For a graph $\Gamma$ with adjacency matrix $A$, we consider a switching operation that takes $\Gamma$ into a graph $\Gamma'$ with adjacency matrix $A'$, defined by $A'=Q^\top A Q$, where $Q$ is a regular orthogonal matrix of level $2$ (that is, $Q^\top Q=I$, $Q$ 1 $=$ 1 , $2Q$ is integral, and $Q$ is not a permutation matrix). If such an operation exists, and $\Gamma$ is nonisomorphic with $\Gamma'$, then we say that $\Gamma'$ is semi-isomorphic with $\Gamma$. Semi-isomorphic graphs are $\mathbb {R}$-cospectral, which means that they are cospectral and so are their complements. Wang and Xu [On the asymptotic behavior of graphs determined by their generalized spectra, Discrete Math. 310 (2010)] expect that almost all pairs of nonisomorphic $\mathbb {R}$-cospectral graphs are semi-isomorphic. Regular orthogonal matrices of level $2$ have been classified. By use of this classification we work out the requirements for this switching operation to work in case $Q$ has one nontrivial indecomposable block of size $4$, $6$, $7$ or $8$. Size $4$ corresponds to Godsil-McKay switching. The other cases provide new methods for constructions of $\mathbb {R}$-cospectral graphs. For graphs with eight vertices all these constructions are carried out. As a result we find that, out of the 1166 graphs on eight vertices which are $\mathbb {R}$-cospectral to another graph, only 44 are not semi-isomorphic to another graph.


Wild boars belong to the most wide spread ungulates in the world. They are characterized by a well performed adaption to their environment mainly due to their omnivorous dietary. The wild boar population in Germany increased during the past three decades. Nowadays their high density leads to problems in agricultural areas due to damage of crops and plays a significant role as disease vector as the classical swine fever. For an effective population management population size information is of crucial importance. Different traditional methods exist to estimate population sizes as direct sightnings, faecal drop counts or hunting harvest which provide only relative estimates and population trends. Absolute population sizes could be yielded by a Capture-Mark-Recapture (CMR) approach. However, capturing of wild boars is difficult to realize and costly in terms of personnel and field effort.
Furthermore the capture probabilities are heterogeneous due to the variable behaviour of individuals influenced by age, sex, and experience of the animals. Non-invasive genetic methods are a promising complement to the traditional methods for population size estimation particularly for wild boar. These methods reduce stress and capture bias and increase the number of re-captures. Faeces proved to be a suitable DNA source for wild boar genotyping, due to almost equal capture probability. However working with faeces implicates difficulties such as low DNA rnquality and quantity, genotyping errors as dropout and false alleles.
The main aim of the present study was to develop a reliable, cost-efficient, reproducible and practicable method for wild boar genotyping. This method should provide a reliable dataset of genotypes obtained from the collected faeces samples. Individual identification forms the basis for an improved mark-recapture approach. As there is no sound method for absolute population counts in free living wild boar, reference values for the validation of this new approach are missing. Therefore, different routines to reduce and to assess genotyping errors were compared within this thesis. For maximum amplification rate, the storage, the extraction methods and the PCR-procedure were optimised. A step by step procedure was evaluated in order to determine the minimum required microsatellite (MS) number for reliable individual identification including a test with family groups (female and embryo tissue) to distinguish even between close relatives. A multiple-tubes approach, post-amplification checking and different correction procedures were applied to reduce genotyping errors. In order to quantify real genotyping error rates (GER) of datasets derived from sampling in the Palatinate Forest in western Germany, different methods for GER determination were compared with each other, obtaining GERs between 0% and 57.5%. As a consequence, more strict criteria for the multi-tube approach and increased repetition number of homozygous samples were used. An additional method validation was the implementation of a blind test to achieve the reliability of the genotyping and error checking procedure. Finally a strict and practicable proposal for the lab procedure was developed, by beginning with faecal sample collection and ending with a reliable dataset with genotypes of each sample.
The results of the presented method were derived from two sampling periods in a 4000 ha area in the Palatinate Forest in Rhineland-Palatinate in December 2006 and 2007. Both provided high confidence intervals (CI) applying inaccurate estimates (eg. for 2006 population size amounted to 215 with CI 95% of 156-314 and for 2007 population size amounted to 415 with CI 95% of 318-561) due to low sampling sizes (for 2006 n = 141 and for 2007 n = 326), successfully analysed samples (for 2006 n = 89 and for 2007 n = 156) and recapture numbers (for 2006 n = 12 and for 2007 n = 24). Furthermore, the population estimates even for the lowest values were considerably higher than previously assumed by hunting statistics, which implicates an ineffective hunting regime in the study area. For the future prospect, to obtain more precise population size estimations the increase of sampling sizes is inevitable, because absolute and reliable estimates are highly desirable for wildlife management and the control of diseases transmission. Nevertheless, the method for individual genotyping of wild boars evaluated in this thesis could be successfully established resulting in reliable datasets for population estimation modelling with sufficiently low GER.


The origin of frogs, salamanders and caecilians is controversial. McGowan published an original hypothesis on lissamphibian origins in 2002 (McGowan, 2002, Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society, 135: 1-32), stating that Gymnophiona was nested inside the 'microsaurian' lepospondyls, this clade was the sister-group of a caudate-salientian-albanerpetontid clade, and both were nested inside the dissorophoid temnospondyls. We have investigated McGowan's data matrix and isagree with the scoring of 35% of the cells. All taxa and all but two characters are affected. In some cases, we have a different interpretation about correspondence between morphology and character states, or we delimit states differently (or use information that was unknown in 2002). In others, we report probable typographic errors. When these cells and characters are revised, the most parsimonious trees - now longer by almost 64% - support one of the three commonly advocated hypotheses, namely a monophyletic Lissamphibia nested, together with its sister-group Albanerpetontidae, within the temnospondyls (next to Doleserpeton) - even though we did not add any characters or taxa to the very small data matrix. This exemplifies the impact of errors in data matrices on the results of phylogenetic analyses. Adding the lysorophian Brachydectes, however, results in the Lissamphibia-Albanerpetontidae clade becoming the sister-group of Brachydectes and settling within the lepospondyls rather than the temnospondyls, thus supporting another of the previously published three hypotheses. This latter finding does not change if the recently described Gerobatrachus is also added. Finally, when Doleserpeton is interpreted as morphologically immature (which means scoring three characters as unknown instead of known), Lissamphibia and Albanerpetontidae are again nested within the 'microsaurian' lepospondyls, even though Brachydectes is not included in this analysis. This, too, does not change if Gerobatrachus is added and likewise treated as morphologically immature. Bootstrap supports are rather low under all assumptions. Such lability was to be expected from the small size of the data matrix.


A long-held view in corporate circles has been that furious rapid trading in stock markets has been increasing in recent decades, justifying corporate governance and corporate law measures that would further shield managers and boards from shareholder influence, to further free boards and managers to pursue their view of sensible long-term strategies in their investment and management policies. Here, I evaluate the evidence in favor of that view and find it insufficient to justify insulating boards from markets further. While there is evidence of short-term stock market distortions, the view is countered by several underanalyzed aspects of the American economy, each of which alone could trump a prescription for more board autonomy. Together they make the case for further judicial isolation of boards from markets untenable. First, even if the financial markets were, net, short-term oriented, one must evaluate the American economy from a system-wide perspective. As long as venture capital markets, private equity markets, and other conduits mitigate, or reverse, much of any short-term tendencies in public markets, then a potential short-term problem is largely local but not systemic. Second, the evidence that the stock market is, net, short-termist is inconclusive, with considerable evidence that stock market sectors often overvalue the long term. Third, managerial mechanisms inside the corporation, including compensation packages with a duration that is shorter than typical institutional stock market holdings, and managerial labor markets across firms, including managerial efforts to get good results on their watch, are important sources of short-term distortions; insulating boards from markets further would exacerbate these managerial short-term-favoring mechanisms. Fourth, courts are not well positioned to make this kind of basic economic policy, which, if determined to be a serious problem, is better addressed with policy tools unavailable to courts. And, fifth, the widely held view that short-term trading has increased dramatically in recent decades over-interpret, the data; the duration for holdings of many of the country's major stockholders, such as mutual funds run by Fidelity and Vanguard, and major pension funds, does not seem to have shortened. Rather, a high-velocity trading fringe has emerged, and its rise affects average holding periods, but not the holding period for the country's ongoing major stockholding institutions. The view that stock market short-termism should affect corporate lawmaking fits snugly with two other widely supported views. One is that managers must be free from tight stockholder influence, because without that freedom boards and managers cannot run the firm well. Whatever the value of this view and however one judges the line between managerial autonomy and managerial accountability to stockholders should be drawn, short-termism provides no further support for managerial insulation from the influence of financial markets. The autonomy argument must stand or fall on its own. Similarly, those who argue that employees, customers, and other stakeholders are due more consideration in corporate governance point to pernicious short-termism to support their view further. But these stakeholder considerations can be long-term and they can be short-term. As such, the best view of the evidence is similarly that the pro-stakeholder view must stand or fall on its own. It gains no further evidence-based, conceptual support from a fear of excessive short-termism in financial markets. Overall, system-wide short-termism in public firms is something to watch for carefully, but not something that today should affect corporate lawmaking.


This paper describes the ways in which libraries are currently implementing and managing web-based research guides (a.k.a. Pathfinders, LibGuides, Subject Guides, etc.) by examining two sets of data from the spring of 2011. One set of data was compiled by visiting the websites of ninety-nine American university ARL libraries and recording the characteristics of each site's research guides. The other set of data is based on an online survey of librarians about the ways in which their libraries implement and maintain research guides. In conclusion, a discussion follows that includes implications for the library technology community.


Safou (Dacryodes edulis) is a fruit indigenous to West Africa with considerable potential as an oil crop. Safou fruit experiences as much as 40-50% post-harvest losses. The need to recover value lost due to fruit spoilage and Safou's potential as a biodiesel feedstock has been combined in this work. Oil extracted from the spoiled crop could offset fuel production costs or even produce the fuel to transport the crop to market. In this work, the embodied energy of Safou pulp, seed, press-cake, and the oil generated from pressing pulp was quantified. Energy required for processing was also quantified, and preparing and pressing spoiled pulp were investigated in terms of both oil yield and character of the oil. Both fresh and spoiled pulp oil were investigated in terms of fuel characteristics and found to be similar. Fuel was produced from the pulp oil and compared to conventional petro-diesel and soy biodiesel in terms of emissions when combusted in a 2006 Jetta TDI.
According to the findings of this research, Safou has potential as a biofuel feedstock. Although the energy balance assessment conducted did not represent a comprehensive life cycle analysis, the potential energy balance of Safou as biodiesel feedstock was found to be favorable.


Today almost every aspect of life for which data exists can be rendered as a network. Financial data, social networks, biological ecologies: all are visualized in links and nodes, lines connecting dots. A network visualization of a corporate infrastructure could look remarkably similar to that of a terrorist organization. In An Aesthesia of Networks, Anna Munster argues that this uniformity has flattened our experience of networks as active and relational processes and assemblages. She counters the "network anaesthesia" that results from this pervasive mimesis by reinserting the question of experience, or aesthesia, into networked culture and aesthetics. Rather than asking how humans experience computers and networks, Munster asks how networks experience -- what operations they perform and undergo to change and produce new forms of experience. Drawing on William James's radical empiricism, she asserts that networked experience is assembled first and foremost through relations, which make up its most immediately sensed and perceived aspect. Munster critically considers a range of contemporary artistic and cultural practices that engage with network technologies and techniques, including databases and data mining, the domination of search in online activity, and the proliferation of viral media through YouTube. These practices -- from artists who "undermine" data to musicians and VJs who use intranetworked audio and video software environments -- are concerned with the relationality at the core of today's network experience.


"Compomers" are recently introduced products marketed as a new class of dental materials. These materials are said to provide the combined benefits of composites (the "comp" in their name) and glass ionomers ("omer"). Based on an critical review of the literature, the author argues that "compomers" do not represent a new class of dental materials but are merely a marketing name given to a dental composite.


The evolution of the surfboard, from traditional Hawaiian folk designs to masterpieces of mathematical engineering to mass-produced fiberglass. Surfboards were once made of wood and shaped by hand, objects of both cultural and recreational significance. Today most surfboards are mass-produced with fiberglass and a stew of petrochemicals, moving (or floating) billboards for athletes and their brands, emphasizing the commercial rather than the cultural. Surf Craft maps this evolution, examining surfboard design and craft with 150 color images and an insightful text. From the ancient Hawaiian alaia, the traditional board of the common people, to the unadorned boards designed with mathematical precision (but built by hand) by Bob Simmons, to the store-bought longboards popularized by the 1959 surf-exploitation movie Gidget, board design reflects both aesthetics and history. The decline of traditional alaia board riding is not only an example of a lost art but also a metaphor for the disintegration of traditional culture after the Republic of Hawaii was overthrown and annexed in the 1890s. In his text, Richard Kenvin looks at the craft and design of surfboards from a historical and cultural perspective. He views board design as an exemplary model of mingei, or art of the people, and the craft philosophy of Soetsu Yanagi. Yanagi believed that a design's true beauty and purpose are revealed when it is put to its intended use. In its purest form, the craft of board building, along with the act of surfing itself, exemplifies mingei. Surf Craft pays particular attention to Bob Simmons's boards, which are striking examples of this kind of functional design, mirroring the work of postwar modern California designers. Surf Craft is published in conjunction with an exhibition at San Diego's Mingei International Museum.


Inflammation occurs in all tissues in response to injury or stress and is the key process underlying hepatic fibrogenesis. Targeting chronic and uncontrolled inflammation is one strategy to prevent liver injury and fibrosis progression. Here, we demonstrate that triggering receptor expressed on myeloid cells 1 (TREM-1), an amplifier of inflammation, promotes liver disease by intensifying hepatic inflammation and fibrosis. In the liver, TREM-1 expression was limited to liver macrophages and monocytes and was highly upregulated on Kupffer cells, circulating monocytes, and monocyte-derived macrophages in a mouse model of chronic liver injury and fibrosis induced by carbon tetrachloride (CCl4) administration. TREM-1 signaling promoted proinflammatory cytokine production and mobilization of inflammatory cells to the site of injury. Deletion of Trem1 reduced liver injury, inflammatory cell infiltration, and fibrogenesis. Reconstitution of Trem1-deficient mice with Trem1-sufficient Kupffer cells restored the recruitment of inflammatory monocytes and the severity of liver injury. Markedly increased infiltration of liver fibrotic areas with TREM-1–positive Kupffer cells and monocytes/macrophages was found in patients with hepatic fibrosis. Our data support a role of TREM-1 in liver injury and hepatic fibrogenesis and suggest that TREM-1 is a master regulator of Kupffer cell activation, which escalates chronic liver inflammatory responses, activates hepatic stellate cells, and reveals a mechanism of promotion of liver fibrosis.


Abstract. The impacts of climate change on tropospheric transport, diagnosed from a carbon monoxide (CO)-like tracer species emitted from global CO sources, are evaluated from an ensemble of four chemistry–climate models (CCMs) contributing to the Atmospheric Chemistry and Climate Model Intercomparison Project (ACCMIP). Model time-slice simulations for present-day and end-of-the-21st-century conditions were performed under the Representative Concentrations Pathway (RCP) climate scenario RCP 8.5. All simulations reveal a strong seasonality in transport, especially over the tropics. The highest CO-tracer mixing ratios aloft occur during boreal winter when strong vertical transport is co-located with biomass burning emission source regions. A consistent and robust decrease in future CO-tracer mixing ratios throughout most of the troposphere, especially in the tropics, and an increase around the tropopause is found across the four CCMs in both winter and summer. Decreases in CO-tracer mixing ratios in the tropical troposphere are associated with reduced convective mass fluxes in this region, which in turn may reflect a weaker Hadley cell circulation in the future climate. Increases in CO-tracer mixing ratios near the tropopause are largely attributable to a rise in tropopause height enabling lofting to higher altitudes, although a poleward shift in the mid-latitude jets may also play a minor role in the extratropical upper troposphere. An increase in CO-tracer mixing ratios also occurs near the Equator, centred over equatorial and Central Africa, extending from the surface to the mid-troposphere. This is most likely related to localised decreases in convection in the vicinity of the Intertropical Convergence Zone (ITCZ), resulting in larger CO-tracer mixing ratios over biomass burning regions and smaller mixing ratios downwind.


From the outset of the 1992 Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), the application of the economics of information to "access to genetic resources" appears in the published literature. The implications for "the fair and equitable sharing of benefits" (ABS) run counter to the policy discussion in the ten Conferences of the Parties to the CBD (1993-2010). Meanwhile the economics of information has become main stream as witnessed by the 2001 Nobel Memorial Prize and its incorporation in introductory textbooks by 2001. Through Google, Google Scholar and LexisNexis, the ABS literature is searched including and excluding the "economics of information" for the period 2002-2011. The hits differ by three to four orders of magnitude without any evidence of subsiding over the period examined. Such studied ignorance is distinguished from the mere lack of due diligence by exploring two examples from academic superstars who ironically have complained about their scholarship being ignored.


Research on social entrepreneurship is finally catching up to its rapidly growing potential. In The Search for Social Entrepreneurship , Paul Light explores this surge of interest to establish the state of knowledge on this growing phenomenon and suggest directions for future research. Light begins by outlining the debate on how to define social entrepreneurship, a concept often cited and lauded but not necessarily understood. A very elemental definition would note that it involves individuals, groups, networks, or organizations seeking sustainable change via new ideas on how governments, nonprofits, and businesses can address significant social problems. That leaves plenty of gaps, however, and without adequate agreement on what the term means, we cannot measure it effectively. The unsatisfying results are apple-to-orange comparisons that make replication and further research difficult. The subsequent section examines the four main components of social entrepreneurship: ideas, opportunities, organizations, and the entrepreneurs themselves. The copious information available about each has yet to be mined for lessons on making social entrepreneurship a success. The third section draws on Light's original survey research on 131 high-performing nonprofits, exploring how they differ across the four key components. The fourth and final section offers recommendations for future action and research in this burgeoning field.


Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 Unported License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/), permitting all non commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Global Journal of Science Frontier Research: A Physics and Space Science Volume 18 Issue 8 Version 1.0 Year 2018 Type: Double Blind Peer Reviewed International Research Journal Publisher: Global Journals Online ISSN: 2249-4626 & Print ISSN: 0975-5896


Applying to Yale. Yale is proud of its strong commitment to equal opportunity and accessibility to all candidates from any part of the world who show great academic and personal promise. We extend our need-blind admissions policy and holistic application review to all students without regard to citizenship or immigration status. For more information on application requirements and policies for all applicants, consult the Admissions website [2]. Financial Aid. Yale University's financial aid policies are the same for undocumented (with or without DACA) students, as they are for all admitted students. For all undergraduates with financial need, our aid awards meet 100% of a family's demonstrated need without using loans. Consult the Financial Aid website


This thesis treats the application of configurational forces for the evaluation of fracture processes in Antarctic ice shelves. FE simulations are used to analyze the influence of geometric scales, material parameters and boundary conditions on single surface cracks. A break-up event at the Wilkins Ice Shelf that coincided with a major temperature drop motivates the consideration of frost wedging as a mechanism for ice shelf disintegration. An algorithm for the evaluation of the crack propagation direction is used to analyze the horizontal growth of rifts. Using equilibrium considerations for a viscoelastic fluid, a method is introduced to compute viscous volume forces from measured velocity fields as loads for a linear elastic fracture mechanical analysis.


FOREWORD Within the Long-Term Pavement Performance (LTPP) program, two sources of data are used to characterize the climatic conditions for each test section. For the majority of the test sections, data for nearby national weather stations are obtained from the National Climatic Data Center (NCDC) and are used to compute estimated data for a virtual test section located at the test section. In addition, onsite instrumentation is used to obtain site-specific climatic data for the test sections included in the Seasonal Monitoring Program and for the Specific Pavement Studies (SPS)–1, –2, and –8 project sites. This report documents a study undertaken to examine the reliability and accuracy of the LTPP climatic data. The study confirmed that accurate daily, monthly, and yearly estimates of climatic data for a project location can be derived by using the NCDC weather data for several nearby weather stations. The variation in the climatic data also was characterized. NOTICE This document is disseminated under the sponsorship of the U.S. Department of Transportation in the interest of information exchange. The U.S. Government assumes no liability for its contents or use thereof. This report does not constitute a standard, specification, or regulation. The U.S. Government does not endorse products or manufacturers. Trade or manufacturers' names appear herein only because they are considered essential to the objective of this document. The Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) provides high-quality information to serve Government, industry, and the public in a manner that promotes public understanding. Standards and policies are used to ensure and maximize the quality, objectivity, utility, and integrity of its information. FHWA periodically reviews quality issues and adjusts its programs and processes to ensure continuous quality improvement. Within the Long-Term Pavement Performance (LTPP) program, two sources of data are used to characterize the climatic conditions for each test section. For the majority of the test sections, data for nearby national weather stations are obtained from the National Climatic Data Center (NCDC) and are used to compute estimated data for a virtual test section located at the test section. In addition, onsite instrumentation is used to obtain site-specific climatic data for the test sections included in the Seasonal Monitoring Program and for the Specific Pavement Studies (SPS) –1, –2, and –8 project sites. This report documents a study undertaken to examine the reliability and accuracy of the LTPP climatic data. The study confirmed that accurate daily, monthly, and yearly estimates of …


In recent years scholars have begun to acknowledge that the occult sciences were not marginal enterprises but an integral part of the worldview of many of our ancestors. Astrology was one of the many intellectual tools -- along with what we consider to be the superior tools of social and political analysis -- that Renaissance thinkers used to attack practical and intellectual problems. It was a coherent body of practices, strongly supported by social institutions. And alchemy was not viewed primarily as a spiritual pursuit, an idea popularized by nineteenth-century occultists, but as a part of natural philosophy. It was often compared to medicine. Many Renaissance writers suggested links between astrology and alchemy that went beyond the use of astrological charts to determine the best time to attempt alchemical operations. Secrets of Nature shows the many ways in which astrology (a form of divination) and alchemy (an artisanal pursuit concerned with the technologies of minerals and metals) diverge as well as intersect. Overall, it shows how an appreciation of the role of the occult opens up new ways of understanding the past. Topics include the career of Renaissance astrologer Girolamo Cardano and his work on medical astrology, the astrological thinking of Johannes Kepler and Galileo Galilei, the history of the Rosicrucians and the influence of John Dee, the work of medical alchemist Simon Forman, and an extended critique of the existing historiography of alchemy.


Agricultural pesticides, especially insecticides, are an integral part of modern farming. However, these may often leave their target ecosystems and cause adverse effects in non- target, especially freshwater ecosystems, leading to their deterioration. In this thesis, the focus will be on Insect Growth Regulators (IGRs) that can in many ways cause disruption of the endocrine system of invertebrates. Freshwater invertebrates play important ecological, economic and medical roles, and disruption of their endocrine systems may be crucial, considering the important role hormones play in the developmental and reproductive processes in organisms. Although Endocrine Disruption Chemicals (EDCs) can affect moulting, behaviour, morphology, sexual maturity, time to first brood, egg development time, brood size (fecundity), and sex determination in invertebrates, there is currently no agreement upon how to characterize and assess endocrine disruption (ED). Current traditional ecotoxicity tests for Ecological Risk Assessment (ERA) show limitations on generating data at the population level that may be relevant for the assessment of EDCs, which effects may be sublethal, latent and persist for several generations of species (transgenerational).
It is therefore the primary objective of this thesis to use a test method to investigate adverse effects of EDCs on endpoints concerning development and reproduction in freshwater invertebrates. The full life-cycle test over two generations that includes all sensitive life stages of C. riparius (a sexual reproductive organism) allows an assessment of its reproduction and should be suitable for the investigation of long-term toxicity of EDCs in freshwater invertebrates. C. riparius is appropriate for this purpose because of its short life cycle that enables the assessment of functional endpoints of the organism over several generations. Moreover, the chironomid life cycle consists of a complete metamorphosis controlled by a well-known endocrine mechanism and the endocrine system of insects has been most investigated in great detail among invertebrates. Hence, the full life-cycle test with C. riparius provides an approach to assess functional endpoints (e.g. reproduction, sex ratio) that are population-relevant as a useful amendment to the ERA of EDCs. In the laboratory, C. riparius was exposed to environmentally-relevant concentrations of the selected IGRs in either spiked water or spiked sediment scenario over two subsequent generations.
The results reported in this thesis revealed significant effects of the IGRs on the development and the reproduction of C. riparius with the second (F1) generation showing greater sensitivity. These findings indicated for the first time the suitability of multigenerational testing for various groups of EDCs and strongly suggested considering the full life-cycle of C. riparius as an appropriate test method for a better assessment of EDCs in the freshwater environment. In conclusion, this thesis helps to detect additional information that can be extrapolated at population level and, thus, might contribute to better protection of freshwater ecosystems against the risks of Endocrine Disrupting Chemicals (EDCs.) It may furthermore contribute to changes in the ERA process that are necessary for a real implementation of the new European chemical legislation, REACH (Registration, Evaluation Authorization and Restriction of Chemicals). Finally, significant interactions between temperature, chemical exposure and generation were reported for the first time and, may help predict impacts that may occur in the future, in the field, under predicted climate change scenarios.


Nowadays, enormous increase of production and service sectors leads to increase in demand for energy consumption. Therefore, energy and oil consumption in a variety of countries are considerably effected by energy and oil prices. International oil prices are crucial for both oil exporting countries and capital market investors as a means of volatility spillovers. This paper aims to analyze whether volatility spillovers exist between world oil market and several sector indices operating in Borsa Istanbul (BIST) 100 including energy, non-metal mineral products, and transportation using bivariate GARCH (1, 1) model. Estimation results suggest that except for non-metal mineral products sector, there are interactions between oil returns and the underlying sectors in terms of both shocks and conditional variance.


In Chapter 6 of Film, Art, and the Third Culture, Murray Smith argues for a biocultural account of the emotions, which treats them as an interaction between universal and cultural dimensions. He goes on to test this approach in relation to the representation of emotions in films by considering an example from the tradition of modernist filmmaking. This article suggests that, while Smith's case is broadly convincing, there are several ways in which it could be presented more forcefully. In particular, his discussion of the challenge of modernism to a biocultural account could be strengthened by emphasizing rather than downplaying the role that various types of cultural knowledge play in our interaction with modernist works.


Every year since 1848 Liberian presidents have delivered a state of the nation address to the Liberian National Legislature reflecting the various facets of the political, social, economic and ethno-cultural situation of the country. Liberia, the first and - for more than a century - the only independent state in Sub-Saharan Africa, was founded in 1822 by an assortment of American non-governmental organizations as an asylum for black Americans. Similar to a comprehensive longitudinal study, this collection of speeches describes the social and economic development of an African country over a time span of more than a century and a half, from 1848 until 2010. As such, it represents the first major research contribution to the history of the political system of one of the first countries of the continent to attain independence. The speeches illuminate the area of conflict between the autochthonous and the black emigrant populations and also documents the relations with the U.S. as "founding nation" and constitutional role model, especially in the 19th century.The presidents' speeches are a rich source of information for gaining a better understanding of Liberia's past and the country's current challenges and future prospects. With The Annual Messages of the Presidents of Liberia 1848-2010, the speeches scattered in various Liberian and American archives and libraries have now for the first time been collected and reconstructed in one single edition. Biographies of the presidents and a scholarly introduction by the editor supplement the 146 speeches. The edition is a valuable source of information on the history and political situation of Africa during the past 163 years. The editor and publisher D. Elwood Dunn teaches political science at Sewanee: The University of the South. From 1974 until 1980 he served in the government of Liberia, becoming a member of the cabinet in 1979. He was editor of the Liberian Studies Journal from 1985 until 1995.


Entering the work envelope of an industrial robot can lead to severe injury from collisions with moving parts of the system. Conventional safety mechanisms therefore mostly restrict access to the robot using physical barriers such as walls and fences or non-contact protective devices including light curtains and laser scanners. As none of these mechanisms applies to human-robot-collaboration (HRC), a concept in which human and machine complement one another by working hand in hand, there is a rising need for safe and reliable detection of human body parts amidst background clutter. For this application camera-based systems are typically well suited. Still, safety concerns remain, owing to possible detection failures caused by environmental occlusion, extraneous light or other adverse imaging conditions. While ultrasonic proximity sensing can provide physical diversity to the system, it does not yet allow to reliably distinguish relevant objects from background objects.This work investigates a new approach to detecting relevant objects and human body parts based on acoustic holography. The approach is experimentally validated using a low-cost application-specific ultrasonic sensor system created from micro-electromechanical systems (MEMS). The presented results show that this system far outperforms conventional proximity sensors in terms of lateral imaging resolution and thus allows for more intelligent muting processes without compromising the safety of people working close to the robot. Based upon this work, a next step could be the development of a multimodal sensor systems to safeguard workers who collaborate with robots using the described ultrasonic sensor system.


This Article is part of a symposium issue titled "Freedom of the Church in the Modern Era." Freedom of the church, roughly, connotes the independent nature or sovereignty of the church. The most dramatic moment in its development was the eleventh century Investiture Controversy, with its confrontation between Pope Gregory VII and Emperor Henry IV at Canossa, but it has a long prior and subsequent history. Recently, with the renewed scholarly interest in the institutional rights of churches and religious organizations and the Supreme Court's decision affirming the "ministerial exception" doctrine in Hosanna-Tabor Evangelical Lutheran Church and School v. EEOC, the idea of "freedom of the church" has taken on new champions -- and critics.This Article, from an author who has written supportively about freedom of the church and/or religious institutionalism in prior work, takes a deliberately unromantic look at freedom of the church. It evaluates it through two useful disciplinary lenses: history, and the economics of religion. Both historical and economic analysis of the concept of "freedom of the church" suggest the following conclusions: (1) The concept should be treated carefully and with a full awareness of its mixed history, without undue romanticism on the part of its champions, or a confident conclusion on the part of its critics that it is no longer necessary. (2) Whatever the concept of "freedom of the church" means today, the present version is decidedly diminished and chastened, a shadow of the medieval version. Supporters of freedom of the church should welcome that fact. Freedom of the church persists, and may have continuing value, precisely because it has become so domesticated. (3) There are solid historical and economic grounds for some form of freedom of the church or religious institutional autonomy. In particular, religion's status as a credence good, whose value and reliability is certified by religious agents such as ministers, strongly suggests that state interference with religious employment relations can be dangerous to a church's well-being and long-term survival. (4) The history and economics of religion also teach us something about the optimal conditions for freedom of the church -- the conditions under which it is likely to do the most good and the least harm. In particular, they suggest that champions of freedom of the church ought to welcome religious pluralism and a strong non-establishment regime. The Article closes with some speculation about why there has been a recent revival of interest in freedom of the church, including the possibility that its resurgence, even if it is fully justified, also involves an element of rent-seeking by religious institutions.There are two broader underlying suggestions as well. First, there are good reasons to support some version of freedom of the church, but it deserves a more critical and nuanced examination by friends and adversaries alike. Second, legal scholars writing on church-state issues have paid far too little attention to the literature on the economics of religion.


In today's globalized world it is increasingly important to consciously consider the terminology used when referencing others. The purpose of this paper is to explore and discuss the perplexing array of loosely defined ESL-related terminology in Education. A literature search revealed various terms referring to the same group of learners, the most common being English Language Learner. Through a deconstruction of related terms, an alternative term is proposed: Learner of English as an Additional Language (LEAL). The language learning aspect should not be utilized as a defining characteristic. LEAL is a respectful and culturally appropriate term that utilizes person first language.


Key components to support local institutional and consumer markets are: supply chain, finance, clinical use, and consumer use. Key lessons learned: (1) Build supply and demand simultaneously. (2) Support a lead organization to drive the introduction process. (3) Plan for scale up from the start. (4) Profitability for the private sector is an absolute. Key components to support local institutional and consumer markets are: supply chain, finance, clinical use, and consumer use. Key lessons learned: (1) Build supply and demand simultaneously. (2) Support a lead organization to drive the introduction process. (3) Plan for scale up from the start. (4) Profitability for the private sector is an absolute.


A kitchen classic for nearly 35 years. Hailed by Time magazine as a minor masterpiece when it first appeared in 1984, On Food and Cooking is the bible to which food lovers and professional chefs worldwide turn for an understanding of where our foods come from, what exactly they're made of, and how cooking transforms them into something new and delicious. For its twentieth anniversary, Harold McGee prepared a new, fully revised and updated edition of On Food and Cooking. He has rewritten the text almost completely, expanded it by two-thirds, and commissioned more than 100 new illustrations. As compulsively readable and engaging as ever, the new On Food and Cooking provides countless eye-opening insights into food, its preparation, and its enjoyment. On Food and Cooking pioneered the translation of technical food science into cook-friendly kitchen science and helped birth the inventive culinary movement known as molecular gastronomy. Though other books have been written about kitchen science, On Food and Cooking remains unmatched in the accuracy, clarity, and thoroughness of its explanations, and the intriguing way in which it blends science with the historical evolution of foods and cooking techniques. Among the major themes addressed throughout the new edition are: - Traditional and modern methods of food production and their influences on food quality - The great diversity of methods by which people in different places and times have prepared the same ingredients - Tips for selecting the best ingredients and preparing them successfully - The particular substances that give foods their flavors, and that give us pleasure - Our evolving knowledge of the health benefits and risks of foods On Food and Cooking is an invaluable and monumental compendium of basic information about ingredients, cooking methods, and the pleasures of eating. It will delight and fascinate anyone who has ever cooked, savored, or wondered about food.


START-UP NATION addresses the trillion dollar question: How is it that Israel - a country of 7.1 million, only 60 years old, surrounded by enemies, in a constant state of war since its founding, with no natural resources-- produces more start-up companies than large, peaceful and stable nations like Japan, China, India, Korea, Canada and the UK? With the savvy of foreign policy insiders, Senor and Singer examine the lessons of the country's adversity-driven culture, which flattens hierarchy and elevates informality - all backed up by government policies focused on innovation. In a world where economies as diverse as Ireland, Singapore and Dubai have tried to re-create the "Israel effect", there are entrepreneurial lessons well worth noting. As America reboots its own economy and can-do spirit, there's never been a better time to look at this remarkable and resilient nation for some impressive, surprising clues.


This article shows the limitations to the optimal deterrence-inspired cartel enforcement policy currently used by the Department of Justice Antitrust Division. This article employs both quantitative and qualitative survey evidence of cartel practitioners to shed light upon the realities of US cartel enforcement policy. The empirical evidence provided by the practitioner surveys challenges the traditional assumptions behind the success of the DOJ's cartel program. Perhaps the most interesting finding is that firms regularly game the leniency program to punish their competitors. For various reasons, firms and the DOJ have strong incentives to settle rather than to litigate cases in which the legality of cartel conduct may be in doubt. The surveys also expose limitations to the optimal deterrence framework for firms and individuals regarding incentives and behavior. These findings suggest the need for an enforcement focus on sub-units within the firm as well as various processes to change behavior that would improve enforcement and deterrence. Finally, the surveys suggest certain structural limitations in organizational behavior within firms that have prevented antitrust compliance programs from becoming embedded in a way that would reduce cartel activity. Additionally, this article provides an analysis of media coverage of cartel enforcement from 1990-2009. The analysis suggests that successful enforcement has not created sufficient awareness of cartel behavior among the public. Relative to other types of financial crimes, such as accounting fraud, the public seems unaware or uninterested in cartel activity. The conclusion summarizes the article's findings and outlines potential future steps in cartel research.


In a complex and uncertain world, humans and animals make decisions under the constraints of limited knowledge, resources, and time. Yet models of rational decision making in economics, cognitive science, biology, and other fields largely ignore these real constraints and instead assume agents with perfect information and unlimited time. About forty years ago, Herbert Simon challenged this view with his notion of "bounded rationality." Today, bounded rationality has become a fashionable term used for disparate views of reasoning. This book promotes bounded rationality as the key to understanding how real people make decisions. Using the concept of an "adaptive toolbox," a repertoire of fast and frugal rules for decision making under uncertainty, it attempts to impose more order and coherence on the idea of bounded rationality. The contributors view bounded rationality neither as optimization under constraints nor as the study of people's reasoning fallacies. The strategies in the adaptive toolbox dispense with optimization and, for the most part, with calculations of probabilities and utilities. The book extends the concept of bounded rationality from cognitive tools to emotions; it analyzes social norms, imitation, and other cultural tools as rational strategies; and it shows how smart heuristics can exploit the structure of environments.


Pro-opiomelanocortin (POMC) neurons function as key regulators of metabolism and physiology by releasing prohormone-derived neuropeptides with distinct biological activities. However, our understanding of early events in prohormone maturation in the ER remains incomplete. Highlighting the significance of this gap in knowledge, a single POMC cysteine-to-phenylalanine mutation at position 28 (POMC-C28F) is defective for ER processing and causes early onset obesity in a dominant-negative manner in humans through an unclear mechanism. Here, we report a pathologically important role of Sel1L-Hrd1, the protein complex of ER-associated degradation (ERAD), within POMC neurons. Mice with POMC neuron–specific Sel1L deficiency developed age-associated obesity due, at least in part, to the ER retention of POMC that led to hyperphagia. The Sel1L-Hrd1 complex targets a fraction of nascent POMC molecules for ubiquitination and proteasomal degradation, preventing accumulation of misfolded and aggregated POMC, thereby ensuring that another fraction of POMC can undergo normal posttranslational processing and trafficking for secretion. Moreover, we found that the disease-associated POMC-C28F mutant evades ERAD and becomes aggregated due to the presence of a highly reactive unpaired cysteine thiol at position 50. Thus, this study not only identifies ERAD as an important mechanism regulating POMC maturation within the ER, but also provides insights into the pathogenesis of monogenic obesity associated with defective prohormone folding.


We predict the existence of stable fundamental and vortical bright solitons in dipolar Bose–Einstein condensates with repulsive dipole–dipole interactions (DDI). The condensate is trapped in the two-dimensional plane with the help of the repulsive contact interactions whose local strength grows ∼r4 from the centre to periphery, while dipoles are oriented perpendicular to the self-trapping plane. The confinement in the perpendicular direction is provided by the usual harmonic-oscillator potential. The objective is to extend the recently induced concept of the self-trapping of bright solitons and solitary vortices in the pseudopotential, which is induced by the repulsive local nonlinearity with the strength growing from the centre to periphery, to the case when the trapping mechanism competes with the long-range repulsive DDI. Another objective is to extend the analysis for elliptic vortices and solitons in an anisotropic nonlinear pseudopotential. Using the variational approximation and numerical simulations, we construct families of self-trapped modes with vorticities ℓ = 0 (fundamental solitons), ℓ = 1 and ℓ = 2. The fundamental solitons and vortices with ℓ = 1 exist up to respective critical values of the eccentricity of the anisotropic pseudopotential, being stable in the entire existence regions. The vortices with ℓ = 2 are stable solely in the isotropic model.


The asparaginyl hydroxylase FIH [factor inhibiting HIF (hypoxia-inducible factor)] was first identified as a protein that inhibits transcriptional activation by HIF, through hydroxylation of an asparagine residue in the CAD (C-terminal activation domain). More recently, several ARD [AR (ankyrin repeat) domain]-containing proteins were identified as FIH substrates using FIH interaction assays. Although the function(s) of these ARD hydroxylations is unclear, expression of the ARD protein Notch1 was shown to compete efficiently with HIF CAD for asparagine hydroxylation and thus to enhance HIF activity. The ARD is a common protein domain with over 300 examples in the human proteome. However, the extent of hydroxylation among ARD proteins, and the ability of other members to compete with HIF-CAD for FIH, is not known. In the present study we assay for asparagine hydroxylation in a bioinformatically predicted FIH substrate, the targeting subunit of myosin phosphatase, MYPT1. Our results confirm hydroxylation both in cultured cells and in endogenous protein purified from animal tissue. We show that the extent of hydroxylation at three sites is dependent on FIH expression level and that hydroxylation is incomplete under basal conditions even in the animal tissue. We also show that expression of MYPT1 enhances HIF-CAD activity in a manner consistent with competition for FIH and that this property extends to other ARD proteins. These results extend the range of FIH substrates and suggest that cross-competition between ARDs and HIF-CAD, and between ARDs themselves, may be extensive and have important effects on hypoxia signalling.


Referring to Lewis Carroll's Red Queen from Through the Looking-Glass, a character who has to keep running to stay in the same place, Matt Ridley demonstrates why sex is humanity's best strategy for outwitting its constantly mutating internal predators. The Red Queen answers dozens of other riddles of human nature and culture -- including why men propose marriage, the method behind our maddening notions of beauty, and the disquieting fact that a woman is more likely to conceive a child by an adulterous lover than by her husband. Brilliantly written, The Red Queen offers an extraordinary new way of interpreting the human condition and how it has evolved.


Rhew, Jung-Hoon. Ph.D., Purdue University, December, 2003. Physics and Simulation of Quasi-Ballistic Transport in Nanoscale Transistors. Major Professor: Mark S. Lundstrom. The formidable progress in microelectronics in the last decade has pushed the channel length of MOSFETs into decanano scale and the speed of BJTs into hundreds of gigahertz. This progress imposes new challenges on device simulation as the essential physics of carrier transport departs that of conventional approaches because the effects of quasi-ballistic transport and quantum phenomena on device and circuit performance are becoming more important. Although a full quantum approach such as nonequilibrium Green's function method naturally accommodates the two issues and a semiclassical first principle such as Monte Carlo simulation resolves at least the issue of quasi-ballistic transport, their heavy computational prevents them from playing a major role in exploring a wide range of device design options in practice. Hence, it is of great interest to develop a new macroscopic approach for the simulation of nanoscale devices operating near the ballistic limit. This motivates the present study to explore the feasibility of such an attempt. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to understand essential physics of quasi-ballistic transport and its implications to nanoscale device simulation based on macroscopic transport models. The study is composed of three parts; one is to understand the essential physics of quasi-ballistic transport in a device context, another is to identify the limitations of commonly used transport models in assessing nanoscale devices, and the other is to explore new macroscopic transport models valid from the diffusive to the ballistic limit.


Production of biomass feedstock for methanation in Europe has focused on silages of maize and cereals. As ecological awareness has increased in the last several years, more attention is being focused on perennial energy crops (PECs). Studies of specific PECs have shown that their cultivation may enhance agrobiodiversity and increase soil organic carbon stocks while simultaneously providing valuable feedstock for methanation. This study was designed to compare soil quality indicators under annual energy crops (AECs), PECs and permanent grassland (PGL) on the landscape level in south‐western Germany. At a total 25 study sites, covering a wide range of parent materials, the cropping systems were found adjacent to each other. Stands were commercially managed, and PECs included different species such as the Cup Plant, Tall Wheatgrass, Giant Knotweed, Miscanthus, Virginia Mallow and Reed Canary Grass. Soil sampling was carried out for the upper 20 cm of soil. Several soil quality indicators, including soil organic carbon (Corg), soil microbial biomass (Cmic), and aggregate stability, showed that PECs were intermediate between AEC and PGL systems. At landscape level, mean Corg content for (on average) 6.1‐year‐old stands of PEC was 22.37 (±7.53) g kg−1, compared to 19.23 (±8.08) and 32.08 (±10.11) for AEC and PGL. Cmic contents were higher in PECs (356 ± 241 μg C g−1) compared to AECs (291 ± 145) but significantly lower than under PGL (753 ± 417). The aggregate stability increased by almost 65% in PECs compared to AEC but was still 57% lower than in PGL. Indicator differences among cropping systems were more pronounced when inherent differences in the parent material were accounted for in the comparisons. Overall, these results suggest that the cultivation of PECs has positive effects on soil quality indicators. Thus, PECs may offer potential to make the production of biomass feedstock more sustainable.


General/All-in-One Target (Drive/Bus) 25 Boston Post Rd, Orange [2] Walmart (Drive/Bus) 315 Foxon Blvd [3] (includes grocery) and 515 Saw Mill Rd, West Haven [4] Yale Bookstore 77 Broadway [5] Home Goods IKEA 450 Sargent Drive [6] Jordan's Furniture 40 Sargent Drive [7] Electronics Apple Store 65 Broadway [8] Best Buy (Drive/Bus) 53 Boston Post Rd, Orange [9] Cell Phones [10] Personal Items/Pharmacy Rite-Aid 66 Church St South [11] CVS 123 Church St [12] Walgreens 88 York St [13], or 436 Whalley Ave [14] Clothing L.L. Bean 272 Elm Street [15] Patagonia 1 Broadway [16] Urban Outfitters 43 Broadway [17] J. Crew 29 Broadway [18]


Turn back your biological clock. A breakthrough book for men--as much fun to read as it is persuasive--"Younger Next Year" draws on the very latest science of aging to show how men 50 or older can become "functionally younger every year" for the next five to ten years, and continue to live like fifty-year-olds until well into their eighties. To enjoy life and be stronger, healthier, and more alert. To stave off 70% of the normal decay associated with aging (weakness, sore joints, apathy), and to eliminate over 50% of all illness and potential injuries. This is the real thing, a program that will work for anyone who decides to apply himself to "Harry's Rules." Harry is Henry S. Lodge, M.D., a specialist in internal medicine and preventive healthcare. Chris Crowley is Harry's 70-year-old patient who's stronger today (and skiing better) than when he was 40. Together, in alternating chapters that are lively, sometimes outspoken, and always utterly convincing, they spell out Harry's Rules and the science behind them. The rules are deceptively simple: Exercise Six Days a Week. Eat What You Know You Should. Connect to Other People and Commit to Feeling Passionate About Something. The science, simplified and demystified, ranges from the molecular biology of growth and decay to how our bodies and minds evolved (and why they fare so poorly in our sedentary, all-feast no-famine culture). The result is nothing less than a paradigm shift in our view of aging. Welcome to the next third of your life--train for it, and you'll have a ball.


The past several years have witnessed the emergence of a new phenomenon: clinics in law schools that litigate cases in the Supreme Court. Although some commentators have written about the pedagogical goals and benefits of such clinics, no one yet has written about their public interest mission. This Article takes up that task. It begins by empirically testing, for the first time in modern literature, the clinics' foundational assumption: that litigants in the Court who are represented by local counsel instead of Supreme Court specialists are generally at a distinct disadvantage. Finding that assumption to be accurate, the Article identifies and discusses opportunities that Supreme Court clinics have to serve the public interest. Most importantly, such clinics can level the representational playing field to the benefit of traditionally underserved litigants and bring balance to certain areas of the law that otherwise tend to be skewed by inequalities in lawyering. At the same time, operating a Supreme Court clinic presents special challenges and responsibilities. Unlike most other kinds of clinical work, Supreme Court cases generate reverberations far beyond the specific parties involved — indeed, sometimes beyond the courts themselves. Consequently, insofar as clinics have control over which cases they bring to the Court and can cause the Court to hear cases that it might not otherwise have heard, the clinics' work can implicate sometimes-latent tensions between client-centered representation and cause-based advocacy. The Article is forthright that when it comes to selecting (and, to lesser extent, handling) cases in the Court, there are not always easy ways to navigate these competing approaches to public interest lawyering. But it explores the ethical, practical, and normative issues that operating a Supreme Court pro bono practice raises.


www.sciencemag.org (this information is current as of November 19, 2007 ): The following resources related to this article are available online at http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/280/5360/77 version of this article at: including high-resolution figures, can be found in the online Updated information and services, http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/280/5360/77#otherarticles , 7 of which can be accessed for free: cites 43 articles This article 240 article(s) on the ISI Web of Science. cited by This article has been http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/280/5360/77#otherarticles 45 articles hosted by HighWire Press; see: cited by This article has been http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/collection/neuroscience Neuroscience : subject collections This article appears in the following http://www.sciencemag.org/about/permissions.dtl in whole or in part can be found at: this article permission to reproduce of this article or about obtaining reprints Information about obtaining


Background/Aim: Laparoscopic single-port surgery has emerged as a growing trend in minimally invasive surgery. Single-port access is preferred among women undergoing gynecologic surgery who have cosmetic concerns about scarring. Furthermore, this approach results in comparable clinical outcomes to standard laparoscopic surgery and perioperative morbidity rates have been reported to be low. The hypothesis is that a single-port technique might offer such advantages over the standard multi-port laparoscopy as less postoperative pain and better cosmetic results by decreasing abdominal wall tissue trauma. The potential disadvantages of single-port approaches are the larger umbilical incision and the technical difficulties. There are only a few randomized studies in the literature that investigate the value and safety of single-incision laparoscopic surgery in gynecological surgery. The aim of this study was to compare the safety and quality of life in patients who undergo single-incision laparoscopic assisted vaginal hysterectomy and those who undergo conventional laparoscopic assisted vaginal hysterectomy.
Methods: In a prospective randomized trial, 64 patients from three different centers in Germany were randomized (1:1) to conventional laparoscopic assisted vaginal hysterectomy (n=32) or single-incision laparoscopic assisted vaginal hysterectomy (n=30). Data was collected on 60 patients who fulfilled the criteria.
Results: The baseline characteristics of patients were similar in both groups. The mean operative time was comparable in both groups (68.2 vs 73.6 min., p = 0.409). Within the two groups, no differences were seen regarding estimated blood loss (p = 0.915), intra- and postoperative complications (p = 0.944), and wound infection rates (p = 0.944). Patients within the single-incision laparoscopic surgery group experienced significantly less pain in the first 24 hours postoperatively (p = 0.006), while pain scores at days 3, 5, 7 and 2 months postoperatively were comparable.
Conclusion: This study demonstrates that single-incision laparoscopic assisted vaginal hysterectomy is a reliable and safe setup in gynecologic surgery. Compared to conventional laparoscopic assisted vaginal hysterectomy, Notably, patients undergoing single-incision laparoscopic assisted vaginal hysterectomy experienced less pain postoperatively.


Most studies on European hake focus on the recruitment process and nursery areas, whereas the information is comparatively limited on the ecology of the juvenile stage (ca. second year of life)—the one most exploited by the Mediterranean trawl fisheries. Using information of the MEDITS programme, we provide a spatial and temporal assessment of the influence of body size and growth on hake survival from recruits (age 0) to juveniles (age 1), along with the impact of surface temperature and chlorophyll variability. At a biogeographic scale, size-dependent survival is supported, with areas with higher mean length of recruits and juveniles yielding higher survival. A similar pattern was observed at interannual level in some western Mediterranean areas, also mediated by a density-dependent effect on growth. However, the most recurrent inter-annual pattern was a negative effect of size on survival, which could be attributed to potential ontogenetic changes in catchability and underrepresentation of intra-annual recruitment pulses that are seasonally inaccessible to the MEDITS survey. Results also evidence that survival in the Alboran and Adriatic seas is dependent on the primary production variability, and that Corsica and Sardinia could be potential feeding grounds receiving juveniles from neighbouring areas. The present study reveals the importance of size- and growth-dependent survival in the juvenile stage of European hake in the Mediterranean Sea.


Neural stem cell self-renewal, neurogenesis, and cell fate determination are processes that control the generation of specific classes of neurons at the correct place and time. The transcription factor Pax6 is essential for neural stem cell proliferation, multipotency, and neurogenesis in many regions of the central nervous system, including the cerebral cortex. We used Pax6 as an entry point to define the cellular networks controlling neural stem cell self-renewal and neurogenesis in stem cells of the developing mouse cerebral cortex. We identified the genomic binding locations of Pax6 in neocortical stem cells during normal development and ascertained the functional significance of genes that we found to be regulated by Pax6, finding that Pax6 positively and directly regulates cohorts of genes that promote neural stem cell self-renewal, basal progenitor cell genesis, and neurogenesis. Notably, we defined a core network regulating neocortical stem cell decision-making in which Pax6 interacts with three other regulators of neurogenesis, Neurog2, Ascl1, and Hes1. Analyses of the biological function of Pax6 in neural stem cells through phenotypic analyses of Pax6 gain- and loss-of-function mutant cortices demonstrated that the Pax6-regulated networks operating in neural stem cells are highly dosage sensitive. Increasing Pax6 levels drives the system towards neurogenesis and basal progenitor cell genesis by increasing expression of a cohort of basal progenitor cell determinants, including the key transcription factor Eomes/Tbr2, and thus towards neurogenesis at the expense of self-renewal. Removing Pax6 reduces cortical stem cell self-renewal by decreasing expression of key cell cycle regulators, resulting in excess early neurogenesis. We find that the relative levels of Pax6, Hes1, and Neurog2 are key determinants of a dynamic network that controls whether neural stem cells self-renew, generate cortical neurons, or generate basal progenitor cells, a mechanism that has marked parallels with the transcriptional control of embryonic stem cell self-renewal.


The Millennium Development Goals have led to tangible progress in many developing countries. Once adopted, the United Nations' new global Sustainable Development Goals will additionally require industrialized countries to implement such standards beginning in 2016. But the world's first comprehensive stocktaking shows that most industrialized nations are a long way from serving as role models for sustainable development.


Background/Context Given the challenging complexity of the modern principalship— including high-stakes testing, standards-based reform, increased accountability, and severe budget cuts—practitioners and scholars emphasize the urgency of supporting principals' stress-relief and renewal. Purpose/Objective/Research Question/Focus of Study This nationwide study offers insights into how a group of principals renew themselves and prevent burnout, crucial for 21st-century school leaders. This article focuses on how 25 principals supported their own renewal and their yearning to engage in reflective practice with colleagues as a support to their own revitalization, growth, and learning. Research Design Eighty-nine hours of qualitative interviews with a diverse sample of 25 public and private (independent) and Catholic school principals who served in schools with varying levels of financial resources (i.e., high, medium, and low) were conducted, in addition to analyzing field notes and approximately 60 documents. Interviews for the encompassing research study—an investigation of developmentally based principal leadership practices employed to support adult learning—concerned a variety of topics, including principals' practices for supporting teacher learning and how principals themselves supported their own renewal. Data Collection and Analysis All interviews were transcribed verbatim. Two researchers coded interviews, documents, and field notes for central concepts (theoretical and emic codes were employed). Thematic matrices were developed, and narrative summaries were created. A grounded theory approach was employed, and important literatures informed analysis. Matrices displayed confirming and disconfirming instances of themes, and two researchers conferred on alternative interpretations. Findings Findings reveal that these principals (1) employed a variety of strategies for self-renewal given the complex challenges of their leadership work in the 21st century and (2) expressed a desire for engaging in ongoing reflective practice with colleagues as a to support their own development, sustainability, and renewal. All also expressed that although they were fulfilled by their jobs, the scope seemed vast and overwhelming. Whether they served in high, low, or medium financial resource schools and whether they served in public, independent, or Catholic schools, they emphasized that they needed to develop more effective and frequent strategies for self-renewal. Conclusions/Recommendations These school leaders explained that they yearn for regular, ongoing opportunities to reflect with colleagues and fellow principals on the challenges of leadership, emphasizing that this type of ongoing collegial reflection would help them to more effectively exercise leadership, avoid burnout, and renew themselves. Although all these principals spontaneously voiced the desire to engage in collegial reflection, only 3 were doing so on a regular basis. This research suggests the importance of supporting and retaining principals by using reflection and collegial support for renewal, with serious implications for education policy and school district practices.


Epithelial ovarian cancer (EOC) is the most lethal gynecologic cancer (1). We performed discovery of genes associated with epithelial ovarian cancer and of the high-grade serous ovarian cancer (HGSC) subtype, using published microarray data (2, 3) to compare global gene expression profiles of normal ovary or fallopian tube with that of primary tumors from women diagnosed with epithelial ovarian cancer or HGSC. We identified the gene encoding centrosomal protein 55, CEP55, as among the genes whose expression was most different in epithelial ovarian cancer as compared to the normal fallopian tube. CEP55 expression was significantly higher in high-grade serous ovarian tumors relative to normal fallopian tube. CEP55 expression correlated with overall survival in patients with ovarian cancer. These data indicate that expression of CEP55 is perturbed in epithelial ovarian cancers broadly and in ovarian cancers of the HGSC subtype. CEP55 may be relevant to pathways underlying ovarian cancer initiation (transformation) or progression.


Patients presenting with subacute amnesia are frequently seen in acute neurological practice. Amongst the differential diagnoses, herpes simplex encephalitis, Korsakoff's syndrome and limbic encephalitis should be considered. Limbic encephalitis is typically a paraneoplastic syndrome with a poor prognosis; thus, identifying those patients with potentially reversible symptoms is important. Voltage-gated potassium channel antibodies (VGKC-Ab) have recently been reported in three cases of reversible limbic encephalitis. Here we review the clinical, immunological and neuropsychological features of 10 patients (nine male, one female; age range 44-79 years), eight of whom were identified in two centres over a period of 15 months. The patients presented with 1-52 week histories of memory loss, confusion and seizures. Low plasma sodium concentrations, initially resistant to treatment, were present in eight out of 10. Brain MRI at onset showed signal change in the medial temporal lobes in eight out of 10 cases. Paraneoplastic antibodies were negative, but VGKC-Ab ranged from 450 to 5128 pM (neurological and healthy controls <100 pM). CSF oligoclonal bands were found in only one, but bands matched with those in the serum were found in six other patients. VGKC-Abs in the CSF, tested in five individuals, varied between <1 and 10% of serum values. Only one patient had neuromyotonia, which was excluded by electromyography in seven of the others. Formal neuropsychology testing showed severe and global impairment of memory, with sparing of general intellect in all but two patients, and of nominal functions in all but one. Variable regimes of steroids, plasma exchange and intravenous immunoglobulin were associated with variable falls in serum VGKC-Abs, to values between 2 and 88% of the initial values, together with marked improvement of neuropsychological functioning in six patients, slight improvement in three and none in one. The improvement in neuropsychological functioning in seven patients correlated broadly with the fall in antibodies. However, varying degrees of cerebral atrophy and residual cognitive impairment were common. Over the same period, only one paraneoplastic case of limbic encephalitis was identified between the two main centres. Thus, VGKC-Ab-associated encephalopathy is a relatively common form of autoimmune, non-paraneoplastic, potentially treatable encephalitis that can be diagnosed by a serological test. Establishing the frequency of this new syndrome, the full range of clinical presentations and means of early recognition, and optimal immunotherapy, should now be the aim.


Feagan, Robert. Arctic Thunder: A Novel . Toronto: Dundurn Press, 2010. Print. St. Albert is a small city, just north of Edmonton in Central Alberta.  In the opening pages of this book, thirteen-year-old Mike Watson and his team, the St. Albert Rams, win the Alberta Bantam Provincial box lacrosse championship.  Then his father, an RCMP officer, announces that they've been posted to Inuvik, which Mike describes as a place "somewhere inside the Arctic Circle and makes winter in St. Albert seem like summer". The author, Robert Feagan, who lives in St. Albert, but spent much of his youth in RCMP posts across the Canadian Western Arctic, does a good job of presenting the struggles of a thirteen year old boy from the South trying to fit into the largely Inuit and Dene community in Inuvik. The story is definitely told from the point of view of a "white kid from the South", except that Mike is part Zulu, so he sort of looks like he might fit in. Mike finds that teenagers are teenagers everywhere and when he goes to school he meets: the bully, the nerd whom everyone avoids and the super athletes, who in this case compete in the Arctic Games.  There is even a beautiful female nemesis, Gwen, who is one of the best basketball players Mike has every encountered. While well written and engaging, Feagan sometimes becomes a little didactic in educating the reader about the North.  Characters occasionally launch into unnaturally detailed explanations about things northern. Much of the tension between characters is also resolved too neatly.  Most of the core characters acquire self-understanding, turn over new leaves, and apologize to each other within a very few pages.  Much more realistic is the portrayal of the typical teenager, Mike, whispering a "Thank-you" to his Mom, long after she's out of earshot. Through the course of the book, Mike (and the reader) come to appreciate what Inuvik, with its single traffic light and one retail store, has to offer.  Feagan works in a sensitive treatment of the role of the elders in the community and the healthy effects of living close to the land.  Of course, lacrosse, which no one plays in Inuvik, is an important thread through the story. Adult readers should not be put off by the fact that this is a young adult novel; it is a good Arctic read for anyone. Highly recommended: 4 out of 4 stars Reviewer: Sandy Campbell Sandy is a Health Sciences Librarian at the University of Alberta, who has written hundreds of book reviews across many disciplines.  Sandy thinks that sharing books with children is one of the greatest gifts anyone can give.


Second tier high-tech regions are taking a different path than their well-known counterparts such as Silicon Valley or Route 128 around Boston. They may lack many prerequisites of growth such as a world-class research university or high levels of venture capital funding. Often, however, they can successfully leverage anchor firms and entrepreneurial spinoffs. This book explores the evolution of these regions in the United States.


A malware detector is a system that attempts to determine whether a program has malicious intent. In order to evade detection, malware writers (hackers) frequently use obfuscation to morph malware. Malware detectors that use a pattern-matching approach (such as commercial virus scanners) are susceptible to obfuscations used by hackers. The fundamental deficiency in the pattern-matching approach to malware detection is that it is purely syntactic and ignores the semantics of instructions. In this paper, we present a malware-detection algorithm that addresses this deficiency by incorporating instruction semantics to detect malicious program traits. Experimental evaluation demonstrates that our malware-detection algorithm can detect variants of malware with a relatively low run-time overhead. Moreover our semantics-aware malware detection algorithm is resilient to common obfuscations used by hackers.


Numerous accounts of the discovery of LSD have been published in English; none, unfortunately, have been completely accurate. Here, at last, the father of LSD details the history of his "problem child" and his long and fruitful career as a research chemist. In a real sense, this book is the inside story of the birth of the Psychedelic Age, and it cannot be denied that we have here a highly candid and personal insight into one of the most important scientific discoveries of our time, the signiflcance of which has yet to dawn on mankind. Surpassing its historical value is the immense philosophical import of this work. Never before has a chemist, an expert in the most materialistic of the sciences, advanced a Weltanschauung of such a mystical and transcendental nature. LSD, psilocybin, and the other hallucinogens do indeed, as Albert Hofmann asserts, constitute "cracks" in the edifice of materialistic rationality, cracks we would do well to explore and perhaps widen. As a writer, it gives me great satisfaction to know that by this book the American reader interested in hallucinogens will be introduced to the work of Rudolf Gelpke, Ernst Junger, and Walter Vogt, writers who are all but unknown here. With the notable exceptions of Huxley and Wasson, English and American writers on the hallucinogenic experience have been far less distinguished and eloquent than they. This translation has been carefully overseen by Albert Hofmann, which made my task both simpler and more enjoyable. I am beholden to R. Gordon Wasson for checking the chapters on LSD's "Mexican relatives" and on "Ska Maria Pastora" for accuracy and style. Two chapters of this book—"How LSD Originated" and "LSD Experience and Reality"— were presented by Albert Hofmann as a paper before the international conference "Hallucinogens, Shamanism and Modern Life" in San Francisco on the afternoon of Saturday, September 30, 1978. As a part of the conference proceedings, the first chapter has been published in the Journal of Psychedelic Drugs, Vol. 11 (1-2), 1979. Jonathan Ott


This Article offers a new justification for modern litigation under the Alien Tort Statute ("ATS"), a provision from the 1789 Judiciary Act that permits victims of human rights violations anywhere in the world to sue tortfeasors in U.S. courts. The ATS, moribund for nearly 200 years, has recently emerged as an important but controversial tool for the enforcement of human rights norms. "Realist" critics contend that ATS litigation exasperates U.S. allies and rivals, weakens efforts to combat terrorism, and threatens U.S. sovereignty by importing into our jurisprudence undemocratic international law norms. Defenders of the statute, largely because they do not share the critics' realist assumptions about international relations, have so far declined to engage with the cost-benefit critique of ATS litigation and instead justify the ATS as a key component in a global human rights regime. This Article addresses the realists' critique on its own terms, offering the first defense of ATS litigation that is itself rooted in realism – the view that nations are unitary, rational actors pursuing their security in an anarchic world and obeying international law only when it suits their interests. In particular, this Article identifies three flaws in the current realist ATS critique: First, critics rely on speculation about catastrophic future costs without giving sufficient weight to the actual history of ATS litigation and to the prudential and substantive limits courts have already imposed on it. Second, critics' fears about the sovereignty costs that will arise when federal courts incorporate international-law norms into domestic law are overblown because U.S. law already reflects the limited set of universal norms, such as torture and genocide, that are actionable under the ATS. Finally, this realist critique fails to overcome the incoherence created by contending that the exercise of jurisdiction by the courts may harm U.S. interests while also assuming that nations are unitary, rational actors. Moving beyond the critique, this Article offers a new, positive realist argument for ATS litigation. This Article suggests that, in practice, the U.S. government as a whole pursues its security and economic interests in ATS litigation by signaling cooperativeness through respect for human rights while also ensuring that the law is developed on U.S. terms. This realist understanding, offered here for the first time, both explains the persistence of ATS litigation and bridges the gap that has frustrated efforts to weigh the ATS's true costs and benefits.


An updated checklist of the Cerambycidae of Costa Rica is presented. This new version includes 1,071 species and subspecies in 429 genera, 69 tribes, and six subfamilies. Of these, 181 are new country records and 136 species are known only from Costa Rica. In addition, provincial distribution data are provided for each species. The checklist supports a wealth of scientific literature in many other groups of flora and fauna indicating Costa Rica has high species richness of cerambycid beetles.


On November 21, 2007, sensational scientific developments were reported by major newspapers, both in the United States and abroad. The media reported a new breakthrough in the area of stem cell research. According to two articles published in Science and Cell (both highly respected scientific journals), two teams of scientists were able to "reprogram" adult stem cells into embryonic stem cells, without actually having to experiment on embryos. The discovery was immediately hailed by the White House and other opponents of embryonic stem cell research. The New York Times gushed that the "stem cell wars" may be at an end. Two central aspects of the discovery were almost lost in the excitement. First, while the cells were successfully "reprogrammed," the reprogramming process resulted in altering cells' own DNA, making the cells more prone to become cancerous, and therefore not useful for therapeutic interventions. Second, any therapeutic progress based on the methodology outlined in Science and Cell is years, if not decades, away. Thus, at least with respect to the immediate future, the reported discoveries do not obviate the need to conduct research on cells extracted from embryos. Until such time as science will allow us to forgo the use of embryos to extract stem cells, the use of embryos will remain necessary, and the ethical debate attendant to such use will persist. This Article will argue that the use of embryos in such research is permissible even if the embryos are viewed as fully human and are entitled to all ethical and legal protections that go along with such status.The purpose of this Article is twofold. First, the Article suggests that it is unnecessary to resolve the question of whether a fertilized egg is or is not a human life when deciding on the propriety and morality of embryonic stem cell research. Indeed, it may be conceded that life begins at conception. However, even in the face of such a concession, this Article will argue that it is morally permissible to harvest stem cells from embryos even if such harvesting would result in the destruction (death) of the embryo. Secondly, the Article will attempt to give a justification for embryonic stem cell research while proceeding from the premise that the embryo is to be treated not as a commodity, but as an individual with human dignity. In the process, it should become clear why embryonic stem cell research differs from abortion, and how one can — with philosophical consistency — simultaneously subscribe to an anti-abortion position and be in favor of embryonic stem cell research.


Mobile application usage and development is experiencing exponential growth. According to Gartner, by 2016 more than 300 billion applications will be downloaded annually. The mobile domain presents new challenges to software engineering. Mobile platforms are rapidly changing, including diverse capabilities as GPS, sensors, and input modes. Applications must be omni-channel and work on all platforms. Activated on mobile platforms, modern applications must be elastic and scale on demand according to the hardware abilities. Applications often need to support and use third-party services. Therefore, during development, security and authorization processes for the dataflow must be applied. Bring your own device (BYOD) policies bring new security data leaks challenges. Developing such applications requires suitable practices and tools e.g., architecture techniques that relate to the complexity at hand; improved refactoring tools for hybrid applications using dynamic languages and polyglot development and applications; and testing techniques for applications that run on different devices. This workshop aims at establishing a community of researchers and practitioners to share their work and lead further research in the mobile software engineering. The workshop has several goals. First, we want to develop relationships to create a vibrant research community in the area of mobile software development. Second, we want to identify the most important research problems for mobile software development.


The debug register rootkit is a special type of rootkit that has existed for over a decade, and is told to be undetectable by any scanning tools. It exploits the debug registers in Intel's IA-32 processor architecture. This paper investigates the debug register rootkit to find out why it is considered a threat, and which malware removal tools have implemented detection algorithms against this threat. By implementing and running a debug register rootkit against the most popular Linux tools, new conclusions about the protection of the Linux system can be reached. Recently, debug register rootkits were found on Windows as well. This project intends to bring knowledge about the problem and investigate if there are any threats. Our study has shown that still after 12 years, the most popular tools for the Linux operating system have not implemented any detection algorithms against this threat. The security industry may need to prepare for this threat in case it is spread further.


This Article's objective is to spark discussion about the standards by which we judge international courts. Traditional justifications for the authority of international courts are based on outmoded assumptions of their role and impact. State consent and procedural fairness to litigants are insufficient to ground the legitimacy of institutions that may adjudicate the international rights and duties of nonlitigants, deeply affect the interests of nonlitigating stakeholders, and shape the law prospectively. These realities mandate a new approach to the legitimacy of international courts. This Article presents alternative or additional approaches for justifying the authority of international courts rooted in both procedure and substance. First, legitimacy requires a reimagining of procedural fairness to include those whose international rights and duties are being adjudicated by international courts. Democratic theory can help to justify the authority of international courts so long as stakeholders are given the opportunity to participate in the formulation of policies that affect them. In addition, international courts must adhere to certain universal standards of justice. They cannot facilitate the violation of a set of core norms, including prohibitions against torture, slavery, racial discrimination, and genocide, and still retain their legitimacy. Finally, the extent to which an international court implements the objectives it was created for also affects its legitimacy.


Theories and models usually adopted in designing roads, especially for safety verifications, are based on the hypothesis of a single vehicle that follows a trajectory matching with the road axle. This condition can be expressed as "road following" model and it determines many important design parameters, like curvature, design speed, superelevation, lane placement, sight distances, characteristics of transition curves, etc.. In real conditions, vehicles on a road section travel along trajectories always different from the road axle, so, in order to ensure that theoretical models can be effective, it is important to evaluate how a reference trajectory, on particular road elements, can statistically represent the population of users. In this way, it will be possible to design the road axle on the basis of this reference trajectory and consequently develop road design processes. To deal with these problems, it is useful to perform some surveys on trajectories of vehicles on real road elements, but the statistical analysis of the data needs specific procedures to extract trajectories that have a formal geometric expression and correctly represent the scattering of vehicles' position. The article presents a statistics based method, proposed with the aim to obtain the reference trajectories on road sections starting from surveys over real exercise conditions; the method was tested on case studies regarding two ramp terminals, that are particularly interesting because when the infrastructure present special geometrical or physical features the vehicle trajectories are influenced by them.


Retirees confront the difficult problem of how to manage their money in retirement so as to not outlive their funds while continuing to invest in capital markets. We posit a dynamic utility maximizer who makes both asset location and allocation decisions when managing her retirement financial wealth and annuities, and we prove that she can benefit from both the equity premium and longevity insurance in her retirement portfolio. Even without bequests, she will not fully annuitize; rather, her optimal stock allocation amounts initially to more than half of her financial wealth and declines with age. Welfare gains from this strategy can amount to 40 percent of financial wealth (depending on risk parameters and other resources). In practice, it turns out that many retirees will do almost as well by purchasing a variable annuity invested 60/40 in stocks/bonds.


The performance of asphalt concrete pavement depends on the bitumen properties, asphalt concrete mixtures volumetric properties and external factors such as traffic volume and environment. Bitumen is a visco-elastic material where temperature and rate of load application have a great influence on its behavior. Conventional bitumen is exposed to a wide range of loading and weather conditions; it is soft in a hot environment and brittle in cold weather. Higher traffic volume produces high stress within pavement layer, which is one of the main causes for pavement distress. Fatigue cracking and permanent deformation is considered as most serious distresses associated with flexible pavements. These distresses reduce the service life of the pavement and increase the maintenance cost. To reduce the pavement distresses there are different solutions such as adopting new mix design or by using asphalt additives. Using of asphalt additives in highway construction is known to give the conventional bitumen better engineering properties as well as it is helpful to extent the life span of asphalt concrete pavement. In this research an investigation was made on the fundamental studies of modified asphalt binder and mixtures in order to understand the influence of modifiers on the rheological properties and fatigue resistance with the aim of preventing fatigue cracking in asphalt pavement. The conventional bitumen (70/100) penetration grade was used in this research, modified with crumb rubber (CR) and styrene-butadiene-styrene (SBS) at four different modification levels namely 3%, 5%, 7% and 10% by weight of the bitumen. The rheological properties and fatigue resistance tests for asphalt binder were performed using a dynamic shear rheometer apparatus. Fatigue life for asphalt binder and mixtures were calculated based on the dissipated energy concept as well as a procedure for modifying of conventional bitumen was developed to find the suitable blending time and the optimum modifier content. From the results at low rubber content 3% and 5%, the behaviour of the modified bitumen remains close to that of the conventional bitumen and the optimum crumb rubber content for good rheological properties and long fatigue life was found to be 10% by the weight of bitumen. At higher (SBS) polymer content 7% and 10%, the behaviour of the modified binders remains close to that of the modified bitumen with 5% (SBS) and the optimum (SBS) content was found to be 5%. The fatigue behavior of modified bitumen was found to be significantly improved compared to conventional bitumen. Fatigue test using dynamic shear rheometer was found to be costly and time consuming. 3D finite element model for dynamic shear rheometer has been developed and was used for dissipated energy calculation. The experimental result and the model result showed excellent fit between dissipated energy for the same tested bitumen. On the other hand, a shift factor was found between the dissipated energy per volume from the bitumen specimen in dynamic shear rheometer and dissipated energy per volume for asphalt concrete mixtures in indirect tensile fatigue test.


Since the 1960s, the artist Bruce Nauman has developed a highly complex and pluralistic oeuvre ranging from discrete sculpture, performance, film, video, and text-based works to elaborate multipart installations incorporating sound, video recording and monitors, and architectural structures. Nauman's work is often interpreted in terms of movements and mediums, including performance, postminimalism, process, and conceptual art, thereby emphasizing its apparent eclecticism. But what is often overlooked is that underlying these seemingly disparate artistic tendencies are conceptual continuities, one of which is an investigation of the nature of language. Unlike many of his contemporaries, Nauman has refrained from participating in the critical discourse surrounding his own work. He has given relatively few interviews over the course of his career and has little to do with the art press or critical establishment. Indeed, he granted Janet Kraynak and The MIT Press almost complete autonomy in the preparation of this volume. In contrast to Nauman's reputation for silence, however, from the beginning of his career, the incorporation of language has been a central feature of his art. This collection takes as its starting point the seeming paradox of an artist of so few words who produces an art of so many words. Please Pay Attention Please contains all of Nauman's major interviews from 1965 to 2001, as well as a comprehensive body of his writings, including instructions and proposal texts, dialogues transcribed from audio-video works, and prose texts written specifically for installation sculptures. Where relevant, the texts are accompanied by illustrations of the artworks for which they were composed. In the critical essay that serves as the book's introduction, the editor investigates Nauman's art in relation to the linguistic turn in art practices of the 1960s -- understanding language through the speech act -- and its legacy in contemporary art.