Financial risk control has always been challenging and becomes now an even harder problem as joint extreme events occur more frequently. For decision makers and government regulators, it is therefore important to obtain accurate information on the interdependency of risk factors. Given a stressful situation for one market participant, one likes to measure how this stress affects other factors. The CoVaR (Conditional VaR) framework has been developed for this purpose. The basic technical elements of CoVaR estimation are two levels of quantile regression: one on market risk factors; another on individual risk factor. Tests on the functional form of the two-level quantile regression reject the linearity. A flexible semiparametric modeling framework for CoVaR is proposed. A partial linear model (PLM) is analyzed. In applying the technology to stock data covering the crisis period, the PLM outperforms in the crisis time, with the justification of the backtesting procedures. Moreover, using the data on global stock markets indices, the analysis on marginal contribution of risk (MCR) defined as the local first order derivative of the quantile curve sheds some light on the source of the global market risk.


While there is mounting evidence that humor can be an effective means of engaging publics, much remains to be learned about the contextual factors that shape how audiences receive and process humorous scientific content. Analyzing data from a controlled experiment (N = 217), this study explores the differential impact of exposure to stand-up comedy featuring a scientist that generates considerable laughter from the audience versus stand-up comedy lacking audience reaction. Among the key findings, audience laughter served to heighten the affective response of viewers, and affective response was positively linked to two forms of audience engagement with science.


Transparent polymer interlayers are usually adopted to laminate glass members dealing with structural roles. Currently, they are also used to realize laminated adhesive connec-tions joining structural glass components (e.g. steel-to-glass connections). Research activities are currently ongoing to investigate the behavior of such joints, made either by a transparent ionomer (SentryGlas® from DuPont) or by transparent silicon (TSSA from DowCorning). The experimental investigations of the bulk material properties of SG and TSSA laminated interlay-ers are here presented. Uniaxial tensile tests on dumbbell shaped specimens are performed to study the mechanical properties and constitutive law of adhesive materials. The effect of tem-perature and strain rate are investigated and discussed. The specimens were previously cured to bring the polymeric material in the same state as it is in connections after lamination. Real stresses are calculated taking into account the transversal contraction of the material and the ac-tual cross section of the specimens under large deformations by means of Digital Image Correla-tion.


Abstract. It is proposed that technical papers on drainage research studies and engineered design projects should report standard coefficients/parameters that characterize the hydraulics of the system. The following coefficients define key subsurface drainage rates that could be used to quantify the hydraulics of a drainage system. 1. The steady subsurface drainage rate (cm/d) corresponding to a saturated profile with a shallow ponded surface. This subsurface drainage rate defines the length of time that water remains ponded on the soil surface following large rainfall events. It is proposed that this rate be called the Kirkham Coefficient (KC) in honor of Professor Don Kirkham who derived analytical solutions for saturated drained profiles for most soil and boundary conditions of interest. 2. Drainage Intensity (DI), which represents the drainage rate (cm/d) when the water table midway between parallel drains is coincident with the surface. The DI can be estimated by the Hooghoudt Equation and is dependent on the effective saturated hydraulic conductivity of the profile, drain depth, spacing, and depth of the soil profile or restrictive layer. 3. The hydraulic capacity of the system, often called the drainage coefficient (DC). This value is the rate (cm/d) that the outlet works can remove water from the site. It is dependent on the size, slope and hydraulic roughness of the laterals, submains, mains, and, in cases where the pumped outlets are used, the pumping capacity. Routine inclusion of these three coefficients in the documentation of research and design projects would be very useful to readers as they compare results of different studies.


With magnetic resonance (MR) microscopy, high-resolution volumetric imaging (3DFT) of small animals is possible. Although these techniques are suitable for imaging the head and other small stationary objects, breathing and cardiac motion degrade the quality of body images. Scan synchronous ventilation and cardiac gating methods have been developed that permit acquisition of high-resolution images from anywhere in the body of small animals (150 to 400 g). Anesthetized rats were ventilated in synchrony with three-dimensional Fourier spin warp (3DFT) sequence (TR = 400 to 1000 ms, TE = 20 ms). Eight or 16 slices (1.2 or 2.5 mm thick) were acquired simultaneously. Effective pixel size was 200 X 200 mu. Imaging was performed in a 1.5 T, 1-m bore research system using a 28-cm diameter high field gradient coil and a 6-cm diameter radio frequency coil. For thoracic imaging, acquisitions were gated to the QRS of the ECG. Scan synchronous ventilation eliminated breathing motion artifacts and permitted visualization of peripheral vascular structures in the lung and liver. In images that were also cardiac gated, cardiac chambers and major thoracic vessels, including the coronary arteries, were well demonstrated. Thus, thoroughly characterized rodent models can now be studied with MR not only to explore noninvasively the intricacies of mammalian pathomorphology, but also to test the capabilities of MR and aid in interpreting MR data.


Barchan dunes in southeastern Qatar are relentlessly pushed by northwesterly, shamal, winds. This research aims to understand whether a synergy between moisture retention and microbial growth could be exploited to stop them from upsetting natural habitat as they pass. These mobile dunes in Qatar also constitute a unique test area in which to study mechanisms of desertification. After characterizing the behavior and shape of the dune field west of Umm Said, we developed unique instruments for detecting humidity in hyper-arid environments. Using those, we measured diurnal variations in temperature and humidity beneath the dune, as well as fluxes of carbon dioxide through the surface. We also recorded temperature and humidity from a probe initially buried on the dune's avalanche face, emerging 15 months later on its windward face. In the laboratory, we measured effective diffusion, permeability and activity of its sands. By inserting an artificial rippled porous surface in our wind tunnel, we recorded how winds can induce a flow of air within porous sands, thus facilitating moisture and dust intake. Metagenomic analysis of DNA extracted from two dunes revealed that the dune microbial communities were dominated by bacteria from the actinobacteria and firmicutes phyla. Consistent with the known metabolic capacity of these phyla, in silico assessment of the metabolic potential of the dune microbial community suggests that is dominated by heterotrophic bacteria, with surprising few genes for photosynthesis being detected. Other genes, however, were detected that may prove useful in dune stabilization efforts such as urease, and in biotechnology applications such as antibiotic biosynthesis. We succeeded in adapting cultivation independent methods for quantifying viable microbes directly from the sand and in culturing microbes found on individual sand grains. Analysis of the metabolic potential of these isolates is ongoing.


Traffic elements are considered as important elemnts in traffic management. In Iran, overcrowding of automobiles in the cities led the traffic elemnts to be more vehicle-driven rather than pedestrian-oriented hence safety and well-being of pedestrains took less into consideration. Pedestrian bridge is one of the most important traffic elements which is strongly effects the security of pedestrians passing across the streets. Finding the best locations to install pedestrian bridges is normally done based on less comprehend and analytic prepared regulations. This causes low efficiency of many bridges and people choose the street itself instead of these safe passages. In this research alongside usage of spatial processing tools, an agent-based model is developed for assessing the pedestrians behaviors while going across the street. Agent-based model provides the possibility of taking the decision making process and its efficient situations into account which results in more reliable consequences. The developed model was used to evaluate four existent pedestrian bridges in Pasdaran Blvd, Shiraz. The results showed that performance of the least used bridge can be improved up to 27% by a 150 meters displacement. Then, the model was deployed to find two best places for a new bridge. The model anticipate that if a new bridge is constructed in each of new suggested locations, the pedestrians will use it more often than the existing four pedestrian bridges.


The Supreme Court's ruling in Bush v. Gore attracted an enormous outpouring of critical response. But there is a defense for the merits holding of Bush v. Gore that has not received adequate attention. In a well-established line of free speech and press cases, the Court has insisted that state law carefully circumscribe the discretion of local officials to pass on applications for parade permits and the like. The "Lovell doctrine," named after the first case in this line, permits facial challenges to such laws, to ward off the risk of administrative bias that might be too difficult to show on a case by case basis. Similarly, the Florida statutory provisions asking local county officials to determine "voter intent" when manually recounting ballots may be thought to vest too much discretion in officials who are highly subject to the tugs of partisan political connections. Just as rights of political participation are at stake in the Lovell doctrine cases, so were they at stake in the 2000 presidential election, whether seen as the rights of the candidates or the voters. This Article develops the analogy between the Lovell doctrine and the Florida election law that the Court confronted in Bush v. Gore. It provides a detailed account of the Lovell line of cases and a critique of the scholarship in the area. It builds a prima facie case for importing the Lovell doctrine into the election law setting, and responds to several objections to so doing. It also responds to two challenges raised by Justice Stevens in his Bush v. Gore dissent, both involving the possibility that objective ballot counting rules could have been set and applied in a disinterested fashion by state judges. If we accept the application of this long line of First Amendment caselaw to the setting of ballot counting, then we can read Bush v. Gore as a narrow but powerful precedent, limiting the power that States may delegate to local officials to determine what counts as a vote, but not extending to other, mechanical differences that might exist within a State.


Contrary to the assumption that the leaks of the diplomatic cables represented a heavy and unexpected pressure on American diplomacy - through their exposition of a mode of operation based on hypocrisy and duplicity - I will try to prove that the leaks, in fact, signify greater challenges and pressures to the states of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), as in all the countries that witnessed a popular revolt, Internet played an informing, mobilizing and organizing role. I will show that the publication of secret documents may have more of an effect on regional relations within the Middle East than on bilateral relations between the countries of this region and the United States, with information contained in the documents likely to prompt some states to reassess their relations with others in the region.Methodology: I will examine this hypothesis through a theoretical framework based on the concepts of the 'transparent society' and the 'risk society' applying them on the diplomatic field, with a focus on certain examples that appear noteworthy in light of recent social and political events in the Middle East. I will thus examine whether a connection exists between the open source of the Internet and the events taking place in some countries, and discuss the American role in the region, as well as the anticipated developments and changes in diplomatic relations in light of these events.


As autonomous vehicle (AV) intelligence for controllability continues to develop, involving increasingly complex and interconnected systems, the maturity level of AV technology increasingly depends on the systems reliability level, also considering the interactions among them. Hazard analysis is typically used to identify potential system risks and avoid loss of AV system functionality. Conventional hazard analysis methods are commonly used for traditional standalone systems. New hazard analysis methods have been developed that may be more suitable for AV system-of-systems complexity. However, a comprehensive comparison of hazard analysis methods for AV systems is lacking. In this study, the traditional hazard analysis methods, hazard and operability (HAZOP) and failure mode and effects analysis (FMEA), as well as the most recent methods, like functional resonance analysis method (FRAM; Hollnagel, 2004, 2012) and system-theoretic process analysis (STPA; Leveson, 2011), are considered for implementation in the automatic emergency braking system. This system is designed to avoid collisions by utilizing the surrounding sensors to detect objects on the road, warning drivers with alerts about any collision risk, and actuating automatic partial/full braking through calculated adaptive braking deceleration. The objective of this work is to evaluate the methods in terms of their applicability to AV technologies. The advantages of HAZOP, FMEA, FRAM, and STPA, as well as the possibility of combining them to achieve systematic risk identification in practice, are discussed.


Neural codes are inevitably shaped by various kinds of biological constraints, \emph{e.g.} noise and metabolic cost. Here we formulate a coding framework which explicitly deals with noise and the metabolic costs associated with the neural representation of information, and analytically derive the optimal neural code for monotonic response functions and arbitrary stimulus distributions. For a single neuron, the theory predicts a family of optimal response functions depending on the metabolic budget and noise characteristics. Interestingly, the well-known histogram equalization solution can be viewed as a special case when metabolic resources are unlimited. For a pair of neurons, our theory suggests that under more severe metabolic constraints, ON-OFF coding is an increasingly more efficient coding scheme compared to ON-ON or OFF-OFF. The advantage could be as large as one-fold, substantially larger than the previous estimation. Some of these predictions could be generalized to the case of large neural populations. In particular, these analytical results may provide a theoretical basis for the predominant segregation into ON- and OFF-cells in early visual processing areas. Overall, we provide a unified framework for optimal neural codes with monotonic tuning curves in the brain, and makes predictions that can be directly tested with physiology experiments.


The purpose of this study was to examine two instructional methods for delivering a radar operators training class for members of a municipal police department. The first method examined was the traditional classroom-based training with a certified radar instructor. The second method was a computer-based training (CBT) course based on the instructional material from the classroom-based course. The CBT course was administered on CD-ROM using the police department's Windows based computers. This study compared the two methods of delivery to determine if the CBT course was as effective as the traditional classroom-based course. Effectiveness was measured by the completion times of the two courses, examination scores, and overall participant satisfaction levels. These measures were conducted using quasi-experimental design that involved two sample groups. The total population was sixty-nine police officers. The sample contained fourteen participants, divided into two equal groups of seven. The independent variable was the instructional method. The dependent variables were the course completion times, examination scores, and the satisfaction levels of the participants. Of the two groups of police officers, Group 1 received the CBT for radar operators, while Group 2 received the traditional classroom training. Data was gathered regarding the completion times, test results, and participant satisfaction levels of the two courses. A statistical analysis of the data was conducted to determine the difference in course completion times, test scores, and participant satisfaction levels between the two courses.


Departures from self-interest in economic experiments have recently inspired models of "social preferences". We design a range of simple experimental games that test these theories more directly than existing experiments. Our experiments show that subjects are more concerned with increasing social welfare—sacrificing to increase the payoffs for all recipients, especially low-payoff recipients—than with reducing differences in payoffs (as supposed in recent models). Subjects are also motivated by reciprocity: They withdraw willingness to sacrifice to achieve a fair outcome when others are themselves unwilling to sacrifice, and sometimes punish unfair behavior.


Scholars of civil war and insurgency have long posited that insurgent organizations and their state enemies incur costs for the collateral damage they cause. We provide the first direct quantitative evidence that wartime informing to counterinsurgent forces is affected by civilian victimization. Using newly declassified data on tip flow to Coalition forces in Iraq we find that information flow goes down after government forces inadvertently kill civilians and it goes up when insurgents do so. These results confirm a relationship long posited in the theoretical literature on insurgency but never directly observed, have strong policy implications, and are consistent with a broad range of circumstantial evidence on the topic.


Simplifying classical planning tasks by removing operators while preserving at least one optimal solution can significantly enhance the performance of planners. In this paper, we introduce the notion of operator mutex, which is a set of operators that cannot all be part of the same (strongly) optimal plan. We propose four different methods for inference of operator mutexes and experimentally verify that they can be found in a sizable number of planning tasks. We show how operator mutexes can be used in combination with structural symmetries to safely remove operators from the planning task.


The purpose of this project is the creation of an adaptive Function Block control system, and the implementation of Artificial Intelligence integrated within the Function Block control system, using IEC 61499 standard to control an ABB 6-axis virtual robot, simulated in the software RobotStudio. To develop these objectives, we studied a lot of necessary concepts and how to use three different softwares. To learn how to use the softwares, some tests were carried out. RobotStudio is a program developed by ABB Robotics Company where an ABB robot and a station are simulated. There, we designed and created a virtual assembly cell with the virtual IRB140 robot and the necessary pieces to simulate the system. To control the robot and the direct access to the different tools of RobotStudio, it is necessary to use an application programming interface (API) developed by ABB Robotics Company. C sharp (C#) language is used to program using the API, but this language is not supported by the Function Block programming software nxtStudio. Because of this, we used VisualStudio software. In this software, we use the API libraries to start and stop the robot and load a RAPID file in the controller. In a RAPID file the instructions that the robot must follow are written. So, we had to learn about how to program in C# language and how to use VisualStudio software. Also, to learn about IEC 61499 standard it was necessary to read some books. This standard determines how an application should be programmed through function blocks. A function block is a unit of program with a certain functionality which contains data and variables that can be manipulated in the same function block by several algorithms. To program in this standard we learnt how to use nxtStudio software, consuming a lot of time because the program is quite complex and it is not much used in the industrial world yet. Some tests were performed to learn different programing skills in this standard, such as how to use UDP communication protocol and how to program interfaces. Learning UDP communication was really useful because it is necessary for communication between nxtStudio and other programs, and also learning how to use interfaces to let the user access the program. Once we had learnt about how to use and program the different softwares and languages, we began to program the project. Then, we had some troubles with nxtStudio because strings longer than fourteen characters cannot be used here. So, a motion alarm was developed in VisualStudio program. And another important limitation of nxtStudio is that C++ language cannot be used. Therefore, the creation of an Artificial Intelligence system was not possible. So, we created a Function Block control system. This system is a logistical system realised through loops, conditions and counters. All this makes the robot more adaptive. As the AI could not be carried out because of the different limitations, we theoretically designed the AI system. It will be possible to implement the AI when the limitations and the problems are solved.


What should professionalism mean in the literacy field?  Quigley cites the results of a survey of literacy practitioners. According to one participant, 'To act "professionally" in literacy and adult education is to self-educate in professional development.' Another replied that literacy practitioners act professionally when they view 'students as most valued clients and attempt to engage their individual needs and goals within a high-quality program of basic skills instruction.' The theme of caring was one of the strongest points made. Quigley quoted from another survey participant: 'To act professionally in adult literacy one is service-oriented, friendly and accountable. A professional is ethical (with) strong values, especially those pertaining to literacy and the population one serves'.


BACKGROUND
Two systematic reviews have evaluated the quality of research and reporting of observational studies investigating the prevalence of, the incidence of and the risk factors for peri-implant diseases and of experimental clinical studies evaluating the efficacy of preventive and therapeutic interventions.

MATERIALS AND METHODS
For the improvement of the quality of reporting for both observational and experimental studies, the STROBE and the Modified CONSORT recommendations were encouraged.

RESULTS
To improve the quality of research in peri-implant diseases, the following were recommended: the use of unequivocal case definitions; the expression of outcomes at the subject rather than the implant level; the implementation of study validation tools; the reporting of potential sources of bias; and the use of appropriate statistical methods.

CONCLUSIONS
In observational studies, case definitions for peri-implantitis were agreed. For risk factor determination, the progressive use of cross-sectional and case-control studies (univariate analyses), to prospective cohorts (multilevel modelling for confounding), and ultimately to intervention studies were recommended. For preventive and interventional studies of peri-implant disease management, parallel arm RCTs of at least 6-months were encouraged. For studies of non-surgical and surgical management of peri-implantitis, the use of a composite therapeutic end point was advocated. The development of standard control therapies was deemed essential.


The scientific community involved in the UN-REDD program is still reporting large uncertainties about the amount and spatial variability of CO2 stored in forests. The main limitation has been the lack of field samplings over space and time needed to calibrate and convert remote sensing measurements into aboveground biomass (AGB). As an alternative to costly field inventories, we examine the reliability of state-of-the-art lidar methods to provide direct retrieval of many forest metrics that are commonly collected through field sampling techniques (e.g., tree density, individual tree height, crown cover). AGB is estimated using existing allometric equations that are fed by lidar-derived metrics at either the individual tree- or forest layer-level (for the overstory or underneath layers, respectively). Results over 40 plots of a multilayered forest located in northwest Portugal show that the lidar method provides AGB estimates with a relatively small random error (RMSE = of 17.1%) and bias (of 4.6%). It provides local AGB baselines that meet the requirements in terms of accuracy to calibrate satellite remote sensing measurements (e.g., the upcoming lidar GEDI (Global Ecosystem Dynamics Investigation), and the Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) missions NISAR (National Aeronautics and Space Administration and Indian Space Research Organization SAR) and BIOMASS from the European Space Agency, ESA) for AGB mapping purposes. The development of similar techniques over a variety of forest types would be a significant improvement in quantifying CO2 stocks and changes to comply with the UN-REDD policies.


Journalists at major media houses in South Africa use Twitter as a journalistic tool for crowd sourcing, breaking news events, live blogging and to balance, check and cultivate sources. This paper analyses the use of the social network platform by the top 500 South African journalists. The findings suggest that pluralism and openness are important characteristics of the South African Twitter network. Although two strong sub-networks can be detected, we conclude that they give structure to the network and enhance the role of journalists in public debates and democratic decision-making. This is shown in the analysis of three trending news topics related to politics and crime. The last trending topic of the study questions the process of the individualization of journalism through Twitter. The paper concludes by confronting its generic findings from the perspectives and opinions of leading journalists and editors.


Declarative query interfaces to Sensor Networks (SN) have become a commodity. These interfaces allow access to SN deployed for collecting data using relational queries. However, SN are not confined to data collection, but may track object movement, e.g., wildlife observation or traffic monitoring. While relational approaches are well suited for data collection, research on Moving Object Databases (MOD) has shown that relational operators are unsuitable to express information needs on object movement, i.e., spatio-temporal queries. In this paper, we study declarative access to SN that track moving objects. The properties of SN prevent a straightforward application of MOD, e.g., node failures, limited detection ranges and accuracy which vary over time etc. Furthermore, point sets used to model MOD-entities like regions assume the availability of very accurate knowledge regarding the spatial extend of these entities. As we show, assuming such knowledge is unrealistic for most SN. This paper is the first that defines a complete set of spatio-temporal operators for SN while taking into account their properties. Based on these operators, we systematically investigate how to derive query results from object detections by SN. Finally, we show how process spatio-temporal queries in SN efficiently, i.e., reduce the communication between nodes. Our evaluation shows that our measures reduce communication by 45%-89%.


Gestational trophoblastic disease (GTD) is a spectrum of both benign and malignant gestational tumors, including hydatidiform mole (complete and partial), invasive mole, choriocarcinoma, placental site trophoblastic tumor, and epithelioid trophoblastic tumor. The latter four entities are referred to as gestational trophoblastic neoplasia (GTN). These conditions are aggressive with a propensity to widely metastasize. GTN can result in significant morbidity and mortality if left untreated. Early diagnosis of GTD is essential for prompt and successful management while preserving fertility. Initial diagnosis of GTD is based on a multifactorial approach consisting of clinical features, serial quantitative human chorionic gonadotropin (β-hCG) titers, and imaging findings. Ultrasonography (US) is the modality of choice for initial diagnosis of complete hydatidiform mole and can provide an invaluable means of local surveillance after treatment. The performance of US in diagnosing all molar pregnancies is surprisingly poor, predominantly due to the difficulty in differentiating partial hydatidiform mole from nonmolar abortion and retained products of conception. While GTN after a molar pregnancy is usually diagnosed with serial β-hCG titers, imaging plays an important role in evaluation of local extent of disease and systemic surveillance. Imaging also plays a crucial role in detection and management of complications, such as uterine and pulmonary arteriovenous fistulas. Familiarity with the pathogenesis, classification, imaging features, and treatment of these tumors can aid in radiologic diagnosis and guide appropriate management.


The French-ruled territory of New Caledonia, or Kanaky, as Indigenous pro-independence campaigners call their cigar-shaped islands, voted on their political future on 4 November 2018 amid controversy and tension. This was an historic vote on independence in a 'three-strikes' scenario in the territory ruled by France since 1853, originally as a penal colony for convicts and political dissidents. In the end, the vote was remarkably close, reflecting the success of the pro-independence Kanak and Socialist National Liberation Front (FLNKS) in mobilising voters, particularly the youth. The referendum choice was simple and stark. Voters simply had to respond 'yes' or 'no' to the question: 'Do you want New Caledonia to attain full sovereignty and become independent?' In spite of prophecies of an overwhelming negative vote, the 'no' response slipped to a 56.4 percent vote while the 'yes' vote wrested a credible 43.6 percent share with a record turnout of almost 81 percent. New Caledonia is expected to face two further votes on the independence question in 2020 and 2022. The author of this article reported as a journalist on an uprising against French rule in the 1980s, known by the euphemism 'les Évènements' ('the Events'). He returned there three decades later as an academic to bear witness to the vote and examine the role of digital media and youth. This article reflects on his impressions of the result, democracy and the future.


The formation of the International Federation of Organic Agriculture Movements (IFOAM) at Versailles, France, in 1972 set organic food and farming on a strong future trajectory. It was an initiative of France's Nature et Progres, and driven by its then President, Roland Chevriot. IFOAM was founded with the support of a small cluster of kindred organisations: Rodale Press of the USA; the Soil Association of the UK; the Soil Association of South Africa; and the Swedish Biodynamic Association. None of these five organisations bore the term 'organic' in their title, nevertheless, the choice of name acknowledged 'organic' as the term to signify their common cause. It secured 'organic' as the core narrative element and as the international descriptor of what is now a clearly identifiable and differentiated segment of the global food and farming sector. From the outset 'biodynamic' was accepted as a special case of 'organic'. The formation of IFOAM created an entity which united the aspirations, the philosophies and the hopes of disparate groups each with roles primarily restricted to national advocacy. IFOAM has grown to a federation of 804 organisations from 111 counties. Organic production statistics are now reported by IFOAM from 154 countries and organic sector retail sales are reported to be US$51b annually. IFOAM is based in Bonn, Germany, and as the global umbrella advocacy group for the organic sector it is without peer.


Currently, valorization of lignocellulosic biomass almost exclusively focuses on the production of pulp, paper, and bioethanol from its holocellulose constituent, while the remaining lignin part that comprises the highest carbon content, is burned and treated as waste. Lignin has a complex structure built up from propylphenolic subunits; therefore, its valorization to value-added products (aromatics, phenolics, biogasoline, etc.) is highly desirable. However, during the pulping processes, the original structure of native lignin changes to technical lignin. Due to this extensive structural modification, involving the cleavage of the β-O-4 moieties and the formation of recalcitrant C-C bonds, its catalytic depolymerization requires harsh reaction conditions. In order to apply mild conditions and to gain fewer and uniform products, a new strategy has emerged in the past few years, named 'lignin-first' or 'reductive catalytic fractionation' (RCF). This signifies lignin disassembly prior to carbohydrate valorization. The aim of the present work is to follow historically, year-by-year, the development of 'lignin-first' approach. A compact summary of reached achievements, future perspectives and remaining challenges is also given at the end of the review.


I believe in the process in which the artist never works alone but always in collaboration with the elements of chance. As an artist I live and work everyday collaborating with chance, from reading my cards to creating ethereal birds. As I sew pieces together, the thread becomes another element of the image by chance, stitches to lines, lines to pattern. Chance leads the birds to portraying their own personality as they are each created, one's head tilts to the right while another sits tall with dignity. This work is about the connection to the subconscious, my connection to it through what I see, people I know, games I play, what I dream. Through objects based on historical divination practices, I offer a chance for the viewer to journey inward to examine her own subconscious. This is not a declaration of the validity of these practices. "Can one explain the magic of life to someone who cannot perceive it in the smallest everyday things?" -Rosa Luxemborg. It is up to the viewer how these games of chance are interpreted in their own life. I search for truth. But truth to me is not constant. It moves like the phases of the moon, circling, waxing, and waning. Tomorrow may hold answers that are different than today's. I believe that we know much more than our conscious brains reveal. By connecting to the subconscious we gain access to the depths within ourselves. May the birds guide us to the next level of awareness.


Objectives: Pain beliefs have been hypothesized to play an important role in pediatric pain. However, research examining the associations between pain-related beliefs and measures of function in youths with disabilities is limited. Methods: In total, 84 youths (mean age, 14.26 y; SD, 3.27) with physical disabilities who indicated they also had bothersome pain were interviewed and asked to rate their average pain intensity in the past week and to complete measures of pain-related beliefs and health-related quality of life. Results: A number of pain beliefs were associated with different physical and psychosocial function domains, although different beliefs appeared to play different roles, depending on the function domain examined. Across all of the health-related quality-of-life domains studied, a belief that pain is influenced by one's emotions was associated with lower levels of function. No differences were found in pain beliefs related to age. In addition, a small difference in pain beliefs was found for sex; specifically, girls were more likely than boys to endorse the belief that pain is influenced by emotions. Discussion: The findings provide new information regarding the role that pain beliefs have in predicting function and have important clinical implications regarding how youth with physical disabilities and pain might be most effectively treated.


This article deals with a moment in the eighteen-twenties when, it has been argued, British expatriates and middle-class Indians in Calcutta came together to form a multi-ethnic reform public. It is often assumed that this public emerged as a result of the introduction of press censorship in 1823. This article, by contrast, argues that the origins of the reform movement should be traced to the unlikely surroundings of the vestry of one of Calcutta's Anglican churches. The article gives us a new perspective on India's 'age of reform', and shows how municipal reform, often considered to be a metropolitan phenomenon, not only surfaced in the colonial world but also prepared the ground for later campaigns for free trade, judicial reform and a representative legislature.


The rapid development of nanotechnology will inevitably release nanoparticles (NPs) into the environment with unidentified consequences. In addition, the potential toxicity of CeO(2) NPs to plants and the possible transfer into the food chain are still unknown. Corn plants (Zea mays) were germinated and grown in soil treated with CeO(2) NPs at 400 or 800 mg/kg. Stress-related parameters, such as H(2)O(2), catalase (CAT), and ascorbate peroxidase (APX) activity, heat shock protein 70 (HSP70), lipid peroxidation, cell death, and leaf gas exchange were analyzed at 10, 15, and 20 days post-germination. Confocal laser scanning microscopy was used to image H(2)O(2) distribution in corn leaves. Results showed that the CeO(2) NP treatments increased accumulation of H(2)O(2), up to day 15, in phloem, xylem, bundle sheath cells and epidermal cells of shoots. The CAT and APX activities were also increased in the corn shoot, concomitant with the H(2)O(2) levels. Both 400 and 800 mg/kg CeO(2) NPs triggered the up-regulation of the HSP70 in roots, indicating a systemic stress response. None of the CeO(2) NPs increased the level of thiobarbituric acid reacting substances, indicating that no lipid peroxidation occurred. CeO(2) NPs, at both concentrations, did not induce ion leakage in either roots or shoots, suggesting that membrane integrity was not compromised. Leaf net photosynthetic rate, transpiration, and stomatal conductance were not affected by CeO(2) NPs. Our results suggest that the CAT, APX, and HSP70 might help the plants defend against CeO(2) NP-induced oxidative injury and survive NP exposure.


The modulation response, relative intensity noise (RIN) and frequency noise (FN) characteristics of quantum dot (QD) lasers are investigated theoretically in the presence of an external optical beam. Using small signal analysis of the rate equations for carriers and photons, it is demonstrated that by injecting excess carriers into the QDs excited state through optical pumping, the modulation response of QD laser enhances and its bandwidth increases. The external optical pump also helps QD laser to turn on during shorter delay time. Further, it is deduced that the RIN level of QD laser reduces and the damping factor increases due to external beam. Moreover, the frequency noise level of QD laser and correspondingly its linewidth decreases by applying the optical beam.


We present an annotated list of anuran species found in the Parque Municipal de Piraputangas, a protected area of a semi-deciduous forest located in Corumbá, Mato Grosso do Sul, Brazil. Fieldwork was conducted three times per month between August 2012 and July 2013. We recorded 29 species from six families (Bufonidae, Dendrobatidae, Hylidae, Leptodactylidae, Microhylidae, and Phyllomedusidae), representing 30% of the anuran species known to occur in Mato Grosso do Sul and 50% of the anurans recorded in this state's semi-deciduous forests. Microhylids, leptodactylids, and bufonids were associated with terrestrial substrates, whereas most hylids and phyllomedusids were found perched on vegetation. This study will fill gaps in the knowledge on the anuran fauna of the western border of the Pantanal and will serve as a basis for additional studies that are needed to understand how species respond to habitat loss or fragmentation, such as landscape conversions, commercial logging, or mining.


In the United States, coronary heart disease and cardiovascular disease account for nearly 40% of all deaths each year. Coronary heart disease continues to be the leading cause of mortality and a significant cause of morbidity among North Americans. In 2006, coronary heart disease claimed 607 000 lives, translating into about 1 out of every 5 deaths in the United States. High levels of cholesterol, or hypercholesterolemia, are an important risk factor for coronary heart disease. The 3-hydroxy-3-methylglutaryl-coenzyme (HMG-CoA) reductase inhibitors, also known as statins, are the most effective class of drugs for lowering serum low-density lipoprotein cholesterol concentrations. They are first-line agents for patients who require drug therapy to reduce serum low-density lipoprotein cholesterol concentrations. The purpose of this review is to compare the benefits and harms of different statins in adults and children with hypercholesterolemia.


Satellite communication and navigation systems operating at low latitudes suffer outages due to ionospheric scintillations during large magnetic storms that are not currently specified by any model. This paper describes and demonstrates how in the framework of an eastward electric field penetration from high to low latitudes at dusk during the main phase of a large storm, for which the rate of change of Dst ≤ −50 nT/h and the Dst minimum index ≤ −100 nT, it is possible to specify the longitude interval within the low‐latitude ionosphere where scintillations and plasma bubbles are most likely to occur. It is known that the eastward prompt penetration electric field becomes enhanced near sunset due to the day‐to‐night conductivity gradient. Such enhanced eastward electric fields generally set off the Rayleigh‐Taylor plasma instability at F region heights and cause the formation of plasma bubbles and irregularities of electron density that give rise to scintillations of satellite signals. We first discuss two individual magnetic storms that satisfy the criterion of large magnetic storms mentioned above and for which the onsets of the main phase are about 15 h apart. We show that the dusk sectors corresponding to these two storms are such that irregularities and scintillations were observed in the Atlantic‐Peruvian longitude sector for one storm and in the Pacific sector for the other. We then present a statistical study with 30 large magnetic storms during solar cycle 23 which satisfy the two criteria of large magnetic storms and we attempt to specify the longitude interval of irregularity and scintillation occurrence during the main phase of such storms. We have tracked globally the occurrence of equatorial scintillations during magnetic storms by the use of scintillation observations made by the Air Force Research Laboratory's Scintillation Network Decision Aid (SCINDA) network and the DMSP satellite in situ measurements of plasma bubbles at 840 km. The statistical study reveals that during large magnetic storms, scintillations and plasma bubbles occur over a specific longitude sector for which the local dusk corresponds to the time interval of the main phase of storms. The magnetic storm induced scintillations may enhance the general seasonal/longitudinal pattern of quiet time scintillations at the station but may also occur where it is least expected in accordance with climatology. The storm time response of the equatorial ionosphere discussed in this paper will be implemented in the SCINDA algorithm to enhance its capability to specify scintillations during large magnetic storms.


Fluorescence properties of pyrene (Py), benzo[ghi]perylene (BPe), coronene (Co), and ovalene (Ov) dissolved in n-butylammonium thiocyanate, sec-butylammonium thiocyanate, and dipropylammonium thiocyanate are reported. Solvent polarities of the thiocyanate salts are estimated from the fluorescence emission intensity ratios of bands I and III (i.e., Py = I/III) of the polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon vibronic spectra. Calculated BPe, Co, and Ov values indicate that all three thiocyanate salts are comparable in polarity to cyclohexanone.


This paper aims to analyze a pedagogical practice seeking to understand its potential for promoting a critical reflection on the topic of Waste. The practice was developed within the scope of the discipline of Science and Decolonizing Cultures offered in the Remote Teaching model, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, in the Graduate Program in Scientific and Environmental Education of a Federal University. For this, evaluations made by scholarship holders of the Institutional Program of Initiation to Teaching scholarships were taken as data, who after watching the video, answered the following question: what are the positive points and points to be improved in practice. Therefore, this work fits into the Qualitative Research Methodology and the responses were analyzed using Content Analysis and, more specifically, thematic categorization. After the analysis, it was possible to find three categories which are: "Poem as an enhancer of practice", "Transdisciplinary approach" and "Problematization". Thus, it is possible to consider that the practice fulfilled its role to promote a critical reflection on the theme of garbage since it was based on Critical Environmental Education and brought art to problematize issues related to the theme, causing contextualized reflections that transcend how the theme is commonly addressed.


The central phenomenon of interest to the authors was the experiences of Batswana women who have been diagnosed with both HIV/AIDS and cervical cancer. They wanted to know how these women and their families coped with the burden of the two 'fatal' diseases. This interest was brought about by the current surge in cervical cancer cases in the country, and the relationship between the two diseases. There is scant literature on the experiences of women with the dual diagnosis of HIV/AIDS and cervical cancer. The purpose of the study was to explore the experiences of Batswana women who are diagnosed with both HIV/AIDS and cervical cancer. The research question was 'What are the experiences of Batswana women diagnosed with both HIV/AIDS and cervical cancer?' A phenomenological descriptive qualitative research design was therefore appropriate to answer the research question. Semi-structured interviews and field notes were used to collect data. One-to-one interviews were conducted with six women diagnosed with the two diseases. Both convenience and purposive sampling techniques were used in selection of participants. The seven procedural steps proposed by Collaizi (1978) were utilized in data analysis as the study was based on the phenomenology approach. The findings revealed that HIV/AIDS and cervical cancer are chronic illnesses that can instill chronic emotional pain. Reactions to diagnosis with these diseases include pain, fear or intense sadness. Coping with these conditions can be facilitated by different strategies such as acceptance, having hope, support from others and positive thinking. Support can come from children, family members, informal or formal groups and health service providers.


Migrant smugglers occupy a special place in the European 'migration crisis' discourse. They are depicted as the facilitators of irregular migrants' journeys, and as criminals who take advantage of people's vulnerability and naïveté. Stories of ruthless smugglers who abuse, abandon or even murder those who rely on their services are common in popular media, as well as in mainstream academic, policy and law enforcement narratives of migration.


Herbert Butterfield (1900–1979) was one of the earliest and strongest critics of what he saw as the British government's attempts to control the past through the writing of so-called, 'official histories'. His famous diatribe against the 'pitfalls' of official history first appeared in 1949, at a time when the British government was engaged in publishing official histories and diplomatic documents on an unprecedented scale following the Second World War. But why was Butterfield so hostile to official history, and why do his views still matter today? Written by one of the few historians employed by the British government today, this important new book details how successive governments have applied a selective approach to the past in order to tell or re-tell Britain's national history, with implications for the future. Providing a unique overview of the main trends of official history in Britain since the Second World War, the book details how Butterfield came to suspect that the British government was trying to suppress vital documents revealing the Duke of Windsor's dealings with Nazi Germany. This seemed to confirm his long-held belief that all governments would seek to manipulate history if they could, and conceal the truth if they could not. At the beginning of the 21st century, official history is still being written and the book concludes with an insider's perspective on the many issues it faces today– on freedom of information, social media and reengaging with our nation's colonial legacy. Governments have recently been given many reminders that history matters, and it is Herbert Butterfield above all who reminds us that we must remain vigilant in monitoring how they respond to the challenge.


The new agri-food market scenario is considered a detrimental factor for the competitiveness and financial equilibria of the agricultural cooperatives. According to this vision, as a result of the saturation and globalization process, the shift of the specific investment at the forward level of the supply chain (i.e., for the brand development, or for R&D activities) would be a serious threat for the cooperative model. These assumptions come from a transaction cost and property rights-based framework. The results of these studies are surely insightful and valuable, but they should be integrated with the strengths in terms of knowledge integration (and coordination) assured by the agricultural cooperative model. This work is aimed at updating the function/justification of modern agricultural cooperatives. Firstly, a theoretical contribution mingling the knowledge-based theory of the firm with the social innovation approach in agriculture will be defined. Secondly, two case studies will be discussed.


Several comparative studies have reported that there can be great discrepancies between different methods used to estimate forest biomass. With the development of carbon markets, an accurate estimation at the regional scale (i.e. county level) is becoming increasingly important for local government. In this study, we applied five methodologies [continuous biomass expansion factor (CBEF) approach, mean biomass density (MB) approach, mean biomass expansion factor (MBEF) approach, national continuous biomass expansion factors (NCBEF) proposed by Fang et al (2002), standard IPCC approach] to estimate the total biomass for Shitai County, China. The CBEF is generally considered to provide the most realistic estimates in term of regional biomass because CBEF reflects the change of BEF to stand density, stand age and site conditions. The forests of the whole county were divided into four forest types, namely Chinese fir plantations (CF), hardwood broadleaved forests (HB), softwood–broadleaved forests (SB) and mason pine forests (MP) according to the local forest management inventory of 2004. Generally, the MBEF approach overestimated forest biomass while the IPCC approach underestimated forest biomass for all forest types when CBEF derived biomass was used as a control. The MB approach provided the most similar biomass estimates for all forest types and could be an alternative approach when a CBEF equation is lacking in the study area. The total biomass derived from MBEF was highest at 1.44×107 t, followed by 1.32 ×107 t from CBEF, 1.31 ×107 t from NCBEF, 1.25 ×107 t from MB and 1.16 ×107 t from IPCC. Our results facilitate method selection for regional forest biomass estimation and provide statistical evidence for local government planning to enter the potential carbon market.


In this paper, we propose a stable illumination change adaptive tracking algorithm in which the color model update and the target localization are mutually constrained to each other. The mutual constraint is the result of sharing the same five-dimensional feature space, where the feature vector is composed of the three color components and the x,y coordinates of pixels inside the target region. The use of the five-dimensional feature vector introduces spatiality in the color model update, i.e., the re-clustering of the feature space is constrained by the spatial location of the pixels corresponding to the target color. The spatial constraint on the color model update is also due to the use of a window which contains the pixels used in the color model update, where the location of the window is decided by the current target location. The color model update is performed by a five-dimensional mean shift-based clustering algorithm. The update in the color components in the five-dimensional feature vector handles the illumination change in the colors in the target region. The five-dimensional mean shift-based clustering updates also the x,y coordinates in the five-dimensional vector, and thus constrains the target localization. The target localization uses the x,y coordinates of the mean vectors of the five-dimensional vectors corresponding to each color bin. The target location is computed as a minimizer of a proposed energy functional, which is proposed such that the relative spatial locations of the mean vectors are considered in the target localization. The mutual constraint of the color model update and the target localization makes the tracking stable under various situations such as global illumination change, partial occlusion, and cluttered background. It can stably track the target even in the appearance of major background colors that are also major colors of the target object.


Postmodern jurisprudence was all the rage in the 1990s. Two of the most renowned postmodernists, Stanley Fish and Pierre Schlag, both persistently criticized mainstream legal scholars for believing they were modernist selves independent, sovereign, and autonomous agents who could remake the social and legal world merely by writing a law review article. Then Fish and Schlag turned on each other. Each attacked the other for making the same mistake: harboring a modernist self I revisit this skirmish for two reasons. First, it helps explain the current moribund state of postmodern jurisprudence. If two of the leading postmodernists could not avoid embedding a self in their respective writings, then what was the point of criticizing mainstream legal scholars for doing the same? Second, an understanding of this conflict between Fish and Schlag can help suggest a path forward for postmodernism. Since 2000, when Fish published his attack against Schlag, feminist theorists have developed intertwined concepts of a relational self and relational autonomy. These feminist concepts provide a springboard for launching postmodern jurisprudence into


Several populational-based studies have suggested an association between tumoral necrosis factor-alpha (TNF-alpha) polymorphisms and obesity-related phenotypes. Therefore, this study aimed at assessing the situation (frequency and associated phenotype) of two TNF-alpha common polymorphisms in a Spanish population. In a case-control design study, a group of Spanish subjects (n=313) were genotyped for the TNF-alpha G/A -308 and -238 polymorphisms. Obese subjects (cases) were compared with lean individuals (controls) according to body mass index (BMI; cases: BMI >30 kg/m2, controls: BMI <25 kg/m2). Waist-to-hip ratio, body composition and some metabolic indicators were assessed. The frequency of the -308A allele (0.14) and -238A allele (0.09) was similar to those previously reported in other Caucasian populations. Interestingly, cases with the -308A allele of the TNF-alpha gene have significantly higher hip and waist circumferences (p<0.05), BMI (p<0.01) and body fat mass (p<0.05) values than obese individuals carrying the -308G allele, but not the waist-to-hip ratio. No apparent influence of the -308A polymorphism on other metabolic indicators (insulin and leptin levels) was found. We could not detect any association between the substitution at position -238 polymorphism of the TNF-alpha gene and obesity anthropometrical phenotypes in this Spanish population, despite some differences in plasma leptin. These results support the hypothesis that the G/A -308 polymorphism of the TNF-alpha gene is associated with a higher BMI as well as hip ad waist circumferences, particularly on female bearers, while no influence on such measurements was found for the G/A -238 TNF-alpha gene polymorphism, but only an effect on leptinaemia.


In the rapid spray metal tooling, metal film is spray-formed on the substrate and supported under the back, which will act as the working surface of the rapid metal tool finally. So the finishing process for the sprayed metal film is important to the quality and the lifecycle of the rapid metal tool. The finishing of the metal mould is frequently carried out manually, these kinds of operations are iterative, time consuming and require experience. Automation can introduce cost reduction minimizing production times on such manual finishing operations. This paper presents a robotic polishing system with free abrasive for the finishing of the rapid spray metal tool, which is consisted of a six-degree-of-freedom industrial robot manipulator, a high speed electrical polishing spindle and a numerical swivel table. Soft polishing pad and free abrasive are also selected for the robotic polishing system. The path planning is so important to the robotic polishing system that a partition & flexible path mapping method basing on UG CAM is developed to generate the uniform robotic polishing path on the complex mould surface. UG/Open GRIP programming module is used to generate the driving paths with different path intervals on the predesigned plane for each partitioned part. When the driving paths are projected to the mould curved surface, the uniform polishing paths with NC code can be generated by the multi-axis CAM module of the UG. And the path with NC code can then be transformed to the robotic polishing path. According to the elastic deformation and the abrasion of the soft polishing tool, the robotic polishing path should be adjusted to keep the smooth polishing process by offsetting the pre-compressed value and the abrasive compensation value along the polishing axis direction. Technical parameters of the robotic polishing process are also optimized through the experiments. Finally, the rapid metal punch mould is finished to test the robotic polishing system.


This paper is based upon the author's research into developing the use of industrial simulation as a method of delivering, academic knowledge, vocational skills and transferable skills to undergraduate surveying learners. The rationale behind research is that all four stakeholders to surveying education, learner, education provider, professional bodies and employers, desire that graduates be ready for employment. The paper establishes requirements for the equitable delivery of any form of education, and seeks to ensure that any simulation achieves these. It proposes a research methodology which allows the researcher to develop better prepared and delivered industrial simulations by use of an action research model and learning lessons from previously completed simulations. Using existing data from the author's practice a complex industrial simulation, was planned and executed. The details and outcomes of this simulation, run at the University of Salford in 2015, are discussed. Include is how the simulation was adapted from the usual format to accommodate a multidisciplinary cohort of learners. The tutor observations, academic achievement and participant feedback are evaluated using the action research methodology proposed within the paper, to see where lessons might be learned and used to improve a proposed further simulation. A further simulation, also adapted to meet specific learner requirements, is proposed. Conclusions based upon the focus simulation evidence a change in the outcomes envisaged at the commencement of research.


Language and Philosophical Problems investigates problems about mind, meaning and mathematics rooted in preconceptions of language. It deals in particular with problems which are connected with our tendency to be misled by certain prevailing views and preconceptions about language. Philosophical claims made by theorists of meaning are scrutinized and shown to be connected with common views about the nature of certain mathematical notions and methods. Drawing in particular on Wittgenstein's ideas, Sren Stenlund demonstrates a strategy for tracing out and resolving conceptual and philosophical problems. By a critical examination of examples from different areas of philosophy, he shows that many problems arise through the transgression of the limits of the use of technical concepts and formal methods. Many prima facie different kinds of problems are shown to have common roots, and should thus be dealt and resolved together. Such an approach is usually prevented by the influence of traditional philosophical terminology and classification. The results of this investigation make it clear that the received ways of subdividing the subject matter of philosophy often conceal the roots of the problem.


Background As end-stage liver disease progresses, renal blood flow linearly correlates with mean arterial blood pressure (MBP) due to impaired autoregulation. We investigated whether the lower degree of postoperative MBP would predict the occurrence of postoperative acute kidney injury (AKI) after liver transplantation. Material/Methods This retrospective study enrolled 1,136 recipients with normal preoperative kidney function. Patients were categorized into two groups according to the averaged postoperative MBP: <90 mmHg (MBPbelow90) and ≥90 mmHg (MBPover90). The primary endpoint was occurrence of postoperative AKI, defined by the creatinine criteria of the Kidney Disease Improving Global Outcomes. The logistic regression model with inverse probability treatment weighting (IPTW) of propensity score was used to compare the risk of postoperative AKI between two groups. Results MBPbelow90 group (83.0±5.1 mmHg) showed higher prevalence and risk of postoperative AKI (74.2% versus 62.6%, p<0.001; IPTW-OR 1.34 [1.12–1.61], p=0.001) compared with MBPover90 group (97.3±5.2 mmHg). When stratified by quartiles of baseline cystatin C glomerular filtration ratio (GFR), the association between MBPbelow90 and postoperative AKI remained significant only with the lowest quartile (cystatin C GFR ≤85 mL/min/1.73 m2; IPTW-OR 2.24 [1.53–3.28], p<0.001), but not with 2nd–4th quartiles. Conclusions Our results suggest that maintaining supranormal MBP over 90 mmHg may be beneficial to reduce the risk of post-LT AKI, especially for liver transplant recipients with cystatin C GFR ≤85 mL/min/1.73 m2.


Color light therapy is a therapeutic method in complementary medicine. In color therapy, light of two contrasting colors is often applied in a sequential order. The aim of this study was to investigate possible physiological effects, i.e., changes in the blood volume and oxygenation in the brain and calf muscle of healthy subjects who were exposed to red and blue light in sequential order. The hypothesis was that if a subject is first exposed to blue and then red light, the effect of the red light will be enhanced due to the contrastingly different characteristics of the two colors. The same was expected for blue light, if first exposing a subject to red and then to blue light. Twelve healthy volunteers (six male, six female) were measured twice on two different days by near-infrared spectroscopy during exposure to colored light. Two sequences of colored light were applied in a controlled, randomized, crossover design: first blue, then red, and vice versa. For the brain and muscle, the results showed no significant differences in blood volume and oxygenation between the two sequences, and a high interindividual physiological variability. Thus, the hypothesis had to be rejected. Comparing these data to results from a previous study, where subjects were exposed to blue and red light without sequential color changes, shows that the results of the current study appear to be similar to those of red light exposure. This may indicate that the exposure to red light was preponderant and thus effects of blue light were outweighed.


TOKYO, September 30, 2019 – Mitsubishi Electric Corporation (TOKYO: 6503) announced today that it has developed a trench-type1 silicon-carbide (SiC) metal-oxide-semiconductor field-effect transistor (MOSFET) with a unique electric-field-limiting structure for a power semiconductor device that achieves a world-leading2 specific on-resistance of 1.84 mΩ (milliohms) cm2 and a breakdown voltage of over 1,500 V. Mounting the transistor in power semiconductor modules for power electronic equipment will lead to energy savings and equipment downsizing. After improving the performance and confirming the long-term reliability of its new power semiconductor devices, Mitsubishi Electric expects to put its new trench-type SiC-MOSFET into practical use sometime after the fiscal year beginning in 2021. Mitsubishi Electric announced its new trench-type SiC-MOSFET today at the International Conference on Silicon Carbide and Related Materials (ICSCRM) 2019, which is being held at the Kyoto International Conference Center in Japan from September 29 to October 4.


This study investigates fertility responses to the business cycle in the Nordic countries by comparing period variation in women's childbearing propensity. We harmonize register data from Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden to compare childbearing in the aftermath of the two most recent crises that hit those economies: the 1990s and 2010s. We use event-history techniques to present parity-specific fertility, by calendar year, relative to a defined prerecession year. We further examine any possible impact of the two recessions by women's age and education. Results show a large heterogeneity across the five Nordic countries in the childbearing developments after 1990. This variation largely disappears after 2008 when period trends in birth hazards become more similar across countries. Likewise, the educational differences that characterized the variation in childbearing relative risk after 1990 considerably diminish in the years after 2010, especially for first and second births. Economic theories do not suffice to explain this reversal from the heterogeneity of the 1990s to the homogeneity of the 2010s in the childbearing response to recession episodes across countries and socioeconomic groups. Our findings suggest the need to expand the theoretical framework explaining the cyclicality of fertility towards the perception of economic and welfare uncertainty.


This is the first part of a report of an investigation on Information Literacy (IL) among final year students in six Malaysian universities in the Klang Valley. The study attempts to measure students' IL competency in key areas, namely, the ability to identify, access, retrieve, evaluate, and organise needed information to achieve certain purposes. A self-administered questionnaire was used as the in- strument for data collection, conducted during August and September 2005. Respondents comprised students from 3 main fields, i.e. Science and Technology, Social Science and Humanities, Business and Accountancy. A total of 1,100 responses are used for data analysis. Scores are assigned for identifying levels of competency as: 0 = wrong answer, 1= beginner, 2 = intermediate and 3 =advanced. Results of the analysis reveal that half (50.1%) of the respondents are at the intermediate IL level while more than one-third (38.4%) are beginners, and slightly more than ten percent (11.5%) can be categorized as at the advanced competency level. Respondents with higher competency levels are those who frequently read materials in English, use the Internet to download programs / software, search databases for aca- demic materials, use the library to read academic journals and discuss academic matters, compared to those who go to the library for other reasons such as to borrow books, meet friends or study. Compulsory information skills courses are found to be related to competency levels, but this relationship is not statistically significant. There is no significant difference in the competency level between those who are currently writing a thesis and those who are not. However, there is a significant difference in IL competency between those who have written assignments in an essay format and those who have not.


Aware of the interaction between gross domestic savings and economic growth is critically importance for policy option. However, the wide range of controversies surrounding the direction of causality between savings and economic growth motivated this study. Therefore, the objective of this study is intended to investigate empirically the Nexus between gross domestic savings and economic growth in Ethiopia using annual time series data spanning through a period of 42 years (1976 to 2017) obtained from MoFEC and annual reports of NBE. The study employed recently developed methods of autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) approach to co-integration test and the augmented Granger causality test approach developed by Toda and Yamamoto (1995) so as to achieve this objective. After performing robustness checks, ARDL bounds to co integration test can be concluded that there is significant evidence that gross domestic savings and economic growth are co-integrated, and therefore hold a long run relationship exists between them. Error correction model also identified the presence of short run relationship. The Toda and Yamamoto version of granger causality test reveals that causality runs from economic growth to gross domestic savings, implying that economic growth precedes and granger causes saving. Thus, the study rejects the Solow's hypothesis that saving precedes economic growth, and accepts the Keynesian theory that economic growth leads to higher saving. As a result, the study recommends that government and policy makers should focus on income policies that would accelerate economic growth so as to increase saving. Keywords : Economic growth, Gross domestic Savings, Co-integration test, Granger causality test, Ethiopia.


ABSTRACT The homotheres, although known from the Greek fossil record since the beginning of the 1930's, have only been recorded from fragmentary material, sometimes undescribed and with questionable determinations. In 2017, the discovery of an almost complete cranium and a fairly complete humerus of a machairodontine in Dafnero-3, a lower Pleistocene site from Western Macedonia (Greece), confirm the presence of homotheres in Greece. The Dafnero-3 material is described and compared with Eurasian specimens. We conclude that in morphology and size the Dafnero-3 specimen coincides with Homotherium latidens (Owen, 1846). The taxonomy, geographic and stratigraphic distribution of Homotherium Fabrini, 1890 is also discussed. A biostratigraphic revision gives the distribution of the genus in Greece. Homotherium is referred from six Greek localities and its distribution covers the time span from the early Villafranchian (early Villafranchian, locality Milia, Western Macedonia; MN16, 3.0-2.5 Ma) to the middle Pleistocene (locality Tourkovounia near Athens, c. 0.4 Ma).


Development in South Africa is guided by the principle of sustainability, and this is underpinned by integration, which is the consideration of social, economic and environmental factors in decision making. Policies are in place at national and local government level to ensure integration. A key integration instrument at municipality level (the lowest unit of local government) is the Integrated Development Plan (IDP), a strategic planning tool meant to guide all planning and management in a municipality. At national level, the National Environmental Management Act, in particular its philosophy of Integrated Environmental Management (IEM) is supposed to provide guidance on sustainable development. In municipalities, communal natural resource management decisions are made at community level. There are no instruments to guide this decision making to ensure integration. This study analysed natural resource management decision making at community level, focussing on agricultural land use. The objectives were (i) to assess whether agricultural land use decision making incorporated integration principles and (ii) to assess applicability of the IDP and IEM as instruments for incorporating integration into community level decision making. Information was collected through a review of national and local government policies and interviews at municipal and community levels. Decision making was found to be focused on addressing social and economic needs with little consideration for the environment. The IDP had no relevance to community level decision making while the principles of IEM could be applied to incorporate integration into decision making.


The majority of Africans in the colonial era pursued composite livelihood strategies of which commercial and subsistence agriculture were crucial components. So far, however, evidence on the contribution of these sources of non-wage income in African long-term welfare development is understudied. This paper presents a new approach to measure smallholder incomes in a temporal perspective. It introduces the concept of 'model farms' and exploits price series to arrive at 'smallholder welfare ratios'. The paper applies this approach to the cash crop regions of Uganda (1915-1970). The key finding of the paper is that during the colonial era ordinary rural dwellers in these regions of Uganda were slightly better off than previous estimates based on urban wages have suggested, but that living standards on individual smallholdings remained close to subsistence and did not develop much over time. The paper provides qualitative evidence to show how labour migration can explain low wage rates in the context of a thriving colonial cash crop economy. It also shows that in the late colonial and early post-colonial period, while real wages took off from the subsistence floor, the majority of smallholders began to fall behind.


Corrinoids (e.g. vitamin B12, cobalamin) represent a family of complex organometallic cofactors essential to the metabolism of microorganisms, animal and humans, and are involved in several enzymes such as isomerases, methyltransferases and reductive dehalogenases. Microorganisms - and not all of them - however, are the only natural source of corrinoids. Desulfitobacterium hafniense is a strictly anaerobic bacterium harboring a versatile energy metabolism, including a process called organohalide respiration (OHR) during which chlorinated organic pollutants are used as terminal electron acceptors. The first genome sequences of D. hafniense isolates revealed the presence of a complete set of corrinoid biosynthesis genes together with many corrinoid-dependent pathways, such as OHR, and enzymes. We successfully cultivated D. hafniense strain TCE1 in absence of corrinoid in the medium, and preliminary HPLC analysis of extracted corrinoids suggested that strain TCE1 produces several types of corrinoids. A thorough analysis of corrinoid-related genes in the genomes of D. hafniense strains Y51 and DCB-2 revealed the presence of sixteen and eleven cobalamin riboswitches (Cbl-RS), respectively. Cbl-RS structures are known to regulate the transcription or translation of downstream located genes by corrinoid-dependent conformational changes occurring in the 5'-untranslated region of the corresponding RNA transcripts. In vitro in-line probing analysis of three significantly different riboswitches of D. hafniense highlighted their role as regulatory elements in the corrinoid metabolism. In vivo analysis of the transcription of the directly downstream genes upon addition of various corrinoids clearly confirmed it. Our study extends the knowledge on the functional diversity of cobalamin riboswitches.


markdownabstractEvidence is accumulating that mothers and offspring exposed to pregnancies complicated by preeclampsia (PE) have an enhanced risk to develop cardiovascular disease in later life. According to the moment of disease-onset, two main disease entities have been identified, with early-onset PE (EOPE) as the more severe phenotype, diagnosed before 34 weeks of gestation and late-onset PE (LOPE) diagnosed at or after 34 weeks of gestation.

The adverse prenatal PE environment, characterized by intrauterine exposure to excessive oxidative stress, may disturb the development and programming of placental and newborn cardiovascular tissues, resulting in a cardiovascular phenotype of the newborn that is more susceptible to develop future cardiovascular diseases. The process of developmental programming is strongly mediated by various epigenetic mechanisms, such as DNA methylation.

The aim of this thesis was to gain more insight into the following topics:
I. The development of placental and newborn cardiovascular tissues in association with EOPE and LOPE, and of the maternal microcirculation in association with PE (Part I)
II. The tissue-specific DNA methylation in placental and newborn cardiovascular tissues in association with EOPE and LOPE (Part II).

The majority of data described in this thesis was obtained from a nested case-control study embedded in The Rotterdam Periconceptional Cohort, a prospective hospital-based cohort study.

### Results Part I:
- EOPE was associated with a four to sevenfold decreased neutrophil count and a fivefold increased nucleated red blood cell count in umbilical cord blood (chapter 2);
- PE was associated with a smaller umbilical cord vein wall thickness and LOPE with a larger placental width (chapter 3);
- Women with severe PE and HELLP syndrome showed a reduced perfused vessel density, a reduced flow velocity and increased heterogeneity of flow in capillaries, compared with women with severe PE without HELLP syndrome (chapter 4).

### Results Part II:
- DNA methylation of imprinted IGF2/H19 genes showed tissue-specific differences in Wharton jelly of the umbilical cord and placental tissue, versus umbilical cord blood mononuclear cells (chapter 5);
- On a genome-wide level, umbilical cord vein endothelial cells and placental tissue displayed large tissue-specific differences in comparison to umbilical cord white blood cells (chapter 6);
- Extensive genome-wide umbilical cord blood- and placental DNA methylation differences were observed in EOPE, in comparison to preterm birth pregnancies without PE. No significant differential methylation was observed in LOPE pregnancies (chapter 7);
- PE was associated with hypomethylation of the PlGF gene and a lower placental SAM:SAH ratio, more pronounced in EOPE than LOPE (chapter 8).

In conclusion, this thesis provides evidence for associations between prenatal exposure to particularly EOPE and a disturbed development and epigenetic programming of placental and newborn cardiovascular tissues, as potentially underlying mechanism for the association with future cardiovascular risk in offspring.


The Story of Things explored the ideas of memory, collections and narrative. Engaged by a collection of historical scrapbooks (which in themselves encapsulated some surprising ideas of collections, memory and narrative) held by the museum Manchester Metropolitan University Special Collections (UK), we utilised the conceit of the scrapbook as both a visual motif within the exhibition and as a metaphor for our experience of working with the Collections. We set about gathering evidence of our deliberately random and undisciplined journey through the rich and varied material held there.

The title deliberately embraces a dual meaning: firstly, the idea of 'things' having a story and that this story might be drawn out through the act of curation, and, secondly, a defining of our very particular act of curation in producing The Story of Things, which used the artefacts in a museum collection not in a traditional, 'accepted' manner but as artists' materials that might be altered and played with through acts of stacking, overlapping, combining and separating. In doing so we deliberately presented misleading, misinterpreted or inaccurate accounts of the museum's holdings, investigating Pearce's idea that "Collections are essentially a narrative of experience; as objects are a kind of material language, so the narratives in to which they can be selected and organised are a kind of fiction…" (Pearce, S. M. (1995) On Collecting: an Investigation into Collecting in the European Tradition, London: Routledge. p412.)

In the tradition of scrapbooks, The Story of Things – in its essence a three dimensional version of a scrapbook which used the gallery as its pages – constructed its own internal ordering and logic. We cross-referenced the collections, sometimes relating things by type, sometimes putting the unlikely together, sometimes remembering something we already knew, sometimes uncovering things unknown to us. In doing so we did not seek "...closure and establishment of meaning, but exactly the opposite, the absencing of meaning which, in turn, evokes an endless production of it, an endless production of fortuitous encounters…" (Allmer, P. (2009) On Being Touched, Manchester: MMU Special Collections. p iv.)


Early in the Second World War, Henry Moore had to give up working on sculpture when his Hampstead studio was bombed. Instead he concentrated on drawing, creating a monumental series of works showing the plight of people sheltering in the London Underground. This is the first book to consider Moore's visual documentation of the shelters within the context of the events of the London Blitz of 1940-41. Julian Andrews looks at Moore's personal and political feelings about the war and his doubts about working as an Official War Artist, comparing Moore's wartime drawings to works by other artists and to documentary photographs. In addition, the author considers the influence of the Shelter Drawings on people's feelings about the Blitz and their effect on public attitudes towards Moore's work.


A hyper basis function network (HyperBF) is a generalized radial basis function network (RBF) where the activation function is a radial function of a weighted distance. The local weighting of the distance accounts for the variation in local scaling and discriminative power along each feature. Such generalization makes HyperBF networks capable of interpolating decision functions with high accuracy. However, such complexity makes HyperBF networks susceptible to overfitting. Moreover, training a HyperBF network demands weights, centers and local scaling factors to be optimized simultaneously. In the case of a relatively large dataset with a large network structure, such optimization becomes computationally challenging.
In this work, a new regularization method that performs soft local dimension reduction and weight decay is presented. The regularized HyperBF (Reduced HyperBF) network is shown to provide classification accuracy comparable to a Support Vector Machines (SVM) while requiring a significantly smaller network structure. Furthermore, the soft local dimension reduction is shown to be informative for ranking features based on their localized discriminative power.
In addition, a practical training approach for constructing HyperBF networks is presented. This approach uses hierarchal clustering to initialize neurons followed by a gradient optimization using a scaled Rprop algorithm with a localized partial backtracking step (iSRprop). Experimental results on a number of datasets show a faster and smoother convergence than the regular Rprop algorithm.
The proposed Reduced HyperBF network is applied to two problems in bioinformatics. The first is the detection of transcription start sites (TSS) in human DNA. A novel method for improving the accuracy of TSS recognition for recently published methods is proposed. This method incorporates a new metric feature based on oligonucleotide positional frequencies.
The second application is the accurate classification of microarray samples. A new feature selection algorithm based on a Reduced HyperBF network is proposed. The method is applied to two microarray datasets and is shown to select a minimal subset of features with high discriminative information. The algorithm is compared to two widely used methods and is shown to provide competitive results.
In both applications, the final Reduced HyperBF network is used for higher level analysis. Significant neurons can indicate subpopulations, while local active features provide insight into the characteristics of the subpopulation in specific and the whole class in general.


Knowledge of mesoscopic brain connectivity is important for understanding inter- and intra-region information processing. Models of structural connectivity are typically constructed and analyzed with the assumption that regions are homogeneous. We instead use the Allen Mouse Brain Connectivity Atlas to construct a model of whole brain connectivity at the scale of 100 µm voxels. The dataset used consists of 366 anterograde tracing experiments in wild type C7BL/6 mice, mapping fluorescently-labeled neuronal projections brain-wide. Inferring spatial connectivity with this dataset remains underdetermined, since the approximately 2 × 105 source voxels outnumber the number of experiments. To address this, we assume that connection patterns and strengths vary smoothly across major brain divisions. We model the connectivity at each voxel as a radial basis kernel-weighted average of the projection patterns of nearby injections. The voxel model outperforms a previous regional model in predicting held-out experiments and compared to a human-curated dataset. This voxel-scale model of the mouse connectome permits researchers to extend their previous analyses of structural connectivity to unprecedented levels of resolution, and allows for comparison with functional imaging and other datasets.


Musculoskeletal allograft has a wide application in orthopaedic surgery. The most common applications are bone and ligament allografts, but other tissues are also available for grafting. Knee surgery has evolved in the last few years, and there has been renewed interest in the use allografts around the knee. There is a wide variety of grafts available, and these have given us alternative management options for some of the most difficult problems in knee surgery. This review will cover osteochondral, meniscal and ligament allografts.


Extreme heat poses a serious health threat, particularly for people like athletes, soldiers, and workers engaged in outdoor physical activity. For athletes, the American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM) specifies environmental risk categories based on the wet bulb globe temperature (WBGT). We examined the present and future frequency of days that exceed the most extreme ACSM risk category (>32.3°C), when training and practice activities should cease. Using a physically based model, the WBGT was computed for present (1991−2005) climate conditions using standard weather observations and for future (2041−2070) climate conditions using an ensemble of regional climate model output. Results indicate diverse spatial patterns of exceedance across the US in the present-day climate, ranging from <5 d yr−1 in northern portions of the country to >50 d yr−1 across portions of the southeastern US and southern Arizona. Under a warming climate, the frequency of days unsuitable for practice sessions according to current ACSM guidelines increases considerably, ranging from 15 to >30 d yr−1 in broad swaths of the country. Further, our temporal analysis revealed an expansion in the threat for extreme heat through the day ranging from late morning through early evening, although early mornings remain one of the safest periods to avoid heat exposure. Various adaptation strategies such as shifting practice times and developing heat acclimatization plans may be useful in mitigating the impacts of more frequent oppressive days on training sessions.


Abstract. In a multitude of applications like e.g. in automotive radar systems a localization of multiple passive targets in the observed area is necessary. This contribution presents a robust approach based on trilateration to detect point scatterers in a two-dimensional plane using the reflection and transmission information of only two antennas. The proposed algorithm can identify and remove ambiguities in target detection which unavoidably occur in certain target constellations in such a two-antenna configuration.


Set in 1999, this case allows students to put themselves in the positions of both Airbus and Boeing as Boeing considered how to respond to Airbus's decision to announce its plans to proceed or not with the $10 billion development of the world's first commercial superjumbo jet, the Airbus A3XX. Boeing was considering a development effort to "stretch" its 747 jumbo jet into a larger superjumbo version, the 747-X. At the time, the two companies' widely available 20-year forecasts for jumbo- and superjumbo-jet demand were particularly divergent. In light of this very public "agreement to disagree," Boeing could pursue several alternatives, all of which were related to Airbus's decision about whether or not to develop the A3XX. This case presents an opportunity for students to make a real downstream decision. It was prepared as a final exam for an introductory decision analysis course involving subjective probability assessment, decision tree modeling, simulation, real options, and game theory. In the analysis of this case, a student is expected to utilize ideas from all five of these areas.


: Light propagating through a sound field is affected by variations in the density of the medium caused by sound. Therefore, acoustical measurements using light have been studied. The popular measurement methods use the phase shift of the transmitted light. Because they detect integrated acoustical quantities along the optical path of the detected light, time and effort are required to measure the quantities at a single point. On the other hand, single-point acoustical particle velocity measurement by light scattering has been proposed. Using light scattering enables the measurement of non-integrated quantities because the scattered light includes only the acoustical information at a scattering point. However, a method of non-invasive sound pressure measurement at a single point in a free field has not been established. This paper proposes sound pressure measurement at a scattering point, in which the light scattered by particles in the sound field is observed. The intensity of light scattered in the sound field indicates the sound pressure because the intensity of the scattered light is proportional to the density of scatterers. The theory of light scattering by sounds is formalized, and sound measurement experiments with light scattering are also conducted using water drops and air particles as scatterers.


Abstract. A 58 ha mixed upland and lowland boreal plains
watershed called the Sandhill Fen Watershed was constructed between 2008 and
2012. In the years following wetting in 2013, methane emissions were
measured using manual chambers. The presence of vegetation with aerenchymous
tissues and saturated soils were important factors influencing the spatial
variability of methane emissions across the constructed watershed.
Nevertheless, median methane emissions were equal to or less than 0.51 mg CH4 m−2 h−1 even from the saturated organic soils in the
lowlands. Although overall methane emissions remained low, observations of
methane ebullition increased over the 3 study years. Ebullition events
occurred in 10 % of measurements in 2013, increasing to 21 % and 27 % of measurements in 2014 and 2015, respectively, at the plots with
saturated soils. Increasing metal ion availability and decreasing sulfur
availability was measured using buried ion exchange resins at both seasonal
and annual timescales potentially as a result of microbial reduction of
these ions. Using principle component analysis, methane fluxes had a
significant positive correlation to the leading principle component which
was associated with increasing ammonium, iron, and manganese and decreasing
sulfur availability (r=0.31, p<0.001). These results suggest
that an abundance of alternative inorganic electron acceptors may be
limiting methanogenesis at this time.


A b s t r a c t . The results of analysis of thermal cycle of the test engine are presented in the paper. The study focused on determining the ignition delay in compression ignition engine. The correlations available in literature, Hardenberg and Hase, Wolfer and Watson and Assanis were used to determine ignition delay. With the increase of the EGR the ignition delay has increased. It turned out that very often it is necessary to determine own ignition delay correlation. K e y w o r d s : ignition delay, combustion, modeling, engine


Objectives: The aim of this study was to investigate the feasibility of a shoulder screening test to predict shoulder stability in adolescent rugby union players.
Design: A feasibility study.
Methods: Adolescent male rugby union players (n=27) aged 12-18 years were recruited from secondary schools in metropolitan Sydney. Measures of shoulder strength, active joint range of movement and joint hypermobility were recorded.
Results: The right shoulder was significantly stronger than the left in extension (mean difference=2.63; t27=-3.38; p=0.002, two-tailed), abduction (mean difference=2.24; t27=-2.42; p=0.023, two-tailed), and internal rotation in neutral (mean difference=1.36; t27=-2.82; p=0.009, two-tailed). No significant differences in strength were found between sides for shoulder flexion and external rotation in neutral. Internal rotation strength was significantly greater in neutral than in 90o abduction but contrary results were found for external rotation. No significant relationship was found between shoulder muscle strength and active shoulder joint range of movement (r=0.05, p=0.81). No significant differences were found between left and right sides for active range of movement. Four participants (14.8%) scored above normal (>4/9) on the Beighton's Hypermobility Score. There was a moderate, positive correlation between body mass index and average shoulder muscle strength (r=0.40, p=0.04).
Conclusion: The protocol used in this study was feasible for both participants and examiners. This screening test could be used to identify potential risk factors for shoulder injury.


BACKGROUND
Few studies have estimated the economic costs and benefits of brief physician advice in managed care settings.

OBJECTIVE
To conduct a benefit-cost analysis of brief physician advice regarding problem drinking.

DESIGN
Patient and health care costs associated with brief advice were compared with economic benefits associated with changes in health care utilization, legal events, and motor vehicle accidents using 6- and 12-month follow-up data from Project TrEAT (Trial for Early Alcohol Treatment), a randomized controlled clinical trial.

SUBJECTS
482 men and 292 women who reported drinking above a threshold limit were randomized into control (n = 382) or intervention (n = 392) groups.

MEASURES
Outcomes included alcohol use, emergency department visits, hospital days, legal events, and motor vehicle accidents.

RESULTS
No significant differences between control and intervention subjects were present for baseline alcohol use, age, socioeconomic status, smoking, depression or anxiety, conduct disorders, drug use, crimes, motor vehicle accidents, or health care utilization. The total economic benefit of the brief intervention was $423,519 (95% CI: $35,947, $884,848), composed of $195,448 (95% CI: $36,734, $389,160) in savings in emergency department and hospital use and $228,071 (95% CI: -$191,419, $757,303) in avoided costs of crime and motor vehicle accidents. The average (per subject) benefit was $1,151 (95% CI: $92, $2,257). The estimated total economic cost of the intervention was $80,210, or $205 per subject. The benefit-cost ratio was 5.6:1 (95% CI: 0.4, 11.0), or $56,263 in total benefit for every $10,000 invested.

CONCLUSIONS
These results offer the first quantitative evidence that implementation of a brief intervention for problem drinkers can generate positive net benefit for patients, the health care system, and society.