Identification and application of physical and chemical parameters to predict indicator bacterial concentration in a small Californian creek.

This study of Aliso Creek in California aimed to identify physical and chemical parameters that could be measured instantly to be used in a model to serve as surrogates for indicator bacterial concentrations during dry season flow. In this study, a new data smoothing technique and ranking/categorizing analysis was used to reduce variation to allow better delineation of the relationships between adopted variables and concentrations of indicator bacteria. The ranking/categorizing approach clarified overall trends between physico-chemical data and the indicators and suggested sources of the bacteria. This study also applied a principle component regression model to the data. Although the model was promising for predicting concentrations of total and fecal coliforms, it was somewhat weaker in predicting enteroccocci

Transitional cell carcinoma of the nasolacrimal sac

Tumors in the lacrimal sac are rare yet important due to their malignant and potentially lethal outcomes if there is a misdiagnosis or delay in treatment. Epithelial tumors predominate with squamous cell carcinoma. We report a transitional cell carcinoma of the lacrimal sac and management course for the patient

Measuring Confidence of Assurance Cases in Safety-Critical Domains

Evaluation of assurance cases typically requires certifiers’ domain knowledge and experience, and, as such, most software certification has been conducted manually. Given the advancement in uncertainty theories and software traceability, we envision that these technologies can synergistically be combined and leveraged to offer some degree of automation to improve the certifiers’ capability to perform software certification. To this end, we present DS4AC, a novel confidence calculation framework that 1) applies the Dempster-Shafer theory to calculate the confidence between a parent claim and its children claims; and 2) uses the vector space model to evaluate the confidence for the evidence items using traceability information. We illustrate our approach on two different applications, where safety is the key property of interest for both systems. In both cases, we use the Goal Structuring Notation to represent the respective assurance cases and provide proof of concept results that demonstrate the DS4AC framework can automate portions of the evaluation of assurance cases, thereby reducing the burden of manual certification process

CR3 and Dectin-1 Collaborate in Macrophage Cytokine Response through Association on Lipid Rafts and Activation of Syk-JNK-AP-1 Pathway

Copyright: © 2015 Huang et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited Acknowledgments We are grateful to the Second Core Laboratory of Research Core Facility at the National Taiwan University Hospital for confocal microscopy service and providing ultracentrifuge. We thank Dr. William E. Goldman (University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, NC) for kindly providing WT and ags1-null mutant of H. capsulatum G186A. Funding: This work is supported by research grants 101-2320-B-002-030-MY3 from the Ministry of Science and Technology (http://www.most.gov.tw) and AS-101-TP-B06-3 from Academia Sinica (http://www.sinica.edu.tw) to BAWH. GDB is funded by research grant 102705 from Welcome Trust (http://www.wellcome.ac.uk). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Txoj Kev Ntshiab: Hmong American undergraduates’ perceptions of intellectual phoniness and psychosociocultural persistence decisions

Examining the educational experiences of 103 Hmong American undergraduates, gender and class standing differences emerged using a psychosociocultural approach. Females reported increased perceptions of family and friend support and greater cultural congruity in the university environment than males. Lower-division students indicated greater perceptions of social support from family, greater cultural congruity, and lower self-esteem than upper-division students. Feelings of phoniness emerged as the most significant negative predictor of academic persistence decisions. Implications, limitations, and future research are discussed

Accounting for Trends in Charitable Tax Deductions: Framework and Application to the District of Columbia

Charitable tax deductions are one of the largest tax expenditures at the state and federal levels, and they are also crucial for the sustainability of the charitable nonprofit sector. Understanding some of the factors that drive changes in charitable tax deductions over time is needed to inform policy. This paper uses a simple multiplicative decomposition to analyze trends in charitable tax deductions with an application to data from the District of Columbia over the period 2001-2011, thus including the recent recession. The decomposition shows how changes in the District’s population, the share of the population that files tax returns, the share of filers that claim the deduction, the average adjusted gross income of filers, and the average deduction claimed by claimants all contributed to the overall changes in the level of the deductions. The decomposition is applied for the District’s population as a whole as well as by income group

Accounting for Trends in Charitable Tax Deductions: Framework and Application to the District of Columbia

Charitable tax deductions are one of the largest tax expenditures at the state and federal levels, and they are also crucial for the sustainability of the charitable nonprofit sector. Understanding some of the factors that drive changes in charitable tax deductions over time is needed to inform policy. This paper uses a simple multiplicative decomposition to analyze trends in charitable tax deductions with an application to data from the District of Columbia over the period 2001-2011, thus including the recent recession. The decomposition shows how changes in the District’s population, the share of the population that files tax returns, the share of filers that claim the deduction, the average adjusted gross income of filers, and the average deduction claimed by claimants all contributed to the overall changes in the level of the deductions. The decomposition is applied for the District’s population as a whole as well as by income group

Dor pelviperineal

Pelviperineal pain is very common, specially in women. Very often the occurrence of visceral disturbances is not the reason for chronic pelvic pain. In many patients, pain is the result of muscleskeletal abnormalities or neuropathies. The removal of the possible causes, and the prescription of analgesics and adjuvants agents, physical medicine and psychotherapy are the usual procedures for treatment of this condition. Anaesthetic blocks and neurosurgial procedures seldom are necessary for tretament of these patients.Dor pelviperineal crônica é condição comum especialmente nos indivíduos do sexo feminino. Muito freqüentemente,anormalidades viscerais eventualmente identificadas aos exames complementares não justificam a sua ocorrência. Em grande número de enfermos, afecções músculo-esqueleticas, especialmente as síndromes dolorosas miofasciais do assoalho pélvico e da parede abdominal e neuropatias são a razão da ocorrência de dor pelviperineal crônica. O tratamento da dor pélvica crônica visa à remoção das causas possíveis e ao controle funcional da condição sintomática. Medicamentos analgésicos e adjuvantes, procedimentos de medicina física e de psicoterapia são freqüentemente indicados no tratamento das álgicas crônicas pelviperineais. As intervenções neuroanestésicas e neurocirúrgicas são indicadas em casos especiais