Spacelike intersection curve of three spacelike hypersurfaces in E14E_1^4

In this paper, we compute the Frenet vectors and the curvatures of the spacelike intersection curve of three spacelike hypersurfaces given by their parametric equations in four-dimensional Minkowski space $E_1^4$

Rapid mapping of digital integrated circuit logic gates via multi-spectral backside imaging

Modern semiconductor integrated circuits are increasingly fabricated at untrusted third party foundries. There now exist myriad security threats of malicious tampering at the hardware level and hence a clear and pressing need for new tools that enable rapid, robust and low-cost validation of circuit layouts. Optical backside imaging offers an attractive platform, but its limited resolution and throughput cannot cope with the nanoscale sizes of modern circuitry and the need to image over a large area. We propose and demonstrate a multi-spectral imaging approach to overcome these obstacles by identifying key circuit elements on the basis of their spectral response. This obviates the need to directly image the nanoscale components that define them, thereby relaxing resolution and spatial sampling requirements by 1 and 2 - 4 orders of magnitude respectively. Our results directly address critical security needs in the integrated circuit supply chain and highlight the potential of spectroscopic techniques to address fundamental resolution obstacles caused by the need to image ever shrinking feature sizes in semiconductor integrated circuits

Treatment of three hereditary leiomyomatosis patients with cryotherapy

Hereditary leiomyomatosis and renal cell cancer (HLRCC) syndrome is an autosomal dominant disorder characterized by cutaneous leiomyomas (CLM), uterine leiomyomas, and the increased risk of renal cell carcinoma. Piloleiomyomas develop from the arrectorpili muscle and are usually painful. For 22% of the affected patients, the pain is reported to impair their life quality. Since there are few case reports about cryotherapy for cutaneous leiomyomas in the literature, we have decided to present three patients who had painful cutaneous leiomyomas treated with cryotherapy. © 2020 Wiley Periodicals, Inc

Effects of edentulism in obstructive sleep apnea syndrome

Objectives: The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of edentulism in obstructive sleep apnea syndrome (OSAS) patients.Materials and Methods: The study patients’ were selected from the Gaziantep University Sleep Clinic and Orthodontic Department archives between the years of 2009 and 2011. Study groups were determined according to age and edentulism, and the overall study population consisted of 42 (21 male, 21 female) OSAS patients. Data from 14 edentulous (Group I), 14 older dentate (Group II), and 14 middle‑aged dentate OSAS patients (Group III) were compared in this study. Polysomnographic parameters, which were measured and analyzed included: Sleep time, sleep efficiency, sleep stage 1, sleep stage 2, sleep stage 3, percentage of rapid eye movement sleep, apnea‑hypopnea index, oxygen saturation and arousal index. The Kruskal–Wallis and Mann–Whitney U statistical tests were used for comparing the differences between the three groups and subgroups.Results: Sleep time parameters showed significant differences between the groups (P < 0.05). Differences occurred between Group I and Group III in the sleep time parameter (P < 0.05), while the edentulous subjects showed lower mean sleep time values when compared to the older and middle‑aged dentate groups.Conclusion: According to our results, edentulism may not impact polysomnography parameters, with the exception of the sleep time parameter. Important attention should be given to edentulous individuals during sleep with their dentures to prevent OSAS complications. The use of dentures may prevent or protect patients from the predisposing factors of OSAS.Keywords: Dentures, edentulous, obstructive sleep apnea syndrome, polysomnograph

THE RELATION OF RELIGIOUS ATTITUDES AND BEHAVIOURS WITH DEPRESSION IN BOARDING QURAN COURSE STUDENTS

Background: Boarding Quran courses are religious institutions where course attendees spend large part of the year. Depression is an ever-increasing health problem. So, it is worth to study on the effects of religion concept and religious belief and behaviours’ that religion concept brings, on depression. The main purpose of this study, is to analyse the effect of religious attitudes and behaviours on depression in Quran course / hafiz students. Subjects and methods: The study is a cross sectional, case-control survey research. Boarding Quran courses and high schools were visited in Samsun city. A total of 956 participants enrolled between June 2015 and December 2015 were included into study from Samsun city of Turkey. Volunteers, 13 years and over ones without any psychiatric disorders were included in the study. Religious attitude-behaviour inventory and Beck’s depression inventory were used in the study. Results: Median point of case group attitude scale was 49, control group’s was 57 and difference among both has a statistical meaning (p<0.001). Beck’s depression score average of case group is 12.93±9.33, its control group’s average is 13.74±11.14 and difference between them is not important. Median score of both groups are 11. When scores of attitude and depression scales compared with each other in terms of demographic parameters, there is a difference among group, gender, age and education parameters (p<0.001). Conclusions: It was seen that religious attitudes and behaviours can be protective for boarding Quran course students but it cannot be enough by itself

In Situ Synthesis of Polymer/Clay Nanocomposites by Type II Photoinitiated Free Radical Polymerization

Cataloged from PDF version of article.A new synthetic route for the preparation of poly(methyl methacrylate)/montmorillonite (PMMA/MMT) nanocomposites was reported. In this method, first 4-(dimethylamino)benzoate group was incorporated into silicate layers of clay by esterification reaction and used to produce PMMA/MMT nanocomposites by in situ Type II photoinitiated free radical polymerization. In situ photopolymerization of methyl methacrylate through into the silicate layers by either visible or UV light irradiation leads to PMMA/MMT nanocomposites. Copyright © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc

Tn6188 - A Novel Transposon in Listeria monocytogenes Responsible for Tolerance to Benzalkonium Chloride

peer-reviewedControlling the food-borne pathogen Listeria (L.) monocytogenes is of great importance from a food safety perspective, and thus for human health. The consequences of failures in this regard have been exemplified by recent large listeriosis outbreaks in the USA and Europe. It is thus particularly notable that tolerance to quaternary ammonium compounds such as benzalkonium chloride (BC) has been observed in many L. monocytogenes strains. However, the molecular determinants and mechanisms of BC tolerance of L. monocytogenes are still largely unknown. Here we describe Tn6188, a novel transposon in L. monocytogenes conferring tolerance to BC. Tn6188 is related to Tn554 from Staphylococcus (S.) aureus and other Tn554-like transposons such as Tn558, Tn559 and Tn5406 found in various Firmicutes. Tn6188 comprises 5117 bp, is integrated chromosomally within the radC gene and consists of three transposase genes (tnpABC) as well as genes encoding a putative transcriptional regulator and QacH, a small multidrug resistance protein family (SMR) transporter putatively associated with export of BC that shows high amino acid identity to Smr/QacC from S. aureus and to EmrE from Escherichia coli. We screened 91 L. monocytogenes strains for the presence of Tn6188 by PCR and found Tn6188 in 10 of the analyzed strains. These isolates were from food and food processing environments and predominantly from serovar 1/2a. L. monocytogenes strains harboring Tn6188 had significantly higher BC minimum inhibitory concentrations (MICs) (28.5 ± 4.7 mg/l) than strains without Tn6188 (14 ± 3.2 mg/l). Using quantitative reverse transcriptase PCR we could show a significant increase in qacH expression in the presence of BC. QacH deletion mutants were generated in two L. monocytogenes strains and growth analysis revealed that ΔqacH strains had lower BC MICs than wildtype strains. In conclusion, our results provide evidence that Tn6188 is responsible for BC tolerance in various L. monocytogenes strains.This work was supported by a grant from the Austrian Science Fund (FWF, http://www.fwf.ac.at/) to SSE (grant no. P22703‐B17), by the European Union funded integrated project BIOTRACER (contract no. 036272) under the 6th RTD framework and by the EU grant FP7‐KBBE‐2010‐4 (FOODSEG)

Polylactic acid (PLA)/Silver-NP/VitaminE bionanocomposite electrospun nanofibers with antibacterial and antioxidant activity

Cataloged from PDF version of article.The antibacterial property of silver nanoparticles (Ag-NPs) and the antioxidant activity of Vitamin E have been combined by incorporation of these two active components within polylactic acid (PLA) nanofibers via electrospinning (PLA/Ag-NP/VitaminE nanofibers). The morphological and structural characterizations of PLA/Ag-NP/VitaminE nanofibers were performed by Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM), Transmission Electron Microscopy and X-ray diffraction. The average fiber diameter was 140 ± 60 nm, and the size of the Ag-NP was 2.7 ± 1.5 nm. PLA/Ag-NP/VitaminE nanofibers inhibited growth of Escherichia coli, Listeria monocytogenes and Salmonella typhymurium up to 100 %. The amount of released Ag ions from the nanofibers immersed in aqueous solution was determined by Inductively Coupled Plasma Mass Spectrometry, and it has been observed that the release of Ag ions was kept approximately constant after 10 days of immersion. The antioxidant activity of PLA/Ag-NP/VitaminE nanofibers was evaluated according to DPPH (2,2-diphenyl-1-picrylhydrazyl) method and determined as 94 %. The results of the tests on fresh apple and apple juice indicated that the PLA/Ag/VitaminE nanofiber membrane actively reduced the polyphenol oxidase activity. The multifunctional electrospun PLA nanofibers incorporating Ag-NP and Vitamin E may be quite applicable in food packaging due to the extremely large surface area of nanofibers along with antibacterial and antioxidant activities. These materials could find application in food industry as a potential preservative packaging for fruits and juices. © 2014, Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht

Polysulfone/Clay Nanocomposites by in situ Photoinduced Crosslinking Polymerization

Cataloged from PDF version of article.PSU/MMT nanocomposites are prepared by dispersing MMT nanolayers in a PSU matrix via in situ photoinduced crosslinking polymerization. Intercalated methacrylate-functionalized MMT and polysulfone dimethacrylate macromonomer are synthesized independently by esterification. In situ photoinduced crosslinking of the intercalated monomer and the PSU macromonomer in the silicate layers leads to nanocomposites that are formed by individually dispersing inorganic silica nanolayers in the polymer matrix. The morphology of the nanocomposites is investigated by XRD and TEM, which suggests the random dispersion of silicate layers in the PSU matrix. TGA results confirm that the thermal stability and char yield of PSU/MMT nanocomposites increases with the increase of clay loading

Testing timed systems modeled by stream X-machines

Stream X-machines have been used to specify real systems where complex data structures. They are a variety of extended finite state machine where a shared memory is used to represent communications between the components of systems. In this paper we introduce an extension of the Stream X-machines formalism in order to specify systems that present temporal requirements. We add time in two different ways. First, we consider that (output) actions take time to be performed. Second, our formalism allows to specify timeouts. Timeouts represent the time a system can wait for the environment to react without changing its internal state. Since timeous affect the set of available actions of the system, a relation focusing on the functional behavior of systems, that is, the actions that they can perform, must explicitly take into account the possible timeouts. In this paper we also propose a formal testing methodology allowing to systematically test a system with respect to a specification. Finally, we introduce a test derivation algorithm. Given a specification, the derived test suite is sound and complete, that is, a system under test successfully passes the test suite if and only if this system conforms to the specification