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Background: Vertebral fracture is both common and serious among adults, yet it often goes undiagnosed. The aims of this study were to develop a shape-based algorithm (SBA) for the automatic identification of vertebral fractures. Results: At the person level, the SBA achieved a sensitivity of 100% and specificity of 61% (95% CI, 51-72%). At the vertebral level, the SBA achieved a sensitivity of 84% (95% CI, 72% to 93%), a specificity of 88% (95% CI, 85% to 90%). On average, the SBA took 0.3 seconds to assess one X-ray. Conclusions: The SBA developed here is a fast and efficient tool that can be used to systematically screen for asymptomatic vertebral fractures and reduce the workload of healthcare professionals. Methods: The study included 50participants whose plain thoracolumbar spine X-rays (n = 144) were taken. Clinical diagnosis of vertebral fracture (grade 0 to 3) was made by rheumatologists using Genant's semiquantitative method. The SBA algorithm was developed to determinethe ratio of vertebral body height loss. Based on the ratio, SBA classifies a vertebra into 4 classes: 0=normal, 1=mild fracture, 2=moderate fracture, 3=severe fracture). The concordance between clinical diagnosis and SBA-based classification was assessed at both personal and vertebral levels.

Vietnam has successfully reduced population stunting, but ethnic minority groups are being systematically left behind, limiting progress on national reductions. This mixed methods study aims to understand how policy drivers of stunting reduction differ between ethnic majority and minority communities. We used decomposition analysis to explain key determinants of stunting change between 2000 and 2010; and framework analysis to qualitatively assess changes in policy, actors and narratives that have underpinned these over decades. Our analysis shows that stunting reductions are associated with increased household wealth (accounting for 61% of change), improved access to specific health services (16%), and changes in level of maternal education (12%). Despite multiple actors involved in change and a large set of policies designed to address inequities, many among Vietnam’s defined ethnic minority groups are not finding themselves able to effectively engage with central government plans for their communities, and central policies often do not consider their preferences or limitations. This in turn impacts the nutrition of minority groups through the determinants above. Vietnam has achieved the easier portion of stunting reduction through national economic growth and sustained commitment to socially-oriented policy. In order to tackle the remaining pockets of high malnutrition, more attention, thought and funding will need to focus on marginalised ethnic minority communities. The current national development discourse aims to incorporate minorities into mainstream majority systems. This paper argues that policy should rather take into account their particular needs and preferences to address and overcome the identified determinants of malnutrition.

The mangrove Avicennia marina adjusts internal salt concentrations by foliar salt secretion. Deliquescence of accumulated salt causes leaf wetting that may provide a water source for salt-secreting plants in arid coastal wetlands where high nocturnal humidity can usually support deliquescence whereas rainfall events are rare. We tested the hypotheses that salt deliquescence on leaf surfaces can drive top-down rehydration, and that such absorption of moisture from unsaturated atmospheres makes a functional contribution to dry season shoot water balances. Sap flow and water relations were monitored to assess the uptake of atmospheric water by branches during shoot wetting events under natural and manipulated microclimatic conditions. Reverse sap flow rates increased with increasing relative humidity from 70% to 89%, consistent with function of salt deliquescence in harvesting moisture from unsaturated atmospheres. Top-down rehydration elevated branch water potentials above those possible from root water uptake, subsidising transpiration rates and reducing branch vulnerability to hydraulic failure in the subsequent photoperiod. Absorption of atmospheric moisture harvested through deliquescence of salt on leaf surfaces enhances water balances of Avicennia marina growing in hypersaline wetlands under arid climatic conditions. Top-down rehydration from these frequent, low intensity wetting events contributes to prevention of carbon starvation and hydraulic failure during drought.

Recent breakthroughs in quantum hardware are creating opportunities for its use in many applications. However, quantum software engineering is still in its infancy with many challenges, especially dealing with the diversity of quantum programming languages and hardware platforms. To alleviate these challenges, we propose QFaaS, a novel Quantum Function-as-a-Service framework, which leverages the advantages of the serverless model and the state-of-the-art software engineering approaches to advance practical quantum computing. Our framework provides essential components of a quantum serverless platform to simplify the software development and adapt to the quantum cloud computing paradigm, such as combining hybrid quantum-classical computation, containerizing functions, and integrating DevOps features. We design QFaaS as a unified quantum computing framework by supporting well-known quantum languages and software development kits (Qiskit, Q#, Cirq, and Braket), executing the quantum tasks on multiple simulators and quantum cloud providers (IBM Quantum and Amazon Braket). This paper proposes architectural design, principal components, the life cycle of hybrid quantum-classical function, operation workflow, and implementation of QFaaS. We present two practical use cases and perform the evaluations on quantum computers and simulators to demonstrate our framework's ability to ease the burden on traditional engineers to expedite the ongoing quantum software transition., Comment: 35 pages, 15 figures

BACKGROUND Food insecurity (FI) is associated with poor health, suboptimal nutrition, and disadvantaged linguistic, social, and academic development for children. Given the prominent role that parents play in children's development, FI may be associated with parenting practices. OBJECTIVES We aimed to understand how FI and its change over time relate to parenting in early childhood. METHODS Data were from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study-Birth Cohort: parental interviews and child assessments at 9 mo and 2, 4, and 5 y old. Dependent variables were parenting practices in years 2, 4, and 5 in parent-child interaction, discipline, rules, and routines in general and food-related settings. Stratified by gender, parenting outcomes were regressed on earlier FI and child, parent, and contextual covariates, then additionally regressed on concurrent FI, using models with full-information-maximum-likelihood and cluster control. RESULTS Earlier FI was associated with harsh discipline (girls, year 5: β1 = 0.0811, P

Adolescents' developmental tasks and challenges vary based on age, sex, and social context. Food insecurity affects adolescents, but existing research has been limited to a few country contexts and has treated adolescence as a singular developmental moment with limited consideration of potential differences in how food insecurity relates to developmental experiences based on adolescent age and sex.We aimed to describe relations between student-reported food insecurity and students' profiles of nutritional, physical activity, school absenteeism, health/mental health, and victimization experiences, and how these differ by student age and sex.Using cross-sectional data from the Global School-based Student Health Survey, we examined adolescent reports of their food security among 337,738 students 11-18 y old from 95 countries. We identified their profiles of focal experiences, and used mixed-effects linear and logistic regression models to examine differences in these profiles by student food insecurity and how these differ by student age and sex.Of students, 25.5% aged 11-14 y compared with 30% aged 15-18 y reported food insecurity in the past 30 d. Food insecurity was associated with less frequent fruit and vegetable intake; more frequent soft drink intake; worse mental health; less physical activity; more missed school; higher odds of smoking, drinking, and using drugs; and more bullying victimization and sexual partners. Food insecurity was associated with reduced age- and sex-specific protection: greater substance use among younger adolescents, more sexual partners among older females, and greater worry among younger males. Food insecurity was also associated with increased age-specific risk: greater soft drink consumption among younger adolescents.Across countries, adolescent food insecurity was associated with poorer nutritional, mental health, behavioral, and relationship profiles; these associations differed with student age and sex. Food insecurity interventions should attend to adolescent developmental stage and the gendered contexts through which adolescents navigate daily life.

Peutz-Jeghers syndrome (PJS) is an autosomal dominant inheritance characterized by intestinal hamartomatous polyps and hyperpigmented mucocutaneous macules. Bleeding, bowel obstruction, and intussusception are the most common complications in PJS patients. Individuals are infrequently present for the first time with bowel obstruction secondary to intussusception. Intestinal intussusception presentation is often observed clearly on multidetector computed tomography (MDCT) with characteristic findings, such as “target” and “pseudo-kidney” signs, and sometimes shows the cause of lead-point polyp. A complemental examination is needed to attain more diagnostic symptoms of this disorder, including pigmented spots on the oral cavity and lips, family history with multiple gastrointestinal polyps. Here, we report a case of a 17-year-old male who showed traits of Peutz-Jeghers syndrome. However, the diagnosis was not made until he later developed bowel obstruction caused by an ileo-ileal intussusception manifestation on MDCT and eventually proved in typical hamartoma on postoperative histopathology.

Foliar water uptake (FWU) occurs in plants of diverse ecosystems; however, the diversity of pathways and their associated FWU kinetics remain poorly resolved. We characterized a novel FWU pathway in two mangrove species of the Sonneratia genus, S. alba and S. caseolaris. Further, we assessed the influence of leaf wetting duration, wet-dry seasonality and leaf dehydration on leaf conductance to surface water (Ksurf ). The symplastic tracer dye, disodium fluorescein, revealed living cells subtending and encircling leaf epidermal structures known as cork warts as a pathway of FWU entry into the leaf. Rehydration kinetics experiments revealed a novel mode of FWU, with slow and steady rates of water uptake persistent over a duration of 12 h. Ksurf increased with longer durations of leaf wetting and was greater in leaves with more negative water potentials at the initiation of leaf wetting. Ksurf declined by 68% between wet and dry seasons. Our results suggest that FWU via cork warts in Sonneratia sp. may be rate limited and under active regulation. We conclude that FWU pathways in halophytes may require ion exclusion to avoid uptake of salt when inundated, paralleling the capacity of halophyte roots for ion selectivity during water acquisition. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.

Micro tasks are small knowledge probes that can provide speed and accuracy data about how well a user interface (UI) supports work tasks. We present a software system that supports researchers in authoring, managing and conducting micro tasks studies. The system supports the generation of different types of micro task questions, provides tagging functionality, can exchange data with external systems such as simulators, is fully integrated with eye tracking, presents micro tasks questions to participants, allows for online observation, and stores responses in a data base.

When producing pharmaceutical infusion bags, manual inspection of the production of the bags is very important. We set out to see if convolutional neural networks (CNNs) can be used to make one of these inspection steps easier. The task was to detect where infusion bags placed on a tray overlapped. The problem with detecting this overlap is that the infusion bags are made of transparent plastic and filled with transparent fluid, so it is hard to see the bag placements. Several different setups of CNNs were explored, as well as one image processing technique. All the neural networks tested were able to find the infusion bags. The U-Net CNN for the whole image seemed to be especially well suited this specific inspection problem, as this made it possible to make a direct input-to-output neural network with the least limitations. This paper describes the various methods and setups used, including their advantages and limitations. How to implement the selected setup in the actual inspection process and some further work we would like to do is also mentioned.

Wound healing, especially of chronic wounds, is still an unmet therapeutic area since assessment and management are extremely complicated. Although many efforts have been made to treat wounds, all strategies have achieved limited results for chronic wounds. Stem cell-based therapy is considered a promising approach for complex wounds such as those occurring in diabetics. Mesenchymal stem cell transplantation significantly improves wound closure, angiogenesis and wound healing. However, cell therapy is complex, expensive and time-consuming. Recent studies have shown that stem cell-derived exosomes can be an exciting approach to treat wounds. Exosomes derived from mesenchymal stem cells can induce benefit in almost all stages of wound healing, including control of immune responses, inhibition of inflammation, promoting cell proliferation and angiogenesis, while reducing scar formation during the wound healing process. This review aimed at offering an updated overview of the use of exosomes in biological applications, such as wound healing, and addresses not only current applications but also new directions for this next-generation approach in wound healing.

OBJECTIVES: This study tested whether adolescent students who experienced hunger in 95 countries consumed less healthy diets. METHODS: Data were self-reported by adolescent students aged 11–18 years old from the Global School-Based Student Health Survey (2003–2016) in 95 countries. Hunger was affirmed if going hungry due to lack of food in home sometimes, most of the time, or always during the past 30 days. Dietary outcomes were measured by frequencies of having fruits, vegetables, and soft drinks per day, and eating from fast-food restaurants per week. The first two outcomes (i.e., fruits and vegetables) were measured in all 95 country surveys from 2003–2016 (n = 333,062); the latter two (i.e., soft drink and fast foods) were measured in 71 country surveys from 2009–2016 (n = 262,241). Each dietary outcome was analyzed separately using linear mixed-model regression with age and sex as fixed effects and the variation among countries (intercept and slope), among schools, and among classrooms as random effects. RESULTS: Adolescent students who experienced hunger had less frequent intake of fruits and vegetables and more frequent intake of soft drinks daily (β = −0.0715, −0.0348, and 0.0526, respectively), but hunger was not associated with eating from fast-food restaurants. The differences associated with hunger in frequency of intake of fruits, vegetables, and soft drinks in adolescent students varied across countries, with standard deviations of the differences of 0.126, 0.0844, and 0.115, respectively, across countries. That is, for example, the difference in fruit intake associated with hunger ranged across countries, using ± 2 standard deviations, from −0.324 to 0.181 times per day. The analogous ranges for vegetables and soft drinks were −0.204, 0.134 and −0.177, 0.283. CONCLUSIONS: Adolescent students who experienced hunger were less likely to consume healthy diets globally; the magnitude of the association varied across countries. FUNDING SOURCES: None.

Opinion leader research (OLR) has been widely used in public health to identify influential persons or organizations to affect health care practice, inform policy-making processes, and help shape communication strategies. We used OLR to gather information related to barriers and possible solutions to guide strategic engagement for strengthening policy making for improved maternal, infant, and young child nutrition (MIYCN) practices in 5 Southeast Asian countries—Cambodia, Laos, Indonesia, Timor-Leste, and Thailand. In most countries, MIYCN policies and policymaker interest exist, but effective implementation and/or enforcement of current policies is weak. This article aims to share our experience in and lessons learned from using OLR as an advocacy tool: It helped identify opinion leaders with interest and influence to affect nutrition-related policies, it raised opinion leaders’ interest in MIYCN, and it identified themes that would help generate political priority setting. Based on our experience, we recommend OLR as a strategic activity for informing and generating support for MIYCN policy-making processes., Lessons from using opinion leader research (OLR) to improve maternal, infant and young child nutrition (MIYCN) policy-making process in Southeast Asia are shared.

Otter clam farming in Vietnam has recently encountered difficulties due to swollen-siphon disease. Here, we report the metagenome sequences of microorganisms extracted from the siphon tissue of infected otter clams. The data comprised bacterial and viral sequences which likely include those derived from the disease-causing agent.

We demonstrate the ReClass system, a real time reading detection classifier. ReClass detects if a user is reading text or not solely based on the user’s eye movements, without considering the content of the screen. We examined two machine learning approaches. In the first approach, we pre-processed the data using feature engineering and trained a Linear Support Vector Machine classifier. The second approach used a Deep Learning Neural Network; instead of feature engineering, we allowed the neural network to extract features from the raw data. The second approach outperformed the first by about 25%, achieving 96% accuracy. Our tool illustrates how Deep Learning can be a new innovative method for teaching machines to understand human behaviour. We discuss the potential applications of ReClass for educational assessment, medical diagnosis and training.

Synopticon is a software platform that fuses data from position tracking, eye tracking, and physiological sensors. Synopticon was developed to produce real-time digital representations of users. These “digital twins” can be visualized, or used by other algorithms to detect the behavioural, cognitive or emotional state of the user. Synopticon provides 3D modelling tools based on position tracking data to define areas of interest (AOI) in the environment. By projecting the combined eye-and position-data into the 3D model, Synopticon can automatically detect when a user is looking at an AOI, generates real-time heat maps, and compiles statistical information. The demonstration will show how to set up and calibrate a combined position tracking and eye tracking system, and explain how Synopticon addresses some of the limitations of current eye tracking technology.

Leaf structure and water relations were studied in a temperate population of Avicennia marina subsp. australasica along a natural salinity gradient [28 to 49 parts per thousand (ppt)] and compared with two subspecies grown naturally in similar soil salinities to those of subsp. australasica but under different climates: subsp. eucalyptifolia (salinity 30 ppt, wet tropics) and subsp. marina (salinity 46 ppt, arid tropics). Leaf thickness, leaf dry mass per area and water content increased with salinity and aridity. Turgor loss point declined with increase in soil salinity, driven mainly by differences in osmotic potential at full turgor. Nevertheless, a high modulus of elasticity (e) contributed to maintenance of high cell hydration at turgor loss point. Despite similarity among leaves in leaf water storage capacitance, total leaf water storage increased with increasing salinity and aridity. The time that stored water alone could sustain an evaporation rate of 1 mmol m-2 s-1 ranged from 77 to 126 min from subspecies eucalyptifolia to ssp. marina, respectively. Achieving full leaf hydration or turgor would require water from sources other than the roots, emphasizing the importance of multiple water sources to growth and survival of Avicennia marina across gradients in salinity and aridity.

Background: Food insecurity is an aspect of living conditions that is particularly important for quality of life, health, and subjective well-being. The implementation of the 8-item Food Insecurity Experience Scale in 147 countries in the 2014 Gallup World Poll provided an unprecedented opportunity to understand the association of food insecurity with subjective well-being.Objective: We examined how food insecurity relates with measures of living conditions and how food insecurity and other living conditions relate with physical health and, in turn, subjective well-being.Methods: Data were collected from individuals aged ≥15 y by telephone in 38 countries and via face-to-face interviews in 111 others. The available sample was 132,618 (138 countries) and 122,137 (137 countries) for the daily experience and life evaluation indexes of subjective well-being, respectively. Daily experience was a continuous measure and life evaluation was categorized into thriving, struggling, and suffering. We estimated 6 linear or logistic regression models for each index controlling for country as a fixed effect.Results: Food insecurity was associated with the other 3 measures of living conditions: household income, shelter and housing, and employment. Food insecurity explained poor physical health and lower subjective well-being beyond other measures of living conditions. Instrumental and emotional support was associated with higher subjective well-being. The associations of food insecurity with subjective well-being were larger than with other explanatory variables. Food insecurity was associated with subjective well-being within each of the 4 World Bank income classes of countries, with a larger magnitude of differences for the higher-income classes.Conclusions: Food insecurity was strongly and negatively associated with subjective well-being in a large global sample of individuals aged ≥15 y. These results demonstrate the consistency of goal 2 of the Sustainable Development Goals, which has targeted 2030 to ensure food security for all people, year-round, with other goals to reduce food insecurity.

A microscopic (or Hamiltonian-based) theory is employed for the spin-wave instability thresholds of nonlinear processes in ultrathin ferromagnetic stripes and films under perpendicular pumping with an intense microwave field. The spatially-quantized linear spin waves in these nanostructures may participate in parametric processes through the three-magnon interactions (the first-order Suhl process) and the four-magnon interactions (the second-order Suhl process) when pumped. By contrast with most previous studies of spin-wave instabilities made for larger samples, where macroscopic (or continuum) theories involving Maxwell's equations for magnetic dipolar effects are used, a discrete lattice of effective spins is employed. Then a dipole-exchange spin Hamiltonian is employed to investigate the behavior of the quantized spin waves under perpendicular pumping, when modifications due to the more extensive spatial confinement and edges effects in these nanostructures become pronounced. The instability thresholds versus applied magnetic field are calculated, with emphasis on the size effects and geometries of the nanostructures and on the different relative strengths of the magnetic dipole-dipole and exchange interactions in materials. Numerical results are presented using parameters for Permalloy, YIG, and EuS.

OBJECTIVES: Understand the association of food and general parenting practices with young children's dietary behaviors and the role of child difficulty in self-regulation in this relationship. METHODS: Data were from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study – Birth Cohort. Parent-child dyads with non-missing outcomes at age 5 (i.e., weekly frequency of intake of sugar-sweetened beverages, sweet foods and desserts, salty snack foods, fruits, and vegetables) were used (n = 3,250 boys and 3,150 girls). Analyses were done separately for boys and girls. Regression models with full information maximum likelihood were used accounting for clusters in Stata. Each outcome was regressed on food parenting variables at age 4 (i.e., rules about foods, and meal routines of eating as a family and at a regular time) and covariates. General parenting variables at age 4 (i.e., parent-child interaction, difficulty sticking with rules, harsh discipline, rules about watching television, and rules about bedtime), child difficulty in self-regulation at age 4, and their interactions were then added sequentially. RESULTS: Better food parenting practices at age 4 were associated with less frequent intake of unhealthy and more frequent intake of healthy foods and beverages in both boys and girls at age 5, with some differences by gender. General parenting practices at age 4 were associated with dietary behaviors differently for boys and girls. Difficulty in self-regulation at age 4 significantly modified the association between parenting practices and child's dietary behaviors for boys (evening meals at a regular time and intake of sweet foods and desserts) and girls (parent-child interaction and intake of sugar-sweetened beverages; difficulty sticking with rules and intake of sweet foods and desserts; rules about foods and intake of fruits and vegetables; and harsh discipline and intake of fruits). CONCLUSIONS: Better food parenting and general parenting practices at age 4 were associated with children's healthy dietary behaviors at age 5. These associations differed by gender and child difficulty in self-regulation. Interventions to improve children's dietary behaviors should target parents and children to promote positive parenting in food and non-food settings and support children with difficulty in self-regulation. FUNDING SOURCES: None.

All gibbon species (Family: Hylobatidae) are considered threatened with extinction and recognized on the International Union for Conservation of Nature Red List of Threatened Species. Because gibbons are one of the most threatened families of primates, monitoring their status is now critically important. Long-term monitoring programs applying occupancy approaches, in addition to assessing occurrence probability, improves understanding of other population parameters such as site extinction or colonization probabilities, which elucidate temporal and spatial changes and are therefore important for guiding conservation efforts. In this study, we used multiple season occupancy models to monitor occurrence, extinction, and colonization probabilities for northern yellow-cheeked crested gibbon Nomascus annamensis in three adjacent protected areas in the Central Annamites mountain range, Vietnam. We collected data at 30 listening posts in 2012, 2014, and 2016 using the auditory point count method. Occurrence probabilities were highest in 2012 (0.74, confidence interval [CI]: 0.56-0.87) but slightly lower in 2014 (0.66, CI: 0.51-0.79) and 2016 (0.67, CI: 0.49-0.81). Extinction probabilities during the 2012-2014 and 2014-2016 intervals were 0.26 (0.14-0.44) and 0.25 (0.12-0.44), respectively. Colonization probabilities during 2012-2014 were 0.44 (0.19-0.73) and between 2014 and 2016 was 0.51 (0.26-0.75). Although local site extinctions have occurred, high recolonization probability helped to replenish the unoccupied sites and kept the occurrence probability stable. Long-term monitoring programs which use occurrence probability alone might not fully reveal the true dynamics of gibbon populations. We strongly recommend including multiple season occupancy models to monitor occurrence, extinction, and colonization probabilities in long-term gibbon monitoring programs.

P2-type layered structure manganese-based materials have been reported as the most promising candidates for practical applications of sodium ion batteries because of their high capacity, facile fabrication, low cost, and environmental friendliness. In this work, a new P2-type layered structure Na1.0Li0.2Mn0.7Ti0.1O2 material was successfully synthesized by a conventional solid-state reaction method. The material delivered a superior specific capacity of 163 mAh g1 at 0.1C within the potential range from 1.5 to 4 V. The capacity and the coulombic efficiency of the material remained of 90% and 97% after 50 cycles of charge/discharge at a rate of 0.1C. The material also exhibited an excellent rate capability, with a discharge capacity of over 100 mAh.g−1 remained at a rate of 1.0C. The observed results suggested that Na1.0Li0.2Mn0.7Ti0.1O2 is a promising cathode material for sodium ion batteries.

This paper presents a numerical procedure for lower bound limit analysis of plane problems governed by von Mises yield criterion. The stress fields are calculated based on the Airy function which is approximated using the moving least squares technique. With the use of the Airy-based equilibrium mesh-free method, equilibrium equations are ensured to be automatically satisfied a priori, and the size of the resulting optimization problem is reduced significantly. Various plane strain and plane stress with arbitrary geometries and boundary conditions are examined to illustrate the performance of the proposed procedure.

A three-domain pressure – volume relationship (PV curve) was studied in relation to leaf anatomical structure during dehydration in the grey mangrove, Avicennia marina. In domain 1, relative water content (RWC) declined 13% with 0.85 MPa decrease in leaf water potential, reflecting a decrease in extracellular water stored primarily in trichomes and petiolar cisternae. In domain 2, RWC decreased by another 12% with further reduction in leaf water potential to -5.1 MPa, the turgor loss point. Given the osmotic potential at full turgor (-4.2 MPa) and the effective modulus of elasticity (~40 MPa), domain 2 emphasized the role of cell wall elasticity in conserving cellular hydration during leaf water loss. Domain 3 was dominated by osmotic effects and characterized by plasmolysis in most tissues and cell types without cell wall collapse. Extracellular and cellular water storage could support an evaporation rate of 1 mmol m-2s-1 for up to 54 and 50 min, respectively, before turgor loss was reached. This study emphasized the importance of leaf anatomy for the interpretation of PV curves, and identified extracellular water storage sites that enable transient water use without substantive turgor loss when other factors, such as high soil salinity, constrain rates of water transport.The pressure-volume relationships in field grown leaves of the mangrove, Avicennia marina, exhibited three domains dominated successively by 1) the presence and consumption of extracellular water, 2) variable turgor and loss of intracellular water, and 3) osmotic behavior of flaccid cells and plasmolysis. Multiple sites of extracellular water storage were identified, including hollow trichomes and novel structures named “cisternae”. When fully charged, extracellular and cellular water storage could support a typical evaporation rate of 1 mmol m-2s-1 for 54 and 50 min, respectively, before turgor loss was reached. This study emphasizes the importance of leaf anatomy for the interpretation of PV curves, and identifies extracellular water storage sites that enable transient water use without substantive turgor loss when other factors, such as high soil salinity, constrain rates of water transport.

Rodents are important reservoirs of many human pathogens transmitted via arthropod vectors. Arthropod-borne bacteria belonging to the family Rickettsiaceae cause acute febrile diseases in humans worldwide, but the real burdens of rickettsial diseases appear to be underestimated in Hanoi, Vietnam, because differential diagnosis on the basis of clinical signs and symptoms is confounded by the presence of other tropical infectious diseases with similar signs and symptoms. To know the prevalence of bacteria of the family Rickettsiaceae among small mammals in Hanoi, 519 animals thriving in the public places were captured and examined for the presence of bacterial sequences using duplex PCR. Nucleotide sequences specific for Orientia tsutsugamushi were detected in seven samples (1.3%). Out of seven animals, two were captured in a market, whereas five were in hospitals. None of the captured small mammals tested positive for the genus Rickettsia. The nucleotide sequence analysis of the genes encoding the 47-kDa high-temperature requirement A (47-kDa HtrA) and 56-kDa type-specific antigen (TSA) showed that these seven isolates were indistinguishable from each other. O. tsutsugamushi isolated in this study was closely related phylogenetically to the Gilliam strain, which was originally isolated at the border of Assam and Burma, rather than to those isolated in the central to southern part of Vietnam. It should be emphasized that Vietnamese hospitals were heavily infested by small rodents and some of them harbored O. tsutsugamushi. Strict hygienic control should be implemented to mitigate the potential risk posed by O. tsutsugamushi in hospital settings.

Background Food insecurity is strongly associated with subjective well-being. People compare their well-being to a subjective reference that adjusts over time, which is called hedonic adaptation. Objective We aimed to deepen understanding of the relation between food insecurity and subjective well-being among countries from the perspective of possible hedonic adaptation between food insecurity and subjective well-being. Methods Global data from the Gallup World Poll 2014 were collected from 152,206 individuals in 147 countries. Telephone and face-to-face surveys were conducted in 37 and 111 countries, respectively, collecting data on law and order; food and shelter; institutions and infrastructure; job climate; and financial, social, physical, and evaluative well-being, including the Food Insecurity Experience Scale. Data were aggregated to country level and merged with economic and social measures from World Bank and United Nations sources: infant mortality, gross domestic product, economic inequality, agricultural value added, fertility, maternal mortality, female schooling, and female participation in the labor force. Multilevel linear regression was used to examine associations between well-being and food insecurity. Results Experiencing moderate or severe food insecurity was prevalent among countries, with a mean probability of 0.273 ± 0.220. Countries that were less developed economically and socially had a higher probability of experiencing food insecurity, lower subjective well-being as measured by the daily experience index, and less negative slopes for the relation between daily experience index and food insecurity. Food insecurity was the strongest predictor of daily experience from among the measures of economic and social development. Conclusions The prevalence of food insecurity was strongly and negatively associated with subjective well-being across 147 countries. The association between food insecurity and poor subjective well-being within countries was stronger for more-developed countries, providing evidence of hedonic adaptation between food insecurity and subjective well-being. Food insecurity explained substantial variation in subjective well-being both among and within countries.

The commemoration of war martyrs has been an im-portant issue in contemporary Vietnam. These collec-tive memories of war martyrs, however, do not appear independently but are organized and shaped by the powerful state machine. The state does not only control the means of remembering, but also prescribes rules for how the past should be remembered. Yet, the state’s centralized authority is not absolute, since it exposes some limits and is challenged by local agents.

A microscopic, or Hamiltonian-based, theory is outlined for studying the spin-wave instability thresholds of the parametric processes occurring in ferromagnetic nanostructures under conditions of pumping with a microwave eld. Most previous work has concentrated on spheres or lms with dimensions of order several μm or more, with the theoretical interpretation being made in terms of macroscopic (or continuum) methods. At smaller length scales, as in ultrathin lms and nanowires with thickness or lateral dimensions less than about 100 nm, the discreteness of the quantized spin waves and their spatial distributions become modi ed, making it more appropriate to employ a microscopic approach to the nonlinear dynamics with a lattice of e ective spins interacting through the magnetic dipole dipole and exchange interactions. E ects of microwave pumping (in either the parallel or perpendicular con guration) are incorporated in calculations for the instability thresholds of the quantized spin-wave bands in di erent nanostructures and materials.

A microscopic theory is employed to study magnonic crystals represented by one-dimensional arrays of ferromagnetic nanorings. The Hamiltonian-based formalism includes the exchange and dipole-dipole coupling within each ring, as well as the long-range dipolar coupling between rings and an external applied magnetic field. Depending on the applied field, the size of the rings, and the inter-ring spacing, the array elements may be in a vortex (flux closure), onion (bidomain), or other inhomogeneous magnetization state. Numerical results are reported for the magnonic bands and gaps in Permalloy nanorings with outer diameter typically of order 100 nm. In a strong-coupling regime it is found typically that the bands are wide and the gaps small in the vortex state, and vice-versa in the onion state.