This show marks a stage in ongoing visual research using ideas of getting from A to B, the pit falls, non-starters and spaces we move through to get there. It was sponsored by the BC Arts Council and the Canadian Council for the Arts. The spaces are known and unknown, showing the interruptions and changes that can occur. Ogilvie has been developing these ideas since 2002, while working as a visiting artist/lecturer at Minneapolis College of Art and design. The work was shown in Vancouver at the Malaspina Gallery at the end of 2004, in an exhibition of prints and wall mounted cut outs called,' Hither and Thither'. Ogilvie was the international resident artist (2 artists per year are panel selected for the solo show/residency programme), where she spent one month working in lithography and two weeks traveling to Vancouver Island. As well as the solo exhibition Ogilvie made slide lecture/presentations based on her practice to members and associates of the Malaspina Print Society and also at the University of British Columbia to staff and students in the Department of Visual Art. Further research involved experimentation with multimedia following training development at ISIS Arts, New media studio, Newcastle in August 2006, from which she developed a short Director animation using drawings related to the Hither and Thither work. Other associated exhibitions which have shown pieces from this body of work include -'Through a Child's Eye', Edinburgh Printmakers, 2005, 'Impressions', invited group show,The RBSA Gallery, Birmingham, 2005, 'Making a Mark', Northern Print Gallery, 2006, 'Stone•Plate•Grease•Water', Y Taberncl – Museum for Modern art Wales, Machynlleth, 2007 Internationale grafik triennale, Vienna Kunstlerhaus 2007. Reveiws of the work included; 'Arts & Life, Queue, The Vancouver Sun,16.9.04 'Preview, the gallery guide- Alberta, BC, Oregon, Washington', Sept/Oct Chop Newsletter,'Sara Ogilvie: A Review,' - Catherine Stewart.


Background Adverse drug events related to anticoagulants are common and clinically significant. Computerized physician order entry (CPOE) and clinical decision support systems (CDSSs) are widely viewed as crucial for reducing prescribing errors. Purpose To make prescriptions safer and to promote good practise, by developing CDSSs focused on oral and injectable anticoagulants. Materials and Methods A review was carried out of existing guidelines and practise in the units. About ten meetings with clinicians (cardiologists, thrombosis specialists) and pharmacists from the Pharmacy and Therapeutics Committee (PTC) were required to write these CDSSs. The CDSSs were presented and tested in the cardiology units. New discussions and improvements in the CDSSs were made with prescribers, nurses and pharmacists. The final CDSSs were validated by the Pharmacy and Therapeutics Committee (PTC). Results Nine CDSSs had already been validated by the PTC: Vitamin K Antagonist (VKA), heparin sodium, heparin calcium, Low Molecular Weight Heparins (LMWHs) in prophylactic and curative treatment of deep-vein thrombosis and pulmonary embolism, LMWHs for acute coronary syndrome ST-segment elevation myocardial infarction and non-ST-segment elevation myocardial infarction, LMWHs for cardiac arrhythmia, and treatment of heparin-induced thrombocytopenia. There are still regular meetings to develop CDSSs on new anticoagulants: dabigatran, rivaroxaban and apixaban. Each CDSS provides: Information on the choice of a therapeutic strategy based on the indication and the clinical context. Usual doses and rates of administration. A dose calculation based on weight (heparins). Overrun alerts when the dose is exceeded. Regular laboratory tests at the recommended frequency. Protocols for dosage adjustments based on the biological values. Administration modalities for the nurses. Since the implementation of the CDSS on VKA, annual fluindione prescriptions have decreased by 17% and annual warfarin prescriptions have increased by 53% in accordance with the recommendation to prescribe warfarin as the first-line oral anticoagulant. Conclusions Development of CDSSs referred to by the CPOE system takes a lot of time but is a good way of disseminating PTC guidelines to all prescribers, pharmacists and nurses. CDSSs can assist clinicians in the management of patients requiring anticoagulant treatment by improving compliance with care standards. These CDSSs are updated following changes in guidelines and clinical practise. Other CDSSs focused on high-alert medicines will be introduced when computerised prescribing is implemented for the entire hospital. No conflict of interest.


Art played a significant part in the educational ideal promoted by German intellectuals in the late eighteenth century. Gottfried van Swieten, President of the Court Commission for Education in Vienna and librettist for The Creation, was instrumental in developing and promoting the role of art in the moral education of the individual. His encouragement of active engagement with art sheds new light on the common practice of arranging musical "classics"—in particular large-scale vocal works—for smaller instrumental forces around 1800. Van Swieten's writings suggest that such arrangements may be understood not merely as entertaining trifles but as the product of the sociopolitical mores of the Enlightenment. Inviting the direct, interactive experience of art, the arrangement of Joseph Haydn's Creation for string quintet was particularly suited to the moral and social education of the individual. Grounded at least in part in archaic compositional practices, it demonstrated an artwork's adaptability to different circumstances of performance and to the different levels of education of its performers. Moreover, the act of playing the arrangement, one to a part, allowed for the honing of an individual's inner sociable sentiment through collaboration with fellow performers.


Strategic exposure to donor Ags prior to transplantation can be an effective way for inducting donor-specific tolerance in allogeneic recipients. We have recently shown that pretransplant infusion of donor splenocytes treated with the chemical cross-linker ethylenecarbodiimide (ECDI-SPs) induces indefinite islet allograft survival in a full MHC-mismatched model without the need for any immunosuppression. Mechanisms of allograft protection by this strategy remain elusive. In this study, we show that the infused donor ECDI-SPs differentially target T cells with indirect versus direct allospecificities. To target indirect allospecific T cells, ECDI-SPs induce upregulation of negative, but not positive, costimulatory molecules on recipient splenic CD11c+ dendritic cells phagocytosing the injected ECDI-SPs. Indirect allospecific T cells activated by such CD11c+ dendritic cells undergo robust initial proliferation followed by rapid clonal depletion. The remaining T cells are sequestered in the spleen without homing to the graft site or the graft draining lymph node. In contrast, direct allospecific T cells interacting with intact donor ECDI-SPs not yet phagocytosed undergo limited proliferation and are subsequently anergized. Furthermore, CD4+CD25+Foxp3+ T cells are induced in lymphoid organs and at the graft site by ECDI-SPs. We conclude that donor ECDI-SP infusions target host allogeneic responses via a multitude of mechanisms, including clonal depletion, anergy, and immunoregulation, which act in a synergistic fashion to induce robust transplant tolerance. This simple form of negative vaccination has significant potential for clinical translation in human transplantation.


The concept of futility has been a source of discussion for many years. Even though it is tempting to propose that an action or clinical intervention should be deemed futile if it does not achieve the goals of that action, further clarification is needed in terms of the nature of the likely outcomes of an intervention and the probabilities of various outcomes being achieved. The outcome, in an age of balance between autonomy and necessity, should, at a minimum, be acceptable to the person on whom the intervention is to be performed. This is especially the case when considering outcome following decompressive craniectomy for severe traumatic brain injury, in which certain outcomes are likely to be severely impaired states that the patient would consider unacceptable. In this article, we use some key ethical concepts such as substantial benefit and the risk of unbearable badness to explore the concept of futility in severe traumatic brain injury and, by linking that to recent advances in neurosurgical science, propose a pragmatic patient-centered approach to deal with the concept of futility.


We study the first year of the eBOSS quasar sample in the redshift range 0.9<z<2.2 which includes 68,772 homogeneously selected quasars. We show that the main source of systematics in the evaluation of the correlation function arises from inhomogeneities in the quasar target selection, particularly related to the extinction and depth of the imaging data used for targeting. We propose a weighting scheme that mitigates these systematics. We measure the quasar correlation function and provide the most accurate measurement to date of the quasar bias in this redshift range, bQ = 2.45 ± 0.05 at z̄=1.55, together with its evolution with redshift. We use this information to determine the minimum mass of the halo hosting the quasars and the characteristic halo mass, which we find to be both independent of redshift within statistical error. Using a recently-measured quasar-luminosity-function we also determine the quasar duty cycle. The size of this first year sample is insufficient to detect any luminosity dependence to quasar clustering and this issue should be further studied with the final ∼500,000 eBOSS quasar sample.


The lack of evidence on reforms, such as determinants of principal salary, points to data and research deficiencies to be addressed in order to learn more about their effects and make sound public policies. The purpose of the study was to examine district and community determinants of principals' salaries using a spatial econometric framework. The findings have implications for education policy development related to pay for contribution, rather than pay based on tenure, experience, or district wealth. The quantitative study used a spatial regression approach to model school, district, and community factors as determinants of Texas high school principal's salary. Principal salaries are viewed from several lenses in this study by considering effective outcomes of pay defined by actual salaries and market considerations for pay as defined by community, organizational and human capital variables. Literature from the private sector as well as from the public school setting was used as a theoretical underpinning for the hypotheses set forth in this study. The findings provide empirical insights regarding how principal salaries are determined. The study found a statistically significant spatial autocorrelation relationship at p<.05 confirming geographic locations is a robust influence on principal salaries. After controlling for the spatial autocorrelation the study also found experience, gender, district wealth, and campus size significantly influence principal salaries. However, there was no statistically significant relationship between principal salary and student achievement. .


This paper integrates theories of political budget cycles with theories of tactical electoral redistribution to test for political capture in a novel way. Studying banks in India, I find that government-owned bank lending tracks the electoral cycle, with agricultural credit increasing by 5-10 percentage points in an election year. There is significant cross-sectional targeting, with large increases in districts in which the election is particularly close. This targeting does not occur in non-election years, or in private bank lending. I show capture is costly: elections affect loan repayment, and election year credit booms do not measurably affect agricultural output.


A focus on experiences of care helps health systems realize the very transformations they look to achieve. This is because patient experience allows patients, families and carers to define value, enabling healthcare organizations to focus on what matters to them and not simply what is the matter with them. This is what we mean by an 'experience age', one in which clear connections are made between the things patients value and the clinical outcomes we look to achieve: where links are drawn between experience, clinical effectiveness, safety and cost in order to provide the very best care for all patients. Central to the experience age is ensuring our health systems: (1) are accountable for the whole patient experience and thus able to act sooner to keep people well and out of hospital, (2) work to establish new relationships with patients, families and carers in which patients, carers and staff work together to establish what matters and how care can be delivered and (3) make stronger connections between patient and staff experience. In committing to these efforts, the global dialogue on patient experience will become even more important, as we recognise that despite differences in design and operation, the challenges our health systems face and the focus on what matters most to patients are shared.


Abstract We consider a stochastic system in which Markovian customer attribute processes are initiated at customer arrivals in a discrete batch Markovian arrival process (D-BMAP). We call the aggregate a Markovian branching D-BMAP. Each customer attribute process is an absorbing discrete time Markov chain whose parameters depend both on the phase transition, of the driving D-BMAP, and the number of arrivals taking place at the customer's arrival instant. We investigate functionals of Markovian branching D-BMAPs that may be interpreted as cumulative rewards collected over time for the various customers that arrive to the system, in the transient and asymptotic cases. This is achieved through the derivation of recurrence relations for expected values and Laplace transforms in the former case, and Little's law in the latter case.


Set against the backdrop of the cold war, the New York World's Fair of 1964-1965 emphasized capitalism and commercialization while it downplayed art as an element that should be elevated above other exhibits. This emphasis placed art in settings that seemed populist, even vulgar to some critics, in order to attract as many visitors as possible. Adding to this perception that the fair lacked high culture, officials did not sponsor any exhibits showcasing art despite the fact that most earlier fairs had at least one pavilion dedicated to art. The two most distinctive features of the 1964-1965 fair—no separate fine arts pavilion and being the first to feature a number of newly independent nations emerging from colonialism—provide an opportunity to examine the place of the arts in this new global commercial context. This article examines art displays found in selected official international pavilions to show that fair organizers sought out great works of art not simply to create a culturally edifying fair, but to use art as spectacle to enhance the commercial aspects of the event. The fair served as a venue where both exhibitors and fair officials used art, high and low, to serve multiple ends, among them economic development, religious proselytizing, and cultural prestige.


Developing supportive relationships in the workplace has been a key component of the induction of teachers into professional practice and peer mentoring has been used effectively at this developmental stage. However, no such structure has been available to Teaching Assistants and Higher Level Teaching Assistants working in schools and any mentoring they do receive tends to be incidental, unplanned and undertaken by teacher colleagues rather than peers. In terms of developing the school workforce and ensuring that all school staff have access to appropriate support for learning in the workplace, there are issues of how the distinct but complementary role of the TA/HLTA in the Remodelled School Workforce can be supported and developed.

This study seeks to evaluate a locally devised formalised peer-mentoring scheme for Teaching Assistants (TAs) who are seeking to gain Higher Level Teaching Assistant (HLTA) status. The scheme was developed in response to a perceived need for support for TAs aspiring to HLTA status to be provided by peers who not only understood the complexities and scope of their role, but also understood the requirements for gaining HLTA status. In particular the study seeks to determine if training and working as a mentor impacts on workplace learning and the status and the professional identity and standing of HLTAs within schools both from their own and their employers perspective. By adopting a case study approach this study focuses on 40 HLTA mentors who were trained to mentor TA colleagues in maintained primary and secondary schools in the North West during 2006/7 and reports findings from their and their employers' perspectives. The theoretical framework within which this study is being investigated includes views of learning in the workplace (Boud & Solomon,2001; Symes & McIntyre, 2000; Eraut, 1994; Solkin, 2006; Beaney 2006), notions of professional identity (Ozga & Lawn, 1981; Eraut, 1994; Englund, 1996; Bottery, 1998; Dillabough, 1999; Hargreaves, 2000), the concept of the learning organisation and learning networks (Senge, 1992; Day & Hadfield, 2004; Gronn, 2000) and the idea of mentoring as professional development for the mentor (Dymock, 1999; Billet, 2000; Darwin, 2000).


This article explores measurable factors that influence consumers' willingness to pay for locally produced blueberry mixes: Pancake mix, Muffin mix and Banana Bread mix. The innovative aspect of this study is the experiential take-and-bake experiment survey used in order to evaluate consumers' willingness to pay for the product. A survey, along with two of the three recipes – dry mixes to be combined with locally grown frozen fruit - was distributed to potential consumers at diverse locations of study. Participants were instructed to prepare the products at home, sample the prepared product and then evaluate the product and process. Sensory and preparation experience attributes for each recipe were considered as potential variables influencing overall WTP, including previous cooking experience for similar products, watching the Food Network, and related shopping choices. The post-preparation survey used a payment card approach to elicit WTP for each product tried as well as the hypothetical third product not tried. A total of 101 out of 102 participants (99.01%) completed the process and returned the survey. Average WTP for the blueberry pancake mix was $3.45, muffin mix $3.25, and the banana-blueberry bread $3.39. The estimate regression of Censored Tobit model of WTP suggests Trial of one product out of three is significant and Age of participant also is significant. The positive correlation of some variables estimate Trial, Baking of Blueberries Experience, Education, Income, Gender (Male), and Watching Food Network showed that these factors have positive effect on WTP for some products. The paper develops the WTP models and also examines the experience versus the hypothetical effects on stated WTP. The results provide some measure of market opportunity, suggest positioning strategies, and also suggest strong returns to home trial marketing incentives for these products.


Abstract. We compare the location of the polar cap boundary (PCB) determined using two different techniques, and use them as proxies for the open-closed field line boundary (OCB). Electron temperatures from observations of the EISCAT radar facility are used to estimate the latitude of the PCB along the meridian of the EISCAT VHF beam. The second method utilizes global images of proton aurora obtained by the IMAGE satellite FUV SI12 instrument. These methods are applied to three different intervals. In two events, the agreement between the methods is good and the mean of the difference is within the resolution of the observations. In a third event, the PCB estimated from EISCAT data is located several degrees poleward of that obtained from the IMAGE FUV SI12 instrument. Comparison of the reconnection electric field estimated from the two methods shows that high-resolution measurements both in time and space are needed to capture the variations in reconnection electric field during substorm expansion. In addition to the two techniques introduced above to determine the PCB location, we also use a search for the location of the reversal of the east-west component of the equivalent current known as the magnetic convection reversal boundary (MCRB). The MCRB from the MIRACLE magnetometer chain mainly follows the motion of the polar cap boundary during different substorm phases, but differences arise near the Harang discontinuity.


Recent studies have identified mucosal healing on endoscopy as a key prognostic parameter in the management of inflammatory bowel diseases (IBD), thus highlighting the role of endoscopy for monitoring of disease activity in IBD. In fact, mucosal healing has emerged as a key treatment goal in IBD that predicts sustained clinical remission and resection-free survival of patients. The structural basis of mucosal healing is an intact barrier function of the gut epithelium that prevents translocation of commensal bacteria into the mucosa and submucosa with subsequent immune cell activation. Thus, mucosal healing should be considered as an initial event in the suppression of inflammation of deeper layers of the bowel wall, rather than as a sign of complete healing of gut inflammation. In this systematic review, the clinical studies on mucosal healing are summarised and the effects of anti-inflammatory or immunosuppressive drugs such as 5-aminosalicylates, corticosteroids, azathioprine, ciclosporin and anti-TNF antibodies (adalimumab, certolizumab pegol, infliximab) on mucosal healing are discussed. Finally, the implications of mucosal healing for subsequent clinical management in patients with IBD are highlighted.


Over the past 30 years teachers have been held increasingly accountable for the quality of education in their classroom. During this transition, the line between teacher appraisals, traditionally an instrument for continuous formative teacher feedback, and summative teacher evaluations has blurred. Student test scores, as an 'objective' measure, are increasingly used in teacher appraisals in response to historic questions that evaluations are based on 'subjective' components. Their central position in appraisals is part of a larger Global Testing Culture, where standardized tests are linked with high stakes outcomes. Although most teacher appraisal systems are based on multiple components, the prominence of testing as the taken for granted measure of quality suggests that not all components are given equal weight or seen as equally important. This article further explores the role of testing in high stakes teacher appraisal systems across 33 countries using data from the 2013 TALIS; addressing both the prominence of student test scores and their relative importance in teacher's perceived feedback utility. Results indicate that, while rarely applied in isolation, student test scores are the most common component used in teacher appraisals. Relative to other components, student achievement is more often emphasized and, when emphasized in feedback, teachers are more likely to feel their appraisal had limited impact on their instruction and was completed solely as an administrative exercise.


The fate of excessive fluoride in water is cause for serious public health concerns worldwide. Water defluoridation using various technologies therefore continues to attract disproportionate research interest from around the world. Defluoridation studies using soil adsorbents, in particular, has remained the focus of intense research efforts since the last few decades. So as to assess the research status in this area, soil adsorbents commonly reported for water defluoridation over the last few decades were reviewed. This paper presents a compilation of defluoridation capacities and a summary of requisite parameters for water defluoridation using soil adsorbents. Comparison of defluoridation efficiencies of soil adsorbents is also presented, and the fluoride adsorption kinetics and adsorption equilibrium characteristics of adsorbents discussed. The results indicate that the soil adsorbents that have attracted highest research interest in this regard include: hydroxyapatites, montmorillonites, hydrotalcite, zeolites, pumice and kaolinites. On average, however, the minerals that have shown the highest capacities for water defluoridation are: ferrihydrites, hydrotalcite, palygorskites, boehmite/bauxite, and pumice. Fluoride adsorption for most soil adsorbents are fitted by the Langmuir and Freundlich isotherms. Most of the kinetic data, in contrast, were described by the pseudo-second order kinetics model. Water pH and temperature were the dominant solution factors that controlled fluoride adsorption onto soil adsorbents.


Modern literary scholars must combine access to vast collections of text with the traditional close analysis of their field. In this paper, we discuss the design and development of tools to support this work. Based on analysis of the needs of literary scholars, we constructed a suite of visualization tools for the analysis of large collections of tagged text (i.e. text where one or more words have been annotated as belonging to a specific category). These tools unite the aspects of the scholars' work: large scale overview tools help to identify corpus‐wide statistical patterns while fine scale analysis tools assist in finding specific details that support these observations. We designed visual tools that support and integrate these levels of analysis. The result is the first tool suite that can support the multilevel text analysis performed by scholars, combining standard visual elements with novel methods for selecting individual texts and identifying represenative passages in them.


Hyperbilirubinemia is a common cause for irreversible neuronal influence in the brain of term newborns, while the feature of neurological symptoms associated with hyperbilirubinemia has not been well characterized yet. In the present study, we examined a total of 203 neonates suffering from hyperbilirubinemia with a bedside amplitude-integrated Electroencephalography (aEEG) device, in order to determine whether there is any special change in sleep-wake cycles (SWCs). Among these patients, 14 cases showed no recognizable SWCs with the total serum bilirubin (TSB) level at 483.9–996.2 μmol/L; 75 cases exhibited reduced SWCs with the TSB level at 311.2–688.5 μmol/L; and the rest cases had the normal SWCs. The number of the normal SWCs occurrence had a significant negative correlation with the increased TSB level in a non-linear manner (r = -0.689, p <0.001). In addition, the increased TSB reshaped the structure of SWC by narrowing down the broadband and broadening the narrowband. Spearman's correlation analysis indicated a significant negative correlation between the TSB level and the ratio of broadband (r = -0.618, p < 0.001), a significant positive correlation between the TSB level and the narrowband ratio (r = 0.618, p < 0.001), respectively. Furthermore, the change of SWC seemed like a continuous phenomenon, and the hyperbilirubinemia caused SWC changes was fit into a loess model in this paper. In summary, the hyperbilirubinemia influenced SWC of term newborns significantly at a non-linear manner, and these results revealed the feature of the neurological sequela that is associated with TSB.


Standard solar cells heat up under sunlight. The resulting increased temperature of the solar cell has adverse consequences on both its efficiency and its reliability. We introduce a general approach to radiatively lower the operating temperature of a solar cell through sky access, while maintaining its solar absorption. We first present an ideal scheme for the radiative cooling of solar cells. For an example case of a bare crystalline silicon solar cell, we show that the ideal scheme can passively lower its operating temperature by 18.3 K. We then demonstrate a microphotonic design based on real material properties that approaches the performance of the ideal scheme. We also show that the radiative cooling effect is substantial, even in the presence of significant convection and conduction and parasitic solar absorption in the cooling layer, provided that we design the cooling layer to be sufficiently thin.


A numerical approach combining the finite element method with two different stability criteria namely the Budiansky and the phase-plane buckling criteria is used to study the dynamic buckling phenomena of plate and shell structures subjected to sudden applied loading. In the finite element analysis an explicit time integration scheme is used and the two criteria are implemented in the Finite Element analysis. The dynamic responses of the plate and shell structures have been investigated for different values of the plate and shell imperfection factors. The results indicate that the dynamic buckling time, which is normally considered in predicting elasto-plastic buckling behavior, should be taken into consideration with the buckling criteria for elastic buckling analysis of plate and shell structures. By selecting proper control variables and incorporating them with two dynamic buckling criteria, the unique dynamic buckling load can be obtained and the problems of ambiguity and contradiction of dynamic buckling load of plate and shell structure can be resolved.


The thesis presents logic-based formalisms for modelling and reasoning about resource-bounded multi-agent systems. In the field of multi-agent system, it is well-known that temporal logics such as CTL and ATL are powerful tools for reasoning about multi-agent systems. However, there is no natural way to utilise these logics for expressing and reasoning about properties of multi-agent systems where actions of agents require resources to be able to perform. This thesis extends logics including Computational Tree Logic (CTL), Coalition Logic (CL) and Alternating-time Temporal Logic (ATL) which have been used to reasoning about multi-agent systems so that the extended ones have the power to specify and to reason about properties of resource-bounded multi-agent systems. While the extension of CTL is adapted for specifying and reasoning about properties of systems of resource-bounded reasoners where the resources are explicitly memory, communication and time, the extensions of CL and ATL are generalised so that any resource-bounded multi-agent system can be modelled, specified and reasoned about. For each of the logics, we describe the range of resource-bounded multi-agent systems they can account for and axiomatisation systems for reasoning which are proved to be sound and complete. Moreover, we also study the satisfiability problem of these logics.


'The literature on narrative inquiry has been, until now, widely scattered and theoretically incomplete. Clandinin and Connelly have created a major tour de force. This book is lucid, fluid, beautifully argued, and rich in examples. Students will find a wealth of arguments to support their research, and teaching faculty will find everything they need to teach narrative inquiry theory and methods' - Yvonna S. Lincoln, professor, Department of Educational Administration, Texas A&M University.Understanding experience as lived and told stories - also known as narrative inquiry - has gained popularity and credence in qualitative research. Unlike more traditional methods, narrative inquiry successfully captures personal and human dimensions that cannot be quantified into dry facts and numerical data. In this definitive guide, Jean Clandinin and Michael Connelly draw from more than twenty years of field experience to show how narrative inquiry can be used in educational and social science research. Tracing the origins of narrative inquiry in the social sciences, they offer new and practical ideas for conducting fieldwork, composing field notes, and conveying research results. Throughout the book, stories and examples reveal a wide range of narrative methods. Engaging and easy to read, "Narrative Inquiry" is a practical resource from experts who have long pioneered the use of narrative in qualitative research.


EXECUTIVE SUMMARY A problem for small businesses acting entrepreneurially through extending their business onto the web is that they often lose their primary value-added proposition: the personal focus on the customer. As a result, the entrepreneur is left searching for ways to differentiate him/herself. Unfortunately, entrepreneurship literature, based on sound theoretical principles, has not been forthcoming with solutions to this problem. This paper addresses both of these issues by providing to entrepreneurs a guide with which they may gain a competitive advantage while engaging in e-commerce. We blend theoretical perspectives from the resource-based view of the firm with elements of transaction cost economics to better understand entrepreneurial e-commerce initiatives. Furthermore, we discuss and develop theory suggesting that trust is central to entrepreneurial survival and competitive success when engaging in e-commerce. INTRODUCTION According to a report published by the US Small Business Administration, 35 percent of small businesses are selling online and are developing "imaginative ways to conduct e-business" (Pratt, 2002, p. ii). Pratt's research suggests that e-commerce may be an effective way for small businesses and entrepreneurs to reach new customers, increase sales, and be more competitive in the marketplace. With the great changes for business that the Internet has created, it is not surprising that some entrepreneurial firms have not found the Internet to be a friendly operating environment. In fact, it has been estimated that over 95 percent of all dot.coms are doomed to fail (Useem, 2000). The demise of such firms as Boo.com, HealthShop.com, or ToyTime.com offer direct evidence that entrepreneurial e-commerce projects face certain and tremendous obstacles. During times of change, it would be comforting if academics or practitioners could turn to theory for guidance, as theory can help make our world more predictable and help us determine why failures occur (Christensen & Raynor, 2003). Unfortunately, concerns about the lack of theory-based research have plagued entrepreneurial research (Zahra & Dess, 2001) and much of the work on entrepreneurial e-commerce has been anecdotal in nature. As a result, scholars and practitioners have few theoretical mechanisms with which to understand or predict entrepreneurial e-commerce outcomes. This is particularly troubling given the large failure rate of entrepreneurial e-commerce launches. In response to the scant theory on entrepreneurial e-commerce coupled with the tremendous failure rate associated with these initiatives, we develop and advance theory built on the resource-based view of the firm and transaction cost economics to better understand and predict the entrepreneurial e-commerce phenomenon. This theory-driven approach provides a foundation that affords us the opportunity to make prescriptive recommendations to entrepreneurs that would allow them to more fully exploit their e-commerce potential with consumers and, as a result, make e-commerce strategy a critical component to achieve competitive advantage in the market. This work adds value to the entrepreneur as these firms often lose one of the major value-added tenets of their business- personal focus on the customer- as they venture onto the web. The strategies and tactics suggested can help them regain these advantages. THE RESOURCE-BASED VIEW OF THE FIRM The resource-based view (RBV) of the firm holds that it is a firm's resources, obtained by the acquisition or building of unique capabilities, that creates inter-firm heterogeneity and thus is responsible for performance differences (Barney, 1991; Rumelt, 1984; Wernerfelt, 1984). According to this perspective, resources must be valuable, rare, costly to imitate, and non-substitutable to contribute to competitive advantage (Barney, 2001). Resources can be classified as financial, physical, human, and/or organizational. …


Building your own home could save you thousands of dollars. The Owner Builder is an easy-to-understand, step-by-step guide for people who want to build their dream home in a financially responsible manner. From choosing a block of land to decorating the inside of the house, this book guides the reader through the entire building process.

The authors share their personal experiences with photos of the building process in 68 steps. They include tips and hints on the approval process, construction ideas and how to avoid mistakes. They also uncover potential hidden costs, and offer other ways to save money if you don't have time to manage the construction yourself – such as hire a project manager, which is cheaper than a contract builder.

Renovators, DIY enthusiasts and anyone considering building a home will find a wealth of practical information in this book. Even if you are hiring a builder, this book can help you understand what is involved in building a home and what to expect at each stage of the project.


The impact of climate change in the Arctic Ocean such as ice melting and ice retreat facilitates natural resources extraction. Arctic fossil fuel becomes the drivers of geopolitical changes in the Arctic Ocean. Climate change facilitates natural resource extractions and increases competition between states and can result in tensions, even military ones. This article investigates through a political and legal analysis the role of China as an emerging regulatory sea power in the Arctic Ocean given its assertive "energy hungry country behaviour" in the Arctic Ocean. The United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) and the Arctic Council (AC) are taken into consideration under climate change effects, to assess how global legal frameworks and institutions can deal with China's strategy in the Arctic Ocean. China's is moving away from its role as "humble power" to one of "informal imperialistic" resulting in substantial impact on the Arctic and Antartic dynamism. Due to ice-melting, an easy access to natural resources, China's Arctic strategy in the Arctic Ocean has reinforced its military martitime strategy and has profoundly changed its maritime military doctrine shifting from regional to global in the context of UNCLOS. In particular, it is wondered, what China understands about the public order dimension of UNCLOS. The article concludes that despite China' assertive behaviour towards the Arctic environmental ocean and its rise as global sea power, for the time being, China cannot be considered as a variable for Arctic security as there are no sufficient legal and policy objective elements to adduct that it constitutes a threat to Artic ocean security.


A two-dimensional model to describe the photorefractive behavior of a semiconductor multiple-quantum-well structure operating in the longitudinal geometry has been formulated. It takes into account longitudinal and transverse transport as well as both components of the space-charge field. The rate equations have been solved in the short-time regime, and the role of the various geometrical and physical parameters has been investigated. Special attention has been paid to clarifying the effects of transverse transport.


OBJECTIVE
To assess whether antiepileptic drugs (AEDs) should be prescribed to patients with brain tumors who have no history of seizures.

METHODS
We performed a meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials (1966-2004) that evaluated the efficacy of AED prophylaxis vs no treatment or placebo to prevent seizures in patients with brain tumors who had no history of epilepsy. Summary odds ratios (ORs) were calculated using a random-effects model. Three subanalyses were performed to assess pooled ORs of seizures in patients with primary glial tumors, cerebral metastases, and meningiomas.

RESULTS
Of 474 articles found in the initial search, 17 were identified as primary studies. Five trials met inclusion criteria: patients with a neoplasm (primary glial tumors, cerebral metastases, and meningiomas) but no history of epilepsy who were randomized to either an AED or placebo. The 3 AEDs studied were phenobarbital, phenytoin, and valproic acid. Of the 5 trials, 4 showed no statistical benefit of seizure prophylaxis with an AED. Meta-analysis confirmed the lack of AED benefit at 1 week (OR, 0.91; 95% confidence interval [CI], 0.45-1.83) and at 6 months (OR, 1.01; 95% CI, 0.51-1.98) of follow-up. The AEDs had no effect on seizure prevention for specific tumor pathology, including primary glial tumors (OR, 3.46; 95% CI, 0.32-37.47), cerebral metastases (OR, 2.50; 95% CI, 0.25-24.72), and meningiomas (OR, 0.62; 95% CI, 0.10-3.85).

CONCLUSIONS
No evidence supports AED prophylaxis with phenobarbital, phenytoin, or valproic acid in patients with brain tumors and no history of seizures, regardless of neoplastic type. Subspecialists who treat patients with brain tumors need more education on this issue. Future randomized controlled trials should address whether any of the newer AEDs are useful for seizure prophylaxis.


Objectives Occupational pesticide exposure is associated with a wide range of diseases, including lung diseases, but it is largely unknown how pesticides influence airway disease pathogenesis. A potential mechanism might be through epigenetic mechanisms, like DNA methylation. Therefore, we assessed associations between occupational exposure to pesticides and genome-wide DNA methylation sites. Methods 1561 subjects of LifeLines were included with either no (n=1392), low (n=108) or high (n=61) exposure to any type of pesticides (estimated based on current or last held job). Blood DNA methylation levels were measured using Illumina 450K arrays. Associations between pesticide exposure and 420 938 methylation sites (CpGs) were assessed using robust linear regression adjusted for appropriate confounders. In addition, we performed genome-wide stratified and interaction analyses by gender, smoking and airway obstruction status, and assessed associations between gene expression and methylation for genome-wide significant CpGs (n=2802). Results In total for all analyses, high pesticide exposure was genome-wide significantly (false discovery rate P<0.05) associated with differential DNA methylation of 31 CpGs annotated to 29 genes. Twenty of these CpGs were found in subjects with airway obstruction. Several of the identified genes, for example, RYR1, ALLC, PTPRN2, LRRC3B, PAX2 and VTRNA2-1, are genes previously linked to either pesticide exposure or lung-related diseases. Seven out of 31 CpGs were associated with gene expression levels. Conclusions We show for the first time that occupational exposure to pesticides is genome-wide associated with differential DNA methylation. Further research should reveal whether this differential methylation plays a role in the airway disease pathogenesis induced by pesticides.


Property rights theory posits that private firms are more efficiently managed than government enterprises. An important rationale for privatization, these ownership effects are ascribed to the fact that private firms, contrary to government enterprises, face competitive markets for capital and property rights. This article reviews a substantial body of water industry evidence on ownership effects and finds that ownership effects are neither independent nor overwhelming. Private water utilities are not more efficient than their public counterparts. Water utility privatizations sometimes produce efficiency gains but not always. Methodological shortcomings of published empirical work make it difficult to assess why this is so. For policy makers, the tentative conclusion to be drawn from this literature is that a change from public to private management will only yield benefits when accompanied by a comprehensive reform of the utility's external environment.


Jennifer L. Walton, The Effect Of Grading The Work Of Fourth Grade Students' in Red Ink And Their Academic Self-Esteem, 2001, Dr. Randall Robinson, thesis advisor, Rowan University Master of Science in Teaching Elementary Education The purpose of this study was to determine the effect of fourth grade students' academic self-esteem when marking their work in red ink versus blue or black ink, on their academic selfesteem. It was hypothesized that there would not be a significant difference in the academic selfesteem of fourth grade students whose work was marked in red ink, compared to their work that was marked in blue or black ink. The study was a quasi-experimental design, examining students in a fourth grade classroom. Nineteen students participated in the study. Prior to the pretest, student work had been marked in blue or black ink for a period of six months. The students were pretested using a Self-Esteem Inventory Test created by Stanley Coopersmith. After the pretest was administered, students' work was marked in red ink for a period of four weeks. A posttest was given after the four-week period, the same Self-Esteem Inventory Test by Stanley Coopersmith was used. A ttest was administered to determine the significance of the mean of the pretest and posttests scores for the fourth grade class where alpha 0.05 (alpha value). The t-test revealed no significant difference between the mean pretest and posttest scores of the fourth grade class.


Co-authorship networks are graphs in which the nodes of the graph represent authors and two authors are connected by an edge if they have written one or more papers together. When applied to the authorship of scholarly papers, analysing the structure of a co-authorship network can provide useful insights into the way in which research is carried out in a particular field. We examine two co-authorship networks in our article, constructed from papers written on the subjects of chemistry and mathematics during the period 1990 to 2005, in which at least one of the authors was South African. Local results are compared with other studies conducted in much larger discipline-wide networks. We find that many of the same patterns exist locally, with the main difference being a far more fragmented South African mathematics network. We discuss some tentative implications of these results.


Network coding is an area that has emerged in 2000, and has since then attracted an increasing interest, as it promises to have a significant impact in both the theory and practice of networks. To evaluate its performance in realistic situation, we developed a network coding based framework for challenged wireless networks where disconnection and reconnection is frequent as in PANs (Personal Area Networks) or vehicular networks, resulting in a new appelation for these scenarios as Delay Tolerant networks (DTN). For living in such hostile environment our development complies with several constraints as portability, flexibility, genericity, etc. Moreover to reduce the development effort using our framework, a single implementation might be used as standalone as well as inside a simulation environment.


Twist characteristics of the ultraviolet-written long period fiber gratings (UV-LPFGs) are investigated in this paper. It was found experimentally that the resonance wavelength of the UV-LPFG shifts to short side proportional to square of the torsion rate, when it is twisted in both directions of clockwise and counter-clockwise, which is different from that of LPFGs written by CO2 lasers, but similar with that of the corrugated LPFGs. The phenomena can be explained by mechanisms of static compression in twisting and index change caused by photo-elastic effect.


Human beings are often faced with a pervasive problem: whether to make their own decisions or to delegate decision tasks to someone else. Here, we test whether people are inclined to forgo monetary rewards in order to retain agency when faced with choices that could lead to losses and gains. In a simple choice task, we show that even though participants have all the information needed to maximize rewards and minimize losses, they choose to pay in order to control their own payoff. This tendency cannot be explained by participants' overconfidence in their own ability, as their perceived ability was elicited and accounted for. Rather, the results reflect an intrinsic value for choice, which emerges in the domain of both gains and losses. Moreover, our data indicates that participants are aware that they are making suboptimal choices in the normative sense, but do so anyway, presumably for psychological gains.


Policemoms: Perceptions of Motherhood and Policy in Ohio Police Organizations by Lacy Kristine Ellis MSCJ, Tiffin University, 2007 BCJ, Tiffin University, 2006 Dissertation Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy Public Policy and Administration Walden University August 2016 Abstract Police organizations have a problem retaining female police officers, especially those who are mothers. Women leave the policing profession at higher rates during childbearing and child-rearing years than during any other time in their career. Using feminist theory as a foundation, the purpose of this phenomenological study was to gain a deeper understanding of the lived experiences of policewomen who are mothers and identify factors that contribute to poor retention rates during childbearing and childrearing years. Data were collected through 11 interviews with policewomen, who were also mothers, in Ohio. These data were analyzed using Saldana's 2-cycle coding procedure followed by thematic analysis. The findings included a set of patterns that provided insight into the reasons why female police officers are more difficult to retain. These patterns included: (a) challenges related to a double standard associated with women being primary caregivers, (b) psycho-social changes after children including hypervigilance on the job, (c) fear of reassignment or termination, and (d) the perception that departmental policy fails to address the unique needs of female officers. Together, the findings suggest that police departments today have yet to fully understand thePolice organizations have a problem retaining female police officers, especially those who are mothers. Women leave the policing profession at higher rates during childbearing and child-rearing years than during any other time in their career. Using feminist theory as a foundation, the purpose of this phenomenological study was to gain a deeper understanding of the lived experiences of policewomen who are mothers and identify factors that contribute to poor retention rates during childbearing and childrearing years. Data were collected through 11 interviews with policewomen, who were also mothers, in Ohio. These data were analyzed using Saldana's 2-cycle coding procedure followed by thematic analysis. The findings included a set of patterns that provided insight into the reasons why female police officers are more difficult to retain. These patterns included: (a) challenges related to a double standard associated with women being primary caregivers, (b) psycho-social changes after children including hypervigilance on the job, (c) fear of reassignment or termination, and (d) the perception that departmental policy fails to address the unique needs of female officers. Together, the findings suggest that police departments today have yet to fully understand the challenges that policewomen who are mothers face on a daily basis. The implications for social change include reformed policies and practices that could contribute to the advancement and professionalization of the policing profession as a whole by changing the traditionally masculine organizational culture and promoting a more gender-neutral environment, thus allowing communities to benefit from having a more diverse police


The current study is a longitudinal analysis of psychosocial factors contributing to re-offending among 125 adult female offenders. Drawing on General Strain Theory (GST), the study examined the role of victimization and poverty on criminal recidivism and investigated whether this relationship was mediated by depression. Regression, survival, and mediational analyses were employed to examine the impact of these variables on criminal recidivism. Findings revealed that using illegal means to make ends meet, and having survived childhood sexual abuse, were particularly important predictors of recidivism for women in the study sample, although depression was not found to significantly mediate the relationship between strain and recidivism. Implications for future research on female recidivism and helping women to stay crime-free are discussed.


Lithium–sulfur batteries are of great interest owing to their high theoretical capacity of 1675 mA h g−1 and low cost. Their discharge mechanism is complicated and it is still a controversial issue. In the present work, in situ Raman spectroscopy is employed to investigate the poly-sulfide species in the sulfur cathode and in the electrolyte during the cycling of Li–S batteries. The aim is to understand the discharge mechanism and the influence of the electrolyte on the dissolution of sulfur and poly-sulfides. S8n− is identified as the main species in the high voltage plateau of discharge together with cycloocta S8, in the cell using 0.5 mol L−1 LiTFSI–PY13–FSI as the electrolyte. S42−, S22− and S2− are detected soon after the low voltage plateau is reached. A discharge mechanism in the PY13–FSI is proposed based on the identified species which provides important information for improving and designing cathodes. Electrolytes of 0.5 mol L−1 LiTFSI–PY13–FSI and 1 mol L−1 LiTFSI–DOL–DME are used in studying the dissolution of sulfur and poly-sulfides. The results demonstrate that the same poly-sulfide species are present in the two electrolytes. However, the rates of poly-sulfide formation and diffusion to the anode are slow in the ionic liquid compared to those in the ether-based electrolyte due to different ionic mobilities of various species in the two electrolytes. These differences are evidenced by the observation of poly-sulfide species in the DOL–DME from the very beginning of cell assembly even before starting the discharge whereas their appearances, in the ionic liquid, are delayed and only found at the end of the high voltage plateau. Notably, the soluble elemental sulfur is clearly observed in the ionic liquid electrolyte during the first discharge in the high voltage region, which is very different from the DOL–DME system where the elemental sulfur is quickly reduced to poly-sulfides due to self-discharge reactions. In addition, the elemental sulfur is also detected near the lithium anode in DOL–DME at the end of charge, for the first time to our knowledge, which suggests that the degradation of lithium metal is caused by the multiple reactions of the lithium metal surface with soluble poly-sulfides and/or elemental sulfur.


This paper investigates two complementary pieces of data on households' demand for improved water services, coping costs and willingness to pay (WTP), from a survey of 1500 randomly sampled households in Kathmandu, Nepal. We evaluate how coping costs and WTP vary across types of water users and income. We find that households in Kathmandu Valley engage in five main types of coping behaviors: collecting, pumping, treating, storing, and purchasing. These activities impose coping costs on an average household of as much as 3 U.S. dollars per month or about 1% of current incomes, representing hidden but real costs of poor infrastructure service. We find that these coping costs are almost twice as much as the current monthly bills paid to the water utility but are significantly lower than estimates of WTP for improved services. We find that coping costs are statistically correlated with WTP and several household characteristics.


Abstract While decisionmakers warn about the cyber threat constantly, there is little systematic analysis of the issue from an international security studies perspective. Some scholars presume that the related technology's scientific complexity and methodological issues prohibit orderly investigation; only a minimum degree of technical acuity is needed, however, revealing the scope of maneuver in the cyber domain. Other skeptics argue that the cyber peril is overblown, contending that cyber weapons have no intrinsic capacity for violence and do not alter the nature or means of war. This view misses the essence of the danger and conceals its true significance: the new capability is expanding the range of possible harm and outcomes between the concepts of war and peace—with important implications for national and international security. The cyber domain, moreover, features enormous defense complications and dangers to strategic stability: offense dominance, attribution difficulties, technological volatility, poor strategic depth, escalatory ambiguity, and proliferation to nontraditional and subversive actors. But even if the cyber danger is overstated, the issue merits serious scholarly attention. Whatever the current cyber revolution signifies, it is detrimental to the intellectual progress and policy relevance of the field to continue to avoid its central questions.


The 2006 Slow Slip Event in Guerrero, Mexico, is one of the world's largest SSE observed up to now. Thanks to the development of the Guerrero GPS network, the 2006 event was recorded at 15 continuous GPS stations that allowed a detailed study of the surface displacements produced by the event. Temporal variations of the displacement vectors, observed during the 2006 SSE, suggest a complex spatio-temporal evolution of slip on the plate interface. We developed a new method to model the spatial and temporal evolution of slip on the fault plane. We assume a functional form for the slip function on the fault plane, similar to the slip function defined by Liu et al. (2006) for kinematic source inversion of regular earthquakes. This slip function is parameterized by the slip amplitude, the initiation time of the slip, and the slip duration, which is the combination of an accelerating and decelerating rise time. The fault plane is divided in 42 subfaults of 78 km x 25 km each. The Green functions are calculated for a layered elastic half space. First, forward modeling tests show that the geodetic data are sensible to the location of the initiation slip patch, the propagation of the rupture and the duration of the slip. Second, using the same parameterization for the slip function, we invert for the slip amplitude, slip duration and rupture propagation velocity. We perform a linearized least-square inversion in the frequency domain. This new inversion procedure provides a continuous image of the spatial and temporal variatio


Self-preferencing is central to contemporary competition law discussions, in particular in digital markets. This article considers the meaning and scope of the label. It shows, first, that favouring an affiliate is, in itself, an expression of competition on the merits. Such conduct is typically linked to the very pro-competitive benefits that are expected from horizontal and vertical integration. Second, self-preferencing is not a sound category, whether from a legal or an economic perspective. It potentially applies to conduct that differs widely in its nature, purpose and effects. The scope of the category would range from traditional instances of tying, on the one hand; to cases that would demand a competition authority to interfere with the design of a product and/or a firm's business model, on the other.
Against this background, the use of self-preferencing as a category would require addressing some issues of principle. In the first place, it seems particularly necessary to ponder the substantive and institutional implications of abandoning indispensability as a filter limiting the exposure of the system to proactive intervention. In the second place, the need to preserve a robust assesment of effects comes across as particularly important.
Article 102 TFEU, Indispensability, Self-Preferencing, Vertical Integration, Horizontal Integration, Tying, Refusal to Deal, Product Design, Business Model, Digital


Objective:
Investigation of the therapeutic effect of a protocol using non-antibiotic Intra Epidine (IE) spray containing copper and zinc chelate on M2 digital dermatitis (DD) lesions compared to a treatment protocol using antibiotic chlortetracycline (CTC) spray for non-inferiority testing.
Background:
Digital dermatitis (DD) is an infection in dairy cattle which frequently results in lameness. A common individual treatment for DD in Europe is a topical administration of antibiotic CTC spray. Given the important objective to minimise antibiotic use in order to prevent selection for antibiotic resistance, there is a need for effective non-antibiotic treatments for common animal diseases.
Evidentiary value:
This clinical trial on commercial farms with registered products is valuable for all veterinary practitioners interested in the quantitative curative effects of treatments forDD.
Methods:
Professional hoof trimmers trimmed hind legs of 944 cows from nine dairy herds. All legs with DD M2 lesions were included and randomly assigned to a treatment protocol with IE spray or CTC spray according to the label instructions from the manufacturers. At the end of the study 231 individual legs, one per cow, in seven herds were eligible for analysis. Clinical improvement was defined as the transition of the clinical most relevant ulcerative M2 lesion to any other less severe lesion stage at 10 days after the start of the treatment.
Results:
The overall individual leg clinical improvement rate of IE spray (86.8%) was higher compared to CTC spray (47.9%). The herd adjusted odds ratio for clinical improvement was 8.2 (95% CI 4.2 – 15.7) for IE spray versus CTC spray with an estimated Relative Risk of 1.9.
Conclusion:
In conclusion, the IE treatment protocol was non-inferior but more effective than the CTC treatment protocol to clinically improve DD M2 lesions.


In many parts of Africa, people searching for honey are led to bees' nests by the greater honeyguide (Indicator indicator Sparrman). The Boran people of Kenya claim that they can deduce the direction and the distance to the nest as well as their own arrival at the nest from the bird's flight pattern, perching height, and calls. Analyses of the behavior of guiding birds confirmed these claims.


It is widely acknowledged in science education that everyday understandings and evidence are generally inconsistent with the scientific view of the matter: "heartache" has little to do with matters cardiopulmonary, and a rising or setting sun actually reflects the movements of the earth. How then does a member of the general public, which in many areas of science is characterized as "illiterate" and "non-scientific," come to regard something scientifically? Moreover, how do traditional unscientific (e.g., Ptolemaic) views continue their lives, even many centuries after scientists have overthrown them in what are termed scientific (e.g., Copernican) revolutions? In this study, we develop a phenomenological perspective, using Edmund Husserl's categories of Nacherzeugung and Nachverstehen, which provide descriptive explanations for our observations. These observations are contextualized in a case study using online video and historical materials concerning the motions of the heart and blood to exemplify our explanations.


Virtual test stands are used for research when live experiment is either difficult or impossible. The possibility of multiple launches is necessary for the program simulating processes with various parameters, along with computer simulation experiments for complex technical objects with VR visualization of the results. Such systems are used, for instance, in the automobile industry. However, there is no mainstreaming yet, probably, because the existing issues have not been properly worked through. The paper discusses a number of problems connected with designing and developing virtual test stands. Determination of overall and interim goals of computer simulation for these systems is required. The use of specialized computer simulation means and/or simulation packages is possible. Computer simulation requires parallel computations. It is necessary to choose VR means suitable for the aims and objectives of the specific system. The necessity arises to use VR in online visualization mode, which presupposes graphic output in the course of program execution and the opportunity to interact with the program. This interaction can change the execution progress and the output graphic information. A major problem is organizing interaction with a virtual test stand. Interfaces for VR environment control and interfaces for simulation control are being considered. Device and natural interfaces are used in VR systems. Natural interfaces can be used to control the VR environment. Problems arise with natural interfaces in setting simulation parameters. Motion capture interfaces can also be used. When working with the stand, a user may experience undesired conditions, which should be studied and prevented.


Similar to Rho GTPases in animals and fungi, Rho of plant (ROP) GTPases, which are active in the guanosine triphosphate-bound state and inactive in the guanosine diphosphate-bound state, serve as molecular switches in plants. Although the general function is conserved, the upstream regulators and downstream effectors appear to be plant specific. In Arabidopsis thaliana, a gene family of 11 ROPs regulates a wide range of processes among which their role in polarity and cell shape is best studied. Growth and nongrowth regions are defined by ROPs through the differential activation of downstream effectors that, in turn, control the local function of actin and microtubules. ROPs are involved in regulatory feedback loops that mediate tissue-specific cues to individual growth behaviours of single cells.

Key Concepts:

The general function of ROPs GTPases in plants is conserved.

The upstream and downstream effectors of ROPs are plant specific.

ROPs regulate cell shape through the organisation of actin and microtubules.

ROPs regulate cell morphogenesis by differential activation of downstream effectors.

ROPs regulate the size of growth areas through regulatory feedback loops.

Keywords:

actin;
microtubules;
cell shape;
polarity;
ROP GTPase


Hip arthroplasty is a common orthopaedic procedure with considerable success in alleviating hip joint pain and disability. To transfer loads from the prosthesis to the contiguous bone, self-curing polymethyl methacrylate, often referred to as bone cement, is routinely used. Residual stresses due to shrinkage of the bone cement during and after polymerisation have been implicated in the formation of cement mantle cracks before any functional loading.

Contemporary cemented hip arthroplasties involve mixing the bone cement under vacuum and applying bone cement pressurisation in situ. However vacuum-mixed bone cement has been linked with increased cement shrinkage and theoretically linked with greater residual stress. In this thesis, experimental work was performed to investigate the effect of vacuum mixing and pressurisation with respect to bone cement residual stress. Also, two commercial brands of bone cement were compared against each other. Results revealed that vacuum mixing did not appreciably alter the residual stress levels compared with cement mixed under atmospheric conditions. Likewise, negligible residual stress difference was measured between CMW® 1 Gentamicin and SmartSet® HV Gentamicin bone cements. However, pressurisation of the curing bone cement mass had a significant effect on the residual stress magnitudes.

Finite element analysis was implemented to quantify the bone cement residual stresses for the experimental construct. Differential scanning calorimetry and dilatometry experimentation was performed to quantify the bone cement's exotherm and linear coefficient of thermal expansion properties respectively. Both the transient thermal and residual stress predictions were directly comparable with the experimental measurements. Utilising the same finite element methodology, the transient thermal and residual stresses were predicted for a representative in vivo scenario. The representative in vivo stresses for the rehabilitation activity of walking was also predicted. Predictions revealed the residual stresses were significant and should be included to establish the cement mantle stress magnitude and distribution for the early portion of the artificial hip replacement lifetime.


Tears of the posterior roots of the medial and lateral meniscus are relatively uncommon injuries, but can be seen concurrently with anterior crucial ligament (ACL) injuries in young athletes. Despite a wealth of research on the diagnostics and therapeutics of root tears in the adult population, pediatric root tears have been relatively understudied despite the increasing incidence of youth sports participation and thus increasing ACL injuries. With an understanding that repair of the meniscal root is paramount to positive outcomes in the adult population, it is therefore crucial to understand the incidence, presentation, and treatment of this pathology in pediatric patients as well. Our aim is to review the available literature on pediatric meniscal root tears, as well as special considerations for anatomy and diagnosis of this injury in children and adolescents.


The major obstacle in reinterpreting and reconstructing the cultural accumulation of the Civilisation of Islam is not only the unawareness of Muslim scholars of their heritage, but also their willingness to employ western perspectives to utilise this heritage. In order to overcome this tragedy, social sciences should be criticised through vivid and constructive analyses; and Islamic scientific tradition should be reinterpreted in a comprehensive manner. Instead of basic model transfers from the west, the original sources should be re-analysed. Ibn Khaldun and his Muqaddimah present an invaluable opportunity in that respect. However, modern scholarship contextualises Ibn Khaldun in anachronic ways, which in turn preclude the possibility of reproducing new scientific traditions. Indeed, Ibn Khaldun's conception of science rises on three pillars, complementing one another that are a comprehensive perception of universe, a historical consciousness, and a metaphysics of society. These three factors are interrelatedly systematised in the 'ilm al-umrân whose main theme of reference is tawhid in the traditional Islamic thought. Different stages of knowledge overlap in the epistemology of The Muqaddimah. The basic principles of Islamic thought are systematised in the framework of Qur'anic ontological presumptions. Hence, the principles of common origin of the existence, tawhid, and the hierarchical absolution of Allah were continued. Therefore, this article will offer the Umrân (scienza nouva) of Ibn Khaldun as an opportunity to release the social sciences from its ontological dilemmas.


Both a new iterative grid-search technique and the iterative Fourier-transform algorithm are used to illuminate the relationships among the ambiguous images nearest a given object, error metric minima, and stagnation points of phase-retrieval algorithms. Analytic expressions for the subspace of ambiguous solutions to the phase-retrieval problem are derived for 2 × 2 and 3 × 2 objects. Monte Carlo digital experiments using a reduced-gradient search of these subspaces are used to estimate the probability that the worst-case nearest ambiguous image to a given object has a Fourier modulus error of less than a prescribed amount. Probability distributions for nearest ambiguities are estimated for different object-domain constraints.


Michael Johnson's book addresses an important issue in the study of domestic violence: whether domestic violence is a "unitary phenomenon" or whether there are multiple forms of domestic violence. Using previous research on domestic violence and secondary data, Johnson argues that there are three types of domestic violence: "intimate terrorism," "violent resistance," and "situational couple violence." The introduction and first chapter provide an overview of the three types and use statistics to illustrate the differences between them. The next three chapters explain, in detail, each of the three types of domestic violence. Johnson concludes with a discussion of the implications this typology has for intervention, prevention, and research on domestic violence. Although Johnson's typology was first proposed in the 1990s, this book makes several valuable contributions to the literature on domestic violence. First, it provides a comprehensive understanding of each of the three forms of violence, adeptly delving into each form's causes, correlates, and consequences as well as the efficacy of interventions designed to combat domestic violence. Second, Johnson's typology can be used to better understand the problem of gender symmetry in domestic violence, which has been hotly debated for the past 30 years. Family violence researchers argue that domestic violence is gender symmetrical—men and women are equally likely to both use violence and to be victimized in their intimate relationships. Research by feminist researchers, however, argues that domestic violence is gender asymmetrical—men are far more likely than women to use violence and women are far more likely than men to be victimized by an intimate partner. Each group of researchers has an extensive body of research to support its position. Johnson theorizes that these differences have arisen because each group has studied a different form of domestic violence. He argues that family violence researchers have been studying "situational couple violence" and feminist researchers have been studying "intimate terrorism."


Leadership Through Learning is a 12week (i.e., onesemester) programme for Mäori and Pacific tertiary students run by Te Fale Pouäwhina, a Mäori and Pacific student learning service at the University of Auckland in Aotearoa New Zealand. The programme is designed to help students lead, empower and transform through normalising their leadership and learning success. As a strategy, normalising success counters negative stereotypes, microaggressions, and the everyday colonialism and racism these students encounter. By normalising success, positive stereotypes are created that challenge the deficit framing faced by Mäori and Pacific students. This article describes research exploring the Leadership Through Learning programme, its focus on "students as leaders", the relationships that develop between students on the programme as they engage with the curriculum, and the impact of innovative teaching and learning praxis. Kaupapa Mäori and Pacific research methodologies, particularly talanoa, are employed to highlight the student leaders' voices, aspirations and growth as leaders. Student leaders' engagements and relationships strengthen their identity and selfefficacy, and provide opportunities that have created positive stereotypes, especially in the programme's three critical areas: leadership, empowerment and transformation.


Abstract: Traditional mark–recapture studies to estimate abundance and trends of Malayan sun bear (Helarctos malayanus) populations are impeded by logistics of live-trapping wild individuals. The development of noninvasive sampling techniques for monitoring sun bear populations is therefore crucial for targeted conservation action. Sun bears have short fur, and conventional hair-snagging devices are ineffective. Moreover, scats are rapidly decomposed by the warm, humid environment, as well as by invertebrates. In combination with camera-sampling, we tested 2 designs of hair traps (n = 45) in situ at Tabin Wildlife Reserve in Sabah, Malaysia, during April–October 2017, to obtain hair samples from wild sun bears. We also deployed 4 types of hair traps in rainforest enclosures with captive sun bears to evaluate hair-capture success and the effects of weathering, lure, and adhesive on polymerase chain reaction (PCR) amplification success. Wild adult male sun bears displayed back-rubbing behavior at hair traps and 6 individuals were identified based on unique chest marks. We collected 30 hair samples from wild sun bears, including 15 chest mark images of 6 individuals over 1,260 trap-nights. We detected adult males at hair traps more frequently than females and subadults. We obtained 39 hair samples in the captive trials. Extracted DNA from hair roots successfully amplified with mitochondrial (wild bears: 95%; captive bears: 97%) and microsatellite primers (wild bears: 100%; captive bears 87%). Adhesive and lure type did not affect PCR amplification, but weathering reduced amplification of microsatellite loci. This study is the first successful attempt to obtain genetic samples from wild sun bears using inexpensive, readily available materials such as duct tape, polybutyl glue, and locally sourced lures. The quality of genetic material from these genetic samples should be suitable for studies of population size and gene flow.


1. The systemic plasminogen activator response has been examined after intravenous infusion of the following peptides related to neurohypophyseal hormones in approximately equimolar dosages into informed, consenting human volunteer subjects: (a) the natural nonapeptides: lysine- and arginine-vasopressin, oxytocin and arginine-vasotocin, (b) the N- and C-terminal tripeptide fragments of vasopressin and (c) four vasopressin analogues without pressor activity, altered at the N-terminus, the disulphide bridge and/or sequence position 8 in the C-terminal tripeptide. In addition, angiotensin II and adrenaline were infused. 2. It was observed that some of the cyclic nonapeptides resulted in high and prolonged increases in amounts of plasminogen activator in venous blood, in the following order, both for amplitude and duration: 1-desamino-6-monocarba-[8-d-arginine]-vasopressin > 1-desamino-[8-d-arginine]-vasopressin ≫ arginine-vasopressin = lysine-vasopressin > Nα-glycyl-glycyl-glycyl-lysine-vasopressin. 3. No plasminogen activator responses followed infusions of vasopressin tripeptide fragments, oxytocin, angiotension II, 1-desamino-[8-N-MeArg]-vasopressin or 9-desglycineamide-lysine-vasopressin octapeptide. 4. Mole for mole, the four most active substances were approximately two orders of ten more potent than adrenaline by amplitude comparison alone. 5. Intra-arterial adrenaline, in one-tenth the systemic dose, stimulated a release of plasminogen activator from the infused local vascular bed only, This did not occur with equivalent doses of arginine-vasopressin and 1-desamino-[8-d-arginine]-vasopressin. 6. It is concluded that plasminogen activator release arising from catecholamine-responding and vasopressin-responding receptors are both molecule-specific and different in anatomical location. The molecular structural requirements for triggering the latter hypothetical receptor type and potential clinical applications are discussed.


Learning new concepts is critical to making sense of the world. Research on analogical reasoning suggests structure mapping and schema induction can enable discovery of new relational concepts. However, existing theories of schema induction and refinement are insufficient to explain acquisition of rich, compositional hierarchies of relational concepts. This paper offers a proposal for this sort of representation construction, founded on reinforcement learning to evaluate the predictive usefulness of higher-order relations, together with a mechanism of relational consolidation by which systems of relations (schemas) can be chunked into unitary entities. A computational model of these ideas is outlined and partially tested in simulations and human experiments. Implications and moderating factors for relational consolidation are considered.


The objective of this thesis is to investigate how the onboard battery of a quadcopter can be charged through manual rotation of its motors, while understanding the resulting aerodynamical forces acting on the rotors during hover, as well as considering the changes in thrust capabilities when the electronic and structural design are altered. A theoretical approach using the momentum theory will present a general understanding of rotor performance whilst describing the correlation between rotor parameters, thrust and mechanical power. Furthermore, the idea of using the motors as generators are put under study to investigate their electrical output and utilize them to recharge the battery. This is done using the counter electromotive force equation, and a sequence of other equations that will present numerical data of actual manual work converted into electrical power. Resulting in the required time to manually recharge the quadcopter subsequently sustaining hover flight for three minutes. It is concluded in this report that manual recharging of the battery using the motors as generators is possible, as well as maintaining its flying ability in case of added weight. Although not deemed practical in commercial use, it is a new methodology with the intention to develop a sustainable quadcopter further expanding its practical applications in both aviation industry and human aid.


Subperiosteal implants are currently fabricated by using the classic two-stage direct bone impression technique or by the use of the one-stage computer tomography/computer-assisted design-computer-assisted manufacture (CT/CAD-CAM) method. This study compares the accuracy of the two techniques by using cadaver maxillae and mandibles as the models for fabrication of casts. Seven cadaver jaw specimens were collected and subjected to direct bone impressions and to CT scans. Those derived from the direct bone impressions were poured in die stone, while the CT scans were sent for fabrication of CAD-CAM-generated casts. On each of the 14 models so produced, a cast grid was fabricated that was designed as a measuring device. The preciseness of fit of each grid was subjected to analyses that presented levels of accuracy. Statistical evaluation of these levels, reduced to numerical indices, revealed that the direct bone techniques resulted in acceptable castings in seven of seven cases, whereas the CAD-CAM method yielded adequate castings in five of seven cases.


An overlooked classic of Italian literature, this epic and unforgettable novel recounts one man's long and turbulent life in revolutionary Italy. At the age of eighty-three and nearing death, Carlo Altoviti has decided to write down the confessions of his long life. He remembers everything: his unhappy childhood in the kitchens of the Castle of Fratta; romantic entanglements during the siege of Genoa; revolutionary fighting in Naples; and so much more. Throughout, Carlo lives only for his twin passions in life: his dream of a unified, free Italy and his undying love for the magnificent but inconstant Pisana. Peopled by a host of unforgettable characters - including drunken smugglers, saintly nuns, scheming priests, Napoleon and Lord Byron - this is an epic historical novel that tells the remarkable and inseparable stories of one man's life and the history of Italy's unification. Ippolito Nievo was born in 1831 in Padua. Confessions of an Italian, written in 1858 and published posthumously in 1867, is his best known work. A patriot and a republican, he took part with Garibaldi and his Thousand in the momentous 1860 landing in Sicily to free the south from Bourbon rule. Nievo died before he reached the age of thirty, when his ship, en route from Palermo to Naples, went down in the Tyrrhenian Sea in early 1861. He was, Italo Calvino once said, the sole Italian novelist of the nineteenth century in the 'daredevil, swashbuckler, rambler' mould so dear to other European literatures. Frederika Randall has worked as a cultural journalist for many years. Her previous translations include Luigi Meneghello's Deliver Us and Ottavio Cappellani's Sicilian Tragedee and Sergio Luzzatto's Padre Pio: Miracles and Politics in a Secular Age. Lucy Riall is Professor of Comparative History at the European University Institute. Her many books include Garibaldi. Invention of a Hero. "Of all the furore that came out of the Risorgimento, only Manzoni and Nievo really matter today". (Umberto Eco). "The one 19th century Italian novel which has [for an Italian reader] that charm and fascination so abundant in foreign literatures". (Italo Calvino). "Perhaps the greatest Italian novel of the nineteenth century". (Roberto Carnero). "A spirited appeal for liberte, egalite and fraternite, the novel is also an astute, scathing and amusing human comedy, a tale of love, sex and betrayal, of great wealth and grinding poverty, of absolute power and scheming submission, of idealism and cynicism, courage and villainy". (The Literary Encyclopedia).


ABSTRACT Societal dependence on, and commercial and scientific exploitation of Earth-Oriented remote sensing from satellites is growing at an exponential rate. The comprehensive EU Copernicus programme provides a major contribution to the global effort, but even so, to achieve the necessary global and temporal coverage requires synergistic cooperation and associated interoperability of the Worlds sensors. For a user to exploit Earth Observation (EO) data there must exist confidence in data characteristics, quality and reliable delivery. Although long-term data records for climate may be the most demanding in nature, generation of analysis-ready operational data sets for applications, as diverse as food security to pollution monitoring, all require the user to have some quantitative level of confidence in the data and derived information. A long-term Calibration/Validation (Cal/Val) vision necessitates clear ownership and long-term funding. Delineating the roles of the European Commission (EC), space agencies and member states in long-term Cal/Val would provide clarity. It is clear that the space agencies have the responsibility to meet the mission requirement of their spaceborne instruments but long-term validation is often entrusted to interested parties bringing their own resources to the task. Furthermore, there is a critical need for Fiducial Reference Measurements (FRMs), acquired in operational mode, and comprehensive in coverage both spatially and temporally, to assure that the satellite product accuracies are met. This paper discusses the current status, gaps and challenges regarding long-term Cal/Val of EO satellites and recommends the creation of a European coordinating entity for satellite product calibration and validation. The proposed entity would be an integrative organization coordinating the European Cal/Val activities in partnership with the member states and the space agencies and working together with existing data providers to secure access to satellite and in-situ data of traceable FRM standards.


In mammals, pheromones--chemical cues that trigger mating and social behaviors--are detected through two large families of heterotrimeric guanine nucleotide-binding protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs), V1R and V2R, expressed in sensory neurons in discreet regions of the vomeronasal organ (VNO). The molecular mechanisms through which diversity and specificity of pheromone responses are achieved, however, have remained unclear. Loconto et al. used subtractive differential screening of cDNA libraries from individual rat VNO neurons and isolated a nonclassical major histocompatibility complex (MHC) class Ib gene. The authors used a combination of techniques including in situ hybridization, single-cell reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR), immunocytochemistry, and transgenic analysis to investigate the association of M10.7, the mouse homolog of this gene, with pheromone receptors. M10.7 and the five other presumably functional members of the M10 gene family were expressed exclusively in V2R-expressing neurons in the basal neuroepithelium of the VNO. Particular V2Rs specifically associated with one or a few members of the M10 family. Western analysis in combination with immunoaffinity chromatography indicated that V2R, M10, and β2-microglobulin (β2m), which generally associates with MHC molecules, formed a multimolecular complex. In vitro experiments indicated that this association was required for V2R localization to the plasma membrane. Moreover, transgenic mice lacking β2m showed V2R mislocalization and lacked typical male-male aggressive behavior. The authors speculated that M10, in addition to escorting V2R to the cell surface, may alter the mechanism and specificity of pheromone recognition by heterodimerizing with the V2R. J. Loconto, F. Papes, E. Chang, L. Stowers, E. P. Jones, T. Takada, A. Kumánovics, K. F. Lindahl, C. Dulac, Functional expression of murine V2R pheromone receptors involves selective association with the M10 and M1 families of MHC class Ib molecules. Cell 112, 607-618 (2003). [Online Journal]


While deep neural networks can attain good accuracy on in-distribution test points, many applications require robustness even in the face of unexpected perturbations in the input, changes in the domain, or other sources of distribution shift. We study the problem of test time robustification, i.e., using the test input to improve model robustness. Recent prior works have proposed methods for test time adaptation, however, they each introduce additional assumptions, such as access to multiple test points, that prevent widespread adoption. In this work, we aim to study and devise methods that make no assumptions about the model training process and are broadly applicable at test time. We propose a simple approach that can be used in any test setting where the model is probabilistic and adaptable: when presented with a test example, perform different data augmentations on the data point, and then adapt (all of) the model parameters by minimizing the entropy of the model's average, or marginal, output distribution across the augmentations. Intuitively, this objective encourages the model to make the same prediction across different augmentations, thus enforcing the invariances encoded in these augmentations, while also maintaining confidence in its predictions. In our experiments, we evaluate two baseline ResNet models, two robust ResNet-50 models, and a robust vision transformer model, and we demonstrate that this approach achieves accuracy gains of 1-8\% over standard model evaluation and also generally outperforms prior augmentation and adaptation strategies. For the setting in which only one test point is available, we achieve state-of-the-art results on the ImageNet-C, ImageNet-R, and, among ResNet-50 models, ImageNet-A distribution shift benchmarks.


We present an implemented procedure to select an appropriate connective to link two propositions. Each connective is defined as a set of constraints between features of the propositions it connects. Our focus has been to identify pragmatic features that can be produced by a deep generator to provide a simple representation of connectives. Using these features, we can account for a variety of connective usages. We describe how a surface generator can produce complex sentences when given these features in input. The selection procedure is implemented as part of a large functional unification grammar. Topic area: language generation


We propose a method for fine grain QoS control of real-time applications. The method allows adapting the overall system behavior by adequately setting the quality level parameters of its actions. The objective of the control policy is to meet QoS requirements including three types of properties: 1) safety that is, no deadline is missed; 2) optimality that is, maximization of the available time budget; 3) smoothness of quality levels. The method takes as input a model of the application software, QoS requirements and platform-dependent timing information, and produces a controlled application software meeting the QoS requirements on the target platform. This paper provides a complete formalization of the quality control problem. It proposes a new control management policy ensuring safety, near-optimality and smoothness. It also describes a prototype tool implementing the quality control algorithm and experimental results about its application to a video encoder.


The semi‐adiabatic localization by adiabatic selective refocusing (sLASER) sequence provides single‐shot full intensity signal with clean localization and minimal chemical shift displacement error and was recommended by the international MRS Consensus Group as the preferred localization sequence at high‐ and ultra‐high fields. Across‐vendor standardization of the sLASER sequence at 3 tesla has been challenging due to the B1 requirements of the adiabatic inversion pulses and maximum B1 limitations on some platforms. The aims of this study were to design a short‐echo sLASER sequence that can be executed within a B1 limit of 15 μT by taking advantage of gradient‐modulated RF pulses, to implement it on three major platforms and to evaluate the between‐vendor reproducibility of its perfomance with phantoms and in vivo. In addition, voxel‐based first and second order B0 shimming and voxel‐based B1 adjustments of RF pulses were implemented on all platforms. Amongst the gradient‐modulated pulses considered (GOIA, FOCI and BASSI), GOIA‐WURST was identified as the optimal refocusing pulse that provides good voxel selection within a maximum B1 of 15 μT based on localization efficiency, contamination error and ripple artifacts of the inversion profile. An sLASER sequence (30 ms echo time) that incorporates VAPOR water suppression and 3D outer volume suppression was implemented with identical parameters (RF pulse type and duration, spoiler gradients and inter‐pulse delays) on GE, Philips and Siemens and generated identical spectra on the GE 'Braino' phantom between vendors. High‐quality spectra were consistently obtained in multiple regions (cerebellar white matter, hippocampus, pons, posterior cingulate cortex and putamen) in the human brain across vendors (5 subjects scanned per vendor per region; mean signal‐to‐noise ratio > 33; mean water linewidth between 6.5 Hz to 11.4 Hz). The harmonized sLASER protocol is expected to produce high reproducibility of MRS across sites thereby allowing large multi‐site studies with clinical cohorts.


An analog-to-digital converter (ADC) architecture that simultaneously converts two channels is presented. The ADC is intended for use in portable broadband radio receivers that employ in-phase (I) and quadrature (Q) signal paths and will provide an optimal combination of low cost, low power, and high performance. The architecture is pipeline based and employs two separate first stages followed by shared stages for the remainder of the pipeline. A clock generation system for generating all of the required nonoverlapping clock phases is also presented. A prototype ADC with 10 bit resolution and a 40 MHz sample rate that employs the proposed ADC architecture has been fabricated using a 90 nm all-digital CMOS process and occupies an area of 1.727 mm2 for a per-channel area of 0.864 mm2. The measured performance for the two-channel ADC is a peak signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) and signal-to-noise-plus-distortion ratio (SNDR) of 58.4 dB and 56.5 dB, respectively, and differential nonlinearity (DNL) and integral nonlinearity (INL) of -0.48/+0.58 LSB and plusmn1 LSB, respectively, with a power dissipation of 50 mW (including analog, digital, and clock generator power) from a 2.5 V supply (1.2 V for the digital section), giving a per-channel power dissipation of 25 mW.


The shape persistence of a crop yield probability density function (PDF) was studied by using two variants of the Visual Impact Method (VIM) to elicit subjective estimations by farmers. In one variant ten weights were used to describe the PDF and in the other variant the farmer chose the number of weights. Results were compared directly and by means of Weibull distributions fitting, with evidence being obtained in favor of methodological persistence and the equivalence of the two estimation methods.


An analytical formulation for relative dielectric constant retrieval is reconstructed to establish a relationship between the response of a spiral microstrip resonator and effective relative dielectric constant of a lossy superstrate, such as biological tissue. To do so, an analytical equation is modified by constructing functions for the two unknowns, the filling factor A and effective length leff of the resonator. This is done by simulating the resonator with digital phantoms of varying permittivity. The values of A and leff are determined for each phantom from the resulting S-parameter response, using particle swarm optimization. Multiple nonlinear regression is applied to produce equations for A and leff, expressed as a function of frequency and the phantom's relative dielectric constant. These equations are combined to form a new nonlinear analytical equation, which is then solved using the Newton-Raphson iterative method, for both simulations and measurements of physical phantoms. To verify the reconstructed dielectric constant, the dielectric properties of the physical phantoms are determined with commercial high temperature open-ended coaxial probe. The dielectric properties are reconstructed by the described method, with less than 3.67% error with respect to the measurements.


ABSTRACT We have developed an amplification-based reverse dot blot assay for the detection of specific sites of insertion of the Mycobacterium tuberculosis insertion sequence IS6110. In this assay, a set of biotin-labeled amplicons representing the various copies of IS6110 and their flanking sequences is generated by linker-mediated PCR. The amplicons are then hybridized to immobilized oligonucleotide probes that are specific for known IS6110 insertion sites. The method was evaluated using an array of oligonucleotide probes corresponding to IS6110insertion sites from M. tuberculosis strains CDC1551, Erdman, and H37Rv, and multidrug-resistant strain W. A set of 72 DNA samples from 60 M. tuberculosis clinical isolates was analyzed for the presence or absence of these insertion sites, and the assay was found to be highly reproducible. This method of identifying insertion sites has been named "insite" and can be used for the genotyping of M. tuberculosis complex strains based on IS6110 insertion site profiles.