Sewerage systems convey sewage, or wastewater, from residential or commercial buildings through complex reticulation networks to treatment plants. During seismic events both transient ground motion and permanent ground deformation can induce physical damage to sewerage system components, limiting or impeding the operability of the whole system. The malfunction of municipal sewerage systems can result in the pollution of nearby waterways through discharge of untreated sewage, pose a public health threat by preventing the use of appropriate sanitation facilities, and cause serious inconvenience for rescuers and residents. Christchurch, the second largest city in New Zealand, was seriously affected by the Canterbury Earthquake Sequence (CES) in 2010-2011. The CES imposed widespread damage to the Christchurch sewerage system (CSS), causing a significant loss of functionality and serviceability to the system. The Christchurch City Council (CCC) relied heavily on temporary sewerage services for several months following the CES. The temporary services were supported by use of chemical and portable toilets to supplement the damaged wastewater system. The rebuild delivery agency -Stronger Christchurch Infrastructure Rebuild Team (SCIRT) was created to be responsible for repair of 85 % of the damaged horizontal infrastructure (i.e., water, wastewater, stormwater systems, and roads) in Christchurch. Numerous initiatives to create platforms/tools aiming to, on the one hand, support the understanding, management and mitigation of seismic risk for infrastructure prior to disasters, and on the other hand, to support the decision-making for post-disaster reconstruction and recovery, have been promoted worldwide. Despite this, the CES in New Zealand highlighted that none of the existing platforms/tools are either accessible and/or readable or usable by emergency managers and decision makers for restoring the CSS. Furthermore, the majority of existing tools have a sole focus on the engineering perspective, while the holistic process of formulating recovery decisions is based on system-wide approach, where a variety of factors in addition to technical considerations are involved. Lastly, there is a paucity of studies focused on the tools and frameworks for supporting decision-making specifically on sewerage system restoration after earthquakes. This thesis develops a decision support framework for sewerage pipe and system restoration after earthquakes, building on the experience and learning of the organisations involved in recovering the CSS following the CES in 2010-2011. The proposed decision support framework includes three modules: 1) Physical Damage Module (PDM); 2) Functional Impact Module (FIM); 3) Pipeline Restoration Module (PRM). The PDM provides seismic fragility matrices and functions for sewer gravity and pressure pipelines for predicting earthquake-induced physical damage, categorised by pipe materials and liquefaction zones. The FIM demonstrates a set of performance indicators that are categorised in five domains: structural, hydraulic, environmental, social and economic domains. These performance indicators are used to assess loss of wastewater system service and the induced functional impacts in three different phases: emergency response, short-term recovery and long-term restoration. Based on the knowledge of the physical and functional status-quo of the sewerage systems post-earthquake captured through the PDM and FIM, the PRM estimates restoration time of sewer networks by use of restoration models developed using a Random Forest technique and graphically represented in terms of restoration curves. The development of a decision support framework for sewer recovery after earthquakes enables decision makers to assess physical damage, evaluate functional impacts relating to hydraulic, environmental, structural, economic and social contexts, and to predict restoration time of sewerage systems. Furthermore, the decision support framework can be potentially employed to underpin system maintenance and upgrade by guiding system rehabilitation and to monitor system behaviours during business-as-usual time. In conjunction with expert judgement and best practices, this framework can be moreover applied to assist asset managers in targeting the inclusion of system resilience as part of asset maintenance programmes. Deputy Vice-Chancellor's Office Postgraduate Office


Background: Interleukin-21 (IL-21) modulates HIV-1 infection through the elicitation of different antiviral mechanisms, including Th17 lineage commitment and induction of microRNA (miR)-29, a miRNA endowed with anti-HIV activity. As miR-29 expression is significantly increased in HIV-1-exposed seronegative individuals (HESN), we investigated the role of miR-29/IL21 axis in the natural control of HIV-1 infection. Methods: Peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs) isolated from 15 Italian sexually exposed HESN and 15 HIV-unexposed healthy controls were in-vitro infected with an R5-tropic HIV-1Ba-L strain. Seven days post HIV-1 infection we evaluated: 1) p24 production (ELISA); 2) CD4+/IL-21+ and CD4+/IL-17+ T lymphocytes (FACS); 3) IL-17 concentration in supernatants (ELISA); and 4) IL-6, IL-17, IL-21, and miR-29a,b,c expression by CD4+ T lymphocytes as well as perforin and granzyme by peripheral blood mononuclear cells (qPCR). The same analyses were performed on the 15 HIV-positive partners. Results: At baseline IL-6 expression alone was increased in HESN compared to healthy controls. Seven days after in-vitro HIV-1 infection, nevertheless, differences emerged. Thus, CD4+/IL21+ and CD4+/IL17+ T lymphocytes, as well as IL-21 and IL-17 expression and production were significantly augmented in HESN compared to healthy controls. Interestingly, IL-21 upregulation correlated with a significantly increased expression of miR-29a,b,c and a reduced susceptibility to in-vitro HIV-1 infection in HESN alone. No differences were observed in perforin and granzyme expression. Conclusion: The IL-21/miR-29 axis is upregulated by HIV-1 infection in HESN suggesting its involvement in the natural resistance to HIV-1 infection in HESN. Approaches that exogenously increase IL-21 production or prompt preexisting cellular IL-21 reservoir could confine the magnitude of the initial HIV-1 infection.


This article discusses the approaches of the European Union (EU) and of the United States (US) to the notions of agreement and concerted practice applied to horizontal collusive consequences of vertical restraints. I conclude that networks of vertical restraints blur the differences between vertical and horizontal agreements; therefore, both options of attack are available for enforcers in the EU and the US context. If the analysed vertical restraints are parallelly adopted by agreement, they should be deemed illegal as long as they restrict competition producing collusive consequences. In the absence of explicit coordination to adopt the practice, I suggest first looking for a stretched concept of horizontal agreement or a broadly interpreted concept of concerted practice, including unilateral 'communication' that intentionally reduces uncertainty. Even when the analysed practices are adopted individually and not by all firms, they can represent a commitment to focal points, observable by market players, thus amounting to communication of intent. If that is not possible, I then propose that an analysis of market power, incentives, coercion and induction should guide the finding of an illegal vertical agreement and base the analysis of the consequences. The agreement/concerted practice path is an appropriate, feasible and coherent way to deal with vertical restraints facilitating horizontal tacit coordination, but that does not exclude alternative enforcement mechanisms.


Mitotic activity of rat parotid was increased from levels near zero to 10-40 mitotic figures per 1,000 acinar cells (mean, 15/1,000) 2 days after glandular activity was increased from less than normal to normal by replacing liquid diet with a diet of solid chow. This frequency greatly exceeded the maximum (1-3/1,000 acinar cells) observed at any time during the diurnal mitotic fluctuations. This mitotic burst was virtually prevented if the auriculotemporal nerve was removed 2 days prior to introduction of solid chow, but was only somewhat reduced when the superior cervical ganglion was removed prior to the dietary substitution. The parasympathetic innervation also was chiefly responsible for the increased cell size that followed reintroduction of solid food.


The diffusion of ions in solid materials plays an important role in many aspects of materials science such as the geological evolution of minerals, materials synthesis, and in device performance across several technologies. For example, the realization of multivalent (MV) batteries, which offer a realistic route to superseding the electrochemical performance of Li-ion batteries, hinges on the discovery of host materials that possess adequate mobility of the MV intercalant to support reasonable charge and discharge times. This has proven especially challenging, motivating the current investigation of ion mobility (Li+, Mg2+, Zn2+, Ca2+, and Al3+) in spinel Mn2O4, olivine FePO4, layered NiO2, and orthorhombic δ-V2O5. In this study, we not only quantitatively assess these structures as candidate cathode materials, but also isolate the chemical and structural descriptors that govern MV diffusion. Our finding that matching the intercalant site preference to the diffusion path topology of the host structure con...


Heat-shock cognate protein 70 (HSC70) is a multifunctional protein that has known functions as an adenosine triphosphatase (ATPase) in the uncoating of clathrin-coated vesicles and in the facilitation of protein folding. Matsui et al. provide evidence that this versatile protein also serves to regulate stability of the mRNA encoding the proapoptotic protein Bim. During hematopoiesis, survival of the hematopoietic progenitor cells is determined, at least in part, by cytokines that decrease the abundance of Bim. Treatment of cultured Baf-3 cells with interleukin-3 (IL-3) caused destabilization of Bim mRNA. To explore the mechanism behind this effect, the authors analyzed proteins that interacted with the 3′ untranslated region (UTR) of Bim mRNA during affinity chromatography. Matrix-assisted laser desorption/ionization–time-of-flight (MALDI-TOF)/TOF mass spectrometry revealed the association of HSC70 with the Bim 3′-UTR, and this association was decreased in cells treated with IL-3. In IL-3-treated cells, HSC70 was associated with the cochaperones Bag-4 and CHIP, whereas in IL-3-starved cells, two other cochaperones, Hsp40 and Hip, were the more prevalent partners of HSC70. Survival signals from cytokine receptors are thought to be carried by pathways activated by the small guanosine triphosphatase Ras, and cells expressing constitutively active Ras showed rapid loss of Bim mRNA. The authors propose a model in which cells exposed to a survival signal from IL-3 have HSC70 protein associated with its cochaperones Bag-4 and CHIP, with little potential to bind RNA. Under these conditions, Bim mRNA tends to interact with RNA-destabilizing factors. However, if IL-3 is removed, signals not yet resolved cause HSC70 to interact preferentially with Hsp40 and Hip. Interaction of this protein complex with Bim mRNA appears to protect the Bim mRNA from degradation. The authors also point out that these hematopoietic processes are disturbed in leukemia; thus, understanding the regulatory mechanisms involved may offer new strategies for disease intervention. H. Matsui, H. Asou, T. Inaba, Cytokines direct the regulation of Bim mRNA stability by heat-shock cognate protein 70. Mol. Cell 25, 99-112 (2007). [Online Journal]


Globalization as progress of economic development has increased population socioeconomical vulnerability when unequal wealth distribution within economic development process constitutes the main rule, with widening the gap between rich and poors by environmental pricing. Econological vulnerability is therefore increasing too, as dangerous substance and techniques should produce polluted effluents and industrial or climatic risk increasing (Woloszyn, Quenault, Faburel, 2012). To illustrate and model this process, we propose to introduce an analogical induction-model to describe both vulnerability situations and associated resilience procedures. At this aim, we first develop a well-known late 80's model of socio-economic crack-up, known as "Silent Weapons for Quiet Wars", which presents economics as a social extension of natural energy systems. This last, also named "E-model", is constituted by three passive components, potential energy, kinetic energy, and energy dissipation, thus allowing economical data to be treated as a thermodynamical system. To extend this model to social and ecological sustainability pillars, we propose to built an extended E(Economic)-S(Social)-O(Organic) model, based on the three previous components, as an open model considering feedbacks as evolution sources. An applicative illustration of this model will then be described, through this summer's american severe drought event analysis.


: In this paper, a modified adaptive nonlinear filter (MANF) to estimate the vehicle longitudinal velocity of the vehicle has been presented which has acceptable accuracy and simple structure. Obtaining accurate model with minimum uncertainty is difficult and almost impossible, consequently, conventional model based filters can not be used simply in estimating the longituadinal velocity of the vehicle during the braking. On the other hand, the model based filters require the braking toque in velocity estimation where, measuring the braking torque requires specific sensors which will cause increasing the costs of repairing and maintenance. Consequently, in this paper a MANF has been introduced which didn't require the dynamic model of vehicle and the value of braking torque in estimation process. MANF has been evaluated by experimental data and its effectiveness has been approved.


Japan is arguably today's most successful industrial economy, combining almost unprecedented affluence with social stability and apparent harmony. Japanese goods and cultural products are consumed all over the world, ranging from animated movies and computer games all the way through to cars, semiconductors, and management techniques. In many ways, Japan is an icon of the modern world, and yet it remains something of an enigma to many, who see it as a confusing montage of the alien and the familiar, the ancient and modern. The aim of this Very Short Introduction is to explode the myths and explore the reality of modern Japan - by taking a concise look at its history, economy, politics, and culture. ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.


This report presents and discusses the findings of the "Study to quantify and analyse the VAT Gap in the EU-27 Member States" (Contract TAXUD/2012/DE/316, FWC No. TAXUD/2010/CC/104), conducted by CASE and CPB.The structure of this report is as follows. In Chapter 1, we discuss the structure of the VAT systems in the EU, the broad trends in the EU economy over the period 2000-2011, and review the behaviour of VAT revenues, as well as the changes in VAT rates and exemptions that have occurred as a response to economic events or policy decisions. We pay particular attention to the events following the onset of the economic crisis in 2008. In Chapter 2, we discuss the definition of VAT Gaps that has been used in this study, as well as other alternatives existing in the literature. We review possible shortcomings associated with different concepts. In Chapter 3 we present the results of the estimations for EU-26 countries for the period 2000-2011. The estimates are first discussed for the EU-26 as a whole, and then for each country individually. Chapter 4 provides an econometric analysis of the determinants of VAT Gaps for the period under consideration. Appendix A discusses the methodology followed with regard to the estimates, and Appendix B reviews the differences with other, official and unofficial, estimates of the Gaps. Appendix C provides additional statistical material.


The prevalence of school-based healthcare has increased markedly over the past decade. We study a modern mode of school-based healthcare, telemedicine, that offers the potential to reach places and populations with historically low access to such care. School-based telemedicine clinics (SBTCs) provide students with access to healthcare during the regular school day through private videoconferencing with a healthcare provider. We exploit variation over time in SBTC openings across schools in three rural districts in North Carolina. We find that school-level SBTC access reduces the likelihood that a student is chronically absent by 2.5 percentage points (29 percent) and reduces the number of days absent by about 0.8 days (10 percent). Relatedly, access to an SBTC increases the likelihood of math and reading test-taking by between 1.8-2.0 percentage points (about 2 percent). Heterogeneity analyses suggest that these effects are driven by male students. Finally, we see suggestive evidence that SBTC access reduces violent or weapons-related disciplinary infractions among students but has little influence on other forms of misbehavior.


In this paper, we present a novel ultra-high-speed polymer based electrooptic modulator that features a profiled, deeply etched cross section. We show that by profiling the side walls of the modulator and varying the thickness of the dielectric stack that broadband operation can be achieved whilst maintaining a very low drive voltage in a compact device. Initially a quasi-TEM analysis is undertaken in order to determine the modulators response to topographical variation followed by a full-wave analysis on the optimized device. The full-wave analysis is employed in order to determine any frequency dispersion effects with respect to the modulators characteristic impedance Zc, microwave effective index Nm, microwave and dielectric losses alphac and alphad , and the half-wave voltage-length product V pi L.


BACKGROUND
Low-carbohydrate diets are popular for weight loss, but their cardiovascular effects have not been well-studied, particularly in diverse populations.

OBJECTIVE
To examine the effects of a low-carbohydrate diet compared with a low-fat diet on body weight and cardiovascular risk factors.

DESIGN
A randomized, parallel-group trial. (ClinicalTrials.gov: NCT00609271).

SETTING
A large academic medical center.

PARTICIPANTS
148 men and women without clinical cardiovascular disease and diabetes.

INTERVENTION
A low-carbohydrate (<40 g/d) or low-fat (<30% of daily energy intake from total fat [<7% saturated fat]) diet. Both groups received dietary counseling at regular intervals throughout the trial.

MEASUREMENTS
Data on weight, cardiovascular risk factors, and dietary composition were collected at 0, 3, 6, and 12 months.

RESULTS
Sixty participants (82%) in the low-fat group and 59 (79%) in the low-carbohydrate group completed the intervention. At 12 months, participants on the low-carbohydrate diet had greater decreases in weight (mean difference in change, -3.5 kg [95% CI, -5.6 to -1.4 kg]; P = 0.002), fat mass (mean difference in change, -1.5% [CI, -2.6% to -0.4%]; P = 0.011), ratio of total-high-density lipoprotein (HDL) cholesterol (mean difference in change, -0.44 [CI, -0.71 to -0.16]; P = 0.002), and triglyceride level (mean difference in change, -0.16 mmol/L [-14.1 mg/dL] [CI, -0.31 to -0.01 mmol/L {-27.4 to -0.8 mg/dL}]; P = 0.038) and greater increases in HDL cholesterol level (mean difference in change, 0.18 mmol/L [7.0 mg/dL] [CI, 0.08 to 0.28 mmol/L {3.0 to 11.0 mg/dL}]; P < 0.001) than those on the low-fat diet.

LIMITATION
Lack of clinical cardiovascular disease end points.

CONCLUSION
The low-carbohydrate diet was more effective for weight loss and cardiovascular risk factor reduction than the low-fat diet. Restricting carbohydrate may be an option for persons seeking to lose weight and reduce cardiovascular risk factors.

PRIMARY FUNDING SOURCE
National Institutes of Health.


Abstract Background: There has been no comprehensive longitudinal study of pulmonary functions (PFTS) in ALS determining which measure is most sensitive to declines in respiratory muscle strength. Objective: To determine the longitudinal decline of PFTS in ALS and which measure supports Medicare criteria for NIV initiation first. Methods: Serial PFTs (maximum voluntary ventilation (MVV), maximum inspiratory pressure measured by mouth (MIP) or nasal sniff pressure (SNIP), maximum expiratory pressure (MEP), and Forced Vital Capacity (FVC)) were performed over 12 months on 73 ALS subjects to determine which measure showed the sentinel decline in pulmonary function. The rate of decline for each measure was determined as the median slope of the decrease over time. Medicare-based NIV initiation criteria were met if %FVC was ≤ 50% predicted or MIP was ≤ 60 cMH2O. Results: 65 subjects with at least 3 visits were included for analyses. All median slopes were significantly different than zero. MEP and sitting FVC demonstrated the largest rate of decline. Seventy subjects were analyzed for NIV initiation criteria, 69 met MIP criteria first; 11 FVC and MIP criteria simultaneously and none FVC criteria first. Conclusions: MEP demonstrated a steeper decline compared to other measures suggesting expiratory muscle strength declines earliest and faster and the use of airway clearance interventions should be initiated early. When Medicare criteria for NIV initiation are considered, MIP criteria are met earliest. These results suggest that pressure-based measurements are important in assessing the timing of NIV and the use of pulmonary clearance interventions.


Abstract For the peasants in rural China, the harvest season is the occasion when several different worlds – the business world of large companies, the entrepreneurial world of middlemen, local elites and peasant households – are compressed into the same social space, thereby inducing intensive economic and social interactions and crystallizing social relations among villagers, local elites and markets. Based on ethnographic research on the autumn harvest in a township in northern China, this study sheds light on distinctive modes of market transactions across produces, and diverse interactions between markets and local institutions involving different co-ordination mechanisms, rhythms and social relationships. A more nuanced image of market transactions emerges from these observations, calling for a more refined conceptualization of markets and further research on their implications for institutional changes.


An increase in the incidence of disease in various marine organisms over the past few decades has been linked to ocean climate change. In Nova Scotia, Canada, mass mortalities of sea urchins, due to an amoebic disease, are associated with tropical cyclones of relatively high intensity that pass close to the coast when water temperature is above a threshold for disease propagation. These conditions increase the likelihood of introduction and spread of a nonindigenous water‐borne pathogen through turbulent mixing. Our analysis shows that the most deadly storms, in terms of the probability of a sea urchin mass mortality, have become more deadly over the past 30 years. We also found that storms have been tracking closer to the coast and that surface temperature has increased during the hurricane season. These trends are likely to continue with climate warming, resulting in a regional shift to a kelp bed ecosystem and the loss of the urchin fishery.


The role of music during the German occupation of Norway (1940-45) proves to be an exceptional case for cultural opposition in a dictatorship. Few famous musicians, some local celebrities and innumerous hardly known activists preferred artistic instead of militant means to demonstrate reluctance, spread information, contradict the legitimacy of the German occupants and raise the moral strength of fellow countrymen in Norway and abroad, while risking to be caught, incarcerated and driven into exile. The indispensable advantage was the popular belief of art as an apolitical matter so that music even could reach into fields that would have been inaccessible to open political agitation. Based on considerable findings in public archives and private collections, this book discusses music in concentration camps in Norway and the fate of Jewish musicians, portrays choirs, military ensembles, orchestral and church music in Norway, analyzes Harald Sæverud's 5th symphony and Moses Pergament's choir symphony Den Judiska Sången, illustrates the exile of musicians in Stockholm and discusses resistance music in historic media such as the Errol Flynn-movie Edge of Darkness (1943), recapitulated by a model for music as resistance.


Since the introduction of Integrated Product development in 1985 [1], industry has widely been using this model to understand and articulate their design, business and production activities. Recently, however, the picture has started to alter, as the nature of industry's business has had to adapt to a much more complex world and in many cases, Integrated Product Development is no longer a sufficient way of describing industry's product development activity. This paper uses the model of Integrated Product Development as a start-point to exploring the changes that industry has been undergoing over the fifteen years since it was introduced and attempts to make pointers in the direction of a new framework for product development, which should guide industry in the future. The key research challenges that this paper identifies include: developing a framework that identifies and supports a multi-aspect approach to product development; understanding the strategic conditions that affect product development; developing a coherent approach to product quality based on product-life thinking; addressing environmental needs in a proactive manner through innovation techniques; and understanding both organisational and technical knowledge-management for improved product development.


Background: Female soccer players have a well-known risk for anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) injury, but few studies have reported on second ACL injuries in this population. Purpose: To (1) report the rates of subsequent ACL injury (ipsilateral graft rupture or contralateral tear) in competitive female soccer players, (2) compare these rates with those of other female athletes of similar competitive level, (3) determine risk factors for second ACL injury, and (4) report clinical outcome scores in this population. Study Design: Cohort study; Level of evidence, 3. Methods: The medical records at a single institution were reviewed for female patients who were injured during a competitive athletic event and treated with primary ACL reconstruction (ACLR) between 1998 and 2013. Patients were followed for a mean of 68.8 months postoperatively (range, 24-115.2 months). Clinical outcome was obtained via Lysholm and International Knee Documentation Committee (IKDC) scores. Soccer players were matched 1:1 to non-soccer athletes for age, activity level, and graft type. Results: A total of 180 female ACLR patients with a mean ± SD age of 19.6 ± 6.9 years met the study inclusion and exclusion criteria (90 soccer players and 90 non-soccer players). Soccer players sustained more second ACL injuries, including both graft failures (11% vs 1%; P < .01) and contralateral ACL tears (17% vs 4%; P < .01), compared with non-soccer players. Of the 67 patients who returned to soccer after ACLR (mean age, 17.5 years; range, 13-27 years), significantly more had graft tears compared with those who did not return to soccer (15% vs 0%, respectively; P = .04); however, the difference in contralateral ACL tears (19% for returning players vs 9% for those who did not return; P = .34) was not significant. Relatively older age (odds ratio, 1.5 per year; P = .03) was a significant risk factor for ACL graft tear but not for contralateral ACL injury. Both groups had similar mean Lysholm (96 vs 95) and IKDC scores (95 vs 96) at final follow-up. Conclusion: Twenty-eight percent of all female soccer players and 34% of those players who returned to soccer had a second ACL tear. Soccer players had an increased rate of both graft tear and contralateral ACL injury compared with similar non-soccer athletes. Older age and return to soccer were significant risk factors for graft rupture.


Semiparametric additive regression models
relax the common assumption of covariate effects to have a known
functional form specified by some polynomial. These models only
assume that relationships are smooth and are additively separable
and thus are less restrictive than common parametric approaches.
Estimation techniques for such models assuming all covariates to be
exogenous, i.e. uncorrelated to the error term ruling out the
presence of confounding omitted variables, for example, have become
widely available. However, additive models with weaker assumptions
on the error term and methods for inference such as simultaneous
confidence bands and specification tests are still subject to
extensive research. Thus, the objectives of the thesis are the
development of flexible methods for estimation and inference and
their application in various complex data situations. Thereby,
particular focus is laid on the computational implementation of all
proposed approaches aiming at the provision of user-friendly
software packages.
First, the determinants of chronic child undernutrition in Kenya
are analyzed. Particular research questions include the possibility
of catch-up growth, i.e. improvements of the nutritional status
over age, and relevance of hypotheses on the functional forms of
certain effects. In order to address these questions, simultaneous
confidence bands for additive models with locally-adaptive smoothed
components and heteroscedastic errors are proposed. These
appropriately quantify the estimation uncertainty of function
estimates and can be used for assessing the statistical
significance of an effect and of certain features in a curve.
Further, a powerful nonparametric specification test is introduced
that allows to test for polynomial regression versus nonparametric
alternatives.
Next, the needs-relatedness of relief supply in earthquake-affected
communities in Pakistan is studied. Here, non-random sample
selection calls for the application of a sample selection model
with flexible spatial and time-varying effects accounting for
unobserved regional heterogeneity and for varying survivor needs
over changing seasonal conditions. A flexible Bayesian approach to
correct for the sample selection bias is proposed that allows to
simultaneously estimate the determinants of the probability to
receive relief supply and of the amount of delivered supply.
Finally, the usual assumption of the unobservable error term to be
orthogonal to the covariates is relaxed relying on the availability
of some instrumental variable. A Bayesian nonparametric
instrumental variable approach is proposed where bias correction
relies on a simultaneous equations specification with flexible
modeling of both the covariate effects and the joint error
distribution. The approach is used to analyze the relationship
between class size and scholastic achievements of students in
Israel.


The benefits of open educational resources (OER) are extensively promoted, though in the UK they tend to be enjoyed by a well-educated elite. The provision of OER is also an exclusive affair, with universities releasing content on a top-down, higher-education (HE) focused basis rather than responding to the needs of potential OER users outside HE. Beyond the UK, whilst OER initiatives exist across the Commonwealth many perpetuate this approach with a focus on formal education that excludes people who could benefit most from OER. This paper reports research intended to widen access to OER throughout the Commonwealth and which builds on the authors' work with online welfare community forums in the UK voluntary sector. This work resulted in the authors conceptualising a 'public-facing open scholar' role involving academics listening to community members' needs then sourcing and sharing OER to meet those needs. The authors then looked further afield to explore what broadening access to OER might involve in welfare communities across the Commonwealth, where Facebook emerged as the preferred platform for online communities. The authors therefore selected several Facebook groups focused on the topic of autism, with which they performed an open scholarship role. The research revealed considerable potential for using Facebook groups to widen access to OER. The case study groups showed receptiveness to academics' interventions and as sharing is embedded in Facebook culture it was an easy transition to broaden this to include sharing OER. However, the study also revealed challenges for open scholarship in that Facebook features behaviour patterns that have implications for the ways in which an open academic might work. In all though the substantial audience of receptive Facebook welfare communities encountered during the research study indicates the potential for broadening access to OER in this sector and in other non-HE spheres across the Commonwealth.


This paper presents an efficient approach to find optimal power flow (OPF) determining the dispatch schedule of power generators with minimum cost while satisfying the system constraints like the upper and lower power and reactive power generation limit, upper and lower voltage level limit, and line flow limit using power world simulator. The minimization of the generation cost will result to a lower cost of electricity paid by the consumers. Power world simulator employs linear programming method for finding optimal solution. The reactive power is controlled by installing the shunt capacitors at the bus. The proposed approach has been tested and examined on IEEE- 30 bus test system.


The relations between growth and mortality rates and water temperature are important in determining the economic success of spiny lobster aquaculture. Captive juvenile lobsters (Jasus edwardsii) were grown at a site in north-eastern New Zealand where ambient sea-water temperatures in the culture tanks ranged from 23.3°C in summer to 13.4°C in winter, with an annual mean of 17.2°C (s.d. = 2.8). The growth and mortality rates of three size classes of juvenile lobsters were examined over one year in captivity. All lobsters were fed cultured mussels. Lobsters in the smallest size class grew to an average of 39 mm carapace length (31 g) in their first year from settlement. Growth to 200 g was estimated to take three years. Total mortality of lobsters was 12.8% and was greatest in the 0+ size class, for which most mortality occurred in a single tank. Of the total mortality, 64% occurred during two summer months (January and February). The growth and mortality of J. edwardsii are compared with previously unpublished information.


Material collected in summer 2004 from the Mid-Atlantic Ridge between Iceland and the Azores with three pelagic trawls was used to estimate relative catchabilities of common fish, cephalopod, decapod, and jellyfish species. Catchability is defined as the ratio of numbers caught between two trawls, standardized for towed distance. Taxon-specific catchability coefficients were estimated for two large pelagic trawls with graded meshes, using a smaller pelagic trawl with a uniform mesh size as the reference trawl. Two of the trawls were equipped with multiple opening–closing codends that allowed sampling of different depth layers. Generalized linear and mixed models suggest that most of the taxa have catchabilities much lower than expected from the area of opening alone, indicating that only a few species are herded by the large mesh at the mouth of larger trawls. Catchability coefficients across taxa show a very large spread, indicating that the sampled volume for the larger trawls with graded meshes was highly
taxon-specific. Part of this variability can be explained by body size and taxonomic group, the latter probably reflecting differences in body form and behaviour. The catchability estimates presented here form the basis for combining data for quantitative analyses of community structure.


To the extent that the creation and exploitation of information technology, in particular of the Internet, represents not only a cause and a hallmark of economic globalisation, but also is dependent upon globalized ways and rules of trade, it is particularly revealing to study the impact of electronic commerce on the globalization of economic law. Focussing the examination more specifically on problems of consumer protection will also bring into consideration national public policy thus raising additional issues of policy conflicts, even though, in the context of the Internet, the concept of consumer may not be limited to the ultimate consumer. Assuming that the establishment of specific rules of consumer law is legitimate in itself, the paper seeks to identify the problems which consumer protection raises for globalized electronic commerce by comparing the approaches which the major players in the field, i.e. the USA and the EU, prefer. Therefore, the policy of the EU of relying on the traditional legal instruments of market regulation is contrasted with self-regulation of e-commerce by industry, which is the approach the US favor with respect to both the domestic market and international trade (see the Global Business Dialogue). These preferences are then explained by reference to the prevailing political and economic thought, and they are put in the perspective of the institutional framework existing on both the international level (UNCITRAL) and the national and regional levels respectively. In particular, it is demonstrated that the distribution of federal powers in the USA and the rules on the establishment of an Internal Market by free trade and harmonization of laws in the EU do have a deep impact on the approaches chosen and the results reached. A major conclusion is that none of the systems fully corresponds to the needs of both e-commerce and consumer protection on the Internet. This is so because, first, considerable diversity of rules continues to exist on domestic markets, and, second and more important, because the systems, in particular the system of the EU, are inward~oriented. The EU favors the establishment of the Internal Market, and thus neglects or even discriminates against e-commerce with third countries, an attitude which is patently at odds with the requirements of global e-commerce. This divide is further explained by a closer examination of the specific rules governing transnational e-commerce transac~tions, and of a number of specific problems of e-commerce such as consumer contract law, protection of personal data, treatment of unsolicited information, and conflicts of jurisdiction. The main conclusion is that States may considerably impair global e~commerce simply by failing to establish consistent and uniform systems of e-commerce regulation and consumer protection on the domestic level. Another, no less pessimistic conclusion is that the very reasons that impede satisfactory domestic laws in this field will also block the establishment of a satisfactory international regime of e-commerce and consumer protection. The only hope is that compatible legal standards will gradually develop in the course of globalisation. H.U.


Stefanie Walter examines the visibility of European Union citizens in the mass mediated European public sphere and argues that it can help facilitate an exchange between decision-makers and ordinary citizens. The results show that in comparison to other actor groups, such as political parties or civil society organisations, the visibility of European Union citizens is not marginal. Yet, the image of the European Union citizenry that becomes visible via the news media remains nationally entrenched and references to a truly European citizenry are rare. The study also uses multilevel regressions to explain the visibility of European Union citizens in the news coverage. The empirical analyses are based on a large-scale content analysis of TV news and newspaper articles of the 2009 European Parliament election.


The chapter is made up of two fictional conversations, one between members of a donor family, the other a heart transplant recipient and partner. The work is informed by research interviews with donor families and recipients. Each section is preceded by a full page photograph.

Organ transplantation is a medical innovation that has offered the potential to enhance and save lives since the first successful procedure in the 1950s. Subsequent developments in scientific knowledge and advances in surgical techniques have allowed for more efficient and refined procurement, minimal surgical complications, and increased success rate. However, procedures such as organ transplantation raise questions about the nature of our relationship with our own bodies; about our embodiment and personal and corporeal identity.

This book is comprised of academic essays, personal reflections, and creative writing from researchers and artists involved in an ongoing collaborative art-science project about the experience and culture of heart transplantation. The writings and reflections included discuss embodiment, what it means to inhabit a body and define oneself in relation to it, including struggles with identity formation; set in both clinical and private spaces.

The uniqueness of this volume consists in the authors' aim of connecting the specific experience of heart transplantation to the more widely shared experience of relating to the world and one another through the body's physical, perceived, and imagined boundaries. Such boundaries and the commonly held beliefs in personal autonomy that are associated with them are a subject of ongoing philosophical and scientific debate. What's more, the resources of art and culture, including popular culture, literature, historical and contemporary art, are extremely useful in revising our views of what it means for the body's boundaries to be philosophically 'leaky.'

Following the discussion initiated by contributor Margrit Shildrick, this book contributes to the field of inquiry of the phenomenon of embodiment and inter-corporeality, the growing body of literature emerging from collaborative art-science research projects, and the wider area of disability studies. This book will be of particular interest to those with personal, scholarly, and creative interests in the experience of transplantation, or illness in general.


The 1982 Australian film 77ie Road Warrior is a muscular punk cult movie which has appealed to a broad range of audiences. Yet it has not always been a success with critics. Most reviewers acknowledge its impressive technique, especially the stuntsmanship and fast-paced editing which make it a successful action movie of the motorized chase-and-crash genre. But the film's director and cowriter, George Miller, claims that it is more than merely a genre movie: This is a mythological tale. . . . You can compare it to a western-I grew up on them and they are very important to me-but I think this kind of story is told over again in many cultures. In an attempt to generate a script with mythic significance, Miller and his co-writers viewed all the Samurai films, looked again at the classical westerns, and read Joseph Campbell's The Hero with a Thousand Faces.2 Critics have generally commented on the film's debt to westerns and particularly to the 1953 film Shane.3 But several critics have denied the claim to mythic significance. Pauline Kael, for instance, regrets "Miller's thinking there's mythic depth" in the film, and accuses him of assuming "that the more indebted to old movies your material is, the richer it is, and the more archetypal-and that junk food is the only true nourishment. There's nothing under the film's cliches-nothing to support the visceral stress that Miller's single, continuous spurt of energy puts on us." She thinks the film "has no resonance of any kind."4 Yet the film's continuing success with a broad audience suggests that it is mythic, since myths operate on the level of our most deeply felt fears and desires. Even Stanley Kauffman, who considers it "schlock," admits that The Road Warrior "has struck a chord deep in the psyche of the Western world."5 The film is not exceptional, however, because it is mythic; most action films are mythic. But mythic films are usually limited to myths of individuation, in which archetypal heroes or saviours rescue good people from villains. The samurai films and the classical westerns are examples. What distinguishes The Road Warrior from such films is the breadth of its mythic resonance, which expands beyond the mythology of individuals to a corporate, near-apocalyptic mythology with specific cultural significance. The film achieves this expansion through its pervasive evocation of the oldest story of western civilization as narrated in the Trojan epics. The film is set in the Australian desert after a world war which has destroyed the fabric of civilized society. The main character is Max, the Road Warrior, who roams the desert in a supercharged V-8 Interceptor in search of gasoline. He captures the pilot of a gyrocopter (a miniature helicopter) who had tried to steal Max's fuel and who leads him to a walled enclosure besieged by what is essentially a motorcycle gang. The movie's main conflict is between the humane defenders of the walled enclosure, who are hoarding gasoline, and the brutal gang who want the gas for themselves. The Road Warrior sides with the gas-hoarders for the promise of fuel. Soon after he takes sides, a young boy from the enclosure sneaks outside its walls and throws a sharp-edged, stainless steel boomerang that kills the homosexual lover of one of the principal members of the motorcycle gang. When this happens, the film re-enacts Book XVI of the Iliad where, beneath the walls of Troy, Hector slays Patroclus, the homosexual lover of Achilles. The film's young Hector-figure probably intends to kill the Achilles-figure, who is standing near his lover at the time, just as Homer's Hector intends to kill Achilles, whose armor Patroclus is wearing. Like his prototype , the latter-day Achilles is consumed by grief and rage , and bent on revenge. The Homeric evocations in the film make it more than "a cowboy-and-indian western in new guise."6 Because its narrative alludes to the ancient narratives, the film acquires-in its form, its characters and its subject - a complex significance involving recognition and surprise. …


With the growing global energy crisis, development of economic and land-efficient construction structural system became an significant subject in Civil Engineering field. Under this context, material and structural test and theoretical analysis research is meaningful on new energy-saving building material, glazed hollow bead insulation concrete. In this paper, one mix design that meet insulation requirements of the energy-saving project on coefficient of heat conductivity and compressive strength have been chosen. Under the uniaxial status, prism samples of above mix design have been selected to do compression strength and deformation tests; Systemic analysis of the relationship between the strength and deformation for glazed hollow bead insulation concrete has been carried through, and some results have been provided, including the stress-strain constitutive relationship of glazed hollow bead insulation concrete with grade c35, prism compressive strength, strain, initial elastic modulus, residual strength, ductility, etc.


The ages, abundances, and kinematics of a large number of early-type stars at the south Galactic pole are derived to examine the properties, augment the sample of high-velocity stars, and study hypotheses concerning their origin. The results are compared to a group of normal A stars near the disk. It is suggested that at around 6.5 X 10 to the 8th yr ago, a major source of relatively low abundance hydrogen was accreted by the Galactic disk, forming young high-velocity stars that do not partake of the age-abundance-kinematics relationships shown by other stellar groupings. 57 references.


Abstract. This study shows that remotely sensed ETact is useful in hydrological modelling for the procedure of model calibration and shows it potential to update soil moisture predictions. Comparison of modeled and remotely sensed ETact together with the outcomes of our data assimilation procedure points out potential model errors, both conceptual and flux-related. Assimilation of remotely sensed ETact results in a realistic spatial adjustment of soil moisture, except for the area where the model suffers from conceptual errors (forest with deep groundwater levels). By using operational (i.e. available for community in practice) data and models we aim to show the potential and limitations of using remotely sensed ETact in the practice of hydrological modelling. We use satellite data of both ASTER and MODIS for the same two days in the summer of 2006 that, in association with the Surface Energy Balance Algorithm for Land (SEBAL), provides us the spatial distribution of daily ETact. The model, used by the local water board, is a physically based distributed hydrological model of a small catchment (70 km2) in The Netherlands that simulates the water flow in both the unsaturated and saturated zone. Model outcomes of ETact show values that are at least 20% lower than those estimated by SEBAL, which is due to the fact that different evapotranspiration methods are used. The spatial pattern of ETact from the hydrological model resembles the soil map, whereas the ETact from SEBAL resembles the land use map. As both ASTER and MODIS images were available for the same days, this study provides an opportunity to compare the worth of these two satellite sources. It is shown that, although ASTER provides better insight in the spatial distribution of ETact due to its higher spatial resolution than MODIS, they appeared in this study just as useful.


Objectives: Teachers are among the professions reporting highest level of work-related stress, the study was undertaken to evaluate the levels of stress amongst school teachers in a public school of rural western Maharashtra Methods: Prospective survey based study was carried out amongst school teachers of rural western Maharashtra using Copenhagen Psychosocial Questionnaire (COPSOQ).The survey was carried out on 3 scheduled visits over a period of 2 months after the Institutional Ethical committee approval. Total 110 Primary and secondary school teachers, satisfying inclusion and exclusion criteria were randomly selected for the study. All the questions in the Copenhagen Psychosocial Questionnaire (COPSOQ) were graded according to 1 (Always-0), 2 (Sometimes-25), 3 (Often-50), 4 (Seldom-75) and 5 (Never-100). The scale value was calculated as the simple average. More the average score less the stress and vice versa Results & Conclusion: Inability to understand the meaning and importance of work, improper clarity about the job, inability to cope with the problems were found to be the factors always contributing to stress of teachers.


In this research, we investigate the long-term effects of job displacement on several dimensions of job quality and satisfaction, focusing only on individuals who lose their job because of plant closure. Using the German Socio-Economic Panel data from 1984 to 2012, we build a database containing 2,396 individuals who have lost their job because of plant closure. Our control group is created by finding workers who have similar characteristics to the displaced workers before their displacement. The matching method that we use is a coarsened exact matching on pre-treatment covariates and pre-treatment outcomes. We then compare the evolution of job quality in both groups to measure the causal impact of displacement. Our main findings indicate a large and long-lasting impact of displacement on employment probability. The effects of displacement on earnings and hourly wages last until three or four years. As for job security, displaced workers report to be more likely to lose their job again. Indicators of quality of the working environment (working full time, long hours, distance to work), are all affected by displacement in the long run except the probability of working full time. These results are robust when we focus on individuals who do not experience a significant period out of employment.


In this essay I examine the conceptual difficulties generated by drawing a distinction between artworks and mere real things. I argue that the distinction is an unfortunate one, requiring for its operation an assumption of possibility of an objective value judgment with regard to aesthetic productions, which, in reality cannot be defensible on purely philosophical grounds. The distinction, in fact, may be useful in describing the interactions between the artworld, qua a cultural institution, and the socio-economic environment in which it is situated; yet, it proves misleading when introduced into discussions about the nature of artworks and the nature of our interactions with art. I also recommend, in passing, that our understanding of art may benefit from embracing a more holistic approach to construing the relationship between artworks and human agents within a culturally constituted space of the artworld an approach, perhaps, along the lines resembling those suggested by Margolis' historicized relativism.


In recent years, wireless networks have enjoyed tremendous development and popularity due to the technological advances of wireless radio devices. While interest in conventional wireless networks continues to evolve, new types of wireless networks, such as Mobile Ad Hoc Networks (MANET) and Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN) are evolving fast and receiving much attention from academia, industry, and government.
Scalability and energy-efficiency present two of the most important challenges in Mobile Ad Hoc Networks. Scalability in MANETs can be defined as the capability of the network to provide an acceptable throughput when the network size increases. Energy-efficiency can be defined as using less energy to deliver greater or equal amount of services. MANET nodes rely on portable, limited power resources and they bear the duty of relaying packets for other nodes. The failure of some nodes due to battery drainage might bring the whole network down.
In this dissertation, we propose clustering and routing approaches to overcome scalability and energy constraint problems that exist in large scale MANETs. To handle these problems, we design a hierarchical energy-efficient scheme that can be easily setup and maintained. The scheme has three major components, namely: (1) the hierarchical (clustering) component, (2) the maintenance component, and (3) the routing component. Our research provides a mathematical formulation of the clustering component using integer linear programming---ILP. It also provides centralized and distributed energy-efficient schemes that achieve efficient clustering, efficient maintenance, and efficient routing in large scale MANETs. Our simulation study shows that our suggested approaches outperform well known schemes found in the literature.
The distributed energy-efficient scheme presents one of our main contributions. The distributed scheme builds and maintains a hierarchical network structure using low message and time complexity. Furthermore, it provides an intelligent path selection controller that can be easily incorporated in any existing link state routing protocol to select energy-efficient routes. The hierarchical structure increases scalability, but does not improve energy-efficiency. To achieve energy-efficiency, we propose three fuzzy logic controllers that aggregate multiple network metrics and then decide on the quality of the node/path. This quality is then used as an important parameter in the clustering, maintenance, and routing components. The first controller is used to achieve efficient hierarchical design, the second controller is used to achieve efficient network maintenance, and the third controller is used to achieve efficient routing.


The large model capacity of latent space models (LSMs) enables them to achieve great performance on various applications, but meanwhile renders LSMs to be prone to overfitting. Several recent studies investigate a new type of regularization approach, which encourages components in LSMs to be diverse, for the sake of alleviating overfitting. While they have shown promising empirical effectiveness, in theory why larger "diversity" results in less overfitting is still unclear. To bridge this gap, we propose a new diversitypromoting approach that is both theoretically analyzable and empirically effective. Specifically, we use near-orthogonality to characterize "diversity" and impose angular constraints (ACs) on the components of LSMs to promote diversity. A generalization error analysis shows that larger diversity results in smaller estimation error and larger approximation error. An efficient ADMM algorithm is developed to solve the constrained LSM problems. Experiments demonstrate that ACs improve generalization performance of LSMs and outperform other diversitypromoting approaches.


Existing imitation learning approaches often require that the complete demonstration data, including sequences of actions and states, are available. In this paper, we consider a more realistic and difficult scenario where a reinforcement learning agent only has access to the state sequences of an expert, while the expert actions are unobserved. We propose a novel tensor-based model to infer the unobserved actions of the expert state sequences. The policy of the agent is then optimized via a hybrid objective combining reinforcement learning and imitation learning. We evaluated our hybrid approach on an illustrative domain and Atari games. The empirical results show that (1) the agents are able to leverage state expert sequences to learn faster than pure reinforcement learning baselines, (2) our tensor-based action inference model is advantageous compared to standard deep neural networks in inferring expert actions, and (3) the hybrid policy optimization objective is robust against noise in expert state sequences.


The paper attempts to respond to some possible objections that could be raised by Skow's theory of explanation against the two standard examples of non-causal explanation given by Hempel. If these objections would prevail the two standard non-causal examples could be reconstructed as causal explanations. In this paper it is argued that this kind of reconstruction is not possible. The article starts with a detailed analysis of Skow's theory of causal explanation. Subse-quently it tries to show that each of Hempel's examples put up against the po-tential objections that could be given in terms of Skow's theory is ultimately resistant to these objections. Finally, the paper's conclusion is that Skow's theory although an interesting approach for reconstructing causal explanations fails as an adequate framework for reconstructing Hempel's standard examples of non-causal explanation.


Student motivation is an essential component that plays an instrumental role in their learning. Although academic motivation has received much conceptual and empirical focus, cases of high school students exhibiting lack of willingness to execute the academic tasks are rampant, leading to decline in performance at Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education. The objective was to determine teacher's related motivation factors influencing students' academic performance. A descriptive survey research design was used. The target population was 270 principals, 270 class teachers and 9980 students. Gay's formula of 10% was used to select 27 principals, purposively sample 27 class teachers and used Stratified sampling to select 27 schools. The table by Krejcie and Morgan was used to select 370 students and simple random sampling was applied. Questionnaires were used to gather the needed data. Data was analyzed with the help of SPSS version 19. Analyzed data was represented in table form. 68.5% of teachers and 64.3% of students agreed on expectations, 90.7% of teachers and 84.6% of students agreed that positive teacher-student relationship, 81.5% of the teachers and 86.5% of students agreed that rewards highly motivated students. The research concluded that student motivation by teachers has a positive influence on academic performance.


Gemcitabine is a chemotherapeutic agent used for treatment of a variety of malignancies. It has been associated with multiple cutaneous reactions including rash, alopecia, and pruritus. Less commonly, gemcitabine has been associated with "pseudocellulitis," a noninfectious skin inflammatory reaction, which resembles cellulitis. The majority of cases reported in the literature are radiation recall reactions in which inflammation occurs in areas of previous radiation post drug treatment; however, there are also reports of pseudocellulitis occurring in areas of preexisting lymphedema. The pathophysiology of both of these reactions are still unknown, though it is theorized that areas of lymphedema may both increase concentration of gemcitabine and reduce its rate of metabolism leading to increased drug exposure time. In this study, we report a case of pseudocellulitis in a patient with chronic lower extremity lymphedema and a review of the current literature. By recognizing this side effect of gemcitabine, one can avoid unnecessary hospitalization and exposure to antibiotics.


Vertigo is a common complaint in neurology and it can also happen in children. A thorough understanding of the possible underlying causes facilitates the correct diagnosis and guides the proper management in such cases. Of high importance is the rapid distinction between life threatening conditions and relatively benign entities when dealing with a child complaining of vertigo, in an acute setting. This article aims to review the different causes of vertigo in children and to present relevant cases from our experience, at "Dr. Victor Gomoiu" Children's Hospital, Neurology Department.


Practitioner research is considered an integral form of professional learning for teachers but in its implementation it will often encounter significant challenges. This qualitative comparative case-study of teachers in Singapore and NSW investigated the range of challenges they encountered during their work as practitioner researchers. The study employs Schatzki's practice theory to analyse the impact of practitioner research on the existing practice architectures of schools. A total of 42 participants from NSW and Singapore were interviewed for this study. The results explicate the various challenges teachers encountered and how these act to prefigure and remodel practitioner research as a practice within each of the two different settings. The findings are of interest to teacher educators working with teachers across the career span who are considering using practitioner research in their professional learning repertoire.


This paper reviews the status of natural resources distance learning program in the United States and China and discusses the feasibility of educational cooperation between the two countries. By identifying and comparing computer-based learning programs offered at 300 American and 7 Chinese institutions of higher education, I found that only a small number of schools in both countries currently provide natural resources courses via distance learning. Although great opportunities exist for cooperation between the two countries, challenges must be overcome. Some of these challenges include expanding the existing distance learning curriculum to offer more natural resources courses, providing greater flexibility for faculty members who must adjust to a new teaching role, and improving the English proficiency of Chinese students for more effective international distance learning.


Mycobacterium tuberculosis is a significant human pathogen, responsible for approximately 1.3 million deaths annually. The increase of multi-drug resistant (MDR) and extensively drug resistant (XDR) tuberculosis is of particular concern as current first and even second line medications are less or no longer effective. Current antibacterial drugs, such as isoniazid and ethambutol, target various biosynthetic pathways within the complex cell wall of these bacteria, which is a key virulence factor. Its successful defence against the host immune system is due to a largely impermeable cell wall consisting of a multi-laminate mycolyl-arabinogalactan-peptidoglycan complex (mAGP) and a glycolipid layer embedded into the cell wall. Phosphatidylinositol mannosides (PIMs), lipomannan (LM) and lipoarabinomannan (LAM), all virulence factors, are included in this glycolipid layer. Previous studies in our group identified a highly conserved genetic locus involved in mycobacterial cell wall synthesis. Gene knockout studies in Corynebacterium glutamicum, a related model species tolerant of cell wall defects that kill mycobacteria, identified three proteins involved in the transport of mycolic acid intermediates across the cell wall. We have shown that the orthologs NCgl2764, NCgl2762 and NCgl2759 are involved in mycolic acid synthesis. The aim of this study was to determine the roles of NCgl2760 and NCgl2761, the two remaining genes within the putative complex. NCgl2761 was disrupted in C. glutamicum by homologous recombination and next the mutant was studied for cell wall defects. Total lipids, PIMs LM, LAM and mycolic acids were investigated by high performance thin layer chromatography (HPTLC), sodium dodecyl sulphate-polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis (SDS-PAGE) and gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS). Delayed growth and a block in the path from acetyl trehalose monocorynomycolate (AcTMCM) to trehalose dicorynomycolate (TDCM) indicate their involvement in mycolate metabolism. These conclusions were congruent with those of the other three genes in the putative complex. RNA extraction and co-transcription with NCgl2760 were additionally investigated. The results do indeed show co-transcription of C. glutamicum NCgl2761 and C. glutamicum NCgl2760. This co-transcription was replicated in Mycobacterium smegmatis, between genes MSMEG_0315 and MSMEG_0317, the orthologs of NCgl2761 and NCgl2760. Deletion mutants of NCgl2760 using the same principles were completed. Initial growth experimentation showed no delayed growth, unlike the other four genes, so the following procedures were performed in triplicate. Complementation of ΔNCgl2760 was unsuccessful, consequently slice overlap extension (SOE) was attempted. This too failed. Nevertheless, experimental procedures continued and next showed absence of a block in the mycolic acid biosynthetic pathway. But, a Pierce™ silver stain showed a truncated, faster migrating LAM of a size measuring approximately 10kDa on a 15% SDS-PAGE gel. Both these findings are novel and suggest that a complex of at least four proteins mediates mycolic acid transport, and RNA studies raise the possibility of a link between the mycolic acid and LM/LAM biosynthesis pathways in mycobacteria and corynebacteria. All these studies contribute to our understanding of mycobacterial cell wall pathways which may offer attractive drug targets.


Fifty-one subjects each performed two trials which consisted of traversing a horizontal ladder. Film records were made of each trial using a high-speed camera. Absolute and relative temporal and kinematic parameters were obtained from the film records. The conclusions were that there was no age related interaction or differences in preferred rung spacing or contact/airborne times. A Chi-Square analysis did show a preference for a specific gait pattern for the six year old age group.


Material: one well-preserved entire shell and another one, of which the ventral valve was destroyed for the greater part for the sake of chemical analysis in the "Rijkswegenbouw-Laboratorium". Dimensions: the ventral valve of the holotype (fig. 9) has a length of 48.2 mm from the posterior or cardinal to the anterior border; the dorsal valve (fig. 8) is 45.2 mm long. The dorsal valve of the paratype (fig. 16) has a length of 53.8 mm. The breadth of the type is 49 mm, the thickness 32.6 mm. The habitus is more rhynchonelloid than terebratuloid, as e. g. in Gryphus Cubensis (Pourtales) or Abyssothyris Thomson, 1927, or in some cretaceous groups (cf. Sahni, 1925). The shell is exactly bilaterally symmetrical, the ventral (pedicle-) valve being somewhat larger than the dorsal one, with more prominent umbo, but the dorsal valve is more convex than the ventral (figs. 11—12). This type of shell-shape was named dorsibiconvex by Schuchert and Cooper (cf. McEwan, 1939, p. 617—618: follow the evolution-line on the right in the diagram, the line of dorsitumid shells). As McEwan has pointed out, this and other types of the shape of brachiopodal shells may serve as reliable bases for systematical division (as was also recommended by other students); in the key to families given by McEwan (l. c, p. 620) we come, in combination with the characteristics of hinge, deltidium, foramen, shape and sculpture, to the place II-A-1-b among the Telotremata; we cannot reach the finest division as the branchial skeleton of this species is not visible.


Opossum (Didelphis spp.) is an omnivorous marsupial native to the Americas that shows synanthropic behavior in urban areas. Despite its proximity to domestic animals and humans, knowledge of its participation in the epidemiology of some zoonotic agents is substantial. This study aimed to determine the presence of antibodies against Toxoplasma gondii, Neospora spp. and Leptospira spp. in blood samples collected from opossums in 18 municipalities in the state of São Paulo, Brazil, between 2003 and 2008. Blood samples from 343 opossums: Didelphis aurita (n = 256) and Didelphis albiventris (n = 87) were obtained. These were tested to detect antibodies against T. gondii, using the modified agglutination test (MAT-Toto; cutoff ≥ 25); Neospora spp., using the indirect fluorescent antibody test (IFAT; cutoff ≥ 25); and Leptospira spp., using the microscopic agglutination test (MAT-Lepto; cutoff ≥ 100). Frequency of anti-T. gondii, Neospora spp. and Leptospira spp. antibodies were in 22.7%, 1.5% and 3.5%, respectively. The serogroups-serovars of Leptospira spp. presenting positive MAT-Lepto reactions were: AutumnalisButembo; Mini-Mini; Ballum-Castellonis; Icterohaemorrhagiae-Icterohaemorrhagiae; Icterohaemorrhagiae-Copenhageni and Grippotyphosa-Grippotyphosa or Bananal. This study demonstrated that these zoonotic agents are circulating in opossum populations in the state of São Paulo. Therefore, investigations regarding the role of marsupials in the epidemiology of each of these diseases should be conducted, especially to understand the behavior of these animals as zoonosis maintenance hosts.


The JC polyomavirus (JCV) is ubiquitous in humans infecting children asymptomatically, then persisting in renal tissue. Since JCV DNA can be readily isolated from urine, it should be a useful tool with which to study the evolution of DNA viruses in humans. We showed that JCV DNA from the urine of Japanese, Taiwanese, Dutch and German patients can be classified into A and B types, based upon restriction fragment length polymorphisms (RFLPs). This work was extended in the present study. We established multiple JCV DNA clones from the UK, Spain, Italy, Sweden, South Korea, People's Republic of China, Malaysia, Indonesia, Mongolia, India, Sri Lanka, Saudi Arabia, Ethiopia, Kenya, Zambia, South Africa and Ghana. Using type-specific RFLPs, most clones except the four clones from Ghana were classified as either type A or B. We constructed a molecular phylogenetic tree for the Ghanaian clones and several representative type A and B clones. According to the phylogenetic tree, the Ghanaian clones constituted a major new group, tentatively named type C. From the findings presented here and elsewhere, the following conclusions were drawn: (i) type A is prevalent only in Europe; (ii) type B is found mainly in Asia and Africa; and (iii) type C is localized to part of Africa. Our findings should help to clarify how JCV evolved in humans.


Studies on the teaching of intonation are not new. They have actually represented an area of interest since the beginning of the 20th century (Jones 1909; Palmer 1922) up to the latest works by authors following different approaches such as Wells (2006), Canepari (2008), Busà (2012). More recently, there has been growing interest in computer assisted learning (Chun 1998, 2013) and applications in commercial products (Cazade 1999). In this contribution we provide a preliminary study which considers the degree of correlation between the intonation curves of L2 English learners and English native speakers in order to explore variation and to evaluate the potential proximity between different samples. The ultimate goal is to test a set of techniques designed to optimise a computer assisted program for second language intonation learning which have been developed for prosodic variation assessment (Cauvin 2017, De Iacovo 2019).


This paper, studies the controller design for containment problem for a class of multiagent systems with identical time-invariant continuous-time nonlinear dynamics and fixed directed communication graph. In this problem, the Lyapunov stability theorem, the graph theory and matrix linear inequality are used. The agents are divided into two groups of leaders and followers. In containment problem, all the followers are controlled under which will asymptotically converge to the convex hull spanned by the leaders so distributed communication protocol with fixed time delay is considered and four-step algorithm is proposed for obtaining parameters and gain matrix. The above case is proved to be sufficient condition under theorem. To illustrate the reliability and efficiency of the proposed method, numerical example with simulations are presented.


Surveys and focus groups are well known methods for ascertaining public perceptions and opinion. The general view is that such tools provide reasonably accurate reflections of public opinion and values, and that the norms employed by people to make decisions are fixed. But what about issues where the public needs to consider novel choices and where no prior experience can be drawn on? Do their preferences and beliefs change when presented with new options and new information? Recent evidence suggests that they do and this paper describes an alternative way of gathering data, which takes into account the dynamic nature of social norms in response to new technologies and their applications. It also discusses the problem with traditional methods of generating information about public opinion and offers a possible solution. It is widely held that surveys and focus groups are reasonably accurate methods. This accuracy is enhanced if the topic is familiar to respondents, and the heuristics used to make decisions are fixed. However, in the case of new technologies such as genomics or biotechnology, it is difficult to determine whether the information such methods gather is accurate enough to inform public policy. (1) Recent evidence suggests social norms on issues involving breakthrough scientific advances (e.g. prenatal diagnosis or genetically-modified foods) are not as static as originally believed. Preferences and beliefs change when the public is presented with new options and when the consequences of their choices are known. This is of particular importance in the case of biotechnology, since we believe biotechnology poses three central challenges for democratic ethics (2): biotechnology is complex; it is an important field in light of the promises it makes; and biotechnology induces a rapid rate of change. These three challenges compromise the democratic means by which we want biotechnology to be governed. Biotechnology is difficult for much of the public to fully comprehend, yet our methods of gathering public opinion are based on old assumptions that everyone has an informed understanding of the issues at hand. At the University of British Columbia, our interdisciplinary research team, NERD (Norms Evolving in Response to Dilemmas), has developed a web-based survey instrument to address some of the challenges faced by traditional modes of public consultation. The survey can be accessed online at the following website: . NERD is designed to bridge the gap between perceived public opinion and actual response modes for which neither surveys nor focus groups can account. (3) It is an online, easily accessible survey that offers respondents the opportunity to answer a carefully constructed set of twelve decision problems. These problems are based both on historical fact and established science, and for each one the respondent has the option to seek information and advice from five well-informed advisors. NERD is designed to stress test normative decisions with social and technological change and social pressure. By making the survey web-based, it is possible to develop a much more comprehensive picture of public opinion in many regions, both nationally and internationally. The NERD survey has some distinctive features, but most notable is that it offers respondents the option of seeking advice from various sources while trying to answer questions about new technologies. In addition to providing a richer set of results, NERD is also cost-effective as it allows us to survey thousands of people on three parallel issues of genomics at one-eighth the cost of more traditional consultation methods. Additionally, our survey instrument provides depth to our analysis of public opinion, since we not only record participants' answers to our questions, but also the time they spend on each issue, their patterns of advice-seeking, and group dynamics or the "herd-effect": half the participants receive real-time feedback of how people have responded before them, and the other half do not. …


Genesis 4: [1] Adam lay with his wife Eve, and she became pregnant and gave birth to Cain. She said, "With the help of the Lord I have brought forth a man." [2] Later she gave birth to his brother Abel. Now Abel kept flocks, and Cain worked the soil. [3] In the course of time Cain brought some of the fruits of the soil as an offering to the Lord. [4] But Abel brought fat portions from some of the firstborn of his flock. The Lord looked with favor on Abel and his offering, [5] but on Cain and his offering he did not look with favor. So Cain was very angry, and his face was downcast. [6] Then the Lord said to Cain, "Why are you angry? Why is your face downcast? [7] If you do what is right, will you not be accepted? But if you do not do what is right, sin is crouching at your door; it desires to have you, but you must master it." [8] Now Cain said to his brother Abel, "Let's go out to the field." And while they were in the field, Cain attacked his brother Abel and killed him. [9] Then the Lord said to Cain, "Where is your brother Abel?" "I don't know," he replied. "Am I my brother's keeper?" [10] The Lord said, "What have you done? Listen! Your brother's blood cries out to me from the ground. [11] Now you are under a curse and driven from the ground, which opened its mouth to receive your brot her's blood from your hand. [12] When you work the ground, it will no longer yield its crops for you. You will be a restless wanderer on the earth."


The purpose of the study is to explore coordinated and collaborative community-based approaches to services that support early childhood development within three small Tasmanian rural communities, and to examine the factors that influence their development and sustainability. The study focuses specifically on linkages amongst groups and organisations that provide early childhood and family services and supports. Parental and community capacity building have been identified as critical to early childhood development. The emphasis is on developing community-based approaches to provide a support base and safety net for families with young children. Context shapes the development of community-based approaches, yet much of the early childhood literature is derived from urban communities, and it is not clear to what extent this is relevant to the rural context. Additionally, much of the literature examines linkages from an organisational perspective rather than a whole-of-community perspective. This multi-site, multi-method study uses a qualitative approach and case study methodology. Interviews are the key data source, along with observation and written documentation. Working within a community development framework, the study adopts a multi-layered view of community, and examines linkages from multiple perspectives.
Findings indicate that community-based early childhood linkages represent a continuum of activity, extending from cooperation to collaboration. Three interdependent factors influence the development and sustainability of coordinated and collaborative community-based approaches to early childhood development: social capital, leadership and environmental factors. The three influencing factors operate within a rural and community context. This is one of the first early childhood studies to explore the nature and influence of community leadership, moving beyond the traditional focus on individual leaders. The study highlights a link between influencing factors and community readiness. As communities move from early to later stages of readiness, internal leadership capacity develops, levels of social capital are increased, and communities develop the capacity to harness and shape environmental factors to better meet identified need.
The study fills a gap in our knowledge of the development and sustainability of community-based approaches to early childhood development in rural communities, and will enhance the targetting of resources and supports, including mentoring. Implications include the need to increase skills, knowledge and supports in relation to the process of developing and sustaining coordinated and collaborative activity in rural areas. This includes greater attention to the provision of interprofessional learning with a rural component for undergraduates and initial trainees, on-site interprofessional development for voluntary and paid staff, and assistance in establishing and supporting appropriate leadership structures.


The objective of this paper is to find the structure of a nonlinear system from measurement data, as a prior step to model estimation. Applying ANOVA directly on a dataset is compared to applying ANOVA on residuals from a linear model. The distributions of the involved test variables are computed and used to show that ANOVA is effective in finding which regressors give linear effects and what regressors produce nonlinear effects. The ability to find nonlinear substructures depending on only subsets of regressors is an ANOVA feature which is shown not to be affected by subtracting a linear model.


Hurricane Katrina provided a startling reminder that environmental health threats such as pollution and climate change disproportionately affect historically disadvantaged communities in our society. Some progress has been made in environmental law and governance, policy and planning in the United States, yet major work lies ahead in order to eliminate disparities and achieve the goal of global health and sustainability. Dr. Bullard will present an insightful account of events, individuals, and organizations that have shaped the environmental justice movement over the past two decades. He will also describe a framework for how major advances in environmental justice can and should be achieved. Sponsored by UT's Green Fee and Division of Diversity and Community Engagement.


'For a dead man, Elvis Presley is awfully noisy. His body may have failed him in 1977, but today his spirit, his image, and his myths do more than live on: they flourish, they thrive, they multiply.' Why is Elvis Presley so ubiquitous a presence in US culture? Why does he continue to enjoy a cultural prominence that would be the envy of the most heavily publicized living celebrities? In Elvis after Elvis Gil Rodman traces the myriad manifestations of The King in popular and not-so-popular culture. He asks why Elvis continues to defy our expectations of how dead stars are supposed to behave: Elvis not only refuses to go away, he keeps showing up in places where he seemingly doesn't belong. Rodman draws upon an extensive and eclectic body of Elvis 'sightings', from Elvis's appearances at the heart of the 1992 Presidential campaign to the debate over his worthiness as a subject for a postage stamp, and from Elvis's central role in furious debates about racism and the appropriation of African-American music to the world of Elvis impersonators and the importance of Graceland as a place of pilgrimage for Elvis fans and followers. Rodman shows how Elvis has become inseparable from many of the defining myths of US culture, enmeshed with the American dream and the very idea of the 'United States', caught up in debates about race, gender and sexuality and in the wars over what constitutes a national culture.


Introductory undergraduate biology courses often fail to truly engage students in the subject matter, a problem that sometimes causes students to switch out of biology majors. The tra ditional, lecture-only curriculum has already been shunned in middle-school and high-school science classrooms, but this lesson structure persists in the postsecondary domain. Although some professors are using innovative teaching methods in college biology classrooms, they may lack the knowledge, skills, and support to research other promising learning methods, write up their findings, and create a culture on their campuses that emphasizes evidence-based learning in the classroom. The inability of biology faculty to share successful teaching methods inhibits the spread of effective practices and impedes the change in campus culture that undergraduate biology education requires if students in the field are to be retained. Many biology faculty members are committed to the use of effective and proven teaching methods, but they lack a strong background in education research. These educators have little extra time because of their professional obligations, yet they still want to create a successful learning environment for students in their classrooms. In an effort to improve teaching in the microbiology classroom, the American Society of Microbiology (ASM) created the Scholars-in-Residence program in 2005 to introduce biology faculty to the scholarship of teaching and learning. The scholarship of teaching and learning is a broad term describing the professional responsibility of faculty to conduct rigorous evaluations of their own teaching practices and to publicly share their findings to develop a community of practice. The ASM program, which employs both online and inperson components, uses unique approaches for connecting and educating biology faculty in this field. The Scholars-in-Residence program trains microbiologists to use educational research to improve their teaching. The year-long program seeks to develop faculty members' ability to devise a research question about their classroom practices, collect meaningful data, and share their findings through publication in scholarly journals. The goal of this residency is to help faculty members who are already committed to innovative teaching practices to better understand the outcomes of their efforts, and then to share their successes with the larger biology education community. The ASM program has served as a successful test pilot, demonstrating that this type of professional development can improve the educational research skills of biology faculty. Three cohorts have completed the program, with promising results: scholars used the skills they gained during the residency to write and publish their biology education research in peer-reviewed education journals. Building on the success of the Scholarsin-Residence program, the ASM created the Biology Scholars Program, which is open to the larger community of biology educators. The Biology Scholars Program offers three independent "virtual" residencies that allow faculty to explore biology education in greater depth and to obtain a better understanding of the scholarship of teaching and learning. The research residency focuses on helping faculty develop research questions, use existing educational research, and analyze data collected from classrooms. These skills enable faculty to determine whether experimental practices are actually having an impact on student learning, and to ensure that educational research has validity and can be used by the larger education community. The writing residency is designed to assist faculty in writing manuscripts for peer-reviewed education journals and in communicating effectively in the language of educators. Because writing for scientific journals is different from writing for education journals, it is critical that faculty be trained to convey their findings in the education sphere of research. The third component of the Biology Scholars Program is the leadership re sidency, which is concerned with de veloping the scholars' capacity to be advocates for biology education reform. Building leaders in biology education is crucial to effecting change at the institutional level. By strengthening their leadership skills, the faculty scholars will be able not only to mentor colleagues who want to improve their teaching practices but also to help change the way biology is taught in their departments. Such changes in the practices and the priorities of biology departments are integral to edu cation reform that seeks to foster a more collaborative environment for the improvement of undergraduate instruction. The Biology Scholars Program is a novel approach for addressing the issues that face undergraduate edu cation. By providing in-depth and focused professional development for biology faculty in research, writing, and leadership, the program will train the next generation of undergraduate educators and add to knowledge about biology education. Faculty who graduate from the program will be catalysts for future change in biol ogy teaching and in the research of biology education. For more information about the Biology Scholars Program, visit http://bsp.berkeley.edu.


The development of a standard effort compaction test method for determining compaction characteristics of soil-rock mixtures having maximum particle sizes up to 51 or 76 mm (2 or 3 in.) is described. The method is based on results of a testing program to develop testing procedures for 305 and 457-mm (12 and 18-in.)-diameter molds in which equipment size effects are minimized, i.e., procedures where results for materials tested using a conventional 152-mm (6-in.)-diameter mold may be reproduced with the larger equipment required to test materials having maximum particles sizes of 51 and 76 mm (2 and 3 in.). The testing program consisted of a series of standard effort compaction tests performed using 152, 305, and 457-mm (6, 12, and 18-in.)-diameter molds on four test materials having a maximum particle size of 19.1 mm (3/4 in.) and either plastic or nonplastic fines. Hammer weight was isolated as the main testing variable for use in developing the procedure while maintaining as many features of the conventional procedure as possible. It was found that in the case of 305-mm (12-in.)-diameter mold tests, varying hammer weight did not produce significant effects on results and that 152-mm (6-in.)-diameter mold results could be reproduced with any of the hammers used. In the case of the 457-mm (18-in.)-diameter mold, it was found that 152-mm (6-in.)-diameter mold results could be reproduced with the heaviest hammer [59.6 kg (131.4-lbf) used in the 305-mm (12-in.)-diameter mold tests]. The test method resulting from the investigation utilizes a mechanical compactor equipped with 305 and 457-mm (12 and 18-in.)-diameter molds and a 59.6-kg (131.4-lbf) hammer with a 305-mm (12-in.) drop. Additional tests performed using the test method on minus No. 4 (4.76-mm) sieve fractions of the 19.1-mm (3/4-in.) maximum particle size materials produced significant differences in results due to varying equipment sizes, thus indicating it may be impossible to minimize equipment size effects to the same extent for finer gradations.


This article examines whether the so-called reasonably affordable requirements of the public remains a valid condition under TRIPS on which World Trade Organisation members can grant compulsory licences. This article frames its analysis around Section 84 of the Indian Patent Act 1970 in relation to the compulsory licencing case between Bayer vs Natco. The author argues that despite the reasonably affordable requirements of the public not one of the common grounds on which members normally pursue for granting compulsory licences the fact that India has used similar provisions under its TRIPS-compliant patent regime in granting a compulsory licence to Natco significantly validates the affordability requirements of the public as an independent condition that is consistent with TRIPS on which members can grant compulsory licences. This conclusion is premised on the understanding that no member state has even attempted to challenge the legality of India's decision before the WTO, under the dispute settlement understanding system and that paucity is more supportive of the thesis that, nothing in the light of TRIPS would, in fact, preclude the possibility of other developing countries amending their patent laws to demand that as substantive conditions patentees must satisfy the reasonably affordable requirements of the public.


This paper presents a novel background subtraction method called co-occurrence pixelblock pairs (CPB) for detecting objects in dynamic scenes. Based on a "pixel to block" structure, it uses the correlation of multiple co-occurrence pixel block pairs to detect objects in dynamic scenes. It offers robust background subtraction against a dynamically changing background. We firstly propose a correlation measure for co-occurrence pixel-block pairs to realize a robust background model. We then introduce a novel evaluation strategy named correlation depended decision function for accurate object detection with the correlation of co-occurrence pixel-block pairs. Finally, CPB can estimate the foreground from a dynamic background with a sensitive criterion. We describe our CPB in full detail and compare it to other background subtraction approaches. Experimental results with several challenging datasets demonstrate the effective performance of our CPB.