Abstract. The aim of the present study was to perform a zoo-hygienic assessment of lighting (natural and artificial) in different technological zones (stalls, manure and feed alleys) in semi-open freestall barns for dairy cows. The survey was conducted over a period of one year in 3 production buildings from 3 cattle farms located in three different areas of Southern Bulgaria - Stara Zagora District, Haskovo District and Plovdiv District. The building's parameters were as follows: building No.1 - capacity 120 cows, 60.00/18.00/3.00m, 1080m2; building No.2 - capacity 120 cows, 66.00/18.00/3.00m, 1188m2 and building No.3 - capacity 500 cows, 90.00/45.00/3.30m, 4050m2. The premises lighting was measured with two combined apparatuses (Lutron EM-9300SD, 0-20000 lux and PU 150, 0-100000 lux), twice a month at 10.00, 12.00, 14.00, 16.00 and 18.00h at a height of 1m from the floor of the three technology zones. Summarized for all buildings, the light level varies widely by buildings, by seasons, by hours of reporting and by technological zones with limit values between 1 and 9810 lux. In all barns the most intense was the light above the feed alleys, followed by stalls and manure alleys; by hours of reporting during the day the level of lighting above the three technological zones was higher at midday (12.00-14.00h) compared to morning (10.00h) and afternoon (18.00h). Buildings No.1 and No.2 with a smaller built-up area provide more intensive lighting over all technological zones throughout all seasons compared to building No.3 with bigger built-up area: from 7.34 to 13.8 times over stalls, from 3.22 to 5.62 times over manure alleys and from 2.79 to 8.00 times over feed alleys. In buildings No.1 and No.2 there were prerequisites at least 16 hours of day light (photoperiod) to be provided during summer, autumn and spring, while in the winter months up to 8.00am and after 6.00pm the used artificial lighting was with low intensity and cannot provide the recommended over 160 lux intensity of the light. In building No.3 during most of the day for all seasons, the level of lighting above stalls and manure alley where the animals stay the longest time, the lighting level was lower than 160 lux. The factors 'building', 'season' and 'hour of the day' had a statistically significant effect (P<0.05-0.001) on the level of lighting in the three technological zones in the studied buildings. Of the associated factors, only the combination 'season*hour of reporting' had no significant effect on the lighting in the zones above the stalls and manure alleys.


We report the results of the first sprint of a project to build decision support tools for border security that incorporate interactions among border security forces, smugglers and the population and represent integrated technology architectures made up of fixed and mobile sensor and surveillance networks. To demonstrate the feasibility of social simulation for the security of the Southwestern U.S. border, we first describe open-source data on Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) and smuggling organizations, replicating for 2009 the landscape of gateway organizations and cartels in Sonora along with the border security architecture for the Tuscon sector of the CBP. We then recount the architecture of the model, connecting a disaggregated view of these organizations to a high-fidelity representation of the physical environment and sensor networks. Finally, we discuss model dynamics and validity, and the generalizability of our approach.


New discoveries reveal how crucial interactions which determine our destiny occur before birth, when our genes interact with their environment as the embryo and fetus develop. These processes - in the matrix of the womb - are evolutionary echoes of mechanisms which allowed our hunter-gatherer ancestors to survive. These exciting insights into predictive adaptive responses suggest new ways of protecting the health of the fetus, infant and adult. If inappropriate they can trigger obesity, diabetes and heart disease, formerly thought to result solely from adult lifestyle. The new concepts in this book are crucial to understanding the daunting public health burden in societies undergoing rapid transition from poverty to affluence. They add an important new dimension to evolutionary theory. Synthesising developmental biology, evolutionary history, medical science, public health and social policy, this is a ground-breaking and fascinating account by two of the world's leading pioneers in this important emerging field.


Problem and Purpose The Seventh-day Adventist Church in Nigeria, as well as those in other parts of the world, have genuine concern for their pastors' physical and spiritual well-being. One of the fundamental teachings of the church that applies both to the pastors and the laity as well is to be temperate in all that we do. There is still concern, however, for those pastors that are not observing and keeping the laws of health to keep healthy physically, emotionally, and spiritually. This project explored concepts of self-care practices as they relate to pastors in Nigeria and a teaching manual was created to help the pastors to be more intentional about how to take care of themselves. Method This project uses a qualitative methodology. I engaged many pastors from Nigeria, and even outside Nigeria, through phone calls, e-mails, Facebook interactions, read lots of books on the subject matter, and observed that the problem facing the pastoral profession is not an easy one. Result A teaching manual was created through this project to help pastors become more thoroughly informed about the teachings of self-care. Conclusion The teaching of the concept of self-care should be part of the curriculum at our seminaries and universities to prepare pastors for the ministry. The inclusion of self-care as part of the curriculum will make it intentional for the pastors not only to learn those principles, but also to practice the principles of self-care in their individual lives.


Purified Ly1 cells induce other T-cell sets to exert potent feedback inhibitory activity and this T-T interaction has been shown to play an important role in regulating in vivo immune responses. Approximately 2/3 of Ly1 cells also express the Qa1 surface phenotype (Ly1:Qa1+ cells). The experiments reported here indicate that Ly1:Qal+ cells are responsible for induction of feedback inhibition and that signals from both Ly1:Qal+ cells and Ly1:Qal- cells are required for optimal formation of antibody by B cells.


A bestselling author examines the perspectives and principles of the three pillars of the financial world, as well as their judgements on the current crisis and the path to recovery. Throughout the violent financial disruptions of the past several years, three men have stood out as beacons of judgment and wisdom: Warren Buffett, George Soros, and Paul Volcker. Though their experiences and styles vary - Buffett is the canny stock market investor; Soros is the reader of shifting global tides in trade and currencies; and Volcker is the regulator and governor, sheriff and clean-up crew - they have very much in common. All three men have more than fifty years of deep involvement in markets. All are sceptical of Wall Street frenzies. They believe that markets tend to be right, but usually only over the medium term. They have seen too many cycles of herd-driven, emotion-riding booms and busts to make their views hostage to the sweeping and simplistic assumptions of 'efficient-markets' models. With the benefit of his own deep understanding of markets and finance, Morris brilliantly analyzes the records of these men, distilling their wisdom and experience - and argues for the importance of consistent values in navigating the treacherous terrain of today's globalized world.


The intertwining of social interaction - digital and physical and private and public - is described by information systems research as 'The Digital Workplace' and by architects and urban planners as 'The Public Mesh'. To exemplify these concepts, this thesis investigates how the the organisational context is changing. To navigate this organisational context, a Multi-Dimensional Ensemble (MDE) lens has been developed and constructed, through which the social life across social-technical/digital-spatial temporal dimensions may be explored. The primary case study is 'The Rooftop Project' (TRP). Responding to the lack of green and outdoor social space in Manchester's City Centre, TRP is situated in the Northern Quarter and described in this thesis as a grassroots project that experimented with the transformation of a 300m2 rooftop. To better understand the principles and value of RtD, TRP posed the question; how does an open process of experiencing design and designing experience unfold and evolve? An in-depth literature survey of Research through Design (RtD) and systems thinking in Action Research (AR) and Information Systems (IS) unpacks the importance of framing inquiry through design (as experience and participation). In response to this, the designer researcher draws theoretical inspiration from a combination of sociological, curatorial, HCI, design and anthropological viewpoints. In order to gain greater insight into the value and efficacy of RtD, a methodical account of TRP in the form of A Porftolio of RtD is presented. In the first person, a phenomenological inquiry into RtD is undertaken in TRP from the perspective of a designer-activist-researcher. These first-person accounts convey the multiplicity, complexity, conflicts, resolutions and tensions experienced as a result of a combinatory methodological approach. Situtated in TRP, the designer researcher demonstrates how this RtD methodology activates 'an unfolding awareness'. Positioned in this thesis as addressing the theoretical concerns of Organisational Studies (OS), AR in IS and RtD, the methodology is illustrated in the form of a spring. Contributions to theory and implications to practice are explicated, these illuminate RtD's community of practice and how it can extend to OS, AR in IS, urban design, community engagement and architectural practice.


AIM
To explore the nurse-patient interaction in terminally ill situations in acute care, focusing on the nurses' preparation for loss.

BACKGROUND
Caring for dying patients can be a distressing and sometimes even threatening experience for nurses. Despite the vast body of literature on nurse/patient interaction and the quality of end-of-life care, few studies focus specifically on nurses' experience.

DESIGN
A grounded theory approach was used to explore nurses' interaction with dying patients and their families and examine how nurses deal with situations in which the patient's death is inevitable.

METHOD
Eighteen nurses were interviewed up to three times each at three teaching hospitals in Isfahan, Iran, during autumn 2006. A shortlist of possible participants was obtained by means of theoretical sampling and those who had experienced the death of patients and were able to express their feelings verbally were selected.

RESULTS
The results clarified a core consideration: striking a balance between restorative and palliative care, information and hope, expectations and abilities and intimacy and distance.

CONCLUSION
Attaining a balance in caring for dying patients is a major challenge to nurses: it concerns not only their interactions with patients and their families, but also their perceptions of themselves and their actions in end-of-life care.

RELEVANCE TO CLINICAL PRACTICE
In end-of-life care, it is important for nurses to be able to change the focus of their care when the patient's condition is diagnosed as irreversible. They also need to be well equipped to maintain a balance, thereby preparing themselves for the patient's forthcoming death.


The natural diet of the camaenid land snail Thersites mitchellae (Cox, 1864) was investigated by examination of the faecal contents of specimens collected from a range of substrates. The composition of faecal pellets from 22 snails obtained from three different substrates was determined. The results demonstrate that T. mitchellae has a generalist feeding strategy that varies with substrate. Fungal material contributed a high proportion of the diet, suggesting that coarse woody debris (a common fungal substrate) may be an important requirement for populations of T. mitchellae in rainforestassociated habitats. Thersites mitchellae was the first species for which a critical habitat determination was made under the New South Wales Threatened Species Conservation Act 1995. This study adds to our knowledge of the biology of this poorly known land snail. Future studies would benefit from obtaining data pertaining to the timing and frequency of fungal dispersal and substrate preferences to gain further understanding about the availability of fungi as a food source.


Predation often deviates from the law of mass action: many micro- and meso-scale experiments have shown that consumption saturates with resource abundance, and decreases due to interference between consumers. But does this observation hold at macro-ecological scales, spanning many species and orders of magnitude in biomass? If so, what are its consequences for large-scale ecological patterns and dynamics? We perform a meta-analysis of predator-prey pairs of mammals, birds and reptiles, and show that predation losses appear to increase, not as the product of predator and prey densities following the Lotka-Volterra (mass action) model, but rather as the square root of that product. This suggests a phenomenological power-law expression of the effective cross-ecosystem functional response. We consider the possibility that the same power-law holds dynamically within an ecosystem, and explore its consequences in a simple food chain model. The empirical exponents fall close to the boundary between regimes of donor and consumer limitation. Exponents on this boundary are singular in multiple ways. First, they maximize predator abundance and some stability metrics. Second, they create proportionality relations between biomass and productivity, both within and between trophic levels. These intuitive relations do not hold in general in mass action models, but are widely observed empirically. These results provide evidence of mechanisms limiting predation across multiple ecological scales. Some of this evidence was previously associated with donor control, but we show that it supports a wider range of possibilities, including forms of consumer control. Limiting consumption counter-intuitively allows larger populations. It is worthwhile to reconsider whether the observed functional response arises from microscopic mechanisms and constraints, or could hint at selective pressure at the population level.


The legally-binding goal of ending child poverty by 2020 is likely to be missed by a considerable margin, and progress on social mobility may be undermined by the twin problems of high youth unemployment and falling living standards. So finds the Social Mobility and Child Poverty Commission in its first State of the Nation Annual Report. The Commission is a statutory body set up to monitor the progress of government and others in tackling child poverty and improving social mobility. Over the last 9 months, we have looked carefully at evidence on living standards and life chances in Britain. We believe the UK Government deserves credit for sticking to commitments to end child poverty by 2020 and for adding a new one of making social mobility the principal aim of its social policy. But while we see considerable efforts and a raft of initiatives to make Britain a fairer place, we do not believe the scale and effort is enough for progress to be likely. In particular: • since 2010 children in workless households have fallen 15% but recently there has been a 275,000 rise in the numbers of poor children in absolute poverty. Projections by the Institute for Fiscal Studies suggest that targets on poverty will be missed by 2 million children; • there are more people in work than ever before but the numbers of young people unemployed for two years or more are at a twenty-year high and Government has been too slow to act; • real median weekly earnings are now lower than they have been for more than a decade, putting many more families under pressure Entrenched poverty remains a priority for action but transient poverty, growing insecurity and stalling mobility are far more widespread than politicians, employers and educators have so far recognised. More low and middle-income families are being squeezed between falling earnings and rising house prices, university fees and youth unemployment. Many parents fear that when their children grow up they will have lower living standards than they have had. The nature of poverty has changed. Today child poverty is overwhelmingly a problem facing working families, not the workless or the work-shy. Two-thirds of Britain's poor children are now in households where an adult works. In three-quarters of those households someone already works full-time. The problem is that those working parents simply do not earn enough to escape poverty. We argue that the missing piece of the policy agenda is a comprehensive approach to tackling in-work poverty. Today the UK has one of the highest rates of low pay in the developed world. The 5 million workers, mainly women, who earn less than the Living Wage desperately need a new deal. The taxpayer alone can no longer afford to shoulder the burden of bridging the gap between earnings and the cost of living. We call for a new settlement in which Government will need to devise new ways of sharing the burden with employers. This includes making commitments to: • end long-term youth unemployment by increasing high quality learning and earning opportunities for young people who should be expected to take up those opportunities or face tougher benefit conditionality; • reduce in-work poverty by raising the minimum wage, incentivising Jobcentre Plus and paying Work Programme providers for the earnings people receive not just for getting people into work and reallocating Budget 2013 childcare funding from higher rate taxpayers to help those on Universal Credit meet more of their childcare costs; • better resource careers services, provide extra incentives for teachers who teach in the worst schools and provide more help for low-attainers from average income families as well as low-income children to succeed in making it to the top, not just get off the bottom. We call on employers more actively to step up to the plate. They will need to provide higher minimum levels of pay and better career prospects in a way that is consistent with growing levels of employment. Half of all firms should offer apprenticeships and work experience. And unpaid internships should be ended in the professions. Citizens should seize the opportunities on offer. The key influencers on children's life chances are not schools or governments. They are parents. So we urge Government to break one of the great taboos of public policy by doing far more to help parents to parent. A far bigger national effort will be needed if progress is to be made on reducing poverty and improving mobility. That will require leadership at every level. Government cannot do it alone. Chair of the Commission Rt. Hon. Alan Milburn said: It is part of Britain's DNA that everyone should have a fair chance in life. Yet compared to many other developed nations we have high levels of child poverty and low levels of social mobility. Over decades we have become a wealthier society but we have struggled to become a fairer one. Just as the UK government has focused on reducing the country's financial deficit it now needs to redouble its efforts to reduce our country's fairness deficit. If Britain is to avoid being a country where all too often birth determines fate we have to do far more to create more of a level playing field of opportunity. That has to become core business for our nation.


In Fall 2014 we offered an online course CS 7637 Knowledge-Based Artificial Intelligence: Cognitive Systems (KBAI) to about 200 students as part of the Georgia Tech Online MS in CS program. We incorporated lessons from learning science into the design of the project-based online KBAI course. We embedded ~150 microexercises and ~100 AI nanotutors into the online videos. As a quasi-experiment, we ran a typical inperson class with 75 students in parallel, with the same course syllabus, structure, assignments, projects and examinations. Based on the feedback of the students in the online KBAI class, and comparison of their performance with the students in the inperson class, the online course appears to have been a success. In this paper, we describe the design, development and delivery of the online KBAI class. We also  discuss the evaluation of the course.


ABSTRACT Assigning functions to newly discovered genes constitutes one of the major challenges en route to fully exploiting the data becoming available from the genome sequencing initiatives. Heterologous expression in an appropriate host is central in functional genomics studies. In this context, filamentous fungi offer many advantages over bacterial and yeast systems. To facilitate the use of filamentous fungi in functional genomics, we present a versatile cloning system that allows a gene of interest to be expressed from a defined genomic location of Aspergillus nidulans. By a single USER cloning step, genes are easily inserted into a combined targeting-expression cassette ready for rapid integration and analysis. The system comprises a vector set that allows genes to be expressed either from the constitutive PgpdA promoter or from the inducible PalcA promoter. Moreover, by using the vector set, protein variants can easily be made and expressed from the same locus, which is mandatory for proper comparative analyses. Lastly, all individual elements of the vectors can easily be substituted for other similar elements, ensuring the flexibility of the system. We have demonstrated the potential of the system by transferring the 7,745-bp large mpaC gene from Penicillium brevicompactum to A. nidulans. In parallel, we produced defined mutant derivatives of mpaC, and the combined analysis of A. nidulans strains expressing mpaC or mutated mpaC genes unequivocally demonstrated that mpaC indeed encodes a polyketide synthase that produces the first intermediate in the production of the medically important immunosuppressant mycophenolic acid.


This paper presents an innovation pyramid that categorizes four different kinds of design-driven innovations in the product-design field. This pyramid is the final result of a long-term research process started at Politecnico di Milano in 2006 involving the three key disciplinary areas related to new product development: management, engineering and design. The disciplines were represented by the Indaco (INdustrial Design, Art and COmunication) and Mechanical Engineering departments of the Politecnico di Milano, and the Business School of Bocconi University. The first step of the research project attempted to determine how to better demonstrate the contribution design makes to product innovation. In order to answer this, a phenomenological approach was used, i.e. observing product innovation as a phenomenon. From this approach, three possible levers of a design-driven innovation process emerged: form, mode of use, and technology. Additionally, four possible types of results of a design-driven process emerged: aesthetic, mode of use, meaning, and typological innovation. The levers and results are systematized here into an innovation pyramid, which helps to clarify both their similarities and their differences.


Common approaches for the haptic rendering of complex scenarios employ multi-rate simulation schemes. Here, the collision queries or the simulation of a complex deformable object are often performed asynchronously on a lower frequency, while some kind of intermediate contact representation is used to simulate interactions on the haptic rate. However, this can produce artifacts in the haptic rendering when the contact situation quickly changes and the intermediate representation is not able to reflect the changes due to the lower update rate. We address this problem utilizing a novel contact model. It facilitates the creation of contact representations that are accurate for a large range of motions and multiple simulation time-steps. We handle problematic convex contact regions using a local convex decomposition and special constraints for convex areas. We combine our accurate contact model with an implicit temporal integration scheme to create an intermediate mechanical contact representation, which reflects the dynamic behavior of the simulated objects. Moreover, we propose a new iterative solving scheme for the involved constrained dynamics problems. We increase the robustness of our method using techniques from trust region-based optimization. Our approach can be combined with standard methods for the modeling of deformable objects or constraint-based approaches for the modeling of, for instance, friction or joints. We demonstrate its benefits with respect to the simulation accuracy and the quality of the rendered haptic forces in multiple scenarios.


Life on Earth is thought to have coevolved with the chemistry of the oceans and atmosphere, and the shift from an anoxic to an oxic world across the Archean-Proterozoic boundary represents a fundamental step in this process. In order to understand the relative influence of biological and geological factors on this transition, we must constrain key variables in seawater chemistry before the Great Oxidation Event (ca. 2500 Ma). We present a multielement (C-S-Fe-Mo) biogeochemical study of ca. 2662 Ma shales from the Hamersley Province in Western Australia. Our data reveal a sustained episode of Fe-limited pyrite formation under an anoxic and sulfidic (euxinic) water column. This is the oldest known occurrence of euxinia in Earth9s history and challenges the paradigm of persistently Fe-rich Archean oceans. Bulk trace metal chemistry and preservation of strong mass-independent S isotope fractionations in sedimentary pyrites indicate that ocean euxinia was possible prior to oxidative weathering, suggesting that sulfidic waters may have been common throughout the Archean Eon. C-S-Fe systematics suggest that oxygenic photosynthesis was the primary source of organic carbon in the basin, and the absence of Mo enrichments highlights a potential link between inefficient nitrogen fixation and the delayed arrival of the Great Oxidation Event.


The need for renewable sources of electrical power continues to grow around the globe, with solar energy at the forefront. This thesis concerns the assembly and testing of a photoelectrochemical cell that utilizes photosynthetic proteins found in plants to capture solar energy and generate electricity. Photosystem II, plastoquinone and thylakoid lipids were extracted from spinach leaves for use in the photocell. An ω-Hydroxythiol SAM on Au electrode was used as the anode to receive electrons from cytochrome C in solution. A platinum on carbon electrode was used as the cathode, with an anion exchange membrane to avoid short circuits forming between the electrodes. The photocell was tested under a variety of conditions and the highest photocurrent produced was 11.5 μA/cm at an applied voltage of 750 mV.


This study attempts to derive policy implications for spatially-balanced growth through empirical analysis on determinants of regional wage gaps in Korea. Combes et al. [(2008) Spatial wage disparities: Sorting Matters. Journal of Urban Economics, 63, 723–742] suggest that regional wage gaps result from the regional differences in workers' human capital, nonhuman endowments, and agglomeration economies. The current study applies a similar two-stage estimation model to the 2006 cross-sectional data for 4009 workers from the Korean Labor Panel Survey (KLPS) performed by the Korea Labor Institute. Localization economies are positive external effects from the geographic concentration of firms in the same industry. We find evidence of localization economies in our research. The second stage estimation results for the determinants of regional wage gaps show that the average wage is higher in areas that concentrate in a small number of industries rather than in areas that are diversified with many industries. This result is in direct contrast to the findings from Combes et al. [(2008) Spatial wage disparities: Sorting Matters. Journal of Urban Economics, 63, 723–742] who analyze the French labor market data. This difference can be explained by the possibility that in Korea the improved quality of life (e.g., better education services) and/or the increase in job mobility in large diversified metropolitan areas induce workers to accept relatively lower wages in those areas. In order to resolve the bias in the estimation of the agglomeration effects caused by the heterogeneity of workers, we also performed panel regressions of the 2nd 2000 and the 7th 2005 KLPS panel data of 7431 observations. The panel regression results also support our original findings from regressions of the 8th 2006 KLPS data.


Volcanic and Tectonic Activity in the Red Sea Region (2004-2013): Insights from Satellite Radar Interferometry and Optical Imagery Wenbin Xu Studying recent volcanic and tectonic events in the Red Sea region is important for improving our knowledge of the Red Sea plate boundary and for regional geohazard assessments. However, limited information has been available about the past activity due to insufficient in-situ data and remoteness of some of the activity. In this dissertation, I have used satellite remote sensing to derive new information about several recent volcanic and tectonic events in the Red Sea region. I first report on three volcanic eruptions in the southern Red Sea, the 2007-8 Jebel at Tair eruption and the 2011-12 & 2013 Zubair eruptions, which resulted in formation of two new islands. Series of highresolution optical images were used to map the extent of lava flows and to observe and analyze the growth and destructive processes of the new islands. I used Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar (InSAR) data to study the evolution of lava flows, to estimate their volumes, as well as to generate ground displacements maps, which were used to model the dikes that fed the eruptions. I then report on my work of the 2009 Harrat Lunayyir dike intrusion and the 2004 Tabuk earthquake sequence in western Saudi Arabia. I used InSAR observations and stress calculations to study the intruding dike at Harrat Lunayyir, while I combined InSAR data and Bayesian estimation to study the Tabuk earthquake activity. The key findings of the thesis are: 1) The recent volcanic eruptions in the southern Red Sea indicate that the area is magmatically more active than previously acknowledged 5 and that a rifting episode has been taken place in the southern Red Sea; 2) Stress interactions between an ascending dike intrusion and normal faulting on graben-bounding faults above the dike can inhibit vertical propagation of magma towards the surface; 3) InSAR observations can improve locations of shallow earthquakes and fault model uncertainties are useful to associate earthquake activity with mapped faults; 4). The successful application of satellite remote sensing technologies in studying the recent volcanic and tectonic processes in the Red Sea region implies that remote sensing data are an important resource for the local authorities to monitor geohazards.


This article is concerned with the question of the ethnography of the invisible: multisensory research about domestic energy practices. In it I draw on existing and imagined research to outline an agenda for doing ethnography of domestic energy consumption practices. I will not be the first to use qualitative methods to research how people consume energy in their homes. Yet my aim is to further the methodological basis for such research by examining the implications of applying a theory of multisensoriality to understanding the co-constitution of the practices and places of domestic energy consumption.


In the online world, customers can easily navigate to different online stores to make purchases. The products purchased on one site are often associated with product purchases on other sites e.g., a hotel reservation on one site and a car rental on another site. Whereas market basket analysis is often used to discover associations among products for brick-and-mortar stores, it is rarely applied in the online setting where consumers navigate among different online stores to buy products. We define online shopping patterns and develop two novel methods to perform market basket analysis across websites. While this research is motivated by online shopping applications, our contribution is mainly methodological. The two methods we develop in this paper can not only be used to identify various online shopping patterns across sites and products but can also be applied to settings where patterns exist across different dimensions. Experiments on both synthetic data and real online shopping data demonstrate the effectiveness of our methods.


Reduced skeletal loading typically leads to bone loss because bone formation and bone resorption become unbalanced. Hibernation is a natural model of musculoskeletal disuse because hibernating animals greatly reduce weight bearing activity, and therefore they would be expected to lose bone. Some evidence suggests that small mammals like ground squirrels, bats, and hamsters do lose bone during hibernation, but the mechanism of bone loss is unclear. In contrast, hibernating bears maintain balanced bone remodeling and preserve bone structure and strength. Differences in the skeletal responses of bears and smaller mammals to hibernation may be due to differences in their hibernation patterns; smaller mammals may excrete calcium liberated from bone during periodic arousals throughout hibernation, leading to progressive bone loss over time, whereas bears may have evolved more sophisticated physiological processes to recycle calcium, prevent hypercalcaemia, and maintain bone integrity. Investigating the roles of neural and hormonal control of bear bone metabolism could give valuable insight into translating the mechanisms which prevent disuse induced bone loss in bears into novel therapies for treating osteoporosis.


Human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1) can readily accept envelope (Env) glycoproteins from distantly related retroviruses. However, we previously showed that the HIV-1 Env glycoprotein complex is excluded even from particles formed by the Gag proteins of another lentivirus, visna virus, unless the matrix domain of the visna virus Gag polyprotein is replaced by that of HIV-1. We also showed that the integrity of the HIV-1 matrix domain is critical for the incorporation of wild-type HIV-1 Env protein but not for the incorporation of a truncated form which lacks the 144 C-terminal amino acids of the cytoplasmic domain of the transmembrane glycoprotein. We report here that the C-terminal truncation of the transmembrane glycoprotein also allows the efficient incorporation of HIV-1 Env proteins into viral particles formed by the Gag proteins of the widely divergent Moloney murine leukemia virus (Mo-MLV). Additionally, pseudotyping of a Mo-MLV-based vector with the truncated rather than the full-length HIV-1 Env allowed efficient transduction of human CD4+ cells. These results establish that Mo-MLV-based vectors can be used to target cells susceptible to infection by HIV-1.


PurposeThe purpose of this study is to evaluate the effect of opportunity relatedness and uncertainty on the decision of a corporate entrepreneur to pursue a venturing opportunity.Design/methodology/approachThe study uses a conjoint experimental design to reveal the structure of respondents' decision policies. Data were gathered from 47 useable replies from corporate entrepreneurs and were analyzed with hierarchical linear modeling (HLM).FindingsResults show that product relatedness, market relatedness, perceived certainty about expected outcomes and slack resources all have a positive effect on the willingness of a corporate entrepreneur to pursue a new venture idea. Moreover, slack was found to diminish the positive effect of product relatedness on the likelihood to pursue a venturing opportunity.Practical implicationsBy providing a better understanding of decision-making schemas of corporate entrepreneurs, the findings of this study help improve the practice of entrepreneurship at the organizational level. In order to make more accurate opportunity assessments, corporate entrepreneurs need to be aware of their cognitive strategies and need to factor in the salient criteria affecting such assessments.Originality/valueThis paper adds to the limited understanding of corporate-level decision-making with regard to pursuing venturing opportunities. More specifically, the paper adds new insights regarding how relatedness and uncertainty affect new venture opportunity assessments in the presence (or lack thereof) of slack resources.


This article describes the main strategies to activate and convert carbon dioxide (CO2 ) into valuable chemicals over catalytic surfaces. Coherent elements such as common intermediates are identified in the different strategies and concisely discussed based on the reactivity of CO2 with the aim to understand the decisive factors for selective and efficient CO2 conversion.


Gene regulatory networks (GRNs) describe the progression of transcriptional states that take a single-celled zygote to a multicellular organism. It is well documented that GRNs can evolve extensively through mutations to cis-regulatory modules. Transcription factor proteins that bind these cis-regulatory modules may also evolve to produce novelty. Coding changes are considered to be rarer, however, because transcription factors are multifunctional and hence are more constrained to evolve in ways that will not produce widespread detrimental effects. Recent technological advances have unearthed a surprising variation in DNA binding abilities, such that individual transcription factors may recognize both a preferred primary motif and an additional secondary motif. This provides a source of modularity in function. Here, we demonstrate that orthologous transcription factors can also evolve a changed preference for a secondary binding motif, thereby offering an unexplored mechanism for GRN evolution. Using Protein Binding Microarray, Surface Plasmon Resonance, and in vivo reporter assays, we demonstrate an important difference in DNA binding preference between Tbrain protein orthologs in two species of echinoderms, the sea star, Patiria miniata, and the sea urchin, Strongylocentrotus purpuratus. While both orthologs recognize the same primary motif, only the sea star Tbr also has a secondary binding motif. Our in vivo assays demonstrate that this difference may allow for greater evolutionary change in timing of regulatory control. This uncovers a layer of transcription factor binding divergence that could exist for many pairs of orthologs. We hypothesize that this divergence provides modularity that allows orthologous transcription factors to evolve novel roles in gene regulatory networks through modification of binding to secondary sites. at B rham & W om en's H oital on July 7, 2014 hp://m be.oxfournals.org/ D ow nladed from


This document describes the use of loop-free alternates to provide
local protection for unicast traffic in pure IP and MPLS/LDP networks
in the event of a single failure, whether link, node or shared risk
link group (SRLG). The goal of this technology is to reduce the packet
loss that happens while routers converge after a topology change due
to a failure. Rapid failure repair is achieved through use of
precalculated backup next-hops that are loop-free and safe to use
until the distributed network convergence process completes. This
simple approach does not require any support from other routers. The
extent to which this goal can be met by this specification is
dependent on the topology of the network.


This paper analyzes how the labor market adjusts to the Great Recession. To this aim, we use the data for Latvia, a country that has experienced one of the most severe recessions in Europe and a subsequent remarkable recovery. Employing longitudinal EU SILC data and a panel data set constructed by us from various waves of the Latvian Labour Force Survey (LLFS), we estimate worker transitions between labor market states. Labor market adjustment takes place predominantly at the extensive margin since it is driven by flows from permanent wage employment to unemployment. We also show that older, non-Latvian and above all less skilled workers are especially hard hit by the economic crisis. Estimated transitions between four mutually exclusive occupational groups demonstrate that downward mobility is very limited even during the Great Recession. Finally, wage regressions suggest that job mobility is not associated with increased labour productivity during and immediately after the crisis.


This study reports the details Escherichia coli inactivation kinetics on TiON and TiON-Ag films sputtered on polyester by direct current reactive magnetron sputtering (DC) and pulsed magnetron sputtering (DCP) in an Ar/N2/O2 atmosphere. The use of TiON leads to bacterial inactivation avoiding leaching of Ag. The surface of TiON and TiON-Ag was characterized by X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), atomic force microscopy (AFM), electron microscopy (EM), X-ray fluorescence (XRF) and contact angle (CA) measurements. Evidence for the photocatalyst self-cleaning after the bacterial inactivation was shown by XPS, contact angle (CA) and the Zetasizer zeta-potential of the proteins. The photo-induced charge transfer from Ag2O and TiO2 is discussed considering the relative positions of the electronic bands of the iON-Ag films nterfacial charge transfer . coli two oxides. An interfacial charge transfer mechanism (IFCT) for the photo-induced electron injection is suggested. The most suitable TiON coating sputtered on polyester was 70 nm thick and inactivated E. coli within 120 min under low intensity visible/actinic light (400–700 nm, 4 mW/cm2). TiON-Ag sputtered catalysts shortened E. coli inactivation to ∼55 min, since Ag accelerated bacterial inactivation due to its disinfecting properties. Evidence is presented for the repetitive performance within short times of the ter u TiON and TiON-Ag polyes


BACKGROUND
As many as one in six couples will encounter problems with fertility, defined as failure to achieve a clinical pregnancy after regular intercourse for 12 months. Increasingly, couples are turning to assisted reproductive technology (ART) for help with conceiving and ultimately giving birth to a healthy live baby of their own. Fertility treatments are complex, and each ART cycle consists of several steps. If one of the steps is incorrectly applied, the stakes are high as conception may not occur. With this in mind, it is important that each step of the ART cycle is supported by good evidence from well-designed studies.

OBJECTIVES
To summarise the evidence from Cochrane systematic reviews on procedures and treatment options available to couples with subfertility undergoing assisted reproductive technology (ART).

METHODS
Published Cochrane systematic reviews of couples undergoing ART (in vitro fertilisation or intracytoplasmic sperm injection) were eligible for inclusion in the overview. We also identified Cochrane reviews in preparation, for future inclusion.The outcomes of the overview were live birth (primary outcome), clinical pregnancy, multiple pregnancy, miscarriage and ovarian hyperstimulation syndrome (secondary outcomes). Studies of intrauterine insemination and ovulation induction were excluded.Selection of systematic reviews, data extraction and quality assessment were undertaken in duplicate. Review quality was assessed by using the AMSTAR tool. Reviews were organised by their relevance to specific stages in the ART cycle. Their findings were summarised in the text and data for each outcome were reported in 'Additional tables'.

MAIN RESULTS
Fifty-four systematic reviews published in The Cochrane Library were included. All were high quality. Thirty reviews identified interventions that were effective (n = 18) or promising (n = 12), 13 reviews identified interventions that were either ineffective (n = 3) or possibly ineffective (n=10), and 11 reviews were unable to draw conclusions due to lack of evidence.An additional 15 protocols and two titles were identified for future inclusion in this overview.

AUTHORS' CONCLUSIONS
This overview provides the most up to date evidence on ART cycles from systematic reviews of randomised controlled trials. Fertility treatments are costly and the stakes are high. Using the best available evidence to optimise outcomes is best practice. The evidence from this overview could be used to develop clinical practice guidelines and protocols for use in daily clinical practice, in order to improve live birth rates and reduce rates of multiple pregnancy, cycle cancellation and ovarian hyperstimulation syndrome.


Dielectric permittivity is a fundamental parameter for all investigations based on electromagnetic
waves, particularly for moisture sounding. However, the physical principles of dielectric permittivity
in natural materials and its influence on propagation velocity, the reflection coefficient, and the
decay of the electromagnetic waves have been rarely addressed for variable substrate compositions
or frequencies. Hence, this paper aims to fill this gap by systematically investigating quantitative
relationships between dielectric permittivity and soil water content for a continuum of the three
most common soil components in moderately temperate humid latitudes (i.e., illite, carbonate, and
quartz-rich sand). We carried out frequency-dependent permittivity measurements for a large variety
of artificial and natural substrates with an impedance analyser at frequencies ranging from
10 MHz to 1 GHz. Based on these measurements, we selected 200 MHz as the most commonly used
frequency value for geological, ground-penetrating radar applications and developed a set of
empirical equations from third-degree and ternary factorial diagrams to quantify the relationship
between dielectric permittivity and volumetric moisture content of pure sand, clay, carbonate, and
mixtures. The results show systematic trends, which can be explained by competing electrophysical
properties of minerals and their wetting behaviour. This investigation shows that different wetting
affinities of 1:1 and 2:1 clay minerals strongly control permittivity. Thresholds and non-linearity
effects were identified, where specific mineral properties and/or wetting processes became dominant
in complex mixtures of soil materials. Bulk densities and porosities, respectively, were shown
to have only minor influence compared with the impact of water. Consequently, the presented
method is applicable to both undisturbed and disordered samples and, hence, to mobile devices or
permanent installations in the field after compositional laboratory or onsite analyses. The permittivity of natural soils was measured in two field studies. The results show a good correlation between calculated and measured moisture contents. Our study confirms that the widely used Topp equation is only valid for sandy soil materials, i.e., the soil types it was originally designed for. For soils with a clay content >30% and/or a moisture level >20%, the new equations reduce the error in the level of permittivity measurements from up to 20% (using the Topp equation) to 5%.


We mapped and analyzed two vertical exposures—exposed on the walls of a 3- to 5-m-deep, 70-m-long excavation and a smaller 3-m-deep, 10-m-long excavation—across the 1999 rupture of the Chelungpu fault. The primary exposure revealed a broad anticlinal fold with a 2.5-m-high west-facing principal thrust scarp contained in fluvial cobbly gravel beds and overlying fine-grained overbank deposits. Sequential restoration of the principal rupture requires initial failure on the basal, east-dipping thrust plane, followed by wedge thrusting and pop-up of an overlying symmetrical anticline between two opposing secondary thrust faults. Net vertical offset is about 2.2 m across the principal fault zone. From line-length changes, we estimate about 3.3 m of horizontal shortening normal to fault strike. The ratio of these values yields a total slip of 4.0 m and an estimate of about 34° for the dip of the fault plane below the excavation. This value is nearly the same as the 35° average dip of the fault plane from the surface to the hypocenter. Restoration of the exposed gravelly strata and adjacent overbank sediments deposited prior to the 1999 event around the principal rupture suggests the possible existence of a prior event. A buried 30-m-wide anticlinal warp beneath the uplifted crest of the 1999 event is associated with three buried reverse faults that we interpret as evidence for an earlier episode of folding and faulting in the site. The prior event is also recorded in the smaller excavation, which is located 40 m south and is oriented parallel to the larger excavation. Radiocarbon dating of samples within the exposed section did not place tight constraints on the date of the previous event. Available data are interpreted as indicating that the previous event occurred before the deposition of the less than 200 ^(14)C yr B.P. overbank sands and after the deposition of the much older fluvial gravels. We interpret the previous event as the penultimate event relative to the 1999 Chi-Chi earthquake. We estimated the long-term slip rate of the Chelungpu fault to be 10-15 mm/yr during the last 1 Ma, based on previously published retrodeformable cross sections. This rate is, however, significantly higher than geodetic rates of shortening across the Chelungpu thrust where two pairs of permanent Global Positioning System stations suggest 7-10 mm/yr of shortening across the fault. Given the 4 m of average slip, the long-term slip rate yields an interseismic interval of between 267 and 400 yr for the Chelungpu fault.


Cloud computing and other highly virtualized data center applications have placed many new and unique requirements on the data center network infrastructure. Conventional network protocols and architectures such as Spanning Tree Protocol and multichassis link aggregation can limit the scale, latency, throughput, and virtual machine mobility for large cloud networks. This has led to a multitude of new networking protocols and architectures. We present a tutorial on some of the key requirements for cloud computing networks and the various approaches that have been proposed to implement them. These include industry standards (e.g., TRILL, SPB, software-defined networking, and OpenFlow), best practices for standards-based data center networking (e.g., the open datacenter interoperable network), as well as vendor proprietary approaches (e.g., FabricPath, VCS, and Qfabric).


This paper introduces a hybrid propulsion transfer termed a Hohmann Spiral, incorporating low and high-thrust technologies, analogous to the high-thrust bi-elliptic transfer. To understand this transfer fully it is compared to a standard high thrust Hohmann and a bi-elliptic transfer. Two critical specific impulse ratios are derived independent of time that determine the point this novel transfer consumes the exact amount of fuel as the two compared transfer types. It is found that these ratios are valid for both a circular and elliptical starting orbit so long as the apogee of the elliptical orbit coincides with the target orbit radius. An expression representing the fuel mass fraction is derived dependent of time in order to allow a bound solution space. The final part of this paper investigates two orbit transfer case studies, one is a Geostationary Transfer Orbit to Geostationary Earth Orbit based on the Alphabus platform specification and the other is from Low Earth Orbit to an orbit near the Moon. It is found the thrust required to complete the former transfer in a specified duration of 90 days exceeds current technology and as such provides a technology requirement for future spacecraft. It is found however, for spacecraft of significantly smaller mass, in the region of 1000kg, compared to Alphabus (Max. mass at Launch =8100kg), the transfer consumes the same fuel mass as a standard high-thrust Hohmann transfer with realistic low-thrust propulsion values (150mN, 300mN and 450mN) within the set duration of 90 days. In addition, it is shown that utilising uprated thrusters (210mN, 420mN and 630mN) a fuel mass saving can be made. This could provide a potential transfer alternative for future smaller spacecraft. The second case study is bound to a maximum thrust of 150mN, but the mission duration is not specified to highlight the variation. It is found that the HST offers fuel mass savings of roughly 5% compared to a standard high-thrust transfer and approximately 1.5% compared to a bi-elliptic transfer for different scenarios.


Forty-four academic pure mathematicians were given Levine's (1982) computational estimation task, which involved estimating the answers to 20 multiplication and division problems and describing the strategies used. The mathematicians were accurate estimators, and they used a great variety of strategies, as many as 23 for a single problem. All but 2 of the mathematicians used some strategy that was not used by the other 43 for at least one problem. When 18 mathematicians were retested after an interval of several months, they used different strategies on the second test for 9 to 17 of the 20 problems. Some theoretical implications of these findings are discussed.


Building a voice conversion system for noisy target speakers, such as users providing noisy samples or Internet found data, is a challenging task since the use of contaminated speech in model training will apparently degrade the conversion performance. In this paper, we leverage the advances of our recently proposed Glow-WaveGAN and propose a noise-independent speech representation learning approach for high-quality voice conversion for noisy target speakers. Specifically, we learn a latent feature space where we ensure that the target distribution modeled by the conversion model is exactly from the modeled distribution of the waveform generator. With this premise, we further manage to make the latent feature to be noise-invariant. Specifically, we introduce a noise-controllable WaveGAN, which directly learns the noise-independent acoustic representation from waveform by the encoder and conducts noise control in the hidden space through a FiLM module in the decoder. As for the conversion model, importantly, we use a flow-based model to learn the distribution of noise-independent but speaker-related latent features from phoneme posteriorgrams. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed model achieves high speech quality and speaker similarity in the voice conversion for noisy target speakers.


The European Commission requested that the EFSA Panel on Genetically Modified Organisms deliver a scientific opinion related to risk assessment of plants developed using the zinc finger nuclease 3 technique (ZFN-3) which allows the integration of gene(s) in a predefined insertion site in the genome of the recipient species. Since other nucleases with a similar function to ZFN are considered in this opinion the term site-directed nuclease 3 (SDN-3) is used to describe the technique rather than ZFN-3 specifically. The EFSA GMO Panel considers that its guidance documents are applicable for the evaluation of food and feed products derived from plants developed using the SDN-3 technique and for performing an environmental risk assessment. However, on a case-by-case basis lesser amounts of event specific data may be needed for the risk assessment of plants developed using the SDN-3 technique. The EFSA GMO Panel compared the hazards associated with plants produced by the SDN-3 technique with those obtained by conventional plant breeding techniques and by currently used transgenesis. With respect to the genes introduced, the SDN-3 technique does not differ from transgenesis or from the other genetic modification techniques currently used, and can be used to introduce transgenes, intragenes or cisgenes. The main difference between the SDN-3 technique and transgenesis is that the insertion of DNA is targeted to a predefined region of the genome. Therefore, the SDN-3 technique can minimise hazards associated with the disruption of genes and/or regulatory elements in the recipient genome. Whilst the SDN-3 technique can induce off-target changes in the genome of the recipient plant these would be fewer than those occurring with most mutagenesis techniques. Furthermore, where such changes occur they would be of the same types as those produced by conventional breeding techniques.


Variable case marking of pronouns in coordinate noun phrases (CoNPs) is a well-documented phenomenon which has elicited prescriptive censure for centuries. Drawing on the framework of variationist sociolinguistics, this study presents a detailed quantitative analysis of variable case marking in CoNPs in the Quebec English Corpus (Poplack, Walker and Malcolmson 2006), a massive compendium of vernacular speech. Operationalizing a number of extralinguistic and linguistic factors that are claimed to condition variable case marking in CoNPs, multivariate analysis revealed that speaker age and education as well as the syntactic position of the CoNP are key predictors in determining the case of pronouns in these constructions. An important finding is that case marking in CoNPs is highly variable for speakers, suggesting that the Sisyphean efforts of the prescriptive enterprise to impose uniformity on this area of the grammar have been to little avail as far as spontaneous usage is concerned. Comparison of the results with variable case marking in CoNPs in other varieties of English, as well as with diachronic patterns of variability, also raises the possibility that the accusative is increasingly assuming the role of default case in coordinate constructions.


Research funding, promotions, and career trajectories are currently increasingly dependent on the emerging economy of publications and citations across the globe. Such an economy encourages scholars to publish in international journals that are indexed in databases such as Scopus and Web of Science. These developments place an increased emphasis on the question of who is allowed to publish in the journals listed there and whose research counts as valuable. Based on bibliographic data from articles submitted to three main journals in the field of adult education research between 2005 and 2012, we scrutinize the extent to which the emerging economy of publications and citations is dependent on national and regional boundaries. Our results show how four Anglophone countries dominate the field in relation to both published articles and the share of most cited articles and where the publication pattern of these authors are national and regional rather than international.


OBJECTIVE The purpose of this study was to compare the effectiveness of three 15-min bouts of postmeal walking with 45 min of sustained walking on 24-h glycemic control in older persons at risk for glucose intolerance. RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS Inactive older (≥60 years of age) participants (N = 10) were recruited from the community and were nonsmoking, with a BMI <35 kg/m2 and a fasting blood glucose concentration between 105 and 125 mg dL−1. Participants completed three randomly ordered exercise protocols spaced 4 weeks apart. Each protocol comprised a 48-h stay in a whole-room calorimeter, with the first day serving as the control day. On the second day, participants engaged in either 1) postmeal walking for 15 min or 45 min of sustained walking performed at 2) 10:30 a.m. or 3) 4:30 p.m. All walking was on a treadmill at an absolute intensity of 3 METs. Interstitial glucose concentrations were determined over 48 h with a continuous glucose monitor. Substrate utilization was measured continuously by respiratory exchange (VCO2/VO2). RESULTS Both sustained morning walking (127 ± 23 vs. 118 ± 14 mg dL−1) and postmeal walking (129 ± 24 vs. 116 ± 13 mg dL−1) significantly improved 24-h glycemic control relative to the control day (P < 0.05). Moreover, postmeal walking was significantly (P < 0.01) more effective than 45 min of sustained morning or afternoon walking in lowering 3-h postdinner glucose between the control and experimental day. CONCLUSIONS Short, intermittent bouts of postmeal walking appear to be an effective way to control postprandial hyperglycemia in older people.


Abstract Antonio Gramsci's philosophy of praxis is characterised by the spatialisation as well as historicisation of its analytical categories. These theoretical practices are deeply intertwined in his 'absolute historicism'. Highlighting the spatiality of Gramsci's analysis not only enables us to recover the many geographical themes in his work but also provides a useful counterweight to the emphasis on the historical dimensions of his historicism. In addition to obvious references to Gramsci's use of spatial metaphors and his discussion of the Southern Question, it is shown that many of his key concepts are best interpreted from a spatio‐temporal as well as social and material perspective. After introducing the concepts of space, place and scale, the essay shows that all three are relevant to Gramsci's analyses of issues such as language, the historical significance of the Catholic Church, the role of intellectuals, cosmopolitanism, class and class struggle, Americanism and Fordism, the nature of the Italian state, the social bases of state power, Jacobinism, passive revolution and hegemony. The essay concludes that Gramsci's interest in place, space and scale was not merely academic but had to do with his analysis of revolutionary conjunctures.


Increasing consumer demand for organic products has created a need for certified organic research sites. Our objective is to discuss the lessons learned from evaluating alternate cropping systems to establish a certified site in western Iowa. Oat (Avena sativa L.), 'Kelson' snail medic [Medicago scutelata (L.) Mill.] or 'Polygraze' burr medic (Medicago polymorpha L.), triticale (3Triticosecale spp.), sweet corn (Zea mays L.), soybean [Glycine max (L.) Merr.], rye (Secale cereale L.), and alfalfa (Medicago sativa L.) or red clover (Trifolium pretense L.) were evaluated in five crop sequences as transition strategies for converting no-till corn and soybean land for certified organic production. Five models for managing organic research sites were developed and are discussed to help researchers and producers become aware of the different roles, goals, and management challenges faced when developing a certified organic research site. A "shared management model" (Type 3) best described our project involving a transitioning grower and researchers. Maintaining annual profit throughout the transition period was our most important factor, so potential returns to land, labor, and management were calculated to compare the various transition strategies. Only two of the cropping systems incurred a positive return to management. They used either a high-value crop such as sweet corn (provided it was marketable) or low-cost crops (i.e., oat and alfalfa). We conclude that learning from our experiences will enable others to develop certified organic research sites and become involved with on-farm research studies with much less stress than that encountered by our farmer cooperator, technical staff, land owner, and research team.


Web application security and privacy became a central concern among the security community. The problems that are faced once an application is compromised necessarily demands special attention. The emerging programming languages, which allow unexperienced users to quickly develop applications, still fail to introduce mechanisms for preventing the aforementioned attacks. We introduce a technique for enhancing the security and privacy for a web-based solution, by augmenting its execution environment to include tracking information, that permits to efficiently identify and thwart several attack scenarios. The technique has been implemented to protect PHP, and could be extended to protect other web-development languages (such as Java, ASP.NET, Python, Perl and Ruby.) Typical exploitation methods as database-injection attacks, shell injection attacks, cross-site scripting attacks and directory-traversal attacks are prevented. Moreover, this technique prevents untrusted users from obtaining private data stored within the web application's network; thus, putting off the theft of sensitive data, as credit card information, as well as averting information leakage.


Rick Warren, purpose driven and the 40 days of purpose campaign More than 532 churches/congregations in South-Africa have already purchased "The purpose driven campaign kit" and completed the 40 days campaign or are planning to do so. The name Rick Warren is synonymous with "Purpose driven" and the popularity of his work as well as his influence in this country, justifie a study of this nature. This study wants to determine the effect of Rick Warren's 40 days of purpose in the circuit of Klerksdorp of the Nederduitsch Hervormde Kerk van Afrika. Warren provides five purposes for a believer in the church in his book, A purpose driven life, which according to him is the church's purpose of existence. The hypothesis of this study is that the 40 days of purpose is an excellent project for congregations to discover their purpose of existence, while it also strengthens the process of building the local congregation. Eight congregations participated in the research project.


Subscription-based news platforms (such as "Apple News+" or "Readly") that bundle content from different publishers into one comprehensive package and offer it to media users at a fixed monthly rate are a new way of accessing and consuming digital journalism. These services have received little attention in journalism studies, although they differ greatly from traditional media products and distribution channels. This article empirically investigates the perception of journalism platforms based on eight qualitative focus group discussions with 55 German news consumers. Results show that the central characteristics these platforms should fulfill in order to attract users are strikingly similar to the characteristics of media platforms from the music and video industries, in particular regarding price points, contract features, and modes of usage. Against this background, the potential and perspectives of a subscription-based news platform for journalism's societal role are discussed.


Effective policies to halt deforestation depend critically on the forest context. This article uses a forest transition framework to discuss three forest contexts: remote (core) forest areas, frontier forests, and forest-agriculture mosaics. Just as the drivers and capabilities differ across these three contexts or stages, so too do the appropriate government policies. The first stage represents forests that are protected passively by their remote location, where the challenge is to maintain low deforestation rates. Thus high priority should be given to avoiding or redesigning infrastructure developments, resettlements, and other large-scale projects that can accelerate deforestation. Clarifying tenure and local forest rights and creating protected areas can also be helpful. In frontier forests, well-defined property rights, if present, provide a basis for using direct incentive and compensation schemes such as payments for environmental services. Avoiding perverse government policies, such as subsidized credit for deforesting activities, would also reduce the high deforestation rates that characterize this second stage. In largely settled forest-agriculture mosaics, government policies can augment emerging market-based incentives to plant trees. Improved agricultural technologies, which at early stages tend to stimulate agricultural land expansion, can also be important at later stages by increasing food production on existing agricultural land.


This study combines direct measurements of strain, electrical mobility measurements, and a rigorous modeling approach to provide insights about strain-induced mobility enhancement in FinFETs and guidelines for device optimization. Good agreement between simulated and measured mobility is obtained using strain components measured directly at device level by a novel holographic technique. A large vertical compressive strain is observed in metal gate FinFETs, and the simulations show that this helps recover the electron mobility disadvantage of the (110) FinFET lateral interfaces with respect to (100) interfaces, with no degradation of the hole mobility. The model is then used to systematically explore the impact of stress components in the fin width, height, and length directions on the mobility of both n- and p-type FinFETs and to identify optimal stress configurations. Finally, self-consistent Monte Carlo simulations are used to investigate how the most favorable stress configurations can improve the on current of nanoscale MOSFETs.


Scientific workflows are often composed of compute-intensive simulations and data-intensive analysis and visualization, both equally important for productivity. High-performance computers run the compute-intensive phases efficiently, but data-intensive processing is still getting less attention. Dense non-volatile memory integrated into super-computers can help address this problem. In addition to density, it offers significantly finer-grained I/O than disk-based I/O systems. We present a way to exploit the fundamental capabilities of Storage-Class Memories (SCM), such as Flash, by using scalable key-value (KV) I/O methods instead of traditional file I/O calls commonly used in HPC systems. Our objective is to enable higher performance for on-line and near-line storage for analysis and visualization of very high resolution, but correspondingly transient, simulation results. In this paper, we describe 1) the adaptation of a scalable key-value store to a BlueGene/Q system with integrated Flash memory, 2) a novel key-value aggregation module which implements coalesced, function-shipped calls between the clients and the servers, and 3) the refactoring of a scientific workflow to use application-relevant keys for fine-grained data subsets. The resulting implementation is analogous to function-shipping of POSIX I/O calls but shows an order of magnitude increase in read and a factor 2.5x increase in write IOPS performance (11 million read IOPS, 2.5 million write IOPS from 4096 compute nodes) when compared to a classical file system on the same system. It represents an innovative approach for the integration of SCM within an HPC system at scale.


International Handbooks on Information Systems is a series of volumes offering state-ofthe-art surveys on selected topics of information theory and applications.  The scope of the series comprises topics such as architectures of information systems, enterprise architecture, data management in information systems, electronic commerce, knowledge management, ontologies and others. To date more than a dozen volumes have been published, some of them in multiple editions.  The objective is to involve contributors who are the authoritative figures in this area of information systems in each volume in order to provide a reference source for problem solvers in business, industry, and government, which can also be used by professional researchers and graduate students.  To this end, a distinguished international group of academics and practitioners will be invited to contribute articles on their respective fields of expertise.


This paper addresses three independent approaches to improving the performance of Micromorph® tandem solar cells: 1. Thinner cells for higher throughput in mass-production, 2. Optimum cell design and processes yielding stable efficiencies of 11.5% on as-grown ZnO front contact, and finally 3. The introduction of novel textured glass substrates prepared by Corning Incorporated to improve light-management. As a result of the joint research between Oerlikon Solar- Lab and Corning Incorporated, a Micromorph® tandem cell with no anti-reflection coating demonstrated a stable efficiency of 11.9% as independently measured by NREL. This third result represents a new milestone for thin film silicon solar cell technology which is 8% higher than one year ago. Combinations of these improvements are expected to enable cell efficiencies of 12.5% and beyond


Introduction We present a major update to the GPU-STREAM benchmark implementation, first shown at SC'15. The original benchmark allowed comparison of achievable memory bandwidth performance through the STREAM kernels on OpenCL devices. GPU-STREAM v2.0 extends the benchmark to another dimension: the kernels are implemented in a wide range of popular state-of-the-art parallel programming models. This allows an intuitive comparison of performance across a diverse set of programming models and devices, investigating whether choice of model matters to performance and performance portability. In particular we investigate 7 parallel programming languages I OpenMP 4.x I OpenACC I Kokkos I RAJA I SYCL I CUDA I OpenCL across 12 devices I 6 GPUs from NVIDIA and AMD I Intel Xeon Phi (Knights Landing) I 4 generations of Intel Xeon CPUs I IBM Power 8


Since large amount of carbon accumulation in soil can contribute to suppression of global warming, it is important to understand the fates, patterns and mechanism of carbon accumulation in soil. One of the mechanisms is known that metal ions such as aluminum (Al) and iron associate with organic matter (OM) in the soil. It has been reported that chemical weathering related by plants affect the relationship between metal ions and OM. Previous studies indicated that exudates of plant roots increase production of secondary minerals, enhancing the leaching of metal ions from soil. It was also suggested that Si leaching due to chemical weathering was enhanced in soil under gramineous plants such as bamboo and rice, which is known to take up a large amount of Si. Furthermore, it was reported that the amount of Al associated with OM increased in the soil under gramineous plants. However, the effect of chemical weathering on Al dynamics in the soil due to Si uptake by Sasa dwarf bamboo, a Si accumulating plant has not been clarified yet. In this study, we focused on differences of Si uptake by Sasa dwarf bamboo, and investigated their influence on Al dynamics in soil, by comparing with trees. Since Sasa dwarf bamboo absorbs takes up much of Si than tree, we hypothesized that chemical weathering was promoted by existing of Sasa dwarf bamboo, resulting in an increase in the amount of Al in the soil. We established at four plots in the naturally mixed conifer and broadleaf forest in Nakagawa Experimental Forest of Hokkaido University located in the northern part of Hokkaido. In these four plots, oak (Quercus crispula Blume) and fir (Abies sachalinensis) and Sasa dwarf bamboo (Sasa senanensis) are dominant species as upper trees and understory vegetation, respectively. All plots are located on sedimentary rocks and dominant soil is Cambisols (acidic brown forest soil). Two type of sub-plots were established in each site; one is the points with low density of Sasa dwarf bamboo that was about 1 m apart from the tree stem of oak, and the other is the points under canopy gap with high density of Sasa dwarf bamboo (hereafter called Sasa). Three spots were established as replicates in each sub-plot. To evaluate the influence of root invasion and nutrient uptake, we conducted a field incubation experiment of soil with an ingrowth core and a root blocking core during about 3 months at all spots. In each spot, 10 cm of soil was collected from the surface of A layer excluding organic litter layer. The coarse root was removed from soil sample using a 4 mm mesh sieve, and then soil sample was filled into each core. The soil before the in-situ incubation was collected and analyzed as the initial soil condition. Aluminum in the soil was extracted and analyzed for their concentration using inductively coupled plasma atomic emission spectrometry (ICP-AES). For the Al associated with OM, copper chloride extraction method was used. The Al strongly associated with OM was fractionated by sequential extraction method by extraction with sodium pyrophosphate (pH 10.0). There was a significant difference (p <0.01) in the amount of Al associated with OM in the surface soil between the plots with high and low density of Sasa, while no significant difference was found in the Al contents between with and without roots and nutrient uptake. In addition, there was no significant difference in the Al content by sodium pyrophosphate extraction with respect to the density of Sasa and the presence of roots. Our results suggested that the amount of Al associated with OM in the soil changed


This PhD thesis is about a framework in complex geometry and methods thereof for solving sets of compatible differential equations arising from integrable systems, classical or quantum, in the context of the geometry of moduli spaces of connections over complex curves, or Riemann surfaces. It is based on the idea in mathematical Physics that integrable systems posess symmetries that impose algebro-differential constraints, so-called loop equations, on the objects of interest (e.g. partition or correlation functions). In turn, we intend to solve these constraints recursively in certain topological regimes using a particular procedure called the topological recursion. Their solutions are in general generating functions of enumerative-geometric quantities. Since they are for the most part determined by the initial data of the recursive process, it realizes in the making an algebro-geometric classification of the family of integrable models under consideration.


PURPOSE
The purpose of this study was to demonstrate the efficacy of the digital fluoroscopy system (DFS) for the in vivo assessment of pharmacologically induced posterior vitreous detachment (PVD) and vitreous liquefaction in a rabbit model.

METHODS
Twenty eyes from 10 New Zealand white rabbits were divided into 5 groups. In each group, one rabbit received an intravitreal injection of 2.0 U plasmin in the right eye and 0.5 U plasmin in the left eye. Intravitreal injection of 0.1 mL balanced salt solution (BSS) was given in the right eye, and no injection was given in the left eye of another rabbit used as a control. Intraocular fluid dynamics were assessed by the DFS, using a contrast agent in each group at different time intervals (6 hours, 12 hours, 1 day, 3 days, and 7 days). After rabbits were killed, both eyes were enucleated. Scanning electron microscopy was used to confirm the morphological alterations of the vitreoretinal interface as observed in the DFS.

RESULTS
Complete PVD was observed after 12 hours with 2.0 U plasmin injection, whereas complete PVD was observed only after 3 days in eyes injected with 0.5 U plasmin. Eyes that received BSS injection or did not receive an injection failed to show complete PVD even after 7 days. Complete vitreous liquefaction was observed after 7 days with 2.0 U plasmin injection, but no eyes with 0.5 U plasmin or BSS injection showed complete liquefaction. We could clearly confirm the presence of PVD and the degree of vitreous liquefaction by using DFS.

CONCLUSIONS
Digital fluoroscopy system appears to be a useful tool for the evaluation of pharmacological vitreolysis in rabbits with clear in vivo visualization of PVD and vitreous liquefaction.


The twenty-eight sites included in the thematic nomination, "Rebuilding St. Georges Hundred, 1850 - 1880", are representative of a broad pattern
of historically documented architectural, agricultural, and social change that swept through southern New Castle County, Delaware, in the second and third quarters of the 19th century. The selected sites all document one of three major areas of change in domestic architecture as it relates to rebuilding cycles: the improvement of standing buildings, the replacement of standing structures , and the development of new sites (often at the cost of abandoning earlier settings). Also associated with these dwellings and the social processes they represent and articulate are a number of agricultural buildings reflecting the new design options for work space developed in the course of the rebuilding.


This collection of essays, drawn from scholarship over the last forty years, explores the drama of four of the most influential proponents of modernism in European Drama: Ibsen, Strindberg, Pirandello, and Beckett. Although there are other dramatists who also contributed to Modernism, these four illustrate widely different and contrasting aspects to the movement. Since discussions of Modernism are generally restricted to poetry, novels, or the fine arts (painting, sculpture), examining theatre from this perspective covers new ground. The choice of these four dramatists as the subjects of the volume reflects the large percentage of essays dealing with their work published by Modern Drama, the leading scholarly journal in the field, which in turn is a measure of the centrality of these particular playwrights in critical discourse. The essays here have been selected to cover the main elements of the work of each of the four dramatists, with the aim of creating a useful teaching tool for university courses. Since some of the essays selected go back to the 1960s, while others are very contemporary, this volume also offers a perspective on the historical development of critical theory.


I. INTRODUCTION This Article investigates the market potential of and legal constraints on Shari'ah-compliant retail products in Europe, focusing in particular on the English and the German markets. "Retail products," for the purpose of this Article, refer to finance and investment products that target primarily consumers (in other words, the product range of the "high street bank" as opposed to investment banking services). Compared to the development of Islamic retail finance in the UK, it is fair to conclude that the developments in Germany are significantly lagging. For several years, Islamic retail products, especially Islamic home finance products, have been an integral component of the product range of most English High Street banks. Further, the Islamic Bank of Britain, set up as an Islamic bank to serve Muslims in the UK, commenced operation in 2004 and became the first fully Shari'ah-compliant bank in Europe.1 In contrast, Germany, which has a Muslim population exceeding three million, currently lacks Islamic retail products.2 Although there have been some deliberations regarding the establishment of an Islamic bank in Germany, all projects are presently far from the implementation phase. While the English market is booming, the German market is close to non-existent. The same holds true for most of the other European markets. Islamic retail finance in Europe is largely confined to the UK. In light of the existence of Islamic retail products in the UK, why do countries such as Germany and France fail to widely offer Islamic retail products? Considering the attention Islamic finance has attracted in Germany over the past few years and the extensive coverage the issue has received in the media, the shortage of Islamic retail products cannot be due to either disinterest or a lack of information. There has been extensive media coverage both in the general and the financial press focusing on how German institutions could take advantage of the economic potential of Islamic finance.3 There must be other reasons for the slow development. This Article argues that developments in Islamic finance must be analyzed within a broader framework. First, Islamic financing transactions must be integrated with and adapted to the overall legal and regulatory framework of the prospective jurisdiction in which the transaction will take place. Islamic financial services, in most jurisdictions, are subject to state law. Integrating and adapting transactions is of particular importance with regard to retail products that are based on an industrialization of the banking business. In Germany, regulation works differently from the UK and may be less susceptible to catering to the needs of ethnic and religious minorities. Second, and perhaps more importantly, Shari'ah-compliant retail products must also mirror the needs of the respective Muslim communities they serve. While there may be a global market for "big ticket" Islamic financing transactions, this is not the case for retail products, which are not based on globally uniform standards. What is deemed to comply with Islamic principles will depend on who interprets them and in which jurisdiction the transaction is implemented. Therefore, the success of Islamic retail products depends on a double cultural accommodation: adjusting the respective product to both the requirements of local laws and the specificities of local Muslim communities. This depends on certain institutional arrangements that, in the past, have been more favorable in the UK than in Germany. II. WHY CARE ABOUT IT? The assumption underlying this Article is that it is indeed a good idea to pursue the development of Islamic retail finance in Europe. This assumption may be widely shared within the Islamic finance community and certain public bodies-including the British Financial Services Authority ("FSA") and international organizations such as the World Bank-have also taken a supportive view more recently. …


ABSTRACT The use of WDEF (water-diesel-emulsified fuel) has been one of the effective methods used for NOx (Nitrogen oxide) reduction without any modification on engine. In the present study, firstly, the potential of emulsified fuel on performance of engine parameters has been determined. In the experiments; pure diesel, 5%, 10% and 15% water content have been prepared and tested at rated power and torque conditions. As a result of experiments, a slight reduction of up to 5.22% in brake power is observed for maximum torque, also increase up to 7.42% in BSFC (Brake-specific fuel consumption) is attained while using emulsified fuel. However, a leading emission problem of diesel engine, the highest reduction in NOx emissions is obtained as 16.84%. For maximum power, a slight reduction up to 5.46% in brake power has been observed, also increase up to 8.96% in BSFC is acquired comparing with pure diesel. The highest decrease in NOx emissions has been achieved 10.8% by using WDEF. As a result of theoretical study, 10% emulsified fuel has been determined as the optimum fuel blend with the use of Fuzzy-AHP (Analytic hierarchy process) and CODAS (Combinative distance-based assessment) regarding experimental results of brake power, torque, brake specific fuel consumption and NOx emissions. The effects of the optimized fuel on performance of engine parameters and NOx emissions have been examined by one dimensional thermodynamic simulation, AVL Boost, and the results are compared with experimental data. The theoretical results have a good agreement with experimental data.


Tin (Sn) halide perovskite absorbers have attracted much interest because of their nontoxicity as compared to their lead (Pb) halide perovskite counterparts. Recent progress shows that the power conversion efficiency of FASnI3 (FA = HC(NH2)2) solar cells prevails over that of MASnI3 (MA = CH3NH3). In this paper, we show that the organic cations, i.e., FA and MA, play a vital role in the defect properties of Sn halide perovskites. The antibonding coupling between Sn-5s and I-5p is clearly weaker in FASnI3 than in MASnI3 due to the larger ionic size of FA, leading to higher formation energies of Sn vacancies in FASnI3. Subsequently, the conductivity of FASnI3 can be tuned from p-type to intrinsic by varying the growth conditions of the perovskite semiconductor; in contrast, MASnI3 shows unipolar high p-type conductivity independent of the growth conditions. This provides a reasonable explanation for the better performance of FASnI3-based solar cells in experiments with respect to the MASnI3-based solar cells.


Knee ankle foot orthoses (KAFOs) are prescribed to paraplegic patients with low level spinal cord injury and with good control of the trunk muscles. Three types of KAFOs were used in this work (plastic-metal, metal-metal and composite materials), the composite materials were depended on the number of perlon layers (13 layers & 9 layers) with one layer of carbon-fiber and (6 layers) without carbonfiber. The mechanical properties of most of the KAFOs' materials were tested by tensile test and fatigue machines. The data of gait cycle (Ground Reaction Force (GRF), and pressure distribution) were collected from one patient with poliomyelitis (wearing brace type KAFO) and one normal subject. In this paper, the FEM (ANSYS) was used to compute the safety factor of fatigue for all types of KAFOs' models and the equivalent stress (Von-Mises). The interface pressure between the patient's leg and the brace was tested by using a piezoelectric sensor. The results obtained from ANSYS gave the profile of safety factor of fatigue, for metal-metal KAFO (3.69), plastic-metal model (0.88). While, the (13) layers for composite material was about (1.4), but (1.07) & (0.41) for (9) layers and (6) layers, respectively. The value of safety factor increased with the composite material for the suggested design.


Using metametadata like provenance on the statement level has been proposed as a possible solution to some -- if not most -- problems that occur in a metadata aggregation context. Examples for these problems are the information loss that occurs during metadata format conversion or the alignment of disparate metadata quality. Until now, no feasible way to store and manage meta information has been proposed. In this paper, we suggest the use of RDF reification as an elegant way to fill this gap that in addition adheres to all standards and recommendations. We demonstrate this approach by the means of two scenarios: First, an enhancement for metadata crosswalks that supports the maintenance of the converted metadata, and second the use of metametadata for the efficient integration of subject annotations from different sources.


Invasive species are among the greatest challenges to environmental sustainability and agricultural productivity in the world. One of the most promising approaches to managing invasive species is voluntary citizen stewardship. However, in order for control measures to be effective, private citizens often need to make sustained and sometimes burdensome commitments.
Community-Based Control of Invasive Species is based on five years of research by leading scholars in natural resource and human behavioural sciences, which involved government and citizen groups in Australia and the United States. It examines questions including, 'how can citizens be engaged in voluntarily managing invasive species?', 'what communication strategies will ensure good motivation and coordination?' and 'how can governing bodies support citizens in their efforts?'.
With chapters on institutional frameworks, changing governance, systems thinking, organisational learning, engagement, communication and behavioural change, this book will be a valuable reference for researchers and practitioners involved in natural resources management.


For all the interest that wireless sensor networks have created over the past decade, there are few examples to show that they are truly delivering on this promise and anticipation. What is missing? Deviating from the usual focus on routing and energy efficiency, Building Sensor Networks: From Design to Applications attempts to stitch together the path from conceptual development of applications, on one end, to actual complete applications at the other. With this change in perspective, the book examines important facets of wireless sensor networks (WSNs) that are not often discussed in the literature. From Design Practices to the Networking Protocols that Glue Applications Together Organized into three sections, the book presents insights from international experts representing both industry and academia. The first section, on design practices, explores alternative ways to approach the tasks of developing a suitable WSN solution to an application and assisting that development in a manner that is not necessarily tied to a particular application. The second section, on networking protocols, illustrates the impact of the intermediariesthe "glue" of putting applications together. Chapters look at ways to address traffic, delays in network clustering, and the coexistence of a WSN with other systems on a frequency band. The final section of the book delves into experiences with applications in chemical sensing, defense, global trade and security, and ecosystem monitoring. Although these applications may fail the purist definition of an ideal WSN, they offer valuable lessons for the future development and deployment of WSNs. Challenge Your Thinking about Designing WSN Applications Emphasizing the need to build applications, the contributors present examples of what applications of WSNs could look like and identify the constraints. Throughout, the book challenges and illuminates your thinking about how to tame the complexity of designing a WSN application. It is essential reading for anyone interested in future wireless technologies.


Abstract. Heterogeneous ice nucleation on solid ammonium sulfate and glutaric acid particles was studied using optical microscopy and Raman spectroscopy. Optical microscopy was used to detect selective nucleation events as water vapor was slowly introduced into an environmental sample cell. Particles that nucleated ice were dried via sublimation and examined in detail using Raman spectroscopy. Depositional ice nucleation is highly selective and occurred preferentially on just a few ammonium sulfate and glutaric acid particles in each sample. For freezing temperatures between 214 K and 235 K an average ice saturation ratio of S = 1.10±0.07 for solid ammonium sulfate was observed. Over the same temperature range, S values observed for ice nucleation on glutaric acid particles increased from 1.2 at 235 K to 1.6 at 218 K. Experiments with externally mixed particles further show that ammonium sulfate is a more potent ice nucleus than glutaric acid. Our results suggest that heterogeneous nucleation on ammonium sulfate may be an important pathway for atmospheric ice nucleation and cirrus cloud formation when solid ammonium sulfate aerosol particles are available for ice formation. This pathway for ice formation may be particularly significant near the tropical tropopause region where sulfates are abundant and other species known to be good ice nuclei are depleted.


Introduction: With respect to importance of preventing osteoporosis in women and the lack of a standard questionnaire in this context, the aim of this study was planning and Psychometric assessment of nutritional preventive treatment of osteoporosis in women based on protection motivation theory. Materials & methods: In this crosssectional study a questionnaire was designed by using evaluation of scientific resources and need assessment of beliefs based on protection motivation theory, which its validity was determined by face and content validity, and its reliability was determined by internal consistency and testretest. Spss version 15 and Amos version 21 were used to analyze the data collected. Findings: After validity and reliability processes, the 54item questionnaire was designed. Content validity index appeared 0.88, as well as results of construct validity assessment by using Amos software analysis showed AGFI = 0.964, and RMSE = 0.072. Cronbach's alpha results (α=0.94) and ICC (0.91) conformed the reliability of the instrument. Discussion & conclusions: According to the results, the questionnaire was provided based on protection motivation theory, which has approved after validity and reliability evaluation, and it is recommended to be used in future related researches.


OBJECTIVES: To study factors affecting the occurrence of exercise induced bronchospasm (EIB) in elite runners. METHODS: Fifty eight elite runners, 79% of them belonging to Finnish national teams, volunteered. The athletes answered a questionnaire on respiratory symptoms. Skin prick tests were used to investigate atopy, and spirometry to examine lung function at rest and after an exercise challenge test (ECT) at subzero temperature in the winter and after a similar ECT in the summer at the end of the birch pollen season. RESULTS: Definitive EIB (a post-exercise reduction of 10% or more in forced expiratory volume in one second (FEV1) was observed in five (9%) of the 58 runners. A subgroup consisting of 19 non-atopic symptom-free runners with no family history of asthma was used to establish a normal range for post-exercise reduction in FEV1. When this group's mean exercise induced change in FEV1 minus 2 SDs (a reduction of 6.5% or more in FEV1) was taken as the lower limit of the reference range, 15 (26%) of the runners had probable EIB in either the winter or the pollen season. The occurrence of probable EIB depended on atopy (odds ratio increased with number of positive skin prick test reactions, p < 0.05). Nine (22%) of the 41 runners, challenged in both the winter and the pollen season, had probable EIB only in the winter, and three (7%) had it only in the pollen season. Only one runner (2%) had EIB in both tests. CONCLUSIONS: Mild EIB is common in Finnish elite runners and is strongly associated with atopy. Seasonal variability affects the occurrence of EIB, and thus exercise testing should be performed in both cold winter air and the pollen season to detect EIB in elite runners.