In Nigeria library services are developing rapidly as part of a fast
developing economy and social infra-structures. This rapid expansion
calls for trained manpower to manage the services. It is assumed that
a thorough knowledge of existing personnel is essential for adequate
planning and implementation of an effective strategy to supply the
professional personnel required, both now and in the future, to meet the
growing demand.
Consequently this study has been undertaken in order to discover the personal
characteristics (sex, age, marital status, etc.), social origins, educational
backgrounds, and career and mobility patterns of librarians in Nigeria.
Factors associated with career advancement and mobility are examined. Why,
in the first place, individuals choose librarianship as a career and the
contributions they are making to the professional literature and the
professional associations are also investigated. Running through this
study of a sample of librarians in a developing country is an attempt to
relate the findings to those of similar studies in developed countries.
The sample consists of 267 librarians (179 men and 88 women) selected from
various types of libraries and the library schools in the country. Data
was collected by means of a questionnaire.
Among other findings, the results show that, unlike in developed countries,
male librarians in Nigeria outnumber the female by about two to one. The
librarians are relatively young, half not above 35. There are few
expatriate librarians. Most librarians come from ordinary working class
families and their parents have little or no formal education.
About 90% of the librarians are graduates while 99% have professional
qualifications. They choose the profession mainly for reasons similar to
those of librarians in developed countries; Many have previously tried
their hands at other occupations or professions, especially teaching, and
they tend to join the profession rather late in life. Most have yet had
short professional careers, not exceeding ten years. About 60% are mobile.
The majority are satisfied with their professional careers.


Introduction: Leptospirosis is an important cause of morbidity and mortality in Puerto Rico, but the full burden remains unknown due to underreporting and misdiagnosis as dengue fever. Methods: A cross-sectional study paired with rodent trapping was carried out to determine the prevalence and risk factors for prior Leptospira infection in an urban community within San Juan, Puerto Rico. A mixed effect model was built to test for risk factors while controlling for grouping effects across neighborhood blocks. Results: Among 202 human individuals enrolled, 55 (27.3%, 95% CI: 20.9-33.3%) had Leptospira agglutinating antibodies indicative of previous exposure to the bacteria. MLST testing of rodent samples indicated that L. borgpetersenii Ballum and L. interrogans Icterohaemorrhagiae are circulating among rodents in the study area. L. borgpetersenii Ballum was also isolated from the kidney of a rodent and showed agglutination against sera from 16 (7.9%) of humans enrolled, indicating that this serogroup is actively circulating among humans and rodents in this community. Living farther away from the Caño Martin Peña canal was associated with decreased risk of leptospire infection, with each meter of distance from the canal associated with an 0.6% decrease in risk of infection (OR:0.994, 95%CI: 0.990 – 0.998) and reported occurrence of household flooding was associated with lower likelihood of infection with leptospires (OR: 0.12, 95% CI: 0.04 – 0.37). Conclusion: While leptospirosis is often associated with work-related exposures or densely packed urban slum communities, these results suggest that household-related exposures are an important factor in leptospire transmission in low-income urban nonslum communities. This study was a unique opportunity to identify a strain of a zoonotic disease circulating within both rodents and humans in a community facing a variety of environmental risk factors. This confirmation that leptospires are actively circulating in this community could lead to improved diagnostic awareness among healthcare providers and improved patient outcomes for this treatable disease.


This descriptive cross-sectional research study examines perceptions of time spent by architects and professional engineers on reading, writing, and evaluating various information products, as well as their perspectives of specific quality characteristics and the relative significance in meeting work goals. Professional engineers and architects were surveyed at seminars held at eight locations in seven states. Descriptive statistics were then used to investigate perceptions and relationships. Findings indicate architects and professional engineers spend the most amount of time reading correspondence and the least amount of time reading management reports. Respondents considered correspondence to be the most important reading activity. Participants also spend the most amount of time writing correspondence, closely followed by nearly equal time spent writing and editing technical reports and proposals. Finally, participants rated organization, comprehensiveness, and accuracy as the most important aspects while indicating mechanical issues such as grammar and spelling as the least important aspects of technical documents.


Many methods have been employed to detect, compare, and correct errors to increase communication reliability and efficiency in wireless sensor networks (WSNs). However, to the best of our knowledge, no existing study has compared the performance of error control codes by using different modulation techniques in a smart grid communication environment when multichannel scheduling is used. This paper presents a detailed performance evaluation and makes a comparison of different modulation techniques, such as frequency shift keying (FSK), differential phase shift keying (DPSK), binary phase shift keying (BPSK), and offset quadrature phase-shift keying (OQPSK), using Hamming codes in a 500-kV line-of-sight substation smart grid environment with multichannel scheduling. A link-quality-aware routing algorithm is used as a routing protocol and a log-normal shadowing channel is employed as a channel model. Simulations are performed in MATLAB and the performance of the Hamming code with various modulation techniques is compared with the results obtained without using any error correction codes for throughput, delay, and bit error rate. The results show that the performance of the Hamming code with OQPSK modulation is better than its performance with other modulation techniques. Moreover, the results show that the performance of Hamming code improves with multichannel scheduling for all modulation techniques.


This study aims to evaluate the vulnerability of shallow aquifer in irrigated and coastal region of Sindh province, Pakistan by applying DRASTIC method in GIS environment. Vulnerability index values ranging from 119 to 200 were categorized into three contamination risk zones. Results illustrated that 28.03% of the total area that was distributed in the upper northern and southern most coastal area of the province was very highly vulnerable to contamination, 56.76% of the area was highly vulnerable, while the remaining 15.21% area was in medium vulnerable zone. Single and multi-parameter sensitivity analysis evaluated the relative importance of each DRASTIC parameter and illustrated that depth to water table and net recharge caused the highest variation in the vulnerability index. Two water quality indicators parameters, i.e., electrical conductivity (EC) and nitrate ion (NO 3 − ) were used to validate the DRASTIC index. The spatial distribution map of both parameters showed a certain level of similarity with the vulnerability map and both parameters illustrated significant correlation with the DRASTIC vulnerability index ( p 3 − contamination. Findings of this study will assist local authorities in contamination prevention in the groundwater of the lower Indus Plain.


Intra-industry trade is driven by product differentiation and economies of scale. Business services are important for developing and marketing new varieties. Yet, their role for product differentiation has attracted little attention in the literature. This paper contributes to filling this gap by estimating trade costs in business services and exploring the relationships between such costs and the Grubel-Lloyd index of intra-industry trade. High trade costs in business services are associated with a low level of product differentiation in downstream industries, particularly in the motor vehicle industry. Open markets in business services could help industrial upgrading in developing countries.


Human psychological mechanisms are adaptations that evolved to process environmental inputs, turning them into behavioral outputs that, on average, increase survival or reproductive prospects. Modern contexts, however, differ vastly from the environments that existed as human psychological mechanisms evolved. Many inputs now differ in quantity and intensity or no longer have the same fitness associations, thereby leading many mechanisms to produce maladaptive output. We present the precepts of this evolutionary mismatch process, highlight areas of mismatch, and consider implications for psychological science and policy.


Abstract An investigation of the utilization of TRistructural-ISOtropic (TRISO)-coated fuel particles for the burning of plutonium/neptunium (Pu/Np) isotopes in typical Westinghouse four-loop pressurized water reactors is presented. Though numerous studies have evaluated the burning of transuranic isotopes in light water reactors (LWRs), this work differentiates itself by employing Pu/Np-loaded TRISO particles embedded within a silicon carbide (SiC) matrix and formed into pellets, constituting the fully ceramic microencapsulated (FCM) fuel concept that can be loaded into standard LWR fuel element cladding. This approach provides the capability of Pu/Np burning and, by virtue of the multibarrier TRISO particle design and SiC matrix properties, will allow for greater burnup of Pu/Np material, plus improved fuel reliability and thermal performance. In this study, a variety of heterogeneous assembly layouts, which utilize a mix of FCM rods and typical UO2 rods, and core loading patterns were analyzed to demonstrate the neutronic feasibility of Pu/Np-loaded TRISO fuel. The assembly and core designs herein reported are not fully optimized and require fine-tuning to flatten power peaks; however, the progress achieved thus far strongly supports the conclusion that with further rod/assembly/core loading and placement optimization, Pu/Np-loaded TRISO fuel and core designs that are capable of balancing Pu/Np production and destruction can be designed within the standard constraints for thermal and reactivity performance in pressurized water reactors.


Geographic information (GI) comprises all information with a location attribute, e.g. addresses, administrative boundaries, and topographic data describing the natural and built environment. GI is very expensive to collect, process and maintain, yet ever easier to disseminate cheaply via Web-based services and products. Various studies from developed nations around the world show that GI plays a crucial role in underpinning whole economies and delivering efficient government, indicating that it should be used as widely as possible. Much GI is collected by local and national government for specific purposes. How such public sector information (PSI) is made more widely available for other uses and to other users, and at what price, has created heated debate and led to the adoption of diverse PSI charging regimes in different countries. The purpose of this paper is to re-examine the dogma inherent in the bi-polar viewpoints at the heart of the charging debate, from the perspective of economic reality and diverse public information policy cultures.


A generalized conceptual framework for regional carrying capacity evaluation along with its implementation approaches is introduced in this article, demonstrated by the case study in the Yangtze River Delta region, China. Following the data preprocessing, assimilative capacity, supportive capacity, and loading, the three essential aspects of regional carrying capacity, have been evaluated by principal components analysis and/or ecological footprint method. In terms of the characteristics of the results, sustainability criteria are established and used to determine the developmental states from 1997 to 2005 in the study area. Future states from 2006 to 2015 are predicted by a modified cellular automata model, into which an artificial neural network is incorporated to fit the transition rule. As revealed from the results of evaluation and prediction, the overall developmental states are worsening. For the sake of the sustainable development in this region, more attention should be paid to these results.


The 2015 United Nations Climate Change Conference in Paris (COP21) agreed upon limiting global mean temperature increase to less than 2°C compared to pre-industrial levels and pursue efforts towards limiting temperature increase to 1.5°C. Policymakers that face this climate objective are confronted with difficult questions about how this goal can be achieved. Several fields of research, methods and tools are available to help shape our understanding of the needed change to attain the above-mentioned climate objective, including the use of historical references to draw lessons from the past for the future, expert knowledge on current trends and future transition routes and model-based scenarios that allow to explore different future pathways under specific conditions and climate policies. Model-based scenarios, developed by Integrated Assessment Models (IAMs), have proven to be helpful in informing policy makers about key elements of long-term systemic change in the past. However, as insights are generally based on simplified and idealised assumptions on future system change, these studies may be considered as being more of an exploratory rather than predictive nature. It is therefore relevant to assess the ability of IAMs to represent future system change and thereby their ability to inform policy makers on meeting a long-term climate objective. By placing IAM outcomes in the light of other fields of knowledge one can evaluate whether IAMs are able to complement or contrast the various perspectives on future system change. In this dissertation, three perspectives have been systematically compared to identify the commonalities and differences in prospected future change. First, various IAMs have been compared amongst each other to study the robust patterns in model-based scenario analyses looking into limiting global mean temperature increase to 2°C. Secondly, the projected future rates of change by IAMs have been compared to rates of change as observed in the past. Thirdly, the projected rates of change by IAMs have been compared to rates of change as estimated by experts in the field of various energy technologies. To move beyond the existing conceptualisation of systems change as devised by IAMs - which is often based on economics, engineering, and natural sciences - new approaches to broaden the scope of IAMs have been developed and researched. In a final study the national arrangements and policy-evaluation processes for long-term climate policy have been analysed. The dissertation concludes that a broader perspective on future system change allows a more critical appraisal of the considered future opportunities and challenges in a disciplinary field. Overall agreement between the various perspectives has been found for the 2°C development trajectory for wind power towards 2050, whereas differences in perspective have been revealed for other (energy) technologies, particularly nuclear power, bioelectricity and carbon capture and storage. However, in order to come to a more holistic view on future system change in line with the 2°C climate objective, further research may focus on broadening the scope of assessment. Considered avenues are the inclusion of a broader system view, greater engagement with other fields of research and the development of alternative transition pathways.


The 2012/13 academic year saw the introduction of the most significant changes to the funding of higher education in England for over fifty years. This followed the publication of the Browne Review in October 2010 (Browne, 2010), which recommended that the cap on tuition fees be removed and that universities be allowed to charge fees that they felt were appropriate. It further recommended that the funding of England's higher education system shift away from one that is largely funded by the taxpayer to one that is, for the most part, funded privately by graduates from their future earnings. The subsequent government White Paper published later in 2011 incorporated some features of Lord Browne's recommendations: loans would be offered to all students to cover fees, to be repaid only when graduates were earning over a certain threshold. However, the government proposed an absolute cap on fees of £9,000 per year. Those universities charging fees of over £6,000 per year would be obliged to contribute to a national scholarships programme, and there would be a tougher regime of sanctions encouraging these universities to widen access. These new measures were challenged at the time from a variety of sources: politicians, the press and academic research all suggested that this change in funding would ostracise students who came from backgrounds that did not traditionally access higher education. Two years after the introduction of higher fees, this thesis investigates whether there has been any change to the nature of the student demographic accessing Nottingham Trent University (NTU). For some, going to university is seen as a method of ensuring social mobility, so if there is any change in the demographic of the student accessing university following the change in funding, this could have a far-reaching impact across the whole of society. Additionally, given that universities are now increasingly run as businesses as well as places of learning, any changes to the student demographic could have a disruptive impact on the business model of universities. Given that the change in funding was relatively recent, there has been limited work in this field of research. This thesis examines a number of hypotheses in order to understand whether there has been a change in the student demographic accessing NTU following the introduction of higher fees. The analysis looks at not only the socio-economic composition of the student population, but also students' academic credentials on entry, the distance between their home and the place of study, their choice of subject, and what actions and interventions the University has taken in light of its increased fees. Using secondary data from the University's student data system, supplemented by other external data, this investigation looks at the composition of the first-year England-domiciled undergraduate student population from the 2008/09 academic year to the 2013/14 academic year to test a number of hypotheses that emerged from a review of current literature relating to the student decision-making process. In order to ensure validity and reliability, the records of the entire cohort for each year of entry were used rather than a sample approach. The findings suggest that, contrary to the popular opinion that was so vociferous at the time of the Browne Review, there has been no erosion in the number of students from deprived backgrounds accessing university. Instead, for NTU at least, the proportion of students from the most deprived backgrounds has actually increased following the introduction of higher fees. Aligned to this slight change to the socio-economic composition of the student population is a potential decline in the average tariff points on entry to the University. However, there has been little change to the other aspects of the demographic of the student population, namely the distance travelled, the subjects studied, and the shift in university policy with regard to the academic attainment it requires from its students to access its courses. Whilst the results noted above are specific to NTU, the University shares a position in the English higher education market with other similar universities offering similar courses to a similar demographic of student. In terms of geographical location, NTU shares a region with a number of these similar higher education institutions, so it may be valid to generalise the findings of this thesis to other similar universities in England.


Thanks to the powerful representation capabilities, transformers have made impressive progress in image restoration. However, existing transformers-based methods do not carefully consider the particularities of image restoration. In general, image restoration requires that an ideal approach should be translation-invariant to the degradation, i.e., the undesirable degradation should be removed irrespective of its position within the image. Furthermore, the local relationships also play a vital role, which should be faithfully exploited for recovering clean images. Nevertheless, most transformers either adopt local attention with the fixed local window strategy or global attention, which unfortunately breaks the translation invariance and causes huge loss of local relationships. To address these issues, we propose an elegant stochastic window strategy for transformers. Specifically, we first introduce the window partition with stochastic shift to replace the original fixed window partition for training. Then, we design a new layer expectation propagation algorithm to efficiently approximate the expectation of the induced stochastic transformer for testing. Our stochastic window transformer not only enjoys powerful representation but also maintains the desired property of translation invariance and locality. Experiments validate the stochastic window strategy consistently improves performance on various image restoration tasks (derain-ing, denoising and deblurring) by significant margins. The code is available at https://github.com/jiexiaou/Stoformer .


Prostate cancer metastases and hematopoietic stem cells (HSC) frequently home to the bone marrow, where they compete to occupy the same HSC niche. We have also shown that under conditions of hematopoietic stress, HSCs secrete the bone morphogenetic proteins (BMP)-2 and BMP-6 that drives osteoblastic differentiation from mesenchymal precursors. As it is not known, we examined whether metastatic prostate cancer cells can alter regulation of normal bone formation by HSCs and hematopoietic progenitor cells (HPC). HSC/HPCs isolated from mice bearing nonmetastatic and metastatic tumor cells were isolated and their ability to influence osteoblastic and osteoclastic differentiation was evaluated. When the animals were inoculated with the LNCaP C4-2B cell line, which produces mixed osteoblastic and osteolytic lesions in bone, HPCs, but not HSCs, were able to induced stromal cells to differentiate down an osteoblastic phenotype. Part of the mechanism responsible for this activity was the production of BMP-2. On the other hand, when the animals were implanted with PC3 cells that exhibits predominantly osteolytic lesions in bone, HSCs derived from these animals were capable of directly differentiating into tartrate-resistant acid phosphatase–positive osteoclasts through an interleukin-6–mediated pathway. These studies for the first time identify HSC/HPCs as novel targets for future therapy involved in the bone abnormalities of prostate cancer. Mol Cancer Res; 10(3); 282–92. ©2012 AACR.


Kamau Brathwaite's newest work, Born to Slow Horses, is a series of poetic meditations on islands and exile, language and ritual, and the force of personal and historical passions and griefs. These poems are haunted, figuratively and literally, by spirits of the African diaspora and drenched in the colors, sounds, and rhythms of the islands. But they also encompass the world of the exile and return, and the events of 9/11 in New York City. Brathwaite is one of the foremost voices in postcolonial inquiry and expression, and his poetry is densely rooted and expansive. Using his unusual"sycorax" signature typography and spelling, Brathwaite brings a cultural specificity, with distinct accents, sonic gestures, and pronunciations, into his pages-making them new, exciting, and rich in nuances.


The general issue of weaning can be viewed as composed of three different groups of patients. First, simple or easy weaning, represents 60% to 70% of patients whose first trial of spontaneous breathing is successful. The main objective of the weaning process is to detect weaning readiness as early as possible, which is best achieved using a systematic approach. The percentage of patients in this group in a given intensive care unit represents the pretest probability of weaning. A second group is made of patients who experience failure of the first spontaneous breathing trial and in whom up to 7 days from the first trial may be required to achieve weaning. This group represents 20% to 25% of patients who undergo weaning from mechanical ventilation. Muscle weakness contributes to the prolongation of weaning in many of these patients. The last group is made of patients who are characterized by a prolonged or very difficult weaning process (about 5% to 15% of patients undergoing weaning). Muscle weakness is likely to be a major contributing factor. Early use of spontaneous breathing, well-controlled use of sedation, and early mobilization may help in reducing muscle weakness and hasten the weaning process. The postextubation period may be particularly at risk in these patients. More research is needed to guide clinicians regarding the best ventilatory management.


Background: Venous thromboembolic prophylaxis (VTEp) is often delayed following traumatic brain injury (TBI), yet animal data suggest that it may reduce cerebral inflammation and improve cognitive recovery. We hypothesized that earlier VTEp initiation in severe TBI patients would result in more rapid neurologic recovery and reduced progression of brain injury on radiologic imaging. Study Design: Medical charts of severe TBI patients admitted to a level 1 trauma center in 2009-2010 were queried for admission Glasgow Coma Scale (GCS), head Abbreviated Injury Scale, Injury Severity Score (ISS), osmotherapy use, emergency neurosurgery, and delay to VTEp initiation. Progression (+1 = better, 0 = no change, −1 = worse) of brain injury on head CTs and neurologic exam (by bedside MD, nurse) was collected from patient charts. Head CT scan Marshall scores were calculated from the initial head CT results. Results: A total of 22, 34, and 19 patients received VTEp at early (<3 days), intermediate (3-5 days), and late (>5 days) time intervals, respectively. Clinical and radiologic brain injury characteristics on admission were similar among the three groups (P > 0.05), but ISS was greatest in the early group (P < 0.05). Initial head CT Marshall scores were similar in early and late groups. The slowest progression of brain injury on repeated head CT scans was in the early VTEp group up to 10 days after admission. Conclusion: Early initiation of prophylactic heparin in severe TBI is not associated with deterioration neurologic exam and may result in less progression of injury on brain imaging. Possible neuroprotective effects of heparin in humans need further investigation.


Scaffolding genomes into complete chromosome assemblies remains challenging even with the rapidly increasing sequence coverage generated by current next-generation sequence technologies. Even with scaffolding information, many genome assemblies remain incomplete. The genome of the threespine stickleback (Gasterosteus aculeatus), a fish model system in evolutionary genetics and genomics, is not completely assembled despite scaffolding with high-density linkage maps. Here, we first test the ability of a Hi-C based proximity guided assembly to perform a de novo genome assembly from relatively short contigs. Using Hi-C based proximity guided assembly, we generated complete chromosome assemblies from 50 kb contigs. We found that 98.99% of contigs were correctly assigned to linkage groups, with ordering nearly identical to the previous genome assembly. Using available BAC end sequences, we provide evidence that some of the few discrepancies between the Hi-C assembly and the existing assembly are due to structural variation between the populations used for the two assemblies or errors in the existing assembly. This Hi-C assembly also allowed us to improve the existing assembly, assigning over 60% (13.35 Mb) of the previously unassigned (∼21.7 Mb) contigs to linkage groups. Together, our results highlight the potential of the Hi-C based proximity guided assembly method to be used in combination with short read data to perform relatively inexpensive de novo genome assemblies. This approach will be particularly useful in organisms in which it is difficult to perform linkage mapping or to obtain high molecular weight DNA required for other scaffolding methods.


In China, the 'tidal wave' of rural migrant workers has created unique challenges for the government, one being migrant children's education in cities. Despite central policies emphasising the roles of receiving governments and public schools in providing compulsory education for these children, many migrant children in Beijing still attend privately run, often unlicensed migrant schools. Though migrant children's education is attracting increasing government and societal attention, questions concerning the extent to which this decentralisation of responsibilities has created space for civil society in the policy process remain unexplored. This article examines the role of the civil society actors involved and draws on qualitative interviews and the author's fieldwork experience to show that their limited capacity to significantly impact the situations of these schools is shaped by a lack of state–civil society interaction, as well as limited collaboration between key civil society actors and low levels of interaction amongst the schools themselves.


ABSTRACT We examined the extent to which acoustic noise in urban environments influences song characteristics and singing behaviour of Northern Cardinals Cardinalis cardinalis and American Robins Turdus migratorius. We predicted that, in response to loud noise, birds would improve signal transmission by (1) increasing singing rate and (2) adjusting song characteristics such as pitch and length. From May—July 2006, 42 cardinals and 53 robins were recorded in forests located within four acoustic environments in central Ohio: rural, residential, commercial, and highway. Following each recording, we measured ambient noise level and recorded information describing location, weather, habitat, and conspecific presence within 75 m. As predicted, frequency range was positively correlated with noise level for both species, but neither song length nor rate was related to noise level for either species. These data support the idea that anthropogenic noise influences avian singing behaviour and acts as a selective force in urban areas.


Abstract African eggplants (Solanum aethiopicum and S. macrocarpon) are among the most economically important and valuable vegetable and fruit crops. They are a major source of biologically active nutritional substances and metabolites which are essential for plant growth, development, stress adaptation and defense. Among these metabolites are the carotenoids which act as accessory pigments for photosynthesis and precursor to plant hormones. Though African eggplants are known to be resistant to various abiotic stresses, the effect of these stresses on secondary metabolites has not been well defined. The objective of this study was to establish the effect of drought stress on carotenoid profiles of nineteen African eggplant accessions selected based on leaf and fruit morphological traits. Stress was achieved by limiting irrigation and maintaining the wilting state of the crops. Fresh leaves were sampled at different maturity stages; before stress, 2 weeks and 4 weeks after stress for carotenoid analysis. The fresh harvested leaf tissues were immediately frozen in liquid nitrogen and ground. Analysis was carried out using a Dionex HPLC machine coupled to Photo Array Detector and Chromeleon software package (Thermo Fisher Scientific Inc, Waltham, Massachusetts, USA). Major carotenoids viz;. Xanthophylls (neoxanthin, violaxanthin, zeaxanthin and lutein) and carotenes (β–carotene and α–carotene), phytofluene, lycopene, phytoene as well as chlorophylls (chlorophyll‐b and Chlorophyll‐a) were targeted. The carotenoids increased with maturity stage of the crop. Although the stressed crops reported significantly decreased amount of carotenes, chlorophylls, neoxanthin and violaxanthin, the concentration of zeaxanthin increased with stress whereas lutein had no significant change. Chlorophyll‐a was significantly high in all the control accessions. Two accessions reported significantly higher contents of carotenoids as compared to the other accessions. The results of this study indicate that water stress has significant impact on the concentration of some carotenoids and photosynthetic pigments. This will definitely add value to the study of stress tolerance in crops.


The 3D structure of chromatin in the nucleus is important for gene expression and regulation. Chromosomal conformation capture techniques, such as Hi-C, generate large amounts of data showing interaction points on the genome but these are hard to interpret using standard tools. We have developed CSynth, a high performance 3D genome browser and real time chromatin restraint-based modeller to visualise dynamic and interactive models of chromatin capture data. CSynth does its calculations in the GPU hence is much faster than existing modelling software to infer and visualise the chromatin structure which also allow real-time interaction with the modelling parameters. It also allows straightforward comparison of interaction data and the results of third party 3D modelling outputs. In addition we include an option to view and manipulate these complicated structures using Virtual Reality (VR) allowing scientists to immerse themselves in the models for further understanding. This VR component has also proven to be a valuable teaching and public engagement tool. CSynth is web based and available to use at http://csynth.org.


Objective: Hot flashes are a significant problem in women going through the menopausal transition that can substantially affect quality of life. The world of estrogen therapy has been thrown into turmoil with the recent results of the Women's Health Initiative trial report. Pursuant to a growing interest in the use of alternative therapies to alleviate menopausal symptoms and a few pilot trials that suggested that acupuncture could modestly alleviate hot flashes, a prospective, randomized, single-blind, sham-controlled clinical trial was conducted in women experiencing hot flashes. Design: Participants, after being randomized to medical versus sham acupuncture, received biweekly treatments for 5 weeks after a baseline assessment week. They were then followed for an additional 7 weeks. Participants completed daily hot flash questionnaires, which formed the basis for analysis. Results: A total of 103 participants were randomized to medical or sham acupuncture. At week 6 the percentage of residual hot flashes was 60% in the medical acupuncture group and 62% in the sham acupuncture group. At week 12, the percentage of residual hot flashes was 73% in the medical acupuncture group and 55% in the sham acupuncture group. Participants reported no adverse effects related to the treatments. Conclusions: The results of this study suggest that the used medical acupuncture was not any more effective for reducing hot flashes than was the chosen sham acupuncture.


Novel
oxy ring-substituted isopropyl 2-cyano-3-arylacrylates, RPhCH=C(CN)CO2CH(CH3)2 (where R is 3,4-dibenzyloxy, 3-benzyloxy-4-methoxy, 4-benzyloxy-3-methoxy,
2,3-methylenedioxy, 3-iodo-4-methoxy, 5-iodo-2-methoxy, 3,4-difluoro, 3,5-difluoro)
were prepared and copolymerized with
styrene. The acrylates were synthesized by the piperidine catalyzed Knoevenagel
condensation of ring-disubstituted benzaldehydes and isopropyl cyanoacetate and
characterized by CHN elemental analysis, FTIR, 1H and 13C-NMR.
All the acrylates were copolymerized with styrene in solution with radical
initiation (ABCN) at 70°C.
The composition of the copolymers was calculated from nitrogen analysis, and
the structures were analyzed by FTIR, 1H and 13C-NMR.
Thermal properties of the copolymers are characterized by DSC and TGA.
Decomposition of the copolymers in nitrogen occurred in two steps, first in the
200-500ºC range with a residue, which then decomposed in the 500-800ºC range.


Israel is a small nation, it features natural areas that are poor in resources, has a mixed population with different languages and religions, boats a strong army and hold a crucial geographical position: attributes shared with Switzerland. Both nations have a lot in common. Can Switzerland help the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict? Considering also recent developments in the geopolitics of Middle East, the article analyzes different elements of the Swiss federal system that might contribute to social cohesion in the Land. For example, the organization of the political government, divided in the executive (seven members from different areas of the territory, without a President or a Premier) and legislative power (with two chambers). or the federal economic system with a fiscal equalization between poor and rich zones, cooperating with Palestine and distributing resources under the control of a unique federal capital, Jerusalem. Finally, the importance of military service as a system for the integration of multiple parts of society is analysed.


The open education (OE) movement is in its adolescent years and experiencing an identity crisis as it is pulled towards both pragmatism (marked by an emphasis on cost savings, resources, and incremental change) and idealism (marked by an emphasis on permissions, practices, and radical change). In this article, I describe these tensions (free vs. freedom; evolution vs. revolution; and resources vs. practices) before going on to argue in favour of a nuanced resolution to this Eriksonian crisis that reflects the diverse needs and motivations of educators. The merits of an integrated approach and its implications for the future trajectory of the OE movement are discussed.


Schools have been identified as one of the appropriate settings for addiction prevention since this is the place where pupils may come into contact with drugs for the first time and experiment with them, with the possibility of becoming addicted. To be effective, school-based drug education must be firmly based on knowledge of oneself and knowledge of the effects of various addictive substances. Biology education is then an essential part of schoolbased drug education. The aim of this work was to compare the approach taken towards addictive substances in textbooks within 16 countries involved in the European project BIOHEAD-CITIZEN. We used a specific part of the project grid for substance abuse (alcohol, tobacco and other drugs) and focussed on three major indicators: physical effects, psychological effects and social effects. Generally, in all 16 countries, the educative approaches taken in their textbooks include the three dimensions. Textbooks mainly employ text rather than visual images, and some countries' textbooks have only text. Moroccan and Mozambican textbooks do not mention tobacco and other drugs, respectively. The comparative analyses highlighted that the Finnish textbook is the most comprehensive; the only one, in the study, to have a specific Health Education teaching module.


In the context of the chem. of potentially prebiol. natural products it would be important to know whether, from a chem. point of view, glycolaldehyde phosphate could be considered as a potentially prebiol. natural material. In this connection, the reaction of rac. methoxyoxirane with inorg. phosphate in aq. soln. was checked: it does not produce glycolaldehyde phosphate but the 1-phosphate of 1-methoxy-1,2-ethanediol instead. In this context, earlier reflections on the question of how electroneg. substituents influence SN2-reactivity are recorded. [on SciFinder (R)]


Michel Foucault (1926–1984) produced a body of work that is hard to fit within a singular discipline. His own sense of what he was – a philosopher who used fragments of history to examine and disturb the self-evidence of the human sciences – is a clue to the diagnosis of his work as multidisciplinary. A brief examination of his major works shows that a number of disciplines were objects of his inquiries: psychiatry, psychology, criminology, penology, linguistics, economics, biology, medicine and sexology all received major treatments. In addition, a number of themes – philosophical, historical, ethical and sociological – fascinated Foucault at different points in his life: for example, the nature of the relationship between power and knowledge, the status of the self, truth and truth-telling, and the logic surrounding self-mastery and the government of others. Foucault also found time to make forays into art, music and literature. It is difficult to distil from all this activity a singular Foucaultian framework. To most historians and philosophers, for example, Foucault appears an outsider, and his methods and questions alien. The disciplines that Foucault examined do not seem, in the main, to have reciprocated his interest in them. Foucault has more frequently found a home in the 'meta-disciplines' – the study of studies – and perhaps especially in that branch of sociology that is philosophically nervous about the status of knowledge.

That Foucault's work is diverse, then, we can take as read. What framework can we identify in this diversity, and extract to use as a model for future research? Our approach in this chapter is to do three things. Our first section glosses one of Foucault's areas of interest – the government of self and of others – to examine the strengths and weaknesses of the Foucaultian framework. Our second section tries to reconstruct what Foucault was trying to do one of his major studies, The History of Sexuality, Volume 1: An Introduction (Foucault, 1978a). The aim of this section is to uncover the sorts of research questions for which the Foucaultian framework might best be used. In our third section we discuss how, as a writing duo, we became part of an 'intellectual community' that deals in 'Michel Foucault'. The emphasis here is very much on the personal: we offer an account of how this process appeared (and appears) to us. Our aim here is to discover to what sorts of intellectual communities Foucault's work belongs.


The most commonly used stopping criterion in Evolutionary Multi-objective Algorithms is an a priori fixed number of generations (or evaluations). But it is rather difficult to speak about achieving a particular compromise between the quality of the final solutions and the computation time when stopping an algorithm this way. Unfortunately, whereas single-objective Evolutionary Algorithms can stop when the fitness does not improve during a given number of generations, such "steady-fitness" stopping criterion does not easily extend to the multi-objective framework. This paper introduces a stability measure based on the density of the non-dominated solutions and proposes to use it to stop the optimization process when no significant improvement is likely to take place on further iterations. This approach is validated by the empirical results obtained applying NSGA-II to the well-known bi-objective ZDT-benchmarks. In particular, the problem ZDT4 best illustrates the ability of the proposed criterion to avoid useless continuation of a wedged optimization process when a local Pareto-optimal set is reached.


Teams are widely used in organized workplaces. This study developed and tested a model to understand how to promote knowledge creation and learning behavior by individuals in a team setting. Team members in the same context may perceive differences in contextual factors. Is it possible to promote greater knowledge creation and learning by individuals when they perceive various team contextual factors? In this study, individual motivation and team contextual factors were considered simultaneously to explore the direct and interaction effects of these factors. We employed a motivation–opportunity–ability (MOA) framework, which included individual motivation, psychological safety, and collective efficacy. The proposed model was an empirical test using survey data from 207 R&D team members and 42 team leaders. The team members answered the individual motivation, psychological safety, and collective efficacy questions; their team leaders answered the knowledge creation and learning behavior questions. Results revealed that extrinsic motivation, collective efficacy, and psychological safety directly affected an individual's knowledge creation and learning behavior. Notably, intrinsic motivation had no direct effect; however, it affected an individual's knowledge creation and learning behavior when collective efficacy was strong or psychological safety was weak. These findings yielded important implications for research and practice.


A research thesis focusing on self-regulatory driving and riding practices of older car drivers and motorcycle riders from a Malaysian context, an area previously unexplored. It is evident that mobility change is not only viewed as a physical event, but as a multidimensional process that involves behavioural, psychological, and social well-being of older Malaysian adults. As such, it is imperative to customise support systems, including social, infrastructure, and legal support, to cater for specific age groups and road users, particularly in a developing country like Malaysia, where mixed travel modes are common, and motorcycles are largely involved in traffic collisions.


Three experiments examined the use of vibrotactile cues to guide an operator toward a target. Vibrotactile stimulation on the hand can provide spatially stabilizing cues for feedback of subtle changes in position. When such feedback is present, a deviation from the point of origin results in tactile stimulation indicating the direction and magnitude of the positional error. Likewise, spatial deviation from a desired position displayed tactually can provide robust position guidance and stabilization sufficient to improve the acquisition time and accuracy of fine cursor control. A major advantage of this mode of information representation is that it can be present at the same time as visual cues with minimal cross-modal interference. Our findings suggest that performance is actually enhanced when both tactile and visual cues are present. Although previous studies have suggested that various forms of tactile feedback can provide position guidance and stabilization, to our knowledge, this work is the first that details the effect of tactile feedback on target acquisition directly.


Over the past two decades, magnetic resonance-guided high-intensity focused ultrasound (MR-HIFU) has increasingly been used as a non-invasive treatment option for symptomatic uterine fibroids. In this thesis, a volumetric MR-HIFU ablation technique of uterine fibroids is investigated. The first part assesses the implementation of this treatment in clinical practice. The second part explores the use of diffusion-weighted magnetic resonance imaging (DWI) for the measurement and prediction of treatment effect of volumetric MR-HIFU ablation.

Part I. Clinical treatment evaluation
Chapter 2 describes the mid-term clinical efficacy of volumetric MR-HIFU ablation for the treatment of uterine fibroids. This study shows that at 6 months, significant symptom improvement was obtained in 54% of the patients. In chapter 3, the effectiveness of volumetric MR-HIFU is compared with that of uterine artery embolisation (UAE) for the treatment of uterine fibroids. Patients were retrospectively selected and had to meet the eligibility criteria for both radiological treatment options. The results show that both volumetric MR-HIFU and UAE lead to significant symptom relief and improvement in health-related quality of life. However, within 12 months of follow-up, patients treated with MR-HIFU had a significantly higher risk of reintervention compared to the reintervention risk of patients treated with UAE (35% versus 4.5%, respectively). Chapter 4 demonstrates the clinical use of a direct skin cooling (DISC) device added to the MR-HIFU system to maintain a constant temperature (T≈20°C) at the interface between the MR-HIFU table top and the abdominal skin during volumetric ablation of uterine fibroids. This proof of concept study shows that it is safe and technically feasible to perform a volumetric MR-HIFU ablation with DISC for reducing the risk of thermal damage to the abdominal wall.

Part II. MRI for prediction and measurement of treatment effect
In Chapter 5 we assess the value of DWI and apparent diffusion coefficient (ADC) mapping with different b-value combinations for treatment evaluation after volumetric MR-HIFU of uterine fibroids. The results show that DWI can become a helpful non-contrast-enhanced tool to assess the extent of tissue ablation (non-perfused volume) immediately after MR-HIFU ablation. A decrease in contrast agent uptake within the ablated region on contrast-enhanced T1-weighted (CE-T1w) MRI resulted in a uniform increased DWI signal intensity with a corresponding decrease in ADC when the lowest b-values (0, 200 s/mm2) were used for ADC mapping. In Chapter 6, a pre-treatment intravoxel incoherent motion (IVIM) model is investigated for tissue characterisation to predict the heating effectiveness of volumetric MR-HIFU ablation. The mean diffusion coefficient D, the mean pseudodiffusion coefficient D* and the mean perfusion fraction f in fibroid tissue were measured. The results show a high f of over 0.4, but were not able to show correlations between the IVIM parameters and the thermal response and ablation efficacy of MR-HIFU.

Increased experience and further advances in technological developments may allow for further improvements in clinical efficacy of volumetric MR-HIFU ablation.


This note investigates the relationship between crude oil prices and investment in the energy sector. We employ a set of vector autoregression (VAR) models (unconstrained VAR, vector error-correction and Bayesian VAR) to formalize the relationship between the West Texas Intermediate (WTI) benchmark and fixed-asset cash spending in the oil and gas extraction and support activities sector of the Canadian economy. Using data from Statistics Canada's Quarterly Financial Statistics for the period 1999Q2–2015Q4, we report that, for example, an average WTI of $50 in 2016 would yield a 27.1 to 31.4 per cent (year over year) decline in fixed-asset cash spending in the sector relative to 2015.


The small will inherit the Earth… Understanding how communities and ecosystems recovered from the previous five global extinction events sheds light on how extinctions shape broad patterns of biodiversity. Sallan et al. looked across vertebrate species during and after the Devonian extinction (see the Perspective by Wagner). Small-bodied species, with rapid reproductive rates, dominated post-extinction communities, despite the presence of many successful large-bodied species before the extinction. This pattern mimics, to some degree, current patterns of extinction, suggesting that we might expect similar loss of large-bodied species if we continue along our current path. Science, this issue p. 812; see also p. 736 Similar to ongoing extinctions, the end-Devonian extinction resulted in the loss of most large-bodied vertebrates. [Also see Perspective by Wagner] Following the end-Devonian mass extinction (359 million years ago), vertebrates experienced persistent reductions in body size for at least 36 million years. Global shrinkage was not related to oxygen or temperature, which suggests that ecological drivers played a key role in determining the length and direction of size trends. Small, fast-breeding ray-finned fishes, sharks, and tetrapods, most under 1 meter in length from snout to tail, radiated to dominate postextinction ecosystems and vertebrae biodiversity. The few large-bodied, slow-breeding survivors failed to diversify, facing extinction despite earlier evolutionary success. Thus, the recovery interval resembled modern ecological successions in terms of active selection on size and related life histories. Disruption of global vertebrate, and particularly fish, biotas may commonly lead to widespread, long-term reduction in body size, structuring future biodiversity.


The multi‐layered view of digital divide suggests there is inequality of access to ICT, inequality of capability to exploit ICT and inequality of outcomes after exploiting ICT. This is evidently clear in the health systems of developing countries. In this paper, we look at cloud computing being able to provide computing as a utility service that might bridge this digital divide for Health Information Systems in developing countries. We highlight the role of Operational Business Intelligence (BI) tools to be able to make better decisions in health service provisioning. Through the case of DHIS2 software and its Analytics‐as‐a‐Service (AaaS) model, we look at how tools can exploit Cloud computing capabilities to perform analytics on Big Data that is resulting from integration of health data from multiple sources. Beyond looking at purely warehousing techniques, we suggest understanding Big Data from Organizational Capabilities and expanding organizational capabilities by offloading computing as a utility to vendors through cloud computing.


The capacity to trust wisely is a critical facilitator of success and prosperity, and it has been conjectured that people of higher intelligence are better able to detect signs of untrustworthiness from potential partners. In contrast, this article reports five trust game studies suggesting that reading trustworthiness of the faces of strangers is a modular process. Trustworthiness detection from faces is independent of general intelligence (Study 1) and effortless (Study 2). Pictures that include nonfacial features such as hair and clothing impair trustworthiness detection (Study 3) by increasing reliance on conscious judgments (Study 4), but people largely prefer to make decisions from this sort of pictures (Study 5). In sum, trustworthiness detection in an economic interaction is a genuine and effortless ability, possessed in equal amount by people of all cognitive capacities, but whose impenetrability leads to inaccurate conscious judgments and inappropriate informational preferences.


Community health services for pre-school children have been the major universal health provision for well-children for over a hundred years. Traditionally these services have been largely delivered by health visitors, who are now community nurses with a specialist post-graduate qualification. Preventive health services for children in the UK have been increasingly criticised as insufficiently evidence-based. Criticism has led to reform of national policy and subsequent major changes to existing services, particularly in targeting services to those with the highest health and social needs. The effect of these policy changes upon the service provided for pre-school children by health visitors is not known. This thesis explores the origins and development of children's preventive health services and examines the effect of post-1989 policy changes in practice, in particular the move to a predominately targeted child health promotion programme. The empirical study used a mixed methods approach to investigate changes to local policy and practice. A national survey was made of health visitors' child health promotion practice (n=1043) which was followed by an in-depth interview study (n=25) of health visitors' views on service changes. Study findings illuminate the effect of post-1989 reforms on child health services, showing a diversity of practice across the country, and resistance to key aspects of policy and practice among health visitors. Despite a revised national child health promotion programme being published in April 2008, which addresses some of the areas of concern highlighted by this study, flaws remain which have implications for the successful implementation of this programme. These flaws reflect wider contentious issues in NHS policy-making, related to the distribution of power and resources between different professional groups within the NHS and service users. Failing to explore these issues in policy and practice reduces the ability of preventive health services to maintain and improve pre-school children's health.


Introduction: A 32-year-old man presented with a single left lateral lower quadrant stab wound and pulsatile hemorrhage. Methods: The patient was taken immediately to the operating room for laparotomy and was found to have an expanding retropertioneal hematoma. Aortic occlusion did not slow progression. The left iliac artery could not be located. A femoral cut down and proximal control of the femoral artery was also not helpful. The hematoma was entered directly and the hemorrhaging area in the lateral psoas muscle was ligated. Results: The patient maintained palpable dorsalis pedis pulses throughout the procedure. Postoperatively, a CT (computed tomography) showed congenital absence of the left iliac artery with large retroperitoneal collateral vessels in the retroperitoneum that reconstituted in a normal femoral artery. The scan demonstrated the injury was to one of these large vessels. The patient was discharged home after and uneventful course. Discussion: Congenital malformations of the iliac artery are rare, and most are discovered incidentally on imaging. We report a case of injury to a collateral vessel resulting from a left iliac atresia. This had implications for controlling hemorrhage in this case. Knowledge of vascular anomalies is important for management of traumatic injury.


It is summer 2001 and Sami Traifi is struggling. His PhD seems to be slipping ever further from his grasp, and a recent trip home to Damascus has thrown up some disturbing family secrets. On top of all this, his wife Muntaha has just announced that she is taking up the hijab, at a time when he couldn't feel more distant from faith, religion, and from having any answers for any of the big questions. Furious with Muntaha, he finds himself embarking on a spontaneous quest for meaning and fulfillment, but all too soon his search spirals into a hedonistic rampage and threatens to destroy everything that he has.


In an increasingly technological age, the internet is becoming a primary source of networking. From common interest groups to business meetings, many members of western society have at least a minor presence on 'Web 2.0'. Social movements, like every other aspect of life, have become increasingly reliant on the internet for networking, information sharing, and coalition building. This is the case even for disadvantaged groups with fewer resources and less capacity for utilising computers and the internet. Aboriginal activists in Townsville have been slow to exert their presence on the web, but are gradually becoming savvy in the use of electronic networking in furthering their cause. They rely on listservs, blogs, and more recently social networking sites to make their struggle known to a broad audience. The rise in 'push-button activism' increases the opportunities for everyday engagement with the state by social movement participants. However, it also changes the notion of participation as marches and demonstrations give way to electronic petitions and Facebook fan pages. This paper argues that web 2.0 can be a beneficial resource to activists if it is carefully managed to avoid the risks of complacency that it may also bring about.


Calculations of exact-exchange (EXX) and random phase approximation (RPA)-correlation energies within the formally exact adiabatic connection fluctuation-dissipation theorem formalism have recently been carried out for a number of isolated and condensed systems. Unfortunately, most of the applications have been done in a non-self-consistent procedure, and for several systems it has been found that RPA correlation energies may significantly depend on the choice of input single-particle wave functions. In this work, we develop an efficient approach to compute the EXX/RPA total energy self-consistently. We derive an expression for the RPA self-consistent potential based on the density functional perturbation theory and dielectric matrix approaches and implemented it within the plane-wave pseudopotential framework. The efficiency of this approach is greatly improved by exploiting an iterative procedure to compute the inverted Kohn-Sham density-density response function. We apply our implementation to study the binding energy curves and the structural properties of rare gasses such as Ar and Kr and alkaline-earth Be dimers. In addition, the EXX and RPA-correlation potentials of these systems at different dissociation distances are analyzed.


This thesis is based on the assumption that the society in which we live is changing and that we are entering into the information society. This change will affect the public libraries in various ways and the libraries will have to be prepared to make adequate changes in their organizations.Based on the theories of Eric Rhenman and Richard Normann, dealing with how organizations act when changes in their environment occur, we have interviewed 10 public library leaders to find out how hteir respective libraries have acted in this situation.The results show that libraries have made some changes in their organizations to meet the environmental changes. Although not changing their old mission, all libraries have computerized and have had to raise the librarians educational level. However, only small changes have beenmade in their work towards the environment. Changes of this kind may become necessary in the future.


Introduction When, in 1917, the contour maps of the Coastal Plain portion of Virginia appeared, the writer became interested in certain peculiarities of James River and adjacent streams, as represented on these maps, and a close study was begun to see if their meaning could not be determined from the maps. The features in question consisted in upland and floodplain meander scars,2 indicating the former positions of meanders when the stream was flowing at higher levels than it does today, and meanders, generally more or less intrenched, in the present course of the tidal portion of the stream. The writer became interested in these features because it seemed probable that, if they could be correctly interpreted, they would throw considerable light on the conditions of the streams which formed them, particularly as to whether they were then, as now, flowing at tidelevel, or were normal streams with an appreciable grade . . .


BACKGROUND
Prejudicial beliefs, emotions, and behaviours cause discrimination against people labeled as mentally ill. This stigmatization is sometimes internalized by the patients, leading to self-stigmatization. Specific features and impacts of stigmatization and self-stigmatization in patients with bipolar illness are the subjects of this review.

METHOD
Studies were identified through PUBMED, Web of Science and Scopus databases as well as existing reviews. The search terms included "bipolar disorder", "stigma", "self-stigma" psychoeducation", "psychotherapy", "psychosocial treatment". Key articles listed in reference lists were searched.

RESULTS
Considerable recent evidence indicates that bipolar patients and their families are stigmatized, and that this stigmatization affects their quality of life as well as social functioning. The severity of stigmatization in bipolar disorder is greater than that in people with depression. There is also evidence of self-stigmatization which further decreases the quality of life. Stigmatization and self-stigmatization were shown to be one of the barriers that delay or prevent effective treatment, and thus exert adverse effects on the outcomes of bipolar disorder.

CONCLUSION
Stigma affects the experience of illness as well as social functioning in patients with bipolar disorder. The impact of stigma on the lives and treatment outcomes of patients with bipolar disorder mandates intensive effort of mental health research and policy to address this problem. Much has been done against the stigmatization of the mentally ill. But the fight against stigma remains a fundamental objective of health programs for mental health.


Distributed mobility management (DMM) is a promising technology to address the mobile data traffic explosion problem. Since the location information of mobile nodes (MNs) are distributed in several mobility agents (MAs), DMM requires an additional mechanism to share the location information of MNs between MAs. In the literature, multicast or distributed hash table (DHT)-based sharing methods have been suggested; however they incur significant signaling overhead owing to unnecessary location information updates under frequent handovers. To reduce the signaling overhead, we propose a timer-based Bloom filter aggregation (TBFA) scheme for distributing the location information. In the TBFA scheme, the location information of MNs is maintained by Bloom filters at each MA. Also, since the propagation of the whole Bloom filter for every MN movement leads to high signaling overhead, each MA only propagates changed indexes in the Bloom filter when a pre-defined timer expires. To verify the performance of the TBFA scheme, we develop analytical models on the signaling overhead and the latency and devise an algorithm to select an appropriate timer value. Extensive simulation results are given to show the accuracy of analytical models and effectiveness of the TBFA scheme over the existing DMM scheme.


As one of form on mass media communications, film function in giving information to wide society hit the certain idea, as conveyor order the education, but the core important more at aspect of entertainment amusement for society. Cinema is become the place liked by the audience to witness film. The film industry is become important by sharing the film that they produced to the cinema. Hollywood as biggest industrial place owning wide distribution coverage in the world is the important role in the entertainment amusement business. History express just in the middle of the 1940s Hollywood have produced as much 400 films in one year. Undeniably that a lot of among film produced own the tendency made similar in the case of theme. Besides masterpiece original, film produced by the Hollywood is also the adaptation story and or movie remake. Movie remakes is generally re-produced to get the financial advantage. Piquancy for researcher here is how technical aspect of film patterned and significant use of techniques of the films masterpiece. To know it hence researcher of comparing of stylistic film form of Il Mare (Korea) and The Lake House (Hollywood).
Stylistic system representing element of film style which in it consisted of the aspects: mise-en-scene, cinematography, editing, and sound. Mise-en-scene means staging an action, it use the term to signify the director's control over what appears in the film frame. It is include those aspects of film: setting, lighting, costume, and the behavior of the figures. Cinematography is how to control the qualities of the shot, which is how the image is photographed and framed, how long the image lasts on the screen. Editing may be thought of as the coordination of one shot with the next. Sound is all terms which can we listen in the film. Stylistic system is used to create the formal system (film story) in film developed. Film form consider by interact of formal system and stylistic system which is become to audio visual form.
This research is used qualitative approach with the type of comparative form of research where aim to compare and to description of stylistic system which is there are in film of Il Mare and The Lake House. The comparison will study also formed narrative aspect. Through approach qualitative, picture which totally hit the stylistic film form will be presented and description to know the comparison of stylistic system of films.
Result from research indicated that the stylistic system hold the role to create story in the film developed. Pursuant to solution concerning film representing as film art that which given by David Bordwell and Kristin Thompson, a film form consisted of formal system (narrative element) and stylistic system. We shall find that film style interacts with the formal system. In a narrative film, style can function to advance the cause effect chain, create parallels, manipulate story, plot relations, or sustain the narration's flow of information. Some use of film technique can call attention to pattern of style. Similar story can own the different impression because of different tidiness also. This matter found at those films.
Hollywood movie is more look simple in narrative plot. Audience served by easy to know the story, this matter is pushed by its industry is on business oriented. The data can always looked by box office. This matter is seen also that America state which its culture identity have individualism dimension which use the system of low-context communication of its masterpiece. While for the Korea of non-stop develop build the movie industry it seen still emphasize at the cultural side of east at the film that they produced. So that characteristic owned by the Korea film still been seen through depiction which tend to the detail especially at nonverbal aspect. Cultural identities of Korea which have collectivism dimension also show the system of high-context communication of its masterpiece. The equation of the films from this different industry is more seen at its narrating structure by using pattern three points of developed story which is opening, development, and solution.


This chapter builds upon the experiments that we described in Chapter 4. Here we perform additional mechanistic studies on the previously introduced DCDHF-based molecular rotor in order to examine and quantify the influence of solvent polarity on the photophysical behavior of this molecule. In order to systematically examine the influence of solvent polarity on Stokes shifts and fluorescence quantum yields we perform variable-temperature experiments in 2-methyltetrahydrofuran and ethyl acetate, and room temperature experiments in toluene/acetonitrile solvent mixtures. The obtained experimental data clearly point towards the presence of two polarity-responsive excited-state deactivation barriers, in excellent agreement with our previously proposed model and the unusual trends in flu-orescence quantum yields reported in Chapter 3 for the same chromophore. 1 We demonstrate that the presence of two excited-state deactivation pathways results in discontinuous dependence of the nonradiative decay rates on polarity at low viscosities. The fluores-cence quantum yield is low in non-polar solvents and polar solvents, but reaches a maximum > 0.1 in low-viscosity solvents of moderate polarity. Vis-pump/vis-probe measurements performed in a range of non-polar and polar solvents show excellent agreement with the model that was proposed in Chapter 4, and enable us to capture the transient spectrum of the twisted intermediate.


Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE AR-SA Background : Since immobilized enzyme has to be reused several times during the process of applications, thus one has to avoid the laborious work of filtration which is also accompanied by some inevitable loss of the support by selecting magnetic nanoparticles so as to easily separated from the medium by just magnetic separation. Results : In the present study horseradish peroxidase (HRP) was immobilized on non-modified Fe 3 O 4 magnetic nanoparticles. Immobilized HRP was characterized by FT-IR spectroscopy, scanning electron microscopy and energy dispersive X-ray. The immobilized HRP retained 55% of its initial activity after ten reuses. The pH was shifted from 7.0 for soluble HRP to 7.5 for the immobilized HRP. The optimal temperature of soluble HRP was shifted from 40°C to 50°C for the immobilized HRP. The immobilized HRP is more thermal stable than soluble HRP. Various substrates were oxidized by immobilized HRP with higher efficiencies than those of soluble HRP. Km values of the soluble HRP and the immobilized HRP were 31 and 45 mM for guaiacol and 5.0 and 7.0 mM for H 2 O 2 , respectively. The effect of metals on soluble HRP and immobilized HRP has been studied. The immobilized HRP was more stable against high concentration of urea, Triton X-100 and isopropanol. Conclusions : The physical immobilization of HRP on iron magnetic nanoparticles improved the stability toward the denaturation induced by pH, heat, metal ions, urea, detergent and water-miscible organic solvent. /* Style Definitions */
 table.MsoNormalTable
 {mso-style-name:"Tabla normal";
 mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0;
 mso-tstyle-colband-size:0;
 mso-style-noshow:yes;
 mso-style-priority:99;
 mso-style-parent:"";
 mso-padding-alt:0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt;
 mso-para-margin:0cm;
 mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt;
 mso-pagination:widow-orphan;
 font-size:10.0pt;
 font-family:"Times New Roman",serif;
 mso-fareast-language:JA;}


In economic theory there are two types of business entity integration: horizontal and vertical. Cluster environments may include both types of integration—companies producing the same products are interconnected as well cooperating with the suppliers and supporting entities. One explanation ofLatvia's competitiveness current problems is pure level of business entities co-operation and business integration. The global market could be entered more easily and efficiently when companies and suppliers from a particular sector are interconnected in geographically proximate groups (clusters)—efficiency is heightened, greater opportunities for innovation and export are created, and favorable conditions reached for integrated development. Business entity cooperation and integration is a gateway to integrated development and higher competitiveness in the global markets. Cluster environment is stimulating integrated development of all the business entities within the cluster. The main objective of the paper is to find out the industrial cluster influence to integrated development. To reach this goal different scientific research data and papers were analyzed and experts interviewed.


What makes us happy? What makes us sad? How do we come to feel a sense of enthusiasm? What fills us with lust, anger, fear, or tenderness? Traditional behavioral and cognitive neuroscience have yet to provide satisfactory answers. The Archaeology of Mind presents an affective neuroscience approach-which takes into consideration basic mental processes, brain functions, and emotional behaviors that all mammals share-to locate the neural mechanisms of emotional expression. It reveals-for the first time-the deep neural sources of our values and basic emotional feelings. This book elaborates on the seven emotional systems that explain how we live and behave. These systems originate in deep areas of the brain that are remarkably similar across all mammalian species. When they are disrupted, we find the origins of emotional disorders: - SEEKING: how the brain generates a euphoric and expectant response - FEAR: how the brain responds to the threat of physical danger and death - RAGE: sources of irritation and fury in the brain - LUST: how sexual desire and attachments are elaborated in the brain - CARE: sources of maternal nurturance - GRIEF: sources of non-sexual attachments - PLAY: how the brain generates joyous, rough-and-tumble interactions - SELF: a hypothesis explaining how affects might be elaborated in the brain The book offers an evidence-based evolutionary taxonomy of emotions and affects and, as such, a brand-new clinical paradigm for treating psychiatric disorders in clinical practice.


We consider the task of recovering correlated vectors at a central decoder based on fixed linear measurements obtained by distributed sensors. Two different scenarios are considered: In the case of universal reconstruction, we look for a sensing and recovery mechanism that works for all possible signals, whereas in the case of almost sure reconstruction, we allow to have a small set (with measure zero) of unrecoverable signals. We provide achievability bounds on the number of samples needed for both scenarios. The bounds show that only in the almost sure setup can we effectively exploit the signal correlations to achieve effective gains in sampling efficiency. In addition, we propose an efficient and robust distributed sensing and reconstruction algorithm based on annihilating filters.


A use case of integrating a variety of open-source geospatial tools is presented in this paper to process and openly redeliver open data in open standards. Through a software engineering approach, we have focused on the potential usability of OpenStreetMap in authoritative and professional contexts in Great Britain. Our system comprises open source components from OSGeo projects, the Open Street Map (OSM) community and proprietary components. We present how the open data flows among those components and is delivered to the Web with open standards. Apart from the cost issues, utilizing the open-source tools has offered some distinct advantages compared to the proprietary alternatives, if any was available. At the same time, some technical limitations of utilizing current open-source tools are described. Finally a case study is shown for the usability of the developed solution.


Abstract: This paper argues that conflicting assessments of the impacts of free trade in North America are incomplete because they do not analyse these effects in light of the key long term U.S. goal: the reconstruction of U.S. hegemony that was under siege by Japan and Europe. The declining competitiveness of U.S. raw materials supply systems badly damaged U.S. hegemony during the 1970s and l980s. The original U.S. strategy was to create a continental energy market to reduce overseas oil imports, guarantee access to oil and natural gas from Canada and Mexico, and reduce price instability. The evolution into broader agreements reflected the interests of other U.S. industries and the efforts of Canadian and Mexican states and firms to capture benefits from restructuring. This paper analyses the role continental integration of raw materials industries played in strategic efforts to reconstruct U.S. hegemony and the consequences of these efforts. Resume: Cet article argue du fait que les evaluations contradictoires des impacts du libre-echange en Amerique du Nord sont inachevees parce qu'elles n'analysent pas ces effets a Ia lumiere du but principal des Etats-Unis de long terme: Ia reconstruction de l'hegemonie des Etats-Unis qui etait sous le siege par le Japon Ct J'Europe. La competitivite en baisse des circuits d'alimentation de matieres premieres premieres des Etats-Unis a mal endommage I'hegemnie des Etats-Unis pendant les annees 70 et les annees 80. La strategie initiate des Etats-Unis etait de creer un marche de I'energie continental pour neduire les importations de petrole d'outre-mer, I'acces de garantie au petrole et au gaz naturel du Canada et le Mexique, Ct reduit I'instabilite des prix. Levolution dans de plus larges accords a reflete les interets d'autres industries des Etats-Unis et les efforts des etats et des societes canadiens et mexicains aux avantages de saisie de Ia restructuration. Cet article analyse I' integration continentale de role des industries de mateieres premieres premieres jouees dans des efforts strategiques de reconstruire I'hegemonie des Etats-Unis et les consequences de ces efforts. I. Introduction What are the consequences of free trade agreements for North America? The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and the Canada-U.S. Free Trade Agreement (CUSFTA) created the institutional framework for the integration of the economies of the United States, Canada and Mexico. Free trade supporters argued that the increased economic competitiveness resulting from continental integration of firm operations, access to lower cost labour, and enlarged markets would benefit all three nations, but critics emphasized the relocation of industries from the U.S. and Canada to Mexico in search of low wage labour and less stringent environmental regulations. Assessments of the impacts of these agreements remain sharply divided (see, e.g., President's Report to Congress, 1997; USITC, 1997; and Weintraub, 1997 for positive assessments and Economic Policy Institute, 1997 for a negative assessment). In part, this results from focussing on different subsets of the total "impacts" of these agreements. More fundamentally, c onflicting assessments are incomplete because they do not analyse these impacts in light of what this paper will argue are their key long term goals from the U.S. perspective: the reconstruction of U.S. hegemony that was under siege in the 1970s and 1980s by Japan and Europe. Labour costs, market access, and the economies of scale of continental operations are all central components of this hegemonic reconstruction strategy. This paper focuses attention on another central component: U.S. raw materials supply systems. A key factor in U.S. hegemonic decline was reliance on raw materials supply networks developed in the late 1800s and early 1900s. Declining competitiveness in extraction, processing, and particularly transport costs relative to its main competitors helped cause the productivity growth slowdown in the U. …


Copper homeostasis, including intestinal absorption, blood transport, uptake, trafficking and excretion, is regulated by multiple genes encoding for specific copper transporters, which coordinate copper bioavailability. Mutations in genes coding for copper pumps or copper chaperons are responsible for copper overload or deficiency, with relevant consequences on cell structure and human health. The spectrum of genetic disorders of copper metabolism includes multiple entities, characterized by different clinical presentation, with liver and brain as target organs.In recent years, a new autosomal recessive muco-cutaneous syndrome characterized by Mental retardation, Enteropathy, Deafness, peripheral Neuropathy, Icthiosis and Keratodermia (MEDNIK) has been described in several French-Canadian families. Regarding the molecular pathways involved in MEDNIK syndrome, AP1S1 has been identified as the pivotal gene involved in the correct functioning of AP-1 complex, which is responsible for the crosstalk between the trans-Golgi network and the other endosomes. MEDNIK syndrome opens a new field of human pathology, that has been called "adaptinopathies" including all congenital diseases associated with mutations in genes coding for adaptor complexes subunits. Moreover, the report of MEDNIK syndrome induces to focus on the developing spectrum of inborn errors of copper metabolism, where at least eight diseases may be included.


Abstract Although many people seem to share the intuition that multinational companies (MNEs) carry a responsibility for the working conditions in their supply chains, the justification offered for this assumption is usually rather unclear. This article explores a promising strategy for grounding the relevant intuition and for rendering its content more precise. It applies the criteria of David Miller's connection theory of remedial responsibility to different forms of supply chain governance as characterized by the Global Value Chains (GVC) framework. The analysis suggests that the criteria for identifying MNEs as remedially responsible for bad working conditions in their direct suppliers are fulfilled in many cases, even though differentiations are required with regard to the different supply chain governance structures. MNEs thus have a duty to make sure currently bad working conditions in their suppliers are changed for the better. Moreover, since production in supply chains for structural reasons continuously generates remedial responsibility of MNEs for bad working conditions in their suppliers, it puts the prospective responsibility on them to make sure that their suppliers offer acceptable working conditions. Further, it is suggested that the remedial responsibility of MNEs might require them to make financial compensation to victims of bad working conditions and in grave cases initiate or support programs to mitigate disastrous effects suffered by them.


Membership programmes are widely used marketing tools. Many customers belong to a number of different membership programmes across a variety of organizations and contexts. Memberships are based on the idea of mutual benefits of a relationship. Memberships in general offer tangible and intangible benefits such as free admission, discounts, special offers or access to special services, and a sense of belonging and identity. General organizational benefits of memberships are funding, fee revenue, customers, legitimacy and various kinds of member support. Memberships are used as competitive relationship marketing tools to retain customers, build relationships and encourage member participation. Many memberships have developed from merely being reward programmes into an attempt to create emotional bonds based on calculative and affective commitment. Research into memberships is an emergent multidisciplinary field of interest for practitioners and scholars representing different disciplines. This thesis is delimited to study members and memberships at non-profit organizations within tourism settings from a relationship marketing perspective. The aim is to get an insight into why individuals choose to become members, why they stay on as members, and how members interact and use their memberships. The overall objective is therefore to explore motivations related to memberships and how this is reflected in different member behaviours and member roles within tourism settings. Throughout this thesis a mixed-methods research approach was applied combining qualitative and quantitative research to explore the membership phenomenon. This thesis comprises four studies based on data from an explorative pre-study (12 respondents), a questionnaire survey (755 respondents) and a Nordic cross-case study (37 respondents). Findings showed member motivations, behaviours and roles within the tourism system. Member motivations were identified as altruistic (doing good for others), self-interest (doing good for yourself) and social (doing good with others). Findings further showed member interactions with other members (M2M), customers/visitors (M2C) and supported organizations (M2B). Member behaviours found were: returning (retention); supporting, visiting, using member information (participation); marketing, spreading word-of-mouth and recruiting new members and volunteering (co-creation). Furthermore significant relations were found between motivational dimensions, behaviours and member demographics (age, gender and distance). Members performed multiple overlapping roles from supporters, visitors to front-line co-creators.


Francis-99 is a set of workshops aiming to determine the state of the art of high head Francis turbine simulations (flow and structure) under steady and transient operating conditions as well as promote their development and knowledge dissemination openly. The first workshop (Trondheim, 2014) focused on steady state conditions. Some concerns were raised regarding uncertainty in the measurements, mainly that there was no clear vortex rope at the Part Load (PL) condition, and that the flow exhibited relatively large asymmetry. The present paper addresses these concerns in order to ensure the quality of the data presented in further workshops. To answer some of these questions, a new set of measurements were performed on the Francis- 99 model at Waterpower Laboratory at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU). In addition to PL, two other operating conditions were considered, for further use in transient measurements, Best Efficiency (BEP) and High Load (HL). The experiments were carried out at a head of 12 m, with a runner rotational speed of 333 revolutions per minute (rpm). The guide vane opening angle were 6.72°, 9.84° and 12.43° for PL, BEP and HL, respectively. The part load condition has been changed from the first workshop, to ensure a fully developed Rotating Vortex Rope (RVR). The velocity and pressure measurements were carried out in the draft tube cone using 2D PIV and six pressure sensors, respectively. The new PL condition shows a fully developed rotating vortex rope (RVR) in both the frequency analysis and in the phase resolved data. In addition, the measurements confirm an asymmetric flow leaving the runner, as was a concern in the first Francis-99 workshop. This asymmetry was detected at both design and off-design conditions, with a stronger effect during off design.


Most of the Information technology management programs are designed to educate and develop managers who can effectively manage the planning, design, selection, implementation, use, and administration of emerging and converging information and communications technologies. The IT Manager and the Project Manager are not at odds. The Project Manager's ability to focus knowledge, skills, tools and techniques on the temporary endeavor frees the IT Manager to focus on keeping the wheels of commerce turning. The IT Manager supports the project by providing staff resources and by lending authority to the Project Manager.


Concerns about environmental degradation and finite natural resources necessitate cleaner sources of energy for use in the transportation sector. In Canada, natural gas (NG) is currently being appraised as a potential alternative fuel for use in vehicles for both medium- and heavy-duty use due to its relatively lower costs compared with that of conventional fuels. The idea of compressed natural gas vehicles (CNGVs) is being mooted as inexpensive for fleet owners and especially because it will potentially significantly reduce harmful emissions into the environment. A short feasibility study was conducted to ascertain the potential for reduced emissions and savings opportunities presented by CNGVs and renewable NGVs (RNGVs) in both medium- and heavy-duty vehicles. The study which is discussed in the present paper was carried out on long-haul trucking and refuse trucks, respectively. Emphasis was laid on individual vehicle operating economics and emissions reduction, and the identification of practical considerations for both the individual application and CNGVs/RNGVs as a whole. A financial analysis of the annual cost savings that is achievable when an individual diesel vehicle is replaced with a CNG vehicle was also presented. This paper drew substantial references from published case studies for relevant data on maintenance costs, fuel economy, range, and annual distance traveled. It relied on a summary report from Argonne National Laboratory's GREET (Greenhouse Gases, Regulated Emissions, and Energy Use in Transportation) (Argonne National Laboratory, 2018, Argonne GREET Model, US Department of Energy. https://greet.es.anl.gov/. Accessed October 5, 2020) for its discussion on relative fuel efficiency penalties for heavy-duty CNGVs. The fuel cost figures were mostly drawn from motor fuel data of the Ontario Ministry of Transportation since the Ministry is one of the few available sources of compressed natural gas fuel prices. Finally, the GHGenius life-cycle analysis tool ((S&T) Squared Consultants Inc., 2019, GHGenius, (S&T) Squared Consultants Inc. https://www.ghgenius.ca. Accessed October 5, 2020) was employed to determine fuel-cycle emissions in Canada for comparison purposes. The study produced remarkable findings. Results showed that compared with diesel-fuelled vehicles, emissions in CNG heavy-and-medium-duty vehicles reduced by up to 8.7% (for well-to-wheels) and 11.5% (for pump-to-wheels), respectively. Overall, the most beneficial application appeared to be long-haul trucking based on the long distances covered and higher fuel economy achieved (derived from economies of scale), while refuse trucks appeared to have relatively marginal annual savings. However, these annual savings are actually a conservative estimate, which will ultimately be determined by a number of factors that are likely to be predisposed in favor of NG vehicles. Significantly, the prospect of using RNG as fuel was found to be a factor for improving the value proposition of refuse trucks in particular, certainly from an emissions standpoint with a reduction of up to 100%, but speculatively from operational savings as well.


The NSW Sober Driver Program (SDP) is a state-wide education and relapse prevention program for repeat drink drive offenders who are convicted of two or more offences within five years. Unlike other education programs for drink drivers, participants are required to complete the program as part of their sentence. The SDP is the outcome of a comprehensive review of existing road safety interventions and international best practice in traffic offender programs and was developed by a New South Wales (NSW) whole of government committee made up of Roads and Traffic Authority, Motor Accidents Authority, Department of Corrective Services and Attorney General's Department. The Department of Corrective Services, Community Offender Service (DCS COS) delivers the program through 51 district offices from 63 locations across NSW and at different times throughout the year. Around 100 courses are offered every year and district offices may run simultaneous or multiple courses in a year. The NSW Sober Driver Program commenced as a pilot in 2002 and was rolled out statewide from June 2003. Up to the end of June 2007, 5,032 individual offenders have enrolled in a SDP and 4,223 have completed the program. (a) For the covering entry of this conference, please see ITRD abstract no. E216178.


Minangkabau is a region located on the Western part of Sumatera, Indonesia. The Minangkabau tradition of rantau (wandering, a rite of passage) has obviously been the reason for the emergence of youthful and progressive-thinking figures that brought about change. The unique debate about Islam and local customs and traditions had led to the emergence of two opposing forces, the Kaum Tua (The Old, or Conservatives) and the Kaum Muda (The Youth, or Progressives) in Minangkabau. The evidence of the conflict between those two forces can clearly be seen in press activities, which has made the history of the press in Minangkabau as one of the oldest in Indonesia. In its subsequent development, during the Dutch colonial occupation the press in Minangkabau developed in such a way as to become the means to present ideas of nationalism, which later on led to independence. The press of Minangkabau, beginning with the very first newspaper published in 1859, up to national independence in 1945 has had a fascinating history, and it is important for Indonesia as well as for Minangkabau itself. This period has never been the subject of any comprehensive research. The objective of this research is to study and present the history of the Press in Minangkabau. The research method is historical research where various sources of data were used for this research, including books, articles, journals, and interviews with historians, discussions and seminars. Historical data uncovered through this research includes an introduction on Minangkabau and its customs and traditions, the journey of how Islam was introduced into Minangkabau, the progressive modernization of Islam which occurred after the Perang Paderi (Paderi War), the struggles between Kaum Muda and Kaum Tua as found in the historical journey of the Minangkabau press which was part of the effort to modernize Islam and the nationalist movement in the struggle for independence for Indonesia as a nation. Also included is the history of a number of important Press figures, educational institutions and organizations that were involved in the development of the press, and the profile of "Soeloeh Melajoe", one of the Islamic magazines and part of the Islamic Press that was owned by the Kaum Tua (Conservatives). As a result of this research, we are able to reach the conclusion that the History of the Minangkabau Press began with the movement to modernize Islam up to and including the nationalist movement towards national independence of the Republic of Indonesia.


Background Although human embryonic stem cells (ESCs) and mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) from various sources display immunomodulatory effects, direct comparisons among these classes of stem cells have not been reported. Methods Peripheral blood mononuclear cell suppression assays and carboxyfluorescein diacetate succinimidyl ester assays were used to assess the immunosuppressive effects of stem cells. Gene expression was measured using DNA microarrays. Enzyme-linked immunosorbent assays were used to determine interleukin (IL)-6 levels. Results We found that fetal-type MSCs proliferated significantly faster than adult-type MSCs. Compared with ESCs grown on feeder cells, ESCs grown in feeder cell–free conditions exhibited decreased immunosuppressive effects. The suppressive effects of ESCs were significantly stronger than those of MSCs, and the suppressive effects of fetal-type MSCs were significantly stronger than those of adult-type MSCs at each tested dose level. Analysis of gene expression by microarray and MetaCore pathway mapping revealed changes in eight different immune response pathways; we observed that IL-6 gene expression was highly significantly involved in all eight pathways. Significantly higher IL-6 elevation ratios (IL-6after:IL-6before) were found in ESCs compared with fetal-type MSCs, and these were also found in fetal-type MSCs compared with adult-type MSCs. Furthermore, IL-6 levels were found to correlate with cell dosages of MSCs and the suppressive effects. Conclusions The ease of obtaining fetal-type MSCs and their rapid proliferation make these cells ideal candidates for cell-based therapies, especially for diseases associated with immune responses, given the immunosuppressive effects of these cells. IL-6 might play an important role in the immunosuppressive effects of various stem cells.