Rectal prolapse: Diagnosis and clinical management

The exact cause of rectal prolapse is not well addressed,but it is often associated with long standing constipation,advanced age,chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and some neurological disorders.Rectal prolapse is usually only a symptom,which needs a focus on discovery of the underlying pathology or disorder.Three different clinical presentations are often combined and called rectal prolapse.Rectal prolapse can be divided into full thickness rectal prolapse where the entire rectum protrudes beyond the a...     

How New Individuals Behave in a Heterogeneous Community: A Computational Approach to Norm Assimilation Using Agent-Based Systems

Heterogeneous community entails a number of social groups that adopt similar/different social norms. In such community, new individuals who join a new social group should be able to decide with which group they could assimilate based on their capabilities/values/manners. Otherwise, they would be penalized by other members in the group for violating some norms which they cannot comply.Using this approach, software agents would have better reasoning in simulating human society. In this paper, the authors propose a norms assimilation theory, in which a new agent attempts to assimilate with a social group's norms. This theory builds an approach to norm assimilation, analyzes the cases for an agent to decide to assimilate with a social group and develops a mathematical model to measure the assimilation cost and the agent's ability. The approach is developed based on the agent's internal belief about its ability and desire, and its external belief about the cost of assimilating with a number of social groups. The significance of this research is two-fold. Firstly, the study paves the way to future design of intelligent systems, i.e., software agents or robots, to closely mimic human social interactions.Secondly, the norm assimilation using agent-based system could be potentially utilized to simulate some social issues such as immigrants, new students, expatriate etc. The experiments that have been conducted demonstrate that an agent in the domain is able to calculate the assimilation cost and decide which social group to join.     

Refractory periods and climate forcing in cholera dynamics

Outbreaks of many infectious diseases, including cholera, malaria and dengue, vary over characteristic periods longer than 1 year. Evidence that climate variability drives these interannual cycles has been highly controversial, chiefly because it is difficult to isolate the contribution of environmental forcing while taking into account nonlinear epidemiological dynamics generated by mechanisms such as host immunity. Here we show that a critical interplay of environmental forcing, specifically climate variability, and temporary immunity explains the interannual disease cycles present in a four-decade cholera time series from Matlab, Bangladesh. We reconstruct the transmission rate, the key epidemiological parameter affected by extrinsic forcing, over time for the predominant strain (El Tor) with a nonlinear population model that permits a contributing effect of intrinsic immunity. Transmission shows clear interannual variability with a strong correspondence to climate patterns at long periods (over 7 years, for monsoon rains and Brahmaputra river discharge) and at shorter periods (under 7 years, for flood extent in Bangladesh, sea surface temperatures in the Bay of Bengal and the El Ni?o-Southern Oscillation). The importance of the interplay between extrinsic and intrinsic factors in determining disease dynamics is illustrated during refractory periods, when population susceptibility levels are low as the result of immunity and the size of cholera outbreaks only weakly reflects climate forcing.     

Myelin architecture: zippering membranes tightly together

Rapid nerve conduction requires the coating of axons by a tightly packed multilayered myelin membrane. In the central nervous system, myelin is formed from cellular processes that extend from oligodendrocytes and wrap in a spiral fashion around an axon, resulting in the close apposition of adjacent myelin membrane bilayers. In this review, we discuss the physical principles underlying the zippering of the plasma membrane of oligodendrocytes at the cytoplasmic and extracellular leaflet. We propose that the interaction of the myelin basic protein with the cytoplasmic leaflet of the myelin bilayer triggers its polymerization into a fibrous network that drives membrane zippering and protein extrusion. In contrast, the adhesion of the extracellular surfaces of myelin requires the down-regulation of repulsive components of the glycocalyx, in order to uncover weak and unspecific attractive forces that bring the extracellular surfaces into close contact. Unveiling the mechanisms of myelin membrane assembly at the cytoplasmic and extracelluar sites may help to understand how the myelin bilayers are disrupted and destabilized in the different demyelinating diseases.     

ALKALINE PULP OF CORN STALKS

Pulping of corn stalks was studied in soda,soda-anthraquinone (AQ), kraft and kraft-AQ processes. The time, temperature and alkali concentration were varied in soda process. In respect to kappa number and pulp yield, 1 hour cooking at 1400C in 14% alkali were best conditions for corn stalks pulping. Pulp yield was increased by 5.5% and kappa number was reduced by 4.4 points with an addition of 0.05% AQ in the soda liquor. Breaking length was better in soda-AQ process than soda process but tear strength was inferior. In the kraft process, pulp yield was increased with increasing sulphidity and decreasing active alkali. The effectiveness of AQ in the low and high sulphidity kraft process was studied. Results showed that AQ was more effective in low sulphidity than high sulphidity. Strength properties in kraft processes were better than the soda and soda-AQ processes.     

Characterization of low-purity clays for geopolymer binder formulation

The production of geopolymer binders from low-purity clays was investigated. Three low-purity clays were calcined at 750℃ for 4 h. The calcined clays were chemically activated by the alkaline solutions of NaOH and Na₂SiO₃. The compressive strength was measured as a function of curing time at room temperature and 85℃. The results were compared with those of a pure kaolin sample. An amorphous aluminosilicate polymer was formed in all binders at both processing temperatures. The results show that, the mechanical properties depend on the type and amount of active aluminum silicates in the starting clay material, the impurities, and the processing temperature.     

Revision of the digger wasps of the Ampulicidae and Heterogynaidae (Hymenoptera) of Saudi Arabia,with the description of a new species of the enigmatic genus Heterogyna Nagy

The apoid wasps of the families Ampulicidae and Heterogynaidae of Saudi Arabia are revised. In Ampulicidae, four species in three genera are reported, of which three species are recorded for the first time from Saudi Arabia (Al-Baha, Asir and Riyadh regions): Ampulex assimilis Kohl, Dolichurus arabicus Ohl and Trirogma caerulea Westwood. Additionally, the family Heterogynaidae is reported for the first time from Saudi Arabia (Asir and Riyadh regions), and a new species, Heterogyna saudita sp. nov., is described, diagnosed and illustrated. An illustrated key to the species of Heterogyna from the Arabian Peninsula is provided.

www.zoobank.org/urn:lsid:zoobank.org:pub:C23C70A7-AA1C-47C0-951A-D164E7B20001     

Nesomyrmex micheleae,a new ant species (Hymenoptera: Formicidae) from the Dhofar Governorate,Oman, with a synoptic list,distribution map and key to the Arabian Nesomyrmex

ABSTRACT

A new species of the myrmicine ant genus Nesomyrmex Wheeler, 1910, N. micheleae Sharaf sp. nov., is described and illustrated from Oman based on the worker caste. The new species is a member of the N. angulatus species group and can be diagnosed by the golden yellow gaster that contrasts with the dark brown body; the irregular longitudinal rugulose sculpture on the cephalic surface; and the finely punctate mesonotum and propodeal dorsum. A synoptic species list, an updated key and a distribution map to the Arabian Nesomyrmex species are presented. Continued ant species discoveries are central to large-scale diversity patterns, conservation biology and macroecology.

http://www.zoobank.org/urn:lsid:zoobank.org:pub:FBCEACA7-E543-4B10-AB9D-D63319DCB31F http://www.zoobank.org/urn:lsid:zoobank.org:act:1D2EC498-3B2E-43CD-A3C0-1C6C237471E2     

The Effect of Worker Learning on Scheduling Jobs in a Hybrid Flow Shop: A Bi-Objective Approach

This paper studies learning effect as a resource utilization technique that can model improvement in worker’s ability as a result of repeating similar tasks. By considering learning of workers while performing setup times, a schedule can be determined to place jobs that share similar tools and fixtures next to each other. The purpose of this paper is to schedule a set of jobs in a hybrid flow shop (HFS) environment with learning effect while minimizing two objectives that are in conflict: namely maximum completion time (makespan) and total tardiness. Minimizing makespan is desirable from an internal efficiency viewpoint, but may result in individual jobs being scheduled past their due date, causing customer dissatisfaction and penalty costs. A bi-objective mixed integer programming model is developed, and the complexity of the developed bi-objective model is compared against the bi-criteria one through numerical examples. The effect of worker learning on the structure of assigned jobs to machines and their sequences is analyzed. Two solution methods based on the hybrid water flow like algorithm and non-dominated sorting and ranking concepts are proposed to solve the problem. The quality of the approximated sets of Pareto solutions is evaluated using several performance criteria. The results show that the proposed algorithms with learning effect perform well in reducing setup times and eliminate the need for setups itself through proper scheduling.