Biomarkers for assessing human female reproductive health, an interdisciplinary approach.

Identification of environmental hazards to reproductive health and characterization of the adverse outcomes necessitate a multidisciplinary approach. Epidemiologic studies are required for the identification of adverse health effects in human populations and then to confirm that specific exposures are responsible. Clinical studies are required to develop assays for reproductive biomarkers and to validate these assays prior to their application in the field. Assays for field use must be formatted and streamlined for large-scale applications and, whenever possible, computer algorithms should be developed to interpret biomarker data. Appropriate animal models must be identified, biomarker assays validated for that model, and animal experiments conducted to identify the mode of action and target organ of a putative reproductive toxicant. Finally, in vitro studies at the level of the cell and cell organelle are essential for mechanisms for toxicity to be clearly identified and understood. In this article we describe the interdisciplinary approach that we have developed for study of the effects of environmental agents on female reproductive functions. This effort requires specific skills of toxicologists, epidemiologists, physicians, biochemists, and physiologists

Acknowledgements

In this book, an international team of fourteen scholars investigates the Chinese reception of Indian Buddhist ideas, especially in the sixth and seventh centuries. Topics include Buddhist logic and epistemology (pramāṇa, yinming); commentaries on Indian Buddhist texts; Chinese readings of systems as diverse as Madhyamaka, Yogācāra and tathāgatagarbha; the working out of Indian concepts and problematics in new Chinese works; and previously under-studied Chinese evidence for developments in India. The authors aim to consider the ways that these Chinese materials might furnish evidence of broader Buddhist trends, thereby problematizing a prevalent notion of “sinification”, which has led scholars to consider such materials predominantly in terms of trends ostensibly distinctive to China. The volume also tries to go beyond seeing sixth- and seventh-century China primarily as the age of the formation and establishment of the Chinese Buddhist “schools”. The authors attempt to view the ideas under study on their own terms, as valid Buddhist ideas engendered in a rich, “liminal” space of interchange between two large traditions.In this book, an international team of fourteen scholars investigates the Chinese reception of Indian Buddhist ideas, especially in the sixth and seventh centuries. Topics include Buddhist logic and epistemology (pramāṇa, yinming); commentaries on Indian Buddhist texts; Chinese readings of systems as diverse as Madhyamaka, Yogācāra and tathāgatagarbha; the working out of Indian concepts and problematics in new Chinese works; and previously under-studied Chinese evidence for developments in India. The authors aim to consider the ways that these Chinese materials might furnish evidence of broader Buddhist trends, thereby problematizing a prevalent notion of “sinification”, which has led scholars to consider such materials predominantly in terms of trends ostensibly distinctive to China. The volume also tries to go beyond seeing sixth- and seventh-century China primarily as the age of the formation and establishment of the Chinese Buddhist “schools”. The authors attempt to view the ideas under study on their own terms, as valid Buddhist ideas engendered in a rich, “liminal” space of interchange between two large traditions

Income distribution in Croatia:what do the household budget survey data tell us?

The paper analyses income distribution in Croatia using the Household Budget Survey data. The results point to a mild increase in inequality during the 1998-2002 period. A non-linear increase in pensions in 2001 in favour of the better-off households has contributed to the rising inequality. In the meantime, other social transfers have become better targeted towards the poor suppressing overall inequality increase. Wages and salaries have become increasingly important and more unequally distributed sources of income. The income share of the poorest decile has shrunk due to its lower share in wages and pensions. The paper concludes with a proposal for introducing a panel survey of households in order to improve monitoring of poverty and inequality.income distribution, inequality, Croatia

Optimisation des performances du programme mpiBLAST pour la parallélisation sur grille de calcul

Le programme mpiBLAST est un programme d'alignement local de séquences destiné aux architectures parallèles telles que les clusters ou les grilles de calcul. La performance du mpiBLAST est optimale lorsqu'on utilise la totalité des noeuds du cluster l'ISIMA. La meilleure performance est obtenue lorsque (n+1) noeuds sont utilisés pour le calcul tandis que la base de données est fragmentée sur n noeuds. Nous avons démontré une légère chute de performance lorsque le nombre de noeuds utilisés pour le calcul est très supérieur au nombre de fragments de la base de données. Le programme parallèle d'alignement de séquence mpiBLAST est adapté pour l'application que nous développons et permet d'aller jusqu'à 8 fois plus vite que sur une architecture classique. L'architecture du cluster est une étape de transition vers l'architecture de grille de calcul

Analysis of experimental and numerical results of a turbulent swirling flow in a tube

In many applications swirling flow is used to enhance heat and mass transfer. One of the problems of modelling a turbulent swirling flow is the choice of the turbulent closure model which is acceptable for engineering purposes. To evaluate which model performs best, numerical results are compared with experimental data. Local velocity measurements are carried out on a swirling flow in a circular tube. The measurement method is hot-wire anemometry combined with visualization techniques. The numerical analysis is carried out using the k-e model and the Algebraic Stress Model. In the experiment a symmetrical swirl was observed, Comparing the experimental data with the numerical results shows that the Algebraic Stress Model represents the experimental data quite well, whereas the k-e model fails

Unexplained Deaths and Critical Illnesses of Suspected Infectious Cause, Taiwan, 2000–2005

We report 5 years’ surveillance data from the Taiwan Centers for Disease Control on unexplained deaths and critical illnesses suspected of being caused by infection. A total of 130 cases were reported; the incidence rate was 0.12 per 100,000 person-years; and infectious causes were identified for 81 cases (62%)

Beyond Tax Smoothing

Analyses of optimal government capital structure generally follow Bohn (1990) and Barro (1995) in assuming risk neutrality or an exogenous risk premium. These analyses usually conclude that the optimal government capital structure stabilizes tax rates over time and states of nature to the greatest extent possible, something known as "tax smoothing." In this paper, we show that when an endogenous risk premium is introduced, the optimal government capital structure will no longer smooth tax rates. Under likely conditions, the optimal structure requires a larger short position in risky assets than that implied by tax smoothin

Complicating Consent: A Study of the Rhetorical Strategies Employed to Interrupt Rape Myths in the Prosecutor v. Kunarac

The justices in the trial of the Prosecutor v. Kunarac were able to interrupt the rape myths that generally exist in rape trials by complicating the notion of consent. In this paper I argue that the justices de-naturalize common myths about consent by relying on the details of victim testimony and the context of the war to fill in the gaps between testimony and lived experience. Rather than allowing rape myths like "she asked for it" to explain the complicated stories of sexual violence during the war in Bosnia-Herzegovina the justices use a new definition of rape that broadens consent to allow more of the contextual details of the war and each attack to count as valid evidence

Evidential Detection and Tracking Collaboration: New Problem, Benchmark and Algorithm for Robust Anti-UAV System

Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) have been widely used in many areas, including transportation, surveillance, and military. However, their potential for safety and privacy violations is an increasing issue and highly limits their broader applications, underscoring the critical importance of UAV perception and defense (anti-UAV). Still, previous works have simplified such an anti-UAV task as a tracking problem, where the prior information of UAVs is always provided; such a scheme fails in real-world anti-UAV tasks (i.e. complex scenes, indeterminate-appear and -reappear UAVs, and real-time UAV surveillance). In this paper, we first formulate a new and practical anti-UAV problem featuring the UAVs perception in complex scenes without prior UAVs information. To benchmark such a challenging task, we propose the largest UAV dataset dubbed AntiUAV600 and a new evaluation metric. The AntiUAV600 comprises 600 video sequences of challenging scenes with random, fast, and small-scale UAVs, with over 723K thermal infrared frames densely annotated with bounding boxes. Finally, we develop a novel anti-UAV approach via an evidential collaboration of global UAVs detection and local UAVs tracking, which effectively tackles the proposed problem and can serve as a strong baseline for future research. Extensive experiments show our method outperforms SOTA approaches and validate the ability of AntiUAV600 to enhance UAV perception performance due to its large scale and complexity. Our dataset, pretrained models, and source codes will be released publically