A new dosage regimen for topical application of ciprofloxacin in the management of chronic suppurative otitis media

The clinical and bacteriologic efficacy of topically applied ciprofloxacin was studied in 60 patients with chronic suppurative otitis media. Two hundred fifty and 125 microg/ml concentrations of ciprofloxacin solutions were given to two groups of patients. The duration of therapy was determined according to the clinical cure at follow-up. More than 21 days of therapy was not needed in any patient. The clinical cure rate with 250 microg/ml ciprofloxacin was 78.1% at 14 days and with 125 microg/ml it was 83.3%. However, a 100% clinical cure rate and complete bacteriologic eradication was obtained in 21 days in both groups. In each group only one patient had otomycosis by the fourteenth day of therapy, although ear discharge had ceased. It was concluded that 125 microg/ml ciprofloxacin could be applied as successfully as 250 microg/ml, and the duration of therapy had to be at least 14 days. This new dosage regimen can be adopted as an optimal dosage for ototopical application of ciprofloxacin in chronic suppurative otitis media. It will also obviously decrease the expense of therapy.     

Improving literacy and metacognition with electronic portfolios: Teaching and learning with ePEARL

Can an electronic portfolio that is both a multimedia container for student work and a tool to support key learning processes have a positive impact on the literacy practices and self-regulated learning skills of students? This article presents the findings of a yearlong study conducted in three Canadian provinces during the 2007–2008 school year initially involving 32 teachers and 388 students. Due to varying levels of implementation our final data set included 14 teachers and 296 students. Using a non-equivalent pre-test/post-test design, we found that grade 4–6 students who were in classrooms where the teacher provided regular and appropriate use of the electronic portfolio tool ePEARL (i.e., medium–high implementation condition, n = 7 classrooms and 121 students), compared to control students (n = 7 classrooms and 175 students) who did not use ePEARL, showed significant improvements (p < .05) in their writing skills on a standardized literacy measure (i.e., the constructed response subtest of the Canadian Achievement Test-4th ed.) and certain metacognitive skills measured via student self-report. The results of this study indicate that teaching with ePEARL has positive impacts on students’ literacy and self-regulated learning skills when the tool is used regularly and integrated into classroom instruction.     

Multi‐level reranking approach for bug localization

Bug fixing has a key role in software quality evaluation. Bug fixing starts with the bug localization step, in which developers use textual bug information to find location of source codes which have the bug. Bug localization is a tedious and time consuming process. Information retrieval requires understanding the programme's goal, coding structure, programming logic and the relevant attributes of bug. Information retrieval (IR) based bug localization is a retrieval task, where bug reports and source files represent the queries and documents, respectively. In this paper, we propose BugCatcher, a newly developed bug localization method based on multi‐level re‐ranking IR technique. We evaluate BugCatcher on three open source projects with approximately 3400 bugs. Our experiments show that multi‐level reranking approach to bug localization is promising. Retrieval performance and accuracy of BugCatcher are better than current bug localization tools, and BugCatcher has the best Top N, Mean Average Precision (MAP) and Mean Reciprocal Rank (MRR) values for all datasets.     

An Analytical Approach to the Concept of Counter-UA Operations (CUAOPS)

Unmanned Aircraft (UA) have become an integral part of the present-day joint air operations. UA have potential to be employed across the full spectrum of Air Force functions. On the other hand, UA technology could be a subject of an asymmetric use by state actors in high or low density conflict, and/or by non-state actors in many ways including terrorism, drug smuggling, and limited attack with unconventional payloads i.e. biological or chemical agents. Therefore countering the threat associated with the hostile UA use could be necessary in the future. First part of the research revealed that UA can be a threat in the future. In the second part of the research, the SWOT (Strengths-Weaknesses-Opportunities-Threats) analysis supplemented with the Tree analysis (SWOT+Tree) provided a broader look for investigating the factors related to hostile UA use analytically. In literature, there is little information about the concepts for CUAOPS. The final goal of the paper is to find possible solutions and means for a better understanding of the nature of CUAOPS.     

Coal consumption and industrial production nexus in USA: Cointegration with two unknown structural breaks and causality approaches

The paper investigates the causality relationships among industrial production index, coal consumption and employment in industrial sector for the period of 1973:1–2011:10 in USA. After noticing that there are breaks in the regression model, the Hatemi-J test for cointegration is employed to the cases that take into account two possible regime shifts. It is concluded that there is a long run relationship between industrial production and industrial coal consumption with the breaks at 1983:4 and 1998:4. We found a negative relationship between coal consumption and industrial production for the period of 1973:1–1983:4 and positive relationship for 1983:5–1998:4 period. For the last period that covers 1983:5–2011:10, the cointegration relationship turned to negative. In addition, the results show that causal relationship between coal consumption and industrial production changes over time.     

New Octopus-like Phthalocyanines as Fullerene Receptors: Synthesis and Photophysical Investigation

Octopus-like zinc and magnesium phthalocyaninates bearing eight flexible benzylated diethylene glycol chains were synthesized and their interaction with fullerenes C₆₀ and C₇₀ was investigated by UV-Vis spectrophotometric titration, as well as by steady-state and time-resolved fluorescence spectroscopy in chloroform and toluene media. These measurements revealed a high affinity of receptors for C₆₀ and C₇₀, with selectivity to C₇₀: binding constants for C₇₀ are almost two times higher than for C₆₀. These results are interpreted by means of quantum-chemical calculations using the PM6-DH2 Hamiltonian. The binding constants also depend on both the nature of the metal ion in the receptor and the solvent. It is expected that the obtained molecules and supramolecular complexes can be used for further elaboration of optoelectronic donor-acceptor materials.     

Lipoprotein Subfraction Profile and HDL-Associated Enzymes in Sickle Cell Disease Patients

Although hypocholesterolemia is a reported finding in sickle cell disease (SCD), low-density lipoprotein (LDL)/high-density lipoprotein (HDL) subfractions and HDL-associated enzymes have not been determined in SCD patients. Blood was collected from 38 hemoglobin (Hb)A volunteers and 45 homozygous HbSS patients who had not received blood transfusions in the last 3 months. Serum lipids were measured by automated analyzer while LDL and HDL subfraction analysis was done by continuous disc polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis. Serum levels of cholesteryl ester transfer protein (CETP), lecithin-cholesterol acyltransferase (LCAT), apolipoprotein B (apoB) and apolipoprotein A-1 (apoA-I) were determined by enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA). Total cholesterol (TC), low-density lipoprotein cholesterol (LDL-C) and high-density lipoprotein cholesterol (HDL-C) levels were significantly decreased, while TG levels were significantly increased in SCD patients compared to controls. A significant decrease in intermediate-density lipoprotein (IDL)-C, IDL-B, IDL-A and LDL-1 fractions were seen in SCD patients, while no significant difference was observed in small dense LDL particles. A significant decrease was seen in HDL-large, HDL-intermediate and HDL-small fractions in SCD patients versus controls. Levels of LCAT and ApoA-1 protein measured in SCD patients were significantly lower while no significant difference was observed in CETP and ApoB protein levels compared to controls. The reduction observed in LDL- and HDL-C in SCD patients was reflected as significantly decreased IDL, LDL-1 and HDL-subfractions. Decreased HDL subfractions may possibly lead to the reduced ApoA-1 and LCAT protein levels observed in SCD patients.     

Study of hourly solar radiation data in Istanbul

This paper presents a study of the solar radiation data measured in Istanbul (41.1°N, 29.0°E) during 1992 and 1993. The monthly and annual average values of total solar radiation and clearness index are analysed. The monthly averages of daily total radiation are 1.23 kW h m⁻² day⁻¹ for January and 6.55 kW h m⁻² day⁻¹ for July. The annual average value of daily total radiation is 3.81 kW h m⁻² day⁻¹. The monthly averages of clearness index for January and July are 0.28 and 0.50, respectively. The annual average value of clearness index is 0.38. In the second part of the study, the seasonal relative frequency of hourly total radiation and clearness index is studied. 46% of the annual data corresponds to a value greater than 300 W m⁻². The annual average frequency of clear hours is 24%. The analysis points to the conclusion that solar radiation will be efficient and useful between April and September for heating purposes. A polynomial relationship is developed between hourly clearness index and hourly fractional sunshine duration. Some statistical tests are used to check this relationship for four different ranges of optical air mass.