This paper quantifies factors which are responsible for the bullwhip effect within the specific theatre, e.g. Middle East. A comprehensive analytical understanding of the phenomenon is derived by considering at least twenty critical factors including Advertising, Sales Promotions, Seasonal Effect, Price Variations, Substitute or competitive products, delays in order processing and raw material shortage. The paper suggests Methods of mitigation of Bullwhip.


This dissertation aims to contribute to the social work literature regarding successful aging. Specifically, the purpose of this study is to investigate if Mindfulness Meditation training (MM) is a possible method to promote successful aging. The first chapter of the proposal is an article, "Mindfulness: The present moment in clinical social work", which has been published in Clinical Social Work Journal (Turner, 2009). Chapter One provides an understanding of the concept of mindfulness as well as the research into the neurological and behavioral benefits of mindfulness skills training. Four specific therapy protocols, which incorporate mindfulness skills including MBSR, are described. Clinical case examples are provided to demonstrate the impact of mindfulness skills training on both clients and on the social work helping relationship. In Chapter Two, the strengths and challenges for elders in contemporary American society are presented. Specifically, the importance of both skills to cope with loss and of positive self-perception of aging are emphasized as central to successful aging. Mindfulness skills training (MM) is presented as a potential method to promote emotion regulation and positive self-perception in elders. Chapter Three presents the research conducted for this dissertation. In this dissertation, I studied whether mindfulness skills can be taught to elders, and whether elders can improve their ability to regulate emotion and develop a positive self-perception of aging as a result of mindfulness skills training. The findings of this study are presented in chapter 4. MM training participants improved in their mindfulness, emotion regulation and self-perception of aging more than the control group. However, due to the small sample size (n=22) none of these findings met the criteria for statistical significance. Quotes from the participants are provided to demonstrate the benefits that each group experienced as a result of their training. The implications and limitations of this research are examined in chapter 5. Further research into mindfulness to promote successful aging is suggested, utilizing a training tailored to the needs of an older adult population. Further researchers should obtain a greater sample size in order to obtain results that are statistically significant. The connections between mindfulness, spirituality, the reduction of pain and the promotion of healthy sleep are identified as additional variables to be explored. The potential for social workers in promote successful aging through mindfulness skills training is identified as an area for future research. Degree Type Dissertation Degree Name Doctor of Social Work (DSW) First Advisor Ram Cnaan, PhD Second Advisor Jeffrey Applegate, PhD This dissertation is available at ScholarlyCommons: http://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations_sp2/1 Third Advisor Amishi Jha, PhD


Purpose
The purpose of this study was to develop an objective algorithm to discriminate the earliest stages of glaucoma using frequency doubling technology (FDT) Matrix perimetry and spectral domain-optical coherence tomography (OCT) technology to improve primary care detection.

Materials and methods
Three hundred six eyes (mean age 58.67±15.12) from 161 patients were included and classified in the following three groups: 101 nonglaucoma (GI-NG), 100 glaucoma suspect (GII-SG), and 105 open-angle glaucoma (GIII-OAG). All participants underwent a visual field exploration using the Humphrey Matrix visual field instrument and retinal nerve fiber layer evaluation using the Topcon 3D OCT-2000. Pattern deviation plot was divided into 19 areas and five aggrupation or quadrants and ranked with a value between 0 and 4 according to its likelihood of normality, and differences among three groups were analyzed. Principal component analysis (PCA) was also used to extract the most notable features of FDT and OCT, and a logistic regression analysis was applied to obtain the classification rules.

Results
Only area numbers 7 and 12 and the central zone of FDT Matrix showed statistical differences (P<0.05) between GI-NG and GII-SG. The classification rules were estimated by the four PCA obtained from FDT Matrix and 3D OCT-2000 in a separate and combined use. Area under the receiver operating characteristic curve was 78.88% with FDT-PCA, 82.09% with OCT-PCA, and 94.27% with combined use of FDT and OCT-PCA to discriminate GI-NG and GII-SG.

Conclusion
The predictive rules based on FDT-PCA or OCT-PCA provide a high sensitivity and specificity to detect the earliest stages of glaucoma and even better in combined use. These predictive rules may help the future development of software for FDT Matrix perimetry and 3D OCT-2000, which will greatly improve their diagnostic ability, making them useful in daily practice in a primary care setting.


Erasmus yearned to make the Bible an effective instrument in the reform of society, church, and the life of individuals in the turbulent world the sixteenth century. He therefore composed paraphrases in which the words of Holy Scripture provided the core of a text vastly expanded to embrace the reforming 'philosophy of Christ.' The Paraphrases were successful beyond expectation and were quickly translated from Latin into French, German, English, and other languages. This volume is the third Paraphrase to be published in the New Testament Scholarship series in the CWE. In it Erasmus explores questions that have always been central to Christian self-understanding. Why is the cross folly to the wise of this world? In the Paraphrase on John, Erasmus hints broadly that the cause of human blindness lies in the arrogance of intellectual pretensions, the love of vain-glory, the lust for possessions, the fear of losing the supports that secure a comfortable way of life. Perhaps nothing will please the reader more the portraits of the chief characters in John's Gospels. We enjoy the simplicity of the lowly woman at the well, we understand the complexity of the distinguished Nicodemus. Above all, we are captured by the portrait of Christ himself. Upon the stage Erasmus has here designed, Christ appears first in the humility of a lowly artisan from a despised country; only to the discerning does his glory flash forth from his mortality, a mortality vividly etched in the scene on the cross. But in the last pages of the Paraphrase on John, Erasmus sets before us in sharp dramatic contrast the resurrected Christ glorious with a radiant holiness. Like Augustine in the City of God, Erasmus attempts to define the relationship between the two worlds in which the Christian lives - the heavenly and the spiritual, and the earthly and physical.


Let Y be an outcome of interest, X a vector of treatment measures, and W a vector of pre-treatment control variables. Here X may include (combinations of) continuous, discrete, and/or non-mutually exclusive "treatments". Consider the linear regression of Y onto X in a subpopulation homogenous in W = w (formally a conditional linear predictor). Let b 0 (w) be the coefficient vector on X in this regression. We introduce a semiparametrically efficient estimate of the average β 0 = E[b 0 (W)]. When X is binary-valued (multi-valued) our procedure recovers the (a vector of) average treatment effect(s). When X is continuously-valued, or consists of multiple non-exclusive treatments, our estimand coincides with the average partial effect (APE) of X on Y when the underlying potential response function is linear in X, but otherwise heterogenous across agents. When the potential response function takes a general nonlinear/heterogenous form, and X is continuously-valued, our procedure recovers a weighted average of the gradient of this response across individuals and values of X. We provide a simple, and semiparametrically efficient, method of covariate adjustment for settings with complicated treatment regimes. Our method generalizes familiar methods of covariate adjustment used for program evaluation as well as methods of semiparametric regression (e.g., the partially linear regression model).


The anisotropy of the solid-liquid interfacial energy, gamma(sl), plays a key role in the accurate prediction of growth morphologies in metallic alloys. This interfacial energy anisotropy can vary duo to alloy composition, especially when that of the pure solvent is weak. Recently Gonzales and Rappay, [1) showed the influence of an increasing zinc content on the growth direction of aluminum dendrites, which varied progressively from to as the zinc composition changed from 10 to 90 wt%. At the onset and end of this dendrito orientation transition (DOT), textured seaweeds were even observed. While this DOT could be simulated by phase field modeling with a change in the anisotropy of gamma(sl), seaweed could not be reproduced [2]. In order to explain this disagreement, it is necessary to have direct access to the anisotropy parameters. A combined numerical/experimental methodology to determine the needed experimental data is presented. It is based on inverse methods applied to 3D equilibrium shapes obtained by X-ray tomography. The gained anisotropy values are evaluated in a phase field code featuring a description of the interfacial energy anisotropy by a development up to the third order of the spherical harmonics for a cubic system. The hitter enables to model growth directions out of {110} planes, which was not possible with previous models.


Real-world experiments have shown that the transmission power and the received signal strength of low-power radio transceivers used in sensornets decrease when temperature increases. We analyze how this phenomenon affects the network layer, and find that temperature fluctuations may cause undesirable behavior by sensornet routing protocols such as CTP and RPL. Furthermore, we present an approach to make these protocols robust to temperature fluctuations by augmenting the ETX link metric with temperature hints.


In recent literature a relevant problem has been the relationship between career/personal contact networks and different career paths. In addition the recent advances in social capital theory have shown the way in which networks impact on personal careers. In particular women's careers appear to be negatively affected by the informational network structure. The main contribution of this work is to propose empirical evidence of this phenomenon by considering the gendered directorship network with relation to Austria and to show the structural differences by gender in the network. By using community detection techniques we have found various communities in which females seem not to be present at all, where females show significantly fewer contacts than males in the network, and finally where the proportion of males exceeds 91%. The results show the predominant role in the network of male directors; these differences are very relevant if we consider the network as a tool of vehicle information and as a power mechanism. In this paper we wish to make an original contribution to the debate of the well-known "glass-ceiling" effect.


Electrodes were implanted in the middle hypothalamus of rats to determine the neural organization of the "feeding" centers. Stimulations of the farand midlateral hypothalamic area produced feeding responses in sated animals, but only the former caused sated animals to cross an electrified grill to press a lever for food. After lesions had been made in the medial forebrain bundle, however, stimulations in the far-lateral hypothalamic area resulted in feeding in sated animals but failure to cross the electrical barrier to press a lever for food. Simultaneous far-lateral and "satiety" center stimulations produced feeding in sated animals but failed to "motivate" grill-crossing behavior.


Ensuring that the DC voltage remains within an acceptable range is a major concern for HVDC systems. In DC systems, the capacitance is the dominant factor that determines the volatility of the DC voltage against sudden disturbances in analogy to inertia of the AC system characterizing the rate of change of the frequency. As a solution to this problem, the authors of this paper previously proposed a novel control method for Modular Multilevel Converter (MMC), named Virtual Capacitor Control. This enables to make the MMC behave as if there were a physical capacitor whose size is adjustable. Thus, it is possible to attenuate the fluctuations of the DC voltage by virtually enhancing the equivalent capacitance of the system. This paper presents a method to determine the required size of this virtual capacitor to limit the peak of the DC voltage to a desired value in the case of the HVDC grid collecting the power generated by wind farms where a master/slave control may be applied. Its advantages are explicated with analysis on the DC voltage dynamics, and its feasibility is verified by EMT simulations of a three-terminal DC grid.


This article argues that consideration of the strength of ties between communicators can help reconcile disparate results on the impact of new media on social relations. It is argued from the research literature and studies by the author that where ties are strong, communicators can influence each other to adapt and expand their use of media to support the exchanges important to their tie, but where ties are weak, communicators are dependent on common, organizationally established means of communication and protocols established by others. Due to this differential use of media, a new medium that adds means and opportunities for previously unconnected others to communicate will have positive effects on weak ties and weak-tie networks, in particular by laying an infrastructure of latent ties (ones that exist technically but have not yet been activated), and providing an opportunity for weak ties to develop and strengthen. A new medium may also have positive effects on strongly tied pairs where it adds another means of communicating and supports the communication needs and tasks of the pair. However, where a new medium replaces a former, common means of communication, the dependence of weak ties on a common medium makes weak-tie networks highly susceptible to dissolution. In contrast, strong-tie networks, with their connections via multiple relations and multiple media, can be expected to be more robust under conditions of change.


Great improvements have been made in engine performance and emission control due to recent intensive research on engine systems. Further improvements are still required and turbocharging is aiding further improvements in emissions, power and downsizing. Turbocharged vehicles, however, exhibit a weak point of poor drivability under transient running conditions.

This poor drivability has a detrimental affect on the engines emission output during the transient phase. Various methods are being researched to improve transient performance of turbocharged engine systems. This study analyses the effectiveness of injecting air into the inlet manifold and the compressor at improving the transient performance of a turbocharged diesel engine when performing rapid load changes. The paper expands upon previous work carried out which demonstrates the potential of the system.

Computer simulations have been used to analyse the transient engine performance including the drive train. The transient engine models have been developed to analyse the transient engine performance with various injection strategies. The air injection system was modelled by injecting air into the plenum on the intake manifold and using an additional torque on the compressor wheel. The injection pressure was set at a pressure of 3 bar, which is in commonly used range. The valve and additional compressor torque were programmed to activate at the same instant that the transient regime begins.

To assess the effectiveness of the air injection strategies at improving the transient response of the engine the load step simulation was undertaken. During the simulations the air was injected either into the inlet manifold, compressor or both manifold and compressor also known as two point injection. A parametric study has been undertaken analysing vehicle speed, outlet pressure of the compressor, turbine inlet temperature and driver demand.

It has been observed that the air injection systems improve the transient response of the turbocharger and the overall performance of the engine. The vehicle speed response has been shown to be greatly improved, with the time required for the engine to reach 30kph when air injection is used, reduced by 71% with an additional minor gain for two point injection. These Improvements to the transient performance lead to a significant reduction in engine emissions.


In this thesis the lateral motion of rigid, soil-engaging implements hitched to a tractor with a one-point or a three-point hitch, as well as the vertical motion of seed drill coulters for use in tilled seedbeds are investigated. The motion of most tractor-hitched soil-engaging implements is heavily overdamped, it was therefore described by a first order model, based on a quantitative description of the lateral properties of the implement and a functional description of the hitch. For each hitch-implement combination an effective hitch-point, towards which the implement tends to move, was defined and a method to calculate the effective hitch length was developed. The return of a laterally disturbed implement was shown to be exponential. The disturbance is reduced to 10 % of its initial value when the implement moves forward a distance of 2.3 times the effective hitch length. The tractional hitch point and the directional hitch point coincide for one-point hitches but not for three-point hitches. This gives the three-point hitches unique properties: The angular as well as the lateral deflection of a three-point hitched implement will normally be smaller compared to those of a one-point hitched version of the same implement. This is true both when it is used on a hillside and when it is used with an asymmetric load. The three-point hitch is also shown to be versatile enough to enable the construction of a laterally movable and, for both directional and non-directional implements, self-centring front mounted three-point hitch. The horizontal and vertical soil forces on coulters with different rake angles (70-135°) were measured under both pseudostatic (no vertical velocity and no accelerations) and fully dynamic conditions. Most of the measurements were made in a soil bin with dried sand, but some of the pseudostatic measurements were made in a clay field. Empirical models were developed for the soil forces acting on the coulter under both pseudostatic and dynamic conditions. These models were used to simulate coulter equilibrium depth and coulter penetration. The simulations led to the following conclusions: Coulters with a large rake angle (≥1l0°) have several advantages when compared to coulters with smaller rake angles; their equilibrium depth is less sensitive both to speed and to soil parameters and their penetration is faster, better damped and less sensitive to suspension parameters (pivot arm length and pivot axis height) and to suspension type (single armed or parallel armed). The coulter penetration was found to improve with decreasing speed, decreasing moment of inertia and increasing depth of operation. No reasons were found for complicating the coulter suspension by using a parallel arm suspension or by using separate pivot axes for front and rear row coulters. The above conclusions apply to well tilled seedbeds without stones or clods. If there are frequent stones or clods in the seedbed the present recommendation of using coulters with rake angles around 90° seems valid.


Haplotype phasing of genetic variants is important for clinical interpretation of the genome, population genetic analysis, and functional genomic analysis of allelic activity. Here we present phASER, a fast and accurate approach for phasing variants that are overlapped by sequencing reads, including those from RNA-sequencing (RNA-seq), which often span multiple exons due to splicing. This provides 1) dramatically more accurate phasing of rare and de novo variants compared to population-based phasing; 2) phasing of variants in the same gene up to hundreds of kilobases away which cannot be obtained from DNA-sequencing reads; 3) high confidence measures of haplotypic expression, greatly improving power for allelic expression studies.


The aim of this study
was to determinate the gene expression levels of angiotensinogen, angiotensin
converting enzyme, renin, (pro)renin receptor, and the final rennin-angiotensin
system (RAS) products Angiotensin (Ang) II and Ang 1-7 inthe remnant kidney of 5/6
nephrectomized rats and its response to RAS pharmacological blockade. Male
Wistar rats were divided into five groups: sham operated (SO), 5/6
nephrectomized (NFX), NFX + captopril (50 mg/ kg/day), NFX + losartan (10
mg/kg/day), and NFX + aliskiren (10 mg/kg/day). Animals were followed up for
60 days and protein urine excretion was measured. Systolic blood pressure,
renal tissue RAS mRNA expression levels, plasma Ang II, and plasma Ang 1-7 were
evaluated at day 60 after nephrectomy. Blood pressure and urine protein were
increased after 5/6 nephrectomy. Ang II levels were increased 9.4 fold,
whereas Ang 1-7 decreased 72.9% in NFX animals compared with SO rats. 5/6 nephrectomy
increased renal angiotensinogen and (pro)renin receptor mRNA expression but
down-regulated renin mRNA expression. RAS blockade restored the systolic blood
pressure to normal values and slowed down urinary protein excretion, and also
prevented changes in Ang II and Ang 1-7. RAS blockade reduced (pro)renin
receptor, ACE, and AGT mRNA expression in the remnant kidney. However, renin
mRNA expression increased compared with NFX rats. In conclusion these results
suggest that inhibition of Ang II synthesis by RAS blockade is associated
with renal regulation of RAS mRNA expression and this may be through a mechanism
related with the Ang II/Ang 1-7 balance.


Recently, the centroidal momentum dynamics has received substantial attention to plan dynamically consistent motions for robots with arms and legs in multi-contact scenarios. However, it is also non convex which renders any optimization approach difficult and timing is usually kept fixed in most trajectory optimization techniques to not introduce additional non convexities to the problem. But this can limit the versatility of the algorithms. In our previous work, we proposed a convex relaxation of the problem that allowed to efficiently compute momentum trajectories and contact forces. However, our approach could not minimize a desired angular momentum objective which seriously limited its applicability. Noticing that the non-convexity introduced by the time variables is of similar nature as the centroidal dynamics one, we propose two convex relaxations to the problem based on trust regions and soft constraints. The resulting approaches can compute time-optimized dynamically consistent trajectories sufficiently fast to make the approach realtime capable. The performance of the algorithm is demonstrated in several multi-contact scenarios for a humanoid robot. In particular, we show that the proposed convex relaxation of the original problem finds solutions that are consistent with the original non-convex problem and illustrate how timing optimization allows to find motion plans that would be difficult to plan with fixed timing ††Implementation details and demos can be found in the source code available at https://git-amd.tuebingen.mpg.de/bponton/timeoptimization.


Globalization is a transformation process of social relations in the form of network of activities, interaction and trans-continental and inter-regional concessions and it is a worldwide phenomenon. Globalization also brings up threat for human security, that is a condition that requires the fulfillment of human basic needs in which human dignity must be respected and his participation in the life of community must be realized. This condition has an impact on the change of security concept from State centrism to human security At least seven factors must be fulfilled to realize human security, thats are: economic security, food security, health security, environmental security, personal security, community security and political security. The global awareness motivates the development of the concept, doctrine, norms and institution of Human Rights by making international consensus approved by International Community. This consensus is meant to determine the International standards and quality for the countries in implementing their duties to protect, promote, enforce and fulfill Human Rights. This consensus brings about some duties for the countries bound in it to implement the principles and rules in national domain (pacta sunt servanda). Globalization, indicated by the increasing intensity of inter-country relation and more problems regulated in International Law, results in bigger International Obligation of the countries in the world, among others is the obligation to maintain orderliness and peace in the world and to improve Human Rights


This chapter aims to present the importance, advantages, and disadvantages as well as the different types of noninvasive samples that can be used to monitor the carnivorous fauna and the parasitic agents that can infect these animals. This issue is extremely relevant, since noninvasive sampling has been increasingly used in different scientific researches that study animals with elusive habits, such as carnivores, and that claim animal welfare, once these animals do not need to be observed or captured. It is still important to highlight the scarcity of studies on parasitic diseases in free-living carnivores, being needed that parasitological surveys be done frequently by the conservation unit managers also to monitor the infectious agents that may be being introduced into the ecosystem of carnivores due to anthropization.


In 1898, Charlotte Perkins Gilman boldly pronounced economic independence to be the answer to the Woman Question. (1) Readers of her internationally-acclaimed Women and Economics were prepared to take her solution seriously. As one reviewer wrote, "Each of us was mulling away on her own little corner of the problem, with no idea that it [woman] was a Question, until Mrs. Stetson [as she was then known] dared get it into print" (Perry 892). Another concluded, "No woman, whatever her position or the conditions surrounding her, can read the book and not feel that the whole argument applies to herself and her concerns almost like a personal appeal" ("Charlotte Perkins Stetson" 115). Gilman's "whole argument" in Women and Economics is fairly straightforward: as a result of middle-class women's economic dependence on men, they had become more feminine and less human, thwarting what Gilman took to be evolution's plan. The process would only reverse itself once these women learned to stand on their own two feet. And once they did, both they and the men, also stunted by current inequities, would finally fulfill their human potential, to the world's great benefit. Though others had made similar arguments, few had stated the case so succinctly or persuasively. Suffrage leader Carrie Chapman Catt deemed Women and Economics an "immortal book on the status of women, ... utterly revolutionizing the attitude of mind in the entire country, indeed of other countries, as to woman's place" (qtd. in "Charlotte Gilman" 3). In her day, Gilman was considered the brains of the woman's movement and Women and Economics "the outstanding book on Feminism" (Schwimmer). Her thoughts on women's rights and wrongs were seen as visionary, providing the necessary answers to the day's burning questions, chief among them questions of gender. Among the many reviews and commentaries devoted to Women and Economics was a dialogue published in the Critic, featuring a "Tea with a Subject" held to discuss Gilman's influential views on the Woman Question. The attendees' opinions of the book vary, but they concur when one of their number faults Gilman for failing to mention "the power of love" as the reason women marry and stay married (Perry 892). This seems an odd indictment, for two reasons: first, the author was falling in love with her first cousin George Houghton Gilman while writing Women and Economics and so would herself have been preoccupied with "the power of love" at the time; and second, Women and Economics does indeed discuss love, on several occasions, albeit in idealized terms. That is, it focuses on love's ideals--"what love looks forward to," as Gilman phrases it--rather than the practicalities (219). This tendency to optimistic abstraction could explain why the tea-goers concluded that the topic of love gets short shrift in the book; so, too, could Gilman's heavier emphasis on the "sexuo-economic" basis of modern marriage, on its status as an institution premised less on love than on the exchange of domestic service for food and shelter (86). Admittedly, Gilman's treatment of love in Women and Economics is both light and slight. Do her pronouncements (and silences) concerning "love's power" teach us anything about her ongoing love affair, and vice-versa? Reading Women and Economics vis-a-vis this burgeoning relationship--and as the product of prior disastrous ones--clarifies its polemics as well as the author's own difficulties with the book's central issues. If, as the title of one article read, "America's Leading Feminist ... Says That the 'Woman Question' Is Not One of Sex but of Economics," the leading feminist herself was never so decisive, never so certain in her own life which of the two should take precedence (Gilman, "America's"). Before, during, and after both of her marriages, Gilman struggled to reconcile the demands of love and work, so much so that even while writing Women and Economics, she had yet satisfactorily to test out her theory that their reconciliation was not only possible but would, as she put it in her treatise, enable men and women at long last to form a "higher, truer union" (219). …


Aldrete Discharge Scoring: Appropriate for Post Anesthesia Phase I Discharge? Laura P. Dowling, BS, RN, CST University Of New Hampshire Durham, New Hampshire Background: Advances in anesthesia and surgical techniques, along with an increase in managed care, have led to an increase in ambulatory surgeries. The post-anesthesia discharge criteria used for inpatient care may not be appropriate for ambulatory care patients Aim: This quality improvement project was aimed at examining whether or not the patient length of stay (LOS) in Phase I of post anesthesia care was appropriate. The global aim was to right-size post anesthesia care Phase I length of stay for adult upper extremity surgical patients. The first step was to assess the effectiveness of the PACU discharge criteria. The specific aim was to determine the effectiveness of the Aldrete scoring tool at this facility. Methods: After study approval from the hospital's clinical inquiry committee, data from existing records of 60 adult upper-extremity surgical patients were used to compare LOS in Phase I of post-anesthesia care in relation to achieving a score of 8-10 on the Aldrete tool. A survey was given to PACU nurses to assess their understanding of discharge criteria. Results: An education seminar was conducted for PACU nurses as the survey revealed lack of knowledge of the hospital discharge protocol and lack of understanding of the steps and purpose of Aldrete scoring. A comparison of ASPAN approved discharge tools was completed to ascertain if a change in discharge protocol was warranted. Conclusion: It is anticipated that a new scoring tool will be instituted as the discharge protocol for Phase I PACU. Using a standardized tool provides consistency of care, reduces errors, promotes efficient use of resources, meets Joint Commission requirements, and meets ASPAN recommended standards. Use of the scoring tool should be taught as part of orientation to the unit. Implications for CNL practice: The CNL will take charge of this policy change process.


In a consensus algorithm based on Proof-of-Work, miners are motivated by crypto rewards. Furthermore, security is guaranteed because a cost of a 50% attack chance is higher than the potential rewards. However, because of the sudden price jump of cryptocurrencies and cheap prices of mining machines like ASICs, the cost and profit were on equilibrium for Bitcoin in 2017. In this situation, attackers are motivated by the balance between hash power and profits. In this paper, we describe that there is relevance between mining power on the network and price of tokens that can be taken securely on a blockchain. Users who exchange tokens on the PoW blockchain should monitor mining power and exchange tokens cheaper than the attack cost so that profit and cost of the attacker are not in equilibrium.


We show that if policymakers compute the optimal unconstrained interest-rate rule within a Taylor-type class, they may be led to rules that generate indeterminacy and/or instability under learning. This problem is compounded by uncertainty about structural parameters since an optimal rule that is determinate and stable under learning for one calibration may be indeterminate or unstable under learning under a different calibration. We advocate a procedure in which policymakers restrict attention to rules constrained to lie in the determinate learnable region for all plausible calibrations, and that minimize the expected loss, computed using structural parameter priors, subject to this constraint. Copyright 2007 The Ohio State University.


There has been an increasing awareness of the involvement of neurotransmitters other than serotonin in depression, with new antidepressants possessing effects on other receptor types, such as Agomelatine®, an antagonist of 5HT(_2c) receptors that functions as an agonist at melatonin receptors. AMPA receptors are one of the families of ionotropic glutamate receptors and another neurotransmitter receptor type that have been demonstrated to be important in the function of new antidepressants. AMPA receptors possess effects upon brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) expression, a protein involved in neurogenesis in the hippocampus, which is believed to be pivotal to antidepressant efficacy, with BDNF expression diminishing in critical brain areas in response to chronic stress, but increasing in the hippocampus in response to treatment with both antidepressants and/or AMPA receptor modulators. AMPA receptors interact with a family of accessory proteins, the transmembrane AMPA receptor regulatory proteins (TARPs), which not only possess important roles in the trafficking and targeting of AMPA receptors, but also function as auxiliary subunits to AMPA receptors. Present in several isoforms, each individual TARP also directly modifies AMPA receptor kinetics. As such TARPs and their effects must be taken into account for any pathophysiological or drug-induced change involving AMPA receptors. Despite the vast literature on AMPA receptors, there is comparatively little information regarding how TARPs modify AMPA receptor function, largely due to the absence of the necessary tools. We developed polyclonal antibodies specific to each of the known TARP isoforms (y2, y4, y8) mapping the distribution of the TARPs in the mouse CNS, displaying a different distribution profile for each of the TARP isoforms. TARP y8 is of particular interest, being shown to have a wide expression in the CNS from the frontal cortex to the spinal cord, but also a regional distribution in the forebrain that shares similarities to a positive allosteric modulator of AMPA receptors. There is also some evidence of a strain dependent distribution of TARP 78, possibly contributing to some of the behavioural differences between strains. With the extensive distribution of TARP y8 in the forebrain, particularly in those structures shown to experience severe neuronal atrophy in depression, such as the hippocampus, we focused on the antibodies generated to this isoform to generate immunoaffinity columns and immunopurify TARP y8 and its interacting proteins from Triton X-100'_™' solubilised, so effectively non-synaptic, cerebral cortex. Examination of the purified TARP y8 and its interacting partners by both immunological and proteomic techniques revealed a range of proteins previously not implicated as TARP interacting proteins important in several pathophysiological situations, including several isoforms of actin. Furthermore, the immunopurified TARP y8 material also contained a protein identified with multiple 5HT(_2c) receptor antibodies at -60 kDa, the molecular weight correlating to fully glycosylated 5HT(_2c) receptor. Further study of TARP and AMPA receptor levels in the forebrain of mice with either forebrain-specific over-expression, or forebrain-specific knockdown of 5HT(_2c) receptors, identified several differences in total protein levels of the TARPs and AMPA receptor subunits. TARP y8 was shown to possess higher levels of expression in both of the mice strains with altered 5HT2c receptor expression, suggesting a complex functional interaction between TARPs/AMPA receptors and 5HT(_2c) receptors. These results, in addition to providing evidence of strain variations with regard to TARP distributions, have also identified several previously unknown TARP y8 interacting proteins, including, but not limited to cytoskeletal proteins. The results also show evidence of both a physical and functional interaction of TARP y8 and AMPA receptors with 5HT(_2c) receptors in the forebrain, particularly the cerebral cortex - findings of potential importance regarding the role of AMPA receptors in mood disorders.


The climate impact of bioenergy is commonly quantified in terms of CO2 equivalents, using a fixed 100‐year global warming potential as an equivalency metric. This method has been criticized for the inability to appropriately address emissions timing and the focus on a single impact metric, which may lead to inaccurate or incomplete quantification of the climate impact of bioenergy production. In this study, we introduce Dynamic Relative Climate Impact (DRCI) curves, a novel approach to visualize and quantify the climate impact of bioenergy systems over time. The DRCI approach offers the flexibility to analyze system performance for different value judgments regarding the impact category (e.g., emissions, radiative forcing, and temperature change), equivalency metric, and analytical time horizon. The DRCI curves constructed for fourteen bioenergy systems illustrate how value judgments affect the merit order of bioenergy systems, because they alter the importance of one‐time (associated with land use change emissions) versus sustained (associated with carbon debt or foregone sequestration) emission fluxes and short‐ versus long‐lived climate forcers. Best practices for bioenergy production (irrespective of value judgments) include high feedstock yields, high conversion efficiencies, and the application of carbon capture and storage. Furthermore, this study provides examples of production contexts in which the risk of land use change emissions, carbon debt, or foregone sequestration can be mitigated. For example, the risk of indirect land use change emissions can be mitigated by accompanying bioenergy production with increasing agricultural yields. Moreover, production contexts in which the counterfactual scenario yields immediate or additional climate impacts can provide significant climate benefits. This paper is accompanied by an Excel‐based calculation tool to reproduce the calculation steps outlined in this paper and construct DRCI curves for bioenergy systems of choice.


Sudan has undertaken decentralization reforms since the early 1990s, in a federal government system with three tiers: federal, state, and local government levels. Fiscal decentralization was fueled by a decade-long oil boom. With the secession of the South in July 2011, Sudan suffers from large oil revenue losses and significant economic instability. Own revenue mobilization at sub-national levels is low. Inadequate and unevenly distributed own-revenues at both state and local government levels and unpredictable levels of transfers from the federal government pose serious obstacles to implement the policy of decentralization. The purpose of this study is to assess how the current sub-national revenue system can be better designed and managed to thereby strengthen the states' and localities' own resource mobilization. The analysis focuses on the composition of sub-national revenues, administrative practices, and possible impacts of the current system on economic activities. Experiences from other African countries that have suffered similar challenges in the past are also examined. On this basis the study provides recommendations on how to improve sub-national revenue collection without jeopardizing economic activities and private sector development.


Enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) is widely used in medical diagnostics and fundamental biological research due to its high specificity and reproducibility. However, the traditional 96-well-plate based ELISA still suffers from several notable drawbacks, such as long assay time (4-6 hours), burdensome procedures and large sample/reagent volumes (∼100 μl), which significantly limit traditional ELISA's applications in rapid clinical diagnosis and quasi-real-time prognosis of some fast-developing diseases. Here, we developed a user friendly glass capillary array based microfluidic ELISA device. Benefiting from the high surface-to-volume ratio of the capillary and the rapid chemiluminescent photo-imaging method with a commercial camera, our capillary based ELISA device significantly reduced the sample volume to 20 μL and shortened the total assay time to as short as 16 minutes (including detection time), which represent approximately 10-fold and 5-fold reduction in assay time and sample volume, respectively, in comparison with the traditional plate-based method. Furthermore, through the double exposure method, a nearly 10-fold increase in the detection dynamic range was achieved over the traditional well-based ELISA. Our device can be broadly used in rapid biochemical analysis for biomedicine and research/development laboratories.


With innovation in wireless sensing and communication technologies, we are now able to continuously monitor people's everyday conditions. Our goal is to design and develop a pervasive health software architecture on which developers can add new sensing devices, com bine multiple information streams from the devices, and develop an innovative health application (e.g., Web or mobile). In this article, we showcase how to use HealthOS and to develop HealthOS applications and adapters.


Mining learner-generated sketches holds significant potential for acquiring deep insight into learners' mental models. Drawing has been shown to benefit both learning outcomes and engagement, and learners' sketches offer a rich source of diagnostic information. Unfortunately, interpreting learners' sketches—even sketches comprised of semantically grounded symbols—poses significant computational challenges. In this paper we describe SKETCHMINER, an educational sketch mining framework that automatically maps learners' symbolic sketches to topology-based abstract representations that are then analyzed with graph similarity metrics to perform automated assessment and misconception discovery. SKETCHMINER has been used to mine a corpus of symbolic science sketches created by upper elementary students in inquiry-based drawing episodes as they interact with an intelligent science notebook in the domain of physical science. Results of a study with SKETCHMINER suggest that it can correctly assess learners' symbolic sketches.


Development of a vascular system involves the assembly of two principal cell types - endothelial cells and vascular smooth muscle cells/pericytes (vSMC/PC) - into many different types of blood vessels. Most, if not all, vessels begin as endothelial tubes that subsequently acquire a vSMC/PC coating. We have previously shown that PDGF-B is critically involved in the recruitment of pericytes to brain capillaries and to the kidney glomerular capillary tuft. Here, we used desmin and alpha-smooth muscle actin (ASMA) as markers to analyze vSMC/PC development in PDGF-B-/- and PDGFR-beta-/- embryos. Both mutants showed a site-specific reduction of desmin-positive pericytes and ASMA-positive vSMC. We found that endothelial expression of PDGF-B was restricted to immature capillary endothelial cells and to the endothelium of growing arteries. BrdU labeling showed that PDGFR-beta-positive vSMC/PC progenitors normally proliferate at sites of endothelial PDGF-B expression. In PDGF-B-/- embryos, limb arterial vSMC showed a reduced BrdU-labeling index. This suggests a role of PDGF-B in vSMC/PC cell proliferation during vascular growth. Two modes of vSMC recruitment to newly formed vessels have previously been suggested: (1) de novo formation of vSMC by induction of undifferentiated perivascular mesenchymal cells, and (2) co-migration of vSMC from a preexisting pool of vSMC. Our data support both modes of vSMC/PC development and lead to a model in which PDGFR-beta-positive vSMC/PC progenitors initially form around certain vessels by PDGF-B-independent induction. Subsequent angiogenic sprouting and vessel enlargement involves PDGF-B-dependent vSMC/PC progenitor co-migration and proliferation, and/or PDGF-B-independent new induction of vSMC/PC, depending on tissue context.


Patricia Martens's passion for understanding and spreading knowledge about health research manifested itself in different ways throughout her life. She believed strongly in the power of such data to point to ways of improving health and reducing inequality.

A gifted and enthusiastic teacher, skilled academic and widely admired administrator, she served as the director of the Manitoba Centre for Health Policy (MCHP) from 2004 to 2014.

When she was diagnosed with mesothelioma, an aggressive form of cancer usually caused by exposure to asbestos, she recognized the opportunity to speak up and support the campaign to have Canada join other developed countries in banning asbestos. She sent a letter urging Prime Minister Stephen Harper to acknowledge that all forms of asbestos are hazardous to human health, though she only received a polite form letter in reply, her husband, Gary Martens, recalls.

Ever the curious researcher, she told local media soon after her diagnosis, "I want to try to understand this cancer-care journey, so this gives me an opportunity to put on my scientific hat and say, 'How could we do this a little better?'"

Focusing on her work kept her from dwelling on what she called the "yucky things" about her disease.

Patricia Martens died at the age of 62 on Jan. 10. "It is surely a tragic irony that someone who was such a proponent for public health would die from this illness," said David Henry, a Toronto academic, research scientist and friend of Dr. Martens.

Dr. Martens's first career was as a high school chemistry and mathematics teacher in Winnipeg. In 1978, however, she moved with her husband, Gary Martens, to work a farm in rural Manitoba. She returned to university when both her children were in school.

Consequently, she entered the research world late – she was 47 in 1999 when she was awarded her PhD in health sciences at the University of Manitoba. Though her academic career was relatively short, by the time of her death, Dr. Martens had presented at more than 400 conferences and published more than 300 articles, reports, book chapters and abstracts. She became a fellow of the Royal Society of Canada and of the Canadian Academy of Health Sciences.

Dr. Martens was also admitted to the Order of Canada in 2013, received the R.D. Defries Award (the highest award from the Canadian Public Health Association) and was named the 2014 Justice Emmett Hall Laureate for contributions to health research.

Dr. Martens was famous in health policy circles for her lively and humorous presentations, often involving the use of unusual props.

She would distribute licorice sticks, for example, to help non-statisticians grasp the significance of the Lorenz curve, a graphical representation of income-related inequality. The more the curve sags, the greater the inequality. Dr. Martens would have audience members bend their licorice to mirror the curve on the slide of a graph she projected – a curve that revealed, in one instance, that rates of suicide (and suicide attempts) in Manitoba were much higher for people in the 20-per-cent-lowest-income category. This curve, she noted, suggested the need for targeted interventions. In contrast, an almost-straight line on another graph revealed that among people over 55, dementia affects all income groups in Manitoba almost equally, suggesting the need for universal interventions.

Dr. Martens also liked to show snapshots of a variety of deer-crossing road signs, to prompt reflection on whether deer actually look different in different provinces and countries, and to stress the importance of investigation and context.

Most memorable, however, was her trademark "squish and shift" gesture, in which she clasped her hands and raised her arms to form a triangle. She used this gesture to help audiences understand the significance of changing the position and shape of a bell curve representing the distribution of a particular health or social indicator in a population.

If the whole curve could be shifted in a positive direction (she would maintain the triangle proportions but shift her arms to the side) the overall population health gains could be significant, but the gap between the least and most healthy (the tails of the curve) would remain the same. Next, she would demonstrate the "squish" (she would bring her elbows closer together) to explain the importance of a targeted effort to reduce inequality by improving the condition of those who were least healthy.

"She was not as staid as some of her academic peers," her husband, a retired University of Manitoba lecturer, wryly observes. (He abandoned full-time farming in 1996 and began commuting to Winnipeg with his wife.)

"Pat could take dry data, tables and graphs and make an engaging and compelling story," says Brian Postl, dean of health sciences at the University of Manitoba. "And she was so credible – anyone working with large data sets recognizes this."

She was a giant in her field as well as being remarkably selfless and generous, Dr. Henry added. He credits her with providing invaluable advice and guidance to him when he arrived from Australia in 2007 to become president of the Toronto-based Institute for Clinical Evaluative Sciences, a health research centre similar to the one Dr. Martens headed in Manitoba.

Yet asked what challenges Dr. Martens faced in her life, her husband said she would sometimes lament that women had trouble in high-level leadership roles. "She sometimes thought she was not taken seriously enough."

Dr. Martens was born in Calgary on Jan. 25, 1952, the middle child of three. Her father, Howard, was an insurance salesman whose job saw the family move cities every five years or so. Her mother, Hazel, was a homemaker while raising the children and later worked in libraries.

Dr. Martens met Gary Martens when both of them were studying chemistry at the University of Manitoba. They married in 1974. She went on to become a teacher at St. Mary's Academy, a private girls' school in Winnipeg, while her husband took a job at a soil lab. But he yearned to be near the family farm, where he had grown up with his Mennonite parents. "Pat had always lived in cities and it took a year to convince her to move," he said.

The couple bought and also rented farmland near Kleefeld, about 60 kilometres south of Winnipeg, and they worked as much as 640 acres.

Dr. Martens settled in quickly. She created her own community with other young mothers, became active in the local Mennonite church, assumed the role of farm bookkeeper, kept a large garden and took meals out to the field.

The couple had two large trucks, and Gary remembers them driving loads of oats to Winnipeg in tandem – he in one truck with their five-year-old son, John, and Pat in the other with Rebecca, their infant daughter.

Before returning to university, Dr. Martens became active with La Leche League, which promotes breastfeeding. For her master's degree, she studied the barriers that helped explain the low (40 per cent) breastfeeding rate among Sagkeeng First Nations women. For her PhD thesis, she designed an intervention – her key innovation was the training of peer counsellors – that resulted in an increase (to 70 per cent) of breastfeeding rates among the women. Rates of low birth weight and premature births also dropped.

As director of the MCHP, Dr. Martens launched new programs of collaborative research. For example, she convened a Need to Know team, composed of two planners from each regional health authority in Manitoba, MCHP academics and staff from the province's health ministry. They developed reports on subjects such as healthcare utilization and mental health. (The team won a Canadian Institutes of Health Research Knowledge Translation Award for regional impact.)

Dr. Martens's personality was key to the success of her initiatives, maintains Monique Vielfaure Mackenzie, executive director of Regional Health Authorities of Manitoba. "She had a knack for making whoever she spoke with feel like the only person in the room. You just felt comfortable with her. She was never intimidating, despite all her accomplishments."

Dr. Martens died at her farm home, almost two years after she received her diagnosis of mesothelioma. She had continued to work and participate, as much as possible, in the activities of the MCHP until weeks before her death.

Dr. Martens once told a local reporter she was "a bit of scattered research scientist who also loves to be a farm lady and work in a church and do the local community stuff."

Patricia Martens leaves her husband, Gary; children, John and Rebecca; grandchildren, Charlotte and Alexander; and extended family.


A sophisticated and subversive guide on how to make a difference ...one day at a time. You watch the news every night. You turn off your television set, disturbed by what you've seen and wondering what, if anything, you can do to make a difference. This is the book you need to get started. You may think that the issues which confront us are so huge, so complicated, so difficult to deal with that it's hard to believe anything we can do will have a meaningful impact but Michael Norton will prove you wrong. A lot of people doing a lot of little things could have a huge impact. This book has an idea-a-day for changing the world. Most are quite simple, can be done from home, and will not take much time. You can make a start whenever you like. Just open the book at today's date, read, enjoy, be inspired to action - and do something!


Improving the long-term sustainability and resilience of smallholder agriculture in Africa is highly dependent on conserving or improving the quality of the natural resource. Conservation agriculture is conceived around more integrated and effective management strategies for provisioning both food and other ecosystem services. If unattended to, land degradation would reduce agricultural productivity and increase pressure on marginal environments in the Tigray highlands of Ethiopia, adversely affecting food security and livelihoods of smallholder farmers. This paper answers some pertinent questions about mass mobilization of free compulsory labor for ecological restoration in Tigray. It details perception of changes in climate; the process of collective decisionmaking; resistance, documentation, and enforcement of rules; methods of conflict resolution; knowledge and information networks; arrangements for benefit sharing of communal resources; and the role of gender in mass mobilization for communal work. We analyzed data collected from 20 villages in 3 districts in the Tigray region through a household survey using a structured questionnaire, focus group discussions, and personal observations. The results reveal that the people are motivated to provide their free labor to restore the ecology to increase agricultural productivity and production to avoid food insecurity and improve their general livelihood. Availability of institutions in terms of grassroots organizations and rules and regulations was a major factor in the positive response to the call for action. The commitment of the government at both the national and local levels (through sensitization and mobilization for group formation and provision of tools and construction materials); the ethnic homogeneity of the population; and the existence of the Orthodox Church, where most of the people were members, were major factors for the success of the community mobilization for collective action in Tigray. Social networking with neighbors, the clergy, and leaders of grassroots organizations provided the knowledge and information on climate variability and solutions required to conserve the ecology and improve human livelihood. We also observed that there were no differences in gender division of labor except that women worked half the workload of men in a day; the women also did the cooking and cleaned up the surroundings after eating at the site. Both men and women played active roles in leadership with regard to mobilization of people, communal work planning and scheduling, conflict resolution, and sharing of community products. An impact assessment of the ecological conservation in Tigray on agricultural productivity and production and food security would be useful. It will be interesting to replicate the study in other areas in Ethiopia and other countries where the societies may not be homogenous to find out the level of commitment of the people to communal work.


Number Theoretic Transforms (NTTs) are defined in a finite ring of integers Z (_M), where M is the modulus. All the arithmetic operations are carried out modulo M. NTTs are similar in structure to DFTs, hence fast FFT type algorithms may be used to compute NTTs efficiently. A major advantage of the NTT is that it can be used to compute error free convolutions, unlike the FFT it is not subject to round off and truncation errors. In 1976 Winograd proposed a set of short length DFT algorithms using a fewer number of multiplications and approximately the same number of additions as the Cooley-Tukey FFT algorithm. This saving is accomplished at the expense of increased algorithm complexity. These short length DFT algorithms may be combined to perform longer transforms. The Winograd Fourier Transform Algorithm (WFTA) was implemented on a TMS9900 microprocessor to compute NTTs. Since multiplication conducted modulo M is very time consuming a special purpose external hardware modular multiplier was designed, constructed and interfaced with the TMS9900 microprocessor. This external hardware modular multiplier allowed an improvement in the transform execution time. Computation time may further be reduced by employing several microprocessors. Taking advantage of the inherent parallelism of the WFTA, a dedicated parallel microprocessor system was designed and constructed to implement a 15-point WFTA in parallel. Benchmark programs were written to choose a suitable microprocessor for the parallel microprocessor system. A master or a host microprocessor is used to control the parallel microprocessor system and provides an interface to the outside world. An analogue to digital (A/D) and a digital to analogue (D/A) converter allows real time digital signal processing.


Big data and its use by artificial intelligence is disrupting innovation and creating new legal challenges. For example, computers engaging in what IBM terms "computational creativity" are able to use big data to innovate in ways historically entitled to patent protection. This can occur under circumstances in which an artificial intelligence, rather than a person, meets the requirements to qualify as a patent inventor (a phenomenon I refers to as "computational invention"). Yet it is unclear whether a computer can legally be a patent inventor, and it is even unclear whether a computational invention is patentable. There is no law, court opinion, or government policy that directly addresses computational invention, and language in the Patent Act requiring inventors to be individuals and judicial characterizations of invention as a "mental act" may present barriers to computer inventorship. Definitively resolving these issues requires deciding whether a computer qualifies as an "inventor" under the Patent and Copyright Clause of the Constitution: "The Congress shall have the power…to promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries." Whether computers can legally be inventors is of critical importance for the computer and technology industries and, more broadly, will affect how future innovation occurs. Computational invention is already happening, and it is only a matter of time until it is happening routinely. In fact, it may be only a matter of time until computers are responsible for the majority of innovation and potentially displacing human inventors. This chapter argues that a dynamic interpretation of the Patent and Copyright Clause permits computer inventors. This would incentivize the development of creative artificial intelligence and result in more innovation for society as a whole. However, even if computers cannot be legal inventors, it should still be possible to patent computational inventions. This is because recognition of inventive subject matter can qualify as inventive activity. Thus, individuals who subsequently "discover" computational inventions may qualify as inventors. Yet as this chapter will discuss, this approach may be inefficient, unfair, and logistically challenging.


Abstract This article focuses on the politicisation of sections of the Loyalist paramilitaries and the consequences for the restructuring of the politics of Loyalism in the contemporary period. Following the signing of the Belfast Agreement, Loyalism found new expressions through several groupings, such as the now disbanded Ulster Democratic Party (UDP) and the Progressive Unionist Party (PUP). These parties came to prominence in 1994 following the ceasefire statement issued by the Combined Loyalist Military Command. The politics they projected was seemingly different and more progressive than that which had been heard before from Loyalism. Hence it was soon dubbed 'New Loyalism'. This article analyses the political and social dynamics behind New Loyalism. It suggests reasons why it took the form it did. It explains why New Loyalism has failed to mark a permanent fissure within Unionist politics. It sets this in the context of the reconstruction of contemporary Unionist political hegemony around the DUP and the marginalisation of other political groupings within unionism.


We have used the technique of PET to chart the cortical areas activated by visual motion in the brain of a patient with a severe impairment in the ability to recognize the motion of objects (akinetopsia), following bilateral lesions which have so far been presumed to include area V5. High resolution MRI of her brain showed that the zone occupied by area V5 had indeed been destroyed bilaterally. Positron emission tomography activation images, co-registered to the MRIs, showed three principal regions of the cortex activated by motion. These were located (i) bilaterally in the precuneus of superior parietal cortex (area 7 of Brodmann); (ii) bilaterally in the cuneus (a region considered to represent upper V3); (iii) in the left lingual and fusiform gyri (possibly lower V3 and adjacent areas). In contrast to normal subjects, there was no significant activation of area V1 or V2. The stimuli used for scanning were chosen by prior testing of the patient's visual capacities. The control stimulus was a static random distribution of light squares on a dark background. In the moving stimulus these squares moved coherently, the direction of motion changing periodically between the cardinal directions (left, right, up and down). It was ascertained that the patient could correctly identify these directions. We also found (i) that her occasional errors were always in the direction opposite to the motion presented, so that her identification of axis of motion (i.e. vertical or horizontal) was 100% correct; (ii) that when a few static squares were added to the moving the display her identification of direction fell to chance but her identification of the axis of motion remained 100%; (iii) that when a few squares moving opposite and orthogonal to the predominant direction of motion were incorporated, her performance on both direction and axis fell to chance; (iv) that she was unable to identify motion in oblique directions between the horizontal or vertical axes, always guessing one of the cardinal directions. In accounting for her residual vision in terms of cortex, which remains active, we hypothesize; (i) that the bilateral loss of V5 has affected direction sensitive mechanisms at other sites in the cortex which are interconnected with V5 and (ii) that in consequence her performance on our tests reflects the properties of dynamic orientation selective mechanisms that were also differentially activated by the stimuli used during scanning.


Fetal alcohol Spectrum Disorders (FASD) are associated with reduced proliferation and loss of large numbers of neural crest stem cells.   Previous studies suggest that alcohol increases oxidative stress inducing DNA damage and increasing apoptosis in a p53 independent manor.  p53 independent cell losses are often associated with ATM and Chk-2 activation and points to a possible mechanism of cell loss in FASD.  In addition, increased phosphorylation activity of Chk-2 effects cell cycle progression, in part, through phosphorylation of the Fox-1 transcription factor.  This suggests a possible mechanism effecting proliferation and apoptosis in FASD.  Both Chk-1 and Chk2 proteins may play a critical role in the cellular response following DNA damage, altering cell proliferation and increasing cell loss. This study examined the possible effect of alcohol exposure of neuronal stem cells and the effect on expression and localization of Chk-2.   Immuno-cytochemistry and Western blot analysis were conducted in order to determine cellular localization and expressional changes of Chk-2 associated with alcohol exposure. We demonstrate a significant different in expression levels and nuclear localization between alcohol-treated and control cells. We suggest strong support for the role of the Chk-2 and Fox-1 in cell loss and proliferative changes in FASD phenotypes.


Research and translocations of brush-tailed rock-wallabies (Petrogale penicillata) in New South Wales have, in conjunction with studies in Victoria and Queensland, provided extensive insights yet also document the high variability in the species' response to management. Nonetheless, experts are being asked to quantify predicted response for cost–benefit prioritisation models that will rank threatened species and populations worthy of future funding, with little consideration of the basic principles behind adaptive management. The weaknesses of these prioritisation models must be evaluated carefully by experts in order that appropriate advice is provided which genuinely assists decision-making. I explore the questions facing rock-wallaby ecologists as a case study of how much more we need to know and learn within adaptive approaches to conservation before our predictions are robust.


MCCARTHY, SARA VARLEY (2 Dec. 1891-19 Mar. 1987), reporter and social welfare volunteer who helped organize the Cleveland Diocesan Council of the NATIONAL COUNCIL of CATHOLIC WOMEN (NCCW) in 1923, received a papal medal for distinguished service by a layperson to the Catholic Church in 1936. She continued to serve religious and secular organizations locally and nationally for 50 more years. McCarthy served NCCW as local president (1935-38) and as national board member and committee chair, and chaired the women's committee for the SEVENTH NATIONAL EUCHARISTIC CONGRESS (1935). McCarthy was born in Youngstown to John and Mary Cavanaugh Varley, one of 9 children, and educated there by Ursuline nuns. She married Cleveland journalist Eugene McCarthy in 1931; they resided in EAST CLEVELAND. After her husband died (1956), McCarthy moved to a SHAKER HEIGHTS apartment. She was a reporter for the Youngstown Telegram, the PLAIN DEALER, and the CATHOLIC UNIVERSE BULLETIN and assisted at the Diocesan Bureau of Information. Both URSULINE COLLEGE and the Catholic Youth Organization honored McCarthy for her extensive social service involvement. McCarthy died in Cleveland and is buried in Calvary Cemetery in Youngstown, Ohio.


Abstract The primary prey species of mammal-eating killer whales in the Salish Sea, the inland waters of southern British Columbia and Washington state, have experienced dramatic increases in population abundances in the last 25 years. It is possible that changes in prey abundance over time have resulted in changes in predator spatial use, occurrence and group size. Focused studies of mammal-eating killer whale behavior in the area were undertaken from 1987–1993, and an extensive record of sightings with confirmed identifications was available from 2004–2010. Changes in occurrence across years, months, and subareas of the Salish Sea were examined as well as changes in group size and in the identity of specific matrilines using the area. Occurrence of mammal-eating whales increased significantly from 2004–2010 with different seasonal peaks compared to 1987–1993. Different matrilines occurred in different seasons, time periods, and subareas. Group size was larger in 2004–2010 than in 1987–1993. The whales may be increasing use of the area due to increasing prey abundance or an overall increase in the whale population size. Changes in seasonal patterns of occurrence and the increase in group size between the two periods could be due to increased prey diversity.


3D Bioprinting: Fundamentals, Principles and Applications provides the latest information on the fundamentals, principles, physics, and applications of 3D bioprinting. It contains descriptions of the various bioprinting processes and technologies used in additive biomanufacturing of tissue constructs, tissues, and organs using living cells. The increasing availability and decreasing costs of 3D printing technologies are driving its use to meet medical needs, and this book provides an overview of these technologies and their integration. Each chapter discusses current limitations on the relevant technology, giving future perspectives. Professor Ozbolat has pulled together expertise from the fields of bioprinting, tissue engineering, tissue fabrication, and 3D printing in his inclusive table of contents. Topics covered include raw materials, processes, machine technology, products, applications, and limitations. The information in this book will help bioengineers, tissue and manufacturing engineers, and medical doctors understand the features of each bioprinting process, as well as bioink and bioprinter types. In addition, the book presents tactics that can be used to select the appropriate process for a given application, such as tissue engineering and regenerative medicine, transplantation, clinics, or pharmaceutics.Describes all aspects of the bioprinting process, from bioink processing through design for bioprinting, bioprinting techniques, bioprinter technologies, organ printing, applications, and future trendsProvides a detailed description of each bioprinting technique with an in-depth understanding of its process modeling, underlying physics and characteristics, suitable bioink and cell types printed, and major accomplishments achieved thus farExplains organ printing technology in detail with a step-by-step roadmap for the 3D bioprinting of organs from isolating stem cells to the post-transplantation of organsPresents tactics that can be used to select the appropriate process for a given application, such as tissue engineering and regenerative medicine, transplantation, clinics, or pharmaceutics


In this paper we propose a unified approach for integrating implicit and explicit knowledge in neurosymbolic systems as a combination of neural and neurofuzzy modules. In the developed hybrid system, training data set is used for building neuro-fuzzy modules, and represents implicit domain knowledge. The explicit domain knowledge on the other hand is represented by fuzzy rules, which are directly mapped into equivalent neural structures. The aim of this approach is to improve the abilities of modular neural structures, which are based on incomplete learning data sets, since the knowledge acquired from human experts is taken into account for adapting the general neural architecture. Three methods to combine the explicit and implicit knowledge modules are proposed.


This volume of Education and Treatment of Children marks the 25th anniversary issue of the Council for Children with Behavioral Disorders Monograph Series on Severe Behavior Disorders of Children and Youth. The 10 articles published here represent a peer-reviewed sample of papers originally presented at the 25th Annual Teacher Educators for Children with Behavior Disorders Conference held in Tempe, Arizona in November of 2001. This volume is devoted to providing in-depth information on the education and treatment of students with emotional and behavioral disorders (EBD). Consulting editors and field reviewers from both Education and Treatment of Children and Behavioral Disorders were responsible for reviewing and selecting these articles for publication. Collectively, these articles address a number of issues and challenges, suggest a number of programmatic strategies, and propose directions for future research and practice for students with EBD. This issue begins with four research articles focused on preschool and first grade students with or at-risk of emotional and behavioral disorders. In the first of these early intervention studies, Mary Magee Quinn examines the effectiveness of a structured cooperative learning approach using positive peer role models to teach interpersonal problem-solving skills and foster increased academic engaged time in first grade boys who exhibited antisocial behavior. In the second article, Jolivette, Stichter, Sibilsky, Scott, and Ridgley present a descriptive study of what constitutes choice making opportunities for preschool children with and without disabilities in various environments. The purposes of the study were to determine: 1) the rate of naturally occurring choice making opportunities for young students; 2) what types of opportunities were offered/ initiated; and 3) the effects of these opportunities on students' social behavior. In the third article, Lane, Wehby, Menzies, Gregg, Doukas, and Munton examine the effectiveness of a supplemental early literacy program for first-grade students identified by their teachers as at-risk for antisocial behavior and unresponsive to a comprehensive school-wide interventions. Lane and her colleagues found that all of the students made growth in word attack skills and demonstrated lower levels of disruptive behavior in the classroom. In the fourth article focusing on young children, Serna, Nielsen, Mattern, and Forness investigated the use of different measures to identify preschoolers at risk for emotional or behavioral disorders. These authors specifically analyzed the impact of these measures on the gender and ethnicity of the students in the study. The next four articles in the Severe Behavior Disorders of Children and Youth monograph focus on the role of academics in the education and treatment of students with emotional and behavioral disorders. Gable, Hendrickson, Tonelson, and Van Acker emphasize the importance of establishing a classroom environment that reflects positive teacher-pupil interactions, encourages active student engagement, ensures high rates of correct responses, and affords students high rates of positive reinforcement. They discuss ways to identify predictable learning and behavior problems and to plan for instruction reflecting both acculturation and chronological age differences among children. In the next article, Lopes, Cruz, and Rutherford describe a study of fifth and sixth grade students in a public school in Porto, Portugal. The purpose of their study was to determine whether students who were low achievers and/or disruptive were less popular than their peers, if they tended to maintain their negative social status over a tw o-year period, and if they were prone to continue their low academic achievement and disruptive behaviors over that time period. Specifically, they analyzed: 1) the associations of low achievement and/or externalized behavior problems with peer social acceptance and social rejection; 2) the specific behaviors that promote positive or negative peer interactions; and 3) the stability of social status over a two-year period. …


In this paper, we present a novel and general network structure towards accelerating the inference process of convolutional neural networks, which is more complicated in network structure yet with less inference complexity. The core idea is to equip each original convolutional layer with another low-cost collaborative layer (LCCL), and the element-wise multiplication of the ReLU outputs of these two parallel layers produces the layer-wise output. The combined layer is potentially more discriminative than the original convolutional layer, and its inference is faster for two reasons: 1) the zero cells of the LCCL feature maps will remain zero after element-wise multiplication, and thus it is safe to skip the calculation of the corresponding high-cost convolution in the original convolutional layer, 2) LCCL is very fast if it is implemented as a 1*1 convolution or only a single filter shared by all channels. Extensive experiments on the CIFAR-10, CIFAR-100 and ILSCRC-2012 benchmarks show that our proposed network structure can accelerate the inference process by 32% on average with negligible performance drop.


The creation of periodic structures in nanoor micro-scale is an exciting challenge of materials science. Meanwhile, the structures with alternating periodic dielectric constants, known as photonic crystals, are great potentials for many applications in optical integrated circuits. In this dissertation, we design and fabricate periodic two(2D) and three-dimensional (3D) photonic microstructures with desired symmetry, scalable size or novel functionality (e.g. anisotropic feature) using holographic lithography (HL) technique and via harnessing mechanical instability in different polymer systems. In fabrication of 3D diamond-like photonic structure via four-beam single-exposure HL, we quantitatively analyze the lattice distortion due to refraction effect and photoresist shrinkage, which decreases the symmetry of the resulting structure, thus degrading the quality of photonic bandgap (PBG) properties. To address the optical challenge in fabrication of a perfect 3D photonic crystal using four-beam single-exposure HL approach, we design dual-beam triple-exposure HL and fabricate size-scalable diamond-like structure with minimal distortion. We also investigate the robustness of the optical setup, and find that for a large size structure, a small deviation of beam angles may lead to a significant change of lattice size whereas the translational symmetry of SU-8 structure remains reasonably close to face-center-cubic. Besides the 3D holographic fabrication, we develop an efficient method to create a rich library of 2D photonic structures with anisotropic unit cells via harnessing of pattern transformation of an elastomeric poly(dimethylsiloxane) (PDMS) membrane. We then study the PBG properties of 2D Si post arrays with structural symmetries same as those deformed 2D photonic structures, and their tolerance to the structural deviation. To reveal the underlying mechanisms of pattern transformation and the potential for highly ordered complex structures, we systematically study the kinetic process of capillary induced pattern transformation and recovery when swelling and drying 2D poly(2-hydroxyethyl methacrylate) (PHEMA) membranes with a square lattice of micron-sized cylindrical holes from water repeatedly. We find that the PHEMA membrane undergo different modes of instability during drying: when the internal tension is low, the hole reduces size but retains the shape, in a mode of breathing; when the tension is high, the square lattice bifurcated into a diamond plate pattern with neighboring slits perpendicular to each other, in a mode of buckling. Meanwhile, there are many antiphase boundaries (APBs) formed in the diamond plate pattern, where the morphology (either random or aligned) is dependent on the moving speed of the water front. Using dynamic Monte Carlo method we simulate the nucleation, growth and APB formation in pattern transformation and recovery processes, which matches qualitatively with the experimental results. Finally, we suggest a new strategy of shaping the APBs toward the creation of a single crystal transformed pattern. Degree Type Dissertation Degree Name Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) Graduate Group Materials Science & Engineering This dissertation is available at ScholarlyCommons: http://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations/342 First Advisor Shu Yang


Adlerian parent education courses teach parents skills to help children and adolescents become independent, confident, capable adults. While children are in residential treatment settings, youth care workers take on the role of the parent. It is important to train both the parents and the youth care workers to produce the best outcomes. Several research studies were reviewed to support the positive outcome of Adlerian parent education programs. An experiential project was developed specifically to train youth care workers on the same concepts presented in Adlerian parent education courses. The information and examples were modified to fit the treatment setting. Participants of the youth care worker training received valuable skills to help them with current issues of concern, and tools to help them excel in their jobs. Incorporation of these skills into the current program will provide students with a smooth transition home, and continued success in their lives.


Human exposure to the radio frequency electromagnetic fields (EMF) emitted by radio base stations (RBS) is proportional to the transmitted power. Thus, knowledge of actual power levels is key for a correct estimate of the actual EMF exposure. In this study, downlink output power distributions for RBSs in a 4G LTE mobile communication network have been determined. By extracting data using the operations support system (OSS) of the network, statistics were obtained based on 24 hours measurements for more than 5000 RBSs. The network measurement approach was verified with in-situ power density measurements. It was found that the actual output power levels are significantly below the theoretical maximum. For high-traffic periods, the 90th percentile transmitted power was found to be about 12% of the theoretical maximum.


Emulations of cellular nonlinear networks on digital reconfigurable hardware are renowned for an efficient computation of massive data, exceeding the accuracy and flexibility of full-custom designs. In this contribution, a digital implementation with polynomial coupling weight functions is proposed for the first time, establishing novel fields of application, e.g., in the medical signal processing and in the solution of partial differential equations. We present an architecture that is capable of processing large-scale networks with a high degree of parallelism, implemented on state-of-the-art field-programmable gate arrays.


This chapter discusses the challenges of facilitating the development of advanced learners of English in the Scandinavian military context. It focuses on meaningful interaction, which relates to military students' professional language needs and the immediate context of their learning in university programs. These programs include content instruction and military exercises in English on topics relevant to war studies within a Masters degree. The paper describes a series of lessons taught at the Swedish National Defence College that bring together two program components, namely the students need to understand the military content of their subjects in English and their professional English language workplace requirements. It describes how the author used reading comprehension and the genre of presentation to develop a repertoire of questioning strategies for application in the defence workplace.


Lymphocytes, the principal cells of the immune system, perform the immune function throughout the body by their unique capacity to circulate in blood stream and lymphatic vessels and migrate in lymphoid and non-lymphoid tissues. The mechanisms regulating lymphocyte adhesion and migration, interactions with cells and components within the extracellular matrix are not fully understood. The aim of this work has been to elucidate molecular mechanisms governing T lymphocyte adhesion and migration by endogenous molecules. The studies presented in this thesis have shown that thrombospondin-1 (TSP-1) is expressed in T lymphocytes with a high turnover, manifested by variable cell surface expression, and is regulated by SDF-1a, adhesion to fibronectin and collagen type IV. The TSP-1 binding site of calreticulin (CRT), spanning amino acid 19-32, was shown to be a major triggering factor for T cell migration within a three-dimensional collagen type 1 matrix. The chemokine SDF-1a stimulated migration via a calreticulin-TSP-1 pathway. Endogenous calreticulin binding to the N-terminal domain of endogenous TSP-1 elicited a motogenic signal to the T cells through the C-terminal domain of TSP-1 and its cell surface receptor integrin-associated protein (IAP, CD47). Inhibition experiments of ligand binding of CD91 by receptor associated protein (RAP) and small interfering RNA technology indicated that CD91 is an important factor in TSP-1-mediated T cell adhesion and migration. These results unveil an autocrine mechanism of CRT-TSP-1-CD47-CD91 interaction for the control of T cell motility and migration within 3D extracellular matrix substrata. The data demonstrated that T cell adhesion and migration are sequential events governed by a series of interacting cell surface molecules comprising a CRT-TSP-1-CD47-CD91 pathway where endogenous TSP-1 functions as the hub. Ligation of the CD3/T cell antigen receptor complex determines T cell adhesion through this mechanism. CRT interaction with the N-terminal domain of TSP-1 elicits cytoplasmic spreading, and augments adhesion, while a counter-adhesive motogenic pathway, triggering interaction of the C-terminal domain of TSP-1, induces migration. CD91-dependent internalization of TSP-1 is a crucial event of this motogenic pathway. In conclusion, the studies provide a novel mechanism governing T cell adhesion and migration within extracellular matrix substrata.


Sepsis affects millions of people worldwide each year. It occurs when a normal human immune response to a bacterial, viral or fungal infection becomes dysfunctional and triggers widespread inflammation that results in severe tissue damage that leads to organ failure, shock, and death. Sepsis requires immediate treatment and has a high readmission rate for survivors. It is also one of the most expensive conditions to treat. In 2013, there were more than 1.6 million cases of sepsis in the United States with a financial cost of more than $23 billion. Sepsis was first described in antiquity, and given its current name, by the ancient Greek physician Hippocrates. Despite its long medical history, severity, and financial burden, the causes of sepsis are not well understood, and there is no standard approach to diagnosis and treatment. The definition of sepsis, the characterization of its clinical stages, and sepsis monitoring tools have changed three times in the past 25 years, most recently in March 2016. The universal adoption of this latest definition, sepsis-3, and a screening tool, qSOFA, are currently under debate in the medical community. A means to rapidly identify and treat sepsis could reduce the five million deaths due to sepsis each year worldwide. This paper reviews the evolution of the definition of sepsis and the controversy surrounding the sepsis-3 definition and the sepsis screening tool, qSOFA.


Revision with unchanged content. Modern industrial facilities, such as oil refineries, chemical factories, electric power generation plants, etc. are large, complex, distributed systems. These systems are monitored and controlled by networks of special purpose embedded computing devices such as sensors, actuators, and PLCs. These industrial control networks are commonly called SCADA (Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition) networks. The increasing interconnectivity of SCADA networks has exposed them to a wide range of network security problems. One of the important issues in securing SCADA networks is to identify vulnerabilities in the communication protocols. This book analyses existing qualitative security assessment guidelines, specifically attack and vulnerability taxonomies, and proposes a new framework for organizing information about known attacks and vulnerabilities to find unknown or similar vulnerabilities in new systems. This framework is used to organize information related to known vulnerabilities in SCADA protocols into a taxonomy that provides a systematic methodology for the security assessment of other SCADA protocols.


Recently there is an increasing scholarly interest in time-varying knowledge graphs, or temporal knowledge graphs (TKG). Previous research suggests diverse approaches to TKG reasoning that uses historical information. However, less attention has been given to the hierarchies within such information at different timestamps. Given that TKG is a sequence of knowledge graphs based on time, the chronology in the sequence derives hierarchies between the graphs. Furthermore, each knowledge graph has its hierarchical level which may differ from one another. To address these hierarchical characteristics in TKG, we propose HyperVC, which utilizes hyperbolic space that better encodes the hierarchies than Euclidean space. The chronological hierarchies between knowledge graphs at different timestamps are represented by embedding the knowledge graphs as vectors in a common hyperbolic space. Additionally, diverse hierarchical levels of knowledge graphs are represented by adjusting the curvatures of hyperbolic embeddings of their entities and relations. Experiments on four benchmark datasets show substantial improvements, especially on the datasets with higher hierarchical levels.


As the war in Iraq drags into its sixth year and cumulative spending approved by the Congress for the "global war on terrorism" surpasses $850 billion, both the American public and security experts are becoming increasingly concerned about the present and future direction of US defense spending. One proposal under consideration is to allocate the defense budget each year as a specific percentage of America's gross domestic product (GDP). Advocates of this approach typically recommend pegging "base" Department of Defense (DOD) spending, which excludes both supplemental appropriations for ongoing military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan and Department of Energy-administered nuclear weapons activities, at four percent of GDP. In an April 2008 speech on Iraq, President George W. Bush compared current defense spending to higher levels sustained during the Truman, Eisenhower, and Reagan administrations. He concluded that four percent of GDP "is a large amount of money, but it is a modest fraction of our nation's wealth." (1) Republican presidential nominee Senator John McCain (R-Ariz.), top Pentagon officials, conservative security analysts, and several members of Congress have endorsed the four percent proposal. Media reports indicate that the proposal is under consideration by high-level Pentagon officials and "may look very different by the time it reaches the White House or Capitol Hill." (2) This is not the first time national leaders have suggested that economic growth should be used to calculate the appropriate level for defense spending. During World War I, the Navy's motto was "a dollar's worth of Navy for every dollar spent." (3) National Security Council report 68 (NSC-68), released in 1950, stated that while the United States was spending only 6.5 percent of its GDP on defense, the Soviet Union was spending 14 percent. NSC-68 cited this higher Soviet percentage as incentive for the United States to push for increased economic activity capable of financing a major military buildup without sacrificing America's domestic standard of living. (4) Calculating defense spending according to GDP resonates rhetorically and politically, which may be why proponents have adopted it as their preferred approach to accomplish a loftier goal: sustaining higher levels of US defense spending into the future. Tying defense spending to GDP successfully brings debates about future US defense policy to the forefront. As a legitimate policy option, however, the proposal should be rejected by budget experts and national security analysts alike. GDP is an important metric for determining how much the United States could afford to spend on defense, but it provides no insight into how much the United States should spend. Keeping defense budgets arbitrarily high by pegging them to GDP, which has demonstrated a long-term pattern of steady increase, avoids the difficult apportionment choices required in this age of unprecedented, diffuse, and dangerous threats. This article will begin by summarizing the arguments advanced by the principal advocates of spending four percent of GDP on defense. Next, the fiscal year (FY) 2009 defense budget request will be analyzed in order to provide proper context for the GDP debate. Finally, substantive critiques will be made of the four percent proposal's methodology, analytical coherence, and overall utility for future defense planning and budgeting. The Advocates Near the end of 2007, Senator McCain wrote in Foreign Affairs that the United States could afford to spend four cents of every dollar, or more, on national defense in the future? In November 2007, Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates said that four percent of GDP should be a "benchmark as a rough floor of how much we should spend on defense." (6) Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell later reiterated Gates's commitment to the four percent benchmark: "That is what [Gates] believes to be a reasonable price to stay free and protect our interests around the world. …


In an earlier paper, "Who Needs Dark Matter? An Alternative Explanation for the Galactic Rotation Anomaly," this author examined a possible electromagnetic phenomenon as an explanation for the 'galactic rotation anomaly,' whereby the rotational speeds of stars in a spiral galaxy exhibit a relatively constant value despite increasing radius. There, this author assumed that angular rotation speed remained relatively constant, so as to preserve the stability of the spiral arms as they rotate. Several other authors' theories were presented along with one by this author himself, which cited the magnetic field within the plane of a galaxy resulting from rotation by both the spherical galactic core and flattened 'disk' containing the spiral arms as possibly yielding the constant angular speed. However, many galactic rotation curves exhibit constant tangential rather than angular rotation speed, inconsistent with a 'pinwheel-like' galactic rotation which would preserve spiral arm stability. The possibility that this is really an 'optical illusion' masking the actual pinwheel-like rotation, and corresponding constancy of angular, not tangential, speed is considered here. Finally, speculation as to the phenomenon responsible for this 'illusion' is offered.


There is now increasing evidence that LDs (lipid droplets) play a central role in the production of infectious HCV (hepatitis C virus) and participate in virus assembly. Two viral proteins, namely core, which forms the capsid, and NS5A (non-structural 5A protein), a component of complexes engaged in viral RNA synthesis, are detected at LD surfaces in infected cells. Interactions between the two proteins may be critical for anchoring RNA replication sites to droplets for initiating virus assembly. The requirements for targeting of core in particular has received considerable attention since the nature of its interaction with LDs could play a key role in determining the efficiency of virion production. As well as attaching to droplets, core is able to alter their intracellular distribution and direct them towards the microtubule organizing centre. Inhibitors that disrupt microtubules block this redistribution by core and there is a concomitant decrease in virus production. Therefore altered dynamics of LDs may contribute to HCV assembly and release. The purpose of targeting LDs by HCV may be linked to their contribution to the formation of VLDLs (very-low-density lipoproteins) in hepatocytes since virus circulating in infected patients is associated with lipoprotein. Thus HCV may utilize the role played by LDs in the formation of lipoprotein particles as part of its life cycle and access this pathway by direct interaction of viral components with these intracellular storage organelles.