Association between age at disease onset of anti-neutrophil cytoplasmic antibody-associated vasculitis and clinical presentation and short-term outcomes

Objectives: ANCA-associated vasculitis (AAV) can affect all age groups. We aimed to show that differences in disease presentation and 6 month outcome between younger- A nd older-onset patients are still incompletely understood. Methods: We included patients enrolled in the Diagnostic and Classification Criteria for Primary Systemic Vasculitis (DCVAS) study between October 2010 and January 2017 with a diagnosis of AAV. We divided the population according to age at diagnosis: <65 years or ≥65 years. We adjusted associations for the type of AAV and the type of ANCA (anti-MPO, anti-PR3 or negative). Results: A total of 1338 patients with AAV were included: 66% had disease onset at <65 years of age [female 50%; mean age 48.4 years (s.d. 12.6)] and 34% had disease onset at ≥65 years [female 54%; mean age 73.6 years (s.d. 6)]. ANCA (MPO) positivity was more frequent in the older group (48% vs 27%; P = 0.001). Younger patients had higher rates of musculoskeletal, cutaneous and ENT manifestations compared with older patients. Systemic, neurologic,cardiovascular involvement and worsening renal function were more frequent in the older-onset group. Damage accrual, measured with the Vasculitis Damage Index (VDI), was significantly higher in older patients, 12% of whom had a 6 month VDI ≥5, compared with 7% of younger patients (P = 0.01). Older age was an independent risk factor for early death within 6 months from diagnosis [hazard ratio 2.06 (95% CI 1.07, 3.97); P = 0.03]. Conclusion: Within 6 months of diagnosis of AAV, patients >65 years of age display a different pattern of organ involvement and an increased risk of significant damage and mortality compared with younger patients

Just a game? Unjustified virtual violence produces guilt in empathetic players

Many avid gamers discount violent conduct in video games as morally insignificant as "it is just a game." However, recent debates among users, regarding video games featuring inappropriate forms of virtual violence, suggest a more complex truth. Two ex- periments (

A review study on the investigation of the effects of using robots in education on metacognitive behaviors

WOS:000770873100001In today's technology, robots are now involved in all aspects of life. Therefore, it is inconceivable that robots will not affect the field of education either. In this study, the use of robots in education has been explicitly discussed in terms of the development of metacognitive abilities. For this purpose, literature studies have been conducted both on the development of metacognitive skills and on how robots are used in education. According to the results obtained, although robots have been used in many fields of education, they have not been used primarily in the field of developing metacognitive skills. From this point of view, in this study, some research questions and suggestions for the application of metacognitive models through robots and, therefore, the use of robots to improve metacognitive skills are presented to the researchers. It is expected that it will benefit researchers related to this question and the proposed topic to direct their research and help close the lack of research in this area

DEM (DIGITAL ELEVATION MODEL) PRODUCTION AND ACCURACY MODELING OF DEMS FROM 1:35.000 SCALE AERIAL PHOTOGRAPHS

Aerial photographs and satellite imagery have been evaluated manually by the operators for a long time for the extraction of the contour line and DEM data. Computer technology and digital image processing technologies have been developed and this development provides to perform these extraction processes automatically or semi-automatically. The aim of making the processes automatic is to increase the speed of collecting the data and to reduce the cost. Many researches are made about the production of digital elevation models from different data sources and with different methods. In all of the studies, digital elevation models having different resolutions and different data sources are produced and the accuracies of digital elevation models are investigated. The results of these studies vary according to the source data, resolution, ground control point distribution, production method, topography, and reference data for the accuracy assessment. In this study, digital elevation models are produced by automatic image matching and from contour lines which are compiled from 1:35.000 scale aerial photographs and the accuracies of digital elevation models are assessed. Optimum data collection interval and accuracy of digital elevation models are investigated. Automatic image matching and photogrammetric compilation methods for digital elevation model production are compared. Accuracies are also investigated according to the resolution of digital elevation model and slope of topography. The results showed that the accuracy is correlated highly with digital elevation model resolution and 8 to 16 meters of DEM resolution is appropriate for DEMs produced by automatic image matching from 1:35.000 scale aerial photographs. A higher resolution of DEM does not affect the accuracy of DEM. 1.1 Digital Elevation Models 1

Numerical modelling of oil spill in New York Bay

New York Bay is one of the most important transition regions of ships trading to east America. The region plays an important role in the commerce of the New York metropolitan area. The area is surrounded with the coasts that have various levels of environmental sensitivity. The area accommodates high diversity of native ecosystems and species that are rather vulnerable in case of oil spill. Thus getting well informed about the likelihood, or fate, of oil spills around this region is of great importance so that proactive measures can be taken. The purpose of this study is to investigate the oil spill and predict the future accidents likely to be encountered around the Bay of New York. Two trajectory models have been conducted for the study. ADIOS (Automated Data Inquiry for Oil Spills), has been conducted for natural degradation calculations, and, GNOME (General NOAA Operational Modeling Environment), has been conducted for surface spread simulation. The results gained through these efforts are hoped to be useful for many organizations dealing with oil spill response operations and contribute to an effective and efficient coordination among the relevant institutions

Optimum site selection for oil spill response center in the Marmara Sea using the AHP-TOPSIS method

The aim of this study is to determine the optimum location for an oil spill response center in the Marmara Sea. The analytic hierarchy process (AHP) and technique for the order of preference by similarity to ideal solution (TOPSIS) method as the most preferred multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) technique were used. The results reveal that the LOC criterion and PRA sub-criterion have the highest effects on the optimal location selection of the oil spill response center. According to the results, the most suitable location for the oil spill response center in the region is Izmit Bay Entrance. This location has been proposed for the response headquarters to manage the whole operation with the assistance of auxiliary installations in the area. In this study, only technical and operational variables are taken into account, but political and administrative criteria are excluded

Linearity within the SMS4 block cipher

We present several new observations on the SMS4 block cipher, and discuss their cryptographic significance. The crucial observation is the existence of fixed points and also of simple linear relationships between the bits of the input and output words for each component of the round functions for some input words. This implies that the non-linear function T of SMS4 does not appear random and that the linear transformation provides poor diffusion. Furthermore, the branch number of the linear transformation in the key scheduling algorithm is shown to be less than optimal. The main security implication of these observations is that the round function is not always non-linear. Due to this linearity, it is possible to reduce the number of effective rounds of SMS4 by four. We also investigate the susceptibility of SMS4 to further cryptanalysis. Finally, we demonstrate a successful differential attack on a slightly modified variant of SMS4. These findings raise serious questions on the security provided by SMS4