This thesis deals with processing of nanocellulose originating from pulps, with focus on mechanical pulp fibres and fines fractions. The nanocellulose materials produced within this research project were tested for different purposes ranging from strength additives in paper and paperboard products, via composite films to foam materials. TAPPI (Technical Association of Pulp & Paper Industry) has recently suggested a standard terminology and nomenclature for nanocellulose materials (see paper I). In spite of that we have decided to use the terms nano-ligno-cellulose (NLC), microfibrillated cellulose (MFC), nanofibrillated cellulose (NFC) and nanocellulose (NC) in this thesis . It is well-known that mainly chemical pulps are used as starting material in nanocellulose production. However, chemical pulps as bleached sulphite and bleached kraft are quite expensive. One more cost-effective alternative can be to use fibres or fines fractions from thermo-mechanical pulp (TMP) and chemi-thermomechanical pulp (CTMP). In paper II-IV, fractionation has been used to obtain fines fractions that can easily be mechanically treated using homogenisation. The idea with this study was to investigate the possibility to use fractions of low quality materials from fines fractions for the production of nanocellulose. The integration of a nanocellulose unit process in a high-yield pulping production line has a potential to become a future way to improve the quality level of traditional products such as paper and paperboard grades. Paper III describes how to utilise the crill measurement technique as a tool for qualitative estimation of the amount of micro- and nano-material produced in a certain process. The crill values of TMP- and CTMP-based nanocelluloses were measured as a function of the homogenisation time. Results showed that the crill values of both TMP-NLC and CTMP-NLC correlated with the homogenisation time. In Paper V pretreating methods, hydrogen peroxide and TEMPO are evaluated. Crill measurement showed that hydrogen peroxide pretreatment (1% and 4%) and mechanical treatment time did not improve fibrillation efficiency as much as expected. However, for TEMPO-oxidised nanocelluloses, the crill value significantly increased with both the TEMPO chemical treatment and mechanical treatment time. In paper V-VII TEMPO-mediated oxidation systems (TEMPO/NaBr/NaClO) are applied to these fibres (CTMP and Sulphite pulp) in order to swell them so that it becomes easy to disrupt the fibres into nanofibres with mechanical treatment. The demand for paperboard and other packaging materials are steadily increasing. Paper strength properties are crucial when the paperboard is to withstand high load. A solution that are investigated in papers IV and VI, is to use MFC as an alternative paper strength additive in papermaking. However, if one wish to target extremely higher strength improvement results, particularly for packaging paperboards, then it would be fair to use MFC or cationic starch (CS). In paper VI CS or TEMPO-based MFC was used to improve the strength properties of CTMP-based paperboard products. Results here indicate significant strength improvement with the use of different levels of CS (i.e., 20 and 10 kg t–1) and 5% MFC. The strengthening impact of 5% MFC was approximately equal to that of 10 kg t–1 of CS. In paper VII, NFC and nanographite (NG) was used when producing composite films with enhanced sheet-resistance and mechanical properties. The films produced being quite stable, flexible, and bendable. Realising this concept of NFC-NG composite film would create new possibilities for technological advancement in the area of high-yield pulp technology. Finally, in paper VIII, a new processing method for nanocellulose is introduced where an organic acid (i.e., formic acid) is used. This eco-friendly approach has shown to be successful, a nanocellulose with a uniform size distribution has been produced.


The MLA Report (2007) accords considerable weight to the role of culture in a transformed approach to language education in the U.S. and outlines "one possible model" for developing transculturalunderstanding that involves the interpretation of the "cultural narratives" inherent in all forms of cultural representation (p. 238). How exactly students might be engaged in interpreting cultural narratives in the foreign language classroom, though, remains to be further specified, imagined, practiced, and studied. Moreover, expanding this model of culture-in-language education to include active production and negotiation of meaning around cultural narratives, in addition to interpretation of these, has important pedagogical and learning implications. This paper highlights how engagement with historical narratives is a natural site for the kinds of interpretive and meaning-making practicesthat foster the deep cultural learning discussed in the MLA's report. Reporting data from an ethnographic, discourse-analytic study of a university-level French classroom, this paper illustratesthat through the instructional environment created by the teacher and through the students' engagement in class activities, many rich opportunities for perspective-taking from multiple points ofview were made available to students, ultimately weaving a dense web of meanings around French experiences of World War II. Close analysis of excerpts from classroom interaction show how aconstellation of instructional features and patterns of student engagement allowed the class to access the repertoire of more or less plausible storylines attached to this historical period and to practice with interpreting perspectives embedded in cultural texts. Interview data further highlight both the challenges and great potential of inviting multiple perspectives and voices into culture pedagogy in the foreign language classroom.


The challenge of knowing one's position in a precise and reliable way, at any time, with and without reception of satellite signals, represents an area fairly explored for the navigation of vehicles. To widen this service to the pedestrians requires a different approach that adapts to the dynamics, to the speed and especially to the total freedom of movement of the people. The traditional approach implements a triad of accelerometers and gyroscopes, which signals are integrated to obtain the relative displacement. This concept is unfortunately not judicious for a low-cost system. The principal reason is that the speed of displacement of a person is lost in the sensor noise level. In order to take into account all these specificities, an occurential approach was developed, based upon a subset of sensors as well as physiological and biomechanical parameters of the walk. This research is divided into three main directions. The first area of interest consists in the determination of the physiological parameters necessary to quantify the speed of walk and the step length. While the agitation of the accelerometer signals is a good speedometer, the frequency of the steps improves the robustness of the models. The influence of the gender added to the great human diversity imply the normalisation of the various relations deduced. Many tests carried out under conditions of everyday life reveal that the variation of the stride length, especially with the slope, strongly depends on the physical training of the person as well as on the duration of the climb or descent. Characteristic pattern were identified to differentiate between the forward, backward and lateral movements. The various suggested models were then favourably tested with some blind people, whose walking rhythm strongly varies according to the degree of confidence they have towards the course. The second part directly relates to the multiple technologies integrated to build an autonomous three-dimensional Pedestrian Navigation Module (PNM). The knowledge of the terrestrial magnetic field and its orientation makes it possible to determine the azimuth of displacement of a person. The use of a gyroscope improves the reliability of the system and facilitates the detection of magnetic disturbances. More stable in the short term than the compass, it is therefore the optimal complement under such circumstances. The altimetric information is obtained by barometric measurements which, according to the required precision, can be differential. The implementation of a GPS receiver allows the absolute positioning simultaneously to the calibration of the different sensor parameters and physiological models. The third part describes the integration of the models and measurements as well as the characteristics and treatments specific to pedestrian navigation. An initialisation phase is presented to individualize the parameters of the walk and adapt them from the general model. Hence, thanks to the compass-gyroscope integration together with the detection of any movement, this allows an optimal determination and filtering of the azimuth that has little or no temporal degradation. The consideration of several phenomena specific to the displacements of the humans brings artificial intelligence in pedestrian navigation. The coupling of the various sources of measurements, the influence of their precision on the computed position as well as their implication on the PNM reliability are described and illustrated. More than 550 km covered in various circumstances by 31 people allowed to validate the presented approach while fixing its limits.


Produced with the support of the Environment Agency, Environmental Law Handbook, Fourth Edition is a handy compilation of every major statute, statutory instrument and section of EU legislation connected with environmental law. Produced with the support of the Environment Agency, the fourth edition contains a raft of new legislation and statutory guidance as well as all legislation that has remained current since publication of the previous edition in 2003. Quick access to every part of the law Environmental Law Handbook is arranged in five parts to ensure each area of the law is easy to access. These cover statutes, statutory Instruments, statutory guidance, EU materials and international law. Within each part the material is arranged chronologically, whilst an index guides you to the relevant provisions on particular topics. Comprehensive content Key legislation included in the fourth edition includes: Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981; Environmental Protection Act 1990; Water Industry Act 1991 and Water Resources Act 1991; Human Rights Act 1998; Pollution Prevention and Control Act 1999; Clean Neighbourhoods Act 2005; Natural Environment and Rural Communities Act 2006; Climate Change Act 2008; Regulatory Enforcement and Sanctions Act 2008.. Environmental Law Handbook, Fourth Edition is the only single set compendium of all requisite statutory material on environmental law available. As such it is an indispensable companion for environmental lawyers (barristers and solicitors) in private practice, in-house legal departments, local government, central government and government agencies. It is also a very helpful reference source for environmental consultants, companies with a large environmental footprint, water and sewerage companies, universities, environmental insurance brokers and environmental underwriters. Previous edition ISBN: 9780406945334


The need to reform health care in the U.S. is evidenced by exorbitant costs that for many patients, fails to produce better outcomes (McCarthy, How, Fryer, Radley, & Schoen, 2011). Provisions within the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) intend to decrease spending while enhancing the quality of care provided, thus improving patient satisfaction. Notably, the PPACA promotes the patient-centered medical home (PCMH), a model of health care in which a team of practitioners coordinate care for each patient as to ensure that all health needs are addressed (PPACA, 2009a, 2009b). The use of the PCMH model has major implications for many behavioral health providers who have historically provided care in isolation, without collaboration with medical providers (Kessler, Stafford, & Messier, 2009). To investigate the effects of behavioral health integration within this model, six master's level behavioral health clinicians were interviewed about their experiences delivering services at a PCMH. Themes identified within the interviews included a major shift in practice characterized by intermittent behavioral health treatment. While the sample size of the current study greatly limits generalizability, the findings demand further exploration as to understand the future of behavioral health service delivery in the U.S. CLINICIAN PERSPECTIVES OF BEHAVIORAL HEALTH SERVICE DELIVERY IN PATIENT-CENTERED MEDICAL HOMES A project based upon an independent investigation, submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Social Work. Melanie Cox 2015 Smith College School for Social Work Northampton, Massachusetts 01063


Abstract Inequality is the defining feature of our times. Many argue that it calls for a policy response, yet the most obvious policy responses require legislative action. And if inequality is the defining feature of our times, partisan acrimony and gridlock are the defining features of the legislature. That being so, it is worth considering what role administrative agencies, and administrative law, might play in ameliorating or exacerbating economic inequality. Here, I focus on American safety net programs, many of which are joint operations between federal administrative agencies and state governments. In this context, a central mode of bureaucratic policy innovation comes in the form of administrative waivers, whereby a federal administrative agency waives some statutory requirement that is otherwise binding on state administrators. For example, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services recently granted waivers to allow several states to impose various "personal responsibility" requirements on Medicaid beneficiaries. Faced with a choice between legislative inactivity and policy innovation through waivers, many scholars and policymakers of both parties have tended to favor waivers. The appeal of waivers as a path around legislative gridlock is compelling. However, I argue that this view has neglected the federal structure of American safety net programs, and does not account for the state politics of implementation. Moreover, scholars have not focused on the severe information problems that federal agencies face when issuing waivers; a permissive waiver regime exacerbates these problems. Focusing on Medicaid implementation, I highlight the risks of waivers for American safety net programs. Before concluding, I discuss possible reforms to administrative procedures, and offer a case study of litigation surrounding one recent waiver application. The case study illustrates many of the theoretical arguments, and further demonstrates the failure of judicial review; it indicates how review might be adjusted to promote more effective use of waivers and diminish their perils.


In search of critical genes in the mechanism of estrogen action in human breast cancer, we previously showed that estrogen stimulates transcription of the c-myc gene in estrogen-dependent (MCF-7) cells. We have now examined the role of c-myc in estrogen-stimulated growth of MCF-7 cells through the use of a synthetic antisense c-myc phosphorothioate oligonucleotide to specifically inhibit expression of the c-myc protein. Estrogen induces a 5-fold increase in c-myc protein expression within 90 min in steroid-deprived cells, as detected by Western blot. Prior exposure of MCF-7 cells to 10 microM c-myc antisense oligonucleotide results in up to 95% inhibition of the c-myc protein expression induced by estrogen. Antisense-myc oligonucleotide inhibits estrogen-stimulated cell growth by up to 75% over 9 days and also exerts a cytostatic effect on the growth of estrogen-independent MDA-MB-231 cells which show relatively high, constitutive expression of c-myc. Sense-myc and antisense-pS2 oligonucleotides have no effect on c-myc protein level or growth in either cell line. These results demonstrate both the specific and durable effects of antisense phosphorothioate oligonucleotides. Furthermore, these results indicate a critical role for c-myc in the growth of breast cancer cells and support the hypothesis that loss of estrogen regulation of this gene may be an important factor in the progression of breast cancer.


The processing of continuous and complex auditory signals such as speech relies on the ability to use statistical cues (e.g. transitional probabilities). In this study, participants heard short auditory sequences composed either of Italian syllables or bird songs and completed a regularity-rating task. Behaviorally, participants were better at differentiating between levels of regularity in the syllable sequences than in the bird song sequences. Inter-individual differences in sensitivity to regularity for speech stimuli were correlated with variations in surface-based cortical thickness (CT). These correlations were found in several cortical areas including regions previously associated with statistical structure processing (e.g. bilateral superior temporal sulcus, left precentral sulcus and inferior frontal gyrus), as well other regions (e.g. left insula, bilateral superior frontal gyrus/sulcus and supramarginal gyrus). In all regions, this correlation was positive suggesting that thicker cortex is related to higher sensitivity to variations in the statistical structure of auditory sequences. Overall, these results suggest that inter-individual differences in CT within a distributed network of cortical regions involved in statistical structure processing, attention and memory is predictive of the ability to detect structural structure in auditory speech sequences.


Purpose Observational population-based research is a very suitable non-invasive method for studies in the vulnerable populations of pregnant women and children. Therefore, the PHARMO Perinatal Research Network (PPRN) was set up as a resource for life course perinatal and paediatric research by linking population-based data from existing registrations. Participants From 1999 to 2017, the PPRN captures approximately 542 900 pregnancies of 387 100 mothers ('Pregnancy Cohort'). Additionally, mother–child linkage is currently available for a quarter of these pregnancies ('Child Cohort'). The PPRN contains preconceptional information on maternal healthcare, as well as detailed pregnancy and neonatal data, extending into long-term follow-up and outcomes after birth for both mother and child up to nearly 20 years. It includes linked data from different primary and secondary healthcare settings. Findings to date Through record linkage of the Netherlands Perinatal Registry and the PHARMO Database Network, we have established a large population-based research network including data on demographics, medication use, medical conditions and details concerning labour, birth and neonatal outcomes. Here, we provide an overview of record types available from the PPRN, available database follow-up and pregnancy characteristics of the PPRN cohorts. The PPRN has been used for a number of different pharmacoepidemiological studies, for example, to confirm that preterm-born infants were more likely than full-term infants to be hospitalised or use medication. Similar long-term comparisons showed that children born following spontaneous preterm labour were at increased risk of neurodevelopmental and respiratory conditions. Most recently, the PPRN provided important evidence on the trends in use of potentially harmful medication during pregnancy. Future plans The PPRN provides a unique and rich data set facilitating large-scale observational pharmacoepidemiological perinatal research. The patient-level linkage of many different healthcare data sources allows for long-term follow-up of mother and child, with ongoing annual updates.


Background/introduction Desquamative inflammatory vaginitis (DIV) is an uncommon condition characterised by florid vaginal inflammation causing vaginal discharge, vulval pain and dyspareunia. Microscopy typically shows absent vaginal flora, numerous polymorphs and immature parabasal cells with no mature epithelia. The pathogenesis of DIV is currently unknown but may involve tissue kallikrein-related peptidases which are regulated by sex hormones and corticosteroids. Case-1: 35-year-old trans-man on testosterone for 18-months presenting with yellow vaginal discharge, vestibular pain and dyspareunia. Examination revealed vaginal inflammation and mucopurulent discharge. Microscopy was typical of DIV. He was treated with intravaginal clindamycin reporting a good response. Case-2: 26-year-old trans-man on testosterone for 7-years presenting with vaginal discharge, dyspareunia and post-coital bleeding. Examination revealed inflamed friable vaginal mucosa. Microscopy findings were typical of DIV and he started treatment with intravaginal clindamycin (partial-response) and switched to intravaginal prednisolone. Case 3: 20-year-old trans-man with vaginal discharge and post-coital bleeding who started testosterone 6-months earlier. Examination and microscopy findings were typical of DIV. He commenced treatment with intravaginal clindamycin (partial-response) and switched to intravaginal prednisolone. Case 4: 19-year-old trans-man on testosterone for 9-months presenting with vaginal pain and bleeding. Examination and microscopy were typical of DIV. He started treatment with intravaginal clindamycin (partial-response) and switched to intravaginal prednisolone. Discussion We present four cases of DIV in trans-men possibly associated with androgens responding to intravaginal clindamycin and steroids. As well as causing significant morbidity DIV may increase transmission of sexually-transmitted-infections in trans-men: we need to understand more about its aetiology, management and long term outcomes.


This paper introduces the new grammar formalism of Extensible Dependency Grammar (XDG), and emphasizes the benefits of its methodology of explaining complex phenomena by interaction of simple principles on multiple dimensions of linguistic description. This has the potential to increase modularity with respect to linguistic description and grammar engineering, and to facilitate concurrent processing and the treatment of ambiguity.


Growth and democracy (subjective indexes of political freedom) are analyzed for a panel of about 100 countries from 1960 to 1990. The favorable effects on growth include maintenance of the rule of law, free markets, small government consumption, and high human capital. Once these kinds of variables and the initial level of real per-capita GDP are held constant, the overall effect of democracy on growth is weakly negative. There is a suggestion of a nonlinear relationship in which democracy enhances growth at low levels of political freedom but depresses growth when a moderate level of freedom has already been attained. Improvements in the standard of living - measured by GDP, life expectancy, and education - substantially raise the probability that political freedoms will grow. These results allow for predictions about which countries will become more or less democratic in the future.


Abstract This paper presents findings from a study investigating young English language learners (YELLs) in Sweden in 4th grade (N = 76, aged 10–11). Data were collected with the help of a questionnaire and a one-week language diary. The main purpose was to examine the learners' L2 English language-related activities outside of school in general, and their use of computers and engagement in playing digital games in particular. A comparison is made between language-related activities in English, Swedish, and other languages. Another purpose was to see whether there is a relationship between playing digital games and (a) gender, (b) L1, (c) motivation for learning English, (d) self-assessed English ability, and (e) self-reported strategies for speaking English. In order to do so, the sample was divided into three digital game groups, (1) non-gamers, (2) moderate, and (3) frequent gamers (≥4 hours/week), based on diary data (using self-reported times for playing digital games in English). Results showed that YELLs are extensively involved in extramural English (EE) activities (M = 7.2 hrs/w). There are statistically significant gender differences, boys (11.5 hrs/w) and girls (5.1 hrs/w; p < .01), the reason being boys' greater time investment in digital gaming and watching films. The girls, on the other hand, spent significantly more time on pastime language-related activities in Swedish (11.5 hrs/w) than the boys (8.0 hrs/w; p < .05), the reason being girls' greater time investment in facebooking. Investigation of the digital game groups revealed that group (1) was predominantly female, (2) a mix, and (3) predominantly male. YELLs with an L1 other than Swedish were overrepresented in group (3). Motivation and self-assessed English ability were high across all groups. Finally, regarding the self-reported strategies, code-switching to one's L1 was more commonly reported by non- and moderate gamers than frequent gamers.


Christine M. Menold A STUDY OF THE RELATIONSHIPS BETWEEN ORAL COMPREHENSION AND SILENT READING COMPREHENSION 2003/2004 Dr. Stanley Urban Master of Arts in Learning Disabilities The purpose of this study is to compare the relationship between the comprehension levels of a student's silent reading level to their oral comprehension level when a passage is read to them. It will also address the theory that reading is a visual symbol system superimposed on auditory language. Theorists state that reading is a symbol system twice removed from the realities, which they represent. This statement implies a developmental progression as described by Myklebust. That is, the child first integrates nonverbal experience directly. Next he acquires auditory, then later a visual verbal system which represents both the experience and the auditory symbol. By working on improving reading we are assuming a higher level of oral comprehension. The individuals who will participate in this study are 20 special education students from this researcher's middle school. The 15 males and 5 females, ranging in age from 14 years 3 months to 10 years 4 months have been selected as a convenience group (N=20) from three self-contained special education classes ranging from grades fifth through eighth. Ten of these students, ranging from fifth to seventh grade, have been students of this researcher's class since September, 2003 will be identified as a treatment group. The participants were selected because they are readily available to this examiner. The population of interest is all special education classes in this examiner's school. Generalization of results will be to this population. Data obtained from the Stanford Diagnostic Reading Test. Fourth Edition, (SDRT 4) as well as the Jerry John's Basic Reading Inventory, (JJBRI) were utilized in both the pre and post reading testing. The participants were from both this examiner's class and two self-contained classes. Using the students levels of reading the five components of a balanced reading program were implemented in this researchers classroom throughout the week's lessons. The five basic components which are: (1) Read aloud, (2) Shared reading, (3) Guided reading and writing, (4) Paired/cooperative Reading and Writing, and (5) Independent Reading and Writing, were used by this researcher to strengthen as well as maintain reading comprehension skills of the students. Five generalized competencies, which are also necessary for a student to acquire self-confidence and motivation in learning reading were taught. The five competencies are: (1) fluency, (2) word knowledge, (3) flexible strategy use, (4) motivation, and (5) continued reading. The post reading assessments were given at the end of March, 2004 to the eighteen remaining students who were left following transfers. The reading prompt was identical to the prompt given to the study group in September 2003. Results showed minimal improvement in reading ability.


From Plato through the nineteenth century, the West could draw on comprehensive political visions to guide government and society. Now, for the first time in more than two thousand years, Tracy B. Strong contends, we have lost our foundational supports. In the words of Hannah Arendt, the state of political thought in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries has left us effectively "thinking without a banister." Politics without Vision takes up the thought of seven influential thinkers, each of whom attempted to construct a political solution to this problem: Nietzsche, Weber, Freud, Lenin, Schmitt, Heidegger, and Arendt. None of these theorists were liberals nor, excepting possibly Arendt, were they democrats—and some might even be said to have served as handmaidens to totalitarianism. And all to a greater or lesser extent shared the common conviction that the institutions and practices of liberalism are inadequate to the demands and stresses of the present times. In examining their thought, Strong acknowledges the political evil that some of their ideas served to foster but argues that these were not necessarily the only paths their explorations could have taken. By uncovering the turning points in their thought—and the paths not taken—Strong strives to develop a political theory that can avoid, and perhaps help explain, the mistakes of the past while furthering the democratic impulse. Confronting the widespread belief that political thought is on the decline, Strong puts forth a brilliant and provocative counterargument that in fact it has endured—without the benefit of outside support. A compelling rendering of contemporary political theory, Politics without Vision is sure to provoke discussion among scholars in many fields.


We describe the design and implementation of a system for executing search-and-replace text processing tasks automatically, based only on examples of the desired behavior. The examples consist of pairs describing the original string and the desired modified string. Their construction, thus, does not require any specific technical skill. The system constructs a solution to the specified task that can be used unchanged on popular existing software for text processing. The solution consists of a search pattern coupled with a replacement expression: the former is a regular expression which describes both the strings to be replaced and their portions to be reused in the latter, which describes how to build the modified strings. Our proposed system is internally based on genetic programming and implements a form of cooperative coevolution in which two separate populations are evolved independently, one for search patterns and the other for replacement expressions. We assess our proposal on six tasks of realistic complexity obtaining very good results, both in terms of absolute quality of the solutions and with respect to the challenging baselines considered.


When the systems evolved from analog to digital, the performance was improved by the use of power control on the one hand and different modulations and coding schemes on the other. Condensing the available information we are able to propose a new concept of power control. The concept is applicable to real systems, since it uses the available measurements for estimating parameters necessary for the power control. It also supports the use of an adequate quality measure together with a quality specification supplied by the operator. We use frequency hopping GSM as an example and the resulting control algorithm is ready for implementation in the software in the base stations where the output powers are computed. No modifications are needed in the GSM standard, the mobile terminals, the radio interfaces or in the base station transmitters. Finally we provide simulation results confirming the benefits of using the new concept for power control.


We present a patient who was admitted with status migrainosus caused by spontaneous bilateral carotid dissection. Cervical artery dissection commonly presents with headache and neck pain, usually of sudden onset or of different characteristic in patients with a history of primary headache. Occasionally, artery dissection mimics a migraine attack; yet, its presentation as a status migrainosus has not been reported so far. J Med Cases. 2014;5(9):502-504 doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.14740/jmc1306w


OBJECTIVE
To study the efficacy of synthetic 1,25 dihydroxyvitamin D3 (calcitriol) in the treatment of osteoporosis.

DESIGN
Two-year, double-blind, randomized clinical trial.

SETTING
University medical center.

PATIENTS
Fifty postmenopausal women with vertebral fractures recruited by referral.

INTERVENTION
Calcium intake was adjusted to 25 mmol/d (1000 mg/d) at baseline. Patients were then randomized to treatment with either calcitriol or placebo. During the study, calcium intake was reduced to 15 mmol/d (600 mg/d) and the dose of calcitriol was adjusted to maintain serum calcium less than 2.74 mmol/L (less than 11.0 mg/dL) or urine calcium less than 9.96 mmol/d (less than 400 mg/d).

MEASUREMENTS AND MAIN RESULTS
After 2 years, the mean dose of calcitriol in the treated group was 0.62 micrograms/d. Bone mineral density of the spine increased 1.94% with calcitriol therapy and decreased 3.92% with placebo (P = 0.001). Total body calcium increased 0.21% with calcitriol therapy and decreased 1.85% with placebo (P = 0.004). Patients receiving placebo had significant decreases in spine density (P = 0.0007) and total body calcium (P = 0.0004). There were no differences in vertebral fracture rates between the groups. Renal function studies were not statistically different between the groups after 2 years.

CONCLUSION
The treatment of postmenopausal osteoporotic women with synthetic calcitriol for 2 years was associated with increases in spine density and total body calcium. No adverse effects on renal function were seen after long-term calcitriol therapy.


Introduction Recent changes in the global economy have not come about in the manner envisaged a generation ago. Production and distribution are being organized in accordance with decentralized, private-sector patterns coordinated by the market, rather than in a centralized manner by interventionist governments. Though this would indicate a reduced role for governments, the privatization process demonstrates that governments are still significant actors. In a narrow sense, privatization implies merely a shift in economic activity from the public to the private sector with changes in the composition of ownership. More broadly, however, it creates new processes and priorities for governments. Through their policymaking and regulatory roles, governments can enhance the private sector's ability to respond to the demands of a globally integrated economy. Moreover, with growing economic interaction between nations, there is an increasing need for international intermediaries. International organizations and institutions, such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank, the World Trade Organization (WTO) and the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), long seen as relevant to only one of the blocs of the divided world, are becoming the backbone of a single, universally accepted world economic system in which partnerships replace confrontation. In this brief essay, I examine how the trend toward global economic liberalization has raised new questions about the changing responsibilities of governments, and the expanding role and new directions of international organizations. The privatization process illustrates that, despite a reduced presence in the marketplace, governments have much to contribute toward efficient economic management. In addition, international organizations can further enhance governments' abilities to encourage growth through the establishment of global coordination and norms for state behavior. The Role of Governments There is no question that governments have the potential to strengthen an economy's capacity to respond to a more market-oriented, integrated world. To meet international demand, governments can stimulate, facilitate and support the development of competitive enterprises, as well as enhance the linkages between investment, production, trade and technology. They are able to do so in three ways: as a confidence builder, a catalytic agent and a mediating agent. As a confidence builder, governments can encourage households to save or consume, entrepreneurs to set up businesses and investors to move forward in productive activities. Governments also have the ability to create the necessary macroeconomic and market conditions to mobilize savings that can be transformed into long-term lending for enterprise development. Governments may reduce commercial, financial and investment risks associated with sharp tax increases, interest rate adjustments or currency movements that undermine confidence in a national currency as a store of value. Additionally, governments are able to stimulate the development of necessary physical infrastructure and human resources, as well as to establish a favorable legal and commercial framework for developing efficient financial markets, technological capabilities and competitive enterprises. As a catalytic agent, governments are able to stimulate entrepreneurship and enterprise development among private-sector firms. Governments must provide appropriate incentives for business start-ups and the retention of earnings for technological research and development. Policy-based, specialized lending programs encourage the development of small and medium enterprises (SMEs) and the cultivation of their linkages with larger or export-oriented enterprises. One of government's most important catalytic tools is its sponsorship of regulatory reforms. Economic and legal reforms can generate enterprise competition in both input and output markets by leveling the playing field to encourage business start-ups, thereby stimulating wealth creation. …


. We investigate spherically symmetric cosmological models in Einstein-aether theory with a tilted (non-comoving) perfect fluid source. We use a 1+3 frame formalism and adopt the comoving aether gauge to derive the evolution equations, which form a well-posed system of first order partial differential equations in two variables. We then introduce normalized variables. The formalism is particularly well-suited for numerical computations and the study of the qualitative properties of the models, which are also solutions of Horava gravity. We study the local stability of the equilibrium points of the resulting dynamical system corresponding to physically realistic inhomogeneous cosmological models and astrophysical objects with values for the parameters which are consistent with current constraints. In particular, we consider dust models in ( β − ) normalized variables and derive a reduced (closed) evolution system and we obtain the general evolution equations for the spatially homogeneous Kantowski-Sachs models using appropriate bounded normalized variables. We then analyse these models, with special emphasis on the future asymptotic behaviour for different values of the parameters. Finally, we investigate static models for a mixture of a (necessarily non-tilted) perfect fluid with a barotropic equations of state and a scalar field.


ABSTRACT The monopolization of academic journal publishers concentrates power and valuable information into the hands of a few players in the marketplace. It has detrimental effects on how information flows and is accessed. This, in turn, has profound effects on how a nation progresses. Placed in a theoretical framework, utilizing the marketplace of ideas and the economies that coincide, this article takes a look at the history of Elsevier in order to chart this course toward monopolization. It exhibits the effect it has already had on the academic community, while offering two models of Open Access as a much sounder option.


The aim of the Psychology Department is to provide students with an understanding of human behavior that will support their ability to add to scientific knowledge, to help others, and to participate as informed members of our society. One path to this goal involves mastery of the theoretical concepts psychologists use in describing and understanding behavior; the other involves competence in the use of the scientific methodologies employed in the study of behavior. We emphasize the importance of both concepts and methods across diverse topic areas within psychology, including biological, cognitive, social, personality, and culture.


Towards the latter stages of World War I, Mohandas K Gandhi urged Indian peasants to take up arms on behalf of the British. This alienated his liberal pacifist supporters in Europe who were aghast that the apostle of non-violence had seemingly disavowed his own teachings. But Gandhi, during his South African sojourn from 1893-1914, had openly declared his enthusiasm to support the British Empire in its attempts to assume hegemony in the region. He participated on the side of the British in the brutal South African War of 1899-1902 and in their violent suppression of the Zulu uprising in 1906. Alongside this, he formulated his ideas of Satyagraha. This article traces Gandhi's South African years from 1893 to 1914 and seeks to make sense of the apparent contradiction of his taking up arms on behalf of the Raj during the war. This is done in the context of his attachment to the Empire.


Ectopic pregnancy is a common and serious problem, with a significant morbidity rate and the potential for maternal death. The earlier diagnosis of unruptured ectopic pregnancy allows the use of more conservative treatment options. Medical treatment with methotrexate (MTX) has become a safe and effective means of treating ectopic pregnancy. Methotrexate, a folic acid antagonist, acts by inhibiting the metabolism of folic acid. Methotrexate stops the growth of rapidly dividing cells, such as embryonic, fetal, and early placenta cells. There are two commonly used MTX treatment protocols – single and multidose regimens. With proper patient selection, success rate approach 90%.


The growing proportion of UK bank lending to the financial sector reached a peak in 2007 just before the onset of the Global Financial Crisis (GFC). This marks a trend in the dwindling amount of bank lending to private sector non-financial corporations (PNFCs), which was exacerbated with the Great Recession. Many central banks aimed to revive bank lending with quantitative easing (QE) and unconventional monetary policy. We propose an agent based computational economics (ACE) model which combines the main factors in the economic environment of QE and Basel regulatory framework to analyse why UK banks do not prioritize lending to non-financial businesses. The lower bond yields caused by QE encourage big firms to substitute away from bank borrowing to bond issuance. In addition, the risk weight regime of Basel I/II on capital induces banks to favour mortgages over business loans to small and medium enterprises (SMEs). The combination of lower bond yields and Basel II/III capital requirements on banks, which, respectively, impact demand and supply of credit in the UK, plays a role in the drop of bank loans to businesses. The ACE model aims to reinstate policy regimes that form constraints and incentives for the behaviour of market participants to provide the causal factors in observed macro-economic phenomena.


The last one hundred years has seen a great deal of research on hookworm disease (Ankylostomiasis). But the literature is still characterized by a lack of consensus regarding the etiology of the disease and its patterns of transmission. Parasitologists still seem to disagree as to the perceived benefits of sanitation and footwear in reducing the incidence of infection. The relationship between urbanization and the decreasing incidence of infection, or alternatively the role of plantation work and human-manure-farming in the spread of hookworm disease, are still poorly understood or inadequately appreciated. This article proposes that behind most hookworm epidemics that have emerged in human history in the last one-hundred-to-two-hundred years, the constant factor has been density of population, not the type of occupation or agricultural work as has been proposed by some parasitologists. With the exception of human-manure-farming induced hookworm disease in China, which possibly dates back to ancient times and is transmitted by the use of human manure as a fertilizer, the outbreaks of hookworm disease that were documented in the mines of Europe and North America, the plantations of India and the Caribbean, and indigenous settlements in Australia at the turn of the twentieth century were due to changes promoted by capitalism and the concentration of larger numbers of people in confined areas that lacked appropriate sanitation. But as the article also shows, the decreasing incidence of hookworm infection in parts of the world where the disease was once rife seems to be related to increasing levels of urban development in these societies. Key words: hookworm disease, defecation habits, population density, capitalist development, epidemics.


Since his famous discussions with Niels Bohr, Albert Einstein considered quantum entanglement (QE) as a spooky action at a distance, due to the violation of locality necessary so that two entangled particles can share this effect in an instantaneous way despite of being at a great distance from each other, i.e., not being local. In other words, a notification about the change of state in one of them could only cover the space that separates them at a speed superior to that of light, which we know is impossible according to the Theory of Relativity (TR). Besides, QE faces directly the two main pillars of Physics: TR and Quantum Theory (QT); becoming the bone of contention between both theories. Quite the contrary, in this work we will see that QE is the meeting point of both theories, so much so, that QE could be considered as the cornerstone of the Theory of Everything (TOE). Consistent with this, the entangled particles retain certain autonomy unknown to date, and in addition, they will have relativistically entangled alter-egos, which will hold the effect even when the original entangled particles are extremely separated from each other. These alter-egos can be considered as black holes (with their corresponding temperature and entropy) giving rise to a wormhole. This is possible since the locality dilates according to the Lorentz factor, which is accompanied by a contraction in the effective channel and in the temporal delay to cross that channel. All this takes place while space-time is curved (hyperspace) to generate the wormhole between both black holes. In other words, QE is a local effect of infinite range so it does not outpace the speed of light, and therefore QT is a complete theory that does not clash with TR. Finally, everything we have said has direct consequences on the link between entangled particles from the point of view of quantum communications in terms of the channel and its bandwidth, latency, capacity, robustness and security.


Affirmative action policy remains a contentious issue in public debate despite public endorsement by America's leading institutions and validation by the United States Supreme Court. But the decades old disagreement is mired in an unproductive rhetorical stalemate marked by entrenched ideology rather than healthy dialogue. Instead of evolving, racial dialogue about the relevance of race in university admissions and hiring decisions is trapped in a cycle of resentment. In this article, I argue that the stagnation of race preference discourse arises because the basic rhetorical themes advanced by opponents have evolved little over 150 years since the racial reform efforts following the Civil War. Nineteenth-century opponents to the Freedmen's Bureau, Negro citizenship, and Reconstruction era proposals deployed a host of arguments that bear a striking family resemblance to the modern arguments against race preferences. Rhetorical themes advanced by opponents in modern race preference discourse therefore generate resentment and skepticism among proponents because of this odious nineteenth-century pedigree, leading to a conversational impasse.A deepened understanding of this rhetorical pedigree is crucial to restoring public conversation on race preferences. Opponents of race preferences must understand that this pedigree taints the underlying merit of their arguments. Concurrently, proponents must recognize that the advancement of these themes does not automatically signal agreement with nineteenth-century conservative racial norms. Through acknowledgement and understanding, we can stop the retreat into traditional ideologies and meet in the middle for a renewed and meaningful discussion of race preferences. This article begins by discussing four dominant rhetorical themes deployed by opponents in the modern race preference debate, and compares and contrasts those modern arguments with their nineteenth-century counterparts. Next, I discuss the effects of the prevailing modern theme and motivations driving modern policy positions. Finally, I argue that racial progress demands continued dialogue and offer how public conversation on race preferences ought to proceed in the wake of these revelations.


This Article explores the underappreciated role that agency insiders play in directing outside oversight of their employer agencies and, in turn, manipulating agency policy development. Specifically, the Article defines, documents, and evaluates the phenomenon of "soft whistleblowing�? — an agency employee's deliberate, unsanctioned, substantive, and instrumental disclosure of nonpublic information about issues of policy. This phenomenon is ubiquitous but has received no systematic attention in the academic literature. As the Article demonstrates, agency employees regularly engage in soft whistleblowing to congressional staff, journalists, and agency watchdog groups, in an effort to bring outside pressure to bear on their employer agencies to shift policymaking direction. The phenomenon results in a high-volume, employee-generated flow of information out of agencies. This flow has significant implications for the distribution of policymaking power within agencies and for the direction and efficacy of agency oversight. For example, the Article posits that soft whistleblowing empowers those agency professionals whose codes of ethics encourage some information disclosure (engineers are one example), while disempowering agency lawyers, whose code of ethics all but forbids unsanctioned disclosures about their client agencies' activities. With respect to outside oversight, soft whistleblowing increases agency transparency, and strengthens congressional oversight, but undermines so-called "presidential administration.�? Consequently, the activity likely serves a keel-like function, keeping the agency on a relatively steady policymaking course in the face of shifting political winds.


In this dissertation, we investigate jackknife empirical likelihood methods motivated by recent statistics research and other related fields. Computational intensity of empirical likelihood can be significantly reduced by using jackknife empirical likelihood methods without losing computational accuracy and stability. We demonstrate that proposed jackknife empirical likelihood methods are able to handle several challenging and open problems in terms of elegant asymptotic properties and accurate simulation result in finite samples. These interesting problems include ROC curves with missing data, the difference of two ROC curves in two dimensional correlated data, a novel inference for the partial AUC and the difference of two quantiles with one or two samples. In addition, empirical likelihood methodology can be successfully applied to the linear transformation model using adjusted estimation equations. The comprehensive simulation studies on coverage probabilities and average lengths for those topics demonstrate the proposed jackknife empirical likelihood methods have a good performance in finite samples under various settings. Moreover, some related and attractive real problems are studied to support our conclusions. In the end, we provide an extensive discussion about some interesting and feasible ideas based on our jackknife EL procedures for future studies. INDEXWORDS: Empirical likelihood, Transformation model, U-statistics, Jackknife, Partial AUC, Smoothed empirical likelihood, Missing data, ROC curves, Difference of two quantiles. JACKKNIFE EMPIRICAL LIKELIHOOD METHOD AND ITS APPLICATIONS


This thesis presents a thorough and principled investigation into the application of artificial neural networks to the biological monitoring of freshwater. It contains original ideas on the classification and interpretation of benthic macroinvertebrates, and aims to demonstrate their superiority over the biotic systems currently used in the UK to report river water quality. The conceptual basis of a new biological classification system is described, and a full review and analysis of a number of river data sets is presented. The biological classification is compared to the common biotic systems using data from the Upper Trent catchment. This data contained 292 expertly classified invertebrate samples identified to mixed taxonomic levels. The neural network experimental work concentrates on the classification of the invertebrate samples into biological class, where only a subset of the sample is used to form the classification. Other experimentation is conducted into the identification of novel input samples, the classification of samples from different biotopes and the use of prior information in the neural network models. The biological classification is shown to provide an intuitive interpretation of a graphical representation, generated without reference to the class labels, of the Upper Trent data. The selection of key indicator taxa is considered using three different approaches; one novel, one from information theory and one from classical statistical methods. Good indicators of quality class based on these analyses are found to be in good agreement with those chosen by a domain expert. The change in information associated with different levels of identification and enumeration of taxa is quantified. The feasibility of using neural network classifiers and predictors to develop numeric criteria for the biological assessment of sediment contamination in the Great Lakes is also investigated.


We examined the behavioural interactions of a mobile marine predator, the common murre Uria aalge, and its prey in a cold ocean regime in the context of shifting foraging constraints of the predator during various periods of the year. To do this, we explored the scale-dependent distribution patterns of murres in relation to their prey under 2 mobility regimes: (1) during the pre-breeding period when murres can fly and (2) during the post-breeding or moulting period when murres are flightless and are accompanied by flightless juveniles. In addition, we documented for the first time the relative contributions of different prey types in the diets of murres during moult using stable isotopic analysis. Flightless adult and juvenile murres were concentrated on a meso-scale (>100 km) in an area (nursery area) where significantly greater amounts of non-capelin, mainly crustaceans, were located in closely spaced aggregations. Accordingly, flightless murres had variable proportions of fish (capelin Mallotus villosus) and crustaceans in their diet, whereas breeding murres exclusively ate capelin. At fine- and coarse-scales (0.1 to 100 km), murres that could fly during pre-breeding tracked prey at smaller spatial scales (3 to 4 km) than flightless murres (6 to 9 km). We hypothesize that varying mobility regimes and energetic demands (activity levels) of murres during these 2 periods resulted in divergent perceptions of the foraging environment and subsequently in varying tracking scales of prey. This has important implications for the scale of study during different periods of the annual cycle of a predator, when varying constraints and trophic levels may interact to produce diverse behavioural responses to prey distribution and densities.


This book discusses recent developments in semigroup theory and its applications in areas such as operator algebras, operator approximations and category theory. All contributing authors are eminent researchers in their respective fields, from across the world. Their papers, presented at the 2014 International Conference on Semigroups, Algebras and Operator Theory in Cochin, India, focus on recent developments in semigroup theory and operator algebras. They highlight current research activities on the structure theory of semigroups as well as the role of semigroup theoretic approaches to other areas such as rings and algebras. The deliberations and discussions at the conference point to future research directions in these areas. This book presents 16 unpublished, high-quality and peer-reviewed research papers on areas such as structure theory of semigroups, decidability vs. undecidability of word problems, regular von Neumann algebras, operator theory and operator approximations. Interested researchers will find several avenues for exploring the connections between semigroup theory and the theory of operator algebras.


Background/Aim: Gastric cancer (GC) is considered to be a disease of elderly patients. It has been suggested that GC in young adults has more aggressive clinical and pathologic features than in adults. In this study we aimed to evaluate clinical and pathologic features of GC under age 40 years. Patients and Methods: Patients included in this study were those treated and followed up for GC under age 40 years in Ankara Numune Education and Research Hospital from 2002 to 2011. Results: Clinical and pathologic features of 82 patients have been evaluated retrospectively. Of the patients 44 were male (54%) and 38 were (46%) female, and the median age was 35 years (min-max: 18-40 years). The tumor was grade 3 in 77% of the patients, 79% had diffuse type tumor, 64% had lymphovascular invasion, and 76% had perineural invasion. Forty-seven patients (57%) were metastatic at the time of diagnosis. The median follow up was 9 (1-101) months. The median overall survival (OS) was 9 months in metastatic patients and 8-year OS was 64% in nonmetastatic patients. Conclusions: We observed that young GC patients had more aggressive histopathologic features and more than half was metastatic at the time of diagnosis. We need more studies comparing young and elderly patients to confirm that young patients had more aggressive disease.


P a g e | 1 Attention has gradually turned to the geopolitical implications of the Arab spring. It is broadly recognised that ongoing processes of change in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) are not just about domestic level political reform but also regional security dynamics. The region appears to be traversing a valley of heated tension and strategic flux. But no single, dominant organising principle has yet taken shape. A number of strategic frameworks capture parts of what is unfolding in today's Middle East; but each falls short in offering a complete account. An eclectic set of geopolitical dynamics conditions the region's postArab spring reshuffle. And a clash of logics may persist for some time to come. This may militate against the unequivocal prevailing of any singular, Western security approach to the region.


This Article presents a social history of the struggles of Boston's nontraditional students to break into the legal profession by studying in evening law schools. Suffolk Evening Law School was founded in 1906 as a counter-hegemonic institution, explicitly dedicated to the democratization of legal education by challenging the pedagogy and recruitment practices of Harvard and the other elite day schools. Twenty-first century graduates of the most prestigious day law schools continue to thrive in a relatively charmed legal environment, but the legal hierarchy has been destabilized by a growing emphasis upon achievement over ascription. Suffolk's evening law students, for example, often have a competitive advantage in fields such as intellectual property because the leading Boston law firms recruit disproportionately from the software engineers, biotechnology researchers, and other scientists who work as patent agents by day and study law at night. While the evening law school movement of the early twentieth century did much to replace ascription with meritocracy, the equal opportunity revolution remains incomplete because of the continuing influence of the legal stratification system upon the careers of the alumni of low ranking law schools.


In-cylinder temperature is a critical quantity for modeling and understanding combustion dynamics in internal combustion engines (ICEs). It is difficult to measure in small, two-stroke engines due to high operational speeds and limited space to install instrumentation. Optical access was established in a 55-cm3 displacement two-stroke engine using M4 bolts as carriers for sapphire rods to establish a 1.5-mm diameter optical path through the combustion chamber. Temperature laser absorption spectroscopy was successfully used to measure time varying in-cylinder temperature clocked to the piston position with a resolution of 3.6 crank angle degrees (CAD) at 6000 rpm. The resulting temperature profiles clearly showed the traverse of the flame front and were qualitatively consistent with in-cylinder pressure, engine speed, and delivery ratio. The temperature measurements were compared to aggregate in-cylinder temperatures calculated using the ideal gas model using measured in-cylinder pressure and trapped mass calculated at exact port closure as inputs. The calculation was sensitive to the trapped mass determination, and the results show that using the ideal gas model for in-cylinder temperature calculations in heat flux models may fail to capture trends in actual in-cylinder temperature with changing engine operating conditions.


When the Communist Party of Yugoslavia (CPY) took power after the Second World War, it had a vision for a new and better society in which all humans would live together in peace and prosperity and in which their mutual exploitation would be eliminated. That vision required changes not only in the country's political and economic structure, but in its citizen's values, morals, goals, aesthetics, and social behavior. Based on extensive archival research, Lilly's study describes the CPY's struggle to realize that social and cultural transformation by means of oral, written, and visual persuasion in the first nine years after the war.Lilly's descriptions of party policies in such media as newspapers, journals, educational curricula, group activities like parades, workplace competitions, and volunteer labor brigades, and the production of both high and popular culture depict the evolving form and content of the party's persuasive rhetoric. Her archival work, moreover, reveals both societal reaction to such rhetoric and the extent to which party leaders adapted their persuasive policies in response to feedback from below. In this respect, Lilly places her work at the intersection of cultural history, cultural studies and politics by discussing how individuals and different groups perceive, digest, and remake culture from above in their own image.Ultimately, then, this study not only modifies current understandings of Yugoslavia's postwar history but informs us about the nature of state-society relations in dictatorial regimes and the complexities of cultural change. Moving beyond an interpretation of Yugoslavia's political and cultural history in the 1940s, it addresses broader questions like: How do dictatorial regimes maintain power and support? How do subject populations express their views and exert influence even under oppressive conditions? When and how does persuasive rhetoric work and what are its limits?


ABSTRACT Primary Objective: The American Motorcyclist Association requires professional riders to undergo baseline computerized neurocognitive testing (CNT) using the Immediate Post-Concussion Assessment and Cognitive Testing (ImPACT) test for concussion management. It is recommended this practice be expanded to the amateur level, but limited research has explored whether baseline testing is necessary for youth when normative data is available. This study evaluates the utility of baseline testing for amateur riders by comparing their performance to those of traditional youth sports comprising normative datasets. Design/Methods: An cross-sectional study comparing amateur motocross (N = 100) riders matched by age and sex to football (N = 100) and basketball (N = 100) athletes performance on baseline ImPACT testing. Results: ANCOVAs revealed a significant medium effect of group on measures of visual motor speed (F = 11.25, p < 0.001) and reaction time (F = 13.61, p < 0.001). Post hoc analyses revealed that motocross riders were significantly slower compared to football and basketball athletes. There were no significant differences (p > .05) between sport on measures of memory or symptoms. Conclusions: Youth motocross riders performed significantly slower on speed measures compared to football and basketball athletes, providing preliminary support for the expansion of baseline ImPACT testing to the amateur level.


The Fatou-Julia iteration theory of rational and transcendental entire functions has recently been extended to quasiregular maps in more than two real dimensions. Our goal in this paper is similar; we extend the iteration theory of analytic self-maps of the punctured plane to quasiregular self-maps of punctured space. We define the Julia set as the set of points for which the complement of the forward orbit of any neighbourhood of the point is a finite set. We show that the Julia set is non-empty, and shares many properties with the classical Julia set of an analytic function. These properties are stronger than those known to hold for the Julia set of a general quasiregular map of space. We define the quasi-Fatou set as the complement of the Julia set, and generalise a result of Baker concerning the topological properties of the components of this set. A key tool in the proof of these results is a version of the fast escaping set. We generalise various results of Marti-Pete concerning this set, for example showing that the Julia set is equal to the boundary of the fast escaping set.


This paper provides an empirical investigation of externalities from education in Sweden in an earnings equation framework. The empirical models are estimated on a large sample of matched employees and establishments. External effects of education are identified from the average educational attainment of workers outside the individual's establishment. The paper also investigates the coherence of the evidence with respect to the idea that educational externalities arise through face-to-face interaction between individuals. A set of different specifications and fixed effects models is used to investigate the robustness of the basic cross-sectional model. The cross-sectional models suggest, in general, that externalities are positive and significantly different from zero. The cross-sectional evidence is also broadly coherent with the idea that externalities are declining in spatial transaction costs, such as the Euclidean distance between establishments. However, after accounting for individual fixed effects and dummy variables for the county in which the individual works the results indicate no statistically significant external effects of education on earnings in Sweden.


Provision of schooling facilities within walking distance is one of the key components of universal elementary education. Schooling facilities do not indicate only set up of schools but also provision of infrastructure in the schools. Even after twelve years' of implementation of Sarva Sikhshya Abhiyan (SSA) and five years implementation of Right to Education Act, there are still widespread disparities in terms of both school set-up and infrastructure in primary schools. Enrolment has increased manifold indicating parental aspiration to send their children to schools. But supply related variables have lagged behind. This disparity is very prominent in the regions which are geographically backward. Using primary and secondary data, a case study has been carried out to explore the scenario of location of schools, habitation wise distribution of schools, infrastructure of schools and attainment of students in schools. The study finds that attainment of children in schools is very much related to quality of schools.


The Bayh-Dole Act, which allows patenting of federally funded research, has been praised for driving growth but also criticized for creating unnecessary deadweight loss and contributing to a patent "anticommons." Much of the controversy stems from Bayh-Dole's differing effects on different inventions. The dominant justification for Bayh-Dole patents is commercialization theory: the idea that exclusive rights are necessary to bring inventions to market. This theory is convincing for inventions like pharmaceuticals with high regulatory barriers and low imitation costs, but not when exclusivity is unnecessary for commercialization, such as for Stanford's widely licensed patents on early recombinant DNA technology. The problem is that for many government-funded inventions, it is difficult to determine whether exclusive patent grants are necessary to incentivize commercialization.To solve this difficulty, we propose a "market test" for federally funded inventions at universities and other nonprofits. Before charging significant licensing fees for these inventions, these federal grant recipients would first be required to find out whether firms would be willing to commercialize the invention in exchange for a nonexclusive license with a nominal fee. If a company is willing to commit to developing the invention under a nonexclusive license, then an exclusive license — or a nonexclusive license with high fees — would be contrary to the public interest. More generally, using a formal economic model, we show that deadweight loss can be reduced through an auction that forces bidders to reveal the least amount of exclusivity needed to induce commercialization, that revenue cap bidding is more efficient than duration bidding, and that defensive bidding by firms that consume as well as produce the invention will not increase deadweight loss. We discuss how the market test requirement could be structured and how due diligence milestones and other provisions could be used to discourage gaming.


Taxing wealth has received increased attention in both the academic and political debate, as a way to reduce inequality of both income and wealth. However, analytical tools are still underdeveloped when it comes to empirical analyses of different types of wealth-related taxes and policies. New household surveys as those developed as part of the Eurosystem Household Finance and Consumption Survey (HFCS) represent a milestone for this purpose. Yet, distributional analysis of income and wealth requires information on disposable income and wealth which are not available, as the new Eurosystem data includes only gross income values. Moreover, in order to simulate the effects of wealth taxes and (budget neutral) reforms to the current direct taxes a microsimulation model such as EUROMOD is needed. Integrating the HFCS data in EUROMOD makes it possible to assess the effect of different current and hypothetical wealth taxes and policies on the distribution of income and wealth. In this report we build further on a pilot study (see Kuypers et al., 2017), in which the HFCS data have been converted into a EUROMOD database for six countries that were part of the first wave of the HFCS. More specifically, the HFCS-EUROMOD combination is applied for the second wave of the HFCS data and the scope has been broadened to 17 EU countries (6 original from the pilot study and 11 new ones). We discuss the process of how the HFCS data have been transformed to fit the EUROMOD context, how the simulation of wealth taxes and policies has been added to the EUROMOD country files and we assess how the simulation results compare with other available sources. Finally, we also briefly discuss an example of a simulation that can be performed by using the new tool.


Natural communities near freshwater hydrological features provide important ecosystem functions and services. As human populations increase, forested landscapes become increasingly fragmented and deforested, which may result in a loss of the functions and services they provide. To investigate the current state of forested natural communities in the rapidly urbanizing Tampa Bay Watershed, this study examined a systematic random sample of fixed radius 0.04 hectare (0.10 acre) plots that were located within 15.2 meters of a hydrologic feature. These 85 plots were further stratified based on site legacy, and were categorized into three groups: remnant (43 plots), emergent (23 plots), and altered (19 plots). A hierarchical agglomerative cluster analysis identified plots that were most similar to one another within each group. These clusters were then compared to Florida Natural Area Inventory (FNAI) descriptions of natural community types. A high degree of clusters in the remnant and emergent groups resembled natural community types, but variations in species composition and dominance also occurred. However, zero clusters in the altered group resembled natural community types, suggesting anthropogenic changes to the landscape have impacted natural plant community assemblages. Findings from this study fill a gap in our current understanding of how natural communities in the Tampa Bay Watershed differ from those in a non-urban context.


Drawing on a clinical situation that brings together a family affected by adolescence and two institutions, the author considers the interaction between families and institutions and, more precisely, the psychic material brought into play following the cooperation set going in networking. Analysis of the clinical case makes it possible to consider whatever acts across both institutions as the psychodramatic staging of the family scene on the verge of symbolisation. The ideological rifts, the experiences of encroachment, the limits on the work and competence of each professional will be strongly mobilised. These effects, conflictual or not, are unlikely to be acknowledged in their countertransferential form because, as they harm each party's professional narcissism, they very often give rise to ideological rigidification and the reification of the other's positions. The author suggests using as a methodological a priori the consideration of interactions between institutions as working tools for the transmission of the family, particularly during adolescence, when the issue of the limits of the law is brought into the foreground.


Disaster recovery planning and securing business processes against outtakes have been essential parts of running a company for decades. As IT systems have become more important, and especially since more and more revenue is generated over the Internet, securing the IT systems that support the business processes against outages is essential. For cost reasons, we proposed Cloud Computing for disaster recovery in prior work. In order to update and deploy a standby system, however, a deployment method that allows a provider independent, automated deployment of distributed systems is necessary. In this work we present such a deployment method. We show that by using Cloud Standby Deployment, the recovery time can be reduced significantly, and the distributed system can be deployed provider independently.


The Department of European Languages (DEL) of the University of the Philippines Diliman has the distinction of being the country's Center of Excellence in Foreign Languages, conferred by the Commission on Higher Education in 1999. One of the factors that led to making the Department a Center of Excellence is its contribution to the development of foreign language education in the Philippines. It is the only institution that offers a four-year academic program leading to the degree of Bachelor of Arts in European Languages (BAEL). The BAEL program allows a student to study one European language as major specialization (French, German, Spanish and Italian). These languages can also be taken as a minor; or the student may opt to take another field.


OBJECTIVE
To report a new technique of pediatric tracheotomy that reduces the problems of pneumothorax and recannulation after accidental decannulation in a recently performed tracheotomy.

DESIGN
Retrospective chart review for 1990-1997.

PATIENTS
Sixty-eight children aged between 2 days and 14 years.

METHOD
The starplasty procedure is based on the geometry of a 3-dimensional Z-plasty. The technique of the procedure is described and illustrated in detail.

RESULTS
There were 27 short-term complications, including 4 accidental decannulations. There were no instances of pneumothorax or tracheotomy-related deaths. There were 25 long-term minor complications. There were no instances of tracheotomy-related death, suprastomal collapse, or tracheal stenosis. Thirty-eight children remain tracheotomy tube dependent, 17 underwent decannulation, 7 died of primary disease, and 6 were lost to follow-up. All 17 children who underwent decannulation have a persistent tracheocutaneous fistula.

CONCLUSIONS
I conclude that starplasty reduces the incidence of major complications and death. Its only drawback seems to be persistent tracheocutaneous fistula.


Protein kinase C-θ acts directly at gene promoters to participate in inducible gene expression. Roles for protein kinases in the nucleus, indeed directly on chromatin, are emerging as important in mediating gene expression. Sutcliffe et al. show that protein kinase C-θ (PKC-θ) joins this group of chromatin-associated kinases and functions in inducible gene expression in T cells. PKC-θ was present in the nuclei of cultured Jurkat T cells and isolated human CD4+ T cells. Resting memory T cells showed the least PKC-θ, followed by naïve T cells and then effector and activated memory T cells. Chromatin immunoprecipitation (ChIP) analysis of the CD4+ T cell populations showed that PKC-θ was associated with the interleukin 2 (IL-2) promoter primarily in effector and activated memory T cells, which also had the highest amount of IL-2 transcripts. Sequential ChIP analysis suggested that stimulated Jurkat cells showed increased co-occupancy of PKC-θ with the histone kinase MSK-1 and RNA polymerase II (Pol II) (both of which promote gene expression) at inducible genes, such as CD69, TNF-α, and IFN-γ, and washout studies indicated that the recruitment was reversed if the stimulation was removed. Overexpression of wild-type PKC-θ promoted the recruitment of factors that promote inducible gene expression (14-3-3ζ and Pol II) to the promoters of induced genes, and overexpression of a kinase-inactive PKC-θ mutant, which had compromised binding to promoters, reduced their recruitment. Inhibition of the catalytic activity of PKC with Rottlerin did not reduce PKC-θ binding to the CD69 promoter but did reduce the accessibility of the chromatin at the promoter of this gene compared to its accessibility after stimulation of the Jurkat cells in the absence of the inhibitor. (Accessibility was measured in a real-time polymerase chain assay that monitored accessibility of DNA to a nuclease.) RNA interference experiments in which PKC-θ was knocked down in Jurkat cells were consistent with a role for PKC-θ in the recruitment of factors that promote gene expression to genes induced in response to stimulation. Knockdown of PKC-θ also reduced the transcripts of the induced gene. Genome-wide ChIP on chip experiments with activated T cells revealed that PKC-θ associated with 141 genes, 62% of which were also occupied by Pol II. In addition, PKC-θ associated with the regulatory regions of 60 microRNA-encoding genes. Examination of the transcript abundance of the three microRNA-encoding genes with the strongest PKC-θ binding revealed a stimulus-dependent decrease in the expression of these microRNA-encoding genes in Jurkat T cells. In addition to association with genes implicated in immune cell function, the authors noted enrichment in protein-encoding and microRNA-encoding genes associated with the epithelial to mesenchymal transition. Consistent with this possibility, the overexpression of PKC-θ in the MCF-7 breast cancer cell line altered cell morphology to one consistent with increased motility; moreover, these cells exhibited increased motility in an in vitro wound-healing assay. Thus, PKC-θ appears to play key roles in inducible gene expression by promoting the formation of transcription complexes at the promoters of protein-encoding and microRNA-encoding genes. E. L. Sutcliffe, K. L. Bunting, Y. Q. He, J. Li, C. Phetsouphanh, N. Seddiki, A. Zafar, E. J. Hindmarsh, C. R. Parish, A. D. Kelleher, R. L. McInnes, T. Taya, P. J. Milburn, S. Rao, Chromatin-associated protein kinase C-θ regulates an inducible gene expression program and microRNAs in human T lymphocytes. Mol. Cell 41, 704–719 (2011). [Online Journal]


The essays in this dissertation represent theoretical and empirical contributions to urban economics and regional science, focusing on the growing importance of nonmarket interactions. There is increasing evidence that the process of globalization is rendering the world "spiky" rather than "flat". Nonmarket interactions, such as knowledge spillovers, innovation or amenity-based externalities, play a central role in this process. As economic activity is not evenly spread across space, a detailed understanding of the economic linkages between regions is key to the design of effective public policy. This is particularly important in the context of economic linkages between regions or cities, highlighting the key adjustment mechanisms – via both market and nonmarket transactions – and their long-run implications for incomes, the cost of living, and the spatial distribution of population. Both the neoclassically-grounded field of urban economics and the rapidly expanding New Economic Geography (NEG) literature pioneered by Krugman offer a variety of models and (not infrequently competing) predictions about the factors and processes that shape the spatial structure of the economy. At the same time, the dialogue between qualitative and quantitative discourses in regional science has been marred by an increasingly embittered dispute over methodology. While acutely pronounced in economics, this development has re-shaped large parts of its sister disciplines as well, particularly sociology and geography. Across the board, proponents of quantitative science methodology increasingly likened themselves to their natural science counterparts, whereas qualitative methods had become the last bastion of "true social scientists". Today, these so-called "science wars" have rendered "qualitative" and "quantitative" analysis into almost mutually exclusive concepts.


Abstract Halloysite nanotubes (HNTs)/polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE) nanocomposites were prepared by the cold compression moulding method. The effects of addition of HNTs (HNTs 'filling') on the performances of PTFE were explored using X-ray diffraction, Fourier Transform infrared spectroscopy, scanning electron microscopy and thermogravimetric analysis which showed that HNTs were well dispersed in the PTFE matrix by means of physical mixing at lower contents of 2-5 wt.%; the introduction of HNTs into PTFE could improve the heat stability of the PTFE. Furthermore, the mechanical and tribological performances of the nanocomposites were measured to examine the filling effect. The tensile strength of the HNTs/PTFE nanocomposites at 2-5 wt.% HNTs content increased by ∼3.5% while their wear rates decreased by 55-90% relative to pure PTFE, clear proof of the filling effect of HNTs with a high aspect ratio.


The purpose of this study is to examine Turkish consumers' understanding and use of nutrition labels found on packaged food products. Data was collected from a total of 500 consumers living in Istanbul through the use of a structured and undisguised questionnaire. Apart from the descriptive statistics, analyses were conducted with respect to the demographic variables of "gender", "age", "education", and "districts of the city respondents lived in". Significant differences were found to exist particularly among those living in the different districts of the city. "Follow-up of nutrition related news in the media" has also been analyzed. Implications of the study for consumers, producers, retailers, and the state together with further research are presented in the last part of the paper. Although the findings of the study pertain to the Turkish market, its implications may be applicable in other countries, as well, where nutrition labeling is not mandatory for the time being.


Lissotes menalcas (the Mt Mangana Stag Beetle) is an obligate log dwelling beetle and is presently classified as vulnerable under the Tasmanian Threatened Species Protection Act 1995. The distribution, habitat and conservation status of this species were investigated through a combination of collation of known locations and searches for the in decaying logs across likely areas of occurrence.
L. menalcas was found to have a wide distribution in south eastern Tasmania and is now recorded from 34 localities. The species was found in a variety of wet forest habitats from old-growth mixed forest through to 23-year-old wet eucalypt silvicultural regrowth. About 12% of wet eucalypt forest within the predicted range of L. menalcas is formally reserved, and another 14% on Crown land is unlikely to be subject to logging. L. menalcas appears to tolerate both wildfire and clear felling with regeneration burning. Because the species depends on an ongoing supply of rotting logs for its long-term survival, plantation development will probably lead to the elimination of the species from such areas. Analysis of the likely impact of plantation establishment within its range over the next ten years indicates that it will not reach levels that would lead it to be considered as vulnerable. Thus, it is recommended that the status of the species be changed from vulnerable to rare. However, there is a need to determine the ecological sustainability of present forest management practices in relation to the decaying-log habitat and to continue to monitor the extent of clearing and modification of the species' habitat.


In the last 40 years different procedures to estimate standard properties of dimension stones have been proposed by Italian and European technical committees as well as by international associations. The introduction of numerous and different standards, based on different sampling and testing conditions, has produced many practical consequences over the years, such as the doubtful reliability of results from the tests. This paper deals with this issue, analysing the differences between uniaxial compressive strength values of a Miocene limestone from the Central–Southern Apennines, Italy, calculated with four different standard procedures and evaluating the effects of loading rate, environmental conditions, specimen size and shape on the measured values. An additional finding of this study is a specific correlation between uniaxial compressive strength data and the size-corrected point load strength index. Although there are several studies asserting that point load test is an attractive alternative for indirect uniaxial compressive strength evaluation, there are many variables affecting this correlation, as shown by the high variability of results reported in the literature.


The Future Internet enables us to have an immediate access to information about the physical world and its objects. As such, Internet of Things (IoT) has been introduced to integrate the virtual world of information and the real world of devices. Internet of Things covers the infrastructure, which can be hardware, software and services, to support the networking of physical objects. IoT aims to provide a simple interaction between the physical world and the virtual world, by integrating a large numbers of real-world physical devices (or things) into the Internet.
IoT has increasingly gained attention in industry to interact with different types of devices. This popularity cause a demand to use IoT vision for different types of device. While each type of devices can support its own communication protocol and required data to provide data for each interaction. This heterogeneous device interaction cause difficulties to interact with the devices to gather information from the environment. The solution that has introduced in the literatures is defining a middleware layer between the devices and the user of the IoT- based system.
In this research, we investigate on developing a middleware for an IoT-based system like video Monitoring System (VMS), to facilitate configuration and deployment for non-expert end-users. A VMS is responsible to provide full video coverage to monitor an area for an end-user, such as a guard. The configuration and deployment can be facilitated by providing a homogeneous Graphical User Interface to interact with different types of camera in a uniform way.
A VMS must support the technical details of different types of cameras. However, these variations should be hidden from non-expert end-users. Thus, we extract a model from the required features to configure different types of cameras. In this project, we developed a VMS that consist of a Middleware for video Monitoring System (MVMS) and applications, which run on top of the middleware. Our VMS let non-experts end-users configure cameras through communicating with third-party camera service providers which is responsible to apply end- users configuration on cameras.
To evaluate our VMS to achieve the ease of configuration and deployment for non-expert end-users, we developed a prototype and interview with the practitioners in a company which has developed VMS.


Partitioning evapotranspiration into its evaporation and transpiration components is critical for understanding ecohydrologic processes in drylands. Existing partitioning estimates, however, have not adequately accounted for the heterogeneity associated with woody plant canopy patches and intercanopy patches so characteristic of dryland ecosystems. We measured water contents, stable isotopes (δ2H and δ18O), Cl−, and NO3− from core samples collected during an intense drought in canopy and intercanopy patches in a semiarid, piñon–juniper [Pinus edulis Engelm.– Juniperus monosperma (Engelm.) Sarg.] woodland in northern New Mexico to assess patch‐scale heterogeneity and evapotranspiration partitioning. Soil zone residence times based on Cl− ranged from 6 to 37 yr, highlighting the long time scale of percolation in these woodlands. The average NO3− concentration was nearly seven times lower in canopy patches, indicating substantial biogeochemical heterogeneity. Average δ2H values from shallow soil (<0.1 m) were 11 to 17‰ lower in canopy patches, suggesting lower soil evaporation losses compared with intercanopy patches; however, significantly larger Cl− inventories in canopy patches indicate up to four to six times more total evapotranspiration. Taken together, lower evaporation and greater evapotranspiration suggest that canopy patches have substantially larger transpiration rates and lower evaporation/transpiration ratios than intercanopy patches. Our results support a basic but untested conceptual model of patch connectivity where woody plants utilize substantial amounts of intercanopy water that has been redistributed from intercanopy to canopy patches via hydraulic gradients created by root uptake—a finding not generally modeled but potentially relevant to globally extensive patchy‐structured drylands.


Self-affirmation is based on the consistency of how adaptively and morally one sees oneself, and the authenticity and consistency of how one presents oneself to others. The ability to affirm self is rooted in one's self-concept, which is deeply connected to self-image and self-integrity. Oftentimes, individuals have difficulty affirming themselves as a result of a wounded self-concept, impeding their ability to affirm others and difference in general. The Self-SOULstice Model of Affirmation outlines four stages that clarify the evolutionary process that ties the manifestation of affirming others to self-affirmation and living authentically. This model contends that the soul (i.e., the intrinsic self) is the core of the self, where affirmation begins. This process, which places the self at the center of all stages, demonstrates that there can be no true affirming of others without affirmation of self.


The use of indigenous drug industry in India has been widely expanded in recent years. Tinospora cordifolia (Guduchi) belonging to family Menispermaceae has a wide array of bioactive principles in exploring nutraceuticals from plant materials. It is a versatile resource for all forms of life and can be an alternative for synthetic drugs considering their adverse effects and also for economic purposes. T. cordifolia is considered as an important herbal drug of Indian System of Medicines (ISM). The herb is known for its therapeutic efficacy and used in treatment of dyspepsia, diabetes, fever, urinary problems, jaundice, chronic diarrhoea, cardiac disease, dysentry, helmenthiasis, skin diseases, leprosy and many more diseases. Present review highlights the classical anti-toxin, anti diabetic, anticancer, immunomodulatory, antioxidant, antimicrobial, hepato-protective activity of Guduchi and their validation through existing literature. The plant is reported to contain alkaloids, glycosides, steroids and terpenoids. The current study is undertaken to explore and establish the phytochemistry and pharmacological activity of T. cordifolia.


Indoor and outdoor water soluble trace elements (TEs) were analyzed on quasi-ultrafine (UF), accumulation, and coarse PM filter samples collected at four retirement communities, three located in the San Gabriel Valley and one in Riverside, CA. Our analysis indicates that a com- plex mix of vehicular, industrial, and soil-related emissions was responsible for the elemental concentrations measured at the three San Gabriel sites, while regional transport, soil re-suspension and, to a lower degree, local traffic contributed to TE levels observed in Riverside. In the quasi-UF mode, the magnitude of indoor/outdoor concentration ratios (I/O) for elements of anthropogenic origin was highly variable, re- flecting the spatial heterogeneity of combustion sources in the study area. Indoor/outdoor ratios in accumulation mode PM were closer to 1, and more homogeneous across sites, in- dicating that elements associated with this size fraction pen- etrate indoors with high efficiencies. The lowest overall I/O ratios were obtained for elements found in coarse particles, consistent with the fact that only a small portion of coarse outdoor PM infiltrates indoors. The potential of S and other TEs to serve as tracers of indoor-penetrated particles of out- door origin was also examined. Our results suggest that using the I/O ratio of S (I/OS) as a surrogate of the infiltration fac- tor for PM2.5 (Finf(PM2.5)) might lead to an overestimation of the indoor PM2.5 originating outdoors. This is in contrast with what was reported in previous studies conducted in the Eastern US, where S has been consistently used as a reliable tracer of outdoor PM2.5 infiltrating indoors. Our differences may be due to the fact that in the Los Angeles basin (and in general in the Western US) PM2.5 includes a number of semi-volatile labile species, such as ammonium nitrate and several organic compounds, which volatilize either entirely or to a substantial degree upon building entry.