface serves as the ultimate substrate for the toned or developed image. Favored, however, is a "transfer mode" in which the developed image is transferred to a separate substrate, such as plain paper, so that the imaging surface may be reused after any residual toner has been removed therefrom. Indeed electrostatographic printing has enjoyed outstanding commercial success, especially in plain paper xerographic copiers and duplicators. One of the common characteristics of the electrostatographic printing process is the development step. Modern processors generally carry out that step on the fly -- viz. as the imaging surface moves through a development zone. To accomplish that, they normally include a cascade or a magnetic brush development system for circulating a two component developer material along a path running from a sump, through the development zone, and then back to the sump. Briefly, the developer used in such a development system is basically a dry mixture of toner particles with or without fine additives and larger, so-called "carrier" particles as described, for example, in U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,590,000, 3,819,367 and 3,900,588. In practice, the materials for the toner and carrier (or sometimes, carrier coating) components of the mixture are selected from different positions in the triboelectric series so that electrical charges of opposite polarities tend to be imparted to the toner and carrier particles when the developer components are blended together. Moreover, in making those selections, consideration is given to the relative triboelectric ranking of the materials to the end that the polarity of the normal charge for the toner particles opposes the polarity of the latent images which are to be developed. Consequently, in operation, there are competing electrostatic forces acting on the toner particles. Specifically, one set of forces tend to attract them to the carrier particles while another set of forces tends to electrostatically strip them from that portion of the developer which is brought into the immediate proximity of or actuate contact with the image bearing surface. An electrostatographic processor configured to operate in the transfer mode additionally includes a cleaning system for removing residual toner from the imaging surface after the developed image has been transferred to, say, plain paper. Again, modern processors usually carry out the step on the fly -- viz, as the imaging surface moves through a cleaning zone. For that reason, such processors typically include a cleaning blade, brush or web for mechanically removing any residual toner which may tend to adhere to the imaging surface despite the transfer step. Experience with toner handling subsystems of the aforementioned type has deomonstrated that such systems often are sources of uncontrolled and undesired emissions of toner. It is known that the principal cause of that problem is the free toner which is captured in a suspended state and blown about by the air currents to which those systems are subjected. Prior attempts in solving this problem by a controlled air flow as described for example in U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,685,485 and 3,909,864 have not been entirely successful due to the poor prefiltration through baffles and the necessity to change filters frequently. The instant invention utilizes an improved toner emissioner control system and is specifically an improvement over copending application Ser. No. 597,129 filed on July 18, 1975, now abandoned, and commonly assigned herewith. Accordingly, a primary object of the present invention is to provide an improved system for suppressing undesired emissions of airborne particles from agitated two component powders in a partially open container. Another object of the invention is to provide a simple and reliable toner emission control technique for recombining airborne toner particles with a two component developer material composed of toner and carrier particles. Still another object of the invention is to ensure continuous prefiltering of moving airborne particles by flowing powder with which the airborne particles are recombined.

1. Field of the Invention The present invention relates to a nozzle plate member (also referred to as a gas diffusion plate) for supplying fluids in a dispersed manner, and a manufacturing method thereof. More specifically, the invention relates to a film-forming nozzle plate member for dispersing and causing gas to feed and flow out, the gas being used for a film-forming process in manufacturing a semiconductor device or a liquid crystal substrate device, and a manufacturing method of such a nozzle plate member. 2. Description of the Related Art In the process of manufacturing a semiconductor device or a liquid crystal display substrate, film formation has been carried out by spaying gas to a substrate in the process of chemical vapor deposition (CVD) or the like. In such a film-forming process, each of gases of one, two or more kinds, selected from silane gas, oxygen gas, and so on, is supplied, a plurality of gases are uniformly mixed immediately before the substrate, and then a film is formed on the substrate. In the film-forming process, the dispersed supplying of the plurality of gases must be maintained separately immediately before the gases are reached on the substrate, and each of the gases must be supplied to keep uniform mixing on a substrate surface. Thus, the inventors examined a conventional nozzle plate like that shown in each of FIGS. 26(a) and 26(b), which was used to disperse gases as fluids in stages and supply them through a number of holes. FIG. 26(a) is a sectional view of a gas supplying nozzle plate, and FIG. 26(b) is a sectional view. As shown in FIGS. 26(a) and 26(b), the gas supplying nozzle plate is constructed by laminating sheet metal members 40, 41 and 42. The plate metal member 40 includes an A gas path hole 43, its branch 44, and a B gas path hole 47, which are all formed by machining. The plate metal member 41 includes an A gas path hole 45, a B gas path hole 48 and its branch 49, which are all formed by machining. The plate metal member 42 includes an A gas path hole 46 and a B gas path hole 50, which are formed by machining. These plate metal members 40, 41 and 42 are joined together by soldering, electron beam welding or bolt fastening, and then laminated to form a unified body. In the gas supplying nozzle plate constructed by laminating the metal members 40, 41 and 42, A gas is passed through the path hole 43, branched at the branch 44, and dispersed into a number of flows. Then, the A gas flows out through the path holes 45 and 46 to be supplied to a film-forming region. B gas is passed through the path holes 47 and 48, branched at the branch 49, and dispersed into a number of flows. Then, the B gas flows out through the path hole 50 to be supplied to the film-forming region. Then, the A and B gases are mixed with each other immediately before the substrate to form a film on the substrate. The gas supplying nozzle plate described above with reference to FIGS. 26(a) and 26(b) can supply gas in a dispersed manner. However, problems have been inherent particularly with respect to sealing, the state of the joined portions of the gas path holes, and so on, in the cases of joining by soldering, electron beam welding, and bolt fastening. Specifically, in the case of joining by soldering, the problems include: a reduction in sealing, which is caused by a pinhole formed by gas entrainment during soldering; a loss of cleanness necessary for semiconductor manufacturing or a liquid crystal substrate manufacturing, which is caused by gas generated from a component such as solder; a loss of dimension or function of the gas path hole, which is caused by damaging the precise and fine gas path hole or the branch, such damaging occurring due to the melting of brazing filler metal during joining; and others. To solve the problem of the damaging the gas path hole caused by the melting of solder during joining, soldering foil was used. However, the use of such soldering foil proved to be costly, because the need to process and dispose the soldering foil to match the shape of the precise and fine gas path hole or the branch resulted in much man-hour. In addition, it was impossible to deal with a temperature of about 400° C. during film formation. This problem occurred because of a limitation placed by a temperature during the film formation. In the case of joining by electron beam welding, the problems include: the difficulties of securing sealing corresponding to all of a number of precise and fine gas path holes or branches formed in the sheet metal member, and carrying out joining without any hole clogging; the difficulty of manufacturing a large gas nozzle plate because of a limitation placed by the size of a high vacuum chamber, in which electron beam joining is performed; and high costs. In the case of joining by bolt fastening designed to secure sealing by disposing a gasket, the problems include: a loss of designing freedom satisfying a request made by a user, which occurs because of the need to provide a space for machining and disposing a gasket to match the shape of the precise and fine gas path hole or the branch; high costs caused by much man-hour; and the difficulty of securing complete sealing by the gasket. In addition, heat resistance is a significant matter, particularly since such film formation is often carried out at a high temperature. In this respect, it was difficult to provide sufficient heat resistance by the method using the gasket. The present invention is directed to a gas supplying nozzle plate, which is constructed by laminating a plurality of metal members having fluid paths formed therein. It is an object of the invention to provide a fluid nozzle plate member capable of providing high sealing at joined portions, and high reliability without any reductions in the functions of highly precise fluid paths and branches even when used in high vacuum or at a high temperature. It is another object of the invention to provide a manufacturing method of such a fluid nozzle plate member.

The third edition of the Hyderabad Queer Film Festival was held on Saturday. Featuring 17 short films in Tamil, English, Telugu, Hindi, Malayalam and Marathi, the Festival saw visitors trickling in slowly during the morning hours, with the numbers peaking towards the afternoon.“It’s great that a lot of people are coming for such film festivals. In fact, I have invited my colleagues from office and my classmates from college, and most of them are expected to come. These films can help remove some of the misconceptions about the LGBT community ,” said one of the visitors Teju N, an HR professional from Begumpet The festival, organised by the Telangana Queer Swabhimana Yatra Collective , was held after a gap of two years. “The film festival is a very important part of the Queer movement in the city. Films have been the main cultural and entertainment outlet for our society. And mainstream cinema so far has portrayed the LGBT community in bad light. People need to see the other side as well. We hoped that mainstream directors would stand up for our cause, but it hasn’t happened. Now queer activists themselves are turning directors and making films. And this is a platform where they can showcase and promote the queer cause to a larger audience,” said Moses Tulasi , the festival director.

Fatty liver produced by dietary deficiencies: its pathogenesis and potentiation by ethanol. In a study of the pathogenesis of hepatic fat accumulation under experimental conditions mimicking chronic alcoholism, rats were fed a low-fat diet, deficient in amino acids and choline, containing either ethanol or isocaloric amounts of carbohydrate. Dietary deficiencies alone produced a moderately fatty liver after 24 days. The combination of ethanol and dietary deficiencies resulted in enhanced lipid accumulation, which was apparent after only 11 days. In an investigation of the origin of hepatic triglyceride fatty acids, the experiment was repeated after the adipose lipids had been marked by the feeding of oils containing characteristic fatty acids (linseed oil, containing linolenate, or coconut oil, containing laurate and myristate). In all animals, the fatty acid composition of the hepatic triglycerides differed markedly from that of adipose tissue; it had a larger percentage of endogenously synthesized fatty acids and a five times smaller percentage of the marker fatty acids. In addition, ethanol feeding resulted in a greater retention of the marker fatty acids in the adipose tissue. Thus, the deposition of hepatic triglycerides produced by the feeding of deficient diets is markedly potentiated by ethanol; the triglyceride fatty acids accumulated under these conditions appear to originate, for the most part, not from mobilization of depot fat, but from endogenous synthesis.

The use of network computing and storage has proliferated in recent years, and continues to proliferate. The resources for network computing and storage are often provided by computing resource providers who leverage large-scale networks of computers, servers and storage drives to enable clients, including content providers, customers and the like, to host and execute a variety of applications and web services. The usage of network computing allows content providers and customers, among others, to efficiently and adaptively satisfy their computing needs. However, with the growing use of virtual resources, customers are encountering situations in which the virtual resources cannot accommodate their needs during certain situations, such as unanticipated traffic spikes or need for immediate responses to satisfy increased loads. Some of these situations may at least partly be caused by insufficient scalability of components used to manage, instantiate, or otherwise control the functionality of the virtual resources. A related consideration is that with the growing use of virtual resources, the configuration (whether by customer or otherwise) of such resources, and the interconfiguration and topology of multiple resources, is becoming increasingly complex. Accordingly, it is becoming easier, and potentially more damaging, to inadvertently or intentionally make destructive changes to such configurations.

Administering and managing enterprise environments consumes time, money and resources. In many cases, this is because the application and data management process is decentralized and labor-intensive. For example, a significant portion of an administrator's time may be spent providing more storage or performing backups for the corporate data, or updating servers to handle growth in corporate data. Also, an administrator may need to create and provision new servers to handle the growth in data. Additionally, an administrator may spend time updating or provisioning a server to provide a particular user application. Additionally, a significant portion of corporate data may reside outside the corporate data center. For example, corporate documents, files and data may exist on or are distributed to various computers remote to the data center. In an effort to reduce the time, money, and resources required to administer and manage corporate data and applications, many companies have consolidated and centralized servers, corporate data and applications. Although consolidation and centralization have reduced some costs and have produced some benefits, centralized data and applications introduce additional challenges in providing access to data and applications. One such challenge involves a remote user trying to access a file over a wide area network (WAN) connection. For example, a remote user at a branch office which typically has a network connection to the corporate data center that operates much slower than a LAN connection may try to open over the WAN a Microsoft Office document stored in at a corporate data center. The remote user's access over the network to the file may be delayed due to the latency, reliability and bandwidth with the WAN. The delays may be larger for larger files. Furthermore, as the distance between the remote user and the corporate data center grows, the frequency and length of network delays in accessing files also may increase. Adding virtual private network, security and other network layers on the WAN may further reduce bandwidth available to the remote users and increase delays in accessing the file. The lower speed and bandwidth of the remote office may cause unacceptable delays in accessing remote files. To avoid the delays in remote file access, remote users may copy and use files locally, defeating the purpose of centralized operations. Additionally, WAN connections may be less reliable than LAN connections, resulting in packet loss and network disconnection. WAN interruptions may occur during a file operation, such as saving or opening a document, further causing delays experienced by the remote user. Therefore, systems and methods are desired to improve access by remote users to centralized applications and data files, including acceleration of the delivery of applications and data files to remote users.

Looking forward, looking back: anticipation is more evocative than retrospection. The results of 5 experiments indicate that people report more intense emotions during anticipation of, than during retrospection about, emotional events that were positive (Thanksgiving Day), negative (annoying noises, menstruation), routine (menstruation), and hypothetical (all-expenses-paid ski vacation). People's tendency to report more intense emotion during anticipation than during retrospection was associated with a slight, but only occasionally significant, tendency for people to expect future emotions to be more intense than they remembered past emotions having been. The greater evocativeness of anticipation than retrospection was also associated with and statistically mediated by participants' tendency to report mentally simulating future emotional events more extensively than they report mentally stimulating past emotional events. The conclusion that anticipation is more evocative than retrospection has implications for research methodology, clinical practice, decision making, and well-being.

In image-guided operations, it is necessary to provide objects such as bones or medical instruments with marker devices. A marker device consists for example of one or more reflective spheres which can be detected by sensors. The position of the marker device and therefore the position of the object can be determined from the position of the spheres with respect to each other. One commercially available device for fastening a marker device to a bone consists of a screw, a clamping device, an adjusting screw and a sleeve which comprises a mounting for the marker device. When attaching the device, the screw is initially screwed into the bone, and the sleeve together with the adjusting screw and the clamping device is then fitted onto the screw. The clamping device is then fixed relative to the screw, and the sleeve is pressed against the bone in the desired alignment by means of the adjusting screw and thus fixed. One of the disadvantages of this fastening device is that attaching it to the bone requires a large number of steps working on the patient and thus increases the length of time which the patient has to spend in the operating theatre.

With regard to a vehicular air-conditioning control device disclosed in JP-A-10-287123, a first thermistor for detecting temperature of a heat generating portion of an electric heater and a second thermistor for detecting temperature of water are disposed in a hot-water tank. When it is determined that the temperature difference between detected temperatures of the first thermistor and the second thermistor exceeds a predetermined level, it is judged that an abnormal condition is encountered. Thus, electric power supply to the electric heater is interrupted. With regard to a cleaning device for bath hot water disclosed in JP-A-7-35407, hot water in a bath tub is forcedly circulated by a circulation pump and is filtered in a filter tank. Also, the heat of the water is maintained in a thermal insulating heater and activated in an activation tank. A first hot-water temperature sensor is disposed upstream of the thermal insulating heater and a second hot-water temperature sensor is disposed downstream of the thermal insulating heater. When it is determined that the temperature difference between detected temperatures of the first and the second sensors exceeds a predetermined level, it is judged as a shortage of water. Thus, operation of the cleaning device is discontinued. In a water heating device having a mechanical flow sensor, resistance is caused to a circulation of water. Further, it is required to tightly seal connecting portions of the flow sensor to prevent leaks of the water. Therefore, it is difficult to decrease manufacturing costs of the hot water generating device. Also in a water heating device having an electric flow sensor, it is difficult to decrease the manufacturing costs because an electric circuit is complicated. Further, in a water heating device that detects an electric current supply to a water pump, a shunt resistor for detecting an electric current is required. This results in increases in size of an electronic control unit and the manufacturing costs. Further, in a water heating device that detects rotation speed of a water pump, a sensor for detecting the rotation speed is required. This results in increases in the water heating device and the manufacturing costs.

What is it with the past, why do we always feel a need to return there? Only a certain sort of person, surely, would decide to call their restaurant (or mini-chain) canteen. Prior to dining here at a friend’s suggestion, I looked up said word in the dictionary. Accordingly, canteen in extended use refers usually to ‘a refreshment room at a factory, school or like.’ I have never worked in a factory and left school over 20 years’ ago, so why would I want to return to such a place now? Shiny Canary Wharf is certainly institutionalised but a different sort of way, yet it feels like a depressingly appropriate location for such a venue. Inside it’s clean lines and functional furniture. Diners are served by slightly indifferent and surly staff (akin perhaps to the dinner ladies of yore – although I doubt this was the restaurant’s intention). And – joy – you get to stare at skyscrapers from your seat. Canteen claims to offer the best of British cooking and make nearly all of its products in-house. With regard to the latter, just because it’s made in-house doesn’t mean that it’s inherently better than a competitor’s offering; surely it’s down to the chef. Furthermore, in terms of the former, since when was ‘onglet’ a British dish; and, if it this place is supposed to be about all things British, then why no curry? Our starters (pate and salad) fared better than the mains. My mackerel pate at least had pieces of real mackerel in it and carried a lovely lemony tang. The accompanying bread on which to spread it though was disappointingly stingy. Onto the mains and my haunch of venison could – frankly – have been any meat. All notional gamey-ness that ought to have resided here had been stewed out of it. My comrade’s fish pie looked (and probably tasted) as if it really had come out of a canteen of yesteryear. Prices are at least competitive (roughly £7 for a starter and £15 for a main), but I would rather spend my money elsewhere. Perhaps the pub?

Effects of olive leave extract on metabolic disorders and oxidative stress induced by 2.45 GHz WIFI signals. We investigated the effect of olive leaves extract administration on glucose metabolism and oxidative response in liver and kidneys of rats exposed to radio frequency (RF). The exposure of rats to RF (2.45 GHz, 1h/day during 21 consecutive days) induced a diabetes-like status. Moreover, RF decreased the activities of glutathione peroxidase (GPx, -33.33% and -49.40%) catalase (CAT, -43.39% and -39.62%) and the superoxide dismutase (SOD, -59.29% and -68.53%) and groups thiol amount (-62.68% and -34.85%), respectively in liver and kidneys. Indeed, exposure to RF increased the malondialdehyde (MDA, 29.69% and 51.35%) concentration respectively in liver and kidneys. Olive leaves extract administration (100 mg/kg, ip) in RF-exposed rats prevented glucose metabolism disruption and restored the activities of GPx, CAT and SOD and thiol group amount in liver and kidneys. Moreover, olive leave extract administration was able to bring down the elevated levels of MDA in liver but not in kidneys. Our investigations suggested that RF exposure induced a diabetes-like status through alteration of oxidative response. Olive leaves extract was able to correct glucose metabolism disorder by minimizing oxidative stress induced by RF in rat tissues.

Alkyl halides are versatile alkylating agents in organic chemistry. Methyl halides are particularly popular as alkylating agents. Representative of the methyl halides is methyl iodide, which in a pure state is a clear liquid that over time becomes brown as a result of decomposition to form various iodine-containing species. Methyl iodide is often stabilized through the addition of a solid metal such as mercury or copper to the storage vessel. As alkyl halides including methyl iodide are susceptible to actinic degradation and free radical decomposition, alkyl halide storage is often problematic. Nonetheless, aged alkyl halides are readily restored to usable form through a distillation process. The handling of isotopically enriched alkyl halides is made all the more difficult by radioisotope emissions creating free radicals that speed the chemical decomposition of the alkyl halide. Distillation to purify usable alkyl halides from a decomposing isotopically enriched alkyl halide is both technically challenging to perform and highly wasteful of radioisotopes. Owing to the complexities of handling radioisotopes, isotopically labeled reagents tend to be small molecules that can be synthesized and used quickly. [Methyl-3H]methyl iodide is a common methylating reagent used in the synthesis of methyl-labeled radiochemicals. Unfortunately, the rapid degradation of tritiated methyl iodide and other isotope-enriched alkyl halides means that these reagents must be used rapidly after synthesis. The requirement of rapid usage of isotopically labeled alkyl halides entails a scheduled batch production of the reagent followed by numerous reagent consumptive reactions being performed thereafter. The net result is that labeling reactions cannot be efficiently performed but instead are tied to the schedule of alkyl halide production. Additionally, an excess of isotopically enriched alkyl halide is necessarily produced to preclude the possibility of performing a second batch production to account for any shortfall. The resulting excess production of isotopically enriched alkyl halide is wasteful of materials and increases the waste disposal volume. Thus, there exists a need for an isotopically enriched alkylating reagent that has a longer shelf life than the corresponding alkyl halide without loss of specific isotope activity.

Providing a reliable and secure method, apparatus and/or system for collecting and counting votes is paramount to a democratic system of government. One method requires a voter to cast their votes by entering their selections into a machine that generates a paper record or ballot, which is then collected and later counted. While the collection of paper ballots is fairly reliable and secure, it does have its problems. In contemporary voting systems, problems are encountered relating to the accuracy of the ballot. In particular, the generated ballot may not precisely reflect the voter's selections. Also, the voter is not given an opportunity to review the paper ballot generated by the machine, prior to it being deposited in a ballot box. Thus, the voter must trust that the machine will properly record his or her vote. Also, ballots are traditionally made of paper or some similar material. However, the transfer of such material from the voting machine into the ballot box encounters other problems. Generally, voting machines rely on gravity to “drop” the ballot into the ballot box. Alternatively, a paper handling system inside the voting machine pushes the ballot into the ballot box. Either way, such systems are unreliable since the ballot is prone to getting jammed as it is pushed or otherwise externally forced into the ballot box. Further, the ballot box itself becomes a security risk if someone can tamper with the contents. In particular, the integrity of the ballot box contents becomes compromised when an unauthorized person is able to either remove ballots from or insert ballots into a ballot box after it is separated from the voting machine. Ballot boxes include simple mechanical covers or doors that close an aperture used for inserting ballots. Such covers or doors can often be opened by poll workers or other non-authorized personnel, thus compromising the integrity of the ballots therein. There is therefore a need for an efficient, reliable and secure method, apparatus or system for collecting and counting votes, which overcomes the shortcomings found in the prior art as set forth above. Such a method, apparatus or system preferably allows a voter to review their generated ballot before it is deposited within the ballot box. Also, a more reliable method, apparatus or system of depositing ballots within the ballot box should be provided. Preferably, such a method, apparatus or system is capable of keeping the ballot box secure, even after it is separated from the voting machine.

The Postmenopausal Estrogen/Progestins Intervention (PEPI-1) trial of 875 participants followed at 7 centers for three years is the largest and longest randomized double-blind placebo-controlled clinical trial of hormone treatment in postmenopausal women -- and the only long-term trial of estrogen-progestin regimens. It is the only long-term trial designed to compare the effects of Estrogen Replacement Therapy (ERT) and combined (Estrogen-progestin) hormone replacement therapy (HRT) on heart disease risk factors. It is also unique for the number of women who began ERT or HRT more than 5 years after the menopause. Details of the study design, hormone replacement regimens and study populations are given in Project I, as are the major analyses of PEPI-1 data proposed for completion during the extended follow-up period. Project II, Studies of Repository Samples, was planned to utilize plasma, urine and other samples already collected but not analyzed by the close of PEPI-1. Both Project I and Project II, submitted by the Coordinating Center to reflect the centralized activity necessary for a multicenter project, will be conducted with the Clinical Investigators as a cooperative project. Project III, submitted in parallel from each of the 7 PEPI Clinical Centers, describes a three year prospective observational follow-up study designed to: ensure PEPI women's safety and learn more about possible delayed adverse hormone effects; study treatment choices, compliance and reasons related to these decisions; and monitor long-term effects on heart disease risk factors and bone density. All participants will be invited to an annual clinic visit, (conducted according to the established PEPI-1 protocol) which includes a medical history and limited examination, mammogram, endometrial biopsy, and standardized questions about quality of life, sexuality, symptomatology, and medication use. We will measure primary PEPI endpoints (HDL-cholesterol, blood pressure, insulin and fibrinogen and their covariates, and bone density at the hip and spine.

Functional properties of pre-rigor, pre-salted ground beef chilled with solid carbon dioxide. Ground, pre-salted, pre-rigor semimembranosus muscles of beef were subjected to three treatments A=rapid carbon dioxide (CO(2)) chilling, B=slow CO(2) chilling and C=air chilling, and compared to a control D=slow air chilling of muscles, which were subsequently ground and salted post-rigor. Meat of the pre-rigor treatments A, B and C had higher pH values during processing, lower cooking loss, firmer texture and a lighter yellowish external colour of cooked patties than the post-rigor control D (p<0.05). The two CO(2) chilling regimes A and B had no detrimental effects on the functional properties of the pre-rigor meat. Sarcomere lengths did not differ in meat of the four treatments (p>0.05), indicating that early pre-salting protected the meat from cold shortening during rapid temperature decline. A process combination of grinding, followed by immediate pre-salting and CO(2) chilling within 312h post-mortem of non-stimulated beef muscles is likely to yield superior binding properties of cooked patties and similar ground beef products.

Vascular surgery residents spend one fifth of their time on electronic health records after duty hours. Electronic health records (EHR) have largely replaced paper-based medical records. Academic institutions have adapted EHR successfully and technological innovations now allow remote access. Thus, self-reported resident duty hours may not accurately reflect the actual time that is spent on patient care-related activities. This retrospective observational study quantified vascular surgery resident EHR activities between January 2016 and June 2016 at a tertiary care hospital. Use time was tracked from user login to logout, divided by day of the week, and separated by EHR tasks performed. Each 24-hour time period was further divided into on-duty (6:00 am to 6:00 pm) and off-duty (6:00 pm to 6:00 am) hours. On-call weekdays and rotations that occurred off campus were excluded. The following EHR activity data were requested: total time, chart review time, documentation time, electronic order entry, patient discovery, and electronic messages. A total of 11,812 charts were accessed: 80.5% on weekdays and 19.5% on weekends. Total time spent (hours:minutes:seconds, weekday percentage, weekend percentage) on EHR during this time period was 634:33:36 (81.2%, 18.8%). On weekdays, 79% of the EHR time was during the work hours and 21% after hours. On weekends, 78% of the EHR time was during work hours and 22% after hours. Time spent on different EHR tasks was as follows: chart review 278:58:34, documentation 66:33:07, electronic order entry 120:50:24, electronic messaging 2:16:48, problem list modification 1:49:26, electronic messages 4:30:43, patient discovery 151:14:53, and other 164:05:17. Overall, postgraduate year 1 residents spent the most number of hours on EHRs and during the weekdays. There was serial decrease in the total number of EHR hours and the number of weekday hours with the seniority of the residents, with postgraduate year 5 residents spending the least number of overall hours and weekday hours on the EHR. When EHR access was compared with self-reported duty hours, resident compliance was 58% on average. EHR use after hours constituted one-fifth of a vascular surgical trainee's total EHR time. Despite self-reported duty-hour compliance, a good proportion of their daily time is still spent on patient care. This pilot study sets the stage for larger studies to be conducted in future to address this issue.

Factors relating to the feeling of school avoidance among elementary school children: Results from the MEXT (Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Education) Super Shokuiku School Project. Purpose This study aims to evaluate whether lifestyle factors including media use and social and family environments are associated with elementary school children's feeling of school avoidance.Methods Total study population for this study was 2,057 children in 5 elementary schools in Takaoka city, Toyama prefecture, which participated in the MEXT Super Shokuiku School Project. A questionnaire survey was conducted in July 2014 and 1,936 students responded (Response rate: 94.1%). Of those who responded, data from 1,698 respondents were relevant for this study. The questionnaire included questions on lifestyle factors (e.g., eating habits, media use, exercise habits, and sleep), health status, and the social and family environments. Children responded to questions on lifestyle factors, health status, and feeling of school avoidance with their parents. Parents were asked to only respond to the questions on social and family environments. Logistic regression analysis was performed to evaluate whether the feeling of avoiding school, as the dependent variable, is associated with the independent variables such as social and family environment factors and lifestyle factors. The odds ratios (OR) and their 95% confidence intervals (95%CI) were calculated.Results The percentage of children who had the feeling of avoiding school was 32.2% in the study sample. In comparison with the 6th graders, the 1st, 3rd, 4th, and 5th graders were more likely to have this feeling. Relevant adjusted ORs [95%CI] for Grades 1-5 were found to be 1.48 [1.02-2.13], 1.63 [1.10-2.42], 1.60 [1.08-2.39], and 1.56 [1.03-2.35], respectively. Other factors positively correlated with this feeling were skipping breakfast (OR 1.76, 95%CI [1.12-2.75]), daily snacking (OR 1.64, 95%CI [1.21-2.22]), watching TV for 3 hours or longer (OR 1.55, 95%CI [1.05-2.28]), video gaming for 0.5-2 hours (OR 1.37, 95%CI [1.08-1.74]), feeling sleepy (OR 1.51, 95%CI [1.14-1.99]), not feeling well upon waking up (OR 1.64, 95%CI [1.30-2.06]), being unsatisfied with their own health (OR 1.43, 95%CI [1.10-1.87]), and dislike for playing outside (OR 1.62, 95%CI [1.05-2.52]).Conclusions This study showed that feeling of school avoidance was significantly correlated with several lifestyle factors. School health activities aiming at establishing desirable lifestyles for children could reduce the number of children who have the feeling of school avoidance.

[Correlation of expression of RhoC with invasiveness of breast cancer cells in vitro]. To investigate the expression of RhoC in breast cancer cells with different metastatic potential and its correlation with invasiveness. Expression of RhoC mRNA and protein in human breast cancer cells MCF-7 with low metastatic potential and MDA-MB-231 with high metastatic potential was detected by RT-PCR, Western blot, immunohistochemistry and immunofluorescence staining. Eukaryotic expression plasmids of RhoC were constructed and transfected into MCF-7 cells. The biological effects were observed, including in vitro invasion by Boyden charmber assay, motility by would healing assay, alteration of microfilament network by TRTIC-phalloidin staining and expression of p-Akt by Western blot assay. The expression levels of RhoC mRNA and protein varied in the two different metastatic breast cancer cell lines. RhoC was significantly up-regulated in the highly metastatic cells in comparison to the weakly metastatic counterpart (P < 0.01). As shown by Boyden charmber assay, the invasive capacity of transfected cells overexpressing RhoC was significantly promoted as reflected by more penetrating cells (56.88 +/- 4.18) than that of the antisense transcripts (23.12 +/- 3.22), the negative (23.77 +/- 3.64) and blank controls (28.44 +/- 2.48). Further study by would healing assay indicated that cells overexpressing RhoC were more motile in actin-based active movement. The wound healing ratio after 24 h of the sense transcripts, antisense transcripts, negative controls and blank controls was 58.28% +/- 2.14%, 22.36% +/- 2.73%, 28.23% +/- 2.62%, 30.18% +/- 2.86%, respectively. The TRITC-phalloidin staining revealed less actin filament bundles and a reorganized cytoskeleton within the sense transcripts. In addition, p-Akt expression level was upregulated in the sense transcripts. RhoC overexpression may promote the invasive capacity of human breast cancer cells in vitro and its expression level is positively correlated with the metastatic capacity of those cells. So RhoC may be a potential target in the development of a novel strategy for treating metastasis of breast cancer.

Generally, in order to fabricate a cast piece (which is the general term for slab, billet, bloom, beam blank and the like) in a continuous casting machine, molten steel in a liquid state supplied from a ladle passes through a mold via a tundish that stores the molten steel, and then a solidified shell in a solid state is formed by means of a cooling operation in the mold. While the solidified shell obtained by cooling the molten steel is guided by a guide rolls installed below it, the solidified shell is solidified by a secondary cooling water sprayed by spray nozzles, thereby becoming a cast piece in a complete solid state. During the continuous casting work of steel, mold flux as a subsidiary material as well as molten steel is input into the mold together when the molten steel is supplied into the mold. The mold flux is generally input in a solid state, such as powder or granule, and is melted by heat generated in the molten steel supplied into the mold, thereby controlling heat transfer between the molten steel and the mold and improving the lubricating ability. As shown in FIG. 1, the mold flux input into the mold in the shape of powder or granule is melted on an upper surface of the molten steel 12 to form a liquid layer 21, a sintering layer (or semisolid layer) 23 and a powder layer 25 in order from the molten steel surface. The liquid layer 21 is substantially transparent, so that a radiant wave with a wavelength of 500 to 4,000 nm emitted from the molten steel can be easily transmitted through the liquid layer 21. On the other hand, the sintering and powder layers 23 and 25 are optically opaque, thereby blocking a radiant wave and thus preventing a rapid decrease of temperature of the molten steel surface. However, after the conventional mold flux in the shape of powder or granule is melted by the heat of the molten steel, the liquid layer 21 flows between the mold 10 and the solidification layer 11, thereby being solidified on an inner wall surface of the mold 10 to form a solid slag film 27 and also forming a liquid slag film on the molten steel side to control heat transfer between the molten steel and the mold and improve the lubricating ability. At this time, at the point where the molten slag begins to flow between the solid slag film 27 and the solidified shell 11, the mold flux adhering to the mold is formed to protrude to the inside of the mold. This portion is referred to as a slag bear 29. The slag bear 29 prevents the molten slag from being introduced between the mold flux film 27 and the solidified shell 11. This slag bear 29 restricts consumption of mold flux per unit area of a cast piece. Generally, the consumption of mold flux decreases as a casting speed increases, so that the lubricating ability between the cast piece and the mold is deteriorated to thereby increase frequency of occurrence of break-out. In addition, since the thickness of the liquid layer of mold flux becomes irregular due to the slag bear 29, the shape of the solidified shell 11 in the mold 10 becomes irregular, thereby causing surface cracks, which is also more serious as a casting speed is increased. In this regards, Korean laid-open Patent Publication No. 1998-038065 and U.S. Pat. No. 5,577,545 disclose a method for restraining growth of the slag bear by lowering the melting speed of mold flux by coating mold flux with graphite or fine carbon black. However, this method cannot prevent a slag bear fundamentally. In addition, when the melting speed of mold flux is low, the mold flux in an un-molten state is introduced between the solidified shell and the mold, which causes irregularity of the solidification and also increases break-out defects. In order to solve the above problem, Japanese Laid-open Patent Publication No. 1989-202349, 1993-023802, 1993-146855, 1994-007907, 1994-007908, 1994-047511, 1994-079419, 1994-154977 and 1994-226111 disclose a method for melting mold flux at the outside of a mold and then injecting it through a molten steel surface. However, the aforementioned documents suggest that the mold flux in a molten state is limitedly used only in an initial casting process, and then, once the casting work reaches a normal state, mold flux in the shape of powder is used to return to the conventional operation. As mentioned above, since the mold flux in a molten state is substantially transparent in a wavelength of 500 to 4,000 nm, a radiant wave emitted from the molten steel may easily pass through the mold flux, so that the surface of the molten steel cannot be kept at a set temperature due to the increased radiant heat transfer. Accordingly, if the casting is progressed for a certain time, the surface of the molten steel may be solidified, which would be an obstacle in performing the continuous casting process. In addition, paper has been used to supply the mold flux in a molten state into the mold. However, the paper has a limit in supplying the mold flux in a molten state throughout the entire period of the continuous casting process.

Quantification of folate in food using deconjugase of plant origin combined with LC-MS/MS: A method comparison of a large and diverse sample set. A round robin comparison was performed in order to test the performance of a recently developed LC-MS/MS method for quantification of 6 folate forms. Eighty-nine samples representing the food groups of fruits, vegetables, legumes, cereals, dairy products, meat, and offal were analyzed by two LC-MS/MS methods and a microbiological assay (MA). A plant-origin deconjugase enzyme (Arabidopsis thaliana) for deconjugation of folates (PE-LC-MS/MS), or animal-origin deconjugase (rat serum and chicken pancreas) (AE-LC-MS/MS) was used in the LC-MS/MS methods, each in a single enzymatic step. In contrast, the MA involved tri-enzyme extraction including human plasma as a deconjugase. A significant bias of 17% lower and 25% higher results was found when PE-LC-MS/MS was compared to MA and AE-LC-MS/MS, respectively. The PE-LC-MS/MS provides fast quantification of various folate vitamers and total folate content, which could be a proper substitute to the currently standardized but imprecise and time-consuming microbiological assay in the future.

Influence of the Walker 256 carcinosarcoma on muscle, tumor, and whole-body protein synthesis and growth rate in the cancer-bearing rat. The in vivo rates of protein synthesis were assessed in tumor tissue, skeletal muscle, and whole body of rats bearing the Walker 256 carcinosarcoma. Estimates of protein synthesis in the nontumorous tissues were compared to tumor-free controls. Changes in size of the whole animal and tumor (i.e., growth) were measured, and fractional rates of growth, synthesis, and breakdown were estimated. Muscle protein synthesis and whole-body growth were significantly reduced in rats bearing larger tumors, and both were negatively correlated with tumor size (r = -0.723 and -0.825, respectively; P less than 0.01). Furthermore, whole-body and muscle protein synthesis were positively correlated with body growth (r = 0.380 and 0.563, respectively; P less than 0.05). Tumor growth followed first-order kinetics between days 7 and 13 following implantation, with a mean rate constant of 34.3%/day for the larger tumors and 27.7%/day for the small tumors. The difference in tumor growth became statistically significant over the final 3 days of tumor volume measurements. Fractional protein synthesis was significantly lower in the larger compared to the smaller tumors (48.6 versus 84.8%/day; P less than 0.05) as measured on day 14. This finding indicates a lower protein breakdown rate for the larger tumors (14.3 versus 59.0%/day; P less than 0.01) and suggests that the process of protein breakdown could play a significant role in determining tumor size, leading support to the theory of tumors acting as nitrogen traps.

A new cell-based reporter system for sensitive screening of nuclear export inhibitors. Nucleocytoplasmic transport of proteins across the nuclear pore complex (NPC), mediated by the nuclear localization signal (NLS) and the nuclear export signal (NES), is a vital homeostatic process in eukaryotic cells and also in mitogen-activated protein kinase (MEK) signaling molecule in tumor cell proliferation. Some viruses, including the influenza virus and HIV-1, also employ this nuclear export mechanism during their life cycle. Hence, drugs that control nucleocytoplasmic transport of proteins are putative candidate antivirals or anti-cancer agents. Thus, we previously developed a GFP/NES-MDCK reporter cell system for screening novel nuclear export inhibitors. NES signal-conjugated GFP accumulates in the nucleus in the presence of the nuclear export inhibitor leptomycin B (LMB). In this study, a stable GFP/NLS/NES fusion protein-expressing cell line was established, and its potential as a reporter was evaluated. The GFP/NLS/NES-MDCK cell line demonstrates improved nuclear accumulation of GFP in a time-course treatment with LMB. In addition, the dose-response data demonstrated superior sensitivity of GFP/NLS/NES-MDCK over GFP/NES-MDCK cells. As low as 0.01 ng/mL LMB is sufficient to cause accumulation of the GFP fusion protein in the nucleus in GFP/NLS/NES-MDCK cells, while at least 1 ng/mL of LMB is needed for the accumulation of GFP fusion protein in the nucleus of GFP/NES-MDCK cells. These results indicate that the newly established GFP/NLS/NES-MDCK cell line is a potentially powerful tool to screen for novel nuclear export inhibitors.

It is known to use oil as a transfer medium in heat exchangers for steam production. Thus, U.S. Pat. No. 2,222,575 discloses cooling of hot oil by direct contact of the oil with cooling water which immediately evaporates, thereby generating steam for use. The hot oil is pumped into a chamber having a temperature of approximately 343.degree. C., and water is sprayed over its surface from a plurality of nozzles. As the water evaporates, the oil is cooled and replaced by new, hot oil. U.S. Pat. No. 4,164,202 also discloses cooling of hot oil. In this reference, hot oil (about 350.degree. C.) and water are both sprayed into the interior of a vessel in the form of little droplets. When the droplets meet, the water evaporates and the oil, cooled to some extent, falls down and collects at the bottom. U.S. Pat. No. 4,207,840 discloses a steam generator comprising a bath of oil in a spherical vessel which is continuously heated from below by wood combustion. In order to generate steam, water is injected into the bath underneath the heated oil. As the water comes into intimate contact with the heated oil, it evaporates and rises to the surface of the oil where it is discharged from the spherical vessel as steam. Thus, in the prior art, the oil does not take part in producing, but only in transporting heat. Claim 1 refers generally to this process in its preamble.

Conventionally, for example, information to be saved is stored in a recording medium, such as a magnetic tape and a DVD, and such a recording medium is stored in a predetermined location to store the information for a long time. Much of the information to be saved for a long time is information that requires strict security management, such as customer information in a company, and for example, to discard the recording medium where the information is recorded, an act, such as mechanically destroying the recording medium before discarding, is performed (for example, see Patent Citation 1). Incidentally, a recording medium cartridge including a magnetic tape and the like capable of recording a large amount of information is widely used as a thing suitable for long-term storage of information. In general, takeout of such a recording medium cartridge is strictly managed from the viewpoint of the security management, and information leakage caused by illicit takeout of the recording medium cartridge from the storage location is prevented. For example, the information leakage is also prevented by a method of, for example, recording information in a recording medium of a recording medium cartridge in a state in which reading is possible only by use of a predetermined software-like secret code key. Furthermore, a so-called RFID (Radio_Frequency_IDentification) tag capable of wirelessly exchanging information is attached to a commodity to be managed so that an act such as managing takeout of the commodity is performed (for example, see Patent Citation 2), and such takeout management using the RFID tag is applied to the prevention of the information leakage. The prevention of the information leakage using the RFID tag is performed, for example, as follows. First, to each recording medium cartridge in the storage location, a memory and an RFID tag storing identification information for distinguishing a recording medium cartridge from other recording medium cartridge are attached. Then, a security gate, which has a function for communicating with the RFID tags and stores identification information of recording medium cartridges prohibited from being taken out of the storage location, is installed at a gateway of the storage location. When a person carrying a recording medium cartridge passes through the security gate, the security gate queries the RFID tag of the recording medium cartridge carried by the person for an identification number. The security gate generates an alarm when the identification number provided by the RFID tag in response to the query is identification information of a recording medium cartridge prohibited from being taken out of the storage location. The actions by the RFID tags and the security gate prevent the information leakage caused by illicit takeout of recording medium cartridges from the storage location. Patent Citation 1: Japanese Laid-open Patent Publication No. 2007-234129 Patent Citation 2: Japanese Laid-open Patent Publication No. 2004-288004

Many students encounter difficulties in science and mathematics that may stem from intuitive interference of salient irrelevant variables. We focused on the comparison of perimeters task, in which area is the irrelevant salient variable. In congruent trials (no interference), accuracy is higher and reaction time is shorter than in incongruent trials (area variable interference). A brain-imaging study related to this task indicated that correctly answering the incongruent condition is associated with activation in prefrontal brain regions known for their executive inhibitory control. In the current study we explored the relationship between inhibitory control mechanisms and the ability to overcome intuitive interference. Participants in the study were 90 ninth graders. The efficiency of their inhibitory control mechanisms was assessed and accuracy and reaction time of correct responses in the comparison of perimeters task were recorded. The findings indicate that students with efficient inhibitory control mechanisms scored significantly better in the incongruent conditions than did those with inefficient ones. In addition, the findings indicate that the higher the efficiency of inhibitory control mechanisms, the better students were in overcoming the intuitive interference. These findings indicate the importance of inhibitory control mechanisms in overcoming interference in science and mathematics. They point to the possibility of improving students’ ability to overcome intuitive interference by strengthening their inhibitory control mechanisms. We also demonstrate that applying cognitive psychology and neuroscience methodologies in science and mathematics education research contributes to both fields.

This invention relates to an apparatus which is associated with a card, a roller card unit, a cleaner or a similar textile fiber processing machine and serves for advancing the fiber lap to the fiber processing machine. A fiber tuft feeding device, such as a feed chute is associated with the fiber processing machine and is arranged upstream thereof, as viewed in the feed direction of the fiber material. The apparatus includes a feed roller which advances the fiber material to a processing roller at the input of the fiber processing machine. With the feed roller there cooperates a counterelement such as a feed table or a counterroller. According to a known arrangement, between the lower end of the feed chute and the feed roller of the fiber processing machine, such as a carding machine, a transfer element, such as a transfer tray, is arranged for the fiber lap. The transfer element deflects the fiber lap from a vertical orientation (as it leaves the feed chute) into an approximately horizontal position. This change of orientation alters the inner construction of the fiber lap. Further, deflecting, guiding and compressing elements are present which adversely affect the uniformity of the fiber lap.

This invention relates to an apparatus for providing a warning signal to trailing vehicles that the motor brake retarder (engine retarder) of a forward vehicle has been activated and the vehicle is decelerating. Rear end collisions present a serious safety issue on our public highways. Rear end collisions are caused by several factors, such as not paying attention and not receiving a warning that the forward vehicle is decelerating. The present invention addresses the latter. Until now, there has not been a device that interfaces with an existing motor brake retarder system for providing a warning signal to trailing vehicles when the motor brake retarder of the forward vehicle has been activated, causing the vehicle to decelerate. The prior art is replete with devices that turn on a warning light when a vehicle is decelerating. These devices operate through the use of a switch connected to the accelerator pedal. When the accelerator is released, the switch sends a signal to an indicator light such as a brake light. However, these inventions are designed for vehicles that do not have a motor brake retarder. In addition, these inventions can be confusing to trailing vehicles since a warning light is activated every time the accelerator is released regardless of whether the vehicle is actually decelerating, creating a false sense of security so that an activation of the warning light when the vehicle is actually decelerating is ignored or an appropriate response is delayed. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 4,223,649 to Robinson et al. describes a motor brake control system with warning lights that operate with a motor brake retarder to indicate that the vehicle is decelerating. However, the system described in Robinson et al. is activated by the release of the accelerator pedal and not by the motor brake retarder itself. When the operator removes his foot from the accelerator, the motor brake retarder and the warning lights are activated. If the operator turns the motor brake retarder off and releases the accelerator pedal, the warning lights are still activated giving the trailing vehicle a false indication of the forward vehicle's deceleration. The present invention addresses these problems by providing a brake warning apparatus that only activates when a motor brake retarder is being used. Thus, eliminating false warnings of deceleration.

Determination of 4-octylphenol and 4-nonylphenol congeners in composite foods. A method for the determination of alkylphenols in food using cold solvent extraction with methanol, followed by a two-stage chromatographic purification and GC-MS analysis, was developed. The method was validated and used to measure concentrations of 4-octylphenol and 4-nonylphenol congener totals in UK duplicate diet samples. Individual 4-n-octylphenol and 4-n-nonylphenol congeners were also measured, although these were not detected in any sample. Only one sample showed 4-tert-octylphenol at 8.7 microg kg(-1), but levels of 4-nonylphenol ranged from not detectable (<3.8 microg kg(-1)) to 25 microg kg(-1). This concentration range is lower than that reported by others. Tests carried out on the stability of the octyl- and nonylphenol congeners in a duplicate diet matrix over 6 months suggest that some analyte depletion might have occurred during extended frozen storage, which in part may account for the relatively lower concentrations detected, although the extent of usage of these compounds also needs to be taken into consideration.

Dose-response and histopathological study, with special attention to the hypophysis, of the differential effects of domoic acid on rats and mice. The effects of the neurotoxin domoic acid (DA) in the central nervous system of rodents (essentially rats and mice) after intraperitoneal administration have been profusely studied in the past. These observations have shown that the toxin induces similar symptoms and pathology in both species, but the lethality varies greatly. This article addresses the common and specific histopathological effects in rats and mice and the difference in sensitivity of these species to DA. Various sublethal and lethal doses were employed in mice (from 3 mg/kg to 8 mg/kg) to observe their neurotoxicity by using different histological techniques, and these results were compared with the pathological effects after the administration of LD50 in rats (2.5 mg/kg). Additionally we also detected the presence of this toxin in various tissues by means of immunohistochemistry. Our results showed that rats are more vulnerable than mice to the neurotoxic effects of DA after intraperitoneal inoculation: lethality was extremely high in rats and the toxin produced hippocampal damage in rats surviving the intoxication, while lesions were not observed in DA-inoculated mice. As for similarities between rats and mice, both displayed similar clinical signs and in both the toxin was detected in the hypophysis by immunohistochemistry, a brain region not reported to date as target of the toxin.

Integrated modeling and design for realizing a two-wheeled wheelchair for disabled. Two-wheeled wheelchairs are considered highly nonlinear and complex systems. The systems mimic a double-inverted pendulum scenario and will provide better maneuverability in confined spaces and also to reach higher level of height for pick and place tasks. The challenge resides in modeling and control of the two-wheeled wheelchair to perform comparably to a normal four-wheeled wheelchair. Most common modeling techniques have been accomplished by researchers utilizing the basic Newton's Laws of motion and some have used 3D tools to model the system where the models are much more theoretical and quite far from the practical implementation. This article is aimed at closing the gap between the conventional mathematical modeling approaches where the integrated 3D modeling approach with validation on the actual hardware implementation was conducted. To achieve this, both nonlinear and a linearized model in terms of state space model were obtained from the mathematical model of the system for analysis and, thereafter, a 3D virtual prototype of the wheelchair was developed, simulated, and analyzed. This has increased the confidence level for the proposed platform and facilitated the actual hardware implementation of the two-wheeled wheelchair. Results show that the prototype developed and tested has successfully worked within the specific requirements established.

Cellular senescence, a permanent cell cycle exit triggered by different stresses, has recently emerged as a safeguard mechanism against both uncontrolled proliferation and the accumulation of deleterious genetic alterations that occur during oncogenic transformation. Markers of cellular senescence have been identified in early stage human cancers, including preneoplastic prostate lesions, but are lost as the tumors progress. Consistent with a role of senescence in the prevention of tumor progression, genetic inactivation of essential components of the senescence pathway in mouse models leads to the acceleration of cancer progression. Despite accumulating evidence for its biological relevance in tumor suppression, the molecular bases underlying the establishment of cellular senescence remain largely elusive. Recently, the transcriptional silencing of pro-proliferative genes via heterochromatinization has been shown to correlate with the permanent senescence-associated cell cycle exit. Our preliminary results using genetically engineered mice and cells, demonstrate that the histone deacetylase (HDAC) associated Sin3B protein is required for both replicative and oncogene-induced cellular senescence. In addition, Sin3B is specifically induced upon oncogenic stress, and its overexpression is sufficient to induce cellular senescence in primary fibroblasts. The specific aims of this proposal include the determination of the underlying molecular and cellular mechanisms by which Sin3B regulates senescence and prevent cancer progression in mammals. Specifically, we propose to identify the molecular events leading to Sin3B upregulation upon oncogenic stress, and determine how Sin3B upregulation induces cellular senescence (Aim 1);to investigate the contribution of Sin3B-induced senescence in the suppression of cellular transformation in fibroblasts (Aim 2);to test the hypothesis that Sin3B expression prevents prostate tumor progression in vivo (Aim 3). To do so, we will use a combination of molecular, cellular and biochemical approaches, as well as genetically engineered mouse models of cancer. PUBLIC HEALTH RELEVANCE: Cellular senescence represents a driving force for aging as well as a barrier against cancer. We have identified Sin3B as a new and essential regulator of cellular senescence. Understanding the molecular basis for its role in the prevention of tumor progression has important implications for human health.

Debbie Reynolds: More than just a film star US film star Debbie Reynolds, one of Hollywood’s biggest drawcards at the box office in the 1950s and 60s, was more than just an actress. Born Mary Frances Reynolds in 1932, the ambitious blonde first attracted attention when she won a beauty contest in California as a teenager. In 1950 she was spotted by a Warner Brothers talent scout and given a small role in the film “The Daughter of Rosie O’Grady.” But Reynolds’ breakthrough came in 1952 when she was cast alongside high-profile dancer and actor Gene Kelly in the musical “Singin’ in the Rain.” Although it only achieved limited success at the time, the film was selected as the greatest movie musical ever by the American Film Institute, and established Reynolds as a star. She went on to act in over 50 films, receiving her only Oscar nomination for playing the title character in the 1964 film “The Unsinkable Molly Brown.” After initially being dubbed over in her first singing role, Reynolds turned to singing herself for her ensuing film musical roles. The title track to the 1957 film “Tammy” saw Reynolds earn a golden record, as the song stormed up the US music charts. In 1959, Reynolds was caught up in one of the biggest Hollywood scandals of the day, when her husband, Eddie Fisher, left her for her best friend Elizabeth Taylor, later becoming one of her many husbands. Reynolds had two children with Fisher, the actor Todd Fisher and late “Star Wars” actress Carrie Fisher, who died just a day before her mother following a heart attack. US media reported that Taylor and Reynolds eventually patched up their differences, over a private dinner on a cruise boat ship. In all, Reynolds ended up marrying three times. She married a wealthy shoe manufacturer Harry Karl, in 1960 and divorced him in 1973, after he gambled away all their money. She later married a real estate developer Richard Hamlett. They split in 1996 after 12 years of marriage. By 1969, the Texan-born star was famous enough for her own TV show, “The Debbie Reynolds Show,” for which she received a Golden Globe nomination. She also acted in musicals on Broadway through the 1970s, including “Irene” and “Annie Get Your Gun.” Reynolds launched a film comeback of sorts in 1992, playing herself in the Kevin Costner film “The Bodyguard,” before taking on a lead role in the 1996 film “Mother.” Her regular appearances in US sitcom “Will and Grace,” between 1999 and 2006, also increased her popularity again. She also appeared with her old rival Taylor together with Shirley MacLaine and Joan Collins in the 2001 TV movie, “These Old Broads,” which was written by Carrie Fisher and centred on four ageing Hollywood divas trying to make a comeback. Reynolds tried her hand in business throughout her film career, with varying success. In 1992, she purchased a hotel and casino in LasVegas, which eventually went bust and five years later Reynolds was forced to declare bankruptcy. She also enjoyed collecting Hollywood memorabilia, opening a LasVegas museum full of film costumes. But, the museum failed to thrive and was eventually closed down before the star decided to sell the items in 2011. In an interview with NPR radio last month, Carrie Fisher praised her mother as an “extraordinary” woman. “There’s very few women from her generation who worked like that, who just kept a career going all her life, and raised children, and had horrible relationships, and lost all her money, and got it back again,” she said. “I mean, she’s had an amazing life, and she’s someone to admire.” — dpa

- Hello, everyone. My name is Chris Corley. I'm interim dean of Library and Learning at Minnesota State Mankato. Thank you for joining us today. Today's session is a community listening session. It's the first of four sessions that are dedicated to responding to community concerns and our ongoing commitment to professional program review, where our university is inviting you to a town hall listening session on our review of current criminal justice programs, including the educational programs of peace officers and correction officers. By way of introduction, Dr. Pat Nelson, the department chair of our Department of Government, will talk about today's session before we have our conversation. - Thank you for joining us. We're very excited to have you here. So the purpose of our listening session has many facets to it. First of all, President Davenport really wanted us to take some time this summer and dive into what our curriculum is in our criminal justice programs at Minnesota State University, Mankato. And also, we wanted to demonstrate our commitment to the community. All of our programs undergo program review every five years. And this is the first time we've invited the community to have a voice in our program review and to give us feedback on our curriculum. Again, we do have three criminal justice programs. We have the corrections program, the criminal justice program, and law enforcement program. And we'll tell you a little bit about each of those before we get to questions. And I do just want to caution. We are focusing on education, curriculum, and higher education. We're not going to be doing any discussion of any specific events or cases that have occurred in the nation or the world. So by way of introduction, I'm going to have each one of the panelists introduce themselves. - Hi. Good afternoon, everyone-- or, excuse me. Still, good morning. My name is Matt Loayza. I'm the dean of the College of Social and Behavioral Sciences, here at Minnesota State, Mankato. My career at MSU began back in 2003, when I was hired as a professor in the history department. There I taught a bunch of courses on US history, mainly related to US foreign relations, served as interim dean in 2018, 2019, and last year, dropped the interim from the title. So now, it's just dean. I'm serving on this work group, because law enforcement, corrections, and criminal justice are all programs in the College of Social and Behavioral Sciences. Part of my role as dean is talking and working with the faculty on curricular revisions, and development, and all of those programs. So welcome, everyone, and thank you for joining us today. - Hi. Good morning, everyone. My name is Henry Morris, the vice president of Diversity and Inclusion. I'm also a member of the president's cabinet, senior leadership advisory group to the president. And as Pat said, we've been having conversations at cabinet and council of deans for a while on what was happening in the nation and what role that we felt that we could do to be part of changes. And that was decided was needed. I also-- as you can probably tell, I'm a African-American male, so I have some personal interest in the discussion that we're having. So I look forward to these listening sessions to hear what we need to hear about how Minnesota State University can be part of the solution and not received as part of anybody's problem. - And I'm Pat Nelson. You've probably heard of me or seen me talking about law enforcement. I joined Minnesota State University Mankato in 2012 as a faculty member of the law enforcement program and came from a professional position here in Minnesota as a law enforcement officer. I have a deep passion for law enforcement. I'm actually a fifth-generation law enforcement officer in my family. I'm also the chair of the Department of Government that houses several programs, including political science, urban and regional studies, law enforcement, and criminal justice. I serve as the program director, specifically for law enforcement and criminal justice. And I love to instill in my students the passion for being a part of the community, and with law enforcement, and criminal justice. And I'm really excited to hear what you have to give us for information about our programs. - Hi, Dr. Sherrise Truesdale-Moore. I'm associate professor of corrections in the Department of Sociology and Corrections. I'm the past director of the corrections program. My former experience-- I ran a correction program for the state of Maryland in the late 1900s. And I formerly was employed at the US Attorney's Office in Division of Narcotics. I look forward to hearing some of the things that you have to say. I came here in 2004. And some of the courses that I've taught have been Juvenile Delinquency, Intro to Criminal Justice, Correctional Counseling, Social Deviance, Cultural Competency in Corrections. I've done study abroad and to study in South Africa-- the criminal justice system there. And I've also taught race in juvenile justice. So I look forward to hearing some of the things that you have to offer-- our curriculum. - The next step in our introduction-- we just want to really give you a brief overview of the programs to show you what we are currently teaching in there. Because it might help answer some questions and generate some ideas. So I'm going to turn this back over to Dr. Truesdale-Moore to talk about corrections. - OK. So first, I would like to share with you the intent or purpose of our program. So the corrections program was designed to prepare students for entry-level professional work in corrections. The major is built upon a foundation of general education, sociology, and criminological concepts, and a commitment to understanding and transforming the correctional practice. So what we hear today is very important. The major achieves its objectives through the melding of academic learning with experiential education. This program is further expected to promote within corrections and to the community at large, a commitment to the principles of social justice, respect, tolerance, dignity, and worth of all persons. So our students-- when they first come into our program, they usually are taking very intro classes. That will be juvenile delinquency, foundations, and orientation. Foundation is to introduce you to some of the things that we can offer into our program, whether it be non-profit or in agency of some kind. They'll give you some experience in touching on the discipline in some sort. Juvenile delinquency-- of course, it speaks for itself and also the justice system and the theoretical practices behind understanding the behavioral issues. And our JOLT Program is a really fascinating program where it actually has our students connected with probation officers who are working with youth, who are on probation. And one of our students is assigned to one of the kids on probation. And we help them through the probation process. They have different activities that they may do with the youth. They may talk to teachers. They may talk to someone in a community that they have interaction with. But they also work closely with the probation officer in the daily tasks of what they do. So other types of courses are usually what we call the 400 level, is usually at the junior and senior level. And that's where we are actually digging into our major to understand the applied approaches to working. Evidence-- what is the best evidence out there that tells us how to best work with the population into the community? Other types of classes that we have to take-- correctional law that introduces to legal issues within the correctional system. But the interesting thing about one of my courses is that I teach cultural competency in corrections, where there I'm teaching students how to look at the humanity of the offender or the at-risk person that they are working with. That examines their own awareness. We look at skills. And we look at-- and we start to build knowledge and building intervention practices that intersect with evidence-based practices. So I don't know where I should go from here. Because I could go on and on and talk about each course. But I try to give you an interesting aspect or a lens into what we do in our program. - I'm going to move us on to the criminal justice program. Because Sherrise and I worked very hard on this to get this program at Minnesota State University, Mankato. There had been people working on it before us, but we were the ones that finally got it approved. And this is just the second year of our criminal justice program. The criminal justice degree is a little bit different than the law enforcement and the corrections degree, but we blend in classes from both of them. There is a wide range of occupations, careers, associated networks with criminal justice. So it's much more than police and corrections. As you can see, we do a blend of corrections and law enforcement courses. It is a little difficult to decipher this layout on the screen. I admit that is one of the things that we are still working on to make it a little bit smoother. But we do have some common core courses that include ethics and leadership, criminal law and procedure, research, and understanding drugs in society. We also include a cultural competency piece where they can choose between the Law Enforcement Policing in a Diverse Society course or the Cultural Competency in Corrections course. We make them spend time on theories such as criminology and victimology. And then we try to tailor electives into their interest in the criminal justice system. Sherrise, am I missing anything? - No. - And then our law enforcement program. So our law enforcement program is accredited by the Minnesota Peace Officer Standards and Trainings Board. We are an official Professional Peace Officer Education Program. Minnesota-- you have to have at least a two-year degree to become licensed as a peace officer. We're the largest four-year program in the state. And we always encourage our students to get a four-year degree not just because they get to spend more time with us in the classroom, but they get a lot more maturity, more critical thinking, more decision-making in those final two years at the university. And that's what we promote. So as you can see, there's a lot of law enforcement classes. We have a lot of post-learning objectives we have to meet. And we really have it divided into two sections. Our lower division 100 and 200 classes-- we consider the core basic classes. And these are also ones that they would get in a two-year program. And then our 300 and 400-level classes are those where we spend a lot more time, more in depth on theory, practical application, and real-world scenarios. One of our highlights is that we've been teaching a Policing in a Diverse Society class for the last 20 years. We moved it from the 200 level, up into our junior level about three years ago, because we wanted to spend more time there. And I know it might sound weird that we have a class called Law Enforcement Mindset. But that was the best title we could come up with for psychologically preparing them to communicate and work in law enforcement. So we can talk about individual classes if you have questions. We have course descriptions as well on the website. But I really want to be able to have more time for questions for the community. So if you have any specific questions, just let us know. One more thing before we get into questions is we are asking for additional members to be a part of our criminal justice program review work group. We're looking for some community partners and subject matter experts. And we'll be meeting over Zoom starting in August. Right now, we don't have quite the email address you can send your letter of interest to. But we are looking for people that are interested in participating. And we'll get that information out, probably in a press release and on our website here soon. So the structure of today-- you could submit your questions via email to events@msu.edu. But since you're here in our listening session, we would prefer if you submitted your questions via the Q&A button, which is on the bottom on your screen, probably, or by raising your hand. If you raise your hand, we will get you in the order that people raise their hands. We will limit your question to a minute. You will be muted until your question is asked. And then we'll mute you again, just so that we can respond without getting a lot of feedback. If you have additional questions, you can just raise your hand. We will remind you that we are just focused on education here, so we will stay within those boundaries. So at that, I think I will turn it back over to Chris. Thank you. - Thank you very much. We did have some questions that were submitted to us ahead of time. So I think what we'll do is start with a few of those, while our audience is preparing their own questions. And feel free, again, to use the Q&A or to raise your hand. And we'll get to you when we're able to do so. So why don't we start with Dr. Nelson? Why don't we start with you with the first question, which is, are students taught to consider their career in law enforcement as a way to protect and serve through community connections and outreach? - So I will start by saying yes. And you'll probably see that I'll share the program layouts as we're talking and answering questions here. We do not do what is called fear-based training. We are focused, really. We start them off in a class called Law Enforcement and Community Relations, right in their freshman year. And we keep carrying that through. We talk about human behavior. We talk about diverse societies. We talk about psychologically preparing yourself. We have a stress course. So, yes, that is a common theme that you hear from all of our faculty members is that we are community members. There is no "us" versus them. We are all part of the community. And you should be thinking those people as your neighbors and not the enemies. So that is a very strong thing that we try to teach. - OK, we'll go with another question here. Potentially, Dean Loayza, if you would like to answer this question, it's a more broad question. But what can we do as educators to change the direction that policing has taken? - I think what we're continually trying to do here at Minnesota State, Mankato is to always review our programs on a regular basis. Whether or not that's criminal justice, law enforcement, corrections, are considering the question. All of our other programs such as history, sociology, right on down the line to really think about how we analyze society in a broad sense, look at how policing fits into just the broader society that we live in and participate in. So looking at policing not just under a really tunnel vision, myopic focus, but just look at how it plays into many of the challenges that we're facing as a broader society and looking to address these inequities on a systemic level and contributing to our broader society. So I think if we can do that and look at this, I think, from a holistic point of view and look at how all of our university programs, gen-ed curriculum to majors can look at these broader questions and then, in turn, help prepare the best professionally trained individuals that we can, whether or not they're peace officers, whether or not they're social studies or other educators, engineers, social workers. Then I think we'll be much better prepared to deal with these variety of issues that certainly include law enforcement when we're talking about, say, systemic racism, but go well beyond that. - OK, thank you. - Actually, I'd like to jump in on this one, too. I think this is part of why we're having this listening session. Because when we talk about education and the direction policing is going, I think it's important we find out what those in the community think about our education. What do they think we're doing? What do they think we should be doing? So I would open up to anybody that's on the attendees list. You don't actually necessarily have to have a question for us. You could have a suggestion. You could have an area you think that we should be covering. And maybe we are, maybe we aren't. But really, the sky is the limit here. I'll flat out tell you if we can't do something, because it's outside the law. But otherwise, really, the sky is the limit. And that's what we're really looking for, is I want some feedback. How can we help change the direction of policing here? - And I'll just remind you that feel free to put questions in the Q&A. And we'll address those or raise your hand. And we can get to your question orally as well. - Chris, can I just piggyback on that a little bit? - Yes. - Again, I think what Matt and Pat shared, I think, is core. Minnesota State, Mankato is a state university-- I think has a special relationship between what we do here and the citizens of Minnesota as a state institution. Quite a bit of our budget comes from the state legislature through taxes, again through the people. And so as Chris said in our opening statement, we are responding to what we heard from the community. And as a university, we put out to ourselves, had conversations. How can we be part of this conversation? What role do we have? And, well, we teach a lot of the people that become officers in corrections. So are we teaching all the things that make them better employees in those environments in the foundational level when we come out of our program? Are we doing the best that we can do to make them the best people that they can be in the communities that they get hired to? And so we have some questions about that. We see what's happening. We read the newspapers. We see all those interesting things. And so we know. We have a special role. We're not just innocent bystanders looking at it. We have an active role in trying to make a difference. Not the only role and maybe not even the most important role, but we know we have a role. And so that's why we're here to listen and to see what we're missing. And sometime when you're part of the forest, you can't see all the trees. And so that's why we really call in these listening sessions for you to share with us what you may be seeing from your perspectives, that we might be able to have the ability to impact and make a difference in, as we go forward. - Thank you very much, Vice President Morris. The next question-- perhaps I'll direct to Dr. Truesdale-Moore. And that's a question about the kinds of education that our students have about working with people who have physical or mental disabilities. The person writing asked specifically about schizophrenia or bipolar disorder. Could you describe how our students are-- what kind of experience they have with that education? You're muted. - OK. All right. So there are a couple of courses that we have in our program-- Correctional Counseling that, actually, we don't teach from the perspective of maybe someone in a mental health program or a psychology program. We look at it in terms of how that particular disorder affects how it impacts their interaction with law enforcement or particularly probation. We see it in terms of, what does this disorder consist of that create different types of behaviors that may impact how someone sees you, reacts to you? And then at the same time, what are the best interventions or programs that we can put in place to make sure that we have the best types of outcomes? So some of the exercises-- well, one of the exercises that we do is I have them to research a disorder and come back to class. And this is not a lecture pointing to the board type of lecture. This is a lecture where they come and they present the issues about, for example, schizophrenia. And then after that short presentation, we use it in group settings sitting down. And no one is standing up, pointing to the board. Like I said, they present that information. Then the students will take notes as they hear what is happening with that particular disorder. And then my conversation, as I facilitate the conversation is, what will be the interaction? Or what are some of the issues that you think that are important that a probation officer should know about? So does it mean that in some disorders, you may be depressed a lot? In some disorders, you may be hyperactive. In some disorders, you might have to have medication to manage you. I can go on and on. But at the same time, once we understand what those attributes are, those characteristics of the disorder, then it's not necessarily about resistance. Why should I just immediately go to my docket and my file and say, this person resisted? No. This person has problems remembering his appointments. How can we put something in place that challenge that kind of response or build better programming so that he makes it to his probation officer, meets with him regularly? Or we make sure he gets up on time and gets to his program. Or if he's acting out in his program, what are some of those issues that we need to-- is group setting the best place for him? Or should we do an individual setting? So it's those kinds of conversations that we have in a classroom that gives them some insight on how to work with someone with those various types of disorders. - And I'll jump in on here. So on the law enforcement side, we do spend quite a bit of time going over the different types and categories. Not only in mental illnesses, but also, maybe injuries, substance abuse, anything that might impact normal communication. What we, I'll put quotes around that, normal communications with somebody. So we actually start that in Law Enforcement and Human Behavior. We continue it in Law Enforcement Mindset. In fact, the first eight weeks of that course is spent on communications, de-escalation, active listening, and mental illness. And they do even role-playing, where they're role-playing some interactions in a safe environment, so they can get feedback. Now, our interaction on the law enforcement side with people that have mental illness usually come in two categories. They're either in crisis, or they need some assistance. So we also spend quite a bit of time on suicide intervention. As somebody who has some extensive experience with crisis intervention, I always start off with my students, telling them, how do we start a conversation with somebody who's mentally ill? And they usually look at me. It's like the same way you start a conversation with anybody else, because it's true. Most law enforcement officers do not know they're dealing with somebody who is mentally ill. And the mental illness may have no impact whatsoever on the call. So could we spend more time on that? Absolutely. I could probably spend every day, every semester for five semesters trying to teach this to somebody, but it's a skill you have to continually use and build. But it's something we need to definitely lay the foundation for in education. - Thank you. We are receiving some questions coming in from our audience. So I'll start from the top. Some of the questions relate to one another. But the first question is, in what course do students learn about the history of law enforcement as a profession? Specifically, the ways police have been used to enforce oppressive laws like Jim Crow laws. The historical context of the profession seems key to help future officers understand some of the lack of trust people have toward the institution of policing. - So you actually have two classes that answer this. The very history of law enforcement, going back to Sir Robert Peel back in England and our Magna Carta-- we start that an introduction to criminal justice. So everybody in all three programs get this. But the specific ways police have used enforced law to be oppressive-- that's our policing under a diverse society. And I'll admit, I actually have a law enforcement degree, but I don't remember having any of that. So I think it's really good that we have it. Do we need more? I think one of my suggestions-- and I hope is something I also hear from the community-- is maybe we need more of it from a different voice outside of law enforcement. That might be one of our suggestions for a curriculum change. And what do you guys think? Do we need it? - Vice President Morris, did you want to speak to that issue? - Yeah, I think history is an important thing, because it helps people to understand why some communities may see police to protect and serve. And some may see them as an occupying power. And both truths could be true. And until you can understand the perspectives of both and some time to-- that's where the whole issue around certain terminology about-- is your perspective more right than mine? They're just different in that right. How I perceive the police, based on how I was raised and interact with them, may be different than somebody else. And they're both true for people. And so that's why I do think it's important that people in the criminal justice system understand the different perceptions that people have based on their reality and their history with those people, who they are interacting, whether it's a judge, whether it's police corrections. And my wife happens to be a probation officer-- well, used to be. She now supervises them, so we have conversations from that perspective. And how she does her role as an African-American woman is different sometime than what her peers may do it. Yet, so that history, I think, is paramount to understanding why people respond differently to police and to correction officers. - And I'm going to jump on here. Because Jessica also had a very similar question that had just one part that I would like to answer. In our general education component here at the university, history is an option that students can study, but is their selection. When you start getting into our programs, we have some mandatory history we build into our classes. But does everybody in our program study the same amount of history? No, they don't. Should they? Maybe they should. But then deciding what part of that they should be required to study is a conversation we need to have. So I wanted to answer Jessica, since we were already on most of her question there, the one section that we didn't have. - Chris, I could just jump in briefly, too. Yeah. I mean, maybe I'm biased, because I'm an historian. But I think that everyone should study history, obviously. But I think, really, there are a variety of programs across the university, many of them in SBS that address related questions on law enforcement. And I think one thing to consider is the individual raising the question clearly understands what Jim Crow is. Our entering freshmen cohorts don't necessarily know what that's a reference to. So that's a very important part of the equation. When we think about urban violence-- I've covered that in my classes in the '60s. As we currently do, do we call those riots? Do we label them as rebellions instead? I think those questions lead themself to a very different degree of understanding of our history. So I guess what I invite the participants to think about is, yeah, give us some feedback as to, what kind of perspectives do you think would be either necessary or helpful to our future curriculum, whether or not that comes from history, sociology, ethnic studies? But, really, what do you think? What do you want us to include not just as core disciplines, but topics such as Jim Crow, a whole variety of other things? - Dr. Truesdale, would you like to speak to that issue of elements of history that are in your program? - Right. Teaching the history around law enforcement good. However, that is only one small aspect. And the course that I think in our discipline in corrections is social deviance. There's a book I use called All God's Children by Fox Butterfield that talks about the history of violence in America that takes you from the American Revolution, on up to present contemporary life of a family. And it includes not only just issues around Jim Crow, but all of the nuances that happened and the legal issues that happened around the existence of race and family in this time. And I use theory to help explain some of the issues around it. I talk about laws. I talk about the elections that happened in the late 1800 that created separation of state and federal government and what it did for African Americans during Jim Crow and why. So there is so much information that has to be discussed. When you start talking about history, there's so much information. But what I think is important is to zoom in on the conditions that affect what our discipline is all about. Whether it be corrections, law enforcement, what are those conditions that create something that give you good or bad outcomes? There's also a documentary on Netflix called 13th. And that gives you a history lesson about why these conditions happen. So I don't want to just zero in on what law enforcement has to do. I think you're missing most of what has to take place in a history lesson to understand what the conditions are or the curriculum that needs to take place if that makes sense. - Thank you, Dr. Truesdale. We have two related questions, I think, that potentially the program directors can help us respond to. One asks if whether students need to apply to be in any of these programs. If yes, are there personality or psychological screening of the applicants in order to be considered to admission? And a related question, I believe, is, how or when does your program talk with students that may not be appropriate for the field of law enforcement? And should they be steered in a different direction? So I guess both questions ask about the application screening process. - I'll jump on here for the law enforcement program. So they can be admitted to the law enforcement program versus a freshman. But then we get to a block around their junior year, where they have to apply for admission to finish the program. And we are bound by some Minnesota statutes that have requirements about a psychological exam and physical exam and some standards there that we have to meet. Those standards do not identify specific personality types, though. The standards are that the person is not a danger to themselves or others and will not likely engage in racial profiling. I had to look at the exact language here, because I never remember that. And that is at the opinion of the psychologist that meets with the person after they complete the-- I believe it's the MMPI-2. And then from the physical standard is that they don't have any pre-existing injuries or medical restrictions. So we do have those requirements. And we do have to have that documented by medical and psychological professionals. When somebody is hired for a police department, they usually go through a different type of psychological exam. And I think the second part of that was, when do we talk to them? If we are finding somebody may struggle in law enforcement, we try to talk to them as soon as possible. What do I mean by that? If they are afraid to communicate with people, if they are telling us they're not comfortable with certain things, if they're displaying anything that we could interpret as simply being racist, homophobic, discriminative behavior, we'll sit down and talk to them. Believe it or not, many of them do not realize they're displaying that behavior. I get that a lot with role-playing where they get into a little bit of a stressful situation. And suddenly, they are using terms that are not accepted in a classroom. And they don't even realize they're doing it. And then we have to have a much deeper discussion about that. One of the limitations we do have is that we cannot really just tell somebody, you can't get a law enforcement degree, if they can meet that minimum criteria. Even if, as faculty, we've sat down and talked to them and said, this is probably not the right fit for you and why, if they can meet the legal requirements, we can't tell them, no, you can't get this degree. Now, most of those students are weeded out in the hiring process. And it may seem silly that we can't do that. But again, we're bound by legal rules on what our minimum standards are. And then we're bound on other philosophical type of ideas on whether we could tell somebody they can't get a degree or not. - Chris, if I could? Well, there's two things. And one is I want to ask the audience something. But the first part of this is that in my discipline as you study issues around race and counseling issues, there's Dr. Harold Neighbors at the University of Michigan. I don't know if he's retired now, but he does a lot on Blacks and psychology. And in his research-- and you can google much. He's well-established in the discipline. But in his research, he talks about African Americans being more likely to be misdiagnosed. So when we look at law enforcement and issues around, saying, OK, this person-- and a psychologist is saying, this person has some mental health challenges. Oftentimes, we need to question, go a little further. Is that person using the right instrument? Is it a culturally appropriate instrument that they're examining? What is their awareness, knowledge, and skill set in making those diagnosis? Because when you make any of those types of assessments about someone, there is a level of subjectivity around their perspective. So if you take the consideration that African Americans are often misdiagnosed, we can look at that in terms of offender and those who are actually going into the field. And how many of these people who are psychologists, who are actually making this determination-- what is their skill set as well? Because we can't assume that when that person is actually making that evaluation that they have the best skill sets themselves. Historically, if we go back and look at history, mental health has also been used to control as far back as slavery to try to escape. To try to escape would mean that you had a mental health disorder. And there is a level of issue, concerns about the diagnosis. So not only are we concerned about what African-American community. Not only are we concerned about, are there enough people of color getting jobs in policing? Or do they want them at all? But also, looking at the offender side. How does that person-- who is diagnosing that person? And we're more concerned in my discipline in corrections about how we put those kinds of labels on people. And then at the same time, once they've been labeled that way, with it being then misdiagnosed, then that means you are not given a correct intervention for that person as well or programming for that person. OK. All right. - I think your comments, Dr. Truesdale, lead to another question that was provided here about-- and I assume all the panelists could speak to this to some extent is the kinds of efforts that are being made by the university to enroll students of color, to enter corrections, criminal justice, and law enforcement programs. And I'll leave it open. I think many of you might have perspectives on this. - I'll jump in. I know that we, specifically, for criminal justice, law enforcement, and, well, corrections, because we do corrections at the same time, we go recruit in a couple very specific areas. The Minnesota Police Explorers Conference is one that we go to. This was our first year missing it in eight years, because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Our academic advisor, Trudy Kunkel, actually goes up to Anoka, Hennepin Technical College for an event every fall. Because they actually have a high school program that goes right into law enforcement. We have tried to get to the LEO Conference, which is the Law Enforcement Opportunities Conference. We try to get out there to where we know that there might be a larger gathering of students. We do have connections with our community colleges. Because that's a natural transition from the ones that are getting their two-year degree to come and finish their four-year degree. But that's about the extent that I have right now that we've been doing, specific criminal justice program recruiting out in the community. - Maybe what we can do is have the program representatives talk about how their programs recruit. And then we'll hear what the administrators have to say about more broadly recruiting students of color to the university as well. So Dr. Truesdale? - Well, I can tell you. Our discipline is mostly one where they realize what they want to do once they get into the university and take courses like Juvenile Delinquency, an Intro to Criminal Justice, or any one of those intro class. So we're one of those kinds of majors, OK? The second thing that I wish we would do more of is to go to different community colleges and start recruiting. We are at the stage where we are making connections with them, which I think is a good thing. I do believe to recruit students of color, particularly Black and brown students. The university has to do a better job at bringing in faculty that looks like them. And the honesty-- that has been a challenge. It's just been a challenge trying to hire someone at the university. So I'll just leave it at that. - I'll answer some of that as the VP of Diversity and Inclusion. One of my primary responsibilities is to help the university recruit and retain diverse employees and students. We are, I think, fairly good at recruiting students. We need to get better. And we are getting better at retaining those students. Because to get here, they have to be able to get that four-year degree and leave us. We do have some programs that are specifically to try to get diverse students into higher ed, into specific programs. It may be one of those we are to do. Right now, we have some for diverse students in the sciences. Maybe we ought to do some of these with special recruiting for diverse students going into criminal justice, going into policing, going into corrections. So we can and probably should do a better job of doing that. Because our communities, again, are saying they would just like-- Dr. Truesdale was talking about the importance of students seeing role models as their faculty members. Many people in the communities out there say they would love to see police that look like them and think like them in their community. So that is something we, as a university, can make a commitment to doing different and better and following up on some of these suggestions that we are talking about. - I also want to jump in here. Like in law enforcement, most of our students come to the university knowing they want to be law enforcement. And that's part of the recruiting connection we need to have with local law enforcement agencies. Most students that want to study law enforcement have had one of those experiences with a law enforcement officer that they idolized. They've got a mentor connection, or they want to make things better. I mean, we have a pretty good relationship with the Mankato Department of Public Safety. But we need to be pushing our relationships more outside of Mankato and even with Mankato to help recruit those students. Because you influence our law enforcement students in our high schools. We can't do that all as our university. But if we work with our partners in the profession, maybe we could have a better chance of recruiting students in high school, get their interest, get them into some programs where we're working together to build our student population. And I know the next question. I'm just going to answer it here. We at the university reflect the same percentages of women and officers of color that the law enforcement agencies do in the Upper Midwest. We're right about 15% for female and about 10 or 11% officers of color. We've run almost exactly the same as our law enforcement agencies. So any recruiting efforts they do, help us. And any recruiting efforts we do, help our law enforcement agencies. And I think that's a partnership we need to explore more. I don't know what that looks like. And I don't know that our law enforcement officers and elected officials know what that look like. But it's probably a conversation we need to have. We need to be helping each other. We really do. - Can I ask a question of my colleagues on the panel as I was listening to you? And let me say, I'm also learning about our programs here. So I'm also-- when we are talking about the psychological kind of issues and stuff, do we ask our police to do too much in our correction? That seems like a big issue. I have lots of degrees. And I couldn't answer some of these questions in terms of evaluating. So do we ask our police and child programs to try to figure that out in our relationship with police, what we ask police to do? - You want to jump on that first, Sherrise, or you want me to? - I think they do. I think that-- I was raised on the East Coast. And many people who majored-- yeah, some who majored in criminal justice, some did psychology and social work just like here. But also, some of those individuals came from the Marines or the Army and decided that they wanted to do law enforcement-- trained to kill. They're trained to use weapons. We're not just talking about a gun that we wear on our holster. We're talking about people who also are used to-- use the M-16s and M-60s. And some also have come through Desert Storm. They had gotten law enforcement jobs. And some people who want to work in law enforcement may have some of their own issues that they have to unravel. Some people may not-- who work in law enforcement really, really don't know how to work with someone who's dealing with mental health challenges. We can say it all day long. We can just say it all day long in a class. But until you go and have that interaction, you're really not sure what to do. So a trained person should be the one to go in there and probably de-escalate. Because they understand those people's challenges more than someone like myself who's a law enforcement person. And I'm trained to do other things, right? So I think we need to really think about who we're sending in to do certain things. And then I will say from a personal note, I have a cousin who just retired last year from law enforcement in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. And I asked her when some of our own incidents have happened. I asked her. I said, what kind of questions did they ask you? And she said before, when got hired in the early '90s. And she said they asked me about a gender question. And the question was, when he goes in-- your partner is a male. He goes in to deal with a situation or a crisis. Are you going to sit in the car? Or are you going to go with him? She says, I'm going to go with him. Because right now, we're equal. We're looking out for each other. Right. That's the right answer, right? But she said to me there was not one diversity question that they asked her in the interview. Not one. And my concern is at the hiring process. Not just, what is that person trained to do? But what kind of questions you're asking them to get them prepared to think about [AUDIO OUT] that they may have to deal with, right? I think that's important. So to go back to more specific to the question, I think we ask law enforcement to do too much, right? I do think we ask them to do too much. And every single thing that we come into contact-- call the police, call the police, call the police. They could be having coffee. And they're not where they're supposed to. Call the police. I think that we ask them to do too much. - So as somebody who is a Midwest girl, grew up Midwest, I was working law enforcement in the Midwest. Yes, we have trained our society. Over the last 15 to 20 years, if you need anything, call 911. And also, we've had our government structure create a system where, OK, so who can answer these 911 calls, no matter what? Law enforcement, fire, and emergency medical technicians, right? So you have expanded what's required of law enforcement. And we also have some laws. The only profession that can put a hold on somebody who is in a mental health crisis and refusing to get help is the law enforcement officer. Even a social worker would have to call the law enforcement officer to take that person against their will to get medical treatment. Could we balance out things? Maybe. Right? We also have to do assessments of where we think the issues are. What do we think are the calls that law enforcement should be going on or maybe shouldn't be going on? And who would be able to do that? There's a lot of thought we need to put into it. I mean, are we going to tell people you can't call 911 for everything? And now, this is the only list of things you can call them for? How would we train people to not do that, now that we've trained them to call 911 if they need anything? Right? And our law enforcement officers are not all the same, nor do we ever want them to all be the same. The point is we no longer have, what does the perfect law enforcement officer look like? Right? Because we want them to reflect everybody in the community. We want them to think differently and so think all alike. We want them to be able to communicate differently. A challenge is, how do we get more of that? I mean, we have a lot of people that are interested in being in law enforcement that might be-- I'm just going to use a stereotype for a second. White males that grew up in the suburb, so they don't really have exposure to diversity. Well, should we discourage them from following the pursuit of law enforcement because of that? Or can we help give them some education that maybe can help their cultural competency, that may turn them in to be a great community officer somewhere? I guess that's probably my burning question, is, how do we take the ones that are interested and want to be a part of it and make them better, going into the law enforcement profession, or more equipped, or have more tools, along with making our programs more attractive for those in diverse and underrepresented communities? It's a balance that we need to do. Because then we go back to Henry's question. Are we expecting law enforcement to do too much? Well, if we had the right people in there, we're not. I don't know. Because we have some great people with military experience that are awesome officers. You would never have known that they were over in Desert Storm, right? But we also need those that haven't been in that mentality. - There was a submitted question earlier related to whether there is a focus in the curriculum on understanding implicit bias and processing experiences with people of color. It seems like that might be a related question. - Well, I would like to answer that. My big thing is I think that if you have not been raised in a diverse community-- and Midwest is not a diverse place at all. This is not. When I first came here, I had students that say they never had an African-American professor before. So I was news to them. And then moving across the country from the East Coast here-- that was news to them. Some had never been on the East Coast. So my encouragement is to have our students-- whether they're in the corrections, law enforcement, criminal justice, all three programs, they need to spend time in a diverse community and not one that they claim to be someone that's going to appease them in some way or what they call a safe space or whatever. No. You need to go to urban America where you might be patrolling at some point or working as a probation officer at some point and be a part of that community, whether it be working in a shelter, whether it be beating a street with someone, whether it be doing some outreach work. They need to go spend time in those communities. I have trouble taking a student from a very-- a community where there is no diversity. And then all a sudden, they have to work in a community with lots of diversity and cultural activities or values and beliefs that are just the exact opposite of what they have. So it's important that they understand or have a comfort level in interacting. Most-- you have a lot. Well, I won't say most. But there are lots of African-American students on our campus that come to this space. And they're the only person in their class. And they can't relate to anybody. No one is African American in their class. I've seen that many a time. And sometimes I'm the only one in the class. But how does that student who is white-- how does that person-- they were put in a situation where they were the only white person in the class. How then do you function? What are the experiences that you have? And so they have to become-- get a grip on if they're going to work in a field that has a high level of diversity. Because when you go into corrections, you have majority Black and brown offenders there. Unfortunately, that's our reality that I wish I could change. But how do you go into a discipline or a profession that looks the exact opposite of you? You say you want to police, but you don't have any experience. So how do we give them that experience in working with this population before they become professional? I think it's crucial. - Dr. Morris, would you like to say something? - Yeah. No. Well, I already said what I-- there was something I was looking at in the questions. And I was going to ask from an outsider's point of view. As an outsider, my degrees are not in the majors we're talking about, more as a consumer of those majors. And that was, what do we see as weaknesses in our programs? And I can tell you, when I first started to ask the question with my colleagues here at the university, was, do we have gaps in our program? That was the word I used I think missing there, that would give our graduates a better foundation for them to be police. Because again, a lot of things happen to them after they leave us. So we can have the best program here. And things still can happen to them after they leave us, to move them in a path that we would not like and take on. Oh, that's a graduate of ours. We wouldn't want to do that. So that is the question. Do we have gaps? And I think that's one of the things we're looking at. And that's why we're asking the community-- from community members, from people who may be interested in joining us. Are there gaps when you have interacted with police or to corrections? There was something that you thought was just a miss that would help us figure out how we'd do a better wrap-around program. How do we look at those gaps? What are they missing? Now, I think there may be some gaps. But you don't know what you don't know until you look at it. There may actually not be gaps. Again, we don't control everything about people in criminal justice. So that's one of the things that is-- we're asking the question-- are there? Which I think is the first thing of learning. - Another thing-- and I was going to jump on Sherrise's there, is part of our job in education should be to give our students a chance to interact positively with a community that's different than theirs. We don't want to just give somebody a degree and send them out into a diverse committee, whether it's an immigrant community, a domestic community. If their very first interaction with them is during a crisis and that's how they build all of their base knowledge of that community is off of a crisis situation, then we're really doing them a disservice. So maybe part of it is doing the public service or maybe hearing voices different than-- we joke in a way, in our program. Because we've tried to hire more diverse faculty, but we're all white, right? So our professor that teaches Policing in a Diverse Society-- he's really into sociology. He loves the history. He really focuses on implicit bias and systemic racism. But as he says at the end of the day, I'm a white law enforcement officer who's now a professor telling that to my law enforcement students. They need to be hearing that from a voice from a different community as well in building those images, right? I think-- I know we have that as a gap. I have no idea how to correct it or fix it at this point. But they need to be building positive interactions with all sorts of different communities, not just where we come from. And that's true of everybody, not just white people. It's true of everybody. And that should be part of our job in higher education is to help build those interactions and relationships before we send somebody out into the world. To be a part of a global citizenship in a community, we should be able to relate. And I wish I knew the magic answer to fix that right now, but that's what we're doing. We're trying to get some ideas to do that. - Chris, can I jump in briefly? I think, again, I don't have the magic pathway either. But there's things that are coming down the road. We've talked within social and behavioral sciences about building some new structures for collaborations within the college that are really centered around the idea of public service. And the general idea is to whatever program it has to be, just invite more opportunities for collaboration with other departments, whether or not it's gender and women's studies, ethnic studies, sociology. And then through those collaborations, we're making those collaborations easier. I mean, some of them are going on already. And I really tip my hat to both Sherrise and Pat for their work on criminal justice. Because I think that's the best example, most pertinent example right now of that collaboration. But if we can make it easier, then I think that we would say provide-- have an opportunity to provide students and law enforcement or corrections with more opportunities, perhaps through another instructor and program to have those opportunities to engage with outside communities. So we're excited about that. And I think, secondly, the other thing that we really have to do as a college and a university is really into both potential students and to the community, what it is that we actually do. And last year in social and behavioral sciences, we were able to hire a person that specifically can assist faculty in those programs to reach out to potential students with marketing materials. So it's one thing to get back to recruiting. It's one thing to recruit, but you've got to have a message. And all of us are very busy in our own professions. And we're not born marketers, most of us. So I think now that we have a person that can assist in that regard, we'll be better positioned to reach out to potential students and also community members to explain what it is that programs such as corrections, criminal justice, and law enforcement actually do. - Dr. Truesdale, did you want to speak to the issue of weaknesses overall, we were talking about? - I think we have to-- as a university, when it comes to our program, we have to do a better job at hiring Black and brown faculty who are from domestic. And the reason I say domestic is because this issue is very, very concerning to the African-American community and Hispanic community. They've been born here, raised here, and been dealing with this all their lives. And I think we have to do a better job at building that kind of community. If you look at the [INAUDIBLE] model, his research talks about when you have faculty, that teachers look like their students. They're more likely to do better at school. The conversations that I have had with my students who are of color in my office have been quite different from those who are white. Some would be, this is what I'm experiencing on my internship. How can I deal with this? Just last year, someone was crying about the racism that she was experiencing on her internship. And I had to have that same conversation with her that my mother had with me, you see? And we have to do a better job at hiring. We have to do a better job at, who are we connecting our students to when they're doing an internship? I've heard disastrous experiences that I wish I could go down there to those offices and those agencies and correct. But I can't always do that. I can't always do that at all. One of the reasons why I created-- started teaching cultural competency in corrections is because of something that I had witnessed myself in Minnesota. And I vowed I did not want any of my students-- Black, brown, white immigrant to have to go into a workspace and see that. So how do I make a difference as a professor? How do I make a difference in terms of improving not just their experiences that they have when they get there. But you don't become that professional that I heard. How do I make a difference in that way? So I think about what I can change in my space. - We have two very related questions, I think, to that, Dr. Truesdale. I just want to remind everybody who's with us that to continue to submit questions or raise your hand if you'd like to express them orally. We are scheduled to go till 1 o'clock today. But there are two questions. And they both relate to internships. One question asks about corrections, specifically placing students in internships amid a pandemic. And the other question asks about, is it possible? Or would it be appropriate to require a one-year internship in diverse communities for all students? So perhaps we could address these questions. - I'll let Pat go first. - I thought maybe you wanted to talk about how you're doing internships in pandemics, but I'll go first here. - We can do both of us. I was just-- didn't want-- have all the time. - Actually, I'll go first here. I'm at Bess here, if you don't mind, I'm going to unmute you. Could you explain what you would think about-- what do you think a year-long internship in a diverse community might look like? Because I'd be really interested to hear about that. So I'm going to unmute you if you wouldn't mind talking about that. - You're talking to me? - No, I'm sorry. The person I allowed to-- - Who is that? - Here we go. I think I've got her unmuted here. Unmute. Taylor, I might need your help here. - Is that Bess? - Yes. - Yeah, I'm trying to unmute her, too. - Hello? - Oh, there you are. Hi. - Oh, hi. - That's all right. So what do you think an internship in a diverse community might look like? - Well, just off the top of my head, it's, how about spending a year in north Minneapolis? See how you can survive, see how you can interrelate, see how you can get along. Or how about in the Somali community near the U of M, or the Latino communities, or maybe take the Hmong community in St. Paul, or take turns. Be in one for two months. Another one-- maybe learning another language. That teaches you a lot about the culture of the community, the sensibilities, the way the community looks at life, which may be really different. And I'm not from the Midwest either, originally. And I look at things quite differently than Midwesterners. So I think you can't learn that. I know, Chris, you've been in France. So it's like going to France for a year. And you come out a different person. Because you see that your way is not the only way. And I think we have people who don't travel or who have not spent time somewhere else in another community. They think their way is the way. There is no other way. And then they can freak out if they go abroad. And it's like, oh, we have to use the toilet with a hole in the floor. How do I do this? That kind of thing, just different experiences. So I think it'd be really valuable for students to be immersed. I don't know if any of you've seen The Wire on TV. How would you survive as a white person who never had that experience in The Wire-- Baltimore? So I just think it will give people a different perspective, a day-to-day thing. Not necessarily being a police officer, but just living, relating, buying your groceries, et cetera, in another community. - Thank you. - Thank you, Bess. I'm sorry to put you on the spot, but I wanted to hear what your point is. - Yeah, I'm glad she stated that. Because I lived in Baltimore for 13 years. And that's where I ran my program. And it's very true. I've had to back away from doors before, dealing with some of the population that I was working with. But I am interested in seeing, Bess, how some of our students would actually function there. I had a student here that's from Minnesota that decided to do his internship in Chicago. And he came back after his internship. And he said, "Doc! You weren't lying, honey! You weren't lying!" And he talked about his experience and all the things. And I said, how did it work out? And it was eye opening for him. It really was. It was something that I can't teach you in a book. I can't teach you it all. You have to go stand in those spaces and figure it out. - And then on the flip side, because I actually bought and rehabbed a house in Jordan neighborhood in north Minneapolis before, while I was in college. And I lived there the first seven years I was in law enforcement. The flip side of that is you realize your neighbors are people. You realize the people in the neighborhood, which could be multiple blocks, are not all criminals, right? You're only dealing with maybe 3 to 4% of them. And it's easy to lose that perspective if you're working overnight and all you do is go 911, called to 911 call. So I actually think it's a great idea. And I know there's a lot of organizations and agencies that could give both sides of that perspective where you could go. And maybe things are different than you thought. Or maybe they are also people that are working, and struggling to live, and making ends meet. And not everybody is a bad person, too. That's our "us" versus them philosophy that we hear a lot about in the media that we need to try to address. - And I'm glad you said that, Pat. Because the thing about it is when we talk about The Wire, there was a time when I had students that just automatically thought that I came from-- I say, quote unquote, "urban America." I was raised in rural America, outside of Charlottesville, Virginia. So they are just two different experiences, I can tell you that. I was used to leaving my door unlocked and all this other kind of stuff. But the point that I want to make is what Pat said, that people are people. And there are, for instance, African-American churches in these communities where I went to church in Baltimore that are thriving, very political. These people were-- if they weren't the mayor, they were the assistant to the mayor, or they were teachers, or they were janitors, or they were all walks of life, people who didn't have a job, or the homeless man on the street that decided to come in and worship. So I think that it's important that Pat had said that, that you will see that they are human. And your interaction in those spaces-- you'll find that they're still upstanding people who care about their communities. They want to have a drug-free community. They want to have a safe community. They go to church. They go to school. Where I got my master's is not far from the riots that was in Baltimore, literally a block away. So I think that it was important for Pat to say that. - That's actually something we battle a lot in all three programs is the media influence on what they think is happening. I mean, you look at all the entertainment shows. I mean, if you went off their entertainment shows, every police officer you know would have been in four shootings and a chase every other week. And every person they arrest is a criminal. And if you would go to California-- Watson Compton you couldn't do anything or even listening to media in north Minneapolis. There's such a large geographic area. And there's such a small percentage of actual crime that occurs there. Yes, I know Sherrise does this, too. We battle the media all the time. - I heard Sherrise talk about internship all over when she was talking about-- Pat, is that currently part of your program, that students have to do some sort of internship? - No, we don't require an internship at this point. It's not so much that we don't think it's valuable. It is. It would be just finding the right internships. Most of them want to do internships in law enforcement agencies, which is good. But that also taxes our law enforcement agency's ability to host interns. I mean, we have one to two interns at Mankato Department of Public Safety every year, every semester. And we put them in Blue Earth County. The one thing that we do get concerned about is if people want-- require internships up in the metro area. Well, if they live full time in Mankato, how can they get up to internships? Or if they live full time up in the metro area and commute to Mankato, balancing that out. It is probably something we need to look at again, though. - Would you think-- again, I'm part of the audience here, is asking the questions. What about internships? Is what I think the woman asked in social services organization. There are quite a bit of non-profits in southern Minnesota community organization, so not just prudence. And you don't have to answer it now, but something I think as a committee, we may want to look at as we evaluate what the program is. Is there a wider range of internships if that's decided, make sense? - Well, I'll put it on the list. I think that's a good one. - If I could respond to him. And, Henry, I think that working outside our discipline as an intern. If we were to require a certain amount of time before an internship. Because you have to understand how to do the applied stuff that you would get-- being trained to do. Just have to do that. But I think the best thing to understand and learn the community is what Bess was saying, is that go into these communities and learn the culture. Because that's where you understand how to interact best. So it could be working at a food shelter. It could be working-- a lot of African-American churches have programming. It could be something that you're doing with the programming. It could be something that you're working in. Not necessarily social work, but some type of service driven-- where you're interacting with everyday people. It could be inside of a school, something where you're interacting with everyday people. If you're working in your discipline, you don't necessarily get that. - We just have a few minutes left. And I know there is general interest around the country. And maybe Dean Loayza, has some perspective on this in terms of how internships in the College of Social and Behavioral Sciences generally, for example, are working in an age of pandemic. How is that working for students? You're muted. - You're muted, Matt. - Yeah. I guess in short, I'd say that is a work in progress. And there are certainly renewed challenges that we need to figure out. Without going into express detail, I guess I'd say in the age of COVID, what we want to do is provide the best experiences for student learning that are possible. So in limited cases-- so again, if there is a way to have those internships continue in an online basis, we're pursuing those opportunities, just out of concern for safety on both ends of the spectrum, whether or not it's the student or for the participants in the partner agency. If there really is no way to replicate an internship experience online, then we've worked to develop a clear set of safety protocols that both the partner agency and the program and the student will agree to. They all expect that all parties will attend to CDC guidelines for social distancing, so forth, and so on. So the programs in-- or the internships in SBS have followed a wide variety, based on basically what might be possible in a face-to-face environment, what might be possible in an online environment and just take it on a case by case basis. So without really getting into the nuts and bolts of all of our programs, I guess I'd start there. And if there is follow-up questions, can certainly field those. - Thank you. We just have a few minutes left. I don't know if, Dr. Nelson, you'd like to close us out. I know we have three more of these sessions-- July 16, July 20, and July 22 if people are interested. - And if you have some ideas, I'm always happy to take those ideas, too, if you think of them later. Again, we are still looking for people to be part of work groups. And it doesn't have to just be members of urban communities. We're looking for members of all communities in Minnesota. We have graduates that work in every type of community in Minnesota. That's who we're educating our students for as well. So, please, if you're a smaller community, a rural community, we're still interested in what you're thinking as well. Again, we'll be putting out information on submitting a letter of interest to be a part of the work group. And if you want to join us for the rest of the sessions, you can. It's going to be very similar, though. We're just really opening it up for some feedback and talking about what we do. And if you'd like to join us or if you want to pass the word, we appreciate that. - OK. Well, thank you very much. All of our panelists are readily available. You can find them online at the university. You could contact them via email or phone. If you have any follow-up questions or thoughts, I'm sure they'd appreciate your input as they're evaluating their programs and talking about how they can enhance the educational experiences of our students as well. So thank you very much for joining us today. And maybe we'll see you at a future one. But if not, please do let other people know in the community that they can participate as well. Thank you.

The mediating effect of severity of client aggression on burnout between hospital inpatient and community residential staff who support adults with intellectual disabilities. To compare exposure to client aggressive behaviour, perceived self-efficacy in managing this behaviour and burnout between community residential group home and specialised hospital inpatient staff who provide care for adults with intellectual disabilities (ID). To assess the mediating role of aggression exposure on burnout in these two staff groups. Aggressive behaviour is a common indication for admission to hospital so these staff typically experience more frequent and severe forms compared to staff working in the community. There have been mixed results in few studies examining burnout and perceived self-efficacy between these two groups. This study used a demographically matched sample of cross-sectional survey data from community residential group home and hospital staff who care for adults with ID in Ontario, Canada. Exposure to aggression, perceived self-efficacy and burnout were compared for 42 matched pairs using descriptive statistics. A mediation analysis was used to examine the role of aggression severity in the relationship between care setting and burnout. Hospital staff were exposed to more severe client aggression and scored higher in emotional exhaustion (EE). There were no differences in perceived self-efficacy. Severity of aggression was a partial mediator of the higher EE among hospital staff. Exposure to more severe forms of client aggression among hospital staff contributes, at least in part, to them feeling more emotionally exhausted. This study contributes to further understanding exposure to aggression in these different settings and the impact it can have on emotional outcomes. There may be a role for policy and resource development aimed at reducing aggression and preventing or managing the associated emotional consequences. This is particularly true in hospitals, where aggression is most severe.

Concrete structures such as columns in salt water tend to corrode at the location just above the salt water in the inter-tidal and splash zones where the column is subject to wetting and drying. One solution to this problem is to surround the column with a jacket containing a layer of grout within which is buried or located a sacrificial anode as a mesh or layer surrounding the column. This anode is electrically connected to the steel in the column to set up an electric current through the connection and an ionic current through the electrolyte and the concrete from the anode to the steel to tend to inhibit the corrosion of steel in favour of the corrosion of the sacrificial anode. An example of an arrangement of this type is shown in U.S. Pat. No. 5,714,045 (Lasa) assigned to Alltrista Corporation and issued. Another example is shown in published PCT Application WO 2005/035831 of the present applicant published 21 Apr. 2005. Yet another example is shown in U.S. Pat. No. 4,692,066 (Clear) issued Sep. 8, 1987. The disclosures of each of the above three documents is incorporated herein by reference. It is also known to simply clamp an anode onto the column below water level to protect the portion of the column within the water. As the salt water is highly conductive, most of the current generated is transferred to steel in the wet portion of the column and little of the current generated in the galvanic action is transferred to the area of most corrosion which is the area at and above the water line which is wetted and dried. This problem is discussed in the above patent of Clear. In some cases, as shown for example in Lasa above, the above jacket and anode arrangement is used with a below water additional anode, commonly known as a bulk anode, so as to avoid the lower part of the mesh anode in the jacket which is mostly or wholly below water from being rapidly corroded and lost. In other cases, for a simple inexpensive repair with no cathodic protection, a simple wrapping is applied around the column at the water line so as to cover up and hide the worst of the damage. This arrangement may provide a physical barrier but of course does not provide any cathodic protection by galvanic action so that the underlying corrosion continues. As discussed in Lasa above, this type of repair is considered to be merely cosmetic, merely acting to cover up the worst of the cracking and exposed steel. However this can provide a cheap fix with short life span of protection. The wrapping can surround a layer of grout which covers the worst of the cracking and repairs any holes or the wrapping can be applied directly to the column. In some cases the wrapping is filled with a non-cementitious material such as epoxy.

Impact of worksite health promotion on health care costs and utilization. Evaluation of Johnson & Johnson's Live for Life program. This study explores the relationship between exposure to a comprehensive worksite health promotion program and health care costs and utilization. The experience of two groups of Johnson & Johnson employees (N = 5192 and N = 3259) exposed to Live for Life, a comprehensive program of health screens, life-style improvement programs, and worksite changes to support healthier life-styles, was compared with that of a control group (N = 2955) over a five-year period. To account for baseline differences, analyses of covariance produced adjusted means for inpatient hospital costs, admissions, hospital days, outpatient costs, and other health costs. Mean annual inpatient cost increases were $43 and $42 for two Live for Life groups vs $76 for the non-Live for Life group. Live for Life groups also had lower rates of increase in hospital days and admissions. No significant differences were found for outpatient or other health care costs.

Over forty years since the declaration of the War on Cancer, malignancy remains a scourge on human health. Not long after that declaration, the three genes that encode RAS proteins were discovered to be among the most prominent molecular players in cancer. RAS functions as a molecular switch, existing in either an on or off state. When on, RAS instigates a wide variety of signaling cascades that control survival, proliferation, and many other cellular processes. In healthy cells, RAS integrates signals coming from outside the cell to determine cellular response. In approximately 20% of human tumors, however, mutations in RAS cause it to become stuck in the on position. This constitutively active RAS leads to aberrant downstream signaling and malignant transformation of the cell. Together, the three RAS isoforms constitute the most frequently mutated oncogene in human cancers. Notably, RAS mutations are especially prevalent in some of the most intractable malignancies, e.g. pancreatic, lung, and colon cancers. Yet, after nearly four decades of research, no targeted therapy for mutant RAS tumors has been discovered. In large part, this is a result of RAS being undruggable: it is notoriously difficult to directly inhibit with a drug-lie small molecule. The obstinance of RAS means that it's signaling must be dissected with uncompromising depth to identify alternate strategies for targeting these tumors. Despite extensive study, it is still unclear how such a simple on/off switch can govern so many cellular responses of such complexity, or why in some circumstances, activated RAS causes a cell to proliferate, but in others, it causes the cell to senesce. To address these long-standing questions in RAS and cancer biology, we have engineered a chemically-induced activator of RAS (CIAR). With this construct, we are able to activate RAS signaling with a small molecule in a rapid and dose-dependent fashion. This control will permit previously inaccessible studies of the effects of the magnitude and duration of RAS signaling on the phosphoproteome, transcriptome, and malignant phenotype. Furthermore, by localizing CIAR to different subcellular compartments, we will address how spatiotemporal compartmentalization of RAS signaling and effects signaling and trancriptional networks as well as phenotype. The information gleaned from these studies may then guide the identification of novel strategies for targeting tumors bearing RAS mutations.

One of the problems encountered in the production of crude petroleum is the accumulation and deposition of asphaltenes in the wellbore and production lines. Asphaltenes may deposit in the wellbore and the production lines in the form of a solid deposit or a sludge. Solid deposits of asphaltenes may be a result of growth of asphaltene aggregates on formation surfaces, while sludges may form as large aggregates suspended in crude petroleum that settle out of the suspension. The asphaltic materials which compose the deposits may originally be in solution in the crude oil as it exists in the reservoir. Often times in the production or transporting of crude petroleums, the equilibrium of the solution is altered or destroyed and these asphaltic materials, being the least soluble constituents, separate and accumulate in the wellbore and in production equipment at locations where the flow velocity is less than that required to maintain the asphaltene aggregates in suspension. Formation of asphaltenes deposits may also be exacerbated by interruptions in formation fluid flow through wellbores and production lines, such as the interruptions caused by routine maintenance and/or preparations for extreme weather such as hurricanes. The accumulation of these asphaltic materials progressively decreases the rate of movement of the petroleum and must therefore be periodically removed. Various solvents have been utilized to solubilize asphaltenes that have deposited in oil-bearing formations. U.S. Pat. No. 5,425,422 discloses injecting deasphalted oil into an oil-bearing formation to solvate asphaltene deposits near a wellbore in the formation and thereby improving production of oil from the formation. The injected oil may be produced from the formation and deasphalted prior to being injected into the formation. The use of aromatic solvents such as o-xylene and toluene to dissolve asphaltene-based deposits in a formation near a wellbore is also known. Disulfide solvents have also been used to dissolve asphaltene-based deposits in a formation for near-wellbore formation remediation. U.S. Pat. No. 4,379,490 discloses the use of an amine activated disulfide oil for treating and removing unwanted asphaltene deposits from the pore spaces of oil-bearing formations. U.S. Pat. No. 4,379,490 further discloses that carbon disulfide is one of the most effective asphaltene solvents known, and that it has been utilized for the removal of asphaltene-based deposits from oil-bearing formations. Such solvents, however, have certain disadvantages attached to them. Injection of aromatics such as toluene and o-xylene may be subject to regulatory limitation, and is economically inefficient since such aromatics are even more highly processed and valuable than deasphalted oil. Disulfide solvents may be subject to hydrolysis within the formation, and, in the case of carbon disulfide, may result in souring the formation. Carbon disulfide is also highly toxic. It is desirable to develop an improved method of remediating asphaltene deposits in wellbores and production lines.

Expression and neural control of myogenic regulatory factor genes during regeneration of mouse soleus. Given the importance of the myogenic regulatory factors (MRFs) for myoblast differentiation during development, the aims of this work were to clarify the spatial and temporal expression pattern of the four MRF mRNAs during soleus regeneration in mouse after cardiotoxin injury, using in situ hybridization, and to investigate the influence of innervation on the expression of each MRF during a complete degeneration/regeneration process. For this, we performed cardiotoxin injury-induced regeneration experiments on denervated soleus muscle. Myf-5, MyoD, and MRF4 mRNAs were detected in satellite cell-derived myoblasts in the first stages of muscle regeneration analyzed (2--3 days P-I). The Myf-5 transcript level dramatically decreased in young multinucleated myotubes, whereas MyoD and MRF4 transcripts were expressed persistently throughout the regeneration process. Myogenin mRNA was transiently expressed in forming myotubes. These results are discussed with regard to the potential relationships between MyoD and MRF4 in the satellite cell differentiation pathway. Muscle denervation precociously (at 8 days P-I) upregulated both the Myf-5 and the MRF4 mRNA levels, whereas the increase of both MyoD and myogenin mRNA levels was observed later, in the late stages of regeneration (30 days P-I). This significant accumulation of each differentially upregulated MRF during soleus regeneration after denervation suggests that each myogenic factor might have a distinct role in the regulatory control of muscle gene expression. This role is discussed in relation to the expression of the nerve-regulated genes, such as the nAChR subunit gene family. (J Histochem Cytochem 49:887-899, 2001)

Apoptosis, the process of active cell death, is a phenomenon important in the etiology and treatment of various diseases, including cancer. Existing cancer therapies kill tumor cells often by inducing apoptosis, and tumor cells that develop resistance to apoptosis can therefore be refractory to therapy. An understanding of the mechanisms of apoptosis is thus essential groundwork for the development of novel approaches to cancer therapy. Previous studies using cell-free systems and cultured cells have shown that the cytochrome c protein can play an important role in the activation of caspases (apoptotic proteases). However, evidence also shows that under some circumstances, caspases can be activated in a manner independent of cytochrome c. To test the hypothesis that cytochrome c is required for apoptosis in multiple tissues, the investigators will employ a genetic approach in mice. Homozygous null mutations of the somatic cytochrome c gene would be lethal, because this protein is required for mitochondrial respiration. However, they have identified mutant or variant forms of cytochrome c that exhibit no, or drastically reduced, pro-apoptotic activity in vitro, while retaining electron transport function. The investigators propose to generate mice in which the wild-type cytochrome c gene is replaced by one or more of these apoptosis-defective cytochrome c genes. If apoptosis in these mutant animals is disrupted in certain tissues, then this will confirm the hypothesis that cytochrome c is required for apoptosis in those tissues. However, if apoptosis proceeds normally, then it will be concluded that apoptosis pathways independent of cytochrome c predominate. These experiments will decide how important cytochrome c-mediated apoptotic pathways are in vivo and will help in the future design of pro-apoptotic therapy for cancer.

In balloon angioplasty or PTCA, a catheter is advanced through the arterial system of a patient to an area of stenosis where an artery is partially or completely blocked. The catheter, with the balloon deflated, is advanced through the stenotic area, and then the balloon is inflated to expand the stenosis. With conventional catheters for angioplasty, the blood flow is completely blocked while the balloon is inflated. This tends to limit the amount of time that the inflation of the balloon can be tolerated by the patient. Thus, in Sahota U.S. Pat. No. 4,581,017; Sogard et al. U.S. Pat. No. 4,944,745 and Horzewski et al. U.S. Pat. No. 4,771,777, among others, balloon catheters for angioplasty are disclosed in which the balloon can be inflated without completely blocking the blood flow through the artery in which the balloon is inflated. However, in the prior art designs, the flow capacity of blood through the inflated balloon may be undesirably low and/or may be undesirably turbulent for the handling of blood. Also, difficulties may be encountered in some of the prior art designs with respect to the advancement of the guidewire, because of the presence of a side aperture through which the guidewire may accidentally project during advancement. In accordance with this invention, an intravascular balloon catheter is provided which addresses the above problems. A guidewire may be reliably advanced through the catheter of this invention without risk of the guidewire projecting laterally out of a side aperture in the catheter, thus becoming stuck and non-advanceable. Additionally, the catheter of this invention can provided a relatively laminar, non-turbulent, high volume flow of blood through an inflated balloon in an artery when that is required. At the same time, this flow of blood may be shut off when the guidewire or the catheter are being advanced, and then reopened at any desired time for selective and beneficial clinical advantage.

Currently, a widely used form of shaving preparation is the type referred to as a post-foaming shave gel. These post-foaming shave gels are now well-known and have been described, for example, in U.S. Pat. No. 2,995,521 (Bluard), U.S. Pat. No. 3,541,581 (Monson), U.S. Pat. No. 4,405,489 (Sisbarro), U.S. Pat. No. 4,528,111 (Su), U.S. Pat. No. 4,651,503 (Anderson), U.S. Pat. No. 5,248,495 (Patterson), U.S. Pat. No. 5,308,643 (Osipow), U.S. Pat. No. 5,326,556 (Bamet), U.S. Pat. No. 5,500,211 (George), U.S. Pat. No. 5,560,859 (Hartmann), U.S. Pat. No. 5,858,343 (Szymczak) and WO 02/47636 (Lasota). Such compositions generally take the form of an oil-in-water emulsion in which the post-foaming agent, generally a volatile (i.e., low boiling point) aliphatic hydrocarbon, is solubilized in the oil phase, and the water phase comprises a water-dispersible soap or interrupted soap component. The product is generally packaged in an aerosol container with a barrier, such as a piston or collapsible bag, to separate the post-foaming gel from the propellant required for expulsion of the product. The product is dispensed as a clear, translucent or opaque gel that is substantially free from foaming until it is spread over the skin, at which time it produces a foam lather generated by the volatilization of the volatile hydrocarbon foaming agent. Users of wet-shave razors generally appreciate a feeling of warmth against their skin during shaving. The warmth feels good, and also causes the user's skin to hydrate and beard to soften, resulting in a more comfortable shave. Various attempts have been made to provide a warm feeling during shaving. For example, shaving foams have been formulated to react exothermically upon release from the shaving canister, so that the foam imparts warmth to the skin, e.g., as described in U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,341,418, 3,772,203, 3,819,524, 3,866,800, and U.S. Pat. No. 3,878,118. However, up to now no self-heating shaving gels have been commercialized even though shaving gels are highly preferred over shaving foams. Thus, it would be highly desirable to provide a post-foaming shave gel product that is self-heating.

Management of the N0 neck during salvage laryngectomy. Radiotherapy is effective treatment for laryngeal carcinoma. Early-stage laryngeal carcinoma has a low incidence of cervical metastasis. Patients initially clinically N0 usually remain N0 when they fail at the primary site. The incidence of subclinical metastasis in these patients is not well described. Watchful waiting or elective neck dissections are advocated. Examine the incidence of subclinical metastatic disease in patients undergoing elective neck dissections with salvage laryngectomy. Prospective study (1991-1996) of patients who failed radiotherapy and underwent salvage laryngectomy with elective neck dissection. Thirty-four patients underwent salvage laryngectomy with neck dissection (30 bilateral, 4 unilateral). All were clinically N0 at initial presentation and remained N0 at recurrence. Pathologic study of the neck dissection specimens was undertaken. Patients were followed for a minimum of 2 years (mean, 4 y). The male-to-female ratio was 4.5:1, with a mean age of 62 years (range, 38 to 75 y). Metastatic disease was present in 6 patients (17%); 4 of 14 (28%) supraglottic, and 2 of 20 (10%) glottic. Presence of disease in the neck according to stage at recurrence was as follows: T2, 2 of 12; T3, 3 of 14; and T4, 2 of 8. Neck disease was ipsilateral in 4 and contralateral in 2 patients (both supraglottic primaries). Subclinical cervical metastasis may be present in N0 laryngeal carcinoma patients who have recurrence following radiotherapy. Morbidity of a lateral neck dissection is minimal, with excellent control of the neck being possible. Supraglottic and advanced glottic (T3-T4) patients may benefit the most.

A weighing device such as a scale detects a product of mass and gravity as force when the direction of gravitational acceleration is a constant, and detects weight, based on the mass of a standard weight, while assuming the same gravity of the standard weight is applied to a weighing object. Therefore, for performing accurate weighing, horizontal leveling for gravity vector alignment is performed when the scale is installed. Generally, horizontal leveling of a scale is performed by a height adjustment of an adjustor foot (hereinafter, referred to as a foot piece) installed on a bottom surface of a lower case of a scale case 200 that is housing of a weight sensor. As shown in FIG. 11, the foot piece 100 is simply formed of a foot portion 300 that is in contact with an installation surface of the weighing device and has a male screw of its shaft. By rotating an operating portion 400 that extends radially from the shaft by fingers, the foot portion 300 is housed in or projected from a female screw formed on the case 200, and the height adjustment is performed (refer also to Patent Document 1).

Due to the recent energy problems that have arisen, considerable interest has been given to converting the kinetic energy of fluid flows occurring in nature into electrical power, e.g., using wind flows in wind power generation systems (e.g., that are sometimes called wind energy conversion systems) and water current flows in kinetic hydropower generation systems. For example, wind energy conversion systems involve directing wind through a turbine that rotates an electrical generator, causing the electrical generator to produce electrical power, whereas kinetic hydropower generation systems typically involve submerging a turbine under water and directing flowing water current through the turbine, causing the turbine to rotate an electrical generator for producing electrical power. Such turbines are complex machines with several sub-machines that convert the kinetic energy of the moving fluid to electrical power. That is, these machines have a large number of moving parts that are subject to failure and that require considerable maintenance, resulting in high maintenance costs. In particular, the power generation depends on the length of the turbine blades, e.g., the longer each turbine blade, the higher the power generation. However, long blades are costly, can be subjected to defects and failure, take up a large amount of space, and generate excessive noise and vibration. Longer propellers increase not only the cost of material and installation, but also the cost of maintenance. As such, current wind energy conversion systems and kinetic hydropower generation systems typically suffer from low efficiency, high capital cost, unpredictable failures, excessively high noise and vibration, and/or high maintenance. Many of these turbines operate at relatively low rotational speeds (e.g., typically 20 rpm for wind turbines) and require gears to increase the rotational speed up to rotational speeds that are useful for the generator (e.g., typically 1500 rpm for a 1.5 MW generator). This involves high levels of torque and accompanying high gear-mesh forces that can cause the gears to fail, thus meaning considerable maintenance to reduce the amount of failures. Because of the low speed of the turbine, the various gearbox components are usually supported by rolling element bearings. These bearings are subject to significant radial loads that can cause the bearings to fail prematurely, thus meaning considerable maintenance to reduce the amount of failures. For the reasons stated above, and for other reasons stated below which will become apparent to those skilled in the art upon reading and understanding the present specification, there is a need in the art for alternatives to existing fluid power generation systems, such as wind energy conversion systems and kinetic hydropower generation systems.

Defining the extent of cables loss in endometrial cancer subtypes and its effectiveness as an inhibitor of cell proliferation in malignant endometrial cells in vitro and in vivo. Loss of Cables expression is associated with a high incidence of endometrial hyperplasia and endometrial adenocarcinoma in humans. The Cables mutant mouse develops endometrial hyperplasia and following exposure to chronic estrogen develops early endometrial adenocarcinoma. The objectives of the current study were to determine if: (1) loss of Cables expression occurred in high grade endometrioid adenocarcinoma, uterine serous and clear cell carcinoma as observed in endometrial hyperplasia and low grade endometrial adenocarcinoma; (2) overexpression of Cables inhibited cell proliferation in endometrial cancer (EC) cells in vitro and in vivo; and (3) progesterone could regulate the expression of Cables mRNA. Hyperplastic endometrium and low and high grade endometrioid adenocarcinoma showed loss of Cables expression when compared to benign control secretory endometrium. Loss of Cables expression in serous and clear cell tumors was similar to that observed in endometrioid adenocarcinomas with greater than 80% showing loss of protein expression. Treatment of EC lines with progesterone increased cables expression in low-grade EC whereas it had no effect on cables expression in cells derived from high-grade EC. The progesterone-induced increase in cables was abrogated in the presence of a progesterone receptor (PR) antagonist, suggesting the PR mediates the increase. Cables overexpression inhibited cell proliferation of well differentiated EC cells and had no effect on the poorly differentiated EC cells. The capacity to form tumors was dramatically reduced in the Cables overexpressing cell lines compared to those cells containing the control vector. Collectively these results suggest that Cables is an important regulator of cell proliferation and loss of Cables expression contributes to the development of all types of EC.

FIG. 1 (Prior Art) is a perspective view of stacked connector assembly 1. Stacked connector assembly 1 includes a male surface mount connector 2 and a female surface mount connector 3. FIG. 2 (Prior Art) is cross-sectional view of male connector 2 and female connector 3 of FIG. 1. The cross-section of the male connector 2 reveals a pair of L-shaped metal pieces 4 and 5, referred to here as pins. These pins are inserted into holes in an insulative portion 6 so that the pins stay in place as illustrated. The upper portion of pin 4 is a solder tail 7. The upper portion of pin 5 is a solder tail 8. The solder tails 7 and 8 are soldered to corresponding conductors of a printed circuit board 9 so that male connector 2 is physically fixed to the first printed circuit board. The cross-section of the female connector 3 reveals a pair of metal inserts 10 and 11. Metal insert 10 has a solder tail portion 12 and a flexing contact portion 13. Metal insert 11 has a solder tail portion 14 and a flexing contact portion 15. The inserts 10 and 11 are inserted into holes in an insulative portion 16 so that the inserts stay in place as illustrated. The solder tail portions 12 and 14 are for soldering to corresponding conductors on the top of a second printed circuit board 17. FIG. 3 (Prior Art) is a cross-sectional view of male connector 2 and female connector 3 of FIG. 2 when the two connectors are mated. Contact portion 13 presses inward to the right on pin 4 thereby establishing a first conductive path through the connector assembly between solder tail 7 and solder tail 12. Similarly, contact portion 15 pressed inward on pin 5 to the left thereby establishing a second conductive path through the connector assembly between solder tail 8 and solder tail 14. FIG. 4 (Prior Art) is a simplified diagram representing the orientation of the conductive portions within the connector assembly. The diagram is of a cross-section taken through the two connectors 2 and 3 about halfway between, and parallel to, printed circuit boards 9 and 17. The dark rectangles are very simplified representations of cross sections of conductive portions. FIG. 5 (Prior Art) is a perspective view of an improved connector assembly 18 that includes a male connector 19 and a female connector 20. Note that every second one of the solder tails in the two rows of solder tails on the upper surface of male connector 19 are electrically coupled together. Reference numeral 21 illustrates one such pair of solder tails that is formed as a bar or strip. FIG. 6 (Prior Art) is a cross-sectional diagram of the connector assembly 18 of FIG. 5. The cross-section of FIG. 6 is taken through the connector assembly at the location of pair 21. Rather than there being two separate pins in the male connector 19 as in the case of FIG. 2, there is a single piece 22 of stamped metal that is inserted into insulative portion 23. Metal piece 22 has two solder tails 24 and 25 that are usable to solder the male connector 19 to a first printed circuit board 26. Rather than there being two separate metal inserts in the female connector 20 as in the case of FIG. 2, there is a single piece 27 of stamped metal that has two contact portions. Piece 27 has two solder tails 28 and 29 that are usable to solder female connector 20 to a second printed circuit board 30. FIG. 7 (Prior Art) is a view taken at the same sectional line as FIG. 6, except that FIG. 7 shows the connector assembly structure when the two connectors 19 and 20 are mated. Note that the flexing contact portions 31 and 32 press inward and make electrical contact with metal piece 22. Note that a large portion of the cross-sectional area of the connector assembly in FIG. 7 is metal that is electrically coupled together. FIG. 8 (Prior Art) is a cross-sectional view through the connector assembly 18, but the cross-section is taken through a pair of solder tails that are not joined together. The cross-section of FIG. 8 appears much like the cross-section of FIG. 2, except that the press fit extension portions on metal inserts 10 and 11 have been eliminated. FIG. 9 (Prior Art) is a cross-sectional view taken in same plane as the cross-sectional view of FIG. 8, except that male connector 19 and female connector 20 are shown in the mated position. Contact portion 33 presses inward to the right on pin 34 thereby establishing a first conductive path through the connector assembly between solder tail 35 and solder tail 36. Similarly, contact portion 37 pressed inward to the left on pin 38 thereby establishing a second conductive path through the connector assembly between solder tail 39 and solder tail 40. FIG. 10 (Prior Art) is a simplified diagram representing the orientation of the conductive portions within the connector assembly of FIG. 5. The diagram is of a cross-section taken through the two connectors 19 and 20 about halfway between, and parallel to, printed circuit boards 26 and 30. The dark rectangles represent cross sections of conductors. The longer rectangle 41 represents the conductive portions illustrated in FIGS. 6 and 7. These conductive portions are coupled to ground potential and form what approximates a ground plane that extends in the vertical dimension in FIG. 10. The smaller rectangles 42 and 43 represent the conductive portions in the plane of FIGS. 8 and 9. Rectangle 43 represents contact portion 37 and pin 38, whereas rectangle 43 represents contact portion 33 and pin 34. The conductors represented by rectangles 42 and 43 are used to conduct differential signals. Note that the topology of the ground portions and signal portions of FIG. 10 comes closer to a microstrip topology in that pairs of signal conductors are disposed side by side with respect to one another, and in that the pair of signal conductors are disposed over a ground plane. Because the topology of FIG. 10 is closer to that of a microstrip topology than is the topology of FIG. 4, the connector assembly of FIG. 5 can handle higher frequency signals that the connector assembly of FIG. 1. One example of a connector assembly that has a form similar to the form of the connector assembly of FIG. 5 is the so-called “Micro GigaCN stacking connector” from Fujitsu, model number FCN-260. The FCN-260 connector assembly is reported to be able to handle signals up to approximately three gigabits per second. A connector assembly is desired that can handle higher frequency signals.

[Prevalence of risk factors for fragility fracture in men aged 40 to 90 years of a Spanish basic Rural Health Area]. Osteoporosis and as a consequence fragility fractures have emerged in recent years as a major public health issue in developed countries. Although its epidemiology and risk factors in postmenopausal women are well known, few studies exist focused on analyzing this pathology in men. Our objective is to determine the prevalence of fragility fracture risk factors in men belonging to our population and to calculate the absolute risk of major osteoporotic fracture and hip fracture. Cross-sectional study conducted in a Rural Health Basic Area. The target population was composed by males between 40 and 90 years old. Causes of exception were not considered. Personal interviews were carried out collecting the following data: age, weight, height, body mass index (BMI), previous fractures, background on parent hip fracture, smoking habits, use of corticosteroids, background on rheumatoid arthritis, secondary osteoporosis, alcohol and bone mineral density (BMD). With this data, later in our Health Center, the Absolute Fracture Risk and the Hip Fracture Risk were calculated using the FRAX ® tool. 431 cases were studied. Mean age 65,8 ± 13,9 years old and BMI 28,4 ± 4,3 kg/m². BMD had not been determined for any of the patients. Prevalence of risk factors: previous fracture 3,7%; parents with hip fractures 10,4%; smokers 21,1%; glucocorticoids 2,8%; rheumatoid arthritis 0,9%; secondary osteoporosis 2,3%; alcohol 30,9%. Absolute fracture risk, 3,7 ± 3,1 95% CI (3,43-4,02); hip fracture risk 1,7 ± 2,5 95% CI (1,51-1,98). Particularly important for males, the elimination of alcohol and tobacco.

Gallium has been known for many years to be useful in the treatment of calcium bone disorders. Gallium is a metal which belongs to the Group III A Elements of the Periodic Table. The metallic compounds used, have, of course, a low order of toxicity and are pharmaceutically acceptable. Prior U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,529,593 issued Jul. 16, 1985 to Warrell et al; 4,686,104 issued Aug. 11, 1987 to Bockman et al.; and 4,704,277 issued Nov. 3, 1987 to Bockman et al. describe methods of preventing excessive loss of calcium from human bone by the administration of pharmaceutically acceptable gallium-containing compounds. The '593 patent teaches the use of pharmaceutically acceptable gallium salts to reduce the excessive loss of bone calcium. The patent specifically teaches the use of gallium to prevent or treat disorders associated with extensive loss of calcium from bone in humans by administering to the individual a pharmaceutically acceptable gallium compound. Of special importance among the disorders which, may be thus treated are hypercalcemia, osteopenia, osteoporosis, bone destruction due to metastasis from malignant tumors and hyperparathyroidism. Gallium salts which are disclosed to be of use include nitrate, citrate, and halide, preferably the chloride, carbon, acetate, titrate, oxylate, oxide or hydrated oxide. Loss of bone mass from increased bone resorption results in accelerated loss of calcium into the blood. This is the major cause of illness. Diseases result when significant depletion of bone calcium occurs and the structural integrity of the skeleton is compromised. The therapeutic agent of choice, according to the aforementioned patents, for treating many of the bone disorders is gallium, which both decreases bone resorption and increases bone tissue calcium content. Heretofore, there has been no link between the treatment of bone disorders with the inhibition or treatment of arthritis, and more particularly, rheumatoid arthritis. It has been found that gallium compounds, and gallium nitrate, in particular, are effective in treating arthritis. The invention is directed to treating or inhibiting all types of arthritis suffered by man. However, with no intention of limiting the invention, rheumatoid arthritis is discussed. Rheumatoid arthritis is a systemic disease of unknown cause. In the majority of patients, clinical and pathologic findings and disability are the result of chronic inflammation of synovial membranes. However, the frequency of extra-articular manifestations justifies the concept of "rheumatoid disease". Rheumatoid arthritis is one of the most crippling diseases in humans and for which there is no adequate treatment. Its symptoms include objective findings of heat, redness, swelling, tenderness, loss of motion or deformity of joints.

Ty Linton6-2 • 235 • LinebackerMatthews, N.C. • Charlotte Christian SchoolEnrolled at NC State for the 2014 spring semester ... Originally signed with North Carolina in 2010, and was recruited by Dave Doeren when he was at Wisconsin ... Elected to sign a pro baseball contract with Arizona instead, as the Diamondbacks drafted Linton in the 14th round and offered him a $1.25 million dollar signing bonus ... Coached by Jason Estep at Charlotte Christian School ... Started on both sides of the ball and helped lead Charlotte Christian to the NCSIAA 11-man Division I championship game as a senior ... Named to the NCISAA Division I all-state team three times ... Recorded 12 sacks on defense ... Ran for 542 yards and seven touchdowns on 118 carries on offense ... Also led Christian to the baseball NCISSA 3A state championship as a junior ...Coming out of high school, was ranked as the No. 25 player in North Carolina and the No. 63 linebacker in the country by Rivals.com and was ranked as the No. 27 outside linebacker in the country by ESPN.com.

Mental health nurses' views on therapeutic optimism. Registered nurses (RN) coordinate acute mental health units on a 24-hour basis and it behoves researchers to actually ask these nurses what they think contributes to their ability to work with patients in optimistic ways. In this study, 40 RN working in acute mental health settings were asked a series of questions to explore positive aspects of nursing work, which includes therapeutic optimism. Three themes were identified: (i) different ways nurses foster therapeutic optimism; (ii) perceptions of how an optimistic environment is fostered, and (iii) improvement of ward culture. Findings show the pivotal role mental health nurses have in improving teamwork, good communication, sharing, and collaboration, in addition to preceptoring and supervision. Furthermore, effective clinical management is essential to therapeutic optimism and, in this research, is considered to be the aspect of acute mental health nursing most relevant to improving the ward culture.

The described invention relates in general to an obstacle detection system for use with vehicles, and more specifically to an overhead obstacle detection and avoidance system that includes an ultrasonic sensor and processing unit for determining the height of an overhead obstacle and comparing that height to the maximum height of a vehicle. Large trucks and tractor-trailer units are commonplace in modern society and are used on a daily basis for transporting a multitude of items from one place to another. The highway system in the United States as well as in most other countries includes numerous bridges and overpasses that may create difficulties for the operators of trucks and tractor-trailer units due to the fact that the height of some vehicles exceeds the clearance required to safely travel under these obstacles. If a truck or tractor-trailer unit exceeds the required clearance of a bridge or overpass, and the operator of the vehicle is not able to make that determination prior to encountering the obstacle, a collision will occur. These collisions often result in extensive damage to both the vehicle and the section of the roadway involved. The operator of the vehicle, the operators of other vehicles on the affected section of road, and even pedestrians crossing a bridge or overpass may also be injured or even killed. Despite the problems described above, few systems for allowing vehicles such as trucks or tractor-trailer units to avoid collision with overhead obstacles are commercially available. Many previously developed systems are either prohibitively expensive to install, are prohibitively difficult to use, or are only somewhat effective for their intended purpose. Thus, there is an ongoing need for a reliable, relatively inexpensive and easy to install detection system for allowing large (i.e., tall) vehicles to avoid costly and dangerous collisions with overhead obstacles such as bridges and overpasses.

Vitiligo and overt thyroid diseases: A nationwide population-based study in Korea. Associations between vitiligo and thyroid diseases have been reported repeatedly. We investigated the associations between vitiligo and overt autoimmune thyroid diseases and thyroid cancer using the Korean National Health Insurance claims database. We defined patients with vitiligo as those whose records showed ≥4 physician contacts between 2009 and 2013 in which vitiligo was the principal diagnosis. We also established an age- and sex-matched control group without vitiligo (2 per 1 vitiligo patient). The outcomes of interest were concurrent Graves disease and Hashimoto thyroiditis (the patients were taking relevant thyroid medications) and thyroid cancer. The study enrolled 73,336 vitiligo patients and 146,672 controls. Patients with vitiligo were at increased risks of Graves disease (odds ratio [OR] 2.610 [95% confidence interval {CI} 2.319-02.938]), Hashimoto thyroiditis (OR 1.609 [95% CI 1.437-1.802]), and thyroid cancer (OR 1.127 [95% CI 1.022-1.242]), compared with the controls. The associations were consistently stronger in males and younger patients. Individual clinical information was not available, and the homogeneous population may limit the generalizability of the results. Vitiligo was significantly associated with overt autoimmune thyroid diseases and overt thyroid cancer.

The present invention relates generally to evaporator installations, and more particularly to evaporators for processing radioactive liquid wastes in a nuclear power plant. Until relatively recently the need for an evaporator system in nuclear power plants was confined to controlling the concentration of primary water, i.e. the liquid heat transfer medium between the atomic pile and the steam generators of the plant. This liquid, which normally contains sodium sulphate or boric acid, was sufficiently free of scale forming contaminants and sufficiently uniform in concentration that it could be evaporated without excessive scaling in a conventional calandria or long-tube-vertical (LTV) evaporator, wherein circulation through the heat exchanger was obtained by thermal gradients, as opposed to pumping or other mechanical circulation means. It has recently been recognized in the operation of nuclear power plants that liquids accummulated from floor drainage systems and other internal reactor-related sources constitute a potential radiation hazard, and must therefore be handled and disposed of as radioactive waste material, typically by sealing the waste in concrete drums or barrels, and then burying it either on land or at sea. Because of the relatively high expense of the disposal process, it is highly desirable that the radioactive liquid waste be concentrated prior to being sealed in the containers for burial. To this end the waste may be first processed in one or more evaporator stages, wherein a large portion of the liquid is removed as harmless non-radioactive steam or water vapor leaving concentrated liquor for disposal. Unfortunately, the concentrated waste liquor, which unlike primary water may contain suspended solids such as calcium, sodium and magnesium carbonates and sulphates in variable and unpredictable concentrations, is prone to boil and produce scaling in the heat exchanger and the other components of the conventional calandria and LTV natural flow evaporator systems heretofore used in the primary water concentrating process. This eventually reduces the efficiency of the evaporator to the point that its utility in the concentrating process is seriously impaired. While it is possible to remove some of the accummulated scaling by boiling out the evaporator system with a suitable solvent, it eventually becomes necesaary to shut down and dismantle the system so that insoluble scales and plugged tubes can be cleaned by mechanical means. Because the liquor within the evaporator systems is highly radioactive and the systems are therefore normally installed in concrete vaults for shielding and are not easily accessible, dismantling prior-art systems for descaling or repair has been a time-consuming and expensive operation. While forced circulation (FC) evaporators, where a pump or other mechanical circulation means is provided to circulate the liquor, overcome the scaling problem to a large degree by keeping the liquor circulating at a controlled rate with carefully controlled temperature gradients within the heat exchanger whereby boiling is restricted to the evaporation chamber, the use of these evaporators for concentrating radioactive liquids has been avoided in the past because of their use of a pump. Heretofore, such pumps, which were arranged below the level of the liquid in the system and therefore necessarily required a shaft seal resistant to the passage of the fluid being pumped, required frequent servicing which could be accomplished only with great difficulty because of the surrounding radiation shielding and the high radiation levels of the liquor. Furthermore, the use of a pump was considered objectionable because it increased the volume requirements of the system and made necessary additional access passageways, thus significantly increasing the required radiation shielding around the evaporator. Accordingly, it is a general object of the present invention to provide a new and improved evaporator system for concentrating radioactive liquid wastes in a nulcear power plant or the like. It is a more specific object of the present invention to provide an evaporator system for a nuclear power plant or the like which can be more readily dismantled for descaling or repair. It is a still more specific object of the present invention to provide a new and improved evaporator system which can be serviced without being drained. It is another object of the present invention to provide an evaporator for a nuclear power plant which minimizes scaling and the need for periodic maintenance. It is another object of the present invention to provide an evaporator system which can be serviced from one access plane. It is another object of the present invention to provide a new and improved pump mounting and assembly for an evaporator system. It is another object of the present invention to provide a circulation pump for an evaporator system which provides a minimal need for periodic maintenance. It is another object of the present invention to provide a circulation pump for an evaporator system which can be serviced from one access plane without draining the system.

This invention relates generally to optical focus detectors and, more particularly, to electrooptical detectors for providing an indication of the focus error with respect to a radiant energy beam impinging on a surface. Such focus detectors are useful in a variety of applications, but are particularly well suited for use in automatic focus control systems, such as might be used in recording or playback apparatus in which information is recorded on, or played back from a recording surface by means of a beam of light or other radiant energy. By way of a more specific example, one type of disc recording system, used for recording video or other information, records information on a disc surface by means of a laser beam focused onto the recording surface by an objective lens, the intensity of the beam being modulated in some manner to produce corresponding changes in an optical condition of the surface. During playback of the recording, a laser reading beam is also employed and is focused on the recording surface as the disc is rotated. A reflected portion of the reading beam is then directed to a photodetector device, which provides an electrical signal from which the recorded information can be reproduced. In both the recording and playback modes of operation, accurate control of the focus of the beams is critical to successful operation of the apparatus. Focus detectors of the prior art have utilized a central disc and concentric photodetector elements to measure the focus error of a beam. However, such devices do not exhibit the precision and linearity needed for some applications. Accordingly, there is still a significant need for a precise focus detector capable of measuring both the magnitude and direction of focus error. Ideally, such a detector should have a substantially linear response characteristic for some distance on both sides of the point of zero focus error, i.e., the output signal generated by the detector should be practically proportional to the focus error, which can be measured as a distance of displacement of the objective lens. The present invention satisfies this need.

Well operations, including well drilling, production or completion operations, particularly for oil and natural gas wells, utilize various uphole and downhole well components and tools, particularly rotatable components and tools, which must maintain a high abrasion resistance and a low coefficient of sliding friction under extreme conditions, such as, high temperatures and high pressures for their efficient operation. These include many types of rotatable rotors, shafts, bushings, bearings, sleeves and other components that include surfaces that are in slidable engagement with one another. These high temperatures can be elevated further by heat generated by the components and tools themselves, particularly those that are used in the downhole operations. Mud motors, for example, can generate additional heat during their operation. Materials used to fabricate the various uphole and downhole well components and tools used in well drilling, production or completion operations are therefore carefully chosen for their ability to operate, often for long periods of time, in these extreme conditions. In order to maintain a high abrasion resistance and a low coefficient of sliding friction these components and tools frequently employ a surface coating, such as various chromium hardcoats. While such coatings are generally effective to provide the desired abrasion resistance and coefficient of sliding friction, they are known to be susceptible to corrosion upon exposure to various well environments, particularly fluids that include chlorides. Therefore, the development of materials that can be used to form well components and tools having the desired combination of high abrasion resistance and low coefficient of sliding friction, as well as high corrosion resistance, particularly in chloride environments, is very desirable.

The present invention relates to butterfly fire dampers for use in air ducts, particularly those which are intended for use as fire, smoke and/or air control dampers and which are intended to automatically move between the open and closed positions in response to the presence of fire or the receipt of a fire or smoke activated signal, and/or to be moved to intermediate positions to allow preselected volumes of air therethrough. Multiple, folding blade fire dampers having a plurality of blades disposed within a frame having an inwardly depending flange are known in the prior art, as for example, in my U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,814,165 and 3,866,657. In my U.S. Pat. No. 3,899,156, a single blade fire damper is described. In this regard, please refer to U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,009,473 (Hennan); 2,148,530; 3,337,991 (Adams); 3,720,153 (Jardinier et al); French No. 2,307,228 (Barbarin) and my prior U.S. Pat. No. 3,725,972. The present invention also relates to the field of operators, and more particularly, to the field of damper operators which actuate dampers in response to heat or remote signals but which are immediately resettable immediately after the passage of activation conditions so that they may again respond to fire conditions. The present invention also relates to operators which are adapted to set the position of a damper's blades to regulate the volume of air passing therethrough under normal conditions. Finally, the present invention relates to such operators which may be reset without providing manual access to the vicinity of the damper blades. Conventionally, fusible or meltable releasing devices have been employed, such as fusible links in cables which are held under tension in normal conditions and which are activated by the melting of the link and the resulting break of the cable to deploy the blades of a fire or smoke damper into their activated positions. More recently, bimetallic links, such as those illustrated in my previously issued U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,889,314 entitled, "Heat Actuated Link" and 3,725,972 entitled, "Fire Link And Method Of Actuating Same" have been described wherein a mounting element having a bimetallic strip attached thereto, which cooperates therewith, may engage a pawl having an aperture therein which is engaged by a bimetallic element in the normal position, and which is released thereby as the tip of the bimetallic element separates from the striker portion of the mounting element thereof to release the pawl. These bimetallic links have conventionally been installed by attaching a cable to either the pawl, the mounting element, or both, in a manner similar to that used for the fusible or meltable links described above. These bimetallic links have exhibited certain advantages over the prior art fusible links in that following a return to temperatures, the link may be reset by reinserting the pawl into the remaining link assembly. Unfortunately, prior art devices of the type described above have often required that access be provided to the link device so that manual resetting is possible. In certain installations, such as smoke tunnels, ducts, plenums, etc., human access to reset or replace releasing devices is limited. Additionally, relatively skilled personnel must be employed in order to reset or replace the aforementioned releasing devices. In the case of the bimetallic links, these people must at least understand the proper method of inserting the pawl so that it is properly gripped by the remaining portion of the link. For one approach to this problem, please refer to my previously issued U.S. Pat. No. 3,796,248, dated Mar. 12, 1974 entitled, "Remotely Resettable Fire Damper".

The field of the invention relates to windmills having counterbalancing mechanisms for allowing effective operation under minimal wind velocities. Windmills have for many years been used for pumping water to supply the needs of rural residents, farmers and communities where surface water is not readily accessible. Their advantages are their simplicity in construction and economical operation. The disadvantages of commercially available windmills have been their unreliability (due to dependence on a considerable gust of wind to start vane rotation) and the limited depth from which they could pump. The latter problem is particularly serious in areas where the water table is deep or has dropped considerably over a period of years. For these reasons, many users have turned to diesel, gas or electrically powered pumps to provide water for domestic and livestock consumption or irrigation. In addition to the relatively high initial expenditures for pumps of this type, their cost of operation has increased dramatically over the past few years due to rising energy costs. They are also infeasible in parts of the world where power is unavailable and where the technical expertise for maintaining or operating the pumps is absent. Attempts have been made to provide a windmill which will be actuated without the need of a sizable gust of wind. U.S. Pat. No. 3,782,222 is an example of a windmill having a counterbalancing system. Other pumping devices, such as disclosed in U.S. Pat. Nos. 1,019,142 and 1,632,322 have also employed counterweights in various manners.

Gender distribution of patients with Parkinson's disease treated with subthalamic deep brain stimulation; a review of the 2000-2009 literature. Deep brain stimulation (DBS) of the subthalamic nucleus (STN) has been the mainstream surgical procedure for advanced Parkinson's disease (PD) during the last decade. Reports from a few individual centres have hinted that women who receive STN DBS are under-represented. We aimed to evaluate the gender distribution of patients with PD who had received STN DBS during the last ten years, and to discuss the findings in relation to studies on gender prevalence of PD. A search of the PubMed database of clinical papers in English language related to STN DBS between 2000 and 2009 was conducted. Care was taken to minimize redundancies in reporting of published patients. The proportion of men and women were expressed in total and according to pre-defined geographic regions. One hundred and thirty five papers were eligible for review. The gender of the patients was specified in 119 papers on a total of 3880 patients, of which 63% were men. According to geographic origin of publications, the percentage of men with STN DBS was 68% in North America, 62% in Europe, 69% in Australia and 50% in Asia. The proportion of male patients who undergo STN DBS seems to exceed the reported male/female ratio of patients with PD.

This invention relates to household-type mops and more particularly to wet mops employing compressible absorbent cleaning elements with flat mopping surfaces and having built-in means for wringing absorbed moisture therefrom. More specifically, it relates to an advanced wringable household mop which provides improved performance and appearance, employs user-friendly components and is otherwise ergonomically correct, and can be manufactured at competitive costs. As will be apparent, the compressible absorbent cleaning element in the preferred embodiment of the invention comprises natural or synthetic sponge materials similar to those extensively employed in various forms in prior art mops for such purposes. Each of the many prior-art wringable mops employing same, however, suffer from one or more shortcomings. For example, many of the presently-designed sponge mops have rounded or curved cross sections which undesirably minimize the mop area in actual contact with the surface being mopped, or vary such area, sometimes unevenly, depending upon the pressure applied. This cuts down on mopping uniformity and efficiency and accelerates or causes uneven wear. Built-in mechanisms for self-wringing of the prior-art sponges are popular but have their own set of problems. For example, in some instances, particularly in the case of mops employing flat sponges, the wringing mechanisms are effective in removing absorbed moisture but have a tendency to entrap dirt particles. Instead, the wringing mechanism should preferably tend to flush out the dirt particles along with the absorbed fluids. In some instances, the wringing mechanisms perform their function but create still other problems. For example, some wringing mechanisms flex the normally-flat sponge as much as 150.degree. or more, potentially leading to premature stress failure. Some wringing mechanisms or portions thereof are forwardly disposed and obscure all or portions of the forward edge of the sponge from the vision of the user. They also act like an unnecessary bumper and inhibit efforts to advance the sponge itself to the immediate proximity of upstanding articles, such as walls, furniture, and the like. Similarly, some wringing mechanisms, while not forward facing, project in the "at-rest" position beyond the sides of the sponge, again inhibiting the ability to mop surfaces immediately adjacent upstanding articles. They also create the potential for damage or appearance problems, particularly from scraping or marring contact. When stored, some wringing mechanisms unduly project from the mop itself and take up excessive space or obstruct the storage area. Other sponge mop wringer designs employ rollers which necessarily operate at a fixed radius with respect to the axis of rotation and do not lend themselves to alternative embodiments which are not so limited. A design which lends itself to a variety of separate embodiments, e.g., a fixed radius, variable radii or limited-variable radii is preferable in order to meet differing requirements. Still other designs require excessive and awkward positioning and manipulative effort by the user to wring out the sponge, including rotation of the wringer lever through excessive operating arcs, e.g., as much as 130.degree. or more. In some designs, the return stroke of the wringing-out cycle is essentially wasted motion; it has little wringing effect but still requires substantial effort. In some prior-art designs, the wringing operation results in excessive exposure of the hands and arms of the user to the fluids and contaminants being expelled. While this problem can be minimized by repositioning of the hands during portions of the wringing-out cycle, such efforts are self-defeating from the standpoint of efficient work habits. In still other prior-art designs the necessary periodic replacement of worn sponges is a burdensome task, sometimes requiring a tool or other instrument. Coupled with other shortcomings hereinabove set forth, the use of the mop on the whole is hardly user-friendly. Not only must the mop of the present invention provide superior mopping and wringing functions, the cost of manufacture must be consistent with the highly competitive pricing conditions found in the marketplace for such a product. Accordingly, the number of components must be limited, the complexity thereof must be minimized and other costs of manufacture, including assembly, must be competitively acceptable. Many prior-art mops have failed one or more of these criteria. This is vividly illustrated, for example, by many prior-art designs which employ a plurality of roller units to wring out the cleaning element. In addition to superior functionality and competitive manufacturing cost, the resulting product, by its appearance on the display shelf, must quickly appeal to the purchaser even upon superficial inspection. How it works must be readily apparent. Some prior-art designs, while achieving functionality or cost goals, fail to create or convey such perception to the average purchaser upon initial inspection. Often, this situation results in no further inspection and no sale.

""Apartment For Rent"" "l`d like a phone slug." " All out." "Down, back and left." " Thanks." "Momma, this is Jeanne." "There`s an apartment in Passy l`m going to see." "Then I go meet Tom at the station." "See you later." "Kisses." "So long." "l`m here for the apartment." "I saw the sign." " Sign?" " Yes." "What sign?" "Always the same." "Nobody tells me anything." " l`d like to see it." " To rent it?" "I don`t know yet." "They rent, they leave, and l`m the last to know." "You think that`s fair?" "If you want to go up alone, go on." "l`m afraid of the rats." "The key is gone." "Lots of strange things happen." "They drink six bottles a day." "Wait." "There must be a duplicate." "Here it is." "You`re very young, right?" "Let me go, please." "She`s crazy." "Where are you?" "What a fright." "How`d you get in?" "By the door." "Oh, yes. I left it open." "But I didn`t hear you come in." " l was already here." " Excuse me?" "Then the key" "And I bribed the concierge." "These old houses are fascinating." "An armchair would look good here." "The armchair has to go... in front of the window." "You are American?" "You have an American accent." " Will you rent it?" " And you?" "I don`t know." "Do I answer or not?" "There is no one." "I don`t know." "Then you decided to take it?" "I had decided, but" "But now I don`t know." "Do you like it?" "Do you?" "I have to think about it." "Think fast." "You still here?" "Attention." "Who do they take us for?" "This is cinema." "We`re making a movie." "If I kiss you, that might be cinema." "If I caress you, it might be cinema." "What the devil do they want?" "I know them." "l`m shooting a film-- "Portrait of a Girl--" for television." "And the girl is you." "But you`re mad!" "You should have asked my permission." "Yes, but it amuses me... to begin with the girl of the portrait who meets her fiance." "This is my crew." "And so you kiss me... knowing it`s a film." "Coward!" "See, it`ll be most of all a love story." "Tell me,Jeanne." "What did you do while I was away?" "I thought of you day and night and I cried." "Darling, I can`t live without you." "Magnificent!" "Stop!" "Perfect!" "I wanted to clean up... but the police didn`t let me." "They didn`t believe in suicide." "Too much blood all over." "They had fun making me reenact." ""She went there." "She went here." "She opened the curtain."" "I did everything like her." "The clients, awake all night." "The hotel full of police." "They playing around with the blood." "All spies." "If she was sad, if she was happy... lf you fought, if you hit each other." "And then when you were married... why you didn`t have children." "Pigs." "They treated me like dirt." "They said..." ""Nervous type, your boss." "You know he was a boxer?"" "So?" ""But he didn`t do well."" "Then he was... an actor." "And then a bongo player." "Revolutionary in South America." "Journalist in Japan." "One day he debarks in Tahiti." "Wanders around." "Learns French." "Then he arrives in Paris." "And here... meets a woman with money." "Marries her and" ""Now what`s your boss do?"" "He`s kept." ""Can I clean up now?"" ""Don`t touch anything." "You really think... she killed herself?"" "And then he pushed me in a corner trying to" "Turn off the water." "Maybe they`ll do an autopsy." "Why don`t you turn off the water?" "Here`s your razor." "lt`s not mine." "They don`t need it anymore." "The inquiry is over." "Yes, she had some cuts here and on the neck." "Excuse me." "Where should I put it?" " You could have rung." " lt was open." "Here?" "No, in front of the fireplace." "And these chairs?" "Here`s the table." "Where do I put it?" "How do I know?" "He`ll decide." "l`ll leave it here." " Heavy. lt`s really a double." " But it won`t fit." "You`ll see." "Your husband`ll find room." "What a mess." "Thank you." "This armchair has to go in front of the window." "Like that." "I only came to return the key." " To return it to you." " What do I care?" "Take off your coat." "Come on." "Give me a hand." "Take these chairs... and put them here." "Put them on the other side." "Take it too." "You didn`t lose any time." "Listen, sir... I have to go." " l thought l`d find you here." " l expected you later." "I took the first train." "Paul, how horrible!" "Papa is in bed with asthma." "The doctors forbade him to come." "Better." "l`m stronger." "What are you looking for?" "Something that explains it." "A letter, a clue" "There`s nothing, absolutely nothing." "lt`s impossible that my little Rose" "Nothing for her mother." "Not a word." "Useless to look anymore." "Not even for you, her husband." "You need to rest." "Maybe there`s a vacant room." "With a razor?" "What time did it happen?" "I don`t know." "At night." "And then?" "And then-- l already told you on the phone." "When I found her... I called the ambulance." "After your telephone call... we were awake all night long... talking about you and Rose." "And Papa talked softly... as if it happened in our house." " Where did it happen?" " ln a room." "Did she suffer?" "Ask the doctors who did the autopsy." "The autopsy?" "I already had some announcements." "l`ve had enough of deaths." "I think of everything." "I do." "l`ll prepare a lovely funeral chamber... with lots of flowers." "The cards... the mourning clothes, the flowers." "You have everything in that suitcase." "You didn`t forget anything." "But I don`t want any priests here." "Understand?" "You need them." "It must be a religious funeral." "Rose wasn`t a believer." "Paul, don`t shout." "Don`t shout like that!" "They`ll give her absolution." "Absolution and a nice mass." "That`s all I ask." "Understand?" "Rose-- She`s my baby girl." "Why did she kill herself?" "Why?" "Why did she kill herself?" "Why?" "You don`t know, do you?" "You don`t know." "You shouldn`t have done that to me." "But it`s not a wig." "lt`s mine." "l`m not beautiful?" "Tell me you don`t like the way I look." "But I do like the way you look." "Listen." "You seem changed, but you`re the same." "I can already see a shot." "The camera is high." "It slowly descends toward you." "And as you advance, it moves in on you." "There`s music too." "It gets closer and closer to you." "l`m in a hurry." "Let`s begin." "But first we`ll talk about it a little." "Tonight we improvise." "Follow me." "He was my childhood friend." "He would watch me for hours." "Maybe he understood me." "Dogs are better than people." "May I present Olympia, my nurse." "Mustapha knew how to tell the poor from the rich." "If someone well-dressed came in, he didn`t growl." "But if it was a beggar, you should have seen him." "The colonel had him recognize Arabs by their odor." " Olympia, open the door." " First, give me a kiss." "Go and open it." "Olympia is the personification of domestic virtue." "Faithful, economic and racist." "At Papa`s death, we moved to the old country house." "My childhood was made up of smells." "The mold on the walls, the closed rooms." "Many children came to play." "We ran from morning to night." "Growing old is a crime." "That`s me." "And that`s Mademoiselle Sauvage, the teacher." "Severe and religious." "She was too good and spoiled you." "This is Christine." "The best friend." "She`s married and has two children." "lt`s like a village here." "Everyone knows everyone." "I couldn`t live in Paris." "lt`s more humane here." "lt`s melancholy remembering the past." "Why melancholy?" "lt`s marvelous." "lt`s your childhood." "lt`s everything I want." "And what are you doing there?" "Who are all these zombies around us?" "The door!" "l`m opening the door." "l`m opening the doors!" " What are you doing?" " Setting up the shot." "There. I found it." "Reverse gear." "And what are you doing here?" "Beat it!" "Scram!" "Yes." "Reverse gear!" "Understand?" "Like a car." "Put it in reverse." "Close your eyes." "Back up." "Close your eyes." "Come forward, backing up." "Keep going and find your childhood again." "lt`s Papa." "There." "You take off and find your childhood again." "In full dress uniform." "Don`t be afraid." "Overcome the obstacles." "Papa in Algiers." "You are fifteen." "Fourteen." "Thirteen." "Twelve." "Eleven." "Ten." "Nine." "My favorite street at eight years old." "My notebook." "My French homework." "Theme: "The Countryside."" "Exposition: "The country is the home of the cows." "The cow is all dressed in leather." "The cow has four sides:" "front, back... top and bottom."" " lsn`t that good?" " Really charming." "Source of my culture was Larousse and I copied it." ""Menstruation." "Feminine noun." "Physiological function consisting in flow." "Penis." "Masculine noun." "Organ of copulation, measuring between five and 40 centimeters."" "This is a little Robert!" "Look." " Who is it?" " My first love." " Who?" " lt`s my cousin Paul." "The first love." " But his eyes are closed." " What?" "His eyes are closed!" "He played piano very well." "That`s how I remember him-- sitting at the piano." "His fingers flew over the keys." "He practiced hour after hour." "At the bottom of the garden there were two trees." "A plantain and a chestnut." "Sunday after mass... everyone sat under his own tree." "It was marvelous." "We looked into each other`s eyes." "And for me these trees were the jungle." " What are you doing?" " We`re shitting." "Why?" "Can`t you see ?" " ln my jungle?" " Let`s run!" "Shoot!" "Shoot!" "Did you get everything?" " Did you get it?" " Everything." "Olympia was sublime." "She gave a precise idea of her racism." "This really is a jungle." "Tell me about your father." " Aren`t we finished?" " Five minutes." "But l`m in a hurry for work." "But the colonel?" "The colonel had green eyes and shiny boots." "I loved him like a god." "He was so handsome in his uniform." "What are you saying?" "I forbid you." "He died in `58 in Algeria." "In `58, and I forbid you to joke." "Why don't you listen to me?" "The first time?" "I was very late for school." "I began running downhill." "Suddenly, I felt a strong sensation here." "I came as I ran." "Then I ran faster and faster, and the more I ran... the more I came." "Two days later I tried running again... but no dice." "Why don`t you listen to me?" "You know, it seems to me l`m talking to the wall." "Your solitude weighs on me, you know?" "It isn`t indulgent or generous." "You`re an egoist!" "We can`t sleep with this music." "I came to this hotel for one night... and stayed for five years." "When we had the hotel people came here to sleep." "Now they do anything." "They hide out, take drugs, play music." "Remove that hand." "You`re not alone." "l`m here." "You`re crazy!" "l`m beginning to understand." "You want me to stop the music?" "Okay." "l`ll make him shut up." "What are you doing, Paul?" "Turn on the light." "Light, Paul." " Good night, Madam." " Good night." "Good night, Marcel." "Good night, Paul." "Who is it?" "You like?" "He was Rosa`s lover." "I am coming." "I am ready." "Are we going together?" "He is a jerk." "He didn`t even say bye!" "What are you doing here?" "l`m coming. l`m flying." "Stay there!" "Why didn`t you talk on the phone?" "What`s the matter?" "Find another girl for your film." "But why?" "You take advantage of me." "You make me do things l`ve never done." "You`re stealing my time." "You make me do whatever you want." "The film is over." "l`m tired of having my mind raped!" "Come in." "You wanted to talk to me?" "Do." "But... "l didn`t come here to cry with you."" "It bothers you if I keep working?" "It distracts me after what happened." "identical." " Rose wanted them identical." " Our bathrobes." "You can`t tell me anything I don`t already know." "Same color, same design." "Yes, yes." "You are precise." "l`m wondering why... you save these newspaper clippings." "is it a job or a hobby?" "I don`t like the word "hobby."" "lt`s a job to roll out the salary." "Then it`s serious." "lt`s a job that makes you read." "Very instructive." "Be sincere." "Didn`t you know we had identical bathrobes?" "We have lots of things in common." "I know everything." "Rose often told me about you." "I don`t think there are many such marriages." "lt`s strange." "l`m thirsty." " A sip of bourbon?" " Wait." "Here`s the "bourbon."" "Another present from Rose?" "I don`t like it, but Rose always wanted it around." "l`ve often wondered... if by these details... by certain unimportant things... one can explain... understand together." "Together?" "For almost a year Rose and I, without passion... but regularly-- l thought I knew her as one can know" "One`s mistress." "For example, a while ago something happened... I couldn`t explain." "Look there on the wall." "She climbed up on the wall... and tried to tear off the paper with her hands." "I stopped her." "She was ruining her nails." "She did it with a strange... violence." "I had never seen her like that." "Our room is painted white." "She wanted it different from the others... so it would seem like... a normal house." "She wanted to change in here too... and she`d begun with the walls." "A fever blister." "Shit." "You were lucky enough to-- to be" "You must have been a good man... 20 years ago." "Not as much as you." "You have all your hair." "I have to cut it often and wash it." "I wash my hair often." "Do you have massages?" "You`re in good shape." "What do you do for the belly?" "That`s my problem." "Here." " l have a secret." " What?" "Thinking of leaving?" "The suitcase." "America." "Why did she betray you with me?" "You don`t think Rose killed herself?" "lt`s difficult for me, too, to believe it." "Here`s my secret." "Thirty times every morning." "Really, Marcello... I wonder what she ever saw in you." "Are you here?" "Nobody here?" "Hi, monster." "Something wrong?" "What do you think?" "That an American on the floor in an empty house... eating cheese and drinking water is interesting?" "What`s under here?" "An empty space." "What are you doing here?" "Shit!" "Know why I sent everyone away?" "Because you want to be alone with me." "And why?" "Because you have something important to tell me." "lt`s something very important." "Happy or sad?" "lt`s a secret." "Then it`s happy." "What kind of secret?" "A secret between a man... and a woman." "Dirt or love?" "Love." "And it`s not everything." "A love secret that isn`t everything?" "What is it?" "That in a week l`m marrying you." "What?" "l`m marrying you!" " l`m marrying you!" " Marrying me?" " Let`s get married?" " Yes." "Let`s get married!" " Shall we marry or not?" " Yes, let`s get married." "Yes or no?" "Send everything to the country." "What do you think,Jeanne?" "Olympia will be happy." "I went with Tom." "He`s preparing a family museum." "Papa`s boots, no." "l`ll keep them." "They give me strange shivers." "These military things never get old." "How heavy it was when Papa taught me to shoot." "l`ll keep that." "lt`s a good idea to have a weapon in the house." " But if you don`t know how to use it?" " lt`s enough to have it." "It frightens." "You saved everything of Papa`s." "This was his orderly." "A fine example of a Berber." "A strong race, but as servants-- disastrous." "Send everything to the country." "Enough accumulating." "Don`t worry." "Soon you`ll have lots of space." "What`s that mean?" "Nothing." "Madame, the colonel`s lady, announces..." "What?" "that in these solemn days..." "What solemn days?" "l`m getting married in a week." "What did you say?" "To Tom!" "In a week!" " What?" " Tom!" " ln one week!" " What are you doing in a week?" "Rolling." "Five... two." "Come forward." "Start shooting." "Yes, yes, we are coming." "Wait." "Push your arm." "How do you see marriage?" " The marriage?" " Yes." "I see it everywhere." "Always." "Everywhere?" "On walls, on housefronts." "Yes, on posters." "What do the posters say?" "They talk about cars... canned meat, cigarettes." "No, the subject is the young couple... before marriage, without children." "Then, after the marriage, with the children." "Marriage, in short." "The ideal, successful marriage... isn`t anymore the old style, in church... with a depressed and a complaining wife." "Today, the advertising marriage is smiling." "Smiling?" "In the posters." "But why not take the poster marriage seriously?" "Marriage." "The pop marriage." "Pop." "There`s the formula." "For pop youth, pop marriage." "And if it doesn`t work?" "Fix it like a car." "The couple are two workmen in overalls... repairing a motor." "And in case of adultery, what happens?" "Instead of two workmen, there are three or four." "And love?" "is love pop too?" "No." "Love is not pop." "If it is not pop, what is it?" "The workmen go to a secret place." "They take off their overalls, becoming men and women again... and make love." "You`re superb!" "lt`s the dress that makes the bride." "You`re better than Rita Hayworth... than Joan Crawford..." "Kim Novak..." "Lauren Bacall..." "Ava Gardner when she loved Mickey Rooney!" "What are you doing?" "Stop!" "Why don`t you film with the rain?" "You are crazy!" " Where`s Jeanne?" " She ran out." "Where`d she go in this rain?" "Pardon me!" "I wanted to leave you." "I could not." "I can`t leave you." "Understand?" "Do you still want me?" "I want to get out of here." "I want to go away." "I can`t take it anymore here." "l`m going away." "l`m never coming back." "Never." "What?" "There is some noise there." "Then is there somebody?" "Hurry up!" "Wake up!" "Open up!" " But it`s 4:00 a.m. - l need the usual room." "Number 4." "Half an hour will do." "Yes, yes." "Half an hour." " We`re full." " No, indeed." "When you`re full you put out a sign." "I know." "l`m tired of arguing." "Call the owner." "Move it!" "The owner`s always been helpful to me." "We`re old friends, Rose and me." "Open, please." "Knock it off if you don`t want me to tell her." "Come in." "All set." "Happy?" "He left me." "Sorry." "Hurry, please." "He can`t be too far." "Talk him into coming back." "Tell him this can`t be done." "Please don`t say you found me." "Did you see how ugly she is?" "Once my wife was enough for me, but now... she`s got a disease that gives her snake skin." " Put yourself in my place." " Come." "Come with me." "Let me go." "Please let me go." "You`re crazy!" "Let me go!" "Don`t you remember the gentlemen in 4?" "He`s been living here for a few days." "I don`t know anyone." "They come in, go out." "The man in 4." "The lady in 1 ." "What do I know?" "Where`d they take the furniture?" "lt`s empty." "Where do you send his mail?" "Give me the address." "I don`t have it." "I don`t know anyone." " Not even his name?" " Nothing." "Miss!" "I found an apartment for us." "1 Jules Verne Street." "Yes, in Passy." "Come quick." "Come right away." "You understood where it is?" "l`ll wait for you." "Come." "Come in." "You like our apartment?" "lt`s full of light." "There`s one room too small for a big bed." "Maybe for a baby." "Fidel." "Nice name for a kid." "Fidel." "Like Castro." "But I want a daughter too." "Rose." "Like Rose Luxembourg." "She`s not as well known, but she`s not bad." "I wanted to film you every day." "In the morning when you wake up, then when you fall asleep." "When you smile the first time." "And I didn`t film anything." "Today we finish shooting." "The film is finished." "I don`t like things that finish." "One must begin something else right away." "But it`s huge!" "Who are you?" " You could get lost in here." " Oh, stop it." "How`d you find it?" "By chance." " We`ll change everything." " Everything." "We`ll change chance to fate." "Come forward." "Take off!" "You`re in heaven!" "Now dive!" "Make three turns!" "Descend!" "What`s happening to me?" "An air pocket." "What`s happening to you?" "Enough of these turbulent zones." "We can`t joke like this, like children." " We`re adults." " Adults?" "That`s terrible." "Yes, it`s terrible." " Then how must we act?" " l don`t know." "lnvent gestures, words." "For example..." "One thing I do know." "Adults are serious, logical... circumspect, hairy..." "They face all problems." "Here, this apartment is not for us." "Absolutely not." " Where are you going?" " To look for another." "Another like what?" "One you can live in." "But you can live here." "I find this sad." "It smells." " Come with me?" " No, no." "I have to close the windows, give back the keys, leave it all in order." "Okay." "Okay." "Bye." "Mr. mâitre d`hôtel." "The jury has just chosen... the following ten best couples." "Three, seven... eight, nine... eleven, twelve... thirteen, fourteen, fifteen... and nineteen." "Then, ladies and gentlemen... all best wishes for the last tango." "Out!" "What are you doing?" "lt`s love!" "Always" "But it`s a contest!" "Where`s the love fit in?" "Go to the movies to see love!" "Enough!" " Listen" " Enough!" "lt`s over!" "Go away!" "Go away!" "l`ll call the police!" "I mean, after you, mademoiselle." "So long, sister." "lt`s over. lt`s over!" "Police!" "You`re crazy!" "Help!" "Help me, please!" "Help me, please!" "Please help!" "Help!" "I don`t know who he is." "He followed me on the street." "He tried to rape me." "He`s a madman." "I don`t know his name." "I don`t know who he is." "He wanted to rape me." "I don`t know." "I don`t know him." "I don`t know who he is." "He`s a madman." "I don`t know his name."

Effects of neridronate treatment in elderly women with osteoporosis. Osteoporosis is a common disorder, especially among elderly post-menopausal women. Elderly women are often affected by co-morbidities, impaired gastrointestinal function and reduced mobility; therefore, the treatment strategy for their osteoporosis can be difficult. In this randomized pilot study, we have investigated the effects of a 12-month treatment with neridronate on bone mineral density (BMD), bone turnover markers and quality of life (QoL). The study included 40 women (age, 65-80 yr; post-menopausal period, >15yr) from a single osteoporosis centre. Twenty women received a monthly im injection of 25 mg of neridronate associated with a daily dose of 500 mg of calcium and 400 U of vitamin D. Twenty women received calcium plus vitamin D supplements alone. Changes in BMD at the lumbar spine and femoral neck were measured by dual energy X-ray absorptiometry. Serum type I collagen C-telopeptide (sCTX), urinary free-deoxypyridinoline (ufDPD), bone alkaline phosphatase (ALP) and serum osteocalcin levels were determined. For the QoL assessment, the Italian version of the SF-36 test was administrated. Spine and hip BMD rose by 6.6 +/- 3 and 4.2 +/- 2.3%, respectively (p < 0.05), after 12 months of neridronate treatment. Markers of skeletal turnover significantly fell already after 3 months of neridronate treatment and decreased progressively thereafter within 12 months. The mean decrease at 12 months ranged from 38 +/- 11% for sCTX to 25.2 +/- 15% for ufDPD (p < 0.001, all). The mean improvement in QoL in the treated group was 45.7% for bodily pain, 37.5% for general health perception, 23.1% for vitality, 18% for emotional role functioning and 12% for physical role functioning. The changes observed in BMD, turnover markers and QoL in the untreated group were ns. The intermittent neridronate administration was easily manageable and well tolerated. In conclusion, neridronate currently represents a valid option for the treatment of osteoporosis, since it helps just as much as oral BPs in the improvement of BMD and in particular conditions it can be even more effective.

Fatty acid synthesis by slices from developing leaves. Fatty acid synthesis was studied in successive leaf sections from the base to the tip of developing barley (Hordeum vulgare L.), maize (Zea mays L.), rye grass (Lolium perenne L.) and wheat (Triticum aestivium L.) leaves. The basal regions of the leaves had the lowest rates of fatty acid synthesis and accumulated small amounts of very long chain fatty acids. Fatty acid synthesis was highest in the middle leaf sections in all four plants. Linolenic acid synthesis from [1-(14)C]acetate was highest in the distal leaf sections of rye grass. The labelling of the fatty acids of individual lipids of rye grass was examined and it was found that [(14)C]linolenic acid was highest in the galactolipids. Synthesis of this acid in the galactolipids was most active in leaf segment C. Only traces of [(14)C]linolenic acid were ever found in phosphatidylcholine and it is concluded that this phospholipid cannot serve as a substrate for linoleic acid desaturation in rye grass. The synthesis of fatty acids was sensitive to arsenite, fluoride and the herbicide EPTC. The latter was only inhibitory towards those leaf segments which made very long chain fatty acids. Formation of fatty acids from [1-(14)C]acetate was also studied in chloroplasts prepared from successive leaf sections of rye grass. Chloroplasts isolated from the middle leaf sections had the highest activity. Palmitic and oleic acids were the main fatty acid products in all chloroplast preparations. Linolenic acid synthesis was highest in chlorplasts isolated from the distal leaf sections of rye grass.

"Excuse me, I'm so sorry." "I never do this with celebrities, but are you by any chance the foxy mom on the New Horizon realty ad?" "Am I gonna regret doing that?" "Did the *** man have any regrets?" "This ad is perfect." "See, I'm not just selling houses," "I'm selling myself, and the best part about me is my family." "And my teeth." "And both..." "are on display in this ad." " Mmm. - "I can't be satisfied until you're satisfied"?" "Coming soon to a bus bench near you, not to mention our minivan." "So that's really happening?" "Wait." "What's happening to our minivan?" "Having this bad boy shrink-wrapped on it." "Classy." "Yep." "Now all that driving around your mom does will serve a purpose." "Good morning, family." "How are you all doing on this beautiful day?" "Okay." "What's this?" "Haley's S.A.T. scores are available online." "I hate you." "Oh!" "Today's the big day." "Let's take a look, see how she did." "Do we really have to look at them now?" "Don't worry." "We're not expecting any miracles." "Thank you." "Are those Haley's scores?" "Are you sure?" "Why?" "Are they bad?" "No, they're not bad." "Are they good?" "No, they're average." "Sweetie, we did it." "Our baby's average." "Medium five!" "Oh." "This is just a fluke." "She can take them again." "Yeah, and she'll probably do even better." "You are gonna have your choice of some pretty good colleges when the time comes." "If I go to college." "What?" "I've been thinking about it lately, and I might... not." "Later!" "Well, we took the scenic route, but we ended up in the same place." "From Zimbabwe to Algeria come on, let me hear ya these are the countries, these are the countries" "Cam recently became Franklin Middle School's interim musical director." "Go, Franklin!" "I was volunteering for their spring musical festival when their regular director suddenly and mysteriously became ill." "Oh, sorry." "It may have been a blessing." "Their show lacked focus." "I gave it a theme..." ""A musical trip around the world."" "Yeah, see, he focused it by making it about the world." "You don't like it." "No..." "Cam." "I do." "Do you... do you think that the kids, though, are gonna be able to learn it by tonight?" "I mean, maybe you should stick with something that they already know." "I knew this would happen." "Why do you have to throw a wet blanket on my dreams?" " I do not." " You do it all the time." "And you know what I end up with?" "Wet dreams." "I heard it as soon as I said it." "Just leave it alone." "All right, well, Cam, it's just that sometimes you can be a little, you know, overenthusiastic." "Is it really that big of a deal that I want this to be the best show in the world?" "Well, as long as you heard me." "Be in my corner." "Don't be so critical." "We... is that really how you see me?" "Sometimes, yeah, I do, Mitchell." "Oh." "Cam, well, if... if that's true, then I'm..." "I'm sorry." "No, you know, okay, from now on," "I am in your corner 100%." "Yeah, that song is gonna knock everyone out." "Well, I don't know, but wait till you see the dance I have prepared." "A dance?" "A dance!" "More toast, Manny?" "Why won't you call me, Emma?" "More toast, Emma?" "Do you have to be on all the time?" "Okay, I'm sorry." "Who is this Emma?" "She's in the show with me tonight." "I'm thinking of taking a run at her." "You don't "take a run" at a woman." "You woo her." "You make her feel special." "Hey, hon, take a look at this." "It's a picture of my butt." "And then when you get her, you can tell her whatever you want." "Why do you do this?" "I programmed it so my butt pops up when my brother Donnie calls." "It's a clever way of saying my brother's an ass." "Is it?" "That's him." "Compose yourselves." "Forget I showed you this picture." "I'm trying." "How you doing, you dumb son of a bitch?" "You old mick." "Looks like you've put on a few pounds." "Oh, you too." "What, are you eating your hair?" "Oh, Gloria." "Oh." "What are you still doing here?" "There's got to be an easier way to get a green card." "Hey, Uncle Donnie, are you coming to my school concert tonight?" " Well..." " It's an hour, tops." "...wouldn't miss it." "Hey, you know, I think I misplaced my phone." "Could you call me on yours?" "My phone's at the bottom of my bag." "Why don't you use your home phone?" "Oh, come on." "It's simple." " What are you doing?" " I want the phone." "How about you let go, you..." "Give me the phone, Donnie!" "You still think you can take me?" "!" "What?" "Is this all you got, huh?" "I'm gonna wash your mouth out with fist." "Ow!" "Oh!" "I don't understand this relationship, Emma." "Hey, Emma." "Doing this show, it feels like we've become like a little family, huh?" "You mean like you're my brother?" "No." "N... no, I don't." "Oh, no!" "They're back... dinosaur arms!" "This isn't a good time, Luke." "That is hilarious." "Half boy, half T-Rex." "One foot in both worlds, wanted by neither." "Luke, that's a great way to stretch out a shirt." "Okay, okay!" "Break's over, everyone!" "Let's take it from the top." "Listen, we're running 20 minutes long, so we're gonna go ahead and cut the Bollywood number." "Can I go?" "I'm late for soccer practice." "You know who else missed soccer practice, Delroy?" "The cast of "Rent." And now they have a Tony." "We have a Tony." "You are so funny." "Seriously?" "Hello?" "Hey, honey." "Did they drop the van off yet?" "Yeah, a little while ago." "How's it look?" "Uh, well, believe it or not," "I have resisted the temptation to look." "This whole Haley thing has got me a little preoccupied." "We're on our way out to lunch right now." "About that, I've been thinking." "College is still a ways away." "I say we leave Haley alone." "The more we push, the more she'll push back." "I'm gonna push." "And I support that." "Only dad can make our minivan even lamer." "Excuse me." "What are you doing?" "I'm driving this thing to the reservoir." "Just jump when I say jump." "Honey, slide over." "How is this stupid ad supposed to sell houses anyway?" "You heard your father." "He's not just selling houses... he's selling us." "What are my friends gonna think?" "They are gonna think that you're helping your father put food on the table." "Ay, is the chair broken?" "Almost." "That cheap, freeloading brother of mine can't keep his hands off my good scotch, so, you see, I placed that scotch there." "My brother sits in this chair, goes out from under him..." "Bam!" "Masterpiece." "So you make your brother fall and spill his drink?" "Well, I don't want to jinx it, but that's the plan." "Why are you both so mean?" "Where I come from, brothers respect each other." "That's why Colombia is such a peaceful utopia." "Hello, ladies." "Hey, nice shirt." "Do they sell men's clothes where you got that?" "That's funny because women are so inferior." "You got no taste." "I bought this for Melanie's baptism." " Who's Melanie?" " Michael's kid, my granddaughter." "Oh, I forgot to tell Irene I landed safely." "Hello?" "How could you not know" " that your own brother had a granddaughter?" " I probably knew." "How can you forget when he's family?" "I have 29 cousins, and I know them all..." "Rosa Marina, Gloria Maria, Veronica Maria, Jose Vicente..." "Okay, okay, okay." "What's your point?" "You do the chair, you do the fighting, but you don't know each other." "It's sad." "Look, I may not talk to my brother the way you talk to your sisters, but believe me, we're close in our own way." "When was the last time that you saw him?" "Well, that's not easy, 'cause he lives up..." "Huh." "See, I want to say Buffalo." "All I'm saying is that there's no downside to more education." "I knew this car ride was a trap." "See that?" "That right there shows me just how smart you are." "Really?" "Again?" "What is going on?" "It's the stupid ad." "They're honking on my side, too." "Oh." "Yes, we're the people in the ad." "Yeah." "Hi." "Hey." "Another great thing about college... complete independence." "I'd have that in an apartment." "No, because to have an apartment, you would need a job." "You want to know what your job is in college?" "It's a little bit of class and homework and it's a whole lot of new friends and experiences and the boys think you're cute and you are cute, and, oh, trust me, that doesn't last forever." "Call the number!" "All right!" "You in the mood to lose?" "First time for everything." "You break." "So, how's work?" "Don't worry, moneybags." "I'm not here for a loan." "Nice break." "All right, you're solids, which you won't be able to eat in a few years." "Right, right." "Seriously, though, how are things going with you?" "Swell." "I'm beating a fat guy at pool right now." "Donnie, I'm trying to talk to you." "Why?" "Why?" "'Cause that's what people do." "Talk about things, like their lives." "Oh, Irene opened her big trap." "Look, I'm fine." "It's not like I'm gonna die." "What?" "Yeah, they caught it early." "I took the treatment." "I'm clear for now." "Come on." "It's your shot." "Caught what early?" "Donnie, are you talking about... cancer?" "You don't have to whisper." "I know I got it." "You just get your prostate checked..." "by a doctor, not some guy you met on the Internet." "I can't believe you didn't tell me this." "Because it's not a big deal." "Now, listen." "It's just between us." "Oh, God." "Irene, how the hell do I know where your glasses are?" "And there's frisbee golf, and... and you go snow-sledding on cafeteria trays." "Oh, and you all get a dog together." "I don't really know who takes care of the dog during the summer, but he's there when you get back." "Geez, maybe you should just go back to college." "Oh, honey, do you know what I would give to go back?" "It's this moment when your whole life is in front of you, and it's a magical time." "You don't want to miss that, because when it's gone, it's gone." "Yeah, yeah." "Come on, Alex." "Bus is leaving." "Dad, your phone's been buzzing like crazy." "Sweet Lorna Doone!" "19 missed calls?" "I wonder who's..." "Phil Dunphy." "You saw the ad?" "Great." "Do you know what you're looking for?" "The little one?" "I think I know which one you're talking about." "Um, if you're interested, I also have an older model with a lot of character." "What?" "I think the carpet matches the drapes." "I haven't checked in a while." "Both of them?" "Wow." "Well, I guess that makes sense if you're planning to flip one." "Listen, um, why don't I call you back?" "We'll set up an appointment." "It'll give me a chance to give them both a good scrubbing." "All right." "Thanks a lot." "Bye-bye." "How about that, huh?" "You think all these calls are about the ad?" "Yeah." "My friend Nicole just sent me a picture of the van." "I guess I'll be seeing you Wednesdays and every other weekend." "Hello?" "Okay, um, you sound very angry, which is completely understandable." "I'm not angry." "I'm just sitting here thinking about college and how life has passed me by." "Oh, thank God." "I'll see you at the show." "Love you." "Bye." "We got to go." "And as the music swells, we reveal our letters spelling "we love the world."" "Powerful stuff." "And then the majestic Franklin Middle School insignia will drop into position if Reuben ever finishes painting it." "It's not the Sistine Chapel, Reuben." "Surprise!" "Hey!" "Your supportive boyfriend dropped by to bring you a snack." "P.B. and J." "Pear, brie, and jambon." "My favorite!" "Okay, people, let's take five." "A true five." "Hey, Manny." "How's it going?" "Good, great, couldn't be better." "Can we, uh..." "Yes, we can, uh... all right." "What's up?" "Okay, you got to talk to Cam." "He's driving us crazy." "Kevin is biting his nails again, and Reuben hasn't had a bowel movement in a week." "Don't laugh." "That's how Elvis died." "All right, um, Manny, I..." "I can't get involved." "But... all right, if you have to say something, just tell Bob Fussy that he's overdoing it and you want to go back to your old stuff." "Okay, break's over, people!" "I want to do the French Revolution number again." "Let's bring out the guillotine." "Carefully this time." "No, no, no." "Excuse me?" "We don't want to do the new stuff." "We want to stop rehearsing and go back to the old way, Bob Fussy." "I..." "I don't know where this is coming from." "You all feel this way?" " Yeah." " Yeah." " Yeah." " Yeah." "Well, I had no idea." "I had no idea I was surrounded by a bunch of quitters." "This production was a joke until I introduced these children to the musical-theater greats..." "Bernstein, Sondheim." "Years from now, some of these kids will still be talking about the way I Sondheim-ized them." "Ooh, I'm don't think that's a good way of saying... okay." "You want to do it the old way with the same tired songs, the same drab choreography, the same tepid applause from mom and dad?" "Is that what you want?" "Just say the word." " That's what we want." " Yes." " Yes." "Well, too bad, people!" "We're doing it my way!" "From the top!" "This is a closed rehearsal." "March." "Hi, honey." "What are you doing out here?" "Oh, just waiting for you 'cause I love you." "Haley, come out this side." " Why?" " 'Cause it's fun." "Try it." "Yeah, the doors slide, the seats slide." "What can't the Sienna do?" "That was fun." "Right?" "Let's go see a show!" "Sweetie, we need to close the door." "Yeah, with the key." "I like to see how far I can get from the car and still make it work." "Listen, honey, honey." " Yeah?" " Let me ask you something." "Okay, I need you to be really honest with me." "Yeah, you ca... yes." "Are my best years behind me?" "What?" "No." "The trick is to keep looking forward." "Here we go." "Really?" "Yes, yes, for sure." "You feel good?" "Yeah, I..." "Hello, and welcome, everyone." "And latecomers." "I hope you enjoy the show tonight." "I think you will agree it has a certain flair that has been lacking from this stage in years past." "So, please, I invite you to sit back, relax, and enjoy this musical trip around the world!" "Wow." "Growing up in America sure is great, but I wish I knew more about the world." "Me too." "I think I've got an idea." "See you later, friend." "Where are you going?" "To see the world!" "China looks interesting." "I think I'll land here." "Bring him down!" "Bring him down!" "Just go with it." "Go with it." "Oh." "Hey." "Come on." "Geez, come on, Jay." "You're in the theater." "Try your jacket pocket." "Sorry, folks." " Nice." "He taped it shut." " Okay, that's enough." "Ay!" "Stupid!" "You too!" "Don't hit him." "He has cancer." "What..." "Oh, my God, is Luke stuck up there?" "Phil?" "Come on." "Yeah." "Ye... oh, no." "Come on!" "China sure was fun." "And look, there's merry old England." "Has anyone here ever seen a globe?" "Full steam ahead!" "Ahead!" "Just sing." "Oh, joy to salt-swept eyes fair England, do I see..." "Sorry about what I said to Gloria, okay?" "Just came out." "Let's go back inside." " Hit me." " What?" "You heard me." "Hit me." "I'm not gonna hit you, Donnie." "Yeah, well, that's the whole damn point." "As soon as you heard I was sick, you treated me different." "Let me tell you, I get enough of that at home." "I'm sorry." "I feel a little bad for you, okay?" "I know we don't say this much, but, uh..." "I care for you, you know?" "Do you think I don't know that crap?" "I have known you cared about me since we were 8 and 10 years old and that mook Joey Calieri stole my bike and you put his head in the ice." "What was that he said again?" "Um, "I can't hear no more."" ""I can't hear no more!"" "Oh, Don." "Your staging is all over the place." "The kids are exhausted." "You're making it all about you." "No intermission." "What, are we animals?" "I..." "I'm gonna be fine." "I got great doctors." "The kids call me every day." "Irene even lost 20 pounds due to stress." "Good for you." "You promise me you'll get that liver checked out." "Ah, there's nothing wr..." "Come on, Donna." "Suck it up." "We're missing my kid's show." "You son of a bitch." "Come on." "Come on." ""I can't hear no more!"" "Okay, all right." "That one was my fault, but Joan of Arc's gonna be just fine." "It's not gonna be much fun doing the show without Emma." "Maybe we should just stop this." "No." "No." "There is a saying in the theater world that..." ""It's not worth dying for"?" "No, it's that "endings make shows."" "And we've got a great ending." "Now get out there and sing your hearts out." " Oh, not you, sweetie." "You just mouth the words." " Okay." "Uncle Cam, both my legs are tingly." "Okay, we'll cut you down in just a second, Luke, okay?" "The show must go on." "Have fun with it." "Learning about the world sure was fun." "But I'm glad to have my feet back on the ground again." "Oh, Egypt is a land where the pyramids stand which were built by industrious Jews and windmills go around in Holland town where they all wear wooden shoes these are the things we learned today and there's one last thing we want to say" ""We love the word"" "Where's the "L"?" "That's Luke." "Lower the insignia." "Lower it." ""We love the... " What the hell?" "No, no, no." "No, no." "No, no, no." "No." "No, no, no." "No." "Brava!" "Phil, where have you been?" "Oh, just getting some fresh air." " Honey." " Got it." "Ready to go?" "Hey, look up at the moon." "Would you say that's waxing or waning?" "Who cares?" "We can spend all night looking..." ""I can't be satisfied"?" "!" "My God, Phil." "That makes me look like a prostitute." "No." "Yes." "Yes, it does." "More of an escort, really." "You're just selling your time." " Whereas a prostitute just..." " Okay, Phil." "I have been driving around in this all day." "Well, since you're mad already, why don't you just step over here and have a look at that?" "Oh, God." "My baby." "I am not getting back in that car!" "Oh, how do you think you're gonna get home, honey?" "It doesn't matter!" "I'll go home with anyone!" "That's what it should say on the van." "Alex." "I can't believe we trusted you to put this on the car after the debacle of that last picture." "Damn it." "And that... who was that?" "Probably another..." "I think the word you're looking for is "John."" "Get in the minivan." "You mean to tell me that people have actually been calling about this?" "There are a lot of creeps out there." "That's disgusting." "She's a child." "Well, to be fair, most of them were for you." "Well, it's still sick." "What do you mean, "most"?" "Well, I don't know." "There were 30 calls." "You got 20 or 25 of them." "And they... ask for me?" "They asked for the hot blonde." "Hmm." "Men are pigs." "Did they call me anything else?" "So, thanks to all the perverts in town," "I realized I still have a few good years ahead of me." "And if we have one person to thank for that, it would be me." "No." "Was it as awful as I think?" "Take the flowers." "It must have been really hard for you to be supportive while I made a fool out of myself." "Oh, come here." "Luke, do you mind?" "We're trying to have a moment here." "I can feel my heartbeat in my eyes." " In his eyes?" " Yes." " Okay." " We'll get a janitor." "Okay."

In people's daily life, restaurants produce a lot of household wastes every day, wherein the main waste includes remaining foods which are rich in organics, and if not treated well, are easy to rot in air, distributing bad smell bad and polluting air and environment. Hence, it is very necessary to perform treatment on the remaining foods and other household wastes. In the prior art, the kitchen wastes are treated mainly by fermentation, that is to say, after undergoing pretreatments such as draining, smashing and dehydration, the prior restaurant wastes are poured into a barrel equipped with an electric heating and stirring rod, then subjected to heating, stirring and drying treatments, kept in the heating barrel for a period of time, then taken out and packaged by a packing bag, and then fermented for decomposition (maturing). The inventors have found in researches that there are at least the following defects in the treatment of restaurant wastes in the prior art: firstly, the prior fermentation barrel is provided therein with a heating apparatus, achieves a fermentation process mainly by roasting kitchen wastes with the heating apparatus, and has a high energy consumption of about 600 kWh/ton; secondly, the prior technology does not comprise an entire composting process, and relies on a high temperature to heat and dry, wherein partial kitchen wastes are carbonized, resulting in very low organic fertilizer content, low fertilizer efficiency and a side effect on the growth of plants, which is not convenient for popularization and application; thirdly, kitchen waste fermentation devices are mainly mounted in densely populated residential areas which have high requirements for environment protection, however, the prior art fermentation barrels produce a large amount of waste gases during fermentation, and these waste gases greatly pollute the surrounding environment, in particular the air, which is strongly complained and opposed by residents, often resulting in work cannot be normally carried out; fourthly, the prior art fermentation barrel is required to be provided therein with a stirring device, thus the fermentation barrel has a large volume and occupies a large area, which results in increased cost; and fifthly, the prior art fermentation barrel has a complicated structure and high production cost and is not convenient for maintenance and installation.

Heat loss variations of full-face motorcycle helmets. Heat loss of 27 full-face motorcycle helmets was studied using a thermal manikin headform. The headform was electrically heated and positioned at the exit of a wind tunnel, so that the air stream flowed onto its front side. All helmets were measured in three sessions in which all the vents were opened or closed consecutively in random order. Average heat loss was calculated from a steady state period, under controlled environmental conditions of 22+/-0.05 degrees C, 50+/-1% RH and 50.4+/-1.1 km h(-1) (14.0+/-0.3 ms(-1)) wind speed. The results show large variations in heat loss among the different helmets, ranging from 0 to 4 W for the scalp section of the headform and 8 to 18 W for the face section of the headform. Opening all the vents showed an increase in heat loss of more than 1 W (2 W) for four (two) helmets in the scalp section and six (one) helmets in the face section. These levels of heat transfer have been shown to be the thresholds for human sensitivity in scalp and face sections. Furthermore, helmet construction features which could be identified as important for heat loss of motorcycle helmets were identified.

The present invention grows out of a continuing development of forging hammer controls. In recent years, forging hammers have increasingly been of the compressible fluid driven type. A device disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,131,164, the invention of Wilmer W. Hague and Charles W. Frame, senses position of the ram, and hence the piston, to make sure that the piston position does not partially occlude the intake port when the inlet valve is opened in order to assure repeatable performance. The impact device of U.S. Pat. No. 3,464,315, the invention of Henry A. Weyer, provides pilot valves to control inlet and exhaust valves. U.S. Pat. No. 3,818,799, the invention of Wilmer W. Hague, allows both the number and intensity of the series of blows to be performed by a forging hammer to be preselected. Each of these patents is assigned to the assignee of the present invention, Chambersburg Engineering Company. These prior art refinements represent important steps along the road to automation and efficiency. However, these developments were accomplished by knowing what the forging device was capable of doing and assuming that it would always perform in precisely the same way, or making correction based upon a single parameter to allow the forging device to perform that way. While this assumption resulted in important improvements over the prior art, the assumption was a generalized one and often subject to error. In fact, many factors enter into the operation of the forging hammer which cause the energy of blows intended to be identical, to vary from one another, depending upon variations in operating parameters. The advent of computer assisted die design, which prescribes discrete magnitudes of forging energy, demands that forging equipment be capable of delivering precise energies per blow. Developments of this sort have made greater precision in energy control in a forging operation of great significance. The present invention is in response to this need.

This invention relates to a narrow-band filter having a variable center frequency. Such a narrow-band filter is particularly useful for detecting a plurality of tone signals which have different frequencies. In general, a narrow-band filter comprises an input terminal supplied with an input signal having a predetermined frequency, an output terminal, first through n-th low-pass filters which are connected in parallel to one another, where n represents a first positive integer greater than unity, a switching circuit connected to the first through the n-th low-pass filters, and a control circuit for controlling the switching circuit. The first through the n-th low-pass filters have the same filter characteristic and are collectively called an n-path filter. The control circuit delivers first through n-th switch driving signals to the switching circuit. Supplied with the first through the n-th switch driving signals, the switching circuit time divisionally connects the first through the n-th low-pass filters one by one between the input and the output terminals at a predetermined period Tp. As a result of switching operation of the switching circuit, the first through the n-th low-pass filters time divisionally filtering the input signal for first through n-th filtering durations, respectively. The first through the n-th filtering durations are equal to one another. In this event, the narrow-band filter has a single center frequency fc. Such a narrow-band filter is disclosed in Japanese Unexamined Patent Prepublication No. 16013/1985 (Tokkai Sho 60-16013). In the meantime, a mobile radio telephone system of an AMPS type uses an SAT (Supervisory Audio Tone) signal in order to monitor a connection state of a radio channel. The SAT signal is carried by a radio signal and has one of first through third tone frequencies which are equal to 5970 (Hz), 6000 (Hz), and 6030 (Hz), respectively, and which are assigned to base stations. Let the mobile radio telephone system comprise first through third base stations which are assigned with the first through the third tone frequencies, respectively. When the first base station transmits the SAT signal having the first tone frequency, a mobile station receives the SAT signal transmitted from the first base station. When the mobile station detects the first tone frequency of the SAT signal, the mobile station transmits a transmission signal, as an answer back signal, having a frequency equal to the first tone frequency. On reception of the transmission signal having the frequency equal to the first tone frequency, the first base station confirms the fact that the radio channel is connected to the mobile station. As apparent from the above description, the mobile station must discriminate a tone frequency among the first through the third tone frequencies. The narrow-band filter mentioned above is particularly useful for detecting the tone frequency. However, the mobile station must be provided with first through third narrow-band filters having first through third center frequencies which are equal to the first through the third tone frequencies, respectively. This is because the narrow-band filter detects a single tone frequency only. This means that the mobile station requires a receiver circuit of a large size for discriminating the tone frequency among the first through the third tone frequencies.

An important unresolved area of pediatric research involves the role of various viral agents in the etiology of acute gastroenteritis. Although the importance of rotaviruses is firmly established, the role of other viruses such as the astroviruses and caliciviruses has not been resolved. The goal of this project is to place these viruses in perspective with regard to their relative contribution to various forms of acute gastroenteritis in infants and young children. The availability of stool and serum specimens from several large-scale pediatric studies places us in the enviable position of being able to address these issues. Two major studies provide the focus of this project. One is a longitudinal study (1955-1969) at Junior Village, a welfare institution for homeless but otherwise normal children, and the other a cross-sectional study (1974-1991) of children hospitalized with gastroenteritis at Children's Hospital National Medical Center, Washington, DC. Our goal in the Junior Village studies has been to investigate the natural history of calicivirus and astrovirus infections in a longitudinal setting, whereas the Children's Hospital study provides materials that should allow us to determine the importance of calicivirus and astrovirus as agents of severe gastroenteritis requiring admission to the hospital. There is evidence from several studies including this one that the Norwalk viruses (now classified as caliciviruses) and astroviruses both cause infection in infants but, as yet, their importance as etiologic agents of severe gastroenteritis is not certain. This type of information must be obtained before priorities for vaccine development can be set.

The present invention relates to a production scheduling method of and a production scheduling apparatus for planning a production program of products. The following will discuss a production scheduling method of prior art. It is now supposed that the number of different products is defined as A, the name of each product is defined as i and the number of processes to be executed for producing each product i is defined as N(i) (which varies with the type of each product i). According to a production scheduling method of prior art, there is prepared a production program in which after the jth process of each product i, i.e., each process P(i,j) (i=1, . . . , A, j=1, . . . . , N(i)-1) has been finished, each subsequent process P(i, j+1) of each product i is executed. The production program prepared by the production scheduling method of prior art, is arranged to instruct to execute invariably each subsequent process P(i, j+1) after completion of each process P(i,j). Accordingly, even though a defect has been found on a product i as a result of the inspection conducted after completion of the process P(i,j), the subsequent process P(i, j+1) is executed on the product i. This disadvantageously lowers the production yield, thus increasing the production cost. According to the production scheduling method of prior art, the production cost of each product, the delivery delay term of each product, each system standby term and the like are not taken into consideration. This disadvantageously produces an increase in production cost, a delay in delivery term and an increase in system standby term.

In the present day as electronic devices and other devices are increasingly scaled to smaller dimensions, techniques for patterning substrates becomes increasingly challenging. For both planar devices such as planar transistor devices, as well as three dimensional devices, such a three dimensional memory devices, deep trenches or other deep structures may be used in the fabrication process. In order to from a deep trench or deep via or similar structure in a substrate, a patterned mask material may be used in portions of the substrate to be protected while etching of the substrate takes place where mask material is absent. The mask material may subsequently be removed once the substrate is etched to a target depth. Devices such as vertical NAND (VNAND) memory devices (“NAND” refers to a negative- and logic gate) and dynamic random access memory (DRAM) devices may employ trenches or vias having etch depths of more than one micrometer, for example. Because etching of the substrate may also entail etching of the mask material, in order to preserve at least a portion of the mask for the complete etch process, the mask thickness may be similar to the etch depth in some cases. This situation is especially the case for common mask materials based at least in part on carbon. For example, so called hard mask materials having a similar etch rate to the substrate may be employed for etching a trench having a depth on the order of one micrometer. Additionally, the hard mask pattern features may have a high aspect ratio, meaning the height of the mask feature may be greater than the width of the mask feature, at least along one width direction. In some cases, an aspect ratio (height/width) of the mask feature may approach 10:1 or may be greater. A consequence of etch processing using such relatively thick masks may include faceting and clogging of the mask features during etching, bowing of an underlying etch feature in the substrate, or tapering of the etch feature in the substrate. The final patterned trench, via or other structure in the substrate may deviate from a target shape, such as a vertical trench. Forming a patterned hard mask using a material having a relatively lower etch rate may in principle reduce the total thickness of the hard mask used in an etch process. A drawback is that patterning techniques to form a hard mask are impractical using effective hard mask materials such as Al2O3, having a very low etch rate for etches used to etch silicon for example. With respect to these and other considerations the present embodiments are provided.

Portable digital computers rely on rechargeable DC batteries to provide the electrical power necessary for operation. When the computer is powered on for processing operation, but allowed to remain idle, the battery continues nonetheless to supply current to all the components of the computer, including the central processing unit (CPU), memory, the chipset (e.g. the Southbridge) and the display of the computer. If the user fails to turn off the computer, the battery continues to supply full current and, eventually, becomes drained of the stored electrical power. The foregoing action leads to more frequent charging of the battery, and reduces the utility and usability of the computer system. To reduce battery drain under such circumstances, a power management technique was previously introduced for portable computers, called the “sleep” mode. Typically, portable computers based on the INTEL X86 CPU and associated chip set, referred to as “PC's”, include multiple sleep modes (e.g. states of sleep mode). The multiple sleep modes enable the portable computer, when left idle, to selectively power down the components and devices of the computer in stages, although the main power remains on. With the computer spending an increasing amount of time idling, the computer progresses through increasingly deeper and deeper stages of sleep mode (and hence, greater reductions in power consumption). One of the deepest of those modes is characterized by all of the devices, including the CPU, but excepting the main memory (RAM) and the Southbridge chip, being powered down. This latter mode is typically referred to as “Suspend to RAM” (“STR”) or as “Power-on-Suspend” (“POS”) or like terms. In the STR condition power consumption is dramatically reduced and offers the greatest power reduction short of that power reduction obtained by turning off every component of the computer, the latter being referred to as “suspend to disk”, essentially completely shutting down the computer. The sleep modes in the PC are defined and controlled by the operating system software, such as familiar Windows 9X, Unix, Linux and the like, in conjunction with the system BIOS of the computer. When in STR, the Southbridge portion of the chip set, which is responsible for power management of the PC, continues to monitor the keyboard and mouse (and/or resume key) of the PC for any user activity, signifying an end to the computer idle condition. When the user later returns to perform computing and observes the computer is in a sleep mode, the user operates a “resume” key (or any key of the keyboard) or the like. That action initiates a chain of events in the computer transparent to the user, that restores full power to the CPU; and the computer recovers quickly. Return from the upper stages of the sleep mode recovers more quickly than recovery from the STR stage, the deepest stage after the Suspend to Disk stage, the latter recovery procedure being referred to as a “resume from STR”. Of particular convenience, the user may immediately resume computing at the precise location in any application program that was active in the computer at the time the computer entered the sleep mode. To reach that point from the STR stage of sleep mode, the CPU processes a number of steps of the “boot-up” routine for the computer; steps that typically occur in a manner transparent to the user. The computer is able to resume where it left off, because, prior to entering STR, the computer preserved the complete state of all software applications and of all components and devices, including the CPU, in a memory that remained powered up during the “sleep”. For the power management technique of sleep mode, the CPU and the external memory (DRAM) are independently supplied with power, that is, are located in separate power domains. In the deepest sleep mode, STR, power is removed from the CPU (and other electronic components of the computer, such as the display), while maintaining the DRAM memory and the Southbridge chip under power. The application programs and the state of those application programs (e.g. the CPU “context”) is preserved by transferring the state information to the DRAM. In processing operation, the CPU executes application programs by continuously modifying both its internal state and memory contents according to the instructions of the program. The internal CPU memory of the X86 system resides in the same power domain as the CPU. Thus, whenever the CPU is powered down, such as for an STR procedure, the internal memory is also powered down, and normally results in the loss of that CPU context. In order for the CPU of the X86 system to resume processing of an application program on Resume from STR, the processor must at that time at least “know” the state of the program on entering STR. Before entering STR, the CPU executes an instruction (of the power management software) that saves the CPU context at a well defined location in external memory, such as the DRAM memory. That context information subsumes the state of the operating system and the state of the application program. By maintaining power to the DRAM during STR, the state information of the program is preserved, and is available for use later upon a Resume from STR. Once the resume button is pressed and is detected by the Southbridge chip, power is reapplied to the CPU, which commences its start-up routines. The CPU processes the normal boot-up routine stored in the ROM of the BIOS chip. That boot up procedure initializes the internal registers of the CPU and flushes its caches, thereby establishing a baseline state for the CPU. The process takes a noticeable time in which to complete. However, prior to loading the operating system, such as Windows 9x, the routine checks to determine if the boot-up procedure is a “power up reset” as occurs upon initially powering up the computer, or instead is a Resume from STR. When the routine detects the latter condition, the computer “knows” that the state of the operating system software, any application program, and the corresponding CPU context already resides in the external memory (DRAM). The CPU then completes the boot-up procedure by restoring the device states, and, with a special instruction, finally restores the CPU context from the external memory. Thereafter, the CPU is able to simply proceed with executing the next application program instruction exactly where the CPU left off when entering STR. In a stage of sleep mode that lies one stage above the STR stage, the penultimate stage (e.g. the pre-STR stage) referred to as “deep sleep”, existing operating systems issue an instruction to remove the system clock from the CPU, but to maintain the CPU powered up, continuing to consume battery power. The removal of the system clock reduces power consumption also, but that is not as great a reduction as when power is removed from the CPU, such as during STR. Without clock signals being applied, the CPU is no longer able to process (as would consume additional current), but maintains system context in the associated internal registers of the CPU. That context is not lost and is not required to be saved to external memory as is the case in entering the STR stage. As an advantage, the invention powers down the CPU in all sleep modes and preserves the CPU context, saving additional power. Accordingly, an object of the invention is to reduce the power consumption of a computer during periods in which the computer is idle, providing a more effective sleep mode. Another object of the invention is to promote the pre-STR stage of sleep mode in existing power management systems to the STR stage, creating an “Instant STR”, and reduce the time required by the computer system to return from that stage, ideally providing a Resume from STR that appears instantaneous. And, a related object of the invention is to replace on-the-fly a CPU context maintaining sleep mode of existing computer systems that is governed by the operating system with a substitute sleep mode that affords a lower power consumption and remains transparent to the software.

Eosinophilic esophagitis (EoE) is an inflammatory condition of the esophagus, thought to be caused by food allergy, and characterized by the presence of eosinophils within the esophageal mucosa. Even though it is a relatively new disease, EoE is now recognized to be common in both adult and pediatric populations and rapidly rising in incidence. Patients with EoE can experience a variety of upper GI symptoms, ranging from dysphagia to food impaction. Experts fear that if left untreated, EoE may lead to esophageal fibrosis and stricture formation. It is therefore currently recommended that this disease be treated until the symptoms and the eosinophilic infiltrate have resolved. EoE therapy options include corticosteroids and aggressive dietary restriction followed by gradual food reintroduction. While both treatments are effective, EoE returns following cessation of corticosteroids and numerous attempts at food reintroduction are needed to arrive at a diet that provides a good quality of life. As a result, management of EoE patients involves frequent follow up to monitor the patient's clinical and histopathologic response to changes in steroid dosing and/or diet. This strategy is arduous for patients and their families, and costly, as multiple endoscopy sessions must be conducted over time to procure esophageal biopsies and monitor eosinophil counts. We have developed a new technology called spectrally-encoded confocal microscopy (SECM), that is capable of being incorporated into a small-diameter probe and can rapidly obtain depth-resolved microscopic image data over large epithelial areas in vivo. Originally developed to evaluate dysplasia and cancer of the esophagus, we have recently discovered that this imaging modality can also see esophageal eosinophils with a high degree of contrast. Much of the inconvenience and nearly half of the cost of endoscopy is a consequence of patient sedation that is required to perform the endoscopic procedure. In this proposal we will advance the SECM technology so that it can be used to monitor esophageal eosinophils without requiring sedation, endoscopy, or excisional biopsy. We will accomplish this task by developing small, flexible transnasal SECM probe that can be routinely inserted into the esophagus in the outpatient setting. In conjunction with a new high-speed SECM system, this device will automatically image a large portion of the esophagus and count eosinophils. Once the device has been constructed, validation studies will be conducted to demonstrate that the accuracy of this device is comparable to that of endoscopic biopsy. The end product of this research will be an esophageal eosinophil monitoring tool that is less expensive and far better tolerated than the current standard of care. Beyond its immediate clinical impact, this technology can also be used in future investigational studies to expand our knowledge of EoE and other diseases such as asthma that are characterized by tissue eosinophilia.

Unless otherwise indicated herein, the approaches described in this section are not prior art to the claims in this application and are not admitted to be prior art by inclusion in this section. Embodiments relate to computer user interfaces, and in particular, to user interfaces providing decision support in complex problem environments. Specifically, an individual working to solve a business problem may often seek to perform tasks such as investigating extended cause-and-effect relationships, gathering context-related information, and/or comparing and validating possible solution paths. For example in an in-house production scenario, a material planner (MRP Controller Role) may face complex problems affecting different finished end products, intermediates, and/or starting materials. To address shortages, the ERP planner may seek to explore different possible opportunities available both within and outside of a particular business entity. Examples of such options can include but are not limited to, rescheduling of production orders, creating new supplies, and collaborating with a purchaser. Conventionally, the material planner may be forced to manually validate and compare the various problem solution options in terms of feasibility and possible consequences (e.g. follow-up problems on the component level or capacity issues). This process of evaluating options can be roughly compared with a chess game, where the player considers a next move and tries to calculate (simulate) its consequences mentally. In attempting to manually perform this evaluation, the material planner may lack an overview of the context of the problem, and also the cause-and-effect relationships of the possible options. Typically, the material planner may be forced to gather the related information by hand, navigating step-by-step through several levels of details involving the creation of off-line notes and extra communication that may not be recorded or reproducible. A lack of transparency/reproducibility during such critical decision making processes, may leads to inefficiency/time loss, mental stress, and degradation of overall productivity. Also, the lack of an established procedure may lead to potentially suboptimal or even incorrect decisions being made.

Description of clinical outcomes and postoperative utilization of physical therapy services within 4 categories of shoulder surgery. Retrospective cohort study. To describe the clinical outcomes following outpatient physical therapy for postoperative rehabilitation in 4 categories of shoulder surgery. Furthermore, we sought to determine if differences in outcomes between genders existed. Improving the quality of care for patients following shoulder surgery requires an understanding of the clinical outcomes resulting from current clinical practice. This study included 856 patients (43.7% female; mean +/- SD age, 51.8 +/- 14.2 years) who received outpatient physical therapy following shoulder surgery. Standardized methods for classification of patients to type of shoulder surgery and collection of outcome variables were used. Data were gathered from 57 therapists working in 12 clinics. Patients included had been classified into 1 of 4 surgical categories: repair of a unidirectional instability, rotator cuff repair, rotator cuff repair with a subacromial decompression, or subacromial decompression alone. Descriptive statistics were calculated for baseline characteristics of patients in each surgical category. For all patients, scores on the Disability of the Arm Shoulder and Hand (DASH) questionnaire and a numeric pain rating scale (NPRS) were obtained at the initial and final physical therapy visits, and the change between visits was calculated. Data on number of physical therapy sessions and length of stay (LOS) were collected. For each surgical category, independent-samples t tests were used to determine differences between genders for each initial and final clinical outcome of pain and disability, change scores, utilization of visits, and LOS. The percentage of patients who achieved a minimal clinically important difference (MCID) on the DASH was also determined for each surgical group. For each gender in each surgical category, paired t tests were used to determine if patients achieved significant change in pain and disability. Means for each clinical outcome for the initial and final pain and disability scores, change scores, and the percentage of patients that achieved an MCID are provided. Significant differences were observed between genders for clinical outcomes. In the group treated with unilateral instability repair, women reported significantly greater initial disability than men, and their DASH change scores were significantly greater. In the group that had rotator cuff repairs, women reported significantly greater disability initially and at the final follow-up. In the group that had rotator cuff repairs combined with subacrominal decompression, women reported significantly greater disability initially and greater change in DASH scores. Females also reported greater change in their pain scores than males (P<.05). There were no significant differences between men and women in the subacromial decompression group (P<.05). There were no significant differences between genders for number of physical therapy visits or LOS. Men and women in each surgical category achieved clinically meaningful and statistically significant improvement for pain and disability during treatments (P<.01). Greater than 75% of patients achieved an MCID (15 points) on the DASH score in each surgical category (range, 75.6%-94.5%). Differences were observed between men and women in 4 postoperative surgical categories in each of the clinical outcomes but not for number of physical therapy visits or LOS. Statistically significant and clinically meaningful pain and disability improvements were reported for each gender within each shoulder category. Results from this study may help therapists estimate the prognosis of males and females receiving nonstandardized postoperative physical therapy in 4 different shoulder surgical categories. Therapy, level 2b.

Organ transplantation's considerable benefit is significantly offset by the complications associated with its required chronic immunosuppressive therapy. Patients are usually on several medications, but calcineurin inhibitors (CNIs) have long formed the centerpiece of most regimens. CNIs effectively prevent rejection, but their use is associated with non-antigen-specific T cell suppression, consequent impaired protective immunity, and numerous non-immune side effects. This year, a CNI alternative has been approved: belatacept, a fusion protein that mediates CD28-B7 costimulation blockade (CoB). Substantial clinical evidence suggests that belatacept can serve as a CNI replacement, avoiding CNI-specific off-target side effects. However, belatacept appears less able to prevent rejection in certain scenarios, and to inhomogenously impair viral immunity, particularly towards the common Epstein - Barr virus. Thus, clinicians now have two distinct approaches to prevent transplant rejection, CNI- and CoB-based immunosuppression, but little data guiding a rational choice between them. This application approaches this highly contemporary dilemma in transplantation, the CNI/belatacept choice and its relationship to the reciprocal complications of rejection and viral infection. We hypothesize that rejection and viral infection are mechanisticall related through a process known as heterologous alloimmunity-alloimmunity matured by prior viral infection-and that the changes in T cell phenotype known to emerge throughout life and influence allo- and viral-immunity can be used to anticipate one's response to CNIs and CoB. We believe these phenotypic changes can be used to develop a biologically plausible, therapeutically relevant, and diagnostically definable means of segregating those patients who will benefit from a belatacept-based regimen from those better served by a CNI-based approach. We explore this hypothesis in three Specific Aims, one observational study in humans to define the extent to which viral infection and rejection relate to kidney transplant recipients' T cell differentiation and exhaustion in the context of CNI- or belatacept-based therapy, and two experimental projects performed using well-defined, clinically relevant, mouse models of transplantation and viral infection to establish the mechanisms determining CNI- and CoB-specific effects on allo- and viral-specific-immunity. The investigative team formed for this study is facile in using observations in transplant patients to inform the conduct of rigorously controlled animal studies, and in the use of novel animal experiments to modify human studies. It is centered in a high volume transplant center that has developed an outstanding infrastructure for the acquisition of well-characterized human samples, and exceptional exposure to patients undergoing CNI- and belatacept-based regimens. Thus, each aim will be conducted cognizant of both the relevant clinical circumstances and mechanistic principles. This study will facilitate development of a unifying paradigm to guide the rational selection of immunosuppressive agents, and facilitate individualized, data-driven, immunological management for transplant patients. PUBLIC HEALTH RELEVANCE: The proposed research is relevant to public health because it aims to conduct mechanistically driven studies to optimize the implementation of immunosuppression in general, and belatacept (costimulation blockade) in particular, as an alternative strategy to prevent rejection following organ transplantation. Proper selection of immunosuppression offers the potential to minimize patient morbidity and mortality, optimize allograft survival, minimize the risk of re-transplantation, and reduce the healthcare costs associated with end stage organ failure.

Hearing impairment and hearing aid usage in Singapore. To examine the epidemiological and audiological profile, pattern of hearing aid (HA) fitting and usage among HA users in Singapore. Retrospective cross-sectional study. Cohort of 1068 subjects issued with HAs at a tertiary hospital between 2001 and 2013. Mean age was 70 years with 50.8% male. Mean hearing loss (HL) was 63.1 dB and 69.5% had at least moderate-severe HL. Sensorineural HL was present in 66.4% and 69.8% had symmetrical HL. "Behind-the-Ear" HAs were cheaper than "In-Ear" HAs. Standard "Behind-The-Ear" HAs were also cheaper than "Receiver-in-Canal" HAs. Among In-Ear HAs, "In-the-Canal" and "Completely-in-Canal" were more popular than "In-the-Ear" HAs despite costing more. HA was used ≥4 days/week by 85.6% but >7 h per day by only 35.7%. Only 18% received bilateral first HA fitting. In multivariate analysis, younger age and symmetrical HL were predictors of bilateral HA uptake while better Pure-Tone-Audiometry of aided ear and >7 h of daily HA usage were predictors of successive HA fitting. HA users in Singapore were elderly and presented with advanced HL. Bilateral HA adoption and average daily use were low compared to other developed countries. Future research on understanding the suboptimal HA usage should explore patients' motivation, hearing disability, and HA effectiveness.

Interrelated and integrated studies of subjects with periodontal diseases are being carried out. The goals of the ongoing studies are to improve knowledge of factors contributing to the etiology and pathogenesis of periodontal diseases, as well as to use this knowledge to monitor the progression of diseases and to improve diagnostic and prognostic capabilities. Subjects are initially screened and clinically characterized by investigators in the Core section of the Center, and appropriate clinical samples and other pertinent information are collected. Clinical, biostatistical, and data management support are provided to the other study groups involved in the Center. During the past year, two categories of subjects have been studied. Subjects with periodontitis are being observed longitudinally to determine clinical, immunological, and bacteriological parameters associated with progressing periodontal sites. Data from these studies will provide information regarding the nature of progression of periodontitis and provide a basis for rationale therapy and prognosis. The second category of subjects are those with early onset forms of periodontitis and their families. Our data indicate that the expression of early onset periodontitis (juvenile periodontitis JP and severe periodontitis SP) is genetically determined. Therefore, we are continuing to enter families identified via probands with these diseases into our studies in order to test genetic hypotheses of the mode of transmission in these diseases and to study clinical and immunological features of these diseases. Finally, in vitro studies aimed at determining some of the immunological pathogenic mechanisms that contribute to periodontal diseases have been accomplished.

An orbital floor brush machine is a device that includes a motor and an orbital brush. Tile brush is powered by the motor and rotated on a floor or other underlying surface. The orbital floor brush machine can consequently be used to clean the underlying surface. In addition, the orbital floor brush machine can be used for polishing. Further, the orbital floor brush machine can be used with a variety of cleaning and/or polishing compounds. The orbital brush typically is circular or ring shaped. A ring-shaped orbital blush typically includes bristles only in a ring or rings around an outer edge of the orbital brush. Inner bristles may not be included on such a device because the speed of rotation of the inner bristles, especially those near the center of the brush, is very low compared to the rotational speed of the bristles near the outer edge of the orbital brush. As a result, the outer bristles do most of the work performed by the orbital floor brush machine. In addition, inner bristles are not used because they would increase the required rotational energy. As a result, inner bristles would make an orbital brush rotate more slowly. In addition, a reduced area force would be provided at each of the bristles. The cleaning power and efficiency of the orbital floor brush machine is related to the number of bristles and/or bristle tufts. Bristle tufts comprise bundles of bristle fibers. The bundles of bristle fibers offer greater stiffness than the bristle fibers alone possess. In an orbital floor brush machine, the size and/or stiffness of the individual bristles can be increased in order to improve the effectiveness of the orbital brush. In addition, the number of bristles in a bristle tuft or the compactness of a bristle tuft can be increased. However, this can in turn cause other problems. Increased bristle/tuft stiffness can increase rotational resistance of the orbital brush. This in turn can lead to a hopping of the orbital brush, greatly reducing overall effectiveness of the orbital floor brush machine. In addition, such hopping generates additional strain on the machine and can lead to mechanical failures and customer dissatisfaction.

Mass vaccination against hepatitis B: the French example. Mainland France is considered as a low endemicity area for hepatitis B, but the French Caribbean and Pacific territories are classified into areas of intermediate and high endemicity. In France vaccination programmes aimed at high-risk groups were started in 1982 (including health care workers and patients receiving blood products) and the immunization of babies born of hepatitis B virus surface antigen (HBsAg)-positive mothers was reinforced in 1992. Considering the drawbacks and limited effect of targeted vaccination policies, universal vaccination targeted particularly to the preadolescent and adolescent population was initiated in 1994. In 1995, hepatitis B virus (HBV) vaccination was included in the infant immunization schedule. However, the emotion generated by the claim that HBV vaccination could have led to the development of central nervous system demyelinating disorders resulted in a marked decline of HBV vaccine use, both in the pediatric (23.3% vaccination coverage in children less than 13 years old) and in the adult population. The current coverage rates are likely to be insufficient to bring about a significant reduction in the control of hepatitis B in France. The success of universal immunization is highly dependent on reinstating the confidence of the public and health care professionals in the safety and efficacy of hepatitis B vaccines.

Impaired wound healing with defective expression of chemokines and recruitment of myeloid cells in TLR3-deficient mice. Skin injury evokes both innate and adaptive immune responses to restore tissue integrity. TLRs play a critical role in host responses to injurious insults. Previous studies demonstrated that RNAs released from damaged tissues served as endogenous ligands for TLR3. In this study, we investigated the involvement of TLR3 in skin restoration after injury. Full excisional wounds were created on the skin of mice with TLR3 deficiency. We found that skin wound closure in TLR3(-/-) mice was significantly delayed compared with control littermates. Wound healing parameters, including re-epithelialization, granulation formation, and neovascularization, were decreased in TLR3(-/-) mice. Further studies revealed that the absence of TLR3 led to defective recruitment of neutrophils and macrophages, in association with decreased expression of the chemokines, MIP-2/CXCL2, MIP-1α/CCL3, and MCP-1/CCL2, in the wound. Moreover, in wild type mice, the mRNA level and protein content of TLR3 was significantly upregulated in wounded skins and silencing of TLR3 signal adaptor Toll/IL-1R domain-containing adapter inducing IFN-β with small interfering RNA retarded wound closure. These results indicate an essential role for TLR3 and Toll/IL-1R domain-containing adapter inducing IFN-β in wound healing by regulating chemokine production and recruitment of myeloid cells to wound for tissue repair.

Prosthetic cardiac valves have been used for many years to treat cardiac valvular disorders. The native heart valves (such as the aortic, pulmonary and mitral valves) serve critical functions in assuring the forward flow of an adequate supply of blood through the cardiovascular system. These heart valves can be rendered less effective by congenital, inflammatory, or infectious conditions. Such damage to the valves can result in serious cardiovascular compromise or death. For many years the definitive treatment for such disorders was the surgical repair or replacement of the valve during open-heart surgery, but such surgeries are prone to many complications. More recently, a transvascular technique has been developed for introducing and implanting a prosthetic heart valve using a flexible catheter in a manner that is less invasive than open heart surgery. In this technique, a prosthetic valve is mounted in a crimped state on the end portion of a flexible catheter and advanced through a blood vessel of the patient until the prosthetic valve reaches the implantation site. The prosthetic valve at the catheter tip is then expanded to its functional size at the site of the defective native valve, such as by inflating a balloon on which the prosthetic valve is mounted. Alternatively, the prosthetic valve can have a resilient, self-expanding stent or frame that expands the prosthetic valve to its functional size when it is advanced from a delivery sheath at the distal end of the catheter. The native valve annulus in which an expandable prosthetic valve is deployed typically has an irregular shape mainly due to calcification. As a result, small gaps may exist between the expanded frame of the prosthetic valve and the surrounding tissue. The gaps can allow for regurgitation (leaking) of blood flowing in a direction opposite the normal flow of blood through the valve. To minimize regurgitation, various sealing devices have been developed that seal the interface between the prosthetic valve and the surrounding tissue.

DESCRIPTION: The prevalence of overweight among preschool children in the U.S. is over 10 percent. Overweight in childhood is linked to overweight in adulthood, as well as earlier morbidity and mortality. This strongly suggests the need for primary prevention and intervention in children. Furthermore, in contrast to the disappointing weight loss outcome data for adults, weight loss studies with children report far more effective results. The inclusion of a parent in the intervention appears to contribute to the success. Thus, it seems vital that a successful overweight prevention and intervention program must include both children and parents. Finally, studies indicate that early prevention and intervention efforts may be particularly important for minority populations. For example, the prevalence of overweight among minority women approaches a staggering 50 percent compared to 33 percent for White women. Children often acquire a genetic predisposition toward overweight and model their eating patterns after their parents. Therefore, it follows that minority children from families where one or both parents are overweight are at greatest risk for becoming overweight themselves. The proposed research was designed to address the needs of the Black and Hispanic communities, focusing on intervention with preschool aged children. Twenty-four Head Start sites will be randomly assigned to intervention or no-intervention conditions. Of these 24 sites, 12 will serve a predominantly Black population, and 12 will serve a predominantly Hispanic population. The investigators anticipate enrolling an average of 35 Black or Hispanic children and parents per site. Parents and children will participate in health screenings at baseline, following the intervention, and 12 and 24 months later. The intervention consists of a 16-week nutrition and activity based weight control program that includes parental participation. The no-intervention control group will receive the standard curriculum provided by the Head Start preschool program. It is expected that children in the intervention group will show a greater mean reduction in the primary outcome measure, percent ideal body weight for height (%IBWH), as well as dietary fat intake; and an increase in dietary fiber and fruit and vegetable intake. It is expected that the parent intervention group will show a greater mean reduction in body mass index; decreased dietary fat; and increased dietary fiber, fruit and vegetable intake, physical activity, nutrition knowledge, nutrition attitudes, and support for healthy eating. These changes will be seen following the intervention and at 12 and 24 months later.

Losing memories during sleep after targeted memory reactivation. Targeting memories during sleep opens powerful and innovative ways to influence the mind. We used targeted memory reactivation (TMR), which to date has been shown to strengthen learned episodes, to instead induce forgetting (TMR-Forget). Participants were first trained to associate the act of forgetting with an auditory forget tone. In a second, separate, task they learned object-sound-location pairings. Shortly thereafter, some of the object sounds were played during slow wave sleep, paired with the forget tone to induce forgetting. One week later, participants demonstrated lower recall of reactivated versus non-reactivated objects and impaired recognition memory and lowered confidence for the spatial location of the reactivated objects they failed to spontaneously recall. The ability to target specific episodic memories for forgetting during sleep has implications for developing novel therapeutic techniques for psychological disorders such as PTSD and phobias.

An evaluation of the role of identified interneurons in triggering kicks and jumps in the locust. 1. We have used intracellular recording and staining techniques to examine the importance of certain identified interneurons within the system responsible for triggering kicks and jumps in the locust, Locusta migratoria. In particular, our study focused on a pair of metathoracic interneurons called the M-neurons. These cells make strong inhibitory connections to hind-leg flexor motoneurons and are thought to play a key role in the termination of flexor activity which causes kicks and jumps to be triggered (8, 20, 24). 2. Simultaneous recordings from M-neurons and flexor motoneurons during bilateral hindleg kicks revealed that in most cases the onset of the M-neuron's high-frequency discharge coincided precisely with the start of the flexor's rapid repolarization. This result demonstrated that M's activity had the correct timing to be involved in the triggering process and so confirmed suggestions made in previous studies. At times, however, the flexor motoneurons began to repolarize slowly prior to the first spike in the M-neuron, indicating that triggering must involve other neurons and perhaps also an additional mechanism such as a reduction of flexor excitation. 3. The sufficiency and necessity of the M-neurons for triggering kicks were tested by experiments involving intracellular current injections. The application of a brief pulse of depolarizing current to an M-neuron, in order to evoke a burst of spikes in the cell prior to the time it would normally have become active, caused extension of the ipsilateral leg to be triggered prematurely but did not influence the motor program in the contralateral leg. This effect was only observed when the discharge frequency evoked artificially in the M-neuron was greater than that seen during natural performance of the behavior. Even then, the repolarization produced in the flexor motoneurons by the current pulses was not the same as occurs normally. We conclude that under natural circumstances the M-neurons, by themselves, are not sufficient to trigger kicks. 4. When the usual discharge in an M-neuron was prevented by the injection of hyperpolarizing current, both legs were still able to kick. This lack of necessity of the M-neurons confirms that additional neurons must be involved in the triggering process. The rate of repolarization of the flexor motoneurons during kicks in which M activity had been abolished was slower and more variable than is seen in normal kicks but this did not appear to alter the timing of leg extension.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 400 WORDS)

1. Field of the Invention The present invention relates to a surgical stitching instrument providing a combined suture holder and needle in which the needle is adapted to pierce tissue to be stitched, pick up a suture from the holder after piercing the tissue, and to retract through the tissue while dragging the suture from the holder therethrough and more particularly to such an instrument which is manipulatable with one hand by a surgeon while freeing the other hand for tissue arranging, positioning or other ancillary functions particularly desirable in deep surgery. The needle is attached to and is an integral part of the instrument, thus allowing better contact of the needle and ease of manipulation through tissues even in blind stitching. 2. Description of the Prior Art It is a well-known surgical practice to clamp a needle with its attached suture with a needle holder and to push the needle through tissues to be stitched until it exits at the opposite side of the tissue. The needle is then released and clamped again at its leading end and extracted through the tissue together with the attached suture. This procedure is satisfactory in many instances except in suturing deep structures, in the presence of bleeding or exudation, it is difficult to reapply the needle holder after the needle has pierced the tissue. Another well-known method of suturing, especially in deep surgery, is with the use of a Boomerang needle holder. The suture is clamped with a specialized instrument manipulated by one hand, the instrument then being maneuvered to place the suture adjacent to the tissue. A needle having a hook adjacent to the point thereof is then manipulated with another specialized instrument held in the other hand to pierce the tissue and the clamping instrument maneuvered so that the hook snags the suture. The suture is then unclamped with the one hand and the needle is withdrawn along its insertion path with the other hand to draw the suture through the tissue. The instruments and needle are then put aside and the suture tied. This procedure is disadvantageous for several reasons. Both hands are fully employed during the insertion of the suture since one hand is required to operate the needle manipulating instrument while the other hand is required to operate the suture clamping instrument. It has long been recognized that it would be highly advantageous for surgeons to have one hand free for other procedures during such stitching operations. These conventional procedures are relatively slow since, in sequence, the suture must be clamped, the needle must be guided through the tissue, the suture clamping instrument and the needle manipulating instrument must be operated to engage the suture with the needle, and the instruments must be withdrawn without disengaging the suture so as to draw the suture through the tissue. The needle grasping and the suture clamping instruments are both of specialized construction, require great dexterity for proper operation, and the needle manipulating instruments are frequently complicated in structure and mode of operation. It has also long been recognized that it would be highly advantageous to provide a single instrument usable by one hand whereby simple opening and closing movements pass a suture through a tissue in deep surgery and dispose the suture for tying.

The tubular articles of this invention are typically comprised of a thermally insulating yarn which may be supported by an inner tubular wire core. In a particular application, the articles are gaskets used, for example, as over door seals. Woven tubular articles have been used for seals for oven doors for many years. These articles are typically made from a combination of an inner tubular support member formed of knitted wire and an outer tubular member made either by braiding, knitting or weaving an insulating material such as fiberglass yarn. Such structures have proven to be durable at the high temperatures used in self cleaning ovens and provide a good seal despite repeated openings and closures of the oven door over many years of use. Methods of attaching a tubular gasket to an oven or oven door surface have typically comprised providing a retaining member which extends along the gasket and locking the retaining member between sheet metal pieces of the oven or by providing clamps at spaced locations around the periphery of the gasket. An alternative form of gasket has attachment means comprised of a wire form having space attachment protrusions which fit into corresponding holes in surface to which the gasket is to be attached is shown in the prior art. The present invention relates to an improvement in the fastening of gaskets to mounting surfaces and also to a novel resilient fastener which is simple to install onto a tubular gasket, easy to manufacture and effective in retaining the gasket to a support surface. The present invention provides for an improved clip having a head with an apex, a pair of shoulders and a neck and a base attached to the head. The base may comprise of at least one coil course having a variable or constant radius of curvature. Applicants novel improvement further provides a one piece resilient wire strand a portion defining a head and a second portion defining a base, the head and base perpendicular to one another and the head capable of protruding from the gasket while the base is engaged with an interior thereof. Applicants novel invention further comprises a sealing apparatus comprising a gasket and a clip engaged with the gasket, the clip having a head and a coiled base, the coiled base being perpendicular to the plane of the head and adapted to be engaged with the metal core of the gasket, as being enclosed in an interior thereof. The doors of many appliances, such as ovens, refrigerators, microwaves, etc., have flexible tubular gaskets around their perimeter for sealing and a variety of other reasons. See for example U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,986,033 and 4,822,060, the specifications and drawings of which are incorporated herein by reference and attached hereto.

Adaptation by older individuals repeatedly exposed to 0.45 parts per million ozone for two hours. To test for an increased reaction to ozone (O3) in older individuals following an initial exposure, and to test for adaptation and its duration, we exposed 10 men and 6 women (60-89 years old) in an environmental chamber to filtered air and 3 consecutive days of O3 exposure (0.45 ppm), followed by a fourth O3 exposure day after a two day hiatus. Subjects alternated 20-min exercise (minute ventilation = 27 L) and rest periods for 2 hours during each exposure. Subjects rated from one to five, 16 possible respiratory/exercise symptoms prior to and following the exposure. Pulmonary function tests were performed before, and during each rest period and following the exposure. Metabolic measurements were obtained during each exercise period. No significant changes in any symptom question occurred, in spite of a threefold increase in the total number of reported symptoms during O3 exposure. Small but significant pre-to-post decrements on the first and second O3 days in forced vital capacity (FVC-111 and 104 mL), forced expiratory volume in 1 (FEV1-171 and 164 mL) and 3 seconds (FEV3-185 and 172 mL) occurred without concomitant changes in any flow parameter of the forced expiratory maneuver. No differences in the group mean response in FVC, FEV1 or FEV3 on the third or fourth day of O3 exposure and the filtered air exposure were found. The observed changes were due to significant physiological changes in eight of the subjects. Unlike young subjects, no evidence of an increased pulmonary function response to a second consecutive O3 exposure was observed.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)

Incidence and effects of West Nile virus infection in vaccinated and unvaccinated horses in California. A prospective cohort study was used to estimate the incidence of West Nile virus (WNV) infection in a group of unvaccinated horses (n = 37) in California and compare the effects of natural WNV infection in these unvaccinated horses to a group of co-mingled vaccinated horses (n = 155). Horses initially were vaccinated with either inactivated whole virus (n = 87) or canarypox recombinant (n = 68) WNV vaccines during 2003 or 2004, prior to emergence of WNV in the region. Unvaccinated horses were serologically tested for antibodies to WNV by microsphere immunoassay incorporating recombinant WNV E protein (rE MIA) in December 2003, December 2004, and every two months thereafter until November 2005. Clinical neurologic disease attributable to WNV infection (West Nile disease (WND)) developed in 2 (5.4%) of 37 unvaccinated horses and in 0 of 155 vaccinated horses. One affected horse died. Twenty one (67.7%) of 31 unvaccinated horses that were seronegative to WNV in December, 2004 seroconverted to WNV before the end of the study in November, 2005. Findings from the study indicate that currently-available commercial vaccines are effective in preventing WND and their use is financially justified because clinical disease only occurred in unvaccinated horses and the mean cost of each clinical case of WND was approximately 45 times the cost of a 2-dose WNV vaccination program.

A mismatch index based on the difference between measured left ventricular ejection fraction and that estimated by infarct size at three months following reperfused acute myocardial infarction. The reduction of left ventricular ejection fraction (LVEF) following ST-segment elevation myocardial infarction (STEMI) is a result of infarcted myocardium and may involve dysfunctional but viable myocardium. An index that may quantitatively determine whether LVEF is reduced beyond the expected value when considering only infarct size (IS) has previously been presented based on cardiac magnetic resonance (CMR). The purpose of this study was to introduce the index based on the electrocardiogram (ECG) and compare indices based on ECG and CMR. In 55 patients ECG and CMR were obtained 3 months after STEMI treated with primary percutaneous coronary intervention. Significant, however moderate inverse relationships were found between measured LVEF and IS. Based on IS and LVEF an IS estimated LVEF was derived and an MI-LVEF mismatch index was calculated as the difference between measured LVEF and IS estimated LVEF. In 41 (74.5%) of the patients there was agreement between the ECG and CMR indices in regards to categorizing indices as >10 or ≤ 10 and generally no significant difference was detected, mean difference of 1.26 percentage points (p = 0.53). The study found an overall good agreement between MI-LVEF mismatch indices based on ECG and CMR. The MI-LVEF mismatch index may serve as a tool to identify patients with potentially reversible dysfunctional but viable myocardium, but future studies including both ECG and CMR are needed.