Climate change is likely to lead to an increased frequency of droughts and floods, both of which are implicated in large-scale carbon allocation and tree mortality worldwide. Non-structural carbohydrates (NSCs) play an important role in tree survival under stress, but how NSC allocation changes in response to drought or waterlogging is still unclear. We measured soluble sugars (SS) and starch in leaves, twigs, stems and roots of Robinia pseudoacacia L. seedlings that had been subjected to a gradient in soil water availability from extreme drought to waterlogged conditions for a period of 30 days. Starch concentrations decreased and SS concentrations increased in tissues of R. pseudoacacia seedlings, such that the ratio of SS to starch showed a progressive increase under both drought and waterlogging stress. The strength of the response is asymmetric, with the largest increase occurring under extreme drought. While the increase in SS concentration in response to extreme drought is the largest in roots, the increase in the ratio of SS to starch is the largest in leaves. Individual components of SS showed different responses to drought and waterlogging across tissues: glucose concentrations increased significantly with drought in all tissues but showed little response to waterlogging in twigs and stems; sucrose and fructose concentrations showed marked increases in leaves and roots in response to drought but a greater response to drought and waterlogging in stems and twigs. These changes are broadly compatible with the roles of individual SS under conditions of water stress. While it is important to consider the role of NSC in buffering trees against mortality under stress, modelling this behaviour is unlikely to be successful unless it accounts for different responses within organs and the type of stress involved.


The tires used constitute an environmental problem that remains unsolved. It is observed that the automotive fleet and therefore the generation of tires increases year after year, so the recovery and reuse processes are insufficient. For several years, the reuse of tires as materials in the construction has been considered, and several techniques have been developed for the construction of retaining walls and road reinforcement. However, to date, their use remains sporadic. This article presents the theoretical and experimental evaluation of a new geotechnical reinforcement system from used tires. This system, suitable for the construction of containment structures and the reinforcement of roads, is characterized by the conformation of cells that do not require other elements apart from the tires and the filling material. A mathematical model was developed to describe the behavior of the system and pullout tests were carried out for validation. The tests were performed with different tire and compacted granular material with different energies. The results allow validating the theoretical model by showing an increase in pullout resistance with the density and number of tires in the arrangement. It is observed that the coincidence between the model and the tests improves as the stiffness of the soil increases, being the degree of compaction fundamental for the operation.


Application of biodegradable implants has received increasing attention for the treatment of bone damage due to their low adverse effects. To achieve better biocompatibility and enhanced corrosion resistance of biodegradable implants with improved wear resistance, multifunctional coatings need to be developed. Herein, a ceramic hybrid coating has been fabricated by a plasma electrolytic oxidation (PEO) technique using Ta2O5 nanoparticle inclusion on AZ31 Mg alloy in order to attain superior corrosion, wear behavior, and surface porosity that enable improved bioactivity. X-ray diffraction analysis of PEO coatings showed that the surface coating is mainly composed of Mg3(PO4)2, MgO and Ta2O5 in different quantities based on PEO processing. Furthermore, scanning electron microscopy (SEM) analysis was employed to observe the surface of the resultant PEO hybrid coatings after and before wear tests. With Ta2O5 nanoparticles, PEO coatings showed excellent wear compared with pure PEO coatings. The efficiency of the hybrid coatings in corrosion protection was verified by the Tafel plot and electrochemical impedance spectroscopy measurements in simulated body fluid. Furthermore, in vitro cell culture studies were performed on MG-63 human cells to evaluate the biocompatibility of PEO coatings. A quantum chemical approach and force-field molecular dynamics simulation were employed to evaluate the interaction between the AZ31 Mg surface and PEO hybrid coatings. All of the observations evidently showed that the ceramic hybrid PEO coating provides improved wear and corrosion protection performance with superior biocompatibility with Ta2O5 nanoparticles, when compared to pure PEO coatings, due to its synergistic beneficial effect.


A two-parameter Rasch Rating Scale model was developed to measure visual discomfort. Initially it was found that participants reporting frequent severe headache, reading difficulties of a visual nature, and short effective reading times experienced more severe visual discomfort. The validity of this measurement instrument was tested in four experiments. In Experiments 1 and 2 reports of unpleasant somatic and perceptual side-effects or ratings of unpleasantness were obtained for low, moderate, and high scorers on the Visual Discomfort Scale. It was found that those with higher scores reported a greater number of unpleasant side-effects and rated square-wave patterns across the spatial frequency range, and a letter pattern as more unpleasant and distorted to view than those with low scores on the scale. In Experiments 3 and 4 these subjective findings were extended to performance. Efficiency was measured using a copying and reading task. It was found that those obtaining high scores on the Visual Discomfor...


Abstract This essay argues for a radical reassessment of Moscow Conceptualism to incorporate the underappreciated Nest, the group of artists Gennady Donskoy, Mikhail Roshal, and Victor Skersis active in Moscow from 1974 to 1979. The Nest's emphasis on models of shared artistic investigation, audience autonomy, and unconstructed aesthetic response helped reshape Moscow Conceptualism in the late 1970s and early 1980s, making their experience essential to understanding both the era and the works of particular artists they influenced, including Yuri Albert, Vadim Zakharov, Nadezhda Stolpovskaya, and others. The Nest's focus on alternative media and new genres, particularly on unstructured performative works, helped transform Moscow's unofficial art world, freeing it from lingering insularity and modernist conventions.


We often tend to fit our subjective preference with those of others after merely being faced with what other people prefer. This is known as social conformity. However, it is still unclear how the impact of such a social influence on subjective preference is modulated by the personal characteristics of the other person (e.g., whether the person is trustworthy) and the explicit memory of those personal characteristics (e.g., remembering who evaluated the objects). To clarify explicit memory's underlying role regarding social influence, we asked participants to evaluate their preference for abstract paintings both before and after observing binary choices made by others whose behaviors could be labeled as trustworthy, neutral, or untrustworthy. The results showed the following: (a) even without explicit memory of who made a choice and which painting was chosen, the participants preferred chosen over unchosen paintings; and (b) such preference changes were modulated by the subjective trustworthiness of others only when they explicitly remembered who made a choice.


The synthesis of 6-O-octanoyl-1,2-O-isopropylidene-α-D-glucofuranose (C8-IpGlc) via the lipasecatalyzed esterifi cation of 1,2-O-isopropylidene-α-D-glucofuranose (IpGlc) with octanoic acid was evaluated using ketones, nitriles, and tertiary alcohols as reaction media. Among the solvents assessed, acetone was the most effective solvent for the synthesis of C8-IpGlc at 50°C, without the formation of a by-product (a diester of IpGlc); the optimum molar ratio of octanoic acid:IpGlc was 2:1. Notwithstanding early-stage substrate inhibition by IpGlc at initial IpGlc concentrations greater than 250 mmol/L, an optimal product concentration of ca. 210 mmol/L (conversion = 53 % at 7 d) was achieved at longer reaction times by changing the initial IpGlc concentration from 25 to 800 mmol/L.


Error in Table Column Heading: In the Original Investigation titled "Development and Validation of a Clinically Based Risk Calculator for the Transdiagnostic Prediction of Psychosis,"1 published online March 29, 2017, there was an error in the third column heading of Table 2. The column heading should read "Harrell Ca." Additionally, all values in the 2 subcolumns should have a zero in front of the decimal place. This article was corrected online.


We have demonstrated that COS7 cells transiently co-expressing myristylation-defective (Myr-) and protease-defective (PR-) human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) mutants can release infectious virions when co-transfected with an amphotropic murine leukaemia virus envelope protein expression plasmid (SV-A-MLV-env). In contrast, no infectious virions were detected when a PR-, noninfectious HIV gag mutant was co-expressed with the Myr- mutant, although the Myr- mutant could still process the immature core particles in trans. This result indicates that generation of functionally normal Gag proteins is required for virus infectivity in our complementation system. A mutant with a 56-amino-acid deletion in the N-terminal region of the capsid (CA) domain could still complement the PR- mutant to generate infectious virions, suggesting that the deletion mutant could provide a functional protease for processing in the PR- mutant. This result is consistent with the concept that mutations within the N-terminal region of the CA domain have no major effects on Gag-Pol incorporation into particles.


Chest computed tomography (CT) is used to screen for lung cancer and evaluate pulmonary and extra-pulmonary abnormalities such as emphysema and coronary artery calcification, particularly in smokers. In real-world practice, lung abnormalities are visually assessed using high-contrast thin-slice images which are generated from raw scan data using sharp reconstruction kernels with the sacrifice of increased image noise. In contrast, accurate CT quantification requires low-contrast thin-slice images with low noise, which are generated using soft reconstruction kernels. However, only sharp-kernel thin-slice images are archived in many medical facilities due to limited data storage space. This study aimed to establish deep neural network (DNN) models to convert sharp-kernel images to soft-kernel-like images with a final goal to reuse historical chest CT images for robust quantitative measurements, particularly in completed previous longitudinal studies. By using pairs of sharp-kernel (input) and soft-kernel (ground-truth) images from 30 patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), DNN models were trained. Then, the accuracy of kernel conversion based on the established DNN models was evaluated using CT from independent 30 smokers with and without COPD. Consequently, differences in CT values between new images converted from sharp-kernel images using the established DNN models and ground-truth soft-kernel images were comparable with the inter-scans variability derived from repeated phantom scans (6 times), showing that the conversion error was the same level as the measurement error of the CT device. Moreover, the Dice coefficients to quantify the similarity between low attenuation voxels on given images and the ground-truth soft-kernel images were significantly higher on the DNN-converted images than the Gaussian-filtered, median-filtered, and sharp-kernel images (p < 0.001). There were good agreements in quantitative measurements of emphysema, intramuscular adipose tissue, and coronary artery calcification between the converted and the ground-truth soft-kernel images. These findings demonstrate the validity of the new DNN model for kernel conversion and the clinical applicability of soft-kernel-like images converted from archived sharp-kernel images in previous clinical studies. The presented method to evaluate the validity of the established DNN model using repeated scans of phantom could be applied to various deep learning-based image conversions for robust quantitative evaluation.


Abstract Objective: The object of this exploratory evaluation was to evaluate the "Bringing in the Bystander" sexual and intimate partner violence prevention program with a new sample of intercollegiate athletes. Participants and Methods: Fifty-three male and female athletes participated in the program (experimental group), and 86 were in the control group. All completed pretest, posttest, and 2-month follow-up surveys, including assessment of rape myth acceptance, intent to engage in bystander behaviors, bystander confidence, and bystander behaviors. Results: The program worked overall and for both women and men, improved bystander confidence and intent to engage in bystander behaviors, and did not create significant backlash effects (ie, worsening of attitudes as a result of program). Conclusions: The program fits with the intent of the National Collegiate Athletic Association CHAMPS/Life Skills program regarding its focus on the overall development of student-athletes and demonstrates the promising bystander approach compatible with the 2007 American College Health Association toolkit, Shifting the Paradigm: Primary Prevention of Sexual Violence.


The article is aimed at analyzing the main trends in domestic, economic and foreign policy of the USA in 2019. All the political life of the year was organized around the long-lasting confrontation of the democratically controlled House and Trump. In the core of this opposition are values and institutional balance of power. Historical ideological polarization brings a new wave of institutional rebalancing: both the President and the Congress fight to extend their constitutional powers. At the same time the Democratic House aims to force out Trump from political process by any means. All through the year, the House was concentrated on investigating Presidential activity, which culminated in a vote to impeach Trump. But the legislative results of the Congress turned out to be the poorest for the decade. Besides the institutional powers, at the center of the confrontation between the President and the Democrats are values. Both sides represent two different Americas with opposing views on the present and the future of the country. This ideological confrontation showed up perfectly during the longest shutdown at the beginning of the year and then during the impeachment process. The domestic polarization went in parallel with conflicts on the global stage. America's search for a new format of global leadership brought a whole year of trade confrontation with China, which finally resulted in a highly controversial agreement, the new trade agreement with Japan, the new wave of tensions with European allies about collective defense costs and technological leadership, comeback of the conflict with Iran, the rising competition on the energy markets and the enduring confrontation with Russia. 2019 year made it clear that while it is still difficult to predict the vector of the fundamental transformations, which the USA is now going through, these changes have already influenced American leadership style.


In this paper, we introduce a new construct for measuring individuals' privacy-related beliefs and understandings, namely their perception of the frequency with which information about individuals is gathered and used by others for advertising purposes. We introduce a preliminary instrument for measuring this perception, called the Ad Practice Frequency Perception Scale. We report data from a survey using this instrument, as well as the results of an initial clustering of participants based on this data. Our results, while preliminary, suggest that this construct may have future potential to characterize and segment individuals, and is worthy of further exploration.


Carbamazepine (CA) and sodium valproate (SV) were studied for their actions of central nervous system and neuromuscular junction. CA and SV given ip neither possessed analgesic nor hypothermic activity in rats, nor did they alter the pentobarbitone sleeping time in mice. The drug had no effect on the frog rectus muscle nor did they alter its responses to acetylcholine. Both CA and SV produced a dose related decrease in indirectly evoked contractions of rat diaphragm and cat gastrocnemius muscle without much altering the directly evoked responses. This effect may be due to their local anaesthetic property, which was observed in infiltration test in guinea pigs.


Abstract The palaeobiogeographical distribution of the six major clades of Ordovician echinoderms (asterozoans, blastozoans, crinoids, echinozoans, edrioasteroids and stylophorans) is analysed based on a comprehensive and up-to-date database compiling 3701 occurrences (1938 species recorded from 331 localities) of both complete specimens and isolated ossicles. Although historically biased towards a limited number of regions (Europe, North America, Russia), the resulting dataset makes it possible to identify six main palaeobiogeographical provinces for Ordovician echinoderms: Laurentia, Baltica, West Gondwana, East Gondwana, Avalonia and Siberia. At a global scale, the high endemicity of echinoderms during the Early to Middle Ordovician coincides with the time of maximum dispersal of continental masses. Late Ordovician faunas tend to become more cosmopolitan, possibly as a consequence of changing palaeogeography and/or relatively higher sea-levels in the Sandbian–Katian interval. Regional biodiversity patterns of Ordovician echinoderms confirm that their major diversification during the Ordovician is not a single, universal evolutionary event, but rather results from the complex addition of contrasted local evolutionary trends.


A (SiTe)2(Sb2Te3)n phase-change superlattice possesses a Dirac semimetal-like band structure, where the band gap closes only at the Γ-point and exhibits a linear dispersion. (SiTe)2(Sb2Te3)n structures derived from first-principles simulations are successfully fabricated on a Si substrate by RF-magnetron sputtering, which can be a new material system for interfacial phase-change memory applications.


Our understanding of the evolution of He4 and Li7 depends critically on the available data for these two elements at low metallicity. In particular, the degree to which there is a slope in an abundance vs metallicity regression can help determine the evolution of He, C, N, and O in dwarf galaxies in the case of He, and cosmic-ray induced nucleosynthesis of LiBeB in our own galaxy in the case of Li. Recent data and their implications will be discussed.


We compute a family of double-mirror catadioptric sensors with ultrawide field of view and no distortion. The two concentric mirrors are rotationally symmetric, and the inside mirror is a revolved conic section. The mapping between the object and the image planes was linear, hence the lack of distortion. The equations describing the outer mirror were determined by the projection induced by the inside mirror and the rectifying property of the sensor. Solving the resulting nonlinear ordinary differential equations yielded the cross section of the secondary mirror. The sensors we present require no further digital processing.


B4C and SiC particle-dispersed carbon composite were fabricated from calcined pitch coke, B4C and SiC with various particle size by grinding and then pressureless sintering. During non-isothermal oxidation test up to 1400°C in air atmosphere, oxidation behavior of the C/B4C/SiC composite was clarified by means of calculation of kinetic parameters using experimental data of mass change, gas formation of CO2, and oxygen gas consumption. Amount of the matrix carbon oxidized above 800°C in the composite with SiC particle of 0.4 µm and 0.9 µm in size was less than that in the composite with SiC particle of 50 nm and 1.8 µm in size. The oxidation of the matrix carbon was shown to depend upon the formation of B2O3 glass below 800°C oxidation, and that of SiO2 glass above 800°C. The composite containing SiC with 20 nm in size was stable against oxidation above 1400°C except the temperature ranging from 900°C to 1100°C.


Recent studies of DNA sequence of letters A, C, G and T exhibit the inverse power law form frequency spectrum. Inverse power-law form of the power spectra of fractal space-time fluctuations is generic to the dynamical systems in nature and is identified as self-organized criticality. In this study it is shown that the power spectra of the frequency distributions of bases C+G in the Human chromosome X DNA exhibit self-organized criticality. DNA is a quasicrystal possessing maximum packing efficiency in a hierarchy of spirals or loops. Self-organized criticality implies that non-coding introns may not be redundant, but serve to organize the effective functioning of the coding exons in the DNA molecule as a complete unit.


The requirements engineering phase of software development projects is characterized by the intensity and importance of communication activities. During this phase, the various stakeholders must be able to communicate their requirements to the analysts, and the analysts need to be able to communicate the specifications they generate back to the stakeholders for validation. This paper describes a field investigation into the problems of communication between disparate communities involved in the requirements specification activities. The results of this study are discussed in terms of their relation to three major communication barriers: (1) ineffectiveness of the current communication channels; (2) restrictions on expressiveness imposed by notations; and (3) social and organizational barriers. The results confirm that organizational and social issues have great influence on the effectiveness of communication. They also show that in general, end-users find the notations used by software practitioners to model their requirements difficult to understand and validate.


Abstract. In this survey we present studies on mortar mixes added with oxblood, which
was a commonly found local waste material, with a wide application and long
history of use; a precise recipe of lime–pozzolan mortar with blood addition
from a 19th-century Italian manual was chosen, and model samples were prepared
accordingly, with the aim of better understanding the chemical, mineralogical and
physical characteristics of such compositions, starting with a blank
reference specimen. The specimens were analysed by means of scanning electron
microscopy, infrared spectroscopy, thermal analysis and X-ray diffraction,
and the results suggested that amorphous calcium carbonate could be formed in
the specimens with oxblood addition. These preliminary results allow a
better understanding of historical building practices, measuring effects
induced by organic additives on mortar microstructure, as well as an evaluation of new
performances obtained in mortar mixes. Moreover, this paper intends to propose
a full multi-discipline approach to bridge the history of architecture and
building materials to conservation science.


Over the last decade, a network of far-right alternative online media has emerged globally. At the same time, legacy news media have suffered a decline in trust and revenues. In this context, the present article analyses how journalistic authority is questioned and challenged in far-right alternative media, highlighting how these websites claim authority as media critics. The study rests on a qualitative analysis of 600 news articles published on far-right alternative online sites containing evaluations of legacy news media or journalists; it identifies five different positions of authority employed by far-right media critics, constituted around particular forms of knowledge: (i) the insider position (knowledge of the professional journalistic field); (ii) the expert position (factual legitimacy built on statistics and facts); (iii) the victim position (experiential legitimacy as media victim); (iv) the citizen position (democratic legitimacy/representing the people) and (v) the activist position (street legitimacy through confrontation and active resistance).


The majority of people can expect to experience neck pain in their lifetime and some will go on to
develop prolonged or repetitive episodes of neck pain or related symptoms. These persistent complaints
have become a major cause of disability around the world.
Although chronic 'mechanical' neck pain can be defined in clinical terms, the underlying pathology
remains unclear. Research has failed to demonstrate a consistent relationship between the presence of
neck pain and pathology such as degenerative changes. As such, there has been an increasing interest
in altered neuro-muscular-articular function in the pathogenesis of neck pain. Over the last 17 years, the
role of cervical proprioceptive (mechanoreceptive) dysfunction in the perpetuation of chronic neck pain
has received increasing attention from researchers and clinicians. This is commonly referred to as
cervicocephalic kinaesthetic sensibility (KS).
Cervicocephalic KS has generally been studied utilising head repositioning accuracy (HRA) tasks. At
the beginning of this study only seven reports had been published in the area. Following review of this
literature, several focused areas of interest were apparent for further study - 1) comparison of KS in
various patient subgroups (e.g., insidious onset vs 'whiplash'); 2) development of more sophisticated
methods of measuring head movement and repositioning errors; 3) establishing the characteristics of the
tests such as method agreement and reliability; 4) comparison of the discriminative value of repositioning
tasks to both subjective 'straight ahead' (SSA) and to non-neutral set points within the cervical range of
motion (non-straight ahead or nSA).
Investigation 1 used a laser pointer method to study head repositioning errors in patients with chronic
neck pain of insidious onset. The results suggested that these patients with chronic neck pain show little
evidence of impaired cervicocephalic KS, when measured as HRA-SSA. The study also served to
highlight several difficulties with the laser pointer method of measurement and the relatively poor
knowledge of HRA in healthy subjects. Most previous studies used the mean of 10 repetitions for the
measurement but more recent studies utilised fewer repetitions. Although the laser pointer method is
simple, inexpensive and easy to use, the method involves a degree of experimenter bias and inaccuracy.
It also does not lend itself to concurrent evaluation of variables such as range of motion and speed of
head movement.
Investigations 2 & 3 focused on the development of the testing method and the introduction of the
Zebris CMS 70P ultrasound system for the recording of HRA-SSA, namely; method agreement between a
5 and 10 repetition measuring protocol; method agreement between the laser pointer and Zebris system;
the intra/inter-examiner reliability of measurement methods.
The Zebris system results suggested that the two methods of measurement agree sufficiently well for
the 5 repetition method to replace the 10 repetition method to obtain a mean HRA score and that both
could be used interchangeably. Further results suggested that the Zebris and laser pointer methods do
not agree sufficiently well to be used interchangeably. The test-retest reliability was comparable between
both methods suggesting that from this perspective, either could be used for measuring HRA-SSA. The
inter-rater test-retest reliability was comparable to the test-retest reliability suggesting that trained
examiners could be interchanged when carrying out repeated measurements.
Investigation 4, the final study in this thesis, investigated HRA with the Zebris system using the 5
repetition protocol in two groups of chronic neck pain patients; insidious onset and neck pain from a
'whiplash' injury. The results suggested that patients with chronic neck pain of both insidious onset and
from a 'whiplash' injury show little evidence of impaired cervicocephalic KS when measured using HRASSA
and nSA tests. These results conflict with previous studies
Despite numerous investigations over the last 17 years, a test that can be routinely applied in the
clinical setting for the purposes of diagnosis and treatment monitoring has not been established. Studies
to date suggest that an active HRA test to SSA/NHP that is established by the patient may have the
greatest discriminative value. Although HRA testing shows some promise in identifying deficits in
'whiplash' patients, it is unlikely that the KS tests identify specific subgroups of chronic neck pain patients.
There have been several contradictory studies which have shown considerable overlap between patient
and healthy groups. It is also unlikely that HRA tests represent a unique test of cervical proprioceptive
function (peripheral or central integration) and therefore provide a test exclusive to neck disorders.


The design concept of a spherical stepper motor capable of three-degrees-of-freedom (DOF) motion in a single joint is presented. The ball-joint-like motor has no singularities except at the boundary of the workspace and can perform isotropic manipulation in all three directions. Due to its relatively simple ball-like structure, undesired cross-coupling and centrifugal components of wrist rotor dynamics can be effectively minimized or eliminated. The spherical stepper motor has potential in robotic applications as a three-DOF shoulder or an eyeball, as well as a wrist actuator. In particular, the systematic conceptualization of a spherical stepper is presented, and the feasibility of constructing the spherical stepper is examined. Along with the experimental data, an analytical approach based on the permeance formula was used to predict the driving forces generated by a neodymium-iron permanent magnet. The force-displacement curves provide useful information for rational spherical motor design and control. >


Real-time entertainment services such as streaming audiovisual content deployed over the open, unmanaged Internet account now for more than 70% during peak periods. More and more such bandwidth hungry applications and services are proposed like immersive media services such as virtual reality and, specifically omnidirectional/360-degree videos. The adaptive streaming of omnidirectional video over HTTP imposes an important challenge on today's video delivery infrastructures which calls for dedicated, thoroughly designed techniques for content generation, delivery, and consumption.; AB@This paper describes the usage of tiles --- as specified within modern video codecs such HEVC/H.265 and VP9 --- enabling bandwidth efficient adaptive streaming of omnidirectional video over HTTP and we define various streaming strategies. Therefore, the parameters and characteristics of a dataset for omnidirectional video are proposed and exemplary instantiated to evaluate various aspects of such an ecosystem, namely bitrate overhead, bandwidth requirements, and quality aspects in terms of viewport PSNR. The results indicate bitrate savings from 40% (in a realistic scenario with recorded head movements from real users) up to 65% (in an ideal scenario with a centered/fixed viewport) and serve as a baseline and guidelines for advanced techniques including the outline of a research roadmap for the near future.


If physical activity could be taken as a tablet, the dramatic benefits it achieves in reducing cardiovascular disease and diabetes as well as many other conditions mean all of us would be on it. But many people currently miss out because it takes more effort to increase physical activity than popping open a tablet bottle. This article sets out the evidence for physical inactivity as a major cardiovascular risk factor and how to put the evidence into practice and get patients moving.


PURPOSE
Efficacy and safety data regarding the unlabeled uses of botulinum toxins are reviewed, and the pharmacology, adverse effects, and characteristics of commercially available botulinum toxins are discussed.

SUMMARY
More than 300 articles have been published on the use of botulinum toxins, particularly botulinum toxin type A, to treat conditions characterized by excessive smooth or skeletal muscle spasticity. Botulinum toxins are synthesized by Clostridium botulinum and cause temporary local paralysis of the injected muscle by inhibiting acetylcholine release at the neuromuscular junction. While botulinum toxins have Food and Drug Administration-approved labeling to treat a limited number of spasticity disorders, including cervical dystonia and blepharospasm, the toxins have more than 50 reported therapeutic uses. Among these uses, the most rigorously studied indications include achalasia, essential tremors, palmar hyperhidrosis, chronic anal fissures, headache prophylaxis, and limb spasticity. The main adverse effects of the toxins are pain and erythema at the injection site, although unintended paralysis of muscles adjacent to the site of toxin injection may also occur.

CONCLUSION
Clinical studies support the use of botulinum toxins for certain conditions, although more studies are needed to establish the role of the drug relative to conventional therapies and to determine patient predictors of response. Although botulinum toxins are generally well tolerated, a patient-specific risk-benefit assessment should precede any decision to use them for unlabeled indications.


Ultracapacitors (UCs), also known as Supercapacitors or double layer capacitors, are the promising technology devices used for storing energy in the field of energy storage systems. These ultra-capacitors, being a low voltage device, provide fairly large capacitance values as compared to the conventional capacitors. They are the significant component of the energy storage systems (ESS) in the electric traction applications. In the field of electric transportation the UCs need to be modeled dynamically in order to capture real-time characteristics. The model should provide precise estimation of UC responses to various charge/discharge conditions and also predict the behavior of UCs under varied load conditions. In order to incorporate the model for testing purposes in various power electronics/drive simulation toolboxes, it is very important for the model to be accurate. In this thesis an accurate dynamic parameter identification technique is proposed. The identification technique can be integrated with an equivalent RC branch UC model, which can estimate the output voltage without the extraction of the model parameters. The parameters will be determined dynamically from the characteristic equations of the respective model parameters. The complete model is built in MATLAB/Simulink. The simulation responses to different charging and discharging current pulses are presented. The simulation responses for varied charging currents are experimentally validated against the actual UC charging results.


The effect of cromakalim, an opener of ATP-sensitive potassium (KATP) channel, on precontracted aortic rings from control and salt-loaded rats was studied in Sprague-Dawley rats. Salt-loading experiments involved the induction of hypertension by 6-week feeding of 80 g sodium chloride (NaCl) per kilogram (kg) diet while the control diet had 3 g NaCl per kg diet. Blood pressure and heart rate were determined by cannulation of a femoral artery under urethane/alpha-chloralose anaesthesia. Isolated aortic rings were mounted in tissue baths for isometric tension measurement. The sodium-potassium adenosine triphosphatase (Na-K ATPase) pump activity was measured by potassium (K+)-induced relaxation (with or without ouabain) following precontraction with 10(-7) M noradrenaline. The KATP channel was studied by measuring the relaxation response to cromakalim, precontracted with either 10(-7) M noradrenaline or 60 mM potassium chloride (KCl). The Na-K ATPase pump appeared to be inhibited during salt loading. ATPase inactivation was found to be ouabain sensitive but did not seem to affect subsequent K(+)-induced contraction. Cromakalim produced relaxation of noradrenaline-precontracted rings from the control rats; rings from salt-loaded rats showed significantly less relaxation than control (p < 0.05) under similar conditions. During K(+)-induced precontraction, cromakalim produced a weak biphasic response in the control rings--an initial relaxation and then a reversal. Cromakalim produced further contraction of K(+)-induced precontraction in the salt-loaded group. The results suggest that ATP-sensitive potassium channels and Na-K ATPase pumps on the vascular smooth muscle membrane may be deactivated in the development of hypertension during salt loading.


Abstract Energy has a strategic role in social and economic development of the countries. Due to the high dependency of energy supply to fossil fuels, fluctuations in prices and supply have macro/micro-economics effects for both energy exporters and importers. Therefore, understanding economic stability based on energy market changes is an important subject for policy makers and researchers. As the competitiveness of Australia products/services has high dependency on energy prices, analyzing the relationships of economics robustness with fossil fuel fluctuations is important for the policy makers and researchers. In this paper, the researchers investigate the effects of energy changes on Australian economics. In this regard, first, the impact of oil price on macro-economic parameters is discussed. After that, the main issues related to energy economics including resilience of the energy sector, energy policies, economics analysis of the energy sector, electricity markets are discussed.


Nuclear energy is one of the most efficient, clean and stable energy sources. The technology of combined heat and power generation, which is widely used in the conventional thermal power plants all over the world, is also applicable to the nuclear power plants to make full use of the nuclear energy. But at present, the mode of combined heat and power generation is rarely used in the nuclear power plants in China, concerning about the nuclear safety problem. This study aims at the optimum use of nuclear energy to raise the potential margin of nuclear power plants, under the premise of ensuring nuclear safety, and analyzes the influence of the combined heat and power generation (such as the external supply of steam generated by nuclear power plants) of a pressurized water reactor on nuclear safety, including the influence on the normal operation, design basis conditions, design extension conditions and transient analysis. It shows that combined heat and power generation of nuclear power plants has no negative impact on nuclear safety. In the meanwhile, the mode of combined heat and power generation can improve the economy of nuclear power plants and has positive significance for the efficient use of nuclear energy.


Although social organizations are considered a vital aspect of life in neighborhoods, research seldom examines how neighborhood context influences organizational vitality. This article considers how organizational and neighborhood characteristics influence organizational survival over time via a case study of immigrant organizations in Amsterdam. Using multilevel analysis, we investigate which features give organizations an advantage in uncertain environments and which neighborhood characteristics influence organizations' ability to remain active sponsors of immigrant interests. We conclude that neighborhood context has little substantial influence on the failure rates of immigrant organizations in Amsterdam. We take this as provisional evidence that the residential environment on the neighborhood level may not be a relevant source of institutional material or resources for community-based organizations. Rather, what appears to be more crucial are organizational characteristics that enhance the embeddedness and legitimacy of immigrant organizations among the immigrant constituency and external actors in the urban context.


Objectives In the current study, we aimed to investigate the impact of childhood trauma on suicidal behaviour phenotypes in a group of patients with diagnosed affective disorder (unipolar or bipolar affective disorder). Patients and Methods Patients with and without a history of childhood abuse, measured by Childhood Trauma Questionnaire (CTQ), were assessed to explore risks for suicidal behaviour (including suicide attempt, self-harm and non-suicidal self-injury). The tested sample consisted of 258 patients (111 males and 147 females, in-patients and out-patients at the Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, Medical University of Vienna and University Hospital Tulln, Lower Austria). Psychiatric diagnoses were derived from the SCAN (Schedules for Clinical Assessment in Neuropsychiatry) interview. In addition, patients were administered the Lifetime Parasuicidal Count (LPC), Suicidal Behaviour Questionnaire (SBQ-R), and Viennese Suicide Risk Assessment Scale (VISURIAS) questionnaires. Results In contrast to male suicide attempters, female suicide attempters showed both significantly higher total CTQ scores (p<0.001), and higher CTQ subscores (emotional, physical and sexual abuse, as well as emotional and physical neglect) in comparison to the non-suicidal control group. Besides, females with a history of self-harming behaviour (including suicidal intention) and Non-Suicidal-Self Injury (NSSI) had significantly higher CTQ total scores (p<0.001) than the control group. Conclusion These findings suggest gender differences in suicidal behaviour after being exposed to childhood trauma.


Incremental pluton growth can produce sheeted complexes with no magma-magma interaction or large, dynamic magma bodies communicating via crystal and melt exchanges, depending on pulse size and frequency of intrusions. Determining the degree and spatial extent of crystal-melt exchange along and away from plutonic contacts at or near the emplacement level, such as in the large, long-lived Tuolumne intrusive complex (TIC) in California, sheds light onto the process and evolution of incremental growth.
 This study used field mapping and petrographic and geochemical analysis of plagioclase and K-feldspar populations in the equigranular Half Dome (eHD), porphyritic Half Dome (pHD), and Cathedral Peak (CP) Granodiorites of the southeastern section of the TIC to determine the presence and/or extent of feldspar recycling at interunit contacts. Our results suggest that contacts between major units are predominantly ∼400-m- to 3-km-thick gradational zones. K-feldspar is compositionally distinct in eHD and neighboring gradational zones and shows no evidence of mixing. K-feldspar in a gradational zone between pHD and CP shows evidence of mixing between the two. Plagioclase in eHD and CP display distinct ranges of anorthite content, Sr, and light rare earth element abundances; both populations are observed in pHD. Major oxide and trace element calculations of melts in equilibrium with plagioclase cores indicate that the melts were more silicic, less calcic, and lower in Sr and Rb than corresponding analyzed whole-rock samples. These results suggest that the magmas also underwent plagioclase and biotite accumulation. The presence of two plagioclase populations in pHD is consistent with eHD and CP hybridizing to form pHD in an increasingly maturing and exchanging TIC magmatic system during the eHD-pHD-CP stages but before groundmass and small K-feldspar phenocrysts crystallized.


At the beginning of the Second World War, the need for a system for identifying friendly aircraft became very apparent. The system which was developed was known as IFF: identification friend or foe. The development of IFF, from the beginning, and its various forms are described in the paper. The collaboration between the British and Americans later on in the war, to manufacture the Mark V sets, is also described.


There has been a growing body of studies of humor translation, particularly focusing on the strategies in translating humor in particular. As a result, studies on linguistic and cultural barriers to English-Thai translations of humor, especially sarcasm, are still scarce. Hence, this study sought to shed some light on linguistic and cultural barriers to English-Thai translation of sarcasm in The Big Bang Theory. Out of twenty-three total episodes in the third season of The Big Bang Theory, thirteen were selected to be a sample. Based on a definition of sarcasm, the context and non-verbal expressions as a guideline, sarcastic utterances were initially identified and later validated by a native American speaker who is a cultural expert. Subsequently, linguistic and cultural barriers impeding the translation of sarcasm in Thai subtitles, compared to the English ones, were analyzed on the basis of Wong and Shen's (1999) and Campanini's (2000) theories on factors influencing translation. The study revealed that linguistic barriers to the translation of sarcasm were syntactic, lexical and semantic, whereas cultural barriers were based on intercultural barriers, namely culturespecific expressions and allusions. Keyword: Humor Translation, Linguistic and Cultural Barriers, Sarcasm, The Big Bang Theory


Security system designs are required to be flexible enough to support multiple policies. A security policy model always develops; accordingly, the design of a security system using that policy model should reflect the changes. Using role-based access control (RBAC) as an example, currently it supports role hierarchy, static separation of duty relations, and dynamic separation of duty relations. As research on RBAC progresses, more concerns have been and will be covered. So the model hierarchy of RBAC is quickly becoming more and more complicated, which requires that the security system supporting RBAC be flexible and extensible. To address this issue at the design level, we propose an aspect-oriented approach to designing flexible and extensible security systems. This paper illustrates the approach through a case study, which is part of a design for CORBA access control (AC) supporting RBAC models.


Governance is widely believed to be an important determinant of the effectiveness of educational systems. Yet there are few systematic evaluations of the linkages between educational governance and student outcomes, or cogent frameworks for evaluating the effectiveness of governance arrangements in a way that can guide potential policy changes. In this article, we attempt to provide such a framework by identifying indicators of effective educational governance systems drawn from previous research and more than forty interviews with stakeholders at all levels in California, the nation's biggest system. The exploratory research presented here is intended to help inform future studies of educational governance.


: Although the parasitology belongs to one of the longest established disciplines, the recent methodical advances led to the substantial broadening of the possibilities for the detection and treatment of parasitic diseases. However, the exact mechanisms involved in the parasite establishment and survival are frequently unclear and only recently uncovered. At the cellular level, the emerging mechanisms, discussed in this journal issue, include the newly recognized role of mast cells in the host defense against bacterial pathogens, and the role of granulocytes in the host defense against helminths. At the protein level, we discuss here the emerging role of protein tyrosine phosphatases as both targets and tools of nonmetazoan pathogens and viruses. At the level of small signaling molecules, we attempt here to highlight the role of reactive oxygen species as molecules involved both in the host defense, but also produced by some human pathogens and commensals. Scientometric analysis of the fields covered by this journal issue is provided.


Accurately determining gas-phase metal abundances within galaxies is critical as metals strongly affect the physics of the interstellar medium. To date, the vast majority of widely used gas-phase abundance indicators rely on emission from bright optical lines, whose emissivities are highly sensitive to the electron temperature. Alternatively, direct-abundance methods exist that measure the temperature of the emitting gas directly, though these methods usually require challenging observations of highly excited auroral lines. Low-lying far-infrared (FIR) fine structure lines are largely insensitive to electron temperature and thus provide an attractive alternative to optically derived abundances. Here, we introduce the far-infrared abundance (FIRA) project, which employs these FIR transitions, together with both radio free–free emission and hydrogen recombination lines, to derive direct, absolute gas-phase oxygen abundances. Our first target is M101, a nearby spiral galaxy with a relatively steep abundance gradient. Our results are consistent with the O++ electron temperatures and absolute oxygen abundances derived using optical direct-abundance methods by the CHemical Abundance Of Spirals (CHAOS) program, with a small difference (∼1.5σ) in the radial abundance gradients derived by the FIR/free–free-normalized versus CHAOS/direct-abundance techniques. This initial result demonstrates the validity of the FIRA methodology—with the promise of determining absolute metal abundances within dusty star-forming galaxies, both locally and at high redshift.


This paper relates migration and home through the experiences of belonging negotiated by both newcomers and established residents in a South London caff. My account emerges out of an ethnographic exploration of Nick's Caff, a small meeting place off a multi-ethnic, inner city Street. Urban change and social diversity are exemplified in the Walworth Road: a place from which one can hear the chimes of Big Ben and catch glimpses of the London Eye, but which remains curiously detached from the image of a prestigious city; where remnants of white working-class culture juxtapose with a variety of cultures brought from across the globalising world; and where emergent cultures are forged across the difficulties and possibilities of cultural difference. Nick's Caff situates the day-to-day and face-to-face experiences of belonging within a shared space in the contemporary city. This paper explores how different individuals reconstitute conventional understandings of 'home' and 'family' through inhabiting their regular tables in the Caff. I expand on 'belonging' as a mode of social interaction through three key ideas: social space, practice and sociability. I analyse the social and spatial dimensions of everyday interactions in the Caff, and examine whether intermingling within the Caff produces alternative understandings of belonging, beyond the binaries of insider/outsider or local/foreigner.


Abstract A high school stage play is more polished than this service we have been rehearsing since the year one. In two thousand years, we have not worked out the kinks. We positively glorify them. Week after week we witness the same miracle: that God is so mighty he can stifle his own laughter. Week after week, we witness the same miracle: that God for reasons unfathomable, refrains from blowing our dancing bear act to smithereens. Week after week Christ washes the disciples' dirty feet, handles their very toes, and repeats, "It is all right—believe it or not—to be people." Who can believe it?1


Octacosanol (OCT) is a major component of policosanol which has been reported to possess antiinflammatory and lipid-lowering effects. Therefore, it was our interest to evaluate the effects of OCT on HMG-CoA reductase (HMGR) and cyclooxygenase-2 (COX-2) activities in a human colorectal cancer cell line (HT-29). Our results demonstrate that 100 μM OCT decreased viability of HT-29 cells as analyzed by sulforhodamine B colorimetric assay with more pronounced effects seen in cells treated with atorvastatin (AST) or celecoxib (CLX), the inhibitors to HMGR and COX-2, respectively. Additionally, the activity of HMGR was found to be inhibited in cells treated with OCT, while COX-2 activity was unaffected; these effects were also more pronounced in ASTand CLX-treated cells. In cells treated with OCT, a significant decrease in HMGR protein expression was observed, but there was no alteration in COX-2 protein expression as determined by Western blot. Taken together, our results show that OCT inhibited HT-29 cell growth and that this effect might be attributed to the reduction of HMGR protein expression and activity.


Objectives: Pancreatic undifferentiated carcinoma accounts for 2%–7% of pancreatic carcinomas. We aimed to investigate the pathological and genetic characteristics of pancreatic undifferentiated carcinoma with osteoclast-like giant cells and the key points of treatment. Methods: The clinical data and follow-up results of four patients diagnosed with pancreatic undifferentiated carcinoma with osteoclast-like giant cells between May 2015 and May 2020 at the First Affiliated Hospital of Xi'an Jiaotong University were retrospectively analyzed. Results: Chief complaints included "pain and discomfort in the upper abdomen" (2/4), "nausea and vomiting" (1/4) or no symptoms (1/4). Preoperative mildly elevated tumor markers included carcinoembryonic antigen (1/4) and CA19-9 (1/4). The tumors were located in the tail of the pancreas in three patients and the head and neck in one patient. Tumor metastasis was found in pancreatic adipose tissue in two patients and lymph node metastasis in one patient, with microscopic heterogeneous mononuclear cells and scattered osteoclast-like giant cells of various sizes. One patient (1/4) had a mucinous cystic tumor of the pancreas, and two patients (2/4) had adenocarcinoma of the pancreatic duct. Only one patient received postoperative gemcitabine combined with albumin-bound paclitaxel chemotherapy. Conclusion: Currently, treatment guidelines are lacking for PUC-OGC, and prognosis varies markedly. More cases must be reported to clarify its origination. The long-term follow-up of diagnosed patients and genetic mutation testing can also contribute to improving treatment and prognosis of this disease.


Combining mathematical and physical understanding in reasoning is difficult, and a growing body of research shows that students experience problems with the combination of physics and mathematics in reasoning beyond the introductory level. We investigated students' reasoning about boundary conditions (BCs) for the diffusion equation by conducting exploratory task-based, think-aloud interviews with twelve undergraduate students majoring in physics or mathematics. We identified several difficulties students experienced while solving the interview task and categorized them using the conceptual blending framework. This framework states that in reasoning, people draw from separate input spaces, in this case the mathematics and the physics input space, to form a blended space, where they make connections between elements from these spaces. To identify difficulties, we used open coding techniques. We observed few difficulties in the physics space. In the mathematics space, we identified several difficulties that we clustered in two main groups: findings about the mathematical meaning of BCs, and findings about reasoning with functions of two variables. Lastly, we identified four ways in which blending failed. Starting from our findings, we formulate recommendations for teaching and future research.


In the recent years, blending of different polymers is receiving increasing attention from researchers for various reasons including the possibility of creating a material or product for new and more industrial applications to meet specific processing and performance requirements that cannot be satisfied by a single component. Polyethylene (PE) and polypropylene (PP) and their blends have attracted a lot of attention due to their potential industrial applications such as piping systems in pressure vessels and pipelines. The main objective of this work is to study the effect of the thermal treatment/aging and PE/PP blending ratio (composition range) on the mechanical behaviour (tensile and hardness) of PE, PP and PE/PP blends. Samples of PE/PP blends containing 100/00, 75/25, 50/50, 25/75 and 0/100 weight percentage were prepared via injection molding technique and thermally treated/aged at 100 °C for 0, 2, 4, 7, 14 days. The tensile measurements indicated that the yield strength and the modulus decrease with increasing PE content. It was also observed that PE, PP and their blends deform in ductile modes. They undergo a uniform yielding over a wide range of deformation, which is followed by strain hardening and then failure. The strain to break for pure PE is found to be much higher than that for pure PP and for their blends, intermediate values have been observed. The hardness measurements have also revealed that increasing PE content in PE/PP blends reduced the hardness value of PP, however thermal aging hasn't affected the hardness showing a good correlation with the tensile properties.Copyright © 2008 by ASME


This study investigated the impacts of the 2013 haze on the people and economy of Peninsular Malaysia. The economic cost of the June 2013 haze was estimated to be MYR 1.49 billion (0.48% of the GDP); total cost of illnesses due to haze effects was MYR 78.03 per household (MYR 410.6 million for the whole peninsula) or 27.48% of the total cost; cost of medical treatment and hospitalization, MYR 22.59 per household (MYR 118.9 million); cost of medical-related leaves taken, MYR 38.54 per household (MYR 202.8 million); reduced activity days, MYR 13.17 per household (MYR 69.3 million); purchasing air pollution masks as protection, MYR 3.73 per household (MYR 19.6 million); and loss of income opportunities, MYR 182.05 per household (MYR 958 million), which was 64.11% of the total economic cost. Malaysians appear to have gotten used to the haze and tend to continue with their lives as normal, albeit taking measures to deal with its impacts. The willingness to participate in the insurance scheme to avoid a decline in quality of life due to haze was supported by only 37.5% of those surveyed. Their average willingness to pay was only MYR 23.90 per household (MYR 125.8 million) or 8.42% of the total economic cost of the haze.


Introduction Uganda, like most Sub-Saharan African countries, has comprehensive HIV prevention campaigns, yet programs tailored to young adults are completely lacking. Methods In 2016, 202 18–22 year olds were recruited from across Uganda via Facebook to take part in online, 3 day, asynchronous focus groups (FGs). The aim of the FGs was to understand sexual health decision making to inform HIV prevention content development. The study sample was purposefully balanced on age, district, educational attainment, employment status, and income. Eight FGs were conducted; participants were stratified by sex and sexual behaviour in the past 12 months. Results Yong adults who were abstinent said they were making this choice because they treasured virginity; and wanted to stay STD-free and avoid pregnancies. There were drawbacks, particularly for women who said that their boyfriends may leave if they did not have sex. Peer pressure and feeling excluded from those who were having sex were also disadvantages. Ugandan young adults talked about the cultural norm of having multiple partners, both for financial gain and social status. Using condoms was universally noted as the right thing to do. At the same time, sexually active youth voiced several barriers to condom use, including: being allergic to rubber, fear of getting cancer with frequent use, and embarrassment.When asked about how confident they were in negotiating condoms, sexually experienced women voiced a range or responses from 'I can't at all' to 'sometimes' to 'always'.Refusing sex was possible: If a woman did not want to have sex, respondents said she could blame it on her period and if a man did not want to have sex, he could say he was 'tired'. That said, all agreed that the refusal of sex in a relationship could be met with consequences (e.g., distrust by one's partner, an end to the relationship). Conclusion Several important challenges that Uganda young adults faces in making healthy sexual decisions were voiced. These issues need to be directly addressed in HIV prevention programs tailored to this age group.


The National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute sponsored national telephone surveys of practicing physicians in 1983 (N = 1610) and 1986 (N = 1277) to assess attitudes and practices regarding elevated serum cholesterol levels. The 1983 survey was conducted just before the release of the results of the Lipid Research Clinics Coronary Primary Prevention Trial, which showed that a reduction in the blood cholesterol level reduced coronary heart disease. In 1986, 64% of physicians thought that reducing high blood cholesterol levels would have a large effect on heart disease, up considerably from 39% in 1983. Whereas in 1983, physicians attributed considerably less preventive value to reducing the cholesterol level than to reducing blood pressure or smoking, this disparity was substantially smaller in 1986. The median range of blood cholesterol at which diet therapy was initiated was 6.21 to 6.70 mmol/L (240 to 259 mg/dL) in 1986, down from 6.72 to 7.21 mmol/L (260 to 279 mg/dL) in 1983; the median for drug therapy was 7.76 to 8.25 mmol/L. (300 to 319 mg/dL) in 1986 and 8.79 to 9.28 mmol/L (340 to 359 mg/dL) in 1983. In 1986, 87% of physicians surveyed felt that medical evidence warranted the recommended treatment levels set forth in the 1984 National Institutes of Health Consensus Conference on Lowering Blood Cholesterol. These changes indicate that by 1986, physicians were more convinced of the benefit of lowering high blood cholesterol levels and were treating patients accordingly. The data also suggest areas for continued educational initiatives.


This paper reports discovery of a new genus Lupangus gen. n. with three new flightless weevils endemic to the forests of the Eastern Arc Mountains in Tanzania: L. asterius sp. n. (East Usambara; the type species), L. jason sp. n. (Uluguru) and L. orpheus sp. n. (Udzungwa). Maximum Likelihood phylogenetic analyses using parts of mitochondrial (COI), nuclear ribosomal (28S) genes, as well as the nuclear spacer region (ITS2) from 46 terminals grouped together the reciprocally monophyletic Lupangus (3 terminals) and Typoderus (3 terminals), with all three clades strongly supported. Phylogenetic analysis of 32 COI-5' sequences recovered Lupangus species as reciprocally monophyletic, with L . orpheus being the sister to the rest. Internal phylogeny within both L. jason and L. orpheus are geographically structured, while that of L. asterius is not. Temporal analysis of Lupangus evolution using COI-5' data assessed under slow and fast substitution rate schemes estimated separation of mitochondrial lineages leading to three Lupangus species at about 7–8 Ma and about 1.9–2.1 Ma, respectively. Temporal analyses consistently failed to suggest correlation between the timing of Lupangus evolution and the late Pleistocene climatic fluctuations, thus rejecting the hypothesis of faunal interchanges during the wettest periods of the last million years. Applicability of flightless weevils for dispersal-vicariance analysis is reviewed, and their mostly undocumented and taxonomically entangled diversity in the Tanzanian Eastern Arc Mountains is briefly highlighted.


Objectives To explore the feasibility of working with a wholesale supplier to co-design and deliver, and to assess the acceptability of, an intervention to promote smaller portions in Fish & Chip shops. Design Uncontrolled before-and-after study. Setting Fish & Chip shops in northern England, 2016. Participants Owners (n=11), a manager and customers (n=46) of Fish & Chip shops; and intervention deliverers (n=3). Intervention Supplier-led, three-hour engagement event with shop owners and managers, highlighting the problem of excessive portion sizes and potential ways to reduce portion sizes; provision of box packaging to serve smaller portions; promotional posters and business incentives. Data collection In-store observations and sales data collected at baseline and postintervention. Exit survey with customers. Semistructured interviews with owners/managers and intervention deliverers postintervention. Results Twelve Fish & Chip shops were recruited. Observational data were collected from eight shops: at baseline, six shops did not promote the availability of smaller portion meals; at follow-up, all eight did and five displayed the promotional poster. Seven out of 12 shops provided sales data and all reported increased sales of smaller portion meals postintervention. Of 46 customers surveyed: 28% were unaware of the availability of smaller portion meals; 20% had bought smaller portion meals; and 46% of those who had not bought these meals were interested to try them in the future. Interviews revealed: owners/managers found the intervention acceptable but wanted a clearer definition of a smaller portion meal; the supplier valued the experience of intervention co-production and saw the intervention as being compatible with their responsibility to drive innovation. Conclusions The co-design of the intervention with a supplier was feasible. The partnership facilitated the delivery of an intervention that was acceptable to owners and customers. Sales of smaller meal packaging suggest that promotion of such meals is viable and may be sustainable.


We introduce a transaction database distribution scheme that divides the frequent item set mining task in a top-down fashion. Our method operates on a graph where vertices correspond to frequent items and edges correspond to frequent item sets of size two. We show that partitioning this graph by a vertex separator is sufficient to decide a distribution of the items such that the subdatabases determined by the item distribution can be mined independently. This distribution entails an amount of data replication, which may be reduced by setting appropriate weights to vertices. The data distribution scheme is used in the design of two new parallel frequent item set mining algorithms. Both algorithms replicate the items that correspond to the separator. NoClique replicates the work induced by the separator and NoClique2 computes the same work collectively. Computational load balancing and minimization of redundant or collective work may be achieved by assigning appropriate load estimates to vertices. The experiments show favorable speedups on a system with small-to-medium number of processors for synthetic and real-world databases.


In recent decades, overwhelming evidence has indicated that metabolic disorders, including obesity, diabetes, dyslipidemia, and nonalcohol fatty liver disease, are the leading cause of disability and death. However, the pathogenesis of metabolic disorder and its chronic complications involves multiple biological pathways and is largely unknown. Biological markers can be evaluated as indicators of pathogenic processes or pharmacological responses to therapeutic interventions. Taking type 2 diabetes, for example, though some clinical phenotypes such as obesity and impaired glucose tolerance are confirmed to be risk factors for the disease, the genetic information can be detected as earlier indicators for prevention and therapy. Due to the heterogeneity of the metabolic diseases in different ethnics, it is imperative to investigate the genetic characteristics in Chinese population. Therefore, the papers selected for this special issue mainly focused on exploring the genetic predisposition and pathogenesis for obesity and type 2 diabetes and their complications. The selected topics and papers are not exhaustive; they do represent the rich and many-faceted knowledge that we have the pleasure of sharing with the readers. We would like to thank the authors and reviewers for their excellent contributions in assisting us.

This special issue contains seven papers, where two papers discuss genetic susceptibility of type 2 diabetes and diabetic nephropathy and one paper identifies a novel mutation for severe obesity. In addition, one paper investigates the regulation of human fat mass and obesity associated gene (FTO) and one paper evaluates the advantages of different detection methods for ketones and establishes whether detection of the concentration of ketones in the breath is an effective and practical technique. Moreover, one paper performed functional studies to examine therapeutic effects of olmesartan on adipose tissue. Finally one review sheds light on the pathogenesis and its clinical applications of type 2 diabetes systematically.

In the paper entitled "Association of genetic variants of BMP4 with type 2 diabetes mellitus and clinical traits in a Chinese Han population," S. Tang et al. test the impacts of BMP4 variants on type 2 diabetes in the Chinese including 3,410 diabetic patients and 3,412 normal glucose regulation individuals and finally present a minor effect of BMP4 variants on glucose metabolism in Chinese population.

In the paper entitled "Lack of association between TLR4 genetic polymorphisms and diabetic nephropathy in a Chinese population," D. Peng et al. investigate the effects of TLR4 genetic variants on diabetic nephropathy in 1,455 Chinese type 2 diabetic patients and detect no association with the disease.

In the paper entitled "Genetics of type 2 diabetes: insights into the pathogenesis and its clinical application," X. Sun et al. review the major genetic studies on the risk of T2D based on ethnicity and briefly discuss the potential mechanisms and clinical utility of the genetic information underlying T2D.

In the paper entitled "A novel mutation in leptin gene is associated with severe obesity in Chinese individuals," Y. Zhao et al. detect a novel mutation H118L in leptin gene in Chinese subjects. This novel mutation might be the casual variant leading to severe obesity; however, functional studies still needed to be confirmed.

In the paper entitled "CCAAT/enhancer-binding protein α is a crucial regulator of human fat mass and obesity associated gene transcription and expression," W. Ren et al. aim to study the possible mechanism of how the C/EBPα binding site regulates FTOgene expression. They suggest that C/EBPα may act as a positive regulator binding to FTO promoter and, consequently, activates the gene transcription.

In the paper entitled "Breath ketone testing: a new biomarker for diagnosis and therapeutic monitoring of diabetic ketosis," Y. Qiao et al. established breath ketone testing as a noninvasive, convenient method for the diagnosis and therapeutic monitoring of diabetic ketosis.

In the paper entitled "Effects of the angiotensin receptor blocker olmesartan on adipocyte hypertrophy and function in mice with metabolic disorders," A. Maeda et al. investigate the therapeutic effects of an AT1R-specific blocker, olmesartan, on genetically obese diabetic KKAy mice and analyze possible effects on adipose issue. They indicate that the blood pressure lowering effect of olmesartan in KKAy mice is associated with improvement in adipocyte dysfunction including suppression of adipocyte hypertrophy and inhibition of adipose IL-6-oxidative stress axis.

These studies will help readers to understand the current status and gain new insights into the genetic traits of metabolic diseases.

Cheng Hu

Jiarui Wu

Wei Jia


Research Summary
We investigate the theoretical and empirical implications of longitudinal data in strategy research. Theoretically, longitudinal data allow strategy researchers to distinguish between relationships among constructs within versus between firms. Empirically, longitudinal data contain information about two types of relationships: within- and between-firm. We describe how the hybrid approach, a technique used in other disciplines, disentangles within- and between-firm relationships. We reexamine a study of research and development expenditures to illustrate the advantages of the hybrid approach. Based on our theory and reexamination, we offer a series of recommendations for researchers using longitudinal data to test theoretical perspectives.

Managerial Summary
Strategy research examines two important sources of variation over time: what is occurring within the firm (e.g., Do firms perform better over time when investing more in R&D?) and what is occurring between firms (e.g., Do firms investing more in R&D outperform firms investing less in R&D?). These two sources may be similar or different in both direction and magnitude, and when significant differences exist in either direction or magnitude researchers must carefully consider the implication of these differences to their theoretical rationale and statistical testing. Our paper highlights the benefits of theorizing and testing these two sources of variance, providing scholars the ability to broaden both the theoretical and empirical contribution of their research. It is important to understand this distinction when considering how research results might inform managerial decision making.


Virtual reality (VR) based training systems can be used to increase resilience in Crisis Management (CM) teams. Today's training systems largely focus on technical and procedural skills, enforcing limitations on the freedom of interaction the trainee has compared with the real world. Although these types of skills are crucial to successful response operations, the dynamic and unpredictable nature of a crisis also requires skills that are flexible, adaptive and creative. We present a variable uncertainty framework (VUF) for designing and configuring training scenarios which can be used to train capabilities such as flexibility and improvisation, aimed at increasing teams and organizations resilience. When designing a scenario using the VUF events are injected to stimulate specific training needs. By using a sense-making and command-and- control loop we will illustrate how specific training objectives can be targeted to train resilience capabilities.


An online method for obtaining smooth, jerk-bounded trajectories has been developed and implemented. Jerk limitation is important in industrial robot applications, since it results in improved path tracking and reduced wear on the robot. The method described herein uses a concatenation of fifth-order polynomials to provide a smooth trajectory between two way points. The trajectory approximates a linear segment with parabolic blends trajectory. A sine wave template is used to calculate the end conditions (control points) for ramps from zero acceleration to nonzero acceleration. Joining these control points with quintic polynomials results in a controlled quintic trajectory that does not oscillate, and is near time optimal for the jerk and acceleration limits specified. The method requires only the computation of the quintic control points, up to a maximum of eight points per trajectory way point. This provides hard bounds for online motion algorithm computation time. A method for blending these straight-line trajectories over a series of way points is also discussed. Simulations and experimental results on an industrial robot are presented.


Actin cables in pollen tubes serve as molecular tracks for cytoplasmic streaming and organelle movement and are formed by actin bundling factors like villins and fimbrins. However, the precise mechanisms by which actin cables are generated and maintained remain largely unknown. Fimbrins comprise a family of five members in Arabidopsis thaliana. Here, we characterized a fimbrin isoform, Arabidopsis FIMBRIN5 (FIM5). Our results show that FIM5 is required for the organization of actin cytoskeleton in pollen grains and pollen tubes, and FIM5 loss-of-function associates with a delay of pollen germination and inhibition of pollen tube growth. FIM5 decorates actin filaments throughout pollen grains and tubes. Actin filaments become redistributed in fim5 pollen grains and disorganized in fim5 pollen tubes. Specifically, actin cables protrude into the extreme tips, and their longitudinal arrangement is disrupted in the shank of fim5 pollen tubes. Consequently, the pattern and velocity of cytoplasmic streaming were altered in fim5 pollen tubes. Additionally, loss of FIM5 function rendered pollen germination and tube growth hypersensitive to the actin-depolymerizing drug latrunculin B. In vitro biochemical analyses indicated that FIM5 exhibits actin bundling activity and stabilizes actin filaments. Thus, we propose that FIM5 regulates actin dynamics and organization during pollen germination and tube growth via stabilizing actin filaments and organizing them into higher-order structures.


Gender equality is one of the key challenges confronted by pension systems around the world. In a context of gendered labour markets, contributory pension systems face several constraints to guarantee universal and adequate pension benefits for women. Women's life courses are characterized by longer periods dedicated to taking care of others, lower labour market participation, more part-time work and lower earnings. All these features compromise their pension entitlements in pension systems that link benefits to paid work, contributions and earnings. This publication deals with the challenges and constraints that pension systems face to be gender equitable and the policy alternatives to address these challenges. This work shows that crucial policy choices for the protection of women concern the conditions for entitlements in pension systems (based on either work, need or citizenship), the types of transfers that are promoted between women and men, the policy tools available to offset gender differences in paid work, earnings and unpaid work (such as contribution credits) and the protection of the most vulnerable social groups through redistributive benefits.


Electrochemical monitoring of DNA hybridization related to p53
gene sequence was investigated using genomagnetic assay
combined with single walled carbon nanotube (SWCNT) modified
pencil graphite electrodes (PGEs). The hybridization was
performed either at magnetic beads (MB) surface or in solution.
The enhanced guanine signal was obtained using SWCNT-PGEs
compared to one obtained by unmodified PGEs. The selectivity of
genomagnetic assay was tested under optimum conditions. The DLs
were calculated as 0.88 mu M and 0.11 mu M for hybridization
performed at MB surface and solution, respectively. This
selective, practical and cost effective genomagnetic assay
combined with SWCNT-PGEs is reported herein for the first time.


In recent years, there has been an explosion of research into developing more robust deep neural networks against adversarial examples. Adversarial training appears as one of the most successful methods. To deal with both the robustness against adversarial examples and the accuracy over clean examples, many works develop enhanced adversarial training methods to achieve various trade-offs between them [[19], [38], [80]], Leveraging over the studies [8], [32] that smoothed update on weights during training may help find flat minima and improve generalization, we suggest reconciling the robustness-accuracy trade-off from another perspective, i.e., by adding random noise into deterministic weights. The randomized weights enable our design of a novel adversarial training method via Taylor expansion of a small Gaussian noise, and we show that the new adversarial training method can flatten loss landscape and find flat minima. With PGD, CW, and Auto Attacks, an extensive set of experiments demonstrate that our method enhances the state-of-the-art adversarial training methods, boosting both robustness and clean accuracy. The code is available at https://github.com/Alexkael/Randomized-Adversarial-Training.


Abstract The ascendancy of Jamaat Islami to power in a country that was born on the basis of secularism indicates the changing political dynamics in Bangladesh. Its syncretic tradition rooted in its language and culture limited Jamaat's success. Nevertheless, given the role the party played during the liberation war, its political ascendancy speaks of the changing political landscape. This article argues that though the party has exhibited some political success, it faces challenges from the secularists in the socio-cultural sphere, thereby limiting its growth and expansion.


This paper is an attempt to analyze the transformation of the Islamic headscarf from being a private question of piety to a public question of freedom of religious expression. It argues that such a transformation constitutes not only the foundations of the emergence of the headscarf issue but also what we call headscarf-skepticism. The long-lasting headscarf issue has reached a point of deadlock once again due to the reactions of the secular sections of society to the recent efforts of the government to lift the headscarf ban. Different uses and meanings of the Islamic headscarf have reached an increased complexity since the foundation of the republic. It is argued that this complexity is due first to the elements of the history of the Turkish Republic, second to the emergence of new state–society relations, and third to the accelerated developments in the conflict between Islamists and secularists.


This paper presents a novel time varying dynamic Bayesian network (TVDBN) model for the analysis of nonstationary sequences which are of interest in many fields. The changing network structure and parameter in TVDBN are treated as random processes whose values at each time epoch determine a stationary DBN model; this DBN model is then used to specify the distribution of data sequence at the time epoch. Under such a hierarchical formulation, the changing state of network can be incorporated into the Bayesian framework straightforwardly. The network state is assumed to transit smoothly in the joint space of numerical parameter and graphical topology so that we can achieve robust online network learning even without abundant observations. Particle filtering is employed to dynamically update current network state as well as infer hidden data values. We implement our time varying model for data sequences of multinomial and Gaussian distributions, while the general model framework can be used for any other distribution. Simulations on synthetic data and evaluations on video sequences both demonstrate that the proposed TVDBN is effective in modeling nonstationary sequences. Comprehensive comparisons have been made against existing nonstationary models, and our proposed model is shown to be the top performer.


BACKGROUND
 An increasing number of doctor reviews are being generated by patients on the internet. These reviews address a diverse set of topics (features), including wait time, office staff, doctor's skills, and bedside manners. Most previous work on automatic analysis of Web-based customer reviews assumes that (1) product features are described unambiguously by a small number of keywords, for example, battery for phones and (2) the opinion for each feature has a positive or negative sentiment. However, in the domain of doctor reviews, this setting is too restrictive: a feature such as visit duration for doctor reviews may be expressed in many ways and does not necessarily have a positive or negative sentiment.

 OBJECTIVE
 This study aimed to adapt existing and propose novel text classification methods on the domain of doctor reviews. These methods are evaluated on their accuracy to classify a diverse set of doctor review features.

 METHODS
 We first manually examined a large number of reviews to extract a set of features that are frequently mentioned in the reviews. Then we proposed a new algorithm that goes beyond bag-of-words or deep learning classification techniques by leveraging natural language processing (NLP) tools. Specifically, our algorithm automatically extracts dependency tree patterns and uses them to classify review sentences.

 RESULTS
 We evaluated several state-of-the-art text classification algorithms as well as our dependency tree–based classifier algorithm on a real-world doctor review dataset. We showed that methods using deep learning or NLP techniques tend to outperform traditional bag-of-words methods. In our experiments, the 2 best methods used NLP techniques; on average, our proposed classifier performed 2.19% better than an existing NLP-based method, but many of its predictions of specific opinions were incorrect.

 CONCLUSIONS
 We conclude that it is feasible to classify doctor reviews. Automatically classifying these reviews would allow patients to easily search for doctors based on their personal preference criteria.


This work presents electrical and radiation stress as well as transient current analysis results for thin film transistors fabricated using an advanced polysilicon laser crystallization method, termed sequential lateral solidification. The TFTs exhibit excellent device characteristics and parameters such as very high electron mobility, as well as good bias stress endurance, with only a small threshold shift but without appreciable subthreshold swing degradation. The analysis of the drain current transients observed after a gate bias pulsing in the OFF state indicated a peak in their temperature dependence, with a generation freezeout at cryogenic temperatures suggesting good crystal quality. Gamma irradiation of TFTs, particularly in the presence of gate bias, resulted in a negative threshold voltage shift due to positive oxide charge creation and a small subthreshold swing degradation.


Model-based planning is often thought to be necessary for deep, careful reasoning and generalization in artificial agents. While recent successes of model-based reinforcement learning (MBRL) with deep function approximation have strengthened this hypothesis, the resulting diversity of model-based methods has also made it difficult to track which components drive success and why. In this paper, we seek to disentangle the contributions of recent methods by focusing on three questions: (1) How does planning benefit MBRL agents? (2) Within planning, what choices drive performance? (3) To what extent does planning improve generalization? To answer these questions, we study the performance of MuZero (Schrittwieser et al., 2019), a state-of-the-art MBRL algorithm with strong connections and overlapping components with many other MBRL algorithms. We perform a number of interventions and ablations of MuZero across a wide range of environments, including control tasks, Atari, and 9x9 Go. Our results suggest the following: (1) Planning is most useful in the learning process, both for policy updates and for providing a more useful data distribution. (2) Using shallow trees with simple Monte-Carlo rollouts is as performant as more complex methods, except in the most difficult reasoning tasks. (3) Planning alone is insufficient to drive strong generalization. These results indicate where and how to utilize planning in reinforcement learning settings, and highlight a number of open questions for future MBRL research.


Time-dependent selection causes the adaptive evolution of new phenotypes, and this dynamics can be traced in genomic data. We have analyzed polymorphisms and substitutions in Drosophila, using a more sensitive inference method for adaptations than the standard population-genetic tests. We find evidence that selection itself is strongly time-dependent, with changes occurring at nearly the rate of neutral evolution. At the same time, higher than previously estimated levels of selection make adaptive responses by a factor 10–100 faster than the pace of selection changes, ensuring that adaptations are an efficient mode of evolution under time-dependent selection. The rate of selection changes is faster in noncoding DNA, i.e., the inference of functional elements can less be based on sequence conservation than for proteins. Our results suggest that selection acts not only as a constraint but as a major driving force of genomic change.


Determining the truth value of self-referential sentences is an interesting and often tricky problem. The Gödel sentence, asserting its own unprovability in P (Peano arithmetic), is clearly true in N(the standard model of P), and Löb showed that a sentence asserting its own provability in P is also true in N (see Smorynski [Sm, 4.1.1]). The problem is more difficult, and still unsolved, for sentences of the kind constructed by Kreisel [K1], which assert their own falsity in some model N* of P whose complete diagram is arithmetically defined. Such a sentence χ has the property that N ⊨ iff N* ⊭ χ (note that ¬χ has the same property). We show in §1 that the truth value in N of such a sentence χ, after a certain normalization that breaks the symmetry between it and its negation, is determined by the parity of a natural number, called the rank of N, for the particular construction of N* used. The rank is the number of times the construction can be iterated starting from N and is finite for all the usual constructions. We also show that modifications of, e.g., Henkin's construction (in his completeness proof of predicate calculus) allow arbitrary finite values for the rank of N. Thus, on the one hand the truth value of χ in N, for a given "nice" construction of N*, is independent of the particular (normalized) choice of χ, and we shall see that χ is unique up to (provable) equivalence in P. On the other hand, the truth value in question is sensitive to minor changes in the definition of N* and its determination seems to be largely a combinatorial problem.


In e-government context, trust plays a vital role in helping citizens overcome perceived risks. Trust makes citizens comfortable sharing personal information, make online government transaction, and acting on e-Government advices. Thus, trust is a significant notion that should be critically investigated to help both researchers and practitioners to understand citizens' acceptance to e-Government. Prior research in trust has focused mainly on consumer's trust in e-Commerce. Most of existing literatures on trust in e-government focus on technical perspective such as PKI. This paper contributes by proposing a conceptual model of citizens' trust in e-Government. The proposed conceptual model of citizens' trust in e-government is integrated constructs from multiple disciplines: psychology, sociology, e-commerce, and HCI. The research is aimed also to develop items in order to measure the theoretical constructs in the proposed model. The pool of items is generated based on literature review. Q-Methodology has been utilised to validate the generated measurement items. The outcome of two Q-sorting rounds resulted in developing a survey instrument for proposed model with an excellent validity and reliability statistical results.


This paper deals with basic designs of a fault current limiter of the transformer type which differ from each other by the mutual location of a primary winding and a superconducting short-circuited cylinder. Theoretical study of the main parameters of the different designs is performed in the framework of the critical state model and shows that the most effective is a design in which the primary winding is divided into two sections with equal turn numbers. The sections are placed inside and outside of the cylinder and connected in series. Such an arrangement of the windings leads to a substantial reduction of AC losses in the superconducting cylinder, an increase of the activation current and a decrease of the inductive reactance in the normal regime of a protected circuit. The experimental results obtained on the laboratory model with a BSSCO cylinder confirm the theoretical predictions.


New phosphorescent platinum(II) molecular hosts featuring a tridentate N,C,N-coordinating ligand, a conformationally rigid organic linker, and a binding group have been prepared. The complexes have been fully characterized by various spectroscopic techniques, and the X-ray crystal structure of one derivative has been determined. Their photophysical properties have been studied, and intense green metal-perturbed 3IL emission is observed in solution at room temperature. The luminescent responses of these Pt(II) hosts to amino acids have been investigated: emission quenching and UV−vis absorption changes in polar/aqueous media are detected for terminal thiols only, and unusual preferential binding is apparent for cysteine over homocysteine. The nature of the host−guest interactions has been examined by quantitative and comparative binding studies, mass spectrometry, and DFT calculations, which indicate that these observations may be ascribed to the presence of rigidly positioned ditopic binding sites.


Abstract Purpose: This article's primary purpose is to present and analyze the current state of board gender diversity and elaborate on the relatively sparse literature in this field in the Czech Republic, a post-transition Eastern European economy. The described study sought to identify and comment on the theoretical views concerning previous research in other, mainly Western European countries, by highlighting new perspectives on board gender diversity. Design/methodology/approach: The study's empirical analysis was based on 235 companies domiciled in the Czech Republic with 500 or more employees. We followed a selection protocol consisting of several filters in arriving at our final sample. We initially analyzed the data in relation to (a) the number of employees, (b) organization turnover, and (c) industrial classification. We calculated the mean (μ), standard deviation, (σ), and coefficient of variation (CV) of the data/variances, then tested our hypotheses through χ2, determining the significance through the p-value. Finally, we calculated the board diversity index (DI) for female/male board members. Findings: Our findings showed that the representation of women on corporate boards of Czech Republic companies is well below the European directive target figure of 40%. There is a greater representation of women on supervisory than on statutory boards. Moreover, the research revealed that female directors are more likely to serve on boards of companies in health care, social, wholesale, retail, and administration sectors compared to the construction, manufacturing, transportation, and storage sectors. Furthermore, company turnover also plays a part in board gender diversity. Practical implications: We believe this article will be valuable to senior managers in industry and wider regulatory, corporate governance, and ethical environments, fostering diversity and equality on corporate boards. This article forms a sound foundation for future studies on board gender diversity in the Czech Republic and contributes to the ongoing discussion on any adoption of possible future quota. Originality/value: This research presents a rare insight into the current board gender diversity structure in the Czech Republic, especially because the country is relatively under-researched in the corporate governance and gender diversity literature. Thus, the research adds to the theoretical views concerning earlier research undertaken in other, mainly Western European countries, highlighting new perspectives on board gender diversity.


High-accuracy black hole (BH) masses require excellent spatial resolution that is only achievable for galaxies within ∼100 Mpc using present-day technology. At larger distances, BH masses are often estimated with single-epoch scaling relations for active galactic nuclei. This method requires only luminosity and the velocity dispersion of the broad-line region (BLR) to calculate a virial product, and an additional virial factor, f, to determine the BH mass. The accuracy of these single-epoch masses, however, is unknown, and there are few empirical constraints on the variance of f between objects. We attempt to calibrate single-epoch BH masses using spectropolarimetric measurements of nine megamaser galaxies from which we measure the velocity distribution of the BLR. We do not find strong evidence for a correlation between the virial products used for single-epoch masses and dynamical mass, either for the megamaser sample alone or when it is combined with dynamical masses from reverberation mapping modeling. Furthermore, we find evidence that the virial parameter f varies between objects, but we do not find strong evidence for a correlation with other observable parameters such as luminosity or broad-line width. Although we cannot definitively rule out the existence of any correlation between dynamical mass and virial product, we find tension between the allowed f-values for masers and those widely used in the literature. We conclude that the single-epoch method requires further investigation if it is to be used successfully to infer BH masses.


Non-intrusive human body tracking is a key issue in advanced human-computer interaction, with key applications ranging from virtual reality to videoconferencing and telepresence. This paper describes a system for vision-based tracking of body posture. The system is explicitly designed to provide a robust yet simple and inexpensive solution to real-time body tracking through a careful choice of visual and kinematic models. Human posture representation is fully compatible with the MPEG-4 standard. Results of system application to a computer graphics scenario (animation of 3D avatars) are presented and discussed.