OBJECTIVES--To assess whether exercise induced suppression of heart rate variability in the low frequency domain (0.06-0.15 Hz) is related to the increase in circulating catecholamine concentrations. DESIGN--Randomised crossover trial of three exercise tests characterised by different workloads. Pharmacological simulation of exercise-induced changes in vagal and sympathetic activity. PARTICIPANTS--Six healthy men with a mean age of 31.2 (SD 3.0) years. INTERVENTIONS--Three different workloads of steady state cycling ergometry: control state without cycling, cycling at a target heart rate of 100 beats/min, and cycling at a target heart rate of 150 beats/min. Intravenous infusion of atropine (target heart rate 100 beats/min) followed by the additional infusion of adrenaline and noradrenaline. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES--Fast Fourier analysis of heart rate variability; blood pressure; and venous plasma concentrations of lactate, adrenaline, and noradrenaline. RESULTS--During the control exercise period there were no changes in the assessed variables compared with the preceding resting period. During exercise at a heart rate of 100 beats/min systolic blood pressure increased and heart rate variability decreased. During exercise at a heart rate of 150 beats/min systolic blood pressure and lactate, adrenaline, and noradrenaline concentrations increased. In addition, low frequency (LF) was lower than during exercise at 100 beats/min, high frequency (HF 0.15-0.80 Hz) resembled that during exercise at 100 beats/min, and diastolic blood pressure was reduced. Infusion of atropine caused no changes in blood pressure or plasma concentrations of lactate, adrenaline, and noradrenaline and decreased heart rate variability. The additional infusion of adrenaline and noradrenaline completely suppressed heart rate variability and increased blood pressure. CONCLUSIONS--The reduction in LF and HF during exercise at a heart rate of 100 beats/min, which is not characterised by increased plasma catecholamine concentrations, and during atropine infusion suggests that heart rate variability in the supine state is largely influenced by vagal activity. The additional reduction in LF during exercise at 150 beats/min and during catecholamine infusion may reflect a negative feedback of circulating catecholamines on the sympathetic control of heart rate.


The resource dispersion hypothesis (RDH) proposes that in a spatially and temporally heterogeneous environment the territory size of social carnivores increases as the dispersion of limited resources is more widely spaced, whereas group size is limited, independently, by the richness or abundance of those resources or key habitats. To assess if white-nosed coatis Nasua narica behave in accordance with the RDH, the relationship between home-range size and spatio-temporal availability of resources in Mexican tropical dry forests with marked seasonal rainfall was examined. Specifically, home-range sizes were compared at two study sites that were broadly similar but contrasting in resource abundance and dispersion. Home-range estimates for seven white-nosed coati bands varied between 45 and 362 ha. Home-range size did not correlate with food resource abundance and was better explained by the dispersion of water sources during the dry season. Average home-range size was three times greater at the site where water sources were more widely separated during the dry season. These results are in accordance with the predictions of the RDH, and provide an example where the critical resource determining range size and configuration is water.


Generally the responsibility of the successful recruitment is to assist elderly residents with their daily living. The candidate is expected to provide them with direct hands on care with the resident's service plan based on the company's policies and procedure. In terms of education, the ideal candidate is expected to have at least a high school certificate or its equivalence. Eventhough prior experience is advantageous in securing the job, it is not a necessary requirement. This commentary relooks at the issue of recruitment of care givers in such institutions with recommendations to recruiters.


BACKGROUND
Externalizing problems, including aggression and conduct problems, are thought to involve impaired attentional capacities. Previous research suggests that the P3 event-related potential (ERP) component is an index of attentional processing, and diminished P3 amplitudes to infrequent stimuli have been shown to be associated with externalizing problems and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). However, the vast majority of this prior work has been cross-sectional and has not examined young children. The present study is the first investigation of whether within-individual changes in P3 amplitude predict changes in externalizing problems, providing a stronger test of developmental process.

METHOD
Participants included a community sample of children (N = 153) followed longitudinally at 30, 36, and 42 months of age. Children completed an oddball task while ERP data were recorded. Parents rated their children's aggression and ADHD symptoms.

RESULTS
Children's within-individual changes in the P3 amplitude predicted concomitant within-child changes in their aggression such that smaller P3 amplitudes (relative to a child's own mean) were associated with more aggression symptoms. However, changes in P3 amplitudes were not significantly associated with ADHD symptoms.

CONCLUSIONS
Findings suggest that the P3 may play a role in development of aggression, but do not support the notion that the P3 plays a role in development of early ADHD symptoms.


ABSTRACT The first report of the sea urchin (Echinodermata, Echinoidea) species, Temnopleurus decipiens (de Meijere, 1904) is given from Indian waters (Goa, west coast of India). A complete redescription of the species has been made based on test morphology using 27 phenotypic parameters. This species differs from the original description in that "the ocular plates do not reach the periproct margin." A detailed comparison with another congener, namely Temnopleurus toreumaticus (Leske, 1778) revealed that apart from the position of the anus and the presence of a suranal plate, notable differences were also observed in the diameter of the apical system, plan of sutural pits, pore-pairs structure, ratio of spine length to maximum test diameter, and colour banding of the spines. Further, the paper provides a modified taxonomic key to all the seven extant species of the genus Temnopleurus L. Agassiz, 1841 with two additional characters.


Character animation is usually reserved for highly skilled animators and computer programmers because few of the available tools allow the novice or casual user to create compelling animated content. In this paper, we explore a partial solution to this problem which lets the user coach animated characters by sketching their trajectories on the ground plane. The details of the motion are then computed with simulation. We create memorybased control functions for the high-level behaviors from examples supplied by the user and from real-world data of the behavior. The control function for the desired behavior is implemented through a lookup table using a Knearest neighbor approximation algorithm. To demonstrate this approach, we present a system for defining the behaviors of defensive characters playing American football. The characters are implemented using either pointmasses or dynamically simulated biped robots. We evaluate the quality of the coached behaviors by comparing the resulting trajectories to data from human players. We also assess the influence of the user's coaching examples by demonstrating that a user can construct a particular style of play.


This article evaluates Western, and particularly British, policy towards Africa in the wake of the 2005 Commission for Africa, and considers what it tells us about the character of liberal internationalist policy towards the continent. The article reviews the Commission's report, Our Common Interest, and argues that it adheres in important respects to a 'liberal bargain' which has been at the heart of wider donor policy for some time. However, it goes on to argue that the kind of historical leap forward envisaged for Africa has strong echoes in nineteenth-century Western liberal forays into the continent. Yet there are lessons to be learned, and historical legacies to be confronted, from this earlier encounter. These come to the fore in the issue of governance and the difficult political issues that need to be confronted if the Commission's aims are to be realised.


A developing country's choice of an appropriate technology from among those available for use in a particular industry is critical: alternative technological strategies that involve varying mixes of capital, labor, and social costs could have significantly different impacts not only on the industry but also on the country itself, especially one whose industrial base is restricted. This book presents one of the first empirical studies in this area. Recent choices of manufacturing equipment procured by a sample of firms in Colombia, Brazil, the Philippines, and Indonesia are the focus of the study, although a few plants in the US and Japan are also included for comparative purposes. These firms are engaged in the spinning and weaving of short fibers (cotton and synthetics) or in the sulfate pulping of wood and paper making. Since both Latin American and Asian experiences are reviewed and both a mechanical and a chemical process industry are treated, the findings are relevant to other countries and other industries. Amsalem's methodology for evaluating alternative technologies goes beyond the consideration of two factors of production (capital-labor ratios). It enables him to factor in differences in labor skills and productivity, the varying efficiencies of machine utilization, levels of energy intensity appropriate to an industry, plant requirements, and market and social costs. The book also examines the effects of government policies and incentives on the decision processes that culminate in a choice among competing technologies.


This chapter explores the use of troll in modern Swedish in order to show how culturally entrenched concepts, and the attitudes that are associated with them, are integrated in the language of a speech community as part of its heritage. The noun has a complex and variable sense potential, and both literal and metaphorical uses of the noun are attitudinally coloured, although these attitudes may be ambiguous and even contradictory. Using linguistic evidence gathered from dictionaries and Internet sources, this chapter describes and discusses the rich and partly antithetical set of attitudes expressed by the conventional and novel metaphorical expressions that draw on this Scandinavian mythological concept, and briefly compares Swedish uses of troll with those found in English.


Determining the intraocular pressure (IOP) is a part of routine ophthalmic examination. Elevated IOP is a risk factor for glaucoma, and reducing the IOP is the only way to halt or dampen glaucoma progression. Therefore, precise measurement of IOP is critical in glaucoma management. Tonometry is the procedure of determining IOP using various techniques. Various devices are available in the market for determining IOP. Each one works with different principles. Different methods have been introduced and some of them in development, but there is still no perfect clinical method for exact measurement of IOP. This chapter aims to explore various tonometry devices available in the mar‐ ket while explaining their working principles, features, advantages, and disadvantages. Clinicians must choose proper technique balancing the accuracy, convenience, and cost of the tonometers. Estimation values of tonometers should be used with clinical aspects of patients.


Index tracking is a popular form of asset management. Typically, a quadratic function is used to define the tracking error of a portfolio and the look back approach is applied to solve the index tracking problem. We argue that a forward looking approach is more suitable, whereby the tracking error is expressed as an expectation of a function of the difference between the returns of the index and of the portfolio. We also assume that there is model uncertainty in the distribution of the assets, hence a robust version of the optimization problem needs to be adopted. We use Bregman divergence in describing the deviation between the nominal and actual (true) distribution of the components of the index. In this scenario, we derive the optimal robust index tracking portfolio in a semi-analytical form as a solution of a system of nonlinear equations. Several numerical results are presented that allow us to compare the performance of this robust portfolio with the optimal non-robust portfolio. We show that, especially during market downturns, the robust portfolio can be very advantageous.


Power-electronic inverters are becoming popular for various industrial drives applications. In recent years also high-power and medium-voltage drive applications have been installed. However, the existing solutions suffer from some important drawbacks. Hybrid asymmetric multi-level inverters promise significant improvements for medium-voltage applications. This dissertation investigates such a hybrid inverter. To simplify the topology, some inverter parts are deprived of their feeding from the net and can only supply reactive power. The non-supplied intermediate-circuit capacitor voltages are inherently unstable and require a suitable control method for converter operation, preferably without influence on the load. Apart from normal operation, also converter start-up is an issue to consider, for which it is desirable to limit additional equipment. In this dissertation, we investigate the behaviour of this new inverter, and develop methods to obtain its reliable operation for the considered applications. These methods include modulation, voltage stabilization and start-up. We establish suitable models for their foundation. The principle achievement of this work is the development of a control method to stabilize a multitude of capacitor voltages which have no equilibrium state. Power balancing is performed by varying the common-mode output voltage, using a non-linear model-predictive controller. This method, which is new to power electronics, is applied to our hybrid asymmetric nine-level inverter driving an asynchronous motor. Computer simulations and measurements on an experimental drive system demonstrate stable behaviour in steady-state and during transients over the whole operating range. The obtained results prove the possible implementation of such a complex control algorithm for fast real-time operation. As second important accomplishment, this thesis proposes a start-up method that charges the non-supplied intermediate-circuit capacitors in parallel with the supplied ones, without additional equipment. Measurements show its successful application in the investigated drive system.


A novel nanocellulose/hydroxyapatite heterogeneous catalyst was used in the one-pot, two-component synthesis of triazolidine-3-one derivatives, produced from the cyclocondensation reaction between semicarbazide and an aromatic aldehyde. With the use of ethanol solvent, the products formed after a short reaction time (<30 min). The catalyst was characterized by XRD, TEM, SEM-EDS and BET analysis. The main advantages of this protocol were excellent yields (90–96%) of the products, mild and environmentally friendly reaction conditions, good atom-economy, and a simple and fast work-up with the added benefit of a recyclable catalyst, negating the need of chromatographic separations of the intermediates. The twelve triazolidine-3-one derivatives (3a–l) were characterized by 1H, 13C and 15N NMR, FT-IR, and HR-MS and represented a new family of compounds containing the 1,2,4-triazolidin-3-one moiety.


An ultrafast pump-probe spectroscopy experiment was developed in order to investigate the fast photoinduced isomerization reaction of the molecule resveratrol. Characteristics of the resveratrol molecule are discussed, including the photoisomerization reaction from transto cis-resveratrol. The experimental setup for the conventional spectroscopy measurement was developed and characterized in order to investigate and understand the conventional absorption and uorescence spectroscopy of resveratrol thoroughly. The absorption spectra for both transand cis-resveratrol, as well as the uorescence spectra were measured, discussed and explained. This therefore forms a foundation and serves as an initial step to develop a pump-probe spectroscopy experiment for resveratrol. A general overview of ultrafast pump-probe spectroscopy is presented, as well as an explanation of the nal developed experimental setup. The principles and characteristics of the chirped pulse ampli cation (CPA) femtosecond laser source and the tunable noncollinear optical parametric ampli er (NOPA) employed as the pump pulse are discussed. The process of white light continuum (WLC) generation was investigated to utilize as the ultrashort probe pulse. Two white light continuum generation experimental setups were developed and characterized for WLC generation in a transparent medium with the fundamental CPA laser light at 775 nm (in sapphire) and with the second harmonic (SH) of the CPA light at 387 nm (in quartz). A spectrometer was designed, built and characterized in conjuction with a line focus, for simultaneous measurement of the absorption in the pumped, unpumped and reference regions in the sample. In this way the photoisomerization of resveratrol could be measured with temporal resolution as a transient absorption signal. A 420 μg/ml resveratrol solution in ethanol was investigated in this pump-probe spectroscopy experiment and the results obtained are discussed accordingly.


This paper studies the optimal path for public debt deleveraging in a heterogeneous agents framework under incomplete financial markets. My analysis addresses two questions. What is the optimal fiscal instrument the government needs to use to reduce public debt? What is the optimal speed of public debt deleveraging? The main finding is that public debt should be reduced quickly and by cutting public expenditure. If the fiscal authority is forced to use income taxation instead, public debt deleveraging needs to be slow. Independently of fiscal instruments, the economy may end up in a liquidity trap. I show that, in my model, the zero lower bound has a redistributive effect. If the liquidity trap is very persistent, it can reallocate resources from financially constrained agents to financially unconstrained ones. Due to this mechanism, a very slow public debt reduction achieved by increasing income taxation is very costly in terms of aggregate welfare.


Numerical simulations for core-scale capillary pressure (Pc)–saturation (S) relationships have been conducted for a supercritical carbon dioxide-water system at temperatures between 35°C and 65°C at a domain pressure of 15 MPa as typically expected during geological sequestration of CO2. As the Pc-S relationships depend on both S and time derivative of saturation (∂S / ∂t) yielding what is known as the 'dynamic capillary pressure effect' or simply 'dynamic effect', this work specifically attempts to determine the significance of these effects for supercritical carbon dioxide-water flow in terms of a coefficient, namely dynamic coefficient (τ). The coefficient establishes the speed at which capillary equilibrium for supercritical CO2-water flow is reached. The simulations in this work involved the solution of the extended version of Darcy's law which represents the momentum balance for individual fluid phases in the system, the continuity equation for fluid mass balance, as well as additional correlations for determining the capillary pressure as a function of saturation, and the physical properties of the fluids as a function of temperature. The simulations were carried for 3D cylindrical porous domains measuring 10 cm in diameter and 12 cm in height. τ was determined by measuring the slope of a best-fit straight line plotted between (i) the differences in dynamic and equilibrium capillary pressures (Pc,dyn – Pc,equ) against (ii) the time derivative of saturation (dS/dt), both at the same saturation value. The results show rising trends for τ as the saturation values reduce, with noticeable impacts of temperature at 50% saturation of aqueous phase. This means that the time to attain capillary equilibrium for the CO2-water system increases as the saturation decreases. From a practical point view, it implies that the time to capillary equilibrium during geological sequestration of CO2 is an important factor and should be accounted for while simulating the flow processes, e.g., to determine the CO2 storage capacity of a geological aquifer. In this task, one would require both the fundamental understanding of the dynamic capillary pressure effects for supercritical CO2-water flow as well as τ values. These issues are addressed in this article.


Abstract This article critiques methodological nationalism and binaries in theoretical discussions of literary translation. The naturalization of the national story of translation is traced from the Renaissance up to its uncritical adoption when the discipline of translation studies was established. Borrowing from critiques of methodological nationalism in other disciplines, it is argued that a thorough revision of certain vocabularies is still needed to definitively break with lingering national and binary tropes. Venuti's foreignization is challenged due to its most problematic but previously overlooked aspect: its reliance on national paradigms and circumscribed domestic and foreign groups. To eschew the image of literary translation as transfer from culture A to culture B, an alternative empirical approach to networks of intersectionally-positioned readers in transnational localities is proposed. This critique is necessary given the messiness of subjectivity and the need for new solidarities in our transforming transnational world.


We present a photometric detection of the first brightness dips of the unique variable star KIC 8462852 since the end of the Kepler space mission in 2013 May. Our regular photometric surveillance started in 2015 October, and a sequence of dipping began in 2017 May continuing on through the end of 2017, when the star was no longer visible from Earth. We distinguish four main 1%–2.5% dips, named "Elsie," "Celeste," "Skara Brae," and "Angkor," which persist on timescales from several days to weeks. Our main results so far are as follows: (i) there are no apparent changes of the stellar spectrum or polarization during the dips and (ii) the multiband photometry of the dips shows differential reddening favoring non-gray extinction. Therefore, our data are inconsistent with dip models that invoke optically thick material, but rather they are in-line with predictions for an occulter consisting primarily of ordinary dust, where much of the material must be optically thin with a size scale ≪1 μm, and may also be consistent with models invoking variations intrinsic to the stellar photosphere. Notably, our data do not place constraints on the color of the longer-term "secular" dimming, which may be caused by independent processes, or probe different regimes of a single process.


Vital for a game of cricket or golf and enjoyable when picnicking in the park, turfgrass provides a wide range of aesthetic and recreational benefits. However, managed turfgrass is prone to damaging outbreaks of insects and mites. Pest Management of Turfgrass for Sport and Recreation is the first comprehensive work on the plant-eating insects and mites of the grass and non-grass species currently maintained as ornamental lawns and turfgrass playing surfaces throughout Australia, the South Pacific and South-East Asia.

This book provides an industry reference for the identification of pests affecting the roots, stems and leaves of turfgrass and control of these species through integrated pest management. It contains information on the distribution, ecology and biology of pests and how to monitor them. The integrated pest management approach outlined in the book includes natural environmental controls, beneficial and predatory species of arthropods, resistant cultivars and insecticidal and miticidal pesticides.

Pest Management of Turfgrass for Sport and Recreation is an essential manual for managers of sportsgrounds, bowling greens, lawn tennis courts, golf courses, racecourses, ornamental landscapes, amenity parklands, public reserves and turfgrass production farms.


The allelic variability at six Y-chromosome-specific polymorphisms (YAP, DYS19, DYS389-I, DYS390, DYS391, and DYS392) was used to generate male-specific haplotypes in 333 males representing 12 population samples from the region around the Mediterranean sea. Extreme interindividual variation was observed, as more than 160 distinct Y-chromosome variants could be defined as six-locus haplotypes. Concomitant with this high variability, low levels of population genetic structure were observed. In particular, a "core" of populations directly facing the north and the east of the Mediterranean basin, from the Middle East to the Italian Peninsula, was found to be genetically undifferentiated. This observation, supported by a reanalysis of Y-specific binary polymorphisms in the same populations, suggests that at least part of the male-specific gene pools of these populations has either a very recent common origin (that could be related with the Neolithic demic diffusion hypothesis), and/or that gene flow has played a significant role in shaping the patterns of genetic variability in this region. In agreement with both hypotheses, we found that the spatial distribution of DYS392 alleles revealed a marked differentiation between the East and the West of the Mediterranean area. Through the analysis of microsatellite variation, the time to the most recent common ancestor (TMRCA) of the YAP(+) sublineage 4 has been estimated. The estimations, based on two different data sets, turn out to be quite recent (7,000-11,000 YBP), suggesting that this lineage may have been first introduced into Southern Europe through Neolithic migrations from the Middle East.


Building on the extensive interest in company law and corporate governance development in post-communist transformation, this book examines the legal regime for protection of company investors in the CIS. The different contributions focus on issues such as basic shareholder rights, shareholder rights in special circumstances, cumulative voting, and protection through securities markets regulation. The discussion centers on the problems of domestic legal reform and the extent to which international legal standards and best practice are reflected in the process. In doing so, it offers a thorough comparative law analysis covering all twelve CIS countries. Importantly, the book accords a special place to the contribution that the model legislation adopted within the CIS framework makes to the process of legal reform and voluntary legal harmonization.


Objectives: Large liver cell dysplasia (LCD) is frequently associated with hepatitis B virus (HBV), but it remains uncertain whether it is reactive, senescent or preneoplastic. Methods: The HBX transgenic mice and normal control mice were sacrificed at 1, 3, 5, 7, 9, 11, 13 and 15 months after birth. Twenty-three cases of human B viral chronic hepatitis/cirrhosis with prominent LCD were selected. The immunohistochemical stain of proliferating cell nuclear antigen (PCNA), transferase-mediated dUTP-biotin nick end labeling (TUNEL) assay and senescence-associated β-galactosidase (SA-β-Gal) were evaluated. Results: In HBX transgenic mice, LCD was developed since 3 months and formed small nodules of hepatocellular adenoma, which progressed to hepatocellular carcinoma. The hepatocytes with LCD in HBX transgenic mice showed significantly higher PCNA-labeling index (LI) and lower TUNEL-LI than normal hepatocytes of control mice (p < 0.05). In the majority of human B viral chronic hepatitis/cirrhosis, the hepatocytes with LCD revealed higher PCNA-LI and lower TUNEL-LI than those without, when compared in each case using the same tissue block. SA-β-Gal staining showed no difference between hepatocytes with and without LCD. Conclusion: It is suggested that LCD, related to HBV, might not be just an innocent bystander, but closely related to hepatocarcinogenesis.


Dams interrupt the longitudinal connectivity of a river as they store water and trap sediment. When transport capacity downstream of dams exceeds sediment supply, water becomes hungry and channel incision, bed armouring and reduction of morphological diversity are the consequences. Sediment replenishment is an increasingly common measure to restore the sediment regime of such disturbed river reaches. In the present study the influence on channel bed morphology of different geometrical configuration of replenishments and of consecutive gravel augmentation is assessed by means of systematically laboratory experiments. The typical features of a straight armoured alpine gravel channel are reproduced on the model in terms of slope, cross section and bed grain size. The total amount of replenished sediment is deposited in four identical volumes following two different geometrical configurations (parallel and alternating). The reaction of the channel bed is analysed on image and laser data. Persistency of the first replenishment is high and it covers a large portion of the channel bed, which consequently decreases channel bed roughness remarkably. The persistency of the second replenishment is low and the effect on the depositional pattern established after the first replenishment only minor. This is explained by the smoothing of the channel bed during the first replenishment, resulting in higher transport capacities. For the alternating configuration an increase in the deposition heights in the very downstream channel reach can be observed due to the second replenishment. Thus it is assumed that consecutive replenishment can increase the impact length of restoration projects. The parallel configuration results in very spread depositions, while for the alternating configuration a clear bed form pattern could be observed with a wavelength of depositions corresponding to the length of the replenished volumes. These depositions are understood as mounds, forming the initial condition of alternating bars. Thus in order to enhance channel bed topography of an armoured layer downstream a dam, sediment replenishment added by the alternating configuration is most favourable and effective.


The smart city has become one of the many ways to solve the problems of contemporary urban environments. The sustainable integration of technology, people and institutions is essential in urban planning. However, utilizing technology in city management with the Internet of Things (IoT) in smart cities will not be sustainable without ensuring that the community is prepared. The involvement of all societies and persons, as agents of implementation and technology users, requires a gender-responsive approach to social innovation in the urban management. With regard to this issue, the purpose of this paper is to describe the importance of the human aspect of technology orientation through a gender-responsive approach in social innovation for the sustainable smart city. The method used in this study is a combination of several data collection techniques, which are in the form of literature studies, online surveys, and structured interviews. The results show that in terms of planning and management of the city, it is necessary for all communities to achieve social justice by using gender responsive approaches. Social innovation done in smart cities requires an understanding of technology users through community empowerment, especially for women. Women and men should have equal rights and opportunities in the application of the technology. Therefore, various capacity building efforts for women must take place on multiple levels, with the integration and support from the collaboration of all stakeholders. This amounts to a paradigm shift in both the planning policies, regulation and management of smart cities. Cooperation among all parties is critical, whether in partnership or collaboration between government and private parties and other institutions that prioritize public services for the community. This study contributes a social learning framework in strengthening citizens' preparedness to participate in future smart cities.


This dissertation explores economic impacts of food related illness on agricultural industries and models the performance of food safety programs on supply chain participants. Three stand-alone studies are dedicated to economic analysis on food safety issues from different approaches analytically, empirically, and in simulation.In response to recent outbreaks of food-borne illness, the fresh produce and fruit industries have adopted marketing agreements to ensure the consistency of food safety. Chapter 2 presents a theoretical framework and simulation analysis to illustrate farmers' behavior on implementing Good Agricultural Practices (GAPs), and the design of monitoring strategies in setting marketing agreements. It reveals that, if the monitoring resources are not high enough to achieve full compliance on GAPs, the general rule is to allocate resources so that the total amount of decreased fraud in terms of safety effort is the same for all farms. When auditing resources are very low, the size effect is dominant and larger farms are inspected first; when auditing resources are large enough, the cost effect is dominant and smaller farms are inspected first. The optimal auditing probability for smaller farms increases faster than that for larger farms.Contracts now are widely used between processors and growers to specify product quality and safety attributes. Chapter 3 employs a multitask principal-agent model to analyze the optimal incentive structure in contract food production. It offers guidance on understanding contractual relations for both food quality and food safety, and how the inclusion of a traceability system influences the provisions of the contract.Recent outbreaks of highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) in Asia, Europe, and Africa have caused severe impacts on the broiler sector through production loss, trade restrictions and negative demand shocks. Chapter 4 presents a multimarket econometric model to conduct simulation analyses on the spread and market implications of a potential HPAI outbreak in U.S. broiler industry. It takes into account market power that might exist within the livestock and meat sectors and makes endogenous the optimal production conditions in the model system. Findings from the analysis imply that the HPAI shocks impact prices at different marketing levels unequally and change the price margin along the supply chain with the existence of market power. However, the change in the price margin is quite small in absolute value.


The (n,k)-arrangement graph A(n,k) is a graph with all the k-permutations of an n-element set as vertices where two k-permutations are adjacent if they agree in exactly k-1 positions. We introduce a cyclic decomposition for k-permutations and show that this gives rise to a very fine equitable partition of A(n,k). This equitable partition can be employed to compute the complete set of eigenvalues (of the adjacency matrix) of A(n,k). Consequently, we determine the eigenvalues of A(n,k) for small values of k. Finally, we show that any eigenvalue of the Johnson graph J(n,k) is an eigenvalue of A(n,k) and that -k is the smallest eigenvalue of A(n,k) with multiplicity O(n^k) for fixed k.


Abstract. Loss of summertime Arctic sea ice will lead to a large increase in the emission of aerosols and precursor gases from the ocean surface. It has been suggested that these enhanced emissions will exert substantial aerosol radiative forcings, dominated by the indirect effect of aerosol on clouds. Here, we investigate the potential for these indirect forcings using a global aerosol microphysics model evaluated against aerosol observations from the Arctic Summer Cloud Ocean Study (ASCOS) campaign to examine the response of Arctic cloud condensation nuclei (CCN) to sea-ice retreat. In response to a complete loss of summer ice, we find that north of 70° N emission fluxes of sea salt, marine primary organic aerosol (OA) and dimethyl sulfide increase by a factor of ~ 10, ~ 4 and ~ 15 respectively. However, the CCN response is weak, with negative changes over the central Arctic Ocean. The weak response is due to the efficient scavenging of aerosol by extensive drizzling stratocumulus clouds. In the scavenging-dominated Arctic environment, the production of condensable vapour from oxidation of dimethyl sulfide grows particles to sizes where they can be scavenged. This loss is not sufficiently compensated by new particle formation, due to the suppression of nucleation by the large condensation sink resulting from sea-salt and primary OA emissions. Thus, our results suggest that increased aerosol emissions will not cause a climate feedback through changes in cloud microphysical and radiative properties.


The need to share data across applications is becoming increasingly evident. Current cloud isolation mechanisms focus solely on protection, such as containers that isolate at the OS-level, and virtual machines that isolate through the hypervisor. However, by focusing rigidly on protection, these approaches do not provide for controlled sharing. This paper presents how Information Flow Control (IFC) offers a flexible alternative. As a data-centric mechanism it enables strong isolation when required, while providing continuous, fine grained control of the data being shared. An IFC-enabled cloud platform would ensure that policies are enforced as data flows across all applications, without requiring any special sharing mechanisms.


Several recent prospective studies have reported that obesity is associated with an increased risk for chronic kidney disease (CKD), but it is unknown whether weight gain increases the risk for CKD if one remains within the "normal" category of body mass index (BMI). We prospectively followed a cohort of 8792 healthy men who had no known risk factors for CKD and participated in a comprehensive health evaluation program at a large worksite. During 35,927 person-years of follow-up, 427 new incident cases of CKD (estimated GFR <64 ml/min per 1.73 m(2)) developed. Cox proportional hazards modeling revealed that in both the normal-weight and overweight groups, a U-shaped association between weight change categories and development of CKD was observed after adjustment for age, baseline GFR, baseline BMI, HDL, fasting blood glucose, uric acid, and exercise habits. The lowest risk for CKD was observed among those whose weight changed -0.25 to <0.25 kg/yr (P < 0.001 for quadratic term). Weight change as a time-dependent variable was significantly related to CKD incidence. These relationships remained significant even after further adjustment for Homeostasis Model Assessment of Insulin Resistance, high-sensitivity C-reactive protein, systolic BP, diastolic BP, metabolic syndrome, incident hypertension, or incident diabetes. In summary, increases in body weight are independently associated with an increased risk for CKD, even when the BMI remains within the normal range.


The layered transition metal oxide compounds which are composed of hexagonal close packed oxygen atoms network with lithium and transition metal ions in an alternating (111) planes, such as LiCoO2, LiNiO2, LiCoxNi1- xO2 etc. have been studied extensively as alternate cathode materials for low power applications. LiCoO2 thin films have been widely considered as good candidates for their use as environmental gas sensors for detecting pollutant gases like carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide, hydrocarbons, ammonia and nitrogen oxides. The device performance is related to the structural properties and morphological features of the film, which in turn dependant on the deposition technique as well as the preparative parameters. Hence in the present investigation LiCoO2 thin films were prepared by pulsed laser deposition and the gas sensing properties of LiCoO2 thin filmswere studied. When the reducing gas is exposed to the sensing element, it reduces the resistance of the material, which confirms the typical characteristic of a ntypematerial.


The conservation of developmental functions exerted by Antp-class homeoproteins in protostomes and deuterostomes suggested that homologs with related functions are present in diploblastic animals. Our phylogenetic analyses showed that Antp-class homeodomains belong either to non-Hox or to Hox/paraHox families. Among the 13 non-Hox families, 9 have diploblastic homologs, Msx, Emx, Barx, Evx, Tlx, NK-2, and Prh/Hex, Not, and Dlx, reported here. Among the Hox/paraHox, poriferan sequences were not found, and the cnidarian sequences formed at least five distinct cnox families. Two are significantly related to the paraHox Gsx (cnox-2) and the mox (cnox-5) sequences, whereas three display some relatedness to the Hox paralog groups 1 (cnox-1), 9/10 (cnox-3) and the paraHox cdx (cnox-4). Intermediate Hox/paraHox genes (PG 3 to 8 and lox) did not have clear cnidarian counterparts. In Hydra, cnox-1, cnox-2, and cnox-3 were not found chromosomally linked within a 150-kb range and displayed specific expression patterns in the adult head. During regeneration, cnox-1 was expressed as an early gene whatever the polarity, whereas cnox-2 was up-regulated later during head but not foot regeneration. Finally, cnox-3 expression was reestablished in the adult head once it was fully formed. These results suggest that the Hydra genes related to anterior Hox/paraHox genes are involved at different stages of apical differentiation. However, the positional information defining the oral/aboral axis in Hydra cannot be correlated strictly to that characterizing the anterior-posterior axis in vertebrates or arthropods.


A web application is a "two-part" program, with its components deployed both in the browser and in the web server. The communication between these two components inevitably leaks out the program's internal states to those eavesdropping on its web traffic, simply through the side channel features of the communication such as packet length and timing, even if the traffic is entirely encrypted. Our recent study shows that such side-channel leaks are both fundamental and realistic: a set of popular web applications are found to disclose highly sensitive user data such as one's family incomes, health profiles, investment secrets and more through their side channels. Our study also shows that an significant improvement of the current web-application development practice is necessary to mitigate this threat. To answer this urgent call, we present in this paper a suite of new techniques for automatic detection and quantification of side-channel leaks in web applications. Our approach, called Sidebuster, can automatically analyze an application's source code to detect its side channels and then perform a rerun test to assess the amount of information disclosed through such channels (quantified as the entropy loss). Sidebuster has been designed to work on event-driven applications and can effectively handle the AJAX GUI widgets used in most web applications. In our research, we implemented a prototype of our technique for analyzing GWT applications and evaluated it using complicated web applications. Our study shows that Sidebuster can effectively identify the side-channel leaks in these applications and assess their severity, with a small overhead.


Abstract The computation of marginal posterior density in Bayesian analysis is essential in that it can provide complete information about parameters of interest. Furthermore, the marginal posterior density can be used for computing Bayes factors, posterior model probabilities, and diagnostic measures. The conditional marginal density estimator (CMDE) is theoretically the best for marginal density estimation but requires the closed-form expression of the conditional posterior density, which is often not available in many applications. We develop the partition weighted marginal density estimator (PWMDE) to realize the CMDE. This unbiased estimator requires only a single Markov chain Monte Carlo output from the joint posterior distribution and the known unnormalized posterior density. The theoretical properties and various applications of the PWMDE are examined in detail. The PWMDE method is also extended to the estimation of conditional posterior densities. We carry out simulation studies to investigate the empirical performance of the PWMDE and further demonstrate the desirable features of the proposed method with two real data sets from a study of dissociative identity disorder patients and a prostate cancer study, respectively. Supplementary materials for this article are available online.


Contrary to the strawman "classical" model of the textbooks, the original classical economists did not believe that money-stock changes affect only the price level and not real output and employment. Most classicals saw money as having powerful short-run real effects and perhaps some residual long-run effects as well. Concern for money's impact on real activity strongly influenced the classicals' views of the desirability or undesirability of monetary expansion and contraction.


The purpose of this study was to gain insight and understanding into the humor experience in collegiate sport. The specific purpose of this study was to determine the styles of humor used among male collegiate basketball players, the uses humor serves for them, and the perceived effects of humor used within male collegiate basketball teams. Also, the relationship of the styles and uses of humor to team cohesion was determined. The Humor Styles Questionnaire (HSQ) was used to measure the humor styles used among athletic team members (Martin, Puhlik-Doris, Larson, Gray, & Weir, 2003). The Uses of Humor Index (Graham, Papa, & Brooks, 1992) was used to measure the uses of humor among athletic team members. Questions regarding specific effects of humor attempted to develop an understanding of specific positive and negative effects of humor usage in sport, as well as determine the overall frequency of positive and negative effects of humor. The Group Environment Questionnaire (GEQ) was used to measure the perceptions of team cohesion among athletic teams (Widmeyer, Brawley, & Carron, 1985). The data analyzed in this study was collected on 79 male collegiate basketball players representing six institutions. The results of this research found humor usage to be mainly positive, with positive humor being reported with more frequency than negative humor in group settings. The male collegiate basketball participants reported higher scores on the positive styles of humor than on the negatives styles of humor. Likewise, results revealed that positive and expressive affect humor was reported with more frequency than negative affect humor. Additionally, results revealed that the positive effects of humor were reported with more frequency than the negative effects of humor. Correlations showed that the affiliative style of humor was positively correlated with the ATG-T, GI-T, and GI-S cohesion scales. The self-enhancing style of humor was positively correlated with the GI-S cohesion scale. The positive affect and expressiveness affect functions of humor were positively correlated with the humor effect of enhance team cohesion. The results are encouraging for sports professionals, because results suggest that humor is being used mostly in the positive forms that are proposed to lead to positive outcomes. Additionally, results suggest that positive styles and functions of humor may have a positive impact on team cohesion.


Wnt signaling is crucial for embryonic development in all animal species studied to date. The interaction between Wnt proteins and cell surface receptors can result in a variety of intracellular responses. A key remaining question is how these specific responses take shape in the context of a complex, multicellular organism. Recent studies suggest that we have to revise some of our most basic ideas about Wnt signal transduction. Rather than thinking about Wnt signaling in terms of distinct, linear, cellular signaling pathways, we propose a novel view that considers the integration of multiple, often simultaneous, inputs at the level of both Wnt-receptor binding and the downstream, intracellular response.


The heat dissipation and thermal performance of ventilated brake discs strongly depends on the aerodynamic characteristics of the air flow through the rotor passages. In this paper, the thermal convection is analyzed using an analytical method, and the velocity distribution, temperature contours and Nusselt number are determined. Then numerical models for different rotors, pillar post rotors and vane rotors are generated and numerical simulations are conducted to determine the desired parameters. To analyze more realistic vane and pillar post rotor models, commercial CFD software packages, Fluent and Gambit, are used to simulate the heat flux rate, air flow rate, velocity distributions, temperature contours, and pressure distributions inside the rotors. Furthermore, sensitivity studies have been performed, to determine the effects of a different number of vanes or pillar posts, inner and outer radii and various angles of vanes.


The formation of temporal dissipative solitons in optical microresonators enables compact, high-repetition rate sources of ultrashort pulses as well as low noise, broadband optical frequency combs with smooth spectral envelopes. Here we study the influence of the microresonator mode spectrum on temporal soliton formation in a crystalline MgF2 microresonator. While an overall anomalous group velocity dispersion is required, it is found that higher order dispersion can be tolerated as long as it does not dominate the resonator's mode structure. Avoided mode crossings induced by linear mode coupling in the resonator mode spectrum are found to prevent soliton formation when affecting resonator modes close to the pump laser frequency. The experimental observations are in excellent agreement with numerical simulations based on the nonlinear coupled mode equations. The presented results provide for the first time design criteria for the generation of temporal solitons in optical microresonators.


Objective: To investigate and compare the degree of vertical marginal discrepancy of four provisional crown materials by digital microscope. Materials and Methods: A total of 100 provisional crowns were fabricated on standardized resin dies by direct technique of provisional fabrication, using four different provisional materials (n = 25): Provisionals Fabricated by Systemp® c and b II, ivoclar vivadent, Schaan, Liechtenstein (group A); ProtempTM Plus, 3M ESPE, Neuss, Germany (group B); Success CD, PROMEDICA, Neumunster, Germany (group C); and Trim® Plus, Bosworth Company, Illinois, USA (group D). The provisional crowns were finished, tried, and locked with a customized device under 15N of vertical axial force. The vertical marginal discrepancy between the crown margin and the resin die was measured in micrometers using digital microscope (KH-7700, Hirox-USA, Inc., NJ, USA) at mid of buccal, lingual, mesial, and distal margin areas by a trained technician. Results: The mean values obtained for each group were as follows: group A = 129.10 ± 41.64, group B = 123.36 ± 40.94, group C = 89.67 ± 25.34, and group D = 107.24 ± 38.32. Assessment by post hoc Tukey's test at 5% significance level showed a statistically significant difference (P < 0.05) between group C and group D with the other groups. Results of one-way ANOVA showed a statistically nonsignificant difference (P > 0.05) between the means of the four areas of measurement for each group. Conclusion: Marginal discrepancy of the group C (Success CD) was the lowest among the provisionals tested. The mean vertical marginal gap values for the materials tested were found to be with in the clinically acceptable range (<130 μm).


This study aimed at assessing the challenges of primary education service delivery in relation to decentralization. Different objectives guided the study including assessing the level of effectiveness and challenges of the various stakeholders in primary education service delivery , assessing whether the level of collaboration amongst the various centers of power in the delivery of primary education services under the decentralization system poses a challenge and identifying other underlying issues that can pose a challenge in respect to governance and accountability in the education sector. The area of the study was Mbarara district. Field data was collected from four randomly selected sub counties (Nyakayojo, Birere, Sanga and Bubaare). One division of Mbarara municipality was purposely selected. The focus of this study was at the sub county level where two randomly selected primary schools were visited and the total of 80 teachers, 20 head teachers 31 key informants and 20 pupils were approached. Key information interview were held with senior civil servants and political leaders at the district and sub county levels. The interview guides were used to collect information from the key informants for the purpose of qualitative data while a questionnaire was designed for teachers to collect quantitative data. Data was analyzed using both qualitative and quantitative methods. The findings of the study established that the major challenges of the delivery of primary education services are teachers' related factors. The long distance travelled by teachers, and the uncoordinated frequent transfers pose a big challenge to their service delivery. It was also established that pupils who study the whole day without a meal and the automatic promotion from one class to another were other challenges. The fact that most of the local council members lack adequate formal education was also observed. The study however established positive outcomes as a result of improved collaboration of stake holders and the intervention of central government. This was observed in monitoring the progress of universal primary Education service delivery. The conclusions drawn from the findings were that there are gaps in the shared vision among the district centres of power and the various stake holders that play a key role in the education service delivery process. Service providers and the service receivers do not always view themselves as having complementary roles in primary education decentralization process. There is also lack of accountability of funds utilized by head teachers. The study recommends that training of teachers and other stake holders of primary services should be given a priority in order to improve on capacity building. This will help members who directly implement UPE programmes to gain more knowledge and skills. The decentralization of authority and responsibility for UPE design should be marked with adequate and steady transfers of resources. Also,the central government should collaborate with local government in policy guideline formulation which will lead to better service delivery.


The growing retirement crisis results, in part, from inefficient savings incentives embedded in the U.S. tax code. In a joint issue brief with the Center for American Progress (CAP), CAP Senior Fellow Christian Weller and SCEPA Director Teresa Ghilarducci find that households that need the most help saving for retirement receive the least assistance from the multitude of savings incentives in the U.S. tax code, for three reasons. First, existing savings incentives can be incredibly complex. Second, savings incentives often benefit higher-income earners more than middle- and lower-income earners. Third, the public loses out on tax revenue that otherwise would have been collected. Tax reform is needed to simplify savings incentives and better target incentives.


Multiple Sclerosis (MS) is an inflammatory demyelinating disease of the central nervous system (CNS) causing neurological disability in young adults, characterised by discrete acute and chronic lesions that are predominantly located in the CNS white matter. The role the extracellular matrix (ECM) has been widely studied as it is thought to be implicated in the pathogenesis of MS. Components such as chondroitin sulphate proteoglycans (CSPGs) are up-regulated in response to injury and inflammation and participate in the formation of sclerotic lesions. Research into the role of a disintegrin and metalloproteinase with thrombospondin motifs (ADAMTS) in CNS injury and inflammation has demonstrated that this protease may aid the recovery process by cleaving CSPGs, which are inhibitory to neurite outgrowth and axonal regeneration.In vivo studies were carried out investigating the distribution and expression of aggrecan and versican by dual label immunohistochemistry (IHC) and western blotting (WB) using antibodies which specially recognise cleavage-derived aggrecan and versican neoepitopes and intact protein. ADAMTS-9 expression was assessed by real time PCR (qRT-PCR), IHC and western blotting. In active lesions, both IHC and WB indicated that intact versican and aggrecan as well as their neoepitopes and ADAMTS-9 expression were all increased in areas of myelin thinning with ongoing demyelination and macrophage activation, compared to control and normal appearing white matter (NAWM) brain tissue. Immunostaining for CSPG neoepitope was particularly strong at the plaque border in chronic active lesions (CAL) compared to chronic inactive lesions (CL), NAWM and control brain tissue, suggesting active enzymatic cleavage of intact protein. IHC studies demonstrated that ADAMTS-9 was expressed predominantly by astrocytes, endothelium, macrophages and neurons with increased expression within MS active lesions. qRT-PCR studies confirmed ADAMTS-9 expression in MS tissue. In summary this study provides evidence that ADAMTS-9 plays an important role in cleavage of the ECM CSPGs, aggrecan and versican, in active lesions in MS.The role of CSPGs in neurite outgrowth from human neurons has been largely untested but is critical for understanding of regeneration following CNS injury. This thesis aimed to assess the effect of the ECM components, aggrecan, on neurite outgrowth of neuroblastoma cell line (SHSY-5Y) and expression of ADAMTS-9. This was achieved by several methods including qRT-PCR, ICC and WB. These data provided evidence that neurite outgrowth from SHSY-5Y cells is inhibited by aggrecan, this inhibition was associated with high level expression of ADAMTS-9.This thesis also aimed to investigate the expression of ADAMTS-9 by cells of the CNS to gain a better understanding of how these enzymes might be regulated and their possible role in the pathogenesis of MS. Cells were treated with pro-inflammatory cytokines in vitro, to mimic in vivo inflammatory conditions, and following this, ICC and WB data demonstrated that ADAMTS-9 was constitutively expressed by primary human astrocytes, microglia (CHME3) and neuronal (SHSY-5Y) cell lines in vitro, under basal condition. In primary astrocytes, ADAMTS-9 expression was increased following treatment with 10ng/mL interferon-y compared to control untreated cells. In contrast, dual treatment with interleukin-1 and tumour necrosis factor resulted in down regulation of ADAMTS-9. Thus illustrating the external inflammatory mileu influences the expression of ADAMTS-9 in lesions in MS, which in turn influences the degradation of the ECM components aggrecan and versican, which are also upregulated in lesions. Further work to understand how these changes in the ECM influence CNS repair is needed.


There has been a great interest in defining a new network architecture that can meet the needs of a future Internet. One of the main challenges in this context is how to realize the many different technical solutions that have developed in recent years in a single coherent architecture. In addition, it is necessary to consider how to ensure economic viability of architecture solutions. In this work, we discuss how to design a network architecture where choices at different layers of the protocol stack are explicitly exposed to users. This approach ensures that innovative technical solutions can be used and rewarded, which is essential to encourage wide deployment of this architecture.


This article aims to highlight, using the method of semantic and contextual analysis, the relationships that can be established within the paradigm of naming beliefs associated with good and evil. The lexemes subject to analysis are: FAITH, FAITHFULNESS, UNBELIEF, DOUBT, HERESY, HOPE. Being abstract terms, their features are of a higher degree of generality. Vocabulary segmentation was done taking into account the proximate gender regarding beliefs.


PURPOSE
The goal of this study is to evaluate the impact of VMAT planning parameters on plan quality and delivery efficiency on linear accelerators.

METHODS
VMAT technology provide a number of variable on treatment delivery such as MLC motion, dose rate (DR) and gantry rotation speed. Three parameters-Leaf Speed (LS), Minimum DR and Control points (CP) were chosen to evaluate their impact on the VMAT plan quality and delivery efficiency. Five prostate cases were selected to generate several VMAT plans on Pinnacle TPS (v9.2) with Elekta LINAC (Synergy-S). Leaf Speed: Pinnacle provides options for maximum LS while optimizing a treatment plan. We chose 3 LS for a comparative study 2cm/sec (maximum LS allowed at LINAC), 1.5cm/sec & 1cm/sec. Minimum DR: Due to varying DR we evaluated the minimum DR that can be used to perform and deliver a treatment plan on the LINAC.Control points: TPS provides 3 options for choosing the number of CP 91, 121 & 181 i.e. CP generated with gantry spacing 4°, 3°, 2° in a single arc.

RESULTS
Leaf Speed: Due to LS impact of treatment delivery time, it is recommended to stay below the maximum LS of LINAC to avoid beam cut off. The optimum LS was found as 1.5cm/sec.Minimum DR: Beam cut off issue occurred on LINAC when the DR fell below 30MU/sec. So it becomes important to choose a higher value of DR while optimizing a plan in TPS.Control points: The number of CP used to generate a treatment plan has a minimal impact on plan quality and huge impact on plan delivery because it increases the optimization and delivery time.

CONCLUSION
Each parameter in the above study has different impact on the plan quality & delivery efficiency. Hence it is important to evaluate all the parameters before clinical VMAT implementation.


If ichnotaxonomy is to be scientific, then its results must be repeatable. While some ichnotaxa are identified consistently, others are not, suggesting that ichnotaxonomy is not a mature science. When researchers disagree on the identification of a specimen, it suggests that closer examination is needed: an intermediate stage in the scientific method. But when ichnologists publish different names for the same trace fossils, multiple trials of classification have yielded different results, suggesting a failure of the hypotheses that led to the names. The burgeoning of invertebrate ichnology from the 1960s onward was made possible by emonstrating its utility to the petroleum industry; in part, this was accomplished by simplifying the ichnotaxonomy of common trace fossils to the point where a specialist was not required to make use of them in sedimentology and stratigraphy. The biological aspect of trace fossils, albeit of great interest, was downplayed in favour of a severely geometric approach. Ironically, this has had the effect of obscuring basic relationships of trace fossils and their palaeoenvironments that could be of great use to sedimentologists. Previous researchers have emphasized the value of a uniform approach in ichnotaxonomy. To accomplish this, ichnologists should take inspiration from the taxonomy of body fossils. Making ichnotaxonomy more replicable will take time and effort among investigators. In the long run, this can be accomplished by a holistic approach that includes close observation of trace fossils, standardized procedures of description and diagnosis, reinvestigation of type material, attention to bioprint (morphological traits that reveal the anatomical and ethological characteristics of the tracemakers; Rindsberg and Kopaska-Merkel, 2005), avoidance of taphonomic and human bias, and above all, cooperation.


Between 2005 and 2009 a deep‐water shipwreck was located, mapped, and partially excavated by a joint team from RPM Nautical Foundation and the office of the Soprintendenza del Mare, Sicily. Located off Levanzo Island, one of the Egadi Islands off north‐west Sicily, this wrecked merchantman revealed a mixed cargo of foodstuffs, coarseware, glass, and construction materials. The nature of the wreck‐site, its cargo, operational date, and find‐location indicate its likely association with the annona service which supplied Rome. © 2012 The Authors


CaMKIIβ activity at the centrosome alters the subcellular localization of a ubiquitin ligase complex and promotes dendrite retraction. The signaling pathways that mediate dendrite outgrowth in neurons have been characterized in greater detail than those that promote dendrite retraction and pruning. Puram et al. uncovered a role for Ca2+/calmodulin-dependent protein kinase IIβ (CaMKIIβ) in dendrite patterning. Rat granule neurons overexpressing a constitutively active mutant of CaMKIIβ developed shorter, less branched dendrites. In contrast, granule, hippocampal, and cerebral cortical neurons developed longer, more branched dendrites when transfected with short hairpin RNAs (shRNAs) directed against CaMKIIβ, effects that were also observed after shRNA-mediated knockdown of CaMKIIβ in the cerebellar cortices of rats and organotypic cerebellar slices. Time-lapse imaging revealed that overexpression of the constitutively active CaMKIIβ mutant increased the number of retraction events, whereas CaMKIIβ knockdown increased the number of extension events. The inhibitory effect of CaMKIIβ on dendrite growth required its catalytic activity and a domain that localized the protein to the centrosome through interaction with PCM1 (pericentriolar material 1). Knockdown of PCM1 in cerebellar cortices of rats phenocopied the effects of knockdown of CaMKIIβ and resulted in longer dendrites in granule neurons. CaMKIIβ phosphorylated Ser51 of Cdc20, a substrate-targeting component of the ubiquitin ligase APC (anaphase-promoting complex), thereby inducing dispersion of Cdc20 from the centrosome and preventing degradation of APC substrates. Neurons with Cdc20 localized at the centrosome had longer dendrites than those in which Cdc20 was not localized at the centrosome. Thus, CaMKIIβ activity at the centrosome alters the access of Cdc20-APC to its substrates, which triggers dendrite retraction and limits dendrite outgrowth. S. V. Puram, A. H. Kim, Y. Ikeuchi, J. T. Wilson-Grady, A. Merdes, S. P. Gygi, A. Bonni, A CaMKIIβ signaling pathway at the centrosome regulates dendrite patterning in the brain. Nat. Neurosci. 14, 973–983 (2011). [PubMed]


The paper develops the idea of configuration of ownership to distinguish three primary political ideologies: (classical) liberalism, conservatism, and leftism. The liberal configuration is atomistic in its recognition of owners and ownership claims; it conforms closely to Adam Smith's "commutative justice," which Smith represented as a sort of social grammar. The conservative configuration also strives for a social grammar, but it counts among the set of owners certain spirit-lords such as God and Patria. The liberal and conservative configurations become isomorphic if and only if the ownership claims of the conservative spirit-lords are reduced to nothing. The left configuration ascribes fundamental ownership of resources to the people, the state, and sees laws as organizational house-rules into which one enters voluntary by choosing to remain within the polity; the type of justice that pertains is parallel to Smith's "distributive justice," which Smith associated with aspirational rules for achieving beauty in composition. The scheme illuminates why the left's conception of liberty consists in civil liberties. The formulation of configurations is used to interpret the semantics of the three primary ideologies. Meanwhile, it is noted that actually existing parties and movements are admixtures of the three primary ideologies. For example, what makes Republicanism "conservative" is that it is relatively conservative; it by no means thoroughly or consistently rejects the precept of collective ownership by the polity.


This article presents the results of an experiment that attempted the reconciliation of opposite expectations regarding the effectiveness of political decentralization on ethno-political mobilization. An agent-based model was run thousands of times to explore the effect of decentralization. The experiments suggest that the impact is nonlinear: weak and medium levels of decentralization increase the likelihood of ethno-political mobilization, while strong decentralization decreases it. The explanation derives from how minority control of political institutions affects the dynamic of minority identity ascription and the realization of the goal or the frustration of ethnic members seeking more complete political dominance of the regional ideational space.


We describe a number of advances in the analysis of road scenes when the scene contains multiple moving objects and is observed by a single nonsteerable camera mounted on the front of a vehicle. Our structure from motion approach to scene segmentation derives front the observed motions of independently moving objects and requires no prior knowledge. We describe a hierarchy of camera models for the analysis of the scene, the simpler models handle degeneracies that occur in the more complex models. The major technical contribution is the recursive computation of feature clusters, which are fed forward over time. This closed loop feature tracking generates extended feature trajectories which significantly improve the discriminating power of scene segmentation.<<ETX>>


Ancient Greece featured at least five different varieties of same-sex relations: (a) pederastic relations, typically between adolescent boys and adult men who were not yet married; (b) relations between male youths of approximately the same age; less frequently (c) homosexual relations between fully adult men; (d) age-differentiated relations between females; and (e) relations between adult females. The origins of pederasty appear to be related to the relatively late age of marriage for males, which evolved as a response to needs to limit population growth in the scarcity-driven economy of the 7th century bce. The contexts of pederastic socialization (athletics, military comradeship, hunting, cockfighting, and intellectual/musical performance at elite symposia) point toward masculinizing pedagogy and mentorship as key social functions.
 However, social attitudes toward pederasty were not uniform throughout all Greek city-states in all periods. Evidence from several domains suggests that as Athens became more democratic and saw greater distribution of prosperity throughout all social classes, the age of male marriage declined; larger families became socially desirable, while non-procreative alternatives to marital sexuality became less fashionable and even morally dubious. What had always been characterized as an elite habitus during the archaic period and first half of the 5th century no longer seemed at home in a political system where appeal to the common man defined success and popularity. Some philosophical texts from the 4th century bce characterize physical sex between males as para physin ("beyond nature"), whereas others recognize the possibility that it is determined through natural processes grounded in anatomy or spiritual heredity.
 Of most interest for modern politics is the question of what Greek historical evidence can tell us about the ability of adolescent boys to consent to intimate relations with adult men. Modern jurisprudence, especially in the United States, assumes a universal inability to provide informed consent until well after the onset of puberty, and even voluntary relations between adolescent boys and men are heavily sanctioned in the criminal justice system. Although classical Athens featured a robust tradition of criticizing pederasty for a number of reasons, the notion that pre-adult sex with an older partner was psychologically harmful to boys was not among them. The Greeks viewed adolescent (and even younger) boys as inherently sexual, and the widespread practice of nudity in athletic exercise and daily life conditioned Greek boys to a greater degree of frankness and physical disinhibition. Both iconographical and textual evidence show that Greek adolescents were quite capable of rejecting adult suitors or discontinuing relationships that no longer pleased them.


This
thesis describes the development of a low-cost, low-power, accurate sensor designed
for precise, feedback control of an autonomous vehicle to a hitch. Few studies
have been completed on the hitching problem, yet it is an important challenge
to be solved for vehicles in the agricultural and transportation industries.
Existing sensor solutions are high cost, high power, and require modification
to the hitch in order to work. Other potential sensor solutions such as LiDAR
and Digital Fringe Projection suffer from these same fundamental problems.

The
solution that has been developed uses an active stereo vision system, combining
classical stereo vision with a laser speckle projection system, which solves
the correspondence problem experienced by classic stereo vision sensors. A
third camera is added to the sensor for texture mapping. As a whole, the system
cost is $188, with a power usage of 2.3 W.

To
test the system, a model test of the hitching problem was developed using an RC
car and a target to represent a hitch. In the application, both the stereo
system and the texture camera are used for measurement of the hitch, and a
control system is implemented to precisely control the vehicle to the hitch.
The system can successfully control the vehicle from within 35⁰ of perpendicular to the
hitch, to a final position with an overall standard deviation of 3.0 mm of
lateral error and 1.5⁰
of angular error. Ultimately, this is believed to be the first low power, low
cost hitching system that does not require modification of the hitch in order
to sense it.


My main aim in this piece was to further explore the metric ambiguity between 4 and 3 that I had used in an earlier piece, Waltz for Madeleine (2011). Another aim was to see how far I could go in generating melodic material from a 4-note motif that uses minimal pitch range, emphasising intervals of seconds and thirds. Melodic and rhythmic repetition forms the basis of the A section, relying on harmonic movement to provide interest. In the trio version, the bass guitar takes the melody at first, handing over to the piano for the second iteration of the melody of section A. The meandering, reflective character of this opening section is contrasted by a more restless B section, in which the melodic contour rises and falls sharply, the waltz metre disturbed now by an interjecting 5/4 bar. The two main themes are combined in section C: the 4 against 3 meandering melody of section A (now a tone higher) is unsettled by the 5/4 figure from section B. The tension built through the piece so far is released in the final section (D), which provides a complete contrast in the form of static harmony and rhythm, as well as a sparser, more open texture. Piano and bass solo on section A, while section D is opened up for the drum solo. The title pays homage to Kenny Wheeler's waltz, Everybody's Song But My Own (1987).


In the article possibilities of forest designing established on the basis of results of analyses of legal documents (acts and regulations) being in effect in Poland concerning spatial planning, nature conservation and forestry were presented. Achieved results allow to state, that issues concerning landscape approach are becoming more and more important in the realization of principles of the forest management led in Poland. In forests, amongst action associated with the necessity of the landscape protection, management and planning a need of reconstruction of tree stands, keeping all open areas in a natural or near-natural extent, limiting the area of total fellings, increasing the species diversity of ecotones are named. And so the possibilities of landscape design concern mainly culture and management aspects. Simultaneously a lack of many significant references to the scope of applied solutions in the area of forestry engineering was observed.


This study presents a frequency-domain model of an high voltage direct current (HVDC) transmission link with a line-commutated current-source converter. Using space-vector transfer functions between superimposed oscillations in the control signal and the AC and DC sides, expressions for voltages and currents have been derived. The dynamic properties of the HVDC link, taking the characteristics of the networks on both the AC and the DC sides into consideration, can be studied by applying classical Bode/Nyquist/Nichols control methods. The resulting model was validated by time-domain studies in PSCAD/EMTDC. The model is described in two papers. In this paper (Part I), it has been assumed that the overlap angle during commutation remains constant. It is shown in the validation that this assumption introduces resonances that cause severe errors at certain network conditions. In the second paper (Part II), the model is extended so as to cope with the varying overlap angle in order to bring the frequency-domain model into agreement with the results obtained from time-domain simulations.


Abstract Shelter-building behavior by caterpillars provides a mechanism of defense against predators, microenvironment enhancement, and in some cases nutritional benefits. This study provides a detailed description of the life cycle and shelter-building process of caterpillars, and identifies constraints and factors influencing this adaptive behavior in Lepidomys n. sp. near proclea Druce (Pyralidae: Chrysauginae), a tropical dry forest pyralid. Five macroscopic larval instars were detected during the life cycle, and activities performed during shelter-building were categorized and timed. Caterpillar predators were identified, and 20% of all collected larvae died due to attack by parasitoid wasps. Shelter-building behavior was found to be constrained by the ontogenetic stage of caterpillars and influenced by leaf size of the host plant, Piper stipulaceum Opiz (Piperales: Piperaceae). A similar pattern of shelter-building behavior exhibited by Tosale n. sp. near cuprealis larvae that coexisted in the same host plant is also described. Larvae of the second species were significantly less abundant than those of Lepidomys and hatched one month later in the rainy season, which could indicate some competitive interactions between these two pyralid species.


Consumers are now demanding and expecting more from technology. Building intelligence into our devices is a promising way to satisfy this demand by providing more personalized experiences. In Building Intelligent Systems the authors investigate how computer vision, machine learning, and data mining can be used together to build smarter devices and systems. Additionally, they explore some of the practical considerations of using artificial intelligence in the real world, tackling issues that are often overlooked in academic circles, such as performance optimization, benchmarking, robustness, and privacy.


BACKGROUND
The authors attempted to evaluate prospectively the usefulness of serum prostate specific antigen (PSA) complexed to alpha-1-antichymotrypsin (PSA-ACT) in the early detection of prostate carcinoma and its ability to discriminate between prostate carcinoma and benign prostatic hyperplasia (BPH), especially among patients with intermediate PSA levels.

METHODS
Between December 1999 and August 2000, systematic sextant biopsies were performed on 281 prospective patients with prostate carcinoma who had serum PSA levels between 4.1 ng/mL and 20.0 ng/mL. The serum samples were assayed by using kits that were designed specifically for measuring serum PSA, PSA-ACT, and free PSA levels. The clinical values of PSA, PSA-ACT, the free PSA to total PSA ratio (F/T ratio), the free PSA to PSA-ACT ratio, PSA density (PSAD), and PSA-ACT density (ACTD) were compared by using receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve analysis.

RESULTS
Biopsy yielded no evidence of malignancy in 198 patients, and prostate carcinoma was confirmed in 83 patients. ROC analysis demonstrated that the area under the curve (AUC) for PSA-ACT was greater than that for total PSA and was equivalent to that for the F/T ratio in both groups of patients (PSA ranges of 4.1-20.0 ng/mL and 4.1-10.0 ng/mL, respectively). The AUC for the ACTD was greater than the AUC for the PSAD and had the highest value of all parameters.

CONCLUSIONS
The measurement of PSA-ACT represents an alternative to the use of total and free PSA. The ACTD value is the most useful for discriminating between BPH and prostate carcinoma.


The enormous growth of the Interact and the World-Wide Web led to the emergence of various forms of cooperation beyond organizational boundaries. Also, the growth of the solutions business market encouraged enterprises to develop customer-centric services, which require rapid and dynamic service process coordination for on-demand services providing. Through the observation of these tendencies, we can foresee the increase of costs to coordinate business processes beyond organizational boundaries. This paper presents a work process representation model and computation architecture for cross-organizational work process coordination. The model realizes asynchronous work process coordination in the distributed network environment. Also, this model provides decentralized architecture for flexible work process enactment. Additionally, we implemented a prototype system called "ProcessNavigator" that is based on the above model, and we found that this model realizes the work process coordination which will allow users to register their activity without requiring explicit attention to maintaining consistencies with other activities.


Frank 0. Mora1 Rhodes College, Memphis If for much of the 1980s the Andean countries and Mexico viewed drug-trafficking as basically a U.S. problem, Brazil and the Southern Cone, plagued by a number of political, economic and social problems of their own, were surely not about to toe the U.S. line and declare a "war on drugs."2 Brazil and the Southern Cone countries saw this as a problem that involved the U.S. in its "war" against Colombian and Mexican narcotraficantes. The prevailing opinion at the time was that this region was nothing more than a minor staging area for drugs destined to the U.S. and Europe and a producer of small amounts of marijuana. These governments, in addition to the U.S., did not see any danger of their countries coming under the multifarious threat of drug-trafficking. Before 1989, the U.S. paid only scant attention to drug-trafficking in Brazil and the Southern cone. In the early 1970s there were pressures from President Richard Nixon, whose administration was the first to officially declare a war on drugs, for these countries, particularly Brazil, Chile, and Paraguay, to pass anti-drug legislation to counter the growing "heroin threat," which all of them did by 1978. However, in each of these countries the legislation was little more than window dressing - an attempt to appease Washington at a time when the U.S. public grew increasingly alarmed at the high rate of drug (heroin) consumption. There was no political will on the part of these governments to follow through, mainly because they did not perceive a problem. By the mid-1980s, when the anti-drug campaign heated up again, the Reagan and Bush administrations focused their attention and resources on the "war" in Mexico and the Andean region. By 1988 there was widespread consensus that drug-trafficking and the violence, corruption and socio-economic costs associated with it was a national security threat to the U.S. and Latin America. However, Brazilian and the Southern Cone governments, despite evidence of increasing levels of trafficking, consumption, and money laundering, continued to neglect this mounting problem. The U.S. not only neglected to pay attention to the problem in this region, but, in fact, indirectly and unwittingly contributed to pushing the drug trade away from the Andean region and toward Brazil and the Southern Cone.3 Coupled with this official neglect was the total disregard given to the trade in this region by the academic community. Despite the increasingly glaring deleterious effects of the drug trade on these societies, scholars in these countries, and particularly in the U.S., offered very little by way of in-depth studies of the causes and consequences of the drug trade in the region. Only journalists seem to be moderately interested in the issue. The focus of U.S. policy was to "go to the source," believing that successful interdiction, eradication and arrests of major traffickers would, once and for all, eliminate the scourge of drugs from the Western Hemisphere. In the end, U.S. policy and its flare for the theatrical, as exemplified by President Bush's dramatic speech to the nation in September 1989 and the subsequent Andean Strategy and Drug Summits, in Cartagena, Colombia (1990) and San Antonio, Texas (1992), seem to dictate the course of policy, academic, and to a lesser extent, journalistic interest in drug-trafficking, completely disregarding the growing importance of Brazil and the Southern Cone to drug traffickers. Political leaders in Brazil and the Southern Cone refused to accept that the tentacles of the drug trade had reached their borders, when, in fact, by 1987 the international press was already reporting on increased trafficking, corruption and violence linked to the drug trade in Brazil and Paraguay.4 These governments seem to have believed that if they ignored the problem it would somehow disappear. Needless to say, the problem did not disappear, and in fact, these countries in the Southern Cone became increasingly important for drug traffickers seeking new routes, locations for cocaine laboratories, and money laundering centers. …


Convolutional Neural Networks (CNN) have been successful in processing data signals that are uniformly sampled in the spatial domain (e.g., images). However, most data signals do not natively exist on a grid, and in the process of being sampled onto a uniform physical grid suffer significant aliasing error and information loss. Moreover, signals can exist in different topological structures as, for example, points, lines, surfaces and volumes. It has been challenging to analyze signals with mixed topologies (for example, point cloud with surface mesh). To this end, we develop mathematical formulations for Non-Uniform Fourier Transforms (NUFT) to directly, and optimally, sample nonuniform data signals of different topologies defined on a simplex mesh into the spectral domain with no spatial sampling error. The spectral transform is performed in the Euclidean space, which removes the translation ambiguity from works on the graph spectrum. Our representation has four distinct advantages: (1) the process causes no spatial sampling error during the initial sampling, (2) the generality of this approach provides a unified framework for using CNNs to analyze signals of mixed topologies, (3) it allows us to leverage state-of-the-art backbone CNN architectures for effective learning without having to design a particular architecture for a particular data structure in an ad-hoc fashion, and (4) the representation allows weighted meshes where each element has a different weight (i.e., texture) indicating local properties. We achieve results on par with the state-of-the-art for the 3D shape retrieval task, and a new state-of-the-art for the point cloud to surface reconstruction task.


Basic Kitchen and Food Service Management is one of a series of Culinary Arts open textbooks developed to support the training of students and apprentices in British Columbia's foodservice and hospitality industry. Although created with the Professional Cook, Baker and Meatcutter programs in mind, these have been designed as a modular series, and therefore can be used to support a wide variety of programs that offer training in foodservice skills. Other books in the series include: Food Safety, Sanitation, and Personal Hygiene Working in the Food Service Industry Workplace Safety in the Food Service Industry Meat Cutting and Processing Human Resources in the Food Service and Hospitality Industry Ingredients, Nutrition and Labelling Modern Pastry and Plated Dessert Techniques The series has been developed collaboratively with participation from public and private post-secondary institutions.


Based on a unique firm-level data set from the German manufacturing sector, this paper disentangles environmental and non-environmental product and process innovations. The multivariate probit analysis shows that the various innovation types are determined by different factors. The estimation results suggest a policy mix which comprises the encouragement of R&D activities, certified management systems, and specific man-agement activities referring to environmentally friendly products when the implementa-tion of all innovation types is to be supported.


Global regulators agree there is a need to strengthen governance in financial firms. The failure of boards and senior management to consider the risks inherent in their pre†crisis strategies is widely accepted as a crucial factor in the costly meltdown whose consequences continue to be felt. Regulators have tried to strengthen governance mechanisms and, in particular, have recommended a "three lines of defence†model to embed risk management throughout financial firms. Yet while this model is now in use across the financial sector in many countries, its origins are opaque, and its effectiveness untested. Some argue that diffusing the responsibility for risk management in this way in fact reduces accountability and effectiveness. And there is little external validation of the controls firms put in place. Does the three lines of defence system provide a false sense of security? Does it need to be rethought, or can it be enhanced?


In any plant genetic transformation system, the use of a selectable marker gene is essential to promote the recovery of only transgenic plants. However, the presence of marker genes conferring antibiotic resistance in plants represents a serious obstacle for public acceptance and future commercialization. In citrus, selection using the selectable marker gene nptll, that confers resistance to the antibiotic kanamycin, is in general very effective. Search of alternatives to nptII selection is not easy. An attractive possibility is offered by the MAT (Multi-Auto-Transformation) system, which combines the ipt gene for positive selection with the recombinase system R/RS for removal of marker genes from transgenic cells after transformation. Transgenic shoots for ipt gene lose apical dominance and show a characteristic phenotype. We are testing the efficiency of positive selection and excision by recombination with a MAT vector that comprises the ipt gene as selectable marker and the recombinase R gene, in citrus. Transformation with the MAT vector has been attempted in two citrus genotypes, Pineapple sweet orange (Citrus sinensis L. Osb.) and Carrizo citrange (C. sinensis L. Osb. X Poncirus trifoliata L. Raf.). Results indicated that the IPT phenotype was clearly shown in sweet orange but not in citrange, and that excision was not always efficient and precise. Nevertheless, the easy visual detection of the IPT phenotype combined with the higher transformation efficiency achieved in sweet orange using this system open interesting perspectives for the generation of marker-free transgenic citrus plants.


The present work describes a procedure for determining apolipoproteins (apo) B-100 and B-48 in subfractions of triglyceride-rich lipoproteins by analytical sodium dodecyl sulfate polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis (SDS-PAGE) with Coomassie staining. The chromogenicity of the two apoB species was found to be almost equal, and independent of lipoprotein particle size. Both proteins were sensitive to overloading of the gel, which resulted in low dye uptake. This was particularly evident for apoB-48. The precision of this analytical SDS-PAGE-based procedure to determine the plasma concentrations of apoB-100 and B-48 in triglyceride-rich lipoproteins was found to be appreciably low (coefficients of variation ranging between 3.1 and 14.1%).


Thomomydoecus minor is an ectoparasitic chewing louse that lives in intimate association with the pocket gopher Thomomys bottae. Chewing lice are wingless, obligate, host specific parasites that spend their entire life cycle on the fur of their host. Pocket gophers are fossorial and asocial, cut off for most of their lives even from members of their own species. Thus, the life histories of both chewing lice and pocket gophers have been predicted to limit transmission of lice from host to host, thus limiting gene flow among louse infrapopulations found on different hosts and increasing the effect of louse population bottlenecks that occur when lice colonize new host individuals. The geographic location of special interest in this study was a section of the Rio Grande Valley in New Mexico called the San Acacia constriction. This is a zone of secondary contact where two subspecies of pocket gophers meet and hybridize to a limited extent. Restricted hybridization between these hosts was predicted to influence genetic structure of the corresponding louse populations. In the present study, genomic DNA was isolated from 118 chewing lice collected in 2011 from 3 localities surrounding the San Acacia constriction and from 39 samples of lice collected in 1992 from one of the same localities. A portion of the mitochondrial cytochrome-c oxidase subunit I (COI) gene was sequenced and used to construct a phylogenetic tree, which indicated two distinct haplotypes, with one of these occurring north of the host hybrid zone and the other occurring south of it. These two haplotypes likely diverged 78,000-200,000 years ago. Haplotype distribution coincides with the geographic break in suitable pocket gopher habitat imposed by the San Acacia constriction, indicating that either geography or limits on host hybridization in this region cause an impediment to gene flow between northern and southern chewing louse populations. Eight novel microsatellite loci developed for this study revealed greater levels of genetic variation than were available in previous studies of chewing louse populations, which relied on allozymes. Like the mtDNA data, microsatellite data supported a distinct separation between northern and southern louse populations coincident with geography. Furthermore, distinct infrapopulations on different host individuals were detected in microsatellite genetic distance measures and AMOVA analyses, thus supporting previous predictions of louse population subdivision resulting from a life history whereby host pocket gophers serve as isolated islands of habitat for chewing lice with horizontal transmission of lice between unrelated hosts being relatively rare. Contrary to previous predictions, louse populations appeared to be in HardyWeinberg Equilibrium and showed little or no evidence of population bottlenecks or inbreeding. Despite a life history that has been thought to impose frequent bottlenecks on chewing louse populations, relatively stable genetic diversity was maintained over a 19.5year, 175-generation time span between collection dates at the same sampling locality. POPULATION GENETICS OF THOMOMYDOECUS MINOR; ECTOPARASITIC CHEWING LICE ON THOMOMYS BOTTAE POCKET GOPHERS OF THE RIO GRANDE VALLEY IN NEW MEXICO


In the last years of the sixteenth century and the first half of the seventeenth, Spanish medical writers on both sides of the Atlantic engaged in an energetic series of debates on several intertwining issues, including the use of the vernacular for medical texts, the use of anatomical knowledge, the place of surgery within medicine, and the best methods for healing wounds. Beginning with a close reading of a debate over theories of wound treatment in Seville in 1584, this article explores the various issues under discussion within the Spanish empire, and seeks to reinsert Spanish medical practitioners and intellectuals within the larger European framework. The two protagonists debating in 1584, Bartolome Hidalgo de Aguero and Dr. Estrada, represent both divergent beliefs about the value of tradition versus innovation and convergent beliefs about the value of empiricism and empirical testing for validating their beliefs. Thus, they each reflect and represent the ongoing intellectual debates of the early modern era.


A theoretical multiscale approach combining density functional theory and four-flux calculations based on the radiative transfer theory is used to prospect the optical properties of nanocomposite materials composed of inorganic nanoparticles of lanthanum-containing compounds (LaF3 or LaPO4) embedded in Poly(methyl methacrylate) (PMMA). This theoretical investigation shows that a potential route to produce lead-free x-ray shielding screens with high transparency in the visible range (>70% of incident light) may consist in incorporating colorless LaF3 or LaPO4 spherical particles with a diameter lower than 6 nm in a PMMA panel from a minimum thickness of 3 mm with a volumetric fraction of at least 10%. In terms of x-ray attenuation, this would lead to lead equivalency of 0.1 mm (lead foil).