text:
Classics Clem Wood Horace
2 February, 2009 • Issue 8.2 • Literature • Poetry
Feeling the "Lyric Flow"
Clem Wood
The Odes of Horace
Translated by Jeffrey H. Kaimowitz
The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008
£14.00 (paper)
The foundation of a Western literary tradition extending from Ronsard to Auden, Horace's Odes rank among the most familiar of poetic works. But a place in the canon can obscure meaning: the fullest English-language commentators on the Odes, Robin Nisbet and Margaret Hubbard, speculate that the poems "are too familiar to be easily understood". They certainly are for Lord Byron's Childe Harold, who exclaims:
Then farewell, Horace; whom I hated so,
Not for thy faults, but mine; it is a curse
To understand, not feel thy lyric flow,
To comprehend, but never love thy verse…
Of course, it is not just Childe Harold, but also Byron himself, who rejects Horace here. Byron attempts to move his own volume of lyric poetry out of the shadow of an ancient progenitor's. For the English Romantic to breathe new life into the old genre, he must distance himself from the original trailblazer.
Byron and Childe Harold hit upon the most salient and difficult feature of the Odes: their simultaneous classicism and novelty. When we accept a work as a classic, we can easily lose sight of its originality. This is especially risky in the case of the Odes, since Horace emphasises both continuity and innovation: he recasts the Greek metres of his lyric predecessors Sappho and Alcaeus to become the "first to bring Aeólic song to Latin | verse" (3.30.14-15). In his new translation of the Odes, Jeffrey Kaimowitz brings Horatian song to English verse and thus renews our sense of Horace's novelty. By adapting the strict Latin metres to similarly formal English "reminiscences", Kaimowitz expresses the feeling of the original Latin while creating a more distant, intriguingly unfamiliar Horace in English.
Although the Odes certainly have not lacked translators, some recent attempts have tended to privilege poetic licence at the price of accuracy. Although we can learn from such ambitious adaptations, we cannot fully appreciate Horace's own accomplishment without some degree of literalness. Kaimowitz, a classicist by training and the head librarian of Watkinson Library at Trinity College in Connecticut, stakes his Odes on their metrical closeness to Horace.
In addition to recreating some of the sound of Horace's Latin, Kaimowitz consistently preserves its syntax and even word order. Such faithfulness should appeal to readers who know the Odes in the original, as it reproduces in English the long sentences, striking juxtapositions, and deceptively simple diction that give the Odes much of their power in Latin. To those without Latin, Kaimowitz's English may occasionally seem ungainly, but it makes up for the rare awkward moments by reaffirming how creative Horace was in his time—one of the reasons for reading the Odes in the first place.
At his best, Kaimowitz demonstrates that he both understands and feels Horace's "lyric flow". Like Horace, he creates an atmosphere of quiet urgency in the last three stanzas of 1.9, the so-called "Soracte ode":
Of what will be tomorrow, do not ask:
whatever days that Luck provides account
…..as gain, and, while a youth, don't spurn the
…..…..sweet delights of love and dancing,
as long as you are green, not peevish with
gray hair. Seek now once more the Field of Mars,
…..the plazas, and soft whispering towards
…..…..nightfall at the time appointed,
seek now what gives away a hidden girl,
her pleasing laughter from a secret place,
…..and tokens snatched away from arms or
…..…..fingers but barely resisting.
But Kaimowitz does not merely reproduce Horace's words. His double "seek now" translates Horace's single repetantur in content and form: the Latin verb can mean both "seek" and "repeat", and "seek now" is itself repeated. With this subtle touch, Kaimowitz enacts a meaning that is not the primary one in his or Horace's text, but which does enhance the inherent contrast in the speaker's languorous but pressing advice: heap up the logs on the fire, don't worry about tomorrow, but find that girl now. Kaimowitz's Horace moves quickly: the peaceful images of the snow-bound mountain and warm home in the preceding stanzas give way to a hasty rendezvous in the city in the closing lines.
Yet sometimes Kaimowitz does produce inelegant English when he strives to preserve the Latin. In 1.28, for example, he renders animo…morituro as "with mind that must perish" (5-6), which reproduces Latin's lack of an article and thus rings hollow in English. Similar clumsiness appears occasionally throughout the translation. In a volume that aims to be evaluated on the basis of its English alone, sacrificing smoothness for literal rendering is a mistake.
Kaimowitz's sensitive ear for word play does, however, help compensate for the occasional infelicities. His elegant enjambments work as well in English as Horace's do in Latin: "with bold | effrontery" (2.5.15-16) is a pun on the Latin proterva | fronte that preserves the meaning, the sound of frons, and the positions of the words in their lines. This is a model of how a translation can remain close to the original without being literal ("with an onrushing forehead".) Given Kaimowitz's attention to the Latin, though, having Horace's text facing the translation would have benefited even non-Latinists, who could have discerned the metrical adaptations and etymological puns that illuminate the translator's art.
In the closing poem of Odes 1-3, Horace declares that he has erected a monument more enduring than bronze (3.30.1) and that he will reap praise from posterity as long as a priest and a Vestal virgin ascend the Capitoline Hill (3.30.7-9). Of course, his edifice has outlasted the priest and the Vestal and become more familiar to us than many of the trappings of Rome. But, accustomed as we are to the presence of Horace in our own exemplars of lyric poetry, we have gotten so close to the monument that it has become hard to read.
Jeffrey Kaimowitz has produced a translation that manages to convey the metrical rigour of the Latin in straightforward and simple English inflected with the syntax of the original. By keeping close to Horace's text as he crafts his own fine English verse, Kaimowitz has made the Odes new again. He brings us nearer to Horace even as he reminds us of his distance. With Kaimowitz's Odes, we can learn to love and comprehend Horace's verse as we see his monument up close in a new light.
Clem Wood is a graduate at New College, Oxford, studying Greek and Latin historiography and Latin poetry.


text:
package org.apache.shindig.social.opensocial.service;

import com.google.common.collect.ImmutableSet;
import com.google.common.collect.Maps;
import org.apache.shindig.common.EasyMockTestCase;
import org.apache.shindig.common.testing.FakeGadgetToken;
import org.apache.shindig.config.ContainerConfig;
import org.apache.shindig.config.JsonContainerConfig;
import org.apache.shindig.expressions.Expressions;
import org.apache.shindig.protocol.DefaultHandlerRegistry;
import org.apache.shindig.protocol.HandlerExecutionListener;
import org.apache.shindig.protocol.HandlerRegistry;
import org.apache.shindig.protocol.RestHandler;
import org.apache.shindig.protocol.conversion.BeanJsonConverter;
import org.apache.shindig.social.opensocial.spi.AlbumService;
import org.json.JSONObject;
import org.junit.Before;
import org.junit.Test;

import java.util.List;

public class AlbumHandlerTest extends EasyMockTestCase {
  private AlbumService albumService;
  private AlbumHandler handler;
  private ContainerConfig containerConfig;
  private FakeGadgetToken token;
  protected HandlerRegistry registry;
  private BeanJsonConverter converter;

  @Before
  public void setUp() throws Exception {
    token = new FakeGadgetToken();
    converter = mock(BeanJsonConverter.class);
    albumService = mock(AlbumService.class);
    JSONObject config = new JSONObject('{' + ContainerConfig.DEFAULT_CONTAINER + ':' +
        "{'gadgets.container': ['default']," +
         "'gadgets.features':{opensocial:" +
           "{supportedFields: {album: ['id', 'title', 'location']}}" +
         "}}}");

    containerConfig = new JsonContainerConfig(config, Expressions.forTesting());
    handler = new AlbumHandler(albumService, containerConfig);

    registry = new DefaultHandlerRegistry(null, converter,
        new HandlerExecutionListener.NoOpHandler());
    registry.addHandlers(ImmutableSet.<Object>of(handler));
  }

  @Test
  public void testCreate() throws Exception {
    // TODO
  }

  @Test
  public void testGet() throws Exception {
    // TODO
  }

  @Test
  public void testUpdate() throws Exception {
    // TODO
  }

  @Test
  public void testDelete() throws Exception {
    // TODO
  }

  @Test
  public void testSupportedFields() throws Exception {
    String path = "/albums/@supportedFields";
    RestHandler operation = registry.getRestHandler(path, "GET");

    replay();
    @SuppressWarnings("unchecked")
    List<Object> received = (List<Object>) operation.execute(Maps.<String, String[]>newHashMap(),
        null, token, converter).get();
    assertEquals(3, received.size());
    assertEquals("id", received.get(0).toString());
    assertEquals("title", received.get(1).toString());
    assertEquals("location", received.get(2).toString());

    verify();
  }
}

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaGithub


Our pastor, Rick asked us to share "how the good hand of God was upon us" so here is my story. In 2000, my husband and I had been married for a little over 2 years when we were surprised to find out we were expecting a baby. We were excited and scared at the same time. My husband had just graduated from college but didn't have a "real job" and our lives were so uncertain. Soon thereafter, he was offered 2 teaching jobs within a couple of days of each other, one in Choctaw and one in Fletcher. We felt like The Lord wanted us to be in Fletcher and as life unfolded we knew why. A blood test indicated that our baby may have Down's syndrome. We were scared and were referred to OU medical where a level 2 ultrasound would prove that the blood test was a false positive and we had a healthy baby growing and thriving. At about 34 weeks, I developed preeclampsia and 2 weeks later I was admitted on the spot without my husband being with me. It was a routine check up and I didn't think there was any need for him to miss school, especially as a first year teacher, because he would need those sick days for when our baby came. I was terrified so my doctor let me call him and he and my mom were on their way immediately. I was hospitalized and monitored closely for about a week to let the baby's lungs mature. I was induced around 37 weeks and things went downhill from that point on. I was given pitocin and was laboring very hard without any progress. After about 8 hours, the decision was made to give me and epidural, which helped me relax enough to dilate but not enough to really numb the pain. I delivered a 5 lb 12 oz beautiful baby boy that we named Carson at 6:03 and we were immediately in love. We noticed that the doctor was getting concerned because my placenta wouldn't deliver and things got much worse very quickly. He asked Jason to leave the delivery room and manually delivered the placenta which caused a large postpartum hemorrhage. Hours later, I tried to get up but passed out so I slept that night in the labor and delivery room. The next day, I was told that I needed a blood transfusion so my husband, dad, and mother in law were allowed to donate blood for me and the following day I began receiving my blood transfusion. After getting my dad's blood (he was allowed to donate 2 units) I felt pretty good. I had been so weak that I could barely hold Carson. The next two units of blood, I remember thinking that my chest was feeling heavy but dismissed the thoughts I was having and attributed it to normal postpartum issues. Four days postpartum, I was discharged and we were excited to go home. It was a Sunday and that afternoon, I felt like I was beginning to drown in my own fluid. I called the hospital and they told me it was probably just my body shifting all the excess fluid from pregnancy. I couldn't sleep that night and the next day was worse. My mom and I took Carson in for his check up and his pediatrician looked at me and asked how I was feeling. I broke down and began to sob. She listened to my lungs and immediately called the internal medicine doctor in and I was readmitted unexpectedly for the second time. They ran many test and came to the conclusion that I was in congestive heart failure caused by a postpartum cardiomyopathy. While I was having these test run, the nurses kept Carson for us in the hospital nursery even though he was no longer a patient. We were so young and so scared but I'm so thankful for Carson's pediatrician who recognized that something was very wrong and I was treated accordingly. I was put on heart meds and given lasix and lost 17 lbs of fluid in 2 days. I recovered quickly and was completely healed within a couple of months.


text:
\section{Introduction}
	Lithium-ion battery technologies have undergone tremendous advances leading to major developments in a surge of applications from mobile technologies to electric vehicles \cite{Thackeray1983,Motavalli2015,Mizushima1981}. However, further improvements in storage density are still needed. Developing cathode materials that are suitable for reversible energy storage is a challenging task which requires multiscale materials discovery approach. Many cathode materials have been discovered and studied using experimental methods \cite{Parz2013,Iwaya2013,Motohashi2009,Takahashi2007,Godinez1996,Hertz2008}. However, these efforts can be accelerated using atomic scale theoretical and computational approaches \cite{Urban2016,Seo2015,VanderVen1998,Shao-Horn2003,Wolverton1998} that yield high accuracy redox potentials.

	Density functional theory (DFT) \cite{Kohn1965, Hohenberg1964} is often used to predict redox potentials, band gaps and the formation energies of transition metal oxides \cite{Ceder1999, Ong2011, Urban2016, Marianetti2004, Jain2013} due to its favorable balance of computational cost and accuracy. Li-ion battery cathode materials are based on redox-active transition metal oxides, fluorides, phosphates etc. In these materials, local or semi-local DFT exhibits non-systematic errors because of significant self-interaction errors from the localized \textit{d} electrons. To correct this self interaction error, it is common to apply an impurity model (e.g. DFT with Hubbard model correction referred to as DFT+$U$ \cite{Anisimov1991, Dudarev1998}) or to include some portion of the exact exchange \cite{Heyd2003} (hybrid-DFT). These methods involve adjustable parameters that are often tuned to increase the accuracy of various properties, including redox potentials. Transferability of these parameters across the family of transition metal oxides (e.g. nickelates, cobaltites) is questionable, thus the \textit{ab-initio} character of the calculations are reduced in favor of increased accuracy. Therefore, it is difficult to understand and design electronic and energetic properties of cathode materials using available DFT-based methods when no experimental guidance is available \cite{Tarascon2001IssuesAC,whittingham2004lithium,bhatt2015recent}.

	Using a judicious choice of the $U$ value on the transition metal atom can help yield reasonable redox potentials.

	$U$ values can be determined self consistently using linear response theory \cite{cococcioni2005linear, himmetoglu2014hubbard, Kulik2006}. However, the $U$ values determined through linear response can depend on the material and valence which changes during delithiation \cite{Wang2006,Wang2007, Hautier2012, Seo2015, Delmas1999, Marianetti2004}.
	Due to the strong electronegativity of oxygen, valence electrons on the transition metal species are rearranged upon changing the Li concentration, which formally necessitates a separate $U$ value at every state of charge for the the transition metal species. This is crucial to the accuracy of redox potentials since the average redox potential for Li extraction is calculated using the following equation \cite{mckinnon1983physical,aydinol1997ab}:

    \begin{equation}
    V=-\frac{        G[Li_{x2}] - G[Li_{x1}]    -(x_2-x_1)G[Li]      } {x_2-x_1}
    \label{eqn:intercalation}
    \end{equation} where G is the Gibbs free energy of the compounds at Li concentrations of x$_1$ and x$_2$. Typically DFT (or DMC) ground state energies can be used to replace the Gibbs free energies with very little error. Therefore, one would need to perform three calculations to determine the average voltage at different Li concentrations: $Li_{x1}$, $Li_{x2}$ and metallic Li. However, it is not clear whether DFT energies with different $U$ values can be used for calculating energy differences corresponding to the redox voltages.

	In this work, we aim to eliminate most of the mentioned challenges and calculate electronic and energetic properties of Li$_x$NiO$_2$ using a fundamentally different approach: diffusion quantum Monte Carlo (DMC)\cite{Foulkes2001, Needs2010, Shulenburger2013}. DMC is a many-body method which has been successfully used to calculate equilibrium geometries, defect and crystalline formation energies, exchange coupling constants and quasiparticle gaps of transition metal oxides with near chemical accuracy, comparable to the coupled cluster calculations in quantum chemistry applications \cite{Saritas2017, Kolorenc2010, Yu2017, Yu2015, Santana2015, Luo2016, Kylanpaa2017, Foyevtsova2014, Needs2002, Williamson1998, Mitra2015, Schiller2015, Saritas2018a, Saritas2018b, Saritas2019, Saritas2017f}. Using DMC, we study the Li intercalation voltages, charge density distributions and Li diffusion barriers of Li$_x$NiO$_2$, where $0 < x < 1$. We then benchmark our DMC calculations with DFT and DFT+$U$. We highlight important differences between these methods and  demonstrate the limitations of DFT+$U$ corrections.

    \begin{figure}
	\includegraphics[width=0.5\textwidth]{battery-data/plusU_new.pdf}
	\caption{(Color online) DMC wavefunction optimization for NiO$_2$ and LiNiO$_2$ structures using +$U$ interactions (within LDA) on the \textit{d}-shell of Ni atoms. Minimum DMC energies for both structures are set to zero for better visual comparison.}
	\label{fgr:plusu}
    \end{figure}

\begin{figure}
	\includegraphics[width=0.5\textwidth]{battery-data/figure_voltage.pdf}
	\caption{(Color online) Upper three figures indicate the Li-vacancy ordering in partially lithiated structures from on the (001) plane. Gray and black circles denote Li atoms on different planes. Black colored Li atoms are on the (001) surface, and they are separated from the gray colored Li atoms with a Ni-O layer. Black lines show the primitive cell boundaries, while the dashed lines in Li$_{0.5}$NiO$_2$ indicate the 14-atom supercell that is used in our DMC calculations which has the similar texture with Li$_{0.25}$NiO$_2$ and Li$_{0.75}$NiO$_2$. In the lower figure, Li intercalation voltages of Li$_x$NiO$_2$ are shown using DFT+$U$ and DMC calculations. Shaded areas of the DMC curves show the error bars of the voltages obtained. Computational voltages are overlayed on the experimental voltage curve with its measured hysteresis \cite{Delmas1980}}
	\label{fgr:volt}
\end{figure}
\section{Methods}\label{sec:methods}
In this work we used DFT and DMC ground-state energies to determine the redox potential of LiNiO$_2$ as a function of Li concentration.
We used Dudarev's Hubbard-$U$ \cite{Anisimov1997, Dudarev1998} corrected PBE \cite{Perdew1996} DFT functional to benchmark our DMC results. For DFT calculations, all geometries are optimized separately for each functional. We used  Vienna ab-initio simulation package\cite{Kresse1994,Kresse1996a} (\textsc{VASP}) code for all the reported DFT energies and redox potentials. In these calculations, we used projector-augmented wave pseudopotentials \cite{Kresse1999} and a kinetic energy of 520 eV.

Calculating DMC ground-state energies of involves multiple practical steps. Here, we broadly explain main steps involved in a general way and in the following paragraph we will discuss the technical details. First, a trial (guiding) wavefunction must be generated often using single particle Slater determinants (DFT, DFT+$U$, hybrid-DFT) \cite{Schiller2015} or using configuration-interaction (CI) methods \cite{Dash2018, Scemama2018}. The trial wavefunction defines the nodal surface of the fixed-node DMC calculation where the wavefunction goes to zero. However, the CI methods are largely limited to finite systems as they are computationally rather demanding. Therefore, DFT based methods have been largely utilized in periodic systems. In this approach the nodal surface is often optimized by either varying the $U$ interaction parameter or the exact exchange ratio in the hybrid-DFT functionals \cite{Yu2017, Doblhoff-Dier2016, Shin2017, Kylanpaa2017}. Second, Jastrow parameters (correlation functions) are added to the guiding wavefunction and then optimized to further capture many-body correlations in the system. Jastrow parameters are defined for many-body interactions such as electron-electron and electron-electron-ion as examples. Optimizing these parameters require evaluation of expensive stochastic derivatives, hence they are performed using variational Monte Carlo (VMC). Finally, DMC calculations are performed using the trial wavefunction and the optimized Jastrow parameters. The DMC calculations involve equilibration and statistics accumulation steps. We report the DMC energies obtained in the statistics accumulation step. Detailed information regarding the DMC method can be found in the literature and the Supplementary Information \cite{Foulkes2001, Needs2010, Shulenburger2013, Supp}.

DMC and VMC calculations were performed using \textsc{QMCPACK}\cite{QMCPACK}, while DFT-VMC-DMC calculation workflows are generated using the \textsc{Nexus} \cite{Nexus} software suite.  We used PBE+$U$ functional to generate spin-up and spin-down trial wavefunctions using \textsc{Quantum Espresso}\cite{QE-2009} (QE) code. For Ni and O atoms, we used the norm-conserving RRKJ type pseudopotentials \cite{Krogel2016, OPIUM}, while for the Li atom we use BFD pseudopotentials\cite{Burkatzki2007} converted to Kleinman-Bylander form. These pseudopotentials are specifically constructed for DMC calculations and require very large kinetic energy cutoffs (350 Ry), hence they are not practical for DFT calculations. Therefore, in this work, QE code and the RRKJ pseudopotentials were only used towards the DMC calculations. The pseudopotentials in this work were well validated on similar systems using DMC, such as Li intercalation of multilayered graphene \cite{Ganesh2014}, formation energies, ground and excited states of NiO \cite{Mitra2015, Shin2017}.
Each wavefunction we used in the DMC calculations were made of a Slater determinant and Jastrow factors, where both were optimized separately. Varying the $U$ interaction energy in PBE+$U$, we optimized the nodal surface of the trial wavefunction.  DFT+$U$ calculations yield monotonously increasing energies with increased U value. However, the $U$ value is used as a variational parameter in DMC, because with a fixed set of Jastrow parameters, the guiding wavefunction that has the nodal surface closest to exact nodal surface yields the exact ground state energy of that system \cite{Foulkes2001}. For NiO$_2$ and LiNiO$_2$, we performed this step in Fig. \ref{fgr:plusu}. Fig. \ref{fgr:plusu} will be further explained later. Jastrow parameters were optimized using subsequent VMC variance and energy minimization calculations using the linear method \cite{Umrigar2007} as implemented in \textsc{QMCPACK}. Cost function of the energy minimization is split as 95/5 energy and variance minimization, which is shown to provide a good balance for improvements in DMC with the resulting variance \cite{Umrigar2005}.

The DMC calculations are performed using a uniform gamma-centered 3x3x3 reciprocal grid on all the supercells studied, with a time step of 0.01 Ha$^{-1}$. We used the model periodic coulomb (MPC) interaction to eliminate spurious two-body interactions \cite{Drummond2008, Fraser1996}. The locality approximation \cite{Mitas1991} has been shown to yield smaller localization errors in Ni atoms \cite{Dzubak2017a}, compared to T-moves \cite{Casula2006}. Therefore the locality approximation was used throughout this work.

In Fig. \ref{fgr:plusu}, the trial wavefunction optimization is shown for 12 and 16-atom cells in NiO$_2$ and LiNiO$_2$ using a 2x2x2 reciprocal grid with PBE+$U$. Here, the $U$ value is used as a variational parameter to optimize the nodal surface of the trial wavefunction. In practice, one can use different flavors of DFT functionals (local, semilocal, meta-GGA). However, it has been shown that optimized LDA+$U$ and PBE+$U$ trial wavefunctions yield identical DMC energies in NiO, while PBE+$U$ has smaller curvature in the DMC energy versus $U$ interaction energy curves \cite{Shin2017}. In Fig. \ref{fgr:plusu}, we find that the DMC total energy of LiNiO$_2$ is more sensitive to the $U$ value (a sharp minimum at $U=3.0$ eV, while for NiO$_2$ the DMC energies are statistically identical within the range of $U$ values studied. Therefore, we used PBE+$U=3.0$ eV on all the Ni atoms to generate DMC trial wavefunctions in this work.

Geometry optimization in DMC is computationally demanding. Therefore, we fully optimized geometric structures using DFT-PBE. It has been shown PBE and PBE+$U$ can perform well against the experimental lattice parameters \cite{Chakraborty2018}.  For LiNiO$_2$, we used the \textit{R-3m} symmetry cell as our starting geometry for the geometry relaxation calculations\cite{Hirano1995}. We used 4x4 supercells in the \textit{xy}-plane to determine the minimum energy Li-vacancy ordering for the Li$_x$NiO$_2$ structures. Minimum energy structures for each Li concentration are then studied with DMC. The primitive cell lattice parameter these structures are shown in Table 1 at Supplementary Information \cite{Supp}. The (001) projections of the vacancy ordered structures we used in this work are shown in Fig. \ref{fgr:volt}, agreeing with theoretical and experimental findings \cite{VanderVen1998,reimers1992electrochemical,y2002first,arai1995characterization,Delmas1980,Delmas1999}.

One and two body finite size effects must be controlled in periodic DMC calculations. One-body effects are controlled using twist averaging and using a twist averaging correction scheme similar to that proposed by Rajagopal et. al. \cite{Rajagopal1994} and as implemented in Ref. \citenum{Saritas2017}. Whereas the two-body effects require extrapolation to the infinitely large system. If the supercell size is very large, then the two-body effects become minimal and independent of the shape of the supercell. However, for a given volume the supercell that can be used in the DMC calculations is not unique. Therefore, we used \textit{optimal\_tilematrix} method in \textsc{Nexus}, to generate the supercell tiling matrices. \textit{Optimal\_tilematrix} method maximizes the minimum inscribing radius to reduce image interactions in all directions. However, the supercells with similar systems and lattice parameters can benefit from systematic error cancellations: e.g. achieve faster convergence on the energy differences between the Li$_x$NiO$_2$ supercells.
Therefore, for the 14 atom cell of Li$_{0.5}$NiO$_2$ we used a supercell (shown in Fig. \ref{fgr:volt}) which has similar lattice parameters to Li$_{0.25}$NiO$_2$ and Li$_{0.75}$NiO$_2$.
An extrapolation scheme was used on the DMC charge densities to eliminate the bias from using a mixed estimator at the DMC level.
In DMC the charge density estimator does not commute with the fixed node DMC Hamiltonian \cite{Foulkes2001}.
Hence, the collected DMC density is a mixed estimator between the pure fixed-node DMC and VMC densities.
In order to obtain the pure fixed-node DMC density, the following extrapolation formulas can be used \cite{Foulkes2001}:
\begin{equation}
\rho_1 = 2\rho_{DMC}-\rho_{VMC}+\mathcal{O}[(\Phi-\Psi_T)^2]
\label{eqn:extrapolation1}
\end{equation}
\begin{equation}
\rho_2 = 2\rho_{DMC}^2/\rho_{VMC}+\mathcal{O}[(\Phi-\Psi_T)^2]
\label{eqn:extrapolation2}
\end{equation}
where $\rho_{DMC}$ and $\rho_{VMC}$ are DMC and VMC charge densities respectively.
The accuracy of the estimators increases with the increased quality of the trial wavefunction, $(\Phi-\Psi_T)$, where $\Psi$ is the wavefunction from DMC Hamiltonian and the $\Psi_T$ is the trial wavefunction. Ideally in homogeneous systems both estimators above should yield identical results. However, in our case the pseudo Li$^{+}$ atoms donate almost all of their electrons, making the second extrapolation scheme in Eqn. \ref{eqn:extrapolation2} numerically challenging. This is because the VMC density in the denominator approaches zero near the charge depleted regions of pseudo Li$^{+}$ atoms. Therefore, the extrapolation scheme in Eqn. \ref{eqn:extrapolation1} was used throughout this work.

\section{Results and Discussion}\label{sec:res}
\subsection{Ground state calculations}\label{sec:ground}
In LiNiO$_2$, Ni is in an octahedral environment with a formal charge of 3+. Theoretical calculations predict that Ni$^{3+}$ has the $d^7$ ($t_{2g}^6e_g^{1}$) electronic configuration which yields a net magnetization of 1 $\mu$ on each Ni atom \cite{y2002first, ArroyoydeDompablo2001, ArroyoydeDompablo2003}.  However, it has been challenging to experimentally observe the long-range ferromagnetic ordering in LiNiO$_2$ \cite{Chen2011,kemp1990magnetic,reynaud2001orbital}. Plane-wave ab-initio calculations with periodic boundary conditions were used to find ferromagnetic ordering in the ground state \cite{zhou2004first,Chen2011}. In the layered NiO$_2$ structure, the Ni atom donates its $e_g$ electron to O atoms and formally becomes diamagnetic \cite{zhou2004first}. Our PBE+$U$ calculations agree with these findings, yielding a distribution of Ni$^{3+}$ and Ni$^{4+}$ atoms in  all Li$_x$NiO$_2$ structures based on the projection of the charge density on atomic orbitals.  Structural parameters and the total magnetic moments of the structures we studied are listed in the Supplementary Information \cite{Supp}.

In Fig. \ref{fgr:volt} we show the Li-intercalation potential of the Li$_x$NiO$_2$ structures ($x=\{0.0, 0.25, 0.5, 0.75, 1.0\}$) , calculated using DMC and DFT methods. In the figure, theoretical results are overlayed on the experimental results from ref. \citenum{Delmas1980}. In Fig. \ref{fgr:volt}, we first show the primitive cells for each delithiated structures. DMC intercalation voltages show  excellent agreement with the experimental curve except for the slight overestimation between Li$_{0.25}$NiO$_2$ and Li$_{0.5}$NiO$_2$. From PBE+$U$=0 to 9 eV, the average voltage increases monotonically. All DFT functionals in Fig. \ref{fgr:volt}, except PBE+$U$=9 have the same step features as the voltage profile, while the step at $x$=0.75 disappears for PBE+$U$=9. Similar loss of stepwise features in the voltage curves has also been observed near complete Li intercalation with the HSE functional when the exact exchange ratio is increased from 0.17 to 0.25 \cite{Seo2015} in LiCoO$_2$. It has been suggested that at the high and low Li intercalation limits, different amounts of exact exchange would be required to reproduce the experiments \cite{Seo2015}. Our findings, in terms of the loss of stepwise features in LiNiO$_2$, are similar to LiCoO$_2$ \cite{Seo2015}. Hence, we demonstrate the challenges of using a constant $U$ vaue or exact exchange ratio in hybrid DFT functionals to reproduce the redox potentials across the Li intercalation limits.

\begin{figure}
	\includegraphics[width=0.5\textwidth]{battery-data/ni-figure}
	\caption{(Color online) a) Radial spin polarization density ($\rho=\rho_{\uparrow}-\rho_{\downarrow}$) and b) radial spin polarization density difference from extrapolated DMC around the Ni atom with various theoretical methods using RRKJ pseudopotentials. A $U$ value of 6 eV with PBE is the most accurate DFT charge density among the tested DFT functionals. PBE+$U$=6 also has the most accurate voltages in Fig. \ref{fgr:ni_density}. Every two out of three markers are omitted for clarity.}
	\label{fgr:ni_density}
\end{figure}

\subsection{Charge densities}\label{sec:chg}

\begin{figure}
	\includegraphics[width=0.5\textwidth]{battery-data/o-figure}
	\caption{(Color online) a) Radial spin polarization density ($\rho=\rho_{\uparrow}-\rho_{\downarrow}$) and b) radial spin polarization density difference from extrapolated DMC around the O atom with various theoretical methods using RRKJ pseudopotentials. In a),the spin density around O atom is positive for LDA and PBE, while the other theoretical methods yield a negative spin density. DMC spin densities around O in a) and Ni in Fig. \ref{fgr:ni_density} are opposite. Every two out of three markers are omitted for clarity.}
	\label{fgr:o_density}
\end{figure}

The shortcomings of DFT and DFT+$U$ in reproducing experimental redox potentials Li$_x$NiO$_2$ are attributed to the challenges in the accurate description of the hybridization between O-$p$ and Ni-$d$ orbitals \cite{cococcioni2005linear,himmetoglu2014hubbard,shishkin2016self}. Because of this hybridization, it is difficult to correct the exchange-correlation energy term with orbital-dependent energy terms without explicitly accounting for the orbital occupancy of both Ni and O, while taking into account the interatomic coupling. However, the performance of DMC for the voltage curves in Fig. \ref{fgr:volt} suggests that DMC can also provide accurate charge density distributions, and in particular the $p$-$d$ hybridization between Ni and O atoms.

\begin{figure}
	\includegraphics[width=0.5\textwidth]{battery-data/spin_dens}
	\caption{(Color online) LiNiO$_2$ DMC spin density isosurface. Gray, red and green denotes Ni, O and Li atoms. Positive and negative isosurfaces are shown in yellow and blue respectively.}
	\label{fgr:layer_density}
\end{figure}

We investigate the radial spin polarization density of LiNiO$_2$ to understand the degree of hybridization between Ni-$d$ and O-$p$ electrons in Fig. \ref{fgr:ni_density} and \ref{fgr:o_density}. This is motivated by the following: As previously mentioned, in LiNiO$_2$, Ni has a formal charge of 3+, Ni$^{3+}$, while being in an octahedral environment with $t_{2g}^6e_{g}^1$ occupation. This would mean that the $t_{2g}$ manifold is completely occupied. The unpaired electron in the Ni $e_g$ level yields 1 $\mu_B$ magnetization per Ni atom. In LiNiO$_2$, only the Ni-$e_g$ and O-$p$ orbitals have the proper symmetry to hybridize, due to having near 90$^{\circ}$ Ni-O-Ni angles. O-$p$ ($p_x$, $p_y$ or $p_z$) and Ni-$e_g$ orbitals form a filled $e_g$ bonding orbital and a half-filled $e_g*$ anti-bonding orbital \cite{ArroyoydeDompablo2003, y2002first}.
This is consistent with experimental findings from electron energy loss spectroscopy measurements, which find that Ni$^{3+}$ is in a low spin state in LiNiO$_2$, with a significant hybridization between Ni-$d$ and O-$p$ electrons \cite{koyama2005electronic}.
Density of states plots in our Supplementary Information also show that the Fermi level is almost purely Ni-$e_g$ and O-$p$ \cite{Supp}. In this respect, the spin polarization density can be used as an indication to show the distribution of the electron at the $e_g*$ level. At the DFT level, the charge density of the $e_g*$ orbital can be obtained through band decomposition of the charge density, but this is not yet accessible within DMC. Therefore, the spread of the spin polarization density can be used to understand if the hybridization is primarily of Ni or O character. Here, we should emphasize that the total spin polarization is constrained at 1 $\mu_B$ per Ni atom in all DFT and DMC calculations in Fig. \ref{fgr:ni_density}a,b and \ref{fgr:o_density}a,b in order to provide a uniform comparison between the methods. Nevertheless, total spin polarization was also found to be close to ~1 $\mu_B$ in DFT calculations where the total spin polarization is completely relaxed \cite{Chakraborty2018}.

In Fig. \ref{fgr:ni_density}a we show the radial spin polarization density ($\rho=\rho_{\uparrow}-\rho_{\downarrow}$) around the Ni atom in LiNiO$_2$.
All the theoretical methods in Fig. \ref{fgr:ni_density}a yield a peak density around 0.3 {\AA} and all the values are all positive around the core region of the Ni atom. The peak height depends on the DFT functional, with LDA exhibiting the smallest peak height, followed by PBE, and with other functionals showing larger peak heights. The peak height increases monotonically with the increased +$U$ interaction on the Ni valence electrons.
To have a closer look at the results of \ref{fgr:ni_density}a, radial spin polarization density differences from extrapolated DMC densities are shown in Fig. \ref{fgr:ni_density}b.
We highlight three main outcomes from Fig. \ref{fgr:ni_density}b:
\begin{enumerate*}[label=(\roman*)]
\item DMC and VMC charge densities are almost equal with slight fluctuations around the spin density peak regions, indicating that the trial wavefunction is a good estimate of the true many-body wavefunction
\item PBE+$U$=6 has the most accurate spin polarization density around Ni atom compared to the extrapolated DMC density.
This result is illuminating and consistent, as the PBE+$U$=6 calculation also provides the most accurate DFT intercalation voltages in Fig. \ref{fgr:volt}.
This point will be further discussed below.
\item PBE+$U$=3 and SCAN functionals provide almost identical densities.
\end{enumerate*}
Various examples in the literature suggest a reduced self-interaction error in SCAN compared to GGA \cite{Perdew2017, Peng2017, Kitchaev2016, SaiGautam2018a}, which has been reflected in using significantly lower +$U$ values in SCAN compared to GGA+$U$ to produce identical results.

\begin{figure}
	\includegraphics[width=0.5\textwidth]{battery-data/barr2}
	\caption{(Color online) Li diffusion barrier in a 14-atom Li$_{0.5}$NiO$_2$ cell. Reaction coordinate, from left to right, indicates the hopping of a Li$^{+}$ ion from the equilibrium site, through the saddle point, Li$_{0.5}$NiO$_2^*$ and to another equivalent equilibrium site. Li$^{+}$ in Li$_{0.5}$NiO$_2^*$ is found in tetrahedral vacancy site as studied in ref. \cite{kang2006factors}. All geometries, including the saddle point are obtained using PBE+$U$=6. Rest of the theoretical methods use these geometries without optimization.}
	\label{fgr:barr}
\end{figure}

In Fig. \ref{fgr:o_density}a and b, we perform the same analysis as in Fig. \ref{fgr:ni_density}a and b, but around the O atom. The LiNiO$_2$ structure we used has the \textit{R-3m} symmetry meaning that all O atoms are identical. This is apparent from the DMC spin polarization density (Fig. \ref{fgr:layer_density}) which shows both $d_{z^2}$ and $d_{x^2-y^2}$ character. Although a Jahn-Teller distortion can ideally be considered, that could lead to splitting between $d_{z^2}$ and $d_{x^2-y^2}$ levels \cite{ArroyoydeDompablo2003, ArroyoydeDompablo2001}. The most important result in Fig. \ref{fgr:o_density}a is that the sign of the spin polarization density changes depending on the DFT functional used. Fig. \ref{fgr:layer_density} shows that the negative spin polarization density on the O atoms are parallel to the Ni-O plane, but not strongly directional on the Ni-O bond axis. A positive spin density around the O atom (e.g. with LDA) in Fig. \ref{fgr:o_density}a is related to a reduced peak value in Fig. \ref{fgr:ni_density}a.  This is correlated to the peak intensities in the density of states (see Supplementary Information), where there is complete overlap between O-$p$ and Ni-$e_g$ peaks at the PBE level, the O-$p$ peak at the Fermi level increases with increasing $U$ value. Local and semi-local DFT leads to delocalized spin polarization densities for the $e_g*$ electron. However, with increasing $U$ interaction and at the meta-GGA level, the $e_g*$ electron is more strongly localized over the Ni core leading to a small polarization over the Ni-O layer. We find that PBE+$U$=3 eV and SCAN functionals produce almost identical spin polarization densities around the O-atom as well, similar to Fig. \ref{fgr:ni_density}a,b.

\subsection{Lithium diffusion barriers}\label{sec:bar}
In Fig. \ref{fgr:barr}, nudged elastic band (CI-NEB) \cite{jonsson1998nudged} calculations are performed using 5 equidistant images to obtain the Li diffusion saddle point in a 14-atom Li$_{0.5}$NiO$_2$ cell. This cell is found to be sufficiently large to compute the converged energy barrier for lithium diffusion along the tetrahedral vacancy site in LiNiO$_{2}$. The  geometry of the saddle point can heavily depend on the theoretical method used.
Since the saddle point optimization is not yet available in DMC, we perform several tests to ensure that the saddle point geometry optimized in DFT is reasonable to perform DMC calculations.

We cross check the saddle point geometries optimized using PBE and PBE+$U$=6 to understand the effect of geometry optimization on the energy barriers. We compare PBE and PBE+$U$=6 as PBE+$U$=6 provides the most accurate voltage curves in Fig. \ref{fgr:volt}. When both of the structures were calculated using PBE, their ground state energies differ by less than 50 meV.
Our PBE barrier energies compare well with the literature $\sim$ 0.25 eV \cite{kang2006factors}. However, when the same saddle point structures calculated using PBE+$U$=6 eV, their total energies differ by 0.1-0.2 eV. It is known that the distance between NiO$_2$ slabs can drastically effect the diffusion rates \cite{VanDerVen2000}. The reduced slab distance in PBE may lead to increased diffusion barriers in PBE+$U$ calculations. Therefore, we used the saddle point structure optimized using PBE+$U$=6 eV to perform DMC calculations.

Our literature search indicates that a Li diffusion barrier of 0.3-0.6 eV must be expected for Li$_{0.5}$NiO$_2$. Experimental studies on the diffusion rates of LiNiO$_2$ are rather challenging as Ni$^{3+}$ prefers to migrate into Li$^+$ sites at lower Li concentrations. Nevertheless, using $^7$Li NMR spectra a diffusion barrier of 0.6 eV is found \cite{Nakamura2000}. In layered oxides, Li$^+$ diffusion rates are known to increase (diffusion barriers would decrease) with increasing Li-slab distance, hence with decreasing the Li concentration \cite{kang2006factors}. Therefore, the 0.6 eV should be used as an upper bound in our diffusion barrier calculations performed with the Li$_{0.5}$NiO$_2$ cell. Experimental diffusion barrier of LiCoO$_2$ has been studied numerous times with macroscopic \cite{Okubo2009} and local techniques \cite{Balke2012} that yield a diffusion barrier of 0.26-0.3 eV near Li$_{0.5}$CoO2. It has been noted that the diffusion barrier in LiNiO$_2$ should be larger than the diffusion barrier of LiCoO$_2$ \cite{Nakamura2000}. Therefore, the diffusion barrier of Li$_{0.5}$CoO$_2$ can be used as a lower bound for Li$_{0.5}$NiO$_2$. Hence, our analysis yields a range of Li diffusion barrier energies (0.3-0.6 eV) for Li$_{0.5}$NiO$_2$.

Fig. \ref{fgr:barr} shows that the energy barriers are increased with the increased value of $U$, as expected. We find that a $U$ value of 6 eV or larger must be used to obtain Li diffusion barrier energy within 0.3-0.6 eV . DMC Li diffusion barrier energy we calculated, 0.39(3) eV, is larger than all the PBE+$U$ diffusion barrier energies in Fig. \ref{fgr:barr}.
While PBE+$U$=6 eV reproduces experimental voltage curves, a substantially higher value of $U$, $\sim$10 eV, could be required to fit the energy barrier calculated with DMC.
This result supports previous work showing how the energy of the transition state can depend strongly on the exchange component of the density functional, and often larger exchange ratios are required for accurate barrier height than what is needed for the equilibrium geometries \cite{Lynch2001}. Therefore, it is likely that the $U$ value of 6 eV, which is reasonable for intercalation voltages, leads to an underestimation of the barrier height compared to the DMC barrier height.

\section{Conclusions}
We showed that it is possible to obtain accurate Li intercalation voltage curves using DMC method, and illustrated this approach on the LiNiO$_2$ layered cathode structure. Semilocal DFT results typically underestimate the voltage curves due to spurious self-interaction effects, and require corrections. However, DMC calculates the electron-electron interactions without any ad-hoc approximations.
To our knowledge, our work is the first report of a cathode redox potential determined using DMC, which accurately reproduces the experiments and lays the foundation for future methods for predicting redox reaction voltages entirely from first principles.
We discuss the degree of $p$-$d$ hybridization between Ni and O atoms using spin charge density distributions while comparing to the failures of DFT for this material. We show that charge densities computed by LDA and PBE are significantly different than DMC, while SCAN and DFT+$U$ offer relatively improved results. We show how other material properties such as energy barrier to lithium diffusion can be affected, and how the accuracy of DFT+$U$ may not be transferable across different physical properties.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaArXiv


Larus cachinnans 1CY PUAC December 05 2010, Jakuševec-Zagreb, Croatia. Picture: ringing team Luka Jurinovic.
Read at Zagreb landfill, from Ukraine: ringed as pullus on June 05 2010 at Kreminchukske Reservoir, Cherkasi in Ukraine.
No coverts or tertials replaced in post-juvenile moult.


High quality 4130 steel construction.
Includes Instructions for Continued Airworthiness with improved inspection procedures.
more than 0.010 inch radial free play in either bearing.
any corrosion on either bearing.
significant corrosion or other damage to the tube.


text:
Wintel est un mot-valise issu de Windows et Intel. Il se réfère aux ordinateurs personnels utilisant les processeurs Intel compatibles x86 fonctionnant sous Microsoft Windows.

Architecture x86
Compatible IBM PC

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


Highly qualified and experienced describers with a combined 60 years service in the stamp trade who lot your stamps & collections to maximise your returns. In addition we keep up with the latest market trends to ensure we value your material at the right levels.
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The June vote by the UK to leave the European Union creates many uncertainties. This two-part series outlines the exit process and the possible options for the UK's future trading relationships.
By now you are undoubtedly familiar with the term Brexit, coined by the media as shorthand for the June vote by the UK electorate to leave the 28-nation European Union (EU). In my last article in, I outlined the exit process and the possible options for the UK's future trading relationships with the EU and other nations.
Leaving aside the economic effects of the decision to leave the EU, which have already been felt around the globe, any organization operating within the UK or doing business with the UK will need to keep a close eye on any changes to laws and regulations that may affect their business.
It will likely be at least two years before the withdrawal takes effect, during which time the UK remains bound by European law, including the right to freedom of movement for people, goods and services. But following a formal exit, the UK will have to devise new rules for a future as an independent trading nation, and will have the opportunity to repeal or amend those existing laws that do not work for the UK.
Immigration to and from the UK. Who will be affected by the removal of the right to free movement within the EU?
Employment laws. How many rights derived from EU law will be repealed or amended?
Data Protection. Will the UK choose to implement the more stringent rules adopted by the EU in the form of the General Data Protection Regulation due to come into force in 2018?
Restrictions on Services. The freedom of staffing firms to charge temp-to-perm fees has been affected by European law. Will this change in the future?
At this stage nothing is certain, and any change to existing laws will likely involve public consultation with a backdrop of the economic conditions at the time. However, in this two-part series I look at each of these areas in a bit more detail and try to predict what the future might hold for contingent workforce risk management.
Immigration. EU leaders have made clear that if the UK wants to retain its access to the single market it must accept the right of citizens from all remaining 27 nations to live and work freely within the UK. As the perception of "too many immigrants" was one of the reasons many voted to leave the EU, it is widely expected that freedom of movement will cease. As a result, there will need to be changes to the immigration rules and the re-introduction of visa requirements for EU citizens who want to live and work in the UK, and vice versa. This will have implications for the availability of labor and will add cost to the recruitment process.
Under current immigration rules, non-EU citizen workers must be sponsored by an employer for a skilled job that cannot be filled by someone already living in the country. Applying this system to EU migrants will affect the availability of contingent or temporary workers in the engineering and healthcare industries where workers are in short supply.
However, many industries rely on low-skilled workers who would be least likely to qualify to migrate to the UK once free movement is eliminated. According to a report by the Migration Advisory Committee in 2014, some 800,000 low-skilled jobs are filled by EU-born workers. In 2015, 13% of people in the lowest skilled jobs known as "elementary occupations," also often low paid, were born in European Economic Area countries. The food industry, construction, healthcare and hospitality are some sectors which would be hardest hit by the lack of resident temporary workers.
Many of these workers are engaged by and sourced from staffing agencies. Temporary staffing agencies are not permitted to sponsor workers coming from outside the UK, who will be supplied to a third party as labor. Therefore such workers must be employed directly by the end-user. The cost of a sponsor's licence for an employer is £1,476, with additional costs of a further £1,200 often borne by the employer, to recruit a worker from outside the UK.
Of course leaving the EU would also mean that UK citizens would be restricted in their ability to move and work freely around the EU, which may impact on businesses expanding within Europe and seeking skilled labour from the UK.
In my next column, I will address the ramification of Brexit on employment laws, data protection and restrictions on services.


text:
Researchers Conduct Study On Age Related Fertility Decline
Researchers in Southampton are conducting the largest survey of its kind to find out what men and women know about age-related fertility decline and the impact it has on planning a family.
The University of Southampton together with Princess Anne Hospital in Southampton, are looking to recruit more than 2000 people from all over the country to the online study.
Researchers hope to gain insight into the attitudes of people towards egg freezing, their intentions regarding having children and what people think ovarian awareness is.
The number of women having IVF treatment to conceive is rising. In 2010 45,264 women had IVF treatment in the UK compared to the 36,861 women who had the treatment in 2007 and now around 1.5 per cent of all babies born in the UK are the result of IVF and donor insemination.
Professor Nicholas Macklon, Professor of Obstetrics and Gynaecology at the University of Southampton and Director of the Complete Fertility Centre at the Princess Anne Hospital, comments: "Until recently, most women wishing to conceive after the age of 37 either faced failure or opted for IVF, often without success. In recent years however, new technology has become available which may allow women to freeze their eggs, for use later in life. This offers women the possibility of waiting to have a family until they have found a partner with whom they wish to have children or until a suitable moment in their career.
"Many people know that age has a significant impact on a women's ability to have a baby. But we want to find out more about what people really understand about age-related fertility decline, the reasons why women, men and couples make the conscious decision to postpone having a family, and the options available to make that happen."
Researchers hope that a better understanding of the reasons behind delaying having a family will help in the provision of relevant information to enable women and couples to make informed fertility decisions in the future. It will also allow for better service provision, not only for women and couples wishing to postpone childbearing, but also for those women wishing to plan a family.
Fertility Rates and Ectopic Pregnancy
WEDNESDAY, March 13 (HealthDay News) — Fertility rates are about the same for women who undergo different types of treatments for ectopic pregnancy, according to a new study.
In an ectopic pregnancy, the fertilized egg grows outside the uterus, usually in the fallopian tubes. This typically leads to a miscarriage.
This study looked at pregnancies among more than 400 women in France two years after their ectopic pregnancy had been treated using one of three methods: methotrexate injection to halt the pregnancy; conservative surgery, which preserves the fallopian tube; and radical surgery, which removes the fallopian tube.
The first part of the study compared drug treatment and conservative surgery, while the second part compared conservative and radical surgery. The researchers did not directly compare drug treatment and radical surgery, because some women must be treated by surgery.
Pregnancy rates two years after treatment were 67 percent among women who received methotrexate, about 70 percent among those who had conservative surgery and 64 percent among those who had radical surgery.
The study was published online March 13 in the journal Human Reproduction.
"This is the first randomized study to be able to compare fertility after the three treatments for ectopic pregnancies," Dr. Perrine Capmas, a gynecology surgeon and obstetrician at the University Paris Sud, said in a journal news release. "We found that two years after treatment, there was no significant difference in fertility among the women who received medical treatment or conservative surgery in the first arm of the study, or women who received conservative or radical surgery in the second arm."
Experts welcomed the findings.
"This is good news, as it reaffirms our experience that [nonsurgical] medical treatment is sufficient in most cases of ectopic pregnancy that are picked out early enough," said Dr. Avner Hershlag, chief of the Center for Human Reproduction at North Shore University Hospital, in Manhasset, N.Y.
And Dr. Jennifer Kulp Makarov, a fertility specialist at Maimonides Medical Center in New York City, said the statistics on fertility were strong, no matter what treatment was used.
"This … is good news for women who have had an ectopic pregnancy. It gives confidence that women treated for ectopic pregnancy, whether with surgery or with medication, have high rates of fertility after treatment," Makarov said. "The majority of women who desired to become pregnant after treatment for an ectopic pregnancy were able to do so, and most of these pregnancies were located in the uterus."
| ectopic pregnancy
Thousands Protest In Moscow Against Ban On Adoptions To US
By Kirit Radia
ABC World News
MOSCOW — Thousands of Russians took to the streets on Sunday to protest Russia's new ban on adoptions to the United States.
In what organizers called the "March Against Scoundrels" they paraded down a tree-lined boulevard in central Moscow chanting "Hands off our children" and "Russia will be free." They also carried signs with the faces of Russian politicians who approved the ban and the word "Shame" written on them.
"I am not an apologist for the U.S. I am a patriot of this country. But this monstrous law must be canceled," leftist protest leader Sergei Udaltsov told the crowd before the march began, according to the Interfax news agency.
As usual, organizers and police disagreed on the size of the crowd. Organizers estimated between 20,000 and 50,000 people turned out. Police put the figure much lower at about 7,000, but overhead photos of the protest appear to show a crowd larger than that.
Significantly smaller protests, some consisting of just a few dozen people, took place in other cities around the country, according to Interfax. A nationwide poll taken in December by the Public Opinion Foundation found 56 percent support for the ban.
But participants in Sunday's protests accused the ban's proponents of playing politics with the lives of children.
The adoption ban was a late amendment to a bill retaliating for a set of human rights sanctions that President Obama signed into law in December. It cut off adoptions to the United States, one of the most popular destinations for international adoptions from Russia, starting Jan. 1.
More than 60,000 Russian orphans have been adopted by Americans since the end of the Soviet Union, according to the State Department. Many of them are sick or suffer from disabilities.
But Russian officials have pointed to the cases of 19 children who died after being adopted by Americans. They also noted cases in which American parents accused of abusing their adopted children received, in their view, lenient sentences.
Since the law went into effect, Russian officials have struggled to explain whether the ban would cancel 52 adoption cases that had already received court approval and were within weeks of completion. Kremlin spokesman Dmitri Peskov said Thursday that at least some of those adoptions which had cleared the courts would be allowed to proceed, but did to say how many.
The ban was controversial even before it became law. Even though it received nearly unanimous approval from Russia's rubber stamp parliament, prominent cabinet officials, including Russia's Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, came out against the ban. Even President Vladimir Putin himself evaded questions about it when asked during an end of year press conference.
Since the ban was approved, top Russian officials have pledged to devote more resources to reforming the country's dilapidated orphanages and to encourage more Russians to adopt.
Sunday's protest was organized by some of the same opposition leaders who organized last year's anti-Putin rallies. The last such protest, held without city approval and under heavy police presence, drew relatively few people in December, suggesting the protest movement had fizzled. Protest leader and anti-corruption blogger Alexy Navalny, however, told Interfax today that he hopes the adoption ban could rally more Russians to continue protesting.
| adoption
Infertility Rates Haven't Changed Much In 20 Years
By Eryn Brown
It can seem like infertility is on the rise, especially in developed countries as women wait longer to start families. But according to a new analysis of 277 surveys, conducted by researchers at the World Health Organization and other institutions, infertility trends around the world stayed largely the same from 1990 to 2010.
Worldwide in 2010, 1.9% of women ages 20 to 44 who wanted to have babies were unable to give birth to a first child, wrote Gretchen Stevens of the World Health Organization and coauthors in a study in the journal PLOS Medicine. Among women who had already given birth, 10.5% were unable to have another child, the group reported.
Those numbers were only slightly changed from 20 years earlier, when so-called primary infertility (inability to have a first child) was 2.0% worldwide and secondary infertility (inability to have a subsequent child) was 10.2%.
"Independent from population growth and worldwide declines in the preferred number of children, we found little evidence of changes in infertility over two decades," the authors wrote.
The two exceptions were sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia, where infertility declined significantly. Stevens and her collaborators suggested that may be linked to reductions in rates of sexually transmitted diseases such as gonorrhea and chlamydia, which can cause infertility when left untreated.
Central and Eastern Europe and Central Asia, on the other hand, had relatively high rates of secondary infertility, which the coauthors suggested might be associated with the region's higher incidence of abortion and the persistence of unsafe abortion practices that can cause complications that affect fertility.
Estimating infertility is tricky, the team wrote, because few researchers have attempted to do comparative analysis of different countries' health survey data in the past, and no one has applied a consistent method to all the sources of data. This group collected data from demographic and reproductive health surveys that had collected women's ages, whether women were part of a couple, whether they were using contraception, time since first and last births, time since first union and desire to have a child. U.S. data came from the National Survey of Family and Growth, conducted by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
In all, they said, 48.5 million couples around the world are unable to have a child, up 6.5 million from 1990. They attributed the rise in absolute numbers to population growth.
| infertility rates
Badly Wounded Veterans Lobby For Fertility Treatment
By Alexandra Zavis
Army Staff Sgt. Matt Kiel was shot while on patrol in Iraq just six weeks after his wedding. Doctors said he would be on a ventilator for the rest of his life and would never again move his arms or legs — dashing his hopes of raising a family.
But within months of his injuries five years ago, Kiel was breathing on his own and had regained enough function in his left arm to operate a motorized wheelchair. Doctors said he and his wife, Tracy, could start a family through in vitro fertilization.
The couple were overjoyed, until they discovered that the Department of Veterans Affairs does not cover the costly procedure.
"The war takes away so many things from us," Matt Kiel said. "I don't think it should take away our ability to have a family."
Kiel, 31, of Parker, Colo., is among a growing population of veterans whose war wounds make it difficult for them to have children. Advances in battlefield medicine mean troops are surviving catastrophic wounds in Iraq and Afghanistan that might have killed their predecessors in earlier wars. The use of homemade bombs to target foot patrols has left them particularly vulnerable to injuries that can damage their reproductive systems.
More than 1,900 service members have suffered such injuries since 2003, according to Pentagon data provided to U.S. Sen. Patty Murray ( D-Wash.). Most are men, but they include a growing number of women. Many could benefit from in vitro fertilization, which is why Murray is pushing for the VA to cover the procedure.
"Providing this service is a cost of war," Murray said. "There is absolutely no reason we should make these veterans, who have sacrificed so much, wait any longer to be able to realize their dreams of starting or growing their families."
The VA does cover fertility counseling, diagnostic tests and some procedures for veterans with service-connected injuries. For men, that can include the retrieval of sperm, and for women, intrauterine insemination, in which semen is inserted into the uterine cavity through a catheter. Those treatments do help some veterans conceive, although the VA generally won't cover the care provided to veterans' spouses or surrogates.
But for the most severely wounded, more advanced treatments are needed, said Dr. Lori Marshall, medical director at Seattle-based Pacific Northwest Fertility and IVF Specialists. The sperm retrieved from injured men may be of too poor quality for successful intrauterine insemination.
In IVF, egg and sperm are combined in a laboratory, and the resulting embryo is transferred into a woman's uterus. The procedure bypasses the fallopian tubes and is the treatment of choice for many women with badly damaged or missing tubes, Marshall said. If the uterus is incapable of sustaining a pregnancy, the woman may need a surrogate.
"Most of the men and women who suffer these injuries are young and should have very high success rates," Marshall said. But the cost can be prohibitive. A complete cycle of IVF typically costs between $12,000 and $20,000, and it can take several attempts to achieve a successful pregnancy.
Murray, chairwoman of the Veterans' Affairs Committee, introduced legislation that passed the Senate by unanimous consent Thursday directing the VA to make advanced fertility techniques like IVF available to disabled veterans, their spouses or surrogates. But prospects for similar legislation are uncertain in the House, where spending cuts to avoid the fiscal cliff are dominating discussion.
| fertility treatment veteran
Sperm Count Low Among Couch Potatoes, Study Finds
By Monte Morin
For those men who are looking to boost their sperm count, researchers at the Harvard School of Public Health have some simple advice: drop the TV remote control and get to the gym.
A study published Monday in the British Journal of Sports Medicine found that men who watched more than 20 hours of television a week had 44% lower sperm count than men who watched almost no television.
Researchers found too that men who engaged in moderate to vigorous exercise for 15 or more hours a week had 73% higher sperm count than men who exercised less than five hours per week.
The findings come amid claims from some scientists that sperm quality has declined among Western men in the last decades. Some say it may be due in part to a rise in sedentary lifestyles.
"We know very little about how lifestyle may impact semen quality and male fertility in general, so identifying two potentially modifiable factors that appear to have such a big impact on sperm counts is truly exciting," said lead author Audrey Gaskins, a doctoral student at HSPH.
The study was based on 189 men in Rochester, NY. Study subjects, who had an average age of 19, were surveyed on their television viewing habits, exercise regimen, tobacco use and diet. Samples of their semen were then analyzed for sperm concentration; sperm motility; sperm morphology, or shape; and total sperm count.
While more exercise and less TV were closely associated with higher total sperm count and concentration, they appeared unrelated to sperm motility or morphology, according to the report.
Reduced sperm count has been linked to lower fertility. However, it does not absolutely prevent men from fathering a child, authors said.
"The majority of the previous studies on physical activity and semen quality had focused on professional marathon runners and cyclists, who reach physical activity levels that most people in the world cannot match," said senior author Jorge Chavarro, an assistant professor of nutrition and epidemiology at HSPH.
"We were able to examine a range of physical activity that is more relevant to men in the general population," he said.
Copyright © 2013, Los Angeles Times
| low sperm count male factor
Sandy's Most Delicate Rescue Was Fertility Clinic's Embryos
By KATIE MOISSE of ABC News
View Story On ABC News Website
[image_frame style="framed" align="right" height="96″ width="91″]http://www.fertilityassociates.com/site/img/abcnews2.png"[/image_frame]Among all the rescues carried out during the chaos caused by Sandy, the most delicate was the mission to save embryos in rows of incubators that were in jeopardy when the NYU Fertility Center lost its power.
The Manhattan clinic lost power shortly after Sandy struck Monday night. A generator perched atop the 8-story building kept incubators running through the night, but flooding in the basement cut off its fuel supply.
"The generator ran out of gas around 8:15 Tuesday morning," said Dr. James Grifo, the clinic's director.
Without power, the incubators housing delicate embryos at womb-temperature for in vitro fertilization began to cool. But Grifo and his team took action, hoisting five-gallon cans of diesel fuel up darkened stairwells to feed the failing generator.
"It was really a privilege to be part of that," Grifo said of his staff's "heroic" efforts.
The fuel bought the team enough time to transfer the embryos into liquid nitrogen, where they can be stored indefinitely. The embryos were secured as another urgent issue arose.
At 10 a.m., a patient arrived for an egg retrieval — a surgical procedure timed down to the hour after a two-week run of expensive fertility drugs.
Grifo loaded the woman into his car, along with her husband and their baby, and rushed them to a colleague's clinic uptown.
"It's amazing what people can do when everyone's on the same page," Grifo said, adding that the rest of the clinic's patients were booked into clinics throughout the city to "salvage" their cycles.
"It's a testament to the people in New York who work in medicine," he added. "Some of our most vicious competitors offered assistance."
Sandy spawned record-breaking tides around lower Manhattan, prompting power outages from East 39th Street to Battery Park at the southern tip of the island. The NYU Fertility Center is on First Avenue and 38th street, just a block from the overflowing East River.
The storm forced the nearby NYU Langone Medical Center to evacuate 300 patients in gusts of wind topping 70 miles per hour. Cells, tissues and animals used for medical research were left to die in failing refrigerators, freezers and incubators.
But thanks to Grifo and his team, eggs and embryos at the fertility clinic were spared.
"Hopefully we'll get some babies out of it, and that'll be a nice story as well," he said.
Sandy was an example of what some fertility clinics call an "act of God," an unfathomable tragedy that patients are warned about before starting the IVF process.
"There's so much riding on this," said Dr. James Goldfarb, director of the University Hospitals Fertility Center in Cleveland. "Even when everything's going smoothly, it's stressful for women. But add the stress of having to start all over again, that's extremely stressful."
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Forbes Global 2000 List: Ambani overtakes Adani in the Forbes list, know which Indian companies got a place
by Vikram Dave
New Delhi. Veteran industrialist Mukesh Ambani has overtaken his rival Gautam Adani in the Forbes Global 2000 list. Forbes has taken out this list on the world's most powerful 2000 companies. In this, Mukesh Ambani's Reliance Industries is at number 53. Adani's four companies are far behind him. Mukesh Ambani's Reliance has become the first Indian company to earn more than $100 billion in the last financial year. For this reason, he has got an advantage of 2 places in the list of Forbes compared to last year. Mukesh Ambani's assets are around 90 billion dollars. He is the 10th richest person in the world.
Gautam Adani's Adani Port is at 1568th, Adani Green Energy 1570th, Adani Transmission 1705th and Adani Total Gas at 1746th in the Forbes list. According to Forbes, he has prepared this list on the basis of sales, profits, assets and market value of the company. Among other Indian companies in this list, State Bank of India has been ranked at 105th, HDFC Bank at 153rd and ICICI Bank at 204th. State-owned oil company ONGC is at 228th position in this list.
At the same time, HDFC Ltd is ranked 268th, Indian Oil 357th, Tata Consultancy 385th, Tata Steel 407 and Axis Bank 431 in the Forbes list. The country's largest mining company Vedanta has also benefited tremendously this time. She has risen 703 places in this list as compared to last year and has reached number 593.
Ambani Succession Plan: Isha Ambani will be crowned at Reliance Retail, may be announced today
Share Market Closing: Weakness continues in Indian stocks, Sensex falls 175 points while Nifty falls 55 points
Tags: AdaniAmbanicompaniesForbesGlobalIndianListOvertakesplace
Rupee vs Dollar: Indian Rupee at the lowest level against Dollar, Bhutanese currency Nugultrum is also stronger than us
Now onion has become the 'new gold', the price started touching the sky, wives asked for onion ring
'Nora Fatehi was jealous of Jacqueline, wanted us to break up..', claims Sukesh Chandrasekhar
Reliance Jio again did a big feat, launched True 5G service in 50 cities simultaneously


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posted 30 Apr 2019, 13:03 by Guernsey Table Tennis Association [ updated 30 Apr 2019, 13:41 ]
Jersey came away with more individual CI table tennis titles than Guernsey for the first time since 2015 when action concluded on Friday evening at the Geoff Reed table tennis centre in Jersey. Jersey took 13 of the 20 titles on offer, however the Sarnians managed to walk away with 3 of the 5 flagship trophies on the night.
Prolific CI title winner Dawn Morgan was responsible for all 3 of these crowns as she walked away with the Women's Singles, Women's Doubles and Mixed Doubles crowns as well as adding a 4th title on the night in the Women's Veterans Singles.
Her victories in the main blue riband events were all fairly comfortable. She breezed past Irene Bree in straight sets to clinch her 18th CI Women's Singles title and alongside Kay Chivers romped to a 4-0 win over Bree and Kay Lefebvre, also her 18th title in this category and 6th alongside Chivers. Dawn Morgan and Josh Stacey claimed the Mixed Doubles title
The mixed doubles crown was clinched alongside Joshua Stacey where the duo defeated Lefebvre and Tyler Gosselin in 6 sets. This too was her 18th title in this category.
The Women's Veterans clash against Lefebvre however was an extremely tough match and Morgan needed to be at her best to overturn a 3-0 deficit before winning 11-9 in the 7th and deciding leg.
There was disappointment in the 2 x blue riband men's events as Jersey took both of the titles. Lawrence Stacey and twin Josh lost out in a tight 6 set Men's Doubles clash to Mariusz Cieminski and Gosselin, whilst Cieminski battled past Lawrence by the same score in the Men's Singles. Stacey trailed 3-0 and did well to battle back to 3-2 before going down in the 6th. He will rue missed chances, particularly the 3rd end when he held a few game points.
Phil Ogier has been another regular CI title winner and he added another Veterans Open Doubles crown to his collection alongside Jez Powell. The duo won their 6th consecutive title at this level when they overcame Eugene Ellis and Mario Martinka in straight sets. He had no answer to Ellis in the Veteran's Open Singles on this occasion as Ellis powered through 4-1 in an impressive display of attacking table tennis.
The penultimate title won by Guernsey was in the Under 18 Boys singles as Ben Foss battled past Leon Pierre over 6 sets. Foss was unable to add to his tally on the night though, as he lost out to Pierre 4-1 in the Under 21 Open Singles and Pierre was again his nemesis in the Under 18 Open Doubles, where a 4-1 defeat was inflicted alongside Matthew Casey by Pierre and Alfie Sutherland.
The 7th and final title claimed by Guernsey was by Paul Hainsworth in the Restricted Open Singles. The tournament is open to players aged between 21 and 40 with the caveat that entrants have not played in the Green trophy Inter-Insular clash within the past 2 years. Since inception of the CI trophy back in 2016, it has been won by a player that had actually played in the Green event the same year. Olly Langlois claimed it in 2016, whilst Cieminski and Gregorz Frankowski each overcame Hainsworth in the previous 2 years. The trend was broken this year as Hainsworth was only a reserve for the Green. He defeated Jersey's own Green reserve and Gibraltar 2019 Island Games team member Jack Mills 4-0 to clinch the title.
Keith Opie came the closest to making it 8 titles for the visitors as he narrowly lost out 4-3 to JTTA president Paul Routier in the Over 70's Open Singles final.


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Home > Student Work > Graduate Studies > Theses and dissertations > 2493
All Graduate Theses and Dissertations
Adolescent Friendship Pairs: Similarities in Identity Status Development, Behaviors, Attitudes, and Intentions
James F. Akers, Utah State University
Date of Award:
Degree Name:
Department name when degree awarded
Family, Consumer, and Human Development
Committee Chair(s)
Randall M. Jones
Similarities between adolescent friends have been established for many characteristics, including the physical, behavioral, psychological, academic, and social domains of development. Past research and theory also support the notion that psychological and behavioral characteristics are likely related to ego-identity characteristics. This study was primarily a test of the logical extension of the previous statements: Best friends are more similar than nonfriends on identity characteristics. It was also hypothesized that best friends are more similar than nonfriends on behaviors, attitudes, and intentions expected to be related to identity. A sample of 1,159 grade 10-12 students responded to a survey that included a measure of identity status levels, based on a modified Objective Measure of Ego Identity Status. The self-response survey also contained additional items that assessed behaviors, attitudes, and intentions. When comparing 198 pairs of mutually identified adolescent best friends and like numbers of pairs of non mutual best friends and randomly paired non friends, several tests of similarity indicated that best friends shared distinct similarities in ego identity. Magnitudes of similarity indicators were greater for measures of identity in specific content areas than for the global identity status levels or interpersonal and ideological domains. In addition, best friends were more similar than nonfriends on many behaviors, attitudes, and intentions expected to be related to identity. However, similarities of best friends were not related to the duration of the friendship. Weak relationships between identity and academics across grade levels suggested a possible reduction of identity similarities in friend pairs over time. No clear relationships were found between friends' similarities and friends' friendship strength. Finally, only inconsistent differences between females and males were found in the relationships of identity status levels, behaviors, attitudes, and intentions with friendship duration, friendship strength, and grade level.
c41603c6096d8a45bb618ad90574928e
Akers, James F., "Adolescent Friendship Pairs: Similarities in Identity Status Development, Behaviors, Attitudes, and Intentions" (1996). All Graduate Theses and Dissertations. 2493.
https://digitalcommons.usu.edu/etd/2493
Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons
Copyright for this work is retained by the student. If you have any questions regarding the inclusion of this work in the Digital Commons, please email us at .
https://doi.org/10.26076/a553-a5fa


The objective of this study was to determine whether the bicycle safety helmet legislation in California, enacted in 1994, was associated with statistically significant reductions in head injuries among bicyclists aged 17 years and under who were subjected to the law. The study used 44,069 patient discharge cases from all public hospitals in California, from 1991 through 2000, and a case-control design to make direct comparisons between those subjected to the law (Youth) and those who were not (Adult) across the pre- and post-legislation periods. An aggregate data analysis approach and a pooled disaggregate data fitting technique using multinomial logit models were applied. The legislation was found to be associated with a reduction of 18.2% (99% confidence interval: 11.5–24.3%) in the proportion of traumatic brain injuries (Head-TBI) among Youth bicyclists. The proportions of other head, face, and neck injuries were not significantly changed across the pre- and post-legislation periods in this age group but there was a corresponding increase of 9% (5–13%) in the proportion of all other injuries. On the other hand, there was no statistically significant change in the proportions of injury outcomes for Adult bicyclists. The youngest riders, aged 0–9 years, had the greatest decrease in the proportion of Head-TBI. The reduction was the same for motor vehicle and non-motor-vehicle-related incidents. The bicycle safety helmet legislation was associated with a decrease in the likelihood of Head-TBI for non-urban residents but not for urbanites, for males but not for females, and for Whites, Asians, and Hispanics, but not Blacks and others.
The authors chose to compare young riders and adults in order to investigate the effect of a youth-only helmet law. However, these are not compatible groups for a case-control study. Young riders have, on average, less skill and experience than older riders. They take more risks and they have a more frequent record of injury. The types of crash in which the two groups are involved differ, young riders being hurt more often off-road or through play activities whilst adults are more likely to be hurt as a result of collisions in traffic.
As the authors admit, no information about helmet use or cycle use is presented. Without helmet use data, it is not possible to draw any conclusions about helmet efficacy. Fewer head injuries post-legislation could as easily be attributable to less cycling or a change in the cycling profile as it could be due to increased helmet wearing. If the two groups of cyclists did not have similar wearing rates at the start of the study period, that too would add to the differences between the groups.
The lack of information about cycle use is not just with regard to risk exposure. There is also no information about the cycling profile or changes to it. Cycling profile describes cycling purpose (e.g. utility, leisure, spot, play) and location (on or off-road). Helmet laws in Australia proved to be a particular deterrent to cycling for utility journeys and by teenagers (e.g. BHRF, 1113). As the cycling profile changes, so does the injury profile. Whilst OR calculations may be unaffected by the amount of bicycling (exposure) between the two periods, they are certainly not independent of changes in cycling profile.
It is not possible to draw valid conclusions based on injury profile as an outcome measure without having good data on changes in cycling profile. Similarly, the authors' assessment of the relative benefit of helmets by youth age group is no more than speculation without knowing the distance (or time) cycled by each group and how this changed over the study period.
There was a fall of 14% in the per-annum casualties for youths, excluding Head-TBI (head traumatic brain injuries). This suggests a significant decrease in cycle use. If this is so, then reduced exposure and not helmet use accounts for half the decrease in Head-TBI injuries.
The absolute number of Head-TBI injuries avoided is about 120 per annum (assuming the above decrease in exposure), in a state with 35 million people. There is no information as to how many of these injuries were life-threatening or with long-term consequences, but typically this is only a very small proportion.
Post-law, there was a 29% fall in crashes involving youths and motor vehicles. On the other hand, adults were 18% more likely to crash with a motor vehicle. This suggests strongly a change in the cycling profile of youths, particularly relative to adults and highlighting once again the incompatibility of the two groups for a case-control study. Furthermore, if youths did ride less with traffic, that factor alone would make it much less likely that they would suffer serious head injury irrespective of helmet use.
The rate of adult Head-TBI injuries increased over the period although helmet use by adults was also increasing.
Adult crashes with motor vehicles increased, suggesting the possibility that helmet promotion associated with the law distracted attention from other means of addressing serious injuries through general road safety.
The impartiality of the researchers in carrying out the study is not clear. The extensive reference to previous studies supportive of helmet use, and with no reference to any study that has found otherwise, suggests that this project may not have been embarked upon with a completely open mind.
This study seeks to draw too many conclusions from too little data. Most of the paper is little more than speculation about what might have transpired as a result of the helmet law and the reasons for the inconsistent changes thus suggested. The model for a case-control study is inappropriate due to the many uncontrolled differences between the two age groups of cyclists. The lack of data on helmet use, cycle use and cycling profile makes it impossible to draw any meaningful conclusions.
Helmet laws: Western Australia. .


This page shows the latest sodium zirconium cyclosilicate news and features for those working in and with pharma, biotech and healthcare.
AZ acquired Lokelma ( sodium zirconium cyclosilicate) via a $2.7bn acquisition of ZS Pharma three years ago, but suffered serious setbacks in its approval thanks to manufacturing compliance issues.
Lokelma (sodium zirconium cyclosilicate or ZS-9) and Vifor Pharma's Veltassa (patiromer) which "will be a particularly valuable addition to the clinic if efficacy can be confirmed in clinical trials".
However, there's potential competition on the horizon from AstraZeneca, which has a positive opinion the Committee for Medicinal Products for Human Use (CHMP) for its hyperkalaemia drug Lokelma (sodium zirconium ... cyclosilicate) in February.


Carbon nanotube (CNT) based macroscopic objects such as dry-state free-standing sheets and yarns have attracted much attention during more than a decade for their multifunctional features. Thanks to their lightweight, highly conductive, mechanically strong and flexible properties, various applications had been explored so far. However, because of the difficulties in the spinnable CNT forest growth, the sample availability in the academic fields has been quite limited. In this report, various properties of CNT sheets, yarns, and their composites were experimentally presented using the samples prepared from the spinnable CNT forest grown in the newly installed, acetylene-based, chemical-vapor-deposition chamber system. Clear observation of the dimensional effect on the charge transport through CNTs, the enhancement of electro-mechanical actuation owing the volume-expandable infiltration material inside CNTs, and other exemplary evaluations proved the versatility of this macroscopic assembly as well as the good quality of our sample. © 2016 Elsevier B.V.