Risk and risk perception are important concepts for strategic planning and management of an organisation. Risk management (RM) refers to systematic collection and analysis of data to determine the potentially adverse effects of an organisation's strategic objectives (risk), and the development of mitigation strategies to counteract organisational uncertainties.
Such uncertainties are increasing with the rapid development and expansion of the higher education sector (HE). Globalisation, increased competition for funding, advances in information and communication technology, increased social expectations, and many additional challenges have made the educational and research process more complex.
This research aims to: 1) assess the level of staff awareness/participation on risk management among the 14 Ministry of Health Educational Institutions (MOHEIs); 2) identify, evaluate MOHEIs' risks as perceived by MOHEIs staff, and 3) develop a risk management plan with recommendations, to improve the management of risk in MOHEIs.
The RM endeavour is part of the new public management (NPM) reform of HE and it adds value to HEIs and their stakeholders. Both aim to: 1) improve the competitive advantage through a better understanding of risk in the operational environment, and 2) improve efficiency and effective use of resources. Diversifying funding sources, privatisation of some services (thereby sharing/transferring risk to other partners) and decentralisation of some authority to the lower organisation level will empower staff to identify risks at local level and assist in developing mitigation strategies that meet their departments' or units' needs.
The literature review reveals many risk management standards/frameworks, which use similar processes, that include six main steps (1) Defining Context, (2) Event Identification, (3) Risk Assessment, (4) Risk response, (5) Risk Communication and, (5) Evaluation and Monitoring. In the present work I have adapted the first three of these steps through a mixed action research approach.
Three data gathering methods were employed to collect qualitative and quantitative data: 1) content analysis of local, national and international published documents, 2) focus group discussions with eight senior managers and academic staff from various institutions and disciplines, and 3) two-round Delphi survey with participation of 158 MOHEIs staff.
The research revealed 20 risks, of which seven risks have been rated as MOHEIs top priority risks. These include: (1) breakdown of equipment/applications; (2) inadequate infrastructure; (3) breach of IT or data security; (4) low student satisfaction; (5) insufficient funding: (6) slow procurement processes; and, (7) rising cost of employment. A risk management plan was thus developed to mitigate these seven risks through 21 treatment strategies, 69 operational activities, and 46 key risk indicators.
This research highlights the need to develop a risk management framework or standard that caters for all MOHEIs levels and take into consideration the social and cultural values of the stakeholders. Until a risk management framework is established, the results of this research recommend quality assurance section to take the lead in implementing the proposed risk management plan.


This paper reviews the statistical approach typically applied by macroeconomists to investigate the empirical links among aggregate data on household consumption, income, and wealth. In particular, we focus on studies determining whether and how much changes in net worth, such as those generated by the stock-market boom in the U.S. over the latter 1990s, are responsible for subsequent swings in the growth rate of consumer spending. We show how simple economic theory is used to motivate an econometric strategy that consists of two stages of analysis. First, regressions are used to identify trend movements shared by consumption, income, and wealth over the long run, then deviations of these series from their commong long- run trends are used to help forecast consumption growth over the short run. Our discussion highlights the various judgments that researchers must make in the course of implementing this empirical approach, and we detail how specific parameter estimates describing the magnitude of the wealth effect on consumption--and even broad conclusions about its existence--are affected by making alternative choices.


This thesis details the design and construction of an experiment to measure the radial distribution of laser gain in a cylindrical Helium-Neon laser gain tube. This distribution is important as it can effect the transverse mode structure of a running ring laser. Earlier theoretical models of the distribution were not supported by high quality experimental data and fail to take into account some physical processes. A resolution of 8 parts per million in gain and 50 μm in radial position has been achieved. Gain distributions have been measured and are shown to be well modeled by a 0 order Bessel function with first roots at the tube walls and a central dip depending on excitation power; except for the region very near to the tube walls where a very rapid increase in gain has been observed. Hydrogen has been identified by spectroscopic analysis as the primary constituent of gas contamination and cause of the long term reduction in gain of large ring lasers. Additional work has been done to detect a proposed non-classical LenseThirring field around a spinning lead superconductor. It was found that any effect is at least 20 times smaller than predicted. Techniques and tools for data acquisition programming have been reviewed focusing on difficulties with coupling of user interface and application logic, monolithicity, difficulties with scripting and algorithm implementation.


There is a great struggle in the United States between proponents of the death penalty and death penalty abolitionists who believe that the practice is cruel and even unconstitutional. Although the punishment of death is enshrined in the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments of the Constitution, the Supreme Court seems to have followed its moral compass in chipping away at the death penalty because of the cruelty of the practice. The Court's struggle between the text of the Constitution and its moral inclinations in the death penalty context has resulted in an inconsistent and confusing Eighth Amendment Punishments Clause jurisprudence. While attempting to maintain neutrality on the topic and thus relying almost exclusively on assessing the unusualness of a practice through a purportedly objective assessment of state legislative action, the Court seems to have covertly injected into the equation its subjective views as to what punishments are unconstitutionally cruel. This tension between an objective measure of unusualness and a subjective assessment of cruelty has led the Court to make inconsistent statements about whether the Punishments Clause prohibits only punishments that are both cruel and unusual, or rather prohibits both cruel punishments and unusual punishments. This Article goes where no other has, identifying and exploring this important question. After tracing the history of the Eighth Amendment, analyzing the Court's early interpretations of the prohibition on 'cruel and unusual punishments,' and parsing the text of the Punishments Clause, the Article concludes that the Clause prohibits only punishments that are both cruel and unusual and that each of these components of the Clause should thus be independently assessed. While this interpretation may narrow the scope of the Amendment, it allows for further innovations in humane methods of punishment and revives the federalist foundation of this nation that the Court's current jurisprudence has stifled.


The primary aim of this work is to attain improvement of the softness of cotton fabric during the
washing process with ecological surfactants. To attain that improvement, sodium bentonite
microparticules was added to the detergent formulations to produce a softening effect during
washing and obtain the so called "soft detergent" effect. Sodium bentonite (a mineral composed mainly of hydrated aluminium silicates) was mixed with the surfactants used in ecological detergents. Two types of particle size of these microparticles with ammoniumsilicone softener treatment for improving this effect on their behaviour were used. The surfactants used were an anionic surfactant, namely LAS, and two non-ionic surfactants, namely APG and AE, used separately and as mixtures, without builders, to demonstrate their detersive power in one wash and repeated washes, depending on the nature of the surfactants and on their separate mixtures and mixtures in different proportions of anionic and non-ionic surfactants in combination in all cases with a constant concentration of sodium bentonite with two particle sizes. Evaluation was performed of the subjective softness (by handle) of pairs of samples by several observers and also of changes in whiteness after deposition of the bentonite during washing, which was checked with scanning electron microscopy (SEM) images of the fibres of the cotton fabric.


Th e essential oils obtained from Anethum graveolens, Foeniculum vulgare collected at fully-mature and fl owering stages, Mentha piperita, Mentha spicata, Lavandula offi cinalis, Ocimum basilicum (green- and purple- leaf varieties), Origanum onites, O. vulgare, O. munitifl orum, O. majorana, Rosmarinus offi cinalis, Salvia offi cinalis, and Satureja cuneifolia, as well as the widely encountered components in essential oils (γ-terpinene, 4-allylanisole, (-)-carvone, dihydrocarvone, D-limonene, (-)-phencone, cuminyl alcohol, cuminyl aldehyde, cuminol, trans-anethole, camphene, isoborneol, (-)-borneol, L-bornyl acetate, 2-decanol, 2-heptanol, methylheptane, farnesol, nerol, isopulegol, citral, citronellal, citronellol, geraniol, geranyl ester, linalool, linalyl oxide, linalyl ester, α-pinene, β-pinene, piperitone, (-)-menthol, isomenthone, carvacrol, thymol, vanillin, and eugenol), were screened for their antiviral activity against Herpes simplex type-1 (HSV-1) and parainfl uenza type-3 (PI-3). Cytotoxicity was expressed as cytopathogenic eff ect. Most of the oils and compounds displayed strong antiviral eff ects against HSV-1, ranging between 0.8 and 0.025 μg mL −1 . However, the samples tested were less eff ective against PI-3, with results ranging between 1.6 and 0.2 μg mL −1 . Th e essential oil of A. graveolens was the most active. Most of the tested oils and compounds exhibited good antibacterial and antifungal eff ects.


Background. We aimed to evaluate the potential association of mosquito prevalence in a boreal forest area with transmission of the bacterial disease tularemia to humans, and model the annual variation of disease using local weather data. Methods. A prediction model for mosquito abundance was built using weather and mosquito catch data. Then a negative binomial regression model based on the predicted mosquito abundance and local weather data was built to predict annual numbers of humans contracting tularemia in Dalarna County, Sweden. Results. Three hundred seventy humans were diagnosed with tularemia between 1981 and 2007, 94% of them during 7 summer outbreaks. Disease transmission was concentrated along rivers in the area. The predicted mosquito abundance was correlated (0.41, P < .05) with the annual number of human cases. The predicted mosquito peaks consistently preceded the median onset time of human tularemia (temporal correlation, 0.76; P < .05). Our final predictive model included 5 environmental variables and identified 6 of the 7 outbreaks. Conclusions. This work suggests that a high prevalence of mosquitoes in late summer is a prerequisite for outbreaks of tularemia in a tularemia-endemic boreal forest area of Sweden and that environmental variables can be used as risk indicators.


In an increasingly secular society, spirituality (rather than religion) is more pervasive than ever before yet the area seems to be amorphous and hotly contested. Even Gardner has declined to commit to spirituality (or more broadly, existentialism), as an intelligence. What therefore, does this mean for students who have heightened spiritual awareness and ability? How do we identify these students let alone, begin to enhance their spiritual development? This paper contrasts the claims surrounding spiritual giftedness including a comparison of moral, cognitive and theological dimensions. An analysis of what appears to be common to spiritual experiences provides a useful framework for examining this intriguing yet controversial area. Some implications for gifted students are suggested with examples drawn from classroom research.


In the scenario of labor and water shortage, direct sowing of rice is a promising and alternative strategy for rice establishment. Therefore, a field study was undertaken to evaluate the comparative efficiency of different sowing methods and tillage practices for direct seeded rice in salt affected soil. The following treatments tested were; T 1 : cultivator, T 2 : disk harrow + cultivator, T 3 : rotavator + cultivator, with three sowing techniques; S 1 : broadcast + seed covering with planking 40 kg, S 2 : broadcast + seed covering with planking 60 kg and, S 3 : drill sowing. The experiment was designed in randomize complete block design having split plot arrangement and three replications. Results of the study showed that maximum paddy yield was recorded by drill sowing with rotavator + cultivator used as tillage implements for land preparation. At the end of the study, soil properties were also improved with reduction of 0.57%, 16.21% and 8.56% in pH s , EC e and SAR respectively with use of rotavator + cultivator and drill sowing. In conclusion, use of rotavator + cultivator as tillage implement and drill sowing is effective and feasible technology for direct sowing of rice in salt affected soils.


Non-denaturing pressures of around 2000 bar are effective for eliminating and refolding protein aggregates and may be applicable in various phases of protein manufacturing to decrease aggregate levels in products and improve process yields. Lower aggregate levels can result in reduced immunogenicity of proteins and enable the correct refolding of proteins that might not be recovered with traditional techniques. High pressure treatment can also be used to conduct selective PEGylation and protease cleavage reactions while minimizing protein aggregation. High pressure processes have been used in the food industry for over 50 years and large scale (300 L) systems are commercially available, enabling production of proteins on the kilogram scale. This review summarizes the utility of high pressure refolding to remove and refold protein aggregates, enhance therapeutic proteins, and facilitate manufacturing improvements at industrial scales.


For much of the history of the western legal order, jurisdiction has been the first question of law. This book investigates the difference that jurisdiction continues to make to the ordering of normative existence. It also follows the speculation that without an account of jurisdiction, jurisprudence would be left speechless, with no power to address the conditions of attachment to legal and political order.

The starting point of this book lies with the claim that a sharper focus can be given to normative legal ordering through questions of jurisdiction than can be through those of moral responsibility or social action. This is so because jurisdiction articulates both the potentiality of law and the conditions of its exercise. It provides the idiom of response to the fact that there is law and to the fact that law institutes, judges and addresses a form of life. From this viewpoint the contributors to this book examine the institution of human rights, the new global and national orders of sovereign power and of trade and information, the judgment and government of death and desire, and the address of colonial and post-colonial legal idioms. In doing this the contributors also provide for the elaboration of questions of jurisdiction as part of the resources and repertoires of jurisprudence.

This book provides a point of entry to an emergent genre of writing within doctrinal, historical and critical jurisprudence that has returned to questions of jurisdiction to think again about juridical order and change. In so doing, it also points to questions that must be asked for there to be any interdisciplinary study that addresses law.

Book description from publisher website at: http://www.routledgelaw.com/books/Jurisprudence-of-Jurisdiction-isbn9781844720323


This paper investigates a distributed cyclic delay diversity (CDD) transmission scheme for cyclic-prefixed single carrier systems in non-identically and identically distributed frequency selective fading channels. The distinguishable feature of the proposed scheme lies in providing a transmit diversity gain while reducing the burden of estimating the channel state information, which is a challenging task in distributed and cooperative systems. To effectively use the distributed CDD scheme at the transmitters, two sufficient conditions are derived to eliminate the intersymbol interference at the receiver and leveraged to convert the multi-input single-output channel into a single-input single-output channel. These conditions allow the system to achieve the maximum diversity for frequency selective fading channels at a full rate. To achieve this maximum diversity, a fixed number of CDD transmitters are selected based on the channel conditions, symbol block size, and maximum time dispersion of the channel, and a new two-stage transmission mode is proposed. Based on the distributed CDD and the proposed selection schemes, a new expression for the signal-to-noise ratio at the receiver is obtained with the aid of order statistics, and then closed-form expressions for the outage probability and average symbol error rate (ASER) are derived. As far as the identically distributed frequency selective fading channel model is concerned, the achievable maximum diversity gain is proved, with the aid of asymptotic analysis, to be equal to the product of the total number of transmitters in the system and the number of multipath components. Link-level simulations are also conducted to validate the analytical expressions for outage probability, ASER, and maximum achievable diversity gain.


The Oral-Facial-Digital type I syndrome (OFDI; MIM 311200) is a rare syndromic form of inherited renal cystic disease. It is transmitted as an X-linked dominant, male lethal disorder and is caused by mutations in the OFD1 gene. Previous studies demonstrated that OFDI belongs to the growing number of disorders ascribed to dysfunction of primary cilia. Among the different clinical signs OFD type I is characterized by the presence of renal cystic disease, which is present in over 60% of cases. With the purpose of studying the role of the Ofd1 transcript in renal cystic disease, we generated two conditional Ofd1 deficient mouse models (Ksp and IND), which resulted in viable mice characterized by renal cystic disease and progressive impairment of renal function. The study of these models allowed us to demonstrate that primary cilia initially form and then disappear after the development of cysts, suggesting that the dysfunction of primary cilia is a consequence rather than the primary cause of renal cystic disease. Immunofluorescence and western blotting analysis revealed upregulation of the mTOR pathway in both dilated and non dilated renal structures. Treatment with rapamycin, a specific inhibitor of the mTOR pathway, resulted in a significant reduction in the number and size of renal cysts and a decrease in the cystic index compared with untreated mutant animals, suggesting that cystogenesis in our model is mTOR-dependent. mTOR is frequently deregulated in inherited forms of cystic kidney although the molecular mechanisms underlying this phenomenon are still to be determined. The use of both in vitro and in vivo systems allowed us to demonstrate that OFD1 has a role in the formation of the pre-initiation complex of translation (PIC). We showed that OFD1 coimmunoprecipitates with two subunits ( and ) of the eIF3 complex and colocalizes at the centrosome with subunits of the PIC. In addition, we also demonstrated that OFD1 is present in polysomes extracted from kidneys and interacts in vivo with subunits of the eIF3 complex. Microarray experiments performed on mRNA extracted from polysomes indicate impaired translation for a number of transcripts. These results indicate for the first time a role of OFD1 in the formation of the PIC and in the regulation of translation. Among the putative targets we focused our attention on GH and our data suggest that higher levels of the GH due to the impairment of translation may be responsible for the upregulation of the mTOR pathway.
All together our results shed light on the pathogenetic mechanisms underlying this rare inherited form of renal cystic disease and propose new possible link between renal cystic disease and deregulation of the mTOR pathway.


Abstraction heuristics are a popular method to guide optimal search algorithms in classical planning. Cost partitionings allow to sum heuristic estimates admissibly by distributing action costs among the heuristics. We introduce state-dependent cost partitionings which take context information of actions into account, and show that an optimal state-dependent cost partitioning dominates its state-independent counterpart. We demonstrate the potential of our idea with a state-dependent variant of the recently proposed saturated cost partitioning, and show that it has the potential to improve not only over its state-independent counterpart, but even over the optimal state-independent cost partitioning. Our empirical results give evidence that ignoring the context of actions in the computation of a cost partitioning leads to a significant loss of information.


The above quoted statement by the famous Russian author, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, can to my opinion be interpreted as a dream of revitalization of good, old Russian virtues, which the communist regime had silenced and placed in the corner. Then I reflected on the status of virtues in my own country, and especially what history education had done to stick to virtues, which I have encountered in my earlier research as dominant in the 18th century educational discourse? My provisional examinations are presented in this article, where I focus on the impact of virtues in a sample of more popular Danish history textbooks over three centuries. Research in textbooks is closely connected to the societal context and a brief summary of the development in Denmark since the Enlightenment is appropriate, especially for the foreign reader, in order to understand the textbooks in a proper context. In the 18th century the Danish king was the absolute ruler of Denmark, Norway and the North Atlantic islands. Moreover he was the sovereign in the deuces Schleswig and Holstein and of course in the colonies in India, Africa and Caribbean. This multicultural state was transformed in the 19th century; in 1814 Norway was ceded to Sweden, and in 1864 Schleswig and Holstein were after a bloody war, taken over by Prussia. Hence Denmark was one of the smaller countries in Europe, however now a national state. In 1814 compulsory sevenyear school attendance was implemented for all girls and boys, and in the second half of the century agriculture and industry underwent a remarkable growth. In 1849 the absolute ruling king signed a constitution, which introduced partial democratic elections. Although literacy was acquired by nearly all Danish children, the development of secondary education was slow, illustrated by the fact that only 89 students in 1849 finished their upper secondary education in the Kingdom of Denmark. In 1921 it rose to nearly 2% of a year group, whereas today 75 %, equivalent to 60.000 teenagers are prepared for further studies. The upper


Neogene (Miocene–Pliocene) sedimentary rocks of the northeastern Sierra Nevada were deposited in small basins that formed in response to volcanic and tectonic activity along the eastern margin of the Sierra. These strata record an early phase (ca. 11–10 Ma) of extension and rapid sedimentation of boulder conglomerates and debrites deposited on alluvial fans, followed by fluvio-lacustrine sedimentation and nearby volcanic arc activity but tectonic quiescence, until ∼ 2.6 Ma. The fossil record in these rocks documents a warmer, wetter climate featuring large mammals and lacking the Sierran orographic rain shadow that dominates climate today on the eastern edge of the Sierra. This record of a general lack of paleo-relief across the eastern margin of the Sierra Nevada is consistent with evidence presented elsewhere that there was not a significant topographic barrier between the Pacific Ocean and the interior of the continent east of the Sierra before ∼ 2.6 Ma. However, these sediments do not record an integrated drainage system either to the east into the Great Basin like the modern Truckee River, or to the west across the Sierra like the ancestral Feather and Yuba rivers. The Neogene Reno-Verdi basin was one of several, scattered endorheic (i.e., internally drained) basins occupying this part of the Cascade intra-arc and back-arc area.


Introduction: Nurses, who make up more than 70 percent of the health care team, have an important role in educating the patients. Therefore, the aim of this study is to design an education program for patients admitted to the intensive cardiac care unit and investigate the effect of using it in a preliminary study on nurses working in cardiac care unit. Materials and Methods: During a library study, patients' education program was designed. On the next step, it was implemented preliminary in a pre-experimental study of the before and after type in 2015 in cardiac care unit of a selected military hospital. Nurses working in cardiac care unit were entered into the study using complete enumeration method. Educational performance of nurses working in cardiac care unit was investigated before education by the researcher-made checklist consisting of 18 items. Quality content validity of the checklist was determined by 10 professors and experts in the field of education to patients and its reliability was determined on the basis of internal assessment (α=0.869). Patients' education program was taught to the nurses in the form of three 60-minute sessions and in three working shifts during a two weeks period. 3 days after the implementation of the program, performance of nurses was re-assessed by the same checklist. Data collected was analyzed using the software SPSS ver.15 and descriptive statistics and paired t-test. Results: The designed patients' education program in this study included: the development of educational objectives, selection of appropriate education content, selection and implementation of appropriate educational methods and techniques and reviewing the patient's understanding of the provided education. The mean and standard deviation of the overall performance of nurses before and after the implementation of the program was 27.90±3.479 and 33.20±1.932, respectively. Paired t-test showed that the overall educational performance of nurses has a statistically significant difference (P=0.003). Discussion and Conclusion: The use of patient education program as a simple and low cost, has a great effect on nurses and also enhance the quality of education.


Background and Purpose
 The purpose of this study was to determine the effect of a 6-month neuromuscular training (NT) program versus a traditional strength training (ST) program following anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) reconstruction.
 Subjects
 Seventy-four subjects with ACL reconstruction participated in the study.
 Methods
 The study was a randomized, single-blinded, controlled trial. The NT and ST groups were tested preoperatively and at 3 and 6 months. The main outcome measure was the Cincinnati Knee Score. Secondary outcome measures were visual analog scales (VASs) for pain and function, the 36-Item Short-Form Health Survey (SF-36), hop tests, isokinetic muscle strength, proprioception, and static and dynamic balance tests.
 Results
 The NT group demonstrated significantly improved Cincinnati Knee Scores and VAS scores for global knee function compared with the ST group at the 6-month follow-up. There were no significant differences between the groups for the other outcome measures (ie, hop, balance, proprioception, and muscle strength tests).
 Discussion and Conclusion
 The results of this study suggest that exercises included in the NT program should be part of the rehabilitation program following ACL reconstruction.


Market orientation is the overarching framework by which practitioners and academics make sense of the interplay between customers, competition, stakeholders, and the organization within the commercial for-profit arena and is the way the marketing concept is put into practice. Many academics have argued that market orientation would also benefit nonprofit organizations by generating more funds in an increasingly competitive environment. The purpose of this article is to conduct a systematic review of market orientation, identify gaps, and develop a research agenda for market orientation research within the underresearched nonprofit sector. This research agenda highlights the structural, human resource, and cultural challenges nonprofit organizations face if they decide to adopt a market orientation, and the need to develop a praxis framework currently missing from the literature. The article offers suggestions for researchers to extend the concept of market orientation from the commercial for-profit into the nonprofit arena.


Men who have sex with men (MSM) in the US experience great disparities in health outcomes, most notably in HIV. This dissertation will take a look at these disparities and offer a framework for understanding their etiology and for understanding the processes by which these disparities are sustained, propagated and eventually broken down. First, we provide an overview of the literature regarding health disparities among MSM and the current theories that exist to understand where these disparities come from. Specifically, we focus on Syndemics Theory and the Theory of Syndemic Production as the best models for understanding health among MSM. Finally, we suggest a new theoretical model, Cultural Resilience Theory, which can be used to conceptualize health promotion within the syndemic framework. We also test components of Syndemics Theory - interaction and mediation - that until now have functioned as assumed premises with no empirical support for their assertion. Finally, we test Cultural Resilience Theory as a model that can be used in prevention programming to break down syndemic processes among MSM. In the final chapter we look into the practical implications of Cultural Resilience Theory as it applies to the prevention (or abatement) of health disparities among MSM.The findings of this study have great public health significance and important implications for HIV prevention among MSM. First, the synergism analysis is the first to test the assertion that co-occurring psychosocial health conditions interact to increase HIV risk among MSM. These results suggest that there is a synergistic effect present. Likewise, the mediation analysis is the first to test the theory of syndemic production that states that early life adversity impacts HIV outcomes through syndemic processes; an assertion that was supported by these analyses. These two studies further our understanding of how syndemics function within MSM to produce health disparities. Finally, we identify several variables that break down syndemic processes through either their negative association with poor health outcomes, or by buffering the pathways from adversity to HIV risk through syndemics. These results will provide the foundation upon which a culturally tailored Theory of Cultural Resilience among MSM can be developed.


In a wide variety of research elds, dynamic modeling is employed as an instrument to learn and understand complex systems. The differential equations involved in this process are usually non-linear and depend on many parameters whose values decide upon the characteristics of the emergent system. The inverse problem, i.e. the inference or estimation of parameter values from observed data, is of interest from two points of view. First, the existence point of view, dealing with the question whether the system is able to reproduce the observed dynamics for any parameter values. Second, the identi ability point of view, investigating invariance of the prediction under change of parameter values, as well as the quanti cation of parameter uncertainty. In this paper, we present the R package dMod providing a framework for dealing with the inverse problem in dynamic systems. The particularity of the approach taken by dMod is to provide and propagate accurate derivatives computed from symbolic expres-sions wherever possible. This derivative information highly supports the convergence of optimization routines and enhances their numerical stability, a requirement for the appli-cability of so sticated uncertainty analysis methods. Computational efficiency is achieved by automatic generation and execution of C code. The framework is object oriented (S3) and provides a variety of functions to set up dynamic models, observation functions and parameter transformations for multi-conditional parameter estimation. The key elements of the framework and the methodology implemented in dMod are highlighted by an application on a three-compartment transporter model.


The origins and physical consequences of the traditionally used relation between the position measurement error and the momentum perturbation, Δm2xΔp2p ≥ 2/4, are discussed. It is demonstrated that the corresponding increase in the momentum variance for the aposteriori state occurs only in some special cases. The product of Δm2A and Δp2B is shown to essentially differ from the one given by the uncertainty relation if the commutator is an operator. The error quantum limits for the joint homodyne measurement of quadrature amplitudes for an optical mode are found. It is shown that similar results can be obtained if the quadratures of a harmonic oscillator are estimated by means of continuous position measurement.


The work intends to analyse and describe from an anthropological standpoint the so-called "cultural" typology of tourism. The dissertation has been divided into four chapters. The first two chapters are theoretical and analytical and focus their attention on the basic themes of tourism anthropology and the possible anthropological definitions of cultural tourism. The third chapter describes the origins of tourism anthropology and pays particular attention on Rome-centred travel literature (tourist guides and travelogues.) The fourth chapter is dedicated to the ethnographic analysis of the Palatine Hill-Coliseum touristic set. A qualitative methodological plan has been applied to the ethnographic analysis. The chapter aims at underlining the work and human experience of the people who actually interact with tourists by retracing from an ethnographic point encounter dynamics, interactions, exceptional and routine aspects that are part of their work. A questionnaire has been adopted regarding the interaction with tourists visiting Rome.


The article aims to attract attention of the reader to the main features of the new Code of Civil Procedure of Lithuania, the most important novelties of the legal regulation, foreseen in the code, as well as to disclose the essence and to justify the necessity of those novelties in the procedural law of Lithuania. The author points out the following important novelties of the new code: differentiation of the role of judge subject to the nature of a dispute, extension of the spectrum of sanctions for dishonest litigants, principle of co-operation between the judge and parties to the dispute in reaching the objectives of civil procedure, principles of procedural concentration, efficiency, expedition of a trial, reduction and differentiation of court fees, reformation of pre-trial stage, execution process and others. As the limited scope of the article restricts the possibility of the author to analyze all the features of the new code, the article mainly focuses on the objectives and principles of civil procedure, as well as the role of the judge during the trial, the balance between the activeness and impartiality of a judge.


Summary
Acute- and convalescent-phase sera from a series of Bangkok Hospital patients of 1960 with clinical diagnoses of hemorrhagic fever, dengue, fever of unknown origin (FUO) and other diseases were tested rather extensively for arbovirus isolations and serological responses. Five dengue virus isolations were made from acute-phase sera, one of which was typed in the type 1–6 complex, another in the 2–5 complex, two as type 4, and one as yet untypable. Several probable latent mouse viruses were also encountered. A number of cases of hemorrhagic fever, dengue or FUO was serologically confirmed with demonstrated antibody rises by complement fixation, neutralization, or hemagglutination inhibition as group-B arbovirus infections, probably due to dengue viruses. None was confirmed as a chikungunya virus infection, although several gave indication of recent infection. Antibody rises to group B fell in most cases into either of two patterns, group-B primary infections or those with previous group-B experience. These two types of responses were quite different. Further evidence was found to support calling TH-36 and TH-Sman, dengue prototypes previously isolated in Bangkok, dengue types 5 and 6 respectively, although they are closely related to types 2 and 1. Human primary group-B convalescent-phase sera, but not animal sera, usually permitted clear differentiation. Difficulties of dengue virus isolation, adaptation and typing, and limitations of serological studies are described. No evidence was found for the activity of viruses in the Bunyamwera group, California group, or Sindbis and Eastern equine viruses in group A. Japanese B, Murray Valley and Langat viruses in group B frequently gave positive reactions with sera from the dengue virus infected patients.


In this paper, a switching regime model with known sample separation is applied to Greek data, to investigate causality linkages between tourists' satisfaction and their willingness for revisiting. The empirical evidence shows the existence of these causality effects. Moreover, it shows that the willingness for revisiting crucially depends on many qualitative aspects of tourist services and accommodation.


To study the effects of mycorrhiza, fulvic acid, seaweed extract and urea on physiological trait and leaf yield of tobacco, an experiment was carried out as split plots in a randomized complete block design with three replications in Marivan during 2015 year. In this study, the main factor was two levels of inoculation by mycorrhiza including: control: no inoculation and inoculation by mycorrhiza (Glomus interaradices) and subplot were stimulation growth compound in 5 levels as: control-distilled water, fulvic acid, seaweed extract, urea, fulvic acid+ seaweed extract + urea. The results showed that the characters, including: numbers of leaves and dry leaf weight of the middle leaf side of plant were affected significantly by mycorrihza. Hence, numbers of leaf and leaf dry weight of middle leaf side were increased by mycorrhiza inoculations. Also the results of foliar application of stimulation plant growth were showed that relative water content, leaf fresh weight and leaf dry weight in lower side leaves and leaf fresh weight and leaf dry weight in middle side leaves and also spad and leaf fresh weight of upper side leaves of tobacco were affected significantly.


Envision the future disaster recovery worker relying on mobile devices to work in a disaster setting. This recovery worker requires and benefits from a great number of provided services, for instance, to navigate, communicate, and map the environment. However, he faces adverse networking and computing conditions, characterized by the obstructed or destroyed geographical region, the overloaded or destroyed communication infrastructure, and the density and movement of involved recovery workers. We call such surroundings harsh environments.

The present thesis strives to enable recovery workers to consume versatile (cloud) services on top of a resilient communication infrastructure. A service is a software component, i.e., an application, that provides a distinct functionality to accessing users. Thereby, three key challenges have to be faced that also define the three fields of research: (1) improving the resilience of the communication infrastructure, (2) designing a system capable of service provision, and (3) conceiving detailed simulation models and tools to investigate such systems in harsh environments. In each field of research, we contribute and evaluate novel approaches that work together to achieve the main goal of this thesis: mobile service provision in harsh environments.

First, we contribute CityMesh, a resilient emergency communication infrastructure created by interconnecting wireless routers from private households and public institutions found in urban areas. The resulting decentralized mesh network is based on the IEEE 802.11 WLAN standard and outperforms the existing TETRA standard in terms of data throughput, openness, and failure resilience. Furthermore, we present our research methodology to evaluate the feasibility of our concept by collecting data about wireless routers, enhancing the data accuracy using multilateration, and constructing and analyzing CityMesh networks. We show that network topologies in five selected cities rely on router locations specific to the respective city. Furthermore, we demonstrate that private routers are crucial to create a resilient CityMesh network. To realize the CityMesh concept, we propose to install an emergency switch into wireless routers. This switch could be triggered by eligible authorities in case of a disaster.

Second, we present the core contribution of our thesis: the peer-to-peer service overlay concept that fulfills the requirements of harsh environments. To ensure high quality service consumption, the most crucial system components are service discovery (enables service consumers to access a requested service) and service placement (relocates a service in the network topology to increase service quality). Based on simulations, we demonstrate that our conceived hop count placement approach outperforms the state of the art placement approach in terms of consistent service quality for all service consumers. Furthermore, we show that latency is not a suitable quality metric for service placement. We also demonstrate that three state of the art service discovery approaches designed for mobile ad-hoc networks are not capable of handling service mobility introduced by service placement. Moreover, a naive request flooding approach performs best in terms of discovery performance and data traffic efficiency when exposed to peer mobility and frequent service migrations. Finally, we present our real-world experiment setup PeerMoS and contribute four concepts for smooth and efficient service migration.

Third, we contribute our integrated simulation framework DisVis to investigate the effectiveness of communication systems in realistic harsh environments. Especially in disaster recovery scenarios, the movement of recovery workers depends on the terrain, the current disaster situation, the mission strategy of respective recovery workers, and the orders received from the command centers. Hence, DisVis builds upon an OpenStreetMap-based world model and a fine-grained agent-based mobility and communication model. We adjust the rule sets and parameters of our models with results from our survey targeted at experts from first response departments. As opposed to other state of the art mobility simulators, DisVis provides an online interface to connect our framework with state of the art network simulators, such as PeerfactSim.KOM.


The use of low technological agronomic manipulations, such as composted
organic amendments and new irrigation techniques can contribute positively
in water use efficiency and agriculture sustainability under limited resources.
The objective of this study was to evaluate the effect of rice straw compost
on plant physiological status, growth, yield, fruit quality and water use of
tomato grown under protected environment in humid climatic conditions of
Malaysia, using soilless and soil mixture media in combination with water
regimes either by withholding or by using partial rootzone drying (PRD)
technique.
Rice straw compost treated with chicken manure (2:1) using static aeration
pile system has suitable physiochemical properties ranging within compost
standards. The use of rice straw compost in combination with a peat based
vegetable transplant media, especially with 25%and 50% compost mixture
was observed to provide a more appropriate medium compared to rice straw
iv
compost or peat mix alone for production of tomato seedlings and showed
improvement in all growth parameters. The addition of rice straw compost at
30%, significantly increased plant dry biomass, fruit diameter, yield and
water use efficiency (WUE) in both media, whereas the water deficit
significantly decreased these parameters in most of the treatments. The
addition of rice straw compost, however, had opposite effects on the two
media in terms of total organic matter. The total organic matter significantly
increased in the soil mixture, while it significantly decreased in the soilless
media. The results indicated that the soilless media was not affected by the
stress regime in most of these parameters. This suggests that the soilless
media increased the water holding capacity and other physical properties
better than the soil mixture. The results also indicated that media drying
decreased leaf water potential, stomatal conductance, as well as, plant dry
biomass, in addition to increasing proline accumulations, with slight
differences between the different growth media.
PRD, on the other hand, was obsereve to significantly reduce leaf expansion,
plant leaf area and stomatal conductance in both media, but severely with
soil mixture, whereas proline and sugars namely fructose, glucose and
sucrose, were dramatically increased in the leaf especially with soil mixture.
Stomatal conductance, leaf expansion and proline accumulation, however,
significantly correlated with media drying. Dry matter partitioning showed a
significant reduction in total dry matter and plant dry shoot weight with
v
PRD, but significantly increased root to shoot ratio with no significant
differences in plant dry root weight. WUE increased significantly with PRD
in both media. The use of soilless media resulted in a significant increase in
all biological parameters. Yield was also affected with PRD in both media;
there was significant interaction between the two media and irrigation
regime. However, there was no significant reduction in marketable yield due
to PRD in soilless media. This suggests that PRD application could be
effective in soilless media. PRD significantly improved fruit carbohydrates
and other fruit quality indices


Femtosecond phase-coherent two-dimensional (2D) spectroscopy has been experimentally demonstrated as the direct optical analog of 2D nuclear magnetic resonance. An acousto-optic pulse shaper created a collinear three-pulse sequence with well-controlled and variable interpulse delays and phases,which interacted with a model atomic system of rubidium vapor. The desired nonlinear polarization was selected by phase cycling (coadding experimental results obtained with different interpulse phases). This method may enhance our ability to probe the femtosecond structural dynamics of macromolecules.


Objective To approach the therapeutic effect of Salmeterol/fluticasone propionate on COPD with bulla. Methods Divides into 2 groups stochastically 120 example COPD patients, the control group uses the conventional treatment, the treatment group besides the conventional treatment, the inspiration Salmeterol/fluticasone propionate treats 12 months, observe the number of the increasing bullas and the original bulla. Results The treatment group sends the bulla cases of illness greatly not newly, original bulla does not have the change greatly, compares to the control group there were the significance difference. (P< 0. 05). Conclusion The inspiration Salmeterol/fluticasone propionate treats COPD to be possible to reduce the occurrence which the proliferating bulla, delays progress which the bulla.

Key words:
Salmeterol/fluticasone propionate; Bulla; Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease


In this article a model of foreign (L2) vocabulary learning is first developed in which the representation of the spelling, the pronunciation and the meaning(s) of a word are stored in their respective networks. Vocabulary learning in a paired associate learning task is then defined as the building of nodes in a network and as the establishing of an associative pathway between each new node (representing the spelling, pronunciation or meaning(s) of a newly learned L2 word) and the corresponding node for its L1 equivalent. In this model differences in spelling or pronunciation between L2 words and their L1 translations are expressed in terms of differences in length of their associative pathways.On the basis of the above distinctions a prediction was made about a difference in input speed and in the period of retrievability between two kinds of Arabic- Dutch word pairs. It was predicted that word pairs sharing some phonemic features would be learned sooner and remembered longer than those without any of these features in common.The above prediction was confirmed in a group experiment. Moreover, it showed that a resemblance between L2-L1 word pairs had a greater effect on retrievability than on input speed. Finally, the diverging results for one of the testwords were interpreted as indicating that also in associate learning of L2-L1 pairs the semantic category to which that word belonged had played its part. Its abstract meaning was assumed to have negatively affected the time needed to store the word in memory.


A laboratory experimental programme was carried out to investigate the behaviour of the piezocone in lightly over consolidated clay. The clay samples were prepared from reconstituted kaolin. The powdered form of this clay was mixed with water to form a slurry at a moisture content of approximately 120% under vacuum. The clay slurry was consolidated and then allowed to swell in chambers which were well instrumented. Penetration tests were carried out with two sizes of piezocones. The smaller piezocone had a cross sectional area of 1cm² with pore pressure measurement at the cone shoulder. The larger piezocone with a cross sectional area of 5cm² had pore pressure measurements at four locations. In addition to penetration testing, further information on the strength and consolidation characteristics of the test chamber samples was obtained form shear vane, restricted flow consolidation, flow pump permeability and consolidated undrained triaxial tests. The horizontal effective stress and the vertical stress ratio were found to influence the generated excess pore pressure at all four different locations on the piezocone shaft and the net tip resistance. This led to the establishment of direct correlations for the tip resistance factor Q with the coefficient for lateral earth pressure at rest Ko and the vertical effective stress ratio (OCR). Direct correlations for the excess pore pressure ratio at all four measuring positions with Ko and OCR were also established. Several methods of estimating over consolidation ratio were examined. One of the factors examined was Bq which was found to correlate poorly with OCR before tending asymptotically to a value of approximately 0.4. Other examples of factors which showed promising results as estimators of OCR were Bmi, the excess pore pressure ratio, and Q, the tip resistance factor. The excess pore pressures well behind the cone shoulder, which are partly generated by the shear stress in the area, showed promising correlations with the undrained shear strength. However, because correlations with pore pressure on the piezocone are dependent upon the position of the filter element, the particular results from this series may only be used for piezocones whose filter elements are at equivalent positions. The undrained strength ratio was also correlated with the tip resistance factor Q and the result was very promising for future interpretation of piezocone data.


Many forms of interactive digital entertainment involve interacting with virtual dramatic characters. Our long term goal is to procedurally generate character dialogue behavior that automatically mimics, or blends, the style of existing characters. In this paper, we show how linguistic elements in character dialogue can define the style of characters in our RPG SpyFeet. We utilize a corpus of 862 film scripts from the IMSDb website, representing 7,400 characters, 664,000 lines of dialogue and 9,599,000 word tokens. We utilize counts of linguistic reflexes that have been used previously for personality or author recognition to discriminate different character types. With classification experiments, we show that different types of characters can be distinguished at accuracies up to 83% over a baseline of 20%. We discuss the characteristics of the learned models and show how they can be used to mimic particular film characters.


The JAK-STAT pathway is important in cytokine-mediated immune responses. Research in the JAK/STAT field has elucidated its roles in various cellular processes such as proliferation, apoptosis and migration, and has found frequent dysregulation of the JAK/STAT pathway in diverse types of cancer. In recent years, JAK and STAT have also been implicated in a noncanonical mode of action: the regulation of genomic stability independent of their functions in cytokine signalling. Research in Drosophila has shown that nuclear, unphosphorylated STAT physically interacts with heterochromatin protein 1 (HP1) and stabilises its binding to heterochromatin. A similar interaction occurs in human cells, where unphosphorylated STAT5A interacts with HP1α and acts as a tumour suppressor. Nuclear JAK2, however, functions as a histone tyrosine kinase, displacing HP1α from chromatin. These data have important implications for human cancer: They suggest new drug therapies, which could target the noncanonical functions of JAK and STAT. In this article, we discuss how the canonical arm of the JAK-STAT pathway functions in tumourigenesis, focussing on JAK and on STAT1, STAT3 and STAT5. We then discuss recent findings regarding epigenetic silencing of JAK/STAT pathway components, and the direct involvement of JAK and STAT in regulating heterochromatin integrity.

Key Concepts:

The tyrosine kinase JAK and its downstream target STAT respond to cytokine signalling in cells.

In response to cytokines, JAK itself is phosphorylated, leading to its activation. The activated JAK kinase then phosphorylates specific STATs.

STAT proteins dimerise and translocate into the nucleus upon phosphorylation by JAK, where they bind to DNA and regulate transcription.

Overactivation of the JAK-STAT pathway can cause cancer by bypassing apoptosis and cell cycle checkpoints.

Unphosphorylated STAT is also found in the nuclei and mitochondria of cells that are not stimulated by cytokines.

Mitochondrial STAT upregulates cellular respiration and can promote oncogenic transformation.

Unphosphorylated nuclear STAT binds to HP1α and stabilises heterochromatin. STAT5A in colon cancer cells acts as a tumour suppressor via this mechanism.

Nuclear JAK2 is a histone tyrosine kinase. Phosphorylation of histone 3 tyrosine 41 displaces HP1α/CBX5 from chromatin and contributes to tumourigenicity.

In some cancers, DNA methylation suppresses the expression of inhibitory SOCS proteins, resulting in uncontrolled JAK/STAT pathway activation.

Keywords:

JAK;
STAT;
cancer;
epigenetic;
heterochromatin;
metastasis;
angiogenesis;
HP1;
CpG methylation


The paper examines an effect of the return to human capital on health behavior. An approach is assumed in the paper which implies that health is an investment good complimentary for human capital. The latter is treated as actual skills and knowledge yielding a bonus above earnings. We propose a model relating health demand to human capital. According to the model, human capital determines health behavior via the expected effect of health on the return to human capital. The main implication of the model is that the educated people will not much differ from those lacking any education with regard to health behavior if their education does not generate the bonus.


Every nation prioritizes the inclusive economic growth and development of all regions. However, we observe that economic activities are clustered in space, which results in a disparity in per-capita income among different regions. A complexity-based method was proposed by Hidalgo and Hausmann [PNAS 106, 10570-10575 (2009)] to explain the large gaps in per-capita income across countries. Although there have been extensive studies on countries' economic complexity using international export data, studies on economic complexity at the regional level are relatively less studied. Here, we study the industrial sector complexity of prefectures in Japan based on the basic information of more than one million firms. We aggregate the data as a bipartite network of prefectures and industrial sectors. We decompose the bipartite network as a prefecture-prefecture network and sector-sector network, which reveals the relationships among them. Similarities among the prefectures and among the sectors are measured using a metric. From these similarity matrices, we cluster the prefectures and sectors using the minimal spanning tree technique. The computed economic complexity index from the structure of the bipartite network shows a high correlation with macroeconomic indicators, such as per-capita gross prefectural product and prefectural income per person. We argue that this index reflects the present economic performance and hidden potential of the prefectures for future growth.


This work examines changes in cirrus cloud cover (CCC) in possible association with aviation activities at congested air corridors. The analysis is based on the latest version of the International Satellite Cloud Climatology Project D2 data set and covers the period 1984-1998. Over the studied areas, the effect of large-scale modes of natural climate variability such as ENSO, QBO and NAO as well as the possible influence of the tropopause variability, were first removed from the cloud data set in order to calculate long-term changes of observed cirrus cloudiness. The results show increasing trends in (CCC) between 1984 and 1998 over the high air traffic corridors of North America, North Atlantic and Europe. Of these upward trends, only in the summertime over the North Atlantic and only in the wintertime over North America are statistically significant (exceeding +2.0% per decade). Over adjacent locations with low air traffic, the calculated trends are statistically insignificant and in most cases negative both during winter and summer in the regions studied. These negative trends, over low air traffic regions, are consistent with the observed large scale negative trends seen in (CCC) over most of the northern middle latitudes and over the tropics. Moreover, further investigation of vertical velocities over high and low air traffic regions provide evidence that the trends of opposite signs in (CCC) over these regions, do not seem to be caused by different trends in dynamics. It is also shown that the longitudinal distribution of decadal changes in (CCC) along the latitude belt centered at the North Atlantic air corridor, parallels the spatial distribution of fuel consumption from highflying air traffic, providing an independent test of possible impact of aviation on contrail cirrus formation. The correlation between the fuel consumption and the longitudinal variability of (CCC) is significant (+0.7) over the middle latitudes but not over the tropics. This could be explained by the fact that over the tropics the variability of (CCC) is dominated by dynamics while at middle latitudes microphysics explain most of its variability. Results from this study are compared with other studies and for different periods of records and it appears that there exists general agreement as to the evidence of a possible aviation effect on high cloud positive trends over regions with congested air traffic.


Polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cells represent a next-generation power supply technology that may be used in a diverse range of applications. Towards this end, the rational design and engineering of functional nanomaterials as low-cost, high-performance catalysts is of critical significance in the wide-spread commercialization of fuel cell technology. One major bottleneck is the oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) at the cathode. Whereas platinum-based nanoparticles have been used as the catalysts of choice, further engineering of the nanoparticles is urgently needed to enhance the catalytic performance and concurrently reduce the costs. Extensive research has also been extended to non-platinum metals or even metal-free nanocatalysts that may be viable alternatives to platinum. In this review article, we will summarize recent progress in these areas of research within the context of interfacial electron transfer: (a) interactions between metal elements in alloy nanoparticles, (b) metal-ligand interfacial bonding interactions, (c) metal-carbon substrate interactions, and (d) heteroatom doping of graphitic carbons. Results have shown that ready manipulation of the electronic interactions between the catalyst surface and oxygen species may serve as a fundamental mechanism for the optimization of the catalytic performance.


In this article I position the metaphor of the hope chest at the heart of a trilogy of fairy tale novels, The Complete Tales of Ketzia (2001), The Complete Tales of Merry (2006a) and The Complete Tales of Lucy Gold (2011), by Kate Bernheimer that explore traditions of American girlhood. Deploying psychoanalytic interpretative readings, I investigate the characterization of each of the three sisters. My use of the hope chest (as both a toy and a cultural repository) enables me to offer a fuller picture of the social transition depicted in these novels from childhood into womanhood, and is thus conflated with the idea of the child-woman— a hinge-like cultural figure whom Bernheimer represents metaphorically through boxes of accoutrements containing memories and prophecies. With reference to unpublished interviews with Bernheimer, I support my interpretative reading of her trilogy by invoking and explaining the relevance of literary theories related


Aim: The aim of the study was to that assess the perceptions and understanding of dental practitioners in the provision of dental treatment to pregnant women. Materials and Methods: The study was a quantitative, cross-sectional type. A sample size of 200 dental practitioners were included in the study between the period of 6 months, i.e. June–December. A cluster sampling technique was employed covering four different dental institutes. A structured questionnaire was designed to assess the perception and understanding of dental practitioners in providing treatment to the pregnant women. Statistical Analysis: Statistical analysis was performed using SPSS version 19. Chi-square test was done to analyze the association of perception of dental practitioners in treating pregnant women in relation to gender. Results: A total of 200 dental practitioners filled the questionnaire out of which 43% (86) were males and 57% (114) were females. Eighty-two percent of the total participants said that it is safe to provide dental treatment during pregnancy, almost 90.4% of the total dentist interviewed was aware of the special position in which to place a pregnant woman on a dental chair. 85.5% of the study population do not prefer taking radiographs of a pregnant woman, 63% of the entire dentist surveyed prefers to use local anesthesia before any dental procedure on a pregnant patient. 96.5% care to educate their pregnant patient about improving dental health care. 59.5% of the dental practitioners said that they would consult the patient's gynecologist as a mandatory requirement before treating the patient. 57% of the dental practitioners answered with gingivitis. 70.5% agreed on scaling. The majority of the dentists prescribed paracetamol 85.5%. Conclusion: Little is known about the perception and utilization of dental practitioners in providing dental treatment to pregnant women in Pakistan. The present survey concluded that dental practitioners lack appropriate knowledge of X-rays and its effects, prescribing appropriate medications, consultation with patients' gynecologist as a mandatory requirement before provision of dental treatment and educating pregnant woman to seek dental care. There is a need to arrange continuous dental education programs for dental practitioners to gain updated knowledge when providing dental treatment to pregnant women.


Systematic reviews use rigorous methods for locating, appraising, and synthesizing evidence from prior evaluation studies. They have explicit objectives, explicit criteria for including or excluding studies, and a structured and detailed report. The Campbell Collaboration Crime and Justice Group aims to prepare and maintain systematic reviews of criminological interventions and to make them accessible electronically to scholars, practitioners, policy makers, and the general public. The major challenges include setting methodological criteria for including studies in reviews, securing continued funding, academics needing publications in scholarly journals, and coping with the volume of work needed to maintain high standards, including refereeing proposals and final reviews and dealing with correspondence and unsolicited proposals. The aim of making the best knowledge about the effectiveness of criminological interventions immediately available to everyone is ambitious and very important.


Although mentoring is touted as a beneficial activity, supportive data are sparse. This study evaluated the influence of a mentor on five aspects of both the appearance and content of student posters presented at a regional and a national psychology convention. Mentored posters had significantly (p [is less than] .05) better content at both regional and national conventions and significantly (p [is less than] .05) better appearance than did nonmentored posters at regional conventions. For decades mentors have supported and fostered the development of numerous students. In the current age of "networking and playing the game" the role of the mentor has come under scrutiny and appears to be changing. Clawson (1985) notes the changing role of the "modem mentor." Participants in his study rated the level of influence their mentors had in 14 aspects of life. His results indicate mentors no longer influence each of the life aspects equally. In fact, many mentors no longer serve as comprehensive role models. Selecting the best mentor and/or insuring a good match between the mentor and protege is an area receiving sustained research attention. For example, Cesa and Fraser (1989) designed a system which allows graduate students to evaluate faculty in their role as mentors. In addition to the rating system, these authors offer advice for improving mentor-protege relationships. Likewise, T. Cronan-Hillix, Gensheimer, W. A. Cronan-Hillix, and Davidson (1986) examined students' views of the characteristics that constituted good and bad mentors, and the role that mentors play in the students' lives. Despite these analyses and descriptions of the characteristics of the mentoring process and the effective mentor, little objective data demonstrate the positive influence of mentoring. To remedy this situation we examined the relation between quality of student posters presented at regional and national psychology conferences and whether the presenter(s) had a mentor. Method Participants We rated 39 posters displayed in the Psi Chi session at the 1997 meeting of the Midwestern Psychological Association and 24 posters displayed in the Psi Chi session at the 1997 meeting of the American Psychological Association. Procedure A two-part process of evaluation was used to rate all posters and the impact of mentorship. The first portion of the evaluation procedure rated the poster and the presenter using predetermined criteria in two categories. Each category measured five elements. Posters were awarded one point for each element possessed; therefore, the maximum score a poster could receive in any category was 5. The first category rated the poster on the basis of readability from 3' to 5', the distractibility of the font used, use of extras (e.g., Power Point), organization of the layout, and whether the poster was easily comprehended. The second category evaluated the content of the poster and included a consideration of the major premise, clear and appropriate methods, clear results, logical discussion, and whether the poster was flee of errors. Two researchers independently evaluated the posters on these two categories. The second major element of evaluation concerned mentorship. A third researcher asked four predetermined questions of the poster presenter(s). The questions evaluated the level of contribution of a professor, from idea formulation to actual poster presentation. A final question ascertained whether the presenter(s) regarded this professor as their mentor. …


In this text, a United States Army officer and scholar traces the rise and fall of the Soviet military, arguing that it had a far greater impact on Soviet politics and economic development than was perceived in the West. The author asserts that Gorbachev saw that shrinking the military and the military-industrial sector of the economy was essential for fully implementing perestroika and that his efforts to do this led to the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Odom enhances his account with interviews with key factors in the Soviet Union before, during and after the collapse. He describes the condition of the Soviet military during the mid-1980s and explains how it became what it was - its organizational structures, manpower policies, and military-industrial arrangements. He then moves to the events that led to its destruction, taking us to the most secret circles of Soviet policy making, as well as describing the public debates, factional struggles in the new parliament, and street combat as army units tried to repress the political forces unleashed by glasnost. Odom shows that just as the military was the ultimate source for the multinational Soviet state, the communist ideology justified the military's priority claim on the economy. When Gorbachev tried to shift resources from the military to the civilian sector to overcome economic stagnation, he had to revise the official ideology in order to justify removing the military from its central place. Paralyzed by corruption, mistrust and public disillusionment, the military was unable and unwilling to intervene against either Gorbachev's perestroika or Yeltsin's dissolution of the Soviet Union.


Exclusion is ingrained into the global social fabric in general and education in particular. This paper takes up the challenge of international agreements and conventions affirming Education For All. Increasingly education jurisdictions are submitting to lean testing regimes and publishing results to drive local, national and international competition to drive up standards. While there are grave concerns about the poverty of such policy imperatives and the narrow definition of assessment therein, evidence is mounting to demonstrate the perverse and deleterious impacts on disadvantaged communities and vulnerable individuals. The rhetoric of inclusion is strong but conceptions and practices of inclusive education are inconsistent and disconnected from other aspects of social and education policy that drive exclusion in stark and subtle manifestations.


Triglycerides in the beta-cell may be important for stimulus-secretion coupling, through provision of a lipid-derived signal, and for pathogenetic events in NIDDM, where lipids may adversely affect beta-cell function. In adipose tissues, hormone-sensitive lipase (HSL) is rate-limiting in triglyceride hydrolysis. Here, we investigated whether this enzyme is also expressed and active in beta-cells. Northern blot analysis and reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction demonstrated that HSL is expressed in rat islets and in the clonal beta-cell lines INS-1, RINm5F, and HIT-T15. Western blot analysis identified HSL in mouse and rat islets and the clonal beta-cells. In mouse and rat, immunocytochemistry showed a predominant occurrence of HSL in beta-cells, with a presumed cytoplasmic localization. Lipase activity in homogenates of the rodent islets and clonal beta-cells constituted 2.1 +/- 0.6% of that in adipocytes; this activity was immunoinhibited by use of antibodies to HSL. The established HSL expression and activity in beta-cells offer a mechanism whereby lipids are mobilized from intracellular stores. Because HSL in adipocytes is activated by cAMP-dependent protein kinase (PKA), PKA-regulated triglyceride hydrolysis in beta-cells may participate in the regulation of insulin secretion, possibly by providing a lipid-derived signal, e.g., long-chain acyl-CoA and diacylglycerol.


Background Anti-TNF drugs (AD)s have been a major advance in the control of chronic rheumatic diseases, however they sometime have important adverse drug effects (ADEs). Purpose To assess the frequency of AD and disease-modifying antirheumatic drug (DMARD) combinations leading to withdrawal of biological treatment (BT) due to ADEs. Material and methods Observational study in a tertiary hospital (1,350 beds). Outpatients on BT followed in a rheumatic disease unit were included. We evaluated patients who had been prescribed infliximab, etanercept or adalimumab concomitantly with DMARDs (between November 1999 and March 2013). The primary end point was BT withdrawal due to ADEs. Results 444 patients out of 531 took DMARDs at the same time as ADs. 52 (11.7%) discontinued treatment due to ADEs as did 10 patients receiving anti-TNF monotherapy (11.5%) (OR = 0.27; p > 0.05). 160 patients took leflunomide, 28 of them (17.5%) discontinued AD due to ADEs. This risk of discontinuation was significantly higher than in patients receiving other concomitant DMARDs (OR = 1.984; p < 0.05). However, methotrexate seemed to have a protective effect regarding the risk of stopping ADs (OR = 0.567; CI95%: 0.319–1.010; p > 0.05). The frequency of AD withdrawal was similar when comparing patients on monotherapy versus polytherapy (anti-TNF and DMARDs) regardless of drug or diagnoses. Only leflunomide showed significantly higher ADEs which led to BT interruption (OR = 1.984; p < 0.05). We did not detect a significant increase in ADEs when other DMARDs were used concomitantly with BT. We found less probability of withdrawal for patients treated with anti-TNF in combination with methotrexate (OR = 0.567; IC95% (0.319–1.010); p > 0.05). There was an increase in discontinuations with each additional number of concomitant DMARDs up to a maximum of three. Conclusion Association of anti-TNF with different DMARDs did not modify the risk of BT withdrawal as a consequence of ADEs. As a DMARD was added to any AD, the number of its discontinuations increased. The addition of BT treatment concomitantly with leflunomide significantly increased the risk of anti-TNF discontinuation due to ADEs, while patients taking methotrexate with BT were less likely to develop ADEs. References and/or acknowledgements Rheumatology Department No conflict of interest.


Interface structures of a variety of molecular p-type semiconductors in heterojunction with fullerene C60 were generated in molecular dynamic simulations. Using the dimer method (i.e., dimers were used as the quantum-mechanical system) along with a continuum solvation approach and macroscopic electric fields, energetic profiles of the interfaces of organic solar cells (OSCs) were calculated. Several important loss mechanisms, such as exciton trapping, charge trapping, and interfacial charge-transfer traps, were observed. Structure–property relationships were established. They reveal that apart from the molecular orientation and dipolarity, molecular size is an important parameter that influences potential loss mechanisms.


Industrial sensors and actuators are becoming increasingly complex with the inclusion of embedded microprocessors to improve performance and reduce cost. The data transmission systems traditionally used by such instruments are analogue and these can be unduly costly to implement in such digital systems while failing to take full advantage of the potential
inherent in this new breed of sensors. Fieldbus was conceived as an alternative to these traditional methods, providing a rapid, digital transmission system with the facilities to allow complex networks to be designed, run and maintained efficiently. This study provides a basic insight into Fieldbus, providing an outline of many of the available systems before
concentrating on two popular European systems, Profibus and P-Net. The results of this study are incorporated in to an industrial design project undertaken in collaboration with F. Bamford (Instruments) Ltd of Stockport. They have a design for an electronic flowmeter which, while successful in the past, is now suffering reduced sales due to the cost and inflexibility of the design. This device was redesigned to reduce cost and improve performance which, along with the incorporation of Fieldbus technology, will better allow the company to compete in the marketplace.
A comprehensive review of the design methodologies of such an instrument is presented, and these are implemented in the exhaustive design process for the flowmeter which is described in full. This not only includes steps taken to improve the performance of the unit, but also describes methods used to ensure the unit can be upgraded and adapted to operate
successfully with alternate sensors and applications to make it as flexible as possible. Various ways of implementing Fieldbus in such an instrument are also discussed, leading to the development of an interface for this unit which is capable of providing the optimal solution in both high and low volume applications. The result of this design process is a system which features improved resolution and accuracy, is better suited to the flowmeter market yet which is flexible enough to allow custom applications to be fulfilled with ease.


In this paper we describe a validation procedure for the chemical analysis of major elements and some minor elements such as Sr, Cr, Ni, Zn and Zr in heterogeneous geological sediments. The procedure applies two distinct techniques (PIXE and XRF) for the analysis of sediments. In this work an inter-technique comparison of heterogeneous lacustrine sediments from Amik Lake in the vicinity of the Roman city of Antioch (SE, Turkey) was carried out. Dried raw samples and samples with linking powder added were analyzed using PIXE performed at the "Arkeo" beamline of the University of Liege AVF cyclotron and XRF (University of Liege). The aim of this work was to compare PIXE and XRF analysis with set-ups routinely in use in the two laboratories. The purpose was also to determine the best combination of techniques and sample preparation protocols to be applied for heterogeneous sediments and the main elements of interest for each specific technique. The results are in agreement among the two techniques, with discrepancies concerning lighter and minor elements. These differences are mainly related to the texture of the sediments and the intrinsic features of the XRF and PIXE techniques. Major and selected minor elements are sensitive to the grain size and porosity of the samples. However, the accuracy of both XRF and PIXE requires the reduction of the grain size or addition of a linking powder to the sediments to fill the voids in order to increase the intensities of both lighter and minor elements. The results demonstrate the critical importance of sample treatment prior to analysis as well as the necessity of several measurement points and replicates to ensure the accuracy of PIXE results.


The study of brain temperature is important for a number of clinical conditions such as stroke, traumatic brain injury, schizophrenia and birth asphyxia (for neonates). A direct method to estimate brain temperature non-invasively will allow assessment of brain thermoregulation and its variation in clinical conditions. Magnetic resonance imaging is a powerful technique widely used for diagnosis of a range of neurological conditions. All magnetic resonance procedures involve manipulation of the hydrogen nuclei in the water molecules of the human body. The resonance frequency of the water molecules is temperature dependent, thus MR thermometry is a powerful tool for non-invasive temperature measurement. Using internal reference MR spectroscopic imaging (MRSI), absolute brain temperature maps can be estimated. However a number of temperature independent factors influence MRSI data acquisition, thus a thorough validation is necessary and is the focus of this PhD study. In this PhD study using phantom (test object) studies it was shown that optimization of the MRSI pulse sequence is necessary to reduce systematic error in temperature maps and extensive in-vitro validation of MRSI temperature mapping was performed. A custom made temperaturecontrolled phantom was designed for this purpose and is presented in this thesis. MRSI data acquired from healthy (young and elderly) volunteers was employed to assess regional brain temperature variations and repeatability. Finally, the feasibility of employing fast echo planar spectroscopic imaging for volumetric MRSI temperature mapping will be presented in this thesis.


There has been much talk in the popular press about the difficulty of attaining credibility in the bond markets for the low-inflation policies that have been adopted by a number of central banks in recent years. This credibility problem is particularly severe for those countries that have a history of high inflation. Gaining credibility is often viewed in the context of learning by the public about the central bank's true intentions. However, this paper argues that a more important aspect of credibility – at least for long-term inflation expectations – may be public views about how future changes in personnel, electoral results, or economic shocks may affect central bank behaviour. In other words, there is always a positive probability that the current regime will end. Views about the nature of possible future regimes are likely to be influenced by observed past regimes.


We use rich survey data on 133,825 households from 27 EU countries during 2005-2011 to analyze substitution between fixed-line and mobile telecommunications services. We estimate a discrete choice model where households may choose between having mobile or fixed-line voice access only, or using both technologies at the same time. We obtain the following main findings. First, fixed-line and mobile connections are on average perceived as substitutes. But there is substantial heterogeneity across households and EU regions, with stronger substitution in Central and Eastern European countries. Second, there is strong complementarity between fixed-line and mobile connections that are offered by the fixed-line incumbent operator. This gives the incumbent a possibility to leverage its position in the fixed-line market into the mobile market. Third, fixed broadband technologies such as DSL and cable generate strong complementarities between fixed and mobile access, while mobile broadband strengthens substitution (at a smaller scale). The emergence of fixed broadband has thus been an important additional source through which incumbents leverage their strong position in the fixed-line network.


Access to schools achieves only so much if quality is poor With per-capita gross domestic product (GDP) growing by an average of 4.5% annually since 1960, people in East Asia are about nine times as prosperous as two generations ago. By contrast, the average person in Latin America is only about two and a half times as prosperous. Over the past quarter-century, both theoretical and empirical analyses of possible drivers of the different growth rates seen around the world invariably assign an important role to human capital (1–4). This has led to development policies focused on increasing enrollment and retention in schools. We argue, however, that too much attention is paid to the time spent in school, and too little is paid to the quality of the schools and the types of skills developed there.


In this paper, we derive three lessons from Mexico's experience. First, deep reforms like trade liberalization are not likely to happen by government decree. Instead, they usually come about when the unanimous blocking of reform by powerful elites breaks down. In the case of Mexico, this happened during a fiscal crisis, when some groups tried to displace other groups in order to capture a greater share of fiscal revenue. Second, in the presence of entrenched elites, the sustainability of reform depends on the existence of new groups that benefit from the new status quo and have enough power to defend it. Thus, the speed of successful reform is determined by the speed with which new groups are consolidated. Initially, Mexico limited radical liberalization to the manufacturing sector. The government has only recently begun to undertake serious liberalization in the services and agriculture sectors. The third lesson we take from Mexico is that the importance of formal agreements like NAFTA lies not so much in the ability of these agreements to reduce average import tariffs among their parties and improve their terms of trade vis vis the rest of the world, as claimed by the optimal tariff literature, but in that they serve as commitment devices to force reforms to continue.


ABSTRACT The study of hometown associations has been traditionally focused on their social and cultural activities, but little research has been conducted on their political and electoral participation. The direct elections held for the Legislative Assembly in September 2013 in the Macao Special Administrative Region were characterised by the emergence of a clear triangular relationship between casino interests, Fujianese tongxianghui (a hometown association or an interest group with members sharing the same locality ties) and electoral politics. The prominent victory of an electoral group led by the Fujianese tongxianghui and represented under the umbrella of the United Citizens Association of Macao (UCAM) was unprecedented in Macao's political participation and historical development. As a community leader of the Fujian community, Chan Meng Kam formed the UCAM to perform multiple functions: protecting his casino interests, articulating the interests of the Fujianese and the society vis-à-vis the casino state, acting as an intermediary between the Macao government and ordinary citizens, especially in the northern district which is the power base of the UCAM, and serving as a united front machinery for a unique sub-ethnic interest group to win the hearts and minds of the people of Macao.


How does Security Force Assistance (SFA) impact Niger's security sector and beyond? I draw on extensive fieldwork in Niger and identify and analyse two developments taking place in Niger's security sector: the development of an expanded Special Forces Command and the elaboration of multiple mobile hybrid units. I build upon, and contribute to, existing studies related to the politicization and securitization of borders in the Sahel and research discussing the blurring of borders between internal and external security forces. The aim is twofold: first, to unpack SFA efforts and effects through a focus on both geopolitical borders in Niger, and borders between and within corps and units in the security sector; and second, to contextualize and compare the developments in Niger's security sector with broader, global security trends. I find that both of the SFA projects constitute and feed into institutional games and inter-agency rivalry regarding task division, equipment and training. The overuse of the newly created Special Forces Command mirrors global trends of the latter as an 'easy button to push', while the multiplication of hybrid units to secure geopolitical borders reinforces the status and power of intermediary agencies that are at the interface between internal and external security forces. On an overarching level, the two trends of meddling with borders are found to be co-constituted by external and local actors who decide which developments that should be considered threats and how they should be addressed, questions that are deeply intertwined with power and control.


Abstract Mobile populations are vulnerable to contracting HIV. The present study aims to evaluate the relative efficacy of the voluntary counseling and testing plus information dissemination (VCT-ID) approach versus the information dissemination (ID) approach for promoting HIV preventive behaviors in a mobile population, cross-border truck drivers. A total of 301 adult male cross-border truck drivers who self-reported having had sex with female sex workers (FSW) or non-regular sex partners (NRPs) in mainland China in the last 12 months were recruited and randomized into the VCT-ID intervention group (Group I) or ID control group (Group C). Anonymous structured questionnaires, administered through a computer-assisted method, were used to collect data. At the follow-up survey (about 8–9 weeks since the baseline survey), Group I participants, as compared to Group C participants, were more likely to be consistent condom users when having sex with FSW (85.5% versus 68.5%, p<0.05) and with NRP (54.8% versus 36.4%, p<0.1), more knowledgeable about HIV, and were less likely to have contracted sexually transmitted diseases (STD) in the last two months. The VCT-ID approach is shown to be more efficacious than the ID approach in promoting safer sex and HIV-related knowledge among local cross-border truck drivers. Feasibility of providing voluntary counseling and testing (VCT) services at locations which are convenient to the target population is demonstrated. It also shows that VCT services can be used as a means of HIV prevention. The findings of this study resulted in up-scaled VCT services for the local target population.


Immersive virtual reality allows people to inhabit avatar bodies that differ from their own, and this can produce significant psychological and physiological effects. The concept of homuncular flexibility Lanier, 2006 proposes that users can learn to control bodies different from their own by changing the relationship between tracked and rendered motion. We examine the effects of remapping movements in the real world onto an avatar that moves in novel ways. In Experiment 1, participants moved their legs more than their arms in conditions where leg movements were more effective for the task. In Experiment 2, participants controlling 3-armed avatars learned to hit more targets than participants in 2-armed avatars. We discuss the implications of embodiment in novel bodies.


A survey of 1.3 million schoolchildren in Zimbabwe identified a total of 278 pupils with oculocutaneous albinism (OCA), giving a prevalence of 1 in 4728. Pupils with OCA were identified in every province of the country, but the distribution was not even. In certain areas, notably the capital, Harare, and the eastern province of Manicaland, the frequency was significantly higher than in others. Although most of the pupils with albinism belonged to the majority Shona ethnic group, people with OCA were also found among the minority population groups in the country. There were almost twice as many pupils with albinism in rural compared with urban schools (248 v 129). However, the prevalence of OCA was significantly higher in urban than rural areas. These results indicate that data for a country collected solely in urban locations are likely to be biased and emphasise the need for widespread distribution of health and special educational facilities for affected people.


This thesis is a study of the colony of Italian anarchists who found refuge in London in the years between the Paris Commune and the outbreak of the First World War. The first chapter is an introduction to the sources and to the main problems analysed. The second chapter reconstructs the settlement of the Italian anarchists in London and their relationship with the colony of Italian emigrants. Chapter three deals with the activities that the Italian anarchists organised in London, such as demonstrations, conferences, and meetings. It likewise examines the ideological differences that characterised the two main groups in which the anarchists were divided: organisationalists and anti-organisationalists.
Italian authorities were extremely concerned about the danger represented by the anarchists. The fourth chapter of the thesis provides a detailed investigation of the surveillance of the anarchists that the Italian embassy and the Italian Minster of Interior organised in London by using spies and informers. At the same time, it describes the contradictory attitude held by British police forces toward political refugees. The following two chapters are dedicated to the analysis of the main instruments of propaganda used by the Italian anarchists: chapter five reviews the newspapers they published in those years, and chapter six reconstructs social and political activities that were organised in their clubs.
Chapter seven examines the impact that the outbreak of First World Word had on the anarchist movement, particularly in dividing it between interventionists and anti-interventionists; a split that destroyed the network of international solidarity that had been hitherto the core of the experience of political exile. Chapter eight summarises the main arguments of the dissertation.


During the last decade, three liquified natural gas (LNG) projects were proposed for California. At this writing, Pacific Lighting Corporation and Pacific Gas and Electric Company are still seeking government permits for two of these projects, involving the import of liquified natural gas from Indonesia and South Alaska. The third LNG project, proposed in 1974 by the El Paso Company, was to bring Alaskan North Slope gas by ocean carriers to a receiving terminal in Southern California. This proposal has been rejected in favor of an overland pipeline.

While these three projects are interrelated, this case history will focus on the Indonesian LNG project. The intent of this brief history is to outline the most important events of this decade-long controversy (for more detailed case histories, see Ahern 1978, and Western 1978). A discussion of the issues underlying this controversy follows. (See the Appendix for a Summary of Major Events Timetable.)


The agronomic and economic performance of genetically modified (GM) crops relative to their conventional counterparts has been largely investigated worldwide. As a result there is considerable information to conduct a meta-analysis to evaluate the agronomic and economic relative performance of GM crops vs. non GM crops by crop, GM trait, and country's level of development. Such meta-analysis has been recently conducted showing that overall GM crops outperform non GM crops in both agronomic and economic terms (1). This paper focuses on the agronomic and economic performance of GM crops in developing and developed countries as well as the potential implications for global food security of adoption of GM crops by developing countries. The presumption that technology only benefits the developed world is not supported by the meta-analysis conducted. No evidence that GM technology benefits moredeveloped than developing countries was found. Indeed, the agronomic and economic performance of GM crops vs. conventional crops tends to be better for developing than for developed countries. Although it is manifested that the conventional agronomic practices in developing countries are different to those in developed countries, it is also apparent that GM crop adoption in developing countries may help to tackle the growing concerns over the scarcity of food globally.


Summary form only given. This paper proposes a methodology to determine the required level of spinning and nonspinning reserves in a power system with a high penetration of wind power. The computation of the required reserve levels and their costs is achieved through a stochastic programming market-clearing model spanning a daily time horizon. This model considers the network constraints and takes into account the cost of both the load shedding and the wind spillage. The methodology proposed is illustrated using an example and a realistic case study. Some conclusions are finally drawn.