Kerupuk (crackers) is a familiar food in indonesia because many people liked it. The fact, some products of kerupuk have a dangerous subtances for human body. So, there is an idea to make kerupuk called Kerupuk R&B (fRuit and vegetaBle). The purpose of this program is hygienic kerupuk with modern processed. Preparing session of production must be conducted in begining and this processed until Kerupuk R&B has been packed. Results from this program are Kerupuk R&B with collards, guavas, spinachs, and carrot taste. The originality of this product is have natural colours and health educational content in the packaging.


Many wetlands around Farmington Bay of Great Salt Lake are managed waterfowl habitat by means of impounding the flow at the terminus of the Jordan River. The majority of the Jordan River flow is comprised of the secondary-treated effluent of several municipal waste water treatment plants (WWTP), resulting in elevated phosphorus concentrations. This study was initiated to determine whether the assimilative capacity for phosphorus of the impounded wetlands has been exceeded, resulting in a negative impact to the submerged aquatic vegetation (SAV) in the wetlands. The majority of the SAV is sago pondweed and western fineleaf pondweed (Stuckenia pectinata and S. filiformis ssp. occidentalis, respectively), highly preferred food items for waterfowl. Utah Department of Environmental Quality has identified support for waterfowl and shorebirds and the aquatic life in their food chain as the primary beneficial use of these wetlands, and thus, loss or degradation of Stuckenia prior to waterfowl fall staging and migration may constitute a loss of this important beneficial use. Therefore, Utah needs vegetation metrics that will indicate relative health of a wetland with respect to the abundance, density and health of the SAV and the level of nutrient loading it receives. The primary goal of this ongoing study is to develop wetland assessment methods that will be used to establish water quality standards and methods for Clean Water Act §305(b)/303(d) assessments–one of the first attempts by any state of the U.S. to set wetland water quality standards through development of site-specific assessment protocols. To develop metrics that describe the relationship between nutrient gradients and biological responses, we are 1) testing potentially useful parameters for their utility in assessing wetland condition; and 2) refining condition metrics that will identify thresholds of significant change (impairment) that can be attributed to nutrients. This paper presents the first of several potentially useful vegetation metrics. Our analyses showed that percent areal cover of SAV in nutrient enriched wetlands senesced 62-84% from July through November whereas the vegetation in a non-impacted reference wetland remained stable. The fall senescence occurs at a time when migratory waterfowl rely on submerged aquatic vegetation (SAV) for


Clearfell, burn and sow (CBS) forestry is a major disturbance to headwater streams flowing through wet eucalypt forests in southern Tasmania involving clearfelling trees around them and the burning of remaining slash within a year of harvest. The aim of this research was to assess the short-term (<19 years) effects of CBS forestry on several key structural (woody debris and dissolved organic matter source and composition) and functional (nutrient uptake and organic matter processing) characteristics of headwater streams in southern Tasmania. I evaluated these using a combination of replicated space-for-time surveys and an MBACI (multiple before-after control-impact) experiment in headwater stream reaches flowing through old-growth and CBS-affected forest.
My findings show that CBS forestry increased available light, elevated water temperatures (between 0.25 and 0.94°C), and significantly increased the quantity of woody debris situated in the stream channel. I also used fluorescence characterisation of dissolved organic matter (DOM) to show that forest harvesting did not affect the relative contributions of autochthonous and allochthonous stream DOM despite the major reach-scale disturbance that clearfell forestry represents. However, there was conflicting evidence for changes in DOM composition after harvesting. It is likely that catchment-scale processes are more important than reach-scale processes (i.e. forest harvesting) in determining stream DOM biogeochemistry, because only a small proportion of the total channel length (<100 m) is affected by clearfell forestry.
The large physical structural changes to headwater streams caused by CBS forestry led to changes in stream function. Nutrient addition experiments showed greater phosphorus uptake in CBS-affected relative to old-growth (OG) stream reaches, which was likely due to increased biotic activity (algae and bacterial biofilms) related to greater in-stream light availability and quantity of in-stream woody debris. However, sorption to sediment and charred woody debris may also have contributed to the greater phosphorus uptake after harvesting. The impact of CBS forestry on organic matter decomposition differed among years and benthic habitats, with evidence for an increase in bacterial carbon production (BCP) in fine sediment habitat but a decrease in BCP and cellulose decomposition in coarse gravel habitat. Contrary to most previous research, increasing contribution of terrestrial DOM was the strongest variable driving in situ benthic BCP.
Some of the structural changes from CBS may be beneficial in reducing impacts at the catchment-scale. For instance, the observed increase in the amount of woody debris and light availability after harvesting may prevent elevated phosphorus export to downstream ecosystems by increasing phosphorus uptake and retention in headwaters. While these effects characterised the short-term responses to CBS in these headwater streams, the longer-term (>19 years) and catchment-scale impacts require further research. Many variables (e.g. the quantity of woody debris) will take decades to recover to pre-disturbance levels and the cumulative impacts of harvesting multiple coupes throughout the landscape needs to be determined to ensure that CBS operations are managed in space and time to minimise impacts on downstream ecosystems.


In addition to 2012 being a presidential election year, Florida voters also will be asked to vote on a number of proposed amendments to their state constitution. Many voters remain either unaware or less informed regarding the effects and impacts of the proposed constitutional amendments. This document is one of a series of 6 fact sheets that was written by Rodney L. Clouser and published by the UF Department of Food and Resource Economics, July 2012.


In this paper, an approach is presented that allows a robot to navigate in an urban environment by following natural language route instructions. In this situation, neither maps nor GPS information are available to the robot thus it has to rely solely on the human-given route description and the observations from its sensors. An architecture for solving problems such as navigation on the sidewalk, street direction inference, and environment labeling that arise in this situation is presented. Our initial experiments indicate that the proposed methods enable a robot to safely navigate in urban environments by following abstract route descriptions and reach previously unknown points in a city.


Abstract In this article we study nonparametric regression quantile estimation by kernel weighted local linear fitting. Two such estimators are considered. One is based on localizing the characterization of a regression quantile as the minimizer of E{pp (Y — a)|X = x}, where ρp is the appropriate "check" function. The other follows by inverting a local linear conditional distribution estimator and involves two smoothing parameters, rather than one. Our aim is to present fully operational versions of both approaches and to show that each works quite well; although either might be used in practice, we have a particular preference for the second. Our automatic smoothing parameter selection method is novel; the main regression quantile smoothing parameters are chosen by rule-of-thumb adaptations of state-of-the-art methods for smoothing parameter selection for regression mean estimation. The techniques are illustrated by application to two datasets and compared in simulations.


The size distribution of a particle suspension can be inferred from studying the diffracted light pattern produced by a laser beam that passes through the suspension. This involves solving an ill-posed linear system. Two previous versions of projection algorithms were tested by use of computer simulations and experiments. Both algorithms showed limitations in restoring the size distribution, because of either the shape of the size distribution or the presence of noise in the scattered light signal. The generalized projection algorithm presented in this work solves these difficulties by introducing a parameter that allows the user to adjust the noise-resolution trade-off, making it suitable for the analysis of natural suspensions.


Neutrons are important probes of mater and quantum physics. They are particularly powerful at characterizing magnetic structures. In order to extend the applications of neutron physics as a quantum probes/sensors we have developed methods based on Quantum Information Processing for preparing structured waves such as orbital and spin-orbit states of neutrons. Such states may be prepared for the beam as a whole, or with reference to the coherence length of the neutron wavepacket, which is much smaller than the width of useful beams. I will describe experiments to prepare and characterize neutron beams with specific orbital and spin-orbit structure based on neutron interferometry and will show how we can apply these methods to other type of probes such as light.


Abstract The participation of nuclear India in the humanitarian impact of nuclear weapons conferences has generated curiosity in the global community. The world is bewildered to know that India simultaneously possesses nuclear weapons and participates in the humanitarian impact initiative. Even observers of the humanitarian impact movement often wonder what contribution India makes to the movement. Some historical insight into India's nuclear policy solves the puzzle. The humanitarian impact aspect of the nuclear debate has been an ingredient in India's policy because of India's strategic culture. The components of the Humanitarian Pledge are echoed in India's nuclear policy, and India maintains that a world without nuclear weapons will be more secure.


We prove rates of convergence in the statistical sense for kernel-based least squares regression using a conjugate gradient algorithm, where regularization against overfitting is obtained by early stopping. This method is directly related to Kernel Partial Least Squares, a regression method that combines supervised dimensionality reduction with least squares projection. The rates depend on two key quantities: first, on the regularity of the target regression function and second, on the effective dimensionality of the data mapped into the kernel space. Lower bounds on attainable rates depending on these two quantities were established in earlier literature, and we obtain upper bounds for the considered method that match these lower bounds (up to a log factor) if the true regression function belongs to the reproducing kernel Hilbert space. If this assumption is not fulfilled, we obtain similar convergence rates provided additional unlabeled data are available. The order of the learning rates match state-of-the-art results that were recently obtained for least squares support vector machines and for linear regularization operators.


The effects of TGase in dough after 15, 30, 45, and 60 min of resting time after mixing were studied with a Kieffer test. The resistance to stretching of control dough did not change greatly during the 60 min time period after mixing. In dough, TGase decreased extensibility and increased resistance to stretching and this change was already observed after the first 15 min (first measurement). The higher the enzyme dosage was, the higher the magnitude of the rheological change was. All of the doughs that contained TGase 3.8 or 5.7 nkat/g flour had a higher resistance to stretching and lower extensibility than control dough 15 min after mixing. Resistance to stretching clearly increased at a dosage of 5.7 nkat/g flour during the 15-60 min period after mixing. Extensibility increased in the control dough and in the doughs with a low enzyme dosage almost at the same rate. The evolution of air bubbles during proofing was determined with bright field microscopy and image analysis. In the presence of 5.7 nkat/g TGase, the fermented dough contained more of the smallest and less large air bubbles in comparison to the control dough. The effect of TGase and water content on the specific volume of the conventional and organic wheat bread was studied. Water did not have a significant effect on the specific volume of bread. TGase increased the specific volume of breads baked from organic flour only, when additional water (+10% of farinogram absorption) and a small enzyme dosage were used. Microstructural characterization showed that bread baked without TGase from conventional flour had a stronger protein network than that baked from organic flour. TGase improved the formation of protein network in breads baked from either normal or organic flour but at higher dosage caused uneven distribution.


In this thesis, the possibility of integrating linear pulse shapers into various all-optical signal processing devices for applications in high speed optical communication systems, to enhance the overall system performance, is investigated. The linear pulse shaping is performed using superstructured fibre Bragg gratings, which seem very promising passive devices for such application due to their compactness, easy integrability and compatibility with fibre based devices. At the same time, optical switching is facilitated by nonlinear effects in state of the art highly nonlinear fibres. The generation and manipulation of waveforms with specific shapes also requires suitable techniques for their precise characterization. For this reason, optical sampling oscilloscope or linear and nonlinear frequency resolved optical gating techniques are presented in this thesis. As a first example of all optical signal processing using pre-shaped pulses, the incident noisy data pulses are expanded into rectangular pulses at the input port of a nonlinear optical switch (nonlinear optical loop mirror). The flat top of the shaped pulses allows for the mitigation of any mistiming of the original signal across a time window defined by their width, simply by switching them with shorter clean clock pulses. By using a nonlinear switch with full regenerative properties as well, it is demonstrated that amplitude noise reduction as well as timing jitter reduction can be achieved in a single nonlinear switch. In a different switch configuration, where cross-phase modulation is utilized in a single-pass configuration, retiming is obtained by preshaping clean control pulses into pulses with a parabolic shape. XPM induced by such pulses can provide linear frequency-shifting to shorter mistimed data pulses across a temporal window corresponding to the full width of the parabolic pulses. This frequency-shift is proportional to the relative pulse displacement from the control bit-slot centre. Propagation in a suitable length of a dispersive medium can then be used to correct for the mistiming. The parabolic pulse shape is also very interesting for nonlinear propagation in normal-dispersion fibres, since it can propagate at high peak powers without undergoing deleterious pulse distortion (avoiding wave-breaking effects). It is demonstrated that the nonlinearly broadened parabolic pulse spectrum is highly flat and coherent, with a high spectral density, as required for spectral slicing or pulse compression applications. Finally, the use of Bismuth oxide highly nonlinear fibre is investigated in order to enhance the compactness and stability of the switching system. 2R-regeneration at 10- and 40-Gb/s is demonstrated using just 2 m of this fibre.


In this paper, we attempt to scale up the kd-tree indexing methods for large-scale vision applications, e.g., indexing a large number of SIFT features and other types of visual descriptors. To this end, we propose an effective approach to generate near-optimal binary space partitioning and need low time cost to access the nodes in the query stage. First, we relax the coordinate-axis-alignment constraint in partition axis selection used in conventional kd-trees, and form a partition axis with the great variance by combining a few coordinate axes in a binary manner for each node, which yields better space partitioning and requires almost the same time cost to visit internal nodes during the query stage thanks to cheap projection operations. Then, we introduce a simple but very effective scheme to guarantee the partition axis of each internal node is orthogonal to or parallel with those of its ancestors, which leads to efficient distance computation between a query point and the cell associated with each node and yields fast priority search. Compared with the conventional kd-trees, our approach takes a little more tree construction time, but obtains much better nearest neighbor search performance. Experimental results on large scale local patch indexing and image search with tiny images show that our approach outperforms the state-of-the-art kd-tree based indexing methods.


Thrombopoietin (TPO) plays a critical role in megakaryopoiesis through binding to its receptor Mpl. This involves activation of various intracellular signaling pathways, including phosphoinositide 3-kinase (PI3K) and the mitogen-activated protein kinase (MAPK) pathways. Their precise role in TPO-mediated proliferation, survival and differentiation is not fully understood. In the present study, we show that TPO induces different biological responses in Mpl-transduced BaF-3 cells, depending on the cell surface density of Mpl and the resulting activation level of signaling pathways. TPO mediates cell proliferation in cells expressing high levels of Mpl but only mediates survival without proliferation in cells expressing low levels of the receptor. By using the kinase inhibitors PD98059 and LY294002, we further showed that the activation level of the PI3K and MAPK p42/44 pathways is a determining factor for the proliferative effect. In cells expressing low levels of Mpl, the survival effect was strongly dependent on the activation level of the PI3K/AKT, but not the MAPK p42/44 pathway. Moreover, this effect was correlated with the phosphorylation level of BAD but not with the expression level of Bcl-X(L). However, PI3K pathway inhibition did not increase apoptosis when BaF-3 cells proliferated in response to TPO, indicating a compensating mechanism from other Mpl signaling pathways in this case.


Normative models of choice usually predict preferences between alternatives by computing their value according to some criterion, then identifying the alternative with greatest value. An important consequence of this procedure is captured in the economic concept of rationality, defined through a number of principles that are necessary for the existence of an ordinal scale of value upon which organisms base their choices. Violations of these principles, such as some recently reported breaches of transitivity and regularity in birds and honeybees, have strong implications for the understanding of decision mechanisms in humans and nonhumans alike. We investigated rationality in risky choice using European starlings, Sturnus vulgaris. Birds had to choose between two or three food sources, each associated with a different variance in delay to reward. In three experiments, starlings were strongly risk prone, showing regular and consistent preferences in binary and trinary choices. Preferences also satisfied weak and strong stochastic transitivity. Our results extend the generality of previous research in risk-sensitive foraging to situations where more than two alternatives are present and suggest that violations of rationality in risk-sensitive choices may be expressed only under restricted sets of conditions.


This paper presents a new methodology for analytically simulating multi-axis machining of complex sculptured surfaces. A generalized approach is developed for representing an arbitrary cutting edge design, and the local surface topology of a complex sculptured surface. A NURBS curve is used to represent the cutting edge profile. This approach offers the advantages of representing any arbitrary cutting edge design in a generic way, as well as providing standardized techniques for manipulating the location and orientation of the cutting edge. The local surface topology of the part is defined as those surfaces generated by previous tool paths in the vicinity of the current tool position. The local surface topology of the part is represented without using a computationally expensive CAD system. A systematic prediction technique is then developed to determine the instantaneous tool/part interaction during machining. The methodology employed here determines cutting edge in-cut segments by determining the intersection between the NURBS curve representation of the cutting edge and the defined local surface topology. These in-cut segments are then utilized for predicting instantaneous chip load, static and dynamic cutting forces, and tool deflection. Part 1 of this paper details the modeling methodology and demonstrates the capabilities of the simulation for machining a complex surface. Part 2 details both the model calibration procedure and discusses a case study of process optimization through feed rate scheduling.


The present study describes variations in the vertical fluxes measured concurrently with sediment traps at both a shallow water (4 m) and a deeper water (7.5 m) position in a coastal lagoon in April 1995. A tripod equipped with five sediment traps (trap openings at 0.35 m, 0.75 m, 1.05 m, 1.40 m, and 1.80 m above the seabed) was placed at the shallow water position. This tripod was deployed three times during the study period and deployment periods varied between 2 d and 5 d. The second sediment trap, placed at the deep water position in the central part of the lagoon, measured vertical flux for intervals of 12 h at 1.4 m above the seabed. The horizontal distance between the sediment traps was 8 km. The average maximum vertical flux at the shallow water position reached 27.9 g m−2 d−1 during a period of high, westerly wind speeds, and a maximum vertical flux of 16.9 g m−2 d−1 was reached at the deep water position during a period of high, easterly wind speeds. Both strong resuspension events were closely related to increased wave shear stress derived from surface waves. Maximum wave-induced resuspension rate was 10 times higher at the shallow water position and 3.8 times higher at the deep water position compared with the net sedimentation rate in the lagoon. Small resuspension events occurred at the shallow water position during periods of increased current shear stress, Estimations of conditions for transport of sediment between shallow water and deep water showed that particles must be resuspended to a height between 3 m and 4 m and that current speeds must be higher than about 0.1 m s−1. An average sedimentation rate of 3.8 g m−2 d−1 was obtained at the shallow water position during a period without wave shear stress and low current shear stress. This rate measured by sediment traps is similar to a net sedimentation rate in the lagoon of 4.4 g m−2 d−1, which was determined by radiocarbon dating of a sediment core (Kristensen et al. 1995).


Castanea sativa Mill. is one of the most endangered tree species in Iran where it is represented by small fragmented populations in the north of the country. 18 simple sequence repeat (SSR) loci (10 nuclear and 8 chloroplastic) were used to evaluate the genetic diversity and population structure of C. sativa from the Hyrcanian forest. For nuclear SSR, the number of alleles detected per locus ranged from 1 to 5 and observed heterozygosity (HO) was between 0.125 and 1.000. Analysis of molecular variance (AMOVA) indicated a high level of variation within populations (84%) and low levels between populations (16%). Based on structure analysis, the four studied populations were divided into two main clusters that have genetic distance Fst = 0.3. The Shafaroud population was separated in the first cluster, Siyahmazgi, Qalehroudkhan and Veysroud were placed in the second cluster. The UPGMA analysis confirmed the results of Structure analysis, separating the Shafaroud population from the others. The 8 chloroplast SSR loci used to screen the populations showed no polymorphism. In General, low nuclear genetic diversity, no polymorphism in cpDNA and considerable genetic differentiation among populations in short geographical distance represent a serious genetic erosion threat for C. sativa in the Hyrcanian forest, even hinting at an ongoing extinction vortex. Therefore, due to significant decline in genetic diversity, it is essential to introduce constraints protection upon the areas of distribution of all four populations of this species in Iran.


Each filing season, Brookings and a number of other research organizations receive queries from people working in the field, wanting to know more about EITC participation in their communities. Unfortunately, researchers face constraints in their ability to provide accurate estimates on many EITC participation-related questions. Briefly, the major obstacles are: some people who claim the EITC aren't technically eligible for it; we can't know how many eligible families there are at a local level; and eligible people who claim the credit differ from eligible people who don't. This note offers a couple of ideas on how people can make use of data to measure and explain the opportunities for local EITC outreach programs. It then explains each of these obstacles in a little more detail.


WHILE political economy has increasingly concentrated upon the behavior of markets, in some areas it is impossible to ignore the interaction between economic motivation and political decisions. The theory of the political business cycle, which analyzes the interaction of political and economic systems, arose from the obvious facts of life that voters care about the economy while politicians care about power. This paper reviews the theory and evidence about interacting politicoeconomic systems in the theory of the political business cycle (PBC). The first section begins with an overview of different approaches to political cycles. The following two sections review some theoretical issues, with attention to the issue of the behavior of political parties and a formal examination of PBC models. The final sections assess whether the PBC models are consistent with historical evidence.


Wind tunnel measurements were performed for the wake produced by a three-bladed wind turbine immersed in uniform flow. These tests show the presence of a vorticity structure in the near wake region mainly oriented along the streamwise direction, which is denoted as hub vortex. The hub vortex is characterized by oscillations with frequencies lower than the one connected to the rotational velocity of the rotor, which are ascribed to wake meandering by previous works. This phenomenon consists in transversal oscillations of the wind turbine wake, which are excited by the shedding of vorticity structures from the rotor disc acting as a bluff body. In this work temporal and spatial linear stability analyses of a wind turbine wake are performed on a base flow obtained through time-averaged wind tunnel velocity measurements. This study shows that the low frequency spectral component detected experimentally is the result of a convective instability of the hub vortex, which is characterized by a counter-winding single-helix structure. Simultaneous hot-wire measurements confirm the presence of a helicoidal unstable mode of the hub vortex with a streamwise wavenumber roughly equal to the one predicted from the linear instability analysis.


Heparin-induced thrombocytopenia with thrombosis (HITT) type II is a life-threatening complication of heparin therapy that most often occurs after 5-10 days of exposure to heparin. Anticoagulation is a significant concern for patients with HITT type II being prepared for cardiac surgery requiring cardiopulmonary bypass (CPB). We report a case series of 12 patients with a history HITT type II who underwent CPB and cardiac surgery. Six patients did not express the antibody that mediates HITT type II immediately before surgery. Heparin was used as the anticoagulant for the duration of CPB only, and all these patients did well without thrombotic complications. Six patients expressed the antibody that mediates HITT type II immediately before surgery. Hirudin was used as the anticoagulant for CPB in these patients. The ecarin clotting time was used to guide hirudin therapy during CPB. The patients receiving hirudin did well, but they had a large amount of bleeding, required transfusions of multiple allogeneic blood products, and had a frequent rate of reexploration of the mediastinum after CPB.


Introduction: The balanced energy state in the human body allows maintaining a nutritional and health status; excessive or small intakes of food modify the homeostasis and produce diseases. Objective: To determine the association between energy balance and nutritional state in children from educational institutions of Huanchaco District, La Libertad, Peru. Methods: A cross-sectional quantitative study was carried out in 203 children from 3 to 5 years old in the period from April to June 2014. It was assessed the nutritional state with the indexes height/age, weight/age, weight/height using child growth standards of the World Health Organization 2006. The energy balance was measured with the adequacy of energy intake in relation to their estimated energy requirement, expressed as a percentage. Chi-square statistical test was applied with a significance level of 5 %. Results: The indexes to assess the nutritional state were predominantly normal. The energy balance for boys and girls of 3 years old was 123.75 ± 46.97% and 125.82 ± 13.01 % of their requirement respectively; in children of 4 years old it was 109.90 ± 23.17% and 104.69 ± 20.96 %, respectively; and finally in 5 years old boys it was 105.15 ± 24.97 % and in girls a negative energy balance of 86.39 ± 11.99 %. There is a highly significant association (p< 0.01) between the nutritional state and the energy balance. Conclusions: The energy balance with positive trend predisposes toward obesity for the indexes weight/height and weight/age, and the balanced or positive condition to a normal nutritional state according to height/age.


Along this thesis, a novel and robust approach for automatic human annotation in long video sequences is addressed. This work defines a fully automatic pipeline that is able to deal with different types of sequences. The proposed system has been both designed and implemented following a divide and conquer approach. First, a shot detector is used to divide the sequences in smaller ones. Then, humans are detected using a face detector based on the Viola & Jones algorithm. Once humans are detected, their faces are tracked using color-based particle filters and Local Binary Patterns (LBP). Several techniques and refinements have been implemented to improve the overall robustness of the system. Moreover, a track-by-detection technique is used to enhance the tracking accuracy. Finally, each human's track is annotated throughout every shot of the sequence. The performance of the global system is assessed in experiments with real sequences and compared against human made annotations. Furthermore, these annotated tracks set the groundwork for a future recognition system, that will complete the task of automatically annotating identities throughout sequences.


Thermoanaerobacter mathranii contains four genes, adhA, adhB, bdhA and adhE, predicted to code for alcohol dehydrogenases involved in ethanol metabolism. These alcohol dehydrogenases were characterized as NADP(H)-dependent primary alcohol dehydrogenase (AdhA), secondary alcohol dehydrogenase (AdhB), butanol dehydrogenase (BdhA) and NAD(H)-dependent bifunctional aldehyde/alcohol dehydrogenase (AdhE), respectively. Here we observed that AdhE is an important enzyme responsible for ethanol production in T. mathranii based on the constructed adh knockout strains. An adhE knockout strain fails to produce ethanol as a fermentation product, while other adh knockout strains showed no significant difference from the wild type. Further analysis revealed that the ΔadhE strain was defective in aldehyde dehydrogenase activity, but still maintained alcohol dehydrogenase activity. This showed that AdhE is the major aldehyde dehydrogenase in the cell and functions predominantly in the acetyl-CoA reduction to acetaldehyde in the ethanol formation pathway. Finally, AdhE was conditionally expressed from a xylose-induced promoter in a recombinant strain (BG1E1) with a concomitant deletion of a lactate dehydrogenase. Overexpressions of AdhE in strain BG1E1 with xylose as a substrate facilitate the production of ethanol at an increased yield.


STUDY QUESTION
Is curettage more effective than expectant management in case of an incomplete evacuation after misoprostol treatment for first trimester miscarriage?

SUMMARY ANSWER
Curettage leads to a higher chance of complete evacuation but expectant management is successful in at least 76% of women with an incomplete evacuation of the uterus after misoprostol treatment for first trimester miscarriage.

WHAT IS KNOWN ALREADY
In 5-50% of the women treated with misoprostol, there is a suspicion of incomplete evacuation of the uterus on sonography. Although these women generally have minor symptoms, such a finding often leads to additional curettage.

STUDY DESIGN, SIZE, DURATION
From June 2012 until July 2014, we conducted a nationwide multicenter randomized controlled trial (RCT). Women who had had primary misoprostol treatment for miscarriage with sonographic evidence of incomplete evacuation of the uterus were randomly allocated to either curettage or expectant management (1:1), using a web-based application.

PARTICIPANTS/MATERIALS, SETTING, METHODS
We included 59 women in 27 hospitals; 30 were allocated to curettage and 29 were allocated to expectant management. A successful outcome was defined as sonographic finding of an empty uterus 6 weeks after randomization.

MAIN RESULTS AND THE ROLE OF CHANCE
Baseline characteristics of both groups were comparable. Empty uterus on sonography or uneventful clinical follow-up was seen in 29/30 women (97%) allocated to curettage compared with 22/29 women (76%) allocated to expectant management (RR 1.3, 95% CI 1.03-1.6) with complication rates of 10% versus 10%, respectively (RR 0.97, 95% CI 0.21-4.4). In the group allocated to curettage, no woman required re-curettage, while two women (6.7%) underwent hysteroscopy (for other or unknown reasons). In the women allocated to expectant management, curettage was performed in four women (13.8%) and three women (10.3%) underwent hysteroscopy.

LIMITATIONS, REASONS FOR CAUTION
Due to a strong patient preference, mainly for expectant management, the targeted sample size could not be included and the trial was stopped prematurely.

WIDER IMPLICATIONS OF THE FINDINGS
In women suspected of incomplete evacuation of the uterus after misoprostol, curettage is more effective than expectant management. However, expectant management is equally safe and prevents curettage for most of the women. This finding could further restrain the use of curettage in the treatment of first trimester miscarriage.

STUDY FUNDING/COMPETING INTERESTS
This study was funded by ZonMw, a Dutch organization for Health Research and Development, project number 80-82310-97-12066. There were no conflicts of interests.

TRIAL REGISTRATION NUMBER
Dutch Trial Register NTR3310, http://www.trialregister.nl TRIAL REGISTRATION DATE: 27 February 2012.

DATE OF FIRST PATIENT'S ENROLMENT
12 June 2012.


The nonequilibrium Keldysh formalism has been used to study the spin transport effects found in magnetic multi-layered nanostructures. We formulate a new methodology based on Landauer and show it to be in very good qualitative agreement with Keldysh. However, our theory provides more information regarding the physics of these effects because it allows us to calculate the contributions of individual electrons incident from either side of a junction as well as the contributions within a single layer that are incident on and reflected from an adjacent interface.

Chapter 1 provides a consolidated introduction to spintronics in magnetic multilayer nanostructures (the key focus of this thesis) including phenomena such as giant magnetoresistance (GMR), tunneling magnetoresistance (TMR) and current induced switching of magnetization. We then describe how to calculate the local charge and spin current in the direction perpendicular to the layers of an arbitrary magnetic layer structure using the nonnonequilibrium Keldysh formalism before introducing our Landauer approach to investigating the transport of charge and spin current in these magnetic multilayers using the simplest paraboilic band model for electrons in each layer.

In Chapter 2 we formulate our approach by defining the general solution to the wave equation for a given layer in a system in terms of the angle by which the spin polarization is rotated in-plane in that layer and the generalized wave vectors for each electron spin band. We determine a general transfer matrix that enables us to solve explicitly the coefficients of the wave functions in each layer of any general multi-layered system before defining an expression for the in-plane and out-of-plane spin current components in terms of these wave functions before detailing our Landauer formalism to calculating the local spin current in a realistic system consisting of ferromagnets with a finite exchange splitting and appropriate boundary conditions.

We apply our formulated approach in Chapter 3 to a set of collinear spin problems whereby the two magnetic layers in our general multilayer junction (consisting of two ferromagnets separated by a non-magnetic spacer layer) have their rotated magnetizations either ferromagnetically or anti-ferromagnetically aligned (parallel/anti-parallel to the net magnetization). Our analytical results provide the necessary conditions for optimising tunneling magnetoresistance (TMR) and show how a `switching' effect can be used to control it. We achieve this by calculating analytically in the ferromagnetic configuration the necessary conditions to support a 100% transmission success rate in one spin channel whilst making it very difficult for transmission to occur in the other spin channel. However, we show conclusively that re-aligning the magnetization to the anti-ferromagnetic configuration under the same conditions will make it very difficult for transmission to occur in either spin channel.

In Chapter 4 we investigate the spin current in a general five layer junction and show that a zero out-of-plane spin current in the nonmagnetic spacer exists only when perfect symmetry is introduced because the contribution from the left cancels exactly the contribution from the right. We identify a number of properties within the nonmagnetic layers and observe the effect of varying the angle of rotated magnetization and width of the polarizing magnet on the spin current components in the nonmagnetic layers.

In Chapter 5 we define the appropriate boundary conditions for our Landauer approach before investigating analytically the origin of out-of-plane spin current in the nonmagnetic spacer in Chapter 6 by looking specifically at an interface between a semi-infinite magnet and a semi-infinite nonmagnet and obtaining qualitative insight into the out-of-plane spin current found in a non-magnetic spacer sandwiched between two finite ferromagnets. In this final chapter we also calculate numerically the effect of an additional insulating barrier on our classical junction consisting of a nonmagnetic spacer sandwiched between two ferromagnets. We compare our results for the charge and spin current in the nonmagnetic spacer to those obtained previously using the Kelydysh formalism before showing for the first time the physical dependence on multiple magnetic interfaces of the out-of-plane spin current in a nonmagnetic spacer and how the out-of-plane spin current in the spacer can be large even when the charge current and the in-plane spin current are both negligibly small.


The importance of energy for development is underscored by the United Nations declaration of 2014 to 2024 as the Decade of Sustainable Energy for All. Among the goals is to provide universal access to electricity and clean cooking. Each laudable in itself, the two goals actually overlap.


Consistent patterns of Harmful Algal Bloom (HAB) events are not evident across the scientific literature, suggesting that local or regional variability is likely to be important in modulating any overall trend. This study summarizes Scotland-wide temporal and spatial patterns in a robust 15-year high temporal frequency time series (2006–2020) of the incidence of HABs and shellfish biotoxins in blue Mussels (Mytilus edulis), collected as part of the Food Standards Scotland (FSS) regulatory monitoring program. The relationship between the countrywide annual incidence of HAB events and biotoxins with environmental variables was also explored. Temporal patterns exhibited interannual variability, with no year-on-year increase, nor any correlation between annual occurrences. Within years, there was a summer increase in bloom frequency, peaking in July for Dinophysis spp. and Pseudo-nitzschia spp., and a plateau from May to July for Alexandrium spp. Temporal-spatial patterns were analyzed with multivariate statistics on data from monitoring sites aggregated monthly into 50-km grid cells, using Principal Component Analysis (PCA) and cluster K-means analysis. PCA analyses showed correlation between areas with similar temporal dynamics, identifying seasonality as one of the main elements of HAB variability with temporal-spatial patterns being explained by the first and second principal components. Similar patterns among regions in timing and magnitude of blooms were evaluated using K-means clusters. The analysis confirmed that the highest risk from HABs generally occurred during summer, but demonstrated that areas that respond in a similar manner (high or low risk) are not always geographically close. For example, the occurrence of the most prevalent HAB genus, Dinophysis spp., is similar countrywide, but there is a regional trend in risk level with "very-high" and "high" clusters located primarily on the southwest coast, the islands of the central and northern west coast and the Shetland Islands. "Early" and "late" blooms were also associated with certain areas and level of risk. Overall, high risk areas mainly face in a southwest direction, whilst low risk locations face a south or southeast direction. We found relatively few countrywide relationships between environmental variables and HABs, confirming the need for regional analysis to support HAB early warning.


This manuscript summarizes the break-out session held on koala retrovirus (KoRV): Any risks of human infection? at the Koala Conservation Workshop: The koala and its retroviruses: implications for sustainability and survival held at San Diego Zoo, April 17-18, 2013. The goals of this break-out session were to discuss the zoonotic risk of koala retroviruses, the necessity to test human populations for exposure, and precautions to be taken to protect humans who transport or handle koalas (Phascolarctos cinereus). Currently there is no evidence to support the zoonotic potential of KoRV, and the necessity to test humans for KoRV infection needs to be further justified. We recommend strict compliance with standard precautions when handling animals.


Background Hypocalcemia is a marker of poor prognosis in acute pancreatitis (AP) but the prognostic significance of hypocalcemic tetany in patients with AP has not been studied. We aimed to determine the prognostic significance of hypocalcemic tetany in patients with AP. Methods Consecutive patients of AP who presented within 7 days of symptoms were included. Serum calcium levels were measured on admission and the patients were divided into two groups based on the presence (group 1) or absence of hypocalcemia (group 2). Chvostek and Trousseau signs were sought in all patients with hypocalcemia and the outcome measures were compared between patients with normocalcemia, asymptomatic and symptomatic hypocalcemia (tetany). The outcome parameters assessed were persistent organ failure (POF), need for intervention, and mortality. Results Of 105 patients (53 male; mean age 37.34±12.62 years), 37 (35.2%) had hypocalcemia (group 1) and 68 (64.8%) had normal corrected serum calcium levels (group 2). Patients with hypocalcemia had significantly higher frequency of POF, mortality and need for intervention (P<0.05). Twelve of 37 (32.4%) patients with hypocalcemia had tetany. Patients with tetany had significantly lower serum corrected calcium and ionized calcium levels compared with patients with asymptomatic hypocalcemia (P<0.05). Patients with tetany had significantly higher mortality rates compared with patients with asymptomatic hypocalcemia (100% vs. 8%; P=0.00001) as well as POF (100% vs. 32%; P=0.000006). Conclusion Presence of hypocalcemic tetany in AP patients bears a poor prognosis and is associated with increased mortality.


Chronic use of anabolic adrogenic steroids (AAS) has been known to cause serious adverse effects. While the effects of AASs on cardiovascular system are well known, toxicity on other organs has received less attention. A doserelated nephrotoxic effect has been proposed and a wide variety of morpho-functional damages have been observed, but the exact pathophysiological mechanism of action is still not well known. In the present minireview, we highlight the remaining issues through an analysis of the pertinent literature. As with HSPs toxic agents their overexpression could be considered a protective reaction against AAS abuse however, comprehensive studies concerning the whole range of Hsps/chaperones expressions in all organs after long term use of AAS are needed.


Effects of endotoxemia on lung water, hemodynamics, and gas exchange were determined in ponies breathing a mixture of halothane and 100% O2. Escherichia coli endotoxin was infused IV at 20 micrograms/kg of body weight for 1 hour followed by 10 micrograms/kg/hr the subsequent 4 hours. By 0.25 hour, endotoxin increased mean pulmonary artery pressure and pulmonary vascular resistance; this was followed by a return to base-line values by 0.5 and 1 hour, respectively. A 2nd increase in pulmonary vascular resistance occurred by 5 hours of endotoxemia. During the last 2 hours of endotoxin infusion, cardiac index was significantly (P less than 0.05) decreased. Hematocrit was increased from 1 to 5 hours of endotoxemia, whereas, the plasma protein concentration was increased from 2 to 4 hours, indicating a loss of plasma volume. The PaO2 and PaCO2 were unchanged. After 5 hours of endotoxemia, lung extravascular thermal volume, postmortem bronchoalveolar lavage albumin content, and extravascular lung water/extravascular dry weight ratio of bloodless lungs were not increased, indicating no increase in alveolar-capillary permeability or pulmonary edema.


Background The coronavirus disease (COVID-19) has led to dramatic changes worldwide in people's everyday lives. To combat the pandemic, many governments have implemented social distancing, quarantine, and stay-at-home orders. There is limited research on the impact of such extreme measures on mental health. Objective The goal of this study was to examine whether stay-at-home orders produced differential changes in mental health symptoms using internet search queries on a national scale. Methods In the United States, individual states vary in their adoption of measures to reduce the spread of COVID-19; as of March 23, 2020, 11 of the 50 states had issued stay-at-home orders. The staggered rollout of stay-at-home measures across the United States allows us to investigate whether these measures impact mental health by exploring variations in mental health search queries across the states. This paper examines the changes in mental health search queries on Google between March 16-23, 2020, across each state and Washington, DC. Specifically, this paper examines differential changes in mental health searches based on patterns of search activity following issuance of stay-at-home orders in these states compared to all other states. The participants were all the people who searched mental health terms in Google between March 16-23. Between March 16-23, 11 states underwent stay-at-home orders to prevent the transmission of COVID-19. Outcomes included search terms measuring anxiety, depression, obsessive-compulsive, negative thoughts, irritability, fatigue, anhedonia, concentration, insomnia, and suicidal ideation. Results Analyzing over 10 million search queries using generalized additive mixed models, the results suggested that the implementation of stay-at-home orders are associated with a significant flattening of the curve for searches for suicidal ideation, anxiety, negative thoughts, and sleep disturbances, with the most prominent flattening associated with suicidal ideation and anxiety. Conclusions These results suggest that, despite decreased social contact, mental health search queries increased rapidly prior to the issuance of stay-at-home orders, and these changes dissipated following the announcement and enactment of these orders. Although more research is needed to examine sustained effects, these results suggest mental health symptoms were associated with an immediate leveling off following the issuance of stay-at-home orders.


This paper reexamines the role of open market operations for short-run effects of monetary policy. Money demand is induced by a cash constraint, while the central bank supplies money exclusively in exchange for securities, discounted with a short-run nominal interest rate. We consider a legal restriction for open market operations by which only government bonds are eligible, whereas private debt is not accepted as collateral for money. Supply of eligible securities is bounded by assuming fiscal policy to ensure government solvency. The model provides an endogenous liquidity premium on noneligible assets and liquidity effects of money supply shocks regardless whether prices are flexible or set in a staggered way. Nominal interest rate policy is always associated with a uniquely determined price level and rational expectations equilibrium. It is further shown that an intuitive equivalence principle between money supply and interest rates arises in this case.


Energy storage may improve power management in microgrids that include renewable energy sources. The storage devices match energy generation to consumption, facilitating a smooth and robust energy balance within the microgrid. This paper addresses the optimal control of the microgrid's energy storage devices. Stored energy is controlled to balance power generation of renewable sources to optimize overall power consumption at the microgrid point of common coupling. Recent works emphasize constraints imposed by the storage device itself, such as limited capacity and internal losses. However, these works assume flat, highly simplified network models, which overlook the physical connectivity. This work proposes an optimal power flow solution that considers the entire system: the storage device limits, voltages limits, currents limits, and power limits. The power network may be arbitrarily complex, and the proposed solver obtains a globally optimal solution.


The presence of music in Gabriel Josipovici's novel, Goldberg: Variations (2002), is clear at onset as it establishes an obvious allusion to Bach's colon-less Goldberg Variations. The reference naturally moves beyond the title as Josipovici appropriates the well-known anecdote in Johann Sebastian Bach's life and transposes it to an English country house in the 1800s. A constellation of allusions to this episode from Bach's life informs the novel throughout and it becomes ever more evident that music is bound to play an important role in the economy of the novel. This is particular noticeable on Chapter 18 where two characters reflect at length on the notion of the fugue and "its metaphorical potential".And yet, the full scope of the metaphorical potential of the fugue can only be fully grasped in connection to Paul Klee's figure of the wandering artist, which seems to be in the text an iconic metaphor for that which we can only glimpse briefly at a certain moment in time and which is lost once we try to apprehend it.Drawing on this, this paper shall examine, on a first stage, how Klee's Wander-Artist enables music to be translated into words, acting as it does as a metaphor for the way the text uses the notion of the fugue to explore the limits of what is sayable and understandable, and then reflect, on a latter stage, on how the figure of the wandering artist affects the text, allowing it to convey what otherwise would be left unsaid.


BACKGROUND
Group cognitive stimulation therapy programmes can benefit cognition and quality of life for people with dementia. Evidence for home-based, carer-led cognitive stimulation interventions is limited.

OBJECTIVES
To evaluate the clinical effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of carer-delivered individual cognitive stimulation therapy (iCST) for people with dementia and their family carers, compared with treatment as usual (TAU).

DESIGN
A multicentre, single-blind, randomised controlled trial assessing clinical effectiveness and cost-effectiveness. Assessments were at baseline, 13 weeks and 26 weeks (primary end point).

SETTING
Participants were recruited through Memory Clinics and Community Mental Health Teams for older people.

PARTICIPANTS
A total of 356 caregiving dyads were recruited and 273 completed the trial.

INTERVENTION
iCST consisted of structured cognitive stimulation sessions for people with dementia, completed up to three times weekly over 25 weeks. Family carers were supported to deliver the sessions at home.

MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES
Primary outcomes for the person with dementia were cognition and quality of life. Secondary outcomes included behavioural and psychological symptoms, activities of daily living, depressive symptoms and relationship quality. The primary outcome for the family carers was mental/physical health (Short Form questionnaire-12 items). Health-related quality of life (European Quality of Life-5 Dimensions), mood symptoms, resilience and relationship quality comprised the secondary outcomes. Costs were estimated from health and social care and societal perspectives.

RESULTS
There were no differences in any of the primary outcomes for people with dementia between intervention and TAU [cognition: mean difference -0.55, 95% confidence interval (CI) -2.00 to 0.90; p-value = 0.45; self-reported quality of life: mean difference -0.02, 95% CI -1.22 to 0.82; p-value = 0.97 at the 6-month follow-up]. iCST did not improve mental/physical health for carers. People with dementia in the iCST group experienced better relationship quality with their carer, but there was no evidence that iCST improved their activities of daily living, depression or behavioural and psychological symptoms. iCST seemed to improve health-related quality of life for carers but did not benefit carers' resilience or their relationship quality with their relative. Carers conducting more sessions had fewer depressive symptoms. Qualitative data suggested that people with dementia and their carers experienced better communication owing to iCST. Adjusted mean costs were not significantly different between the groups. From the societal perspective, both health gains and cost savings were observed.

CONCLUSIONS
iCST did not improve cognition or quality of life for people with dementia, or carers' physical and mental health. Costs of the intervention were offset by some reductions in social care and other services. Although there was some evidence of improvement in terms of the caregiving relationship and carers' health-related quality of life, iCST does not appear to deliver clinical benefits for cognition and quality of life for people with dementia. Most people received fewer than the recommended number of iCST sessions. Further research is needed to ascertain the clinical effectiveness of carer-led cognitive stimulation interventions for people with dementia.

TRIAL REGISTRATION
Current Controlled Trials ISRCTN65945963.

FUNDING
This project was funded by the National Institute of Health Research (NIHR) Health Technology Assessment (HTA) programme and will be published in full in Health Technology Assessment; Vol. 19, No. 64. See the NIHR Journals Library website for further information.


SUMMARY Digit identity in the avian wing is a classical example of conflicting anatomical and embryological evidence regarding digit homology. Anatomical in conjunction with phylogenetic evidence supports the hypothesis that the three remaining digits in the bird wing are digits 1, 2, and 3. At the same time, various lines of embryological evidence support the notion that these digits develop in positions that normally produce digits 2, 3, and 4. In recent years, gene expression as well as experimental evidence was published that supports the hypothesis that this discrepancy arose from a digit identity shift in the evolution of the bird wing. A similar but less well‐known controversy has been ongoing since the late 19th century regarding the identity of the digits of the three‐toed Italian skink, Chalcides chalcides. Comparative anatomy identifies these digits as 1, 2, and 3, while embryological evidence suggests their derivation from embryological positions 2, 3, and 4. Here we re‐examine this evidence and add gene expression data to determine the identity of the three digits of C. chalcides. The data confirm that the adult and the embryological evidence for digit identity are in conflict, and the expression of Hoxd11 suggests that digits 1, 2, and 3 develop in positions 2, 3, and 4. We conclude that in C. chalcides, and likely in its close relatives, a digit identity frame shift has occurred, similar to the one in avian evolution. This result suggests that changes in of digit identity might be a more frequent consequence of digit reduction than previously assumed.


Many areas of the world are suffering greatly from lack of treated water. Environmental Engineers create treatment plants on the large scale to provide large cities with treated water for drinking, laundry, agriculture, and many other things. To do this, new treatment plants are implemented in areas that are growing rapidly and other treatment plants are updated to provide for new demands. This thesis goes through the steps of building new treatment plants and updating ones already in use to provide the highest standard of water at a reasonable price. The two plants that are looked at are a water treatment plant in Charleston, South Carolina and a wastewater treatment plant located in Reno, Nevada. The population is growing rapidly in both areas and new plants need to be built in order to support this. The water treatment plant focuses on taking water from a river and converting this water into a reliable drinking source. The wastewater treatment plant takes the water that has been used by people, industries, or is gathered through runoff and treats the water to EPA regulations before being discharged back into a river. Both of these plants are vital to protect the water supply that we have and to continue to live as sustainably as possible.


Initialization, normalization, and skip connections are believed to be three indispensable techniques for training very deep convolutional neural networks and obtaining state-of-the-art performance. This paper shows that deep vanilla ConvNets without normalization nor skip connections can also be trained to achieve surprisingly good performance on standard image recognition benchmarks. This is achieved by enforcing the convolution kernels to be near isometric during initialization and training, as well as by using a variant of ReLU that is shifted towards being isometric. Further experiments show that if combined with skip connections, such near isometric networks can achieve performances on par with (for ImageNet) and better than (for COCO) the standard ResNet, even without normalization at all. Our code is available at this https URL.


Software processes comprise many steps; coding is followed by building, integration testing, system testing, deployment, operations, among others. Software process integration and automation have been areas of key concern in software engineering, ever since the pioneering work of Osterweil; market pressures for Agility, and open, decentralized, software development have provided additional pressures for progress in this area. But do these innovations actually help projects? Given the numerous confounding factors that can influence project performance, it can be a challenge to discern the effects of process integration and automation. Software project ecosystems such as GitHub provide a new opportunity in this regard: one can readily find large numbers of projects in various stages of process integration and automation, and gather data on various influencing factors as well as productivity and quality outcomes. In this paper we use large, historical data on process metrics and outcomes in GitHub projects to discern the effects of one specific innovation in process automation: continuous integration. Our main finding is that continuous integration improves the productivity of project teams, who can integrate more outside contributions, without an observable diminishment in code quality.


No, not really, since spectral estimators suffer from small sample and misspecification biases just as VARs do. Spectral estimators are no panacea for implementing long-run restrictions. ; In addition, when combining VAR coefficients with non-parametric estimates of the spectral density, care needs to be taken to consistently account for information embedded in the non-parametric estimates about serial correlation in VAR residuals. This paper uses a spectral factorization to ensure a correct representation of the data's variance. But this cannot overcome the fundamental problems of estimating the long-run dynamics of macroeconomic data in samples of typical length.


The object of this study was to illustrate the entwining between language and liberty in Ghanaian political discourse. Using three letters written by Dr. J. B. Danquah (two addressed to President Nkrumah and one to the Speaker of Ghana's Parliament) and working within the framework of  language and liberty  (Obeng, in press), I demonstrate that even though by being candid, Ghanaian political actors in opposition risked personal danger, such actors had communicative ways for pursuing and defending their  negative liberty  and  positive liberty  and for challenging powerful political actors' oppressive and illegitimate actions. The discursive features employed to pursue liberty include: deferential mode of address, candour, inferencing, glittering generalities, emotional valence, politeness and intertextuality. The syntactic features used included conditional sentences, pronouns, physical verbs, lexical collocation and uppercase letters. The study concludes by submitting that liberty relies on language to become actuality and that political actors' views on liberty and the historical, legal, political and cultural contexts of the discourse ecology in which they operate all impact their discourse performance in their fight for liberty.


Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs) are highly configurable programmable logic devices. They offer many benefits over traditional micro-processors such as the ability to efficiently run tasks in parallel and also highly predictable timing performance. They are becoming increasingly popular for use in the safety critical domain where predictability is essential. However, concerns about their dependability, principally their reliability and difficulties in assessing the impact of an internal failure means that current designs are inefficient and conservative. This paper discusses these issues in depth. It also presents an FPGA task allocation method using simulated annealing to balance efficiency and reliability requirements. This can be used to improve designs of safety critical FPGA based systems.


A distributed source coding problem with a joint distortion criterion that depends on the sources and the reconstruction is considered in this work. While the prevalent trend in information theory has been to prove achievability results using Shannon's random coding arguments, using structured random codes offer rate gains over unstructured random codes for many problems. Motivated by this, a new achievable rate-distortion region (an inner bound to the performance limit) is presented for this problem for discrete memoryless sources based on "good" structured random nested codes built over abelian groups. For certain sources and distortion functions, the new rate region is shown to be strictly bigger than the Berger-Tung rate region, which has been the best known achievable rate region for this problem till now. This is done using numerical plots. Achievable rates for single-user source coding using abelian group codes are also obtained as a corollary of the main coding theorem. It is shown that nested linear codes achieve the Shannon rate-distortion function in the arbitrary discrete memoryless case.


We give a simple, generic conformal prediction method for sequential prediction that achieves target empirical coverage guarantees against adversarially chosen data. It is computationally lightweight -- comparable to split conformal prediction -- but does not require having a held-out validation set, and so all data can be used for training models from which to derive a conformal score. It gives stronger than marginal coverage guarantees in two ways. First, it gives threshold calibrated prediction sets that have correct empirical coverage even conditional on the threshold used to form the prediction set from the conformal score. Second, the user can specify an arbitrary collection of subsets of the feature space -- possibly intersecting -- and the coverage guarantees also hold conditional on membership in each of these subsets. We call our algorithm MVP, short for MultiValid Prediction. We give both theory and an extensive set of empirical evaluations.


Earth pressure balance (EPB) tunnelling machines are commonly used for the construction of tunnels in soft soils. These machines use the excavated soil in a pressurised head chamber to apply a support pressure to the tunnel face during excavation. How well an unstable face is supported in an EPB machine depends on effectively transferring a constant pressure from the support medium to the surface of the face. If the support pressure is not constant, but instead changes, the varying pressure inevitably leads to collapse of the face or heave on the surface ground. A machine may be designed to work in "Ideal ground" conditions. However, natural soils rarely have these properties, and conditioning of the soil is usually necessary to change its properties to suit the machine. Effective soil conditioning significantly improves the machine performance and control of the soil flow through the screw conveyor. However, for soil conditioning as commonly used in practice, the effects of different conditioning treatments on soil properties and the machine performance are not clearly understood, and problems with EPB machine operations related to the soil properties are often encountered. This thesis presents experimental investigations of direct shear box tests on conditioned sands, compressibility tests on conditioned sands and a model EPB screw conveyor operating with sandy soils. Index tests were performed to investigate effects of foam and polymer conditioning treatments on the plastic fluidity of different Leighton Buzzard (L.B.) sands and Thanet sand. The index tests allowed assessment of conditioning treatments for sandy soils, and optimum ranges of treatments for Leighton Buzzard sand and Thanet sand are suggested. In the series of shear box tests, performed on conditioned Thanet sand and conditioned L.B. sands, one of the most important findings was that the pore water pressure controls the strength of the sand foam mixtures. An increase in foam injection ratio (FIR) might produce an increase of pore water pressure and a decrease of shear stress. In the series of compressibility tests, performed on conditioned Thanet sand and conditioned L.B. fine sand, one of the most important findings was that increasing FIR does not increase maximum gas expelled. The FIR and the initial relative density of the specimen have to be related to the capability of the specimen to retain the gas and establish a coexistence between grains of soil, water and gas bubbles. Finally, from the series of model (1:10 scale), screw conveyor tests, performed on conditioned Thanet sand, conditioned L.B. fine sand and conditioned Garside sand, it can be concluded that the Oxford screw conveyor model can be used as a trial machine to study the effects of different operating conditions on conditioned sand specimens similar to those used on site. This can allow choice of conditioning methods to improve the performance of an EPB machine at a given site.


The design and synthesis of flexible monomer-based covalent organic frameworks (COFs) have been considered a challenge. Herein, we describe the design and synthesis of a new flexible monomer-based COF, termed PPN-30 (PPN meaning porous polymer network), by the use of a flexible alkyl amine, 1,4-cyclohexanediamine, combined with 1,3,5-triformylbenzene. The structure and gas adsorption properties of PPN-30 were carefully investigated.


[1] An analysis of land surface microwave emission time series shows that the characteristic diurnal signatures associated with subsurface emission in sandy deserts carry over to arid and semiarid regions worldwide. Prior work found that diurnal variation of Special Sensor Microwave/Imager (SSM/I) brightness temperatures in deserts was small relative to International Satellite Cloud Climatology Project land surface temperature (LST) variation and that the difference varied with surface type and was largest in sand sea regions. Here we find more widespread subsurface emission effects in Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer-EOS (AMSR-E) measurements. The AMSR-E orbit has equator crossing times near 01:30 and 13:30 local time, resulting in sampling when near-surface temperature gradients are likely to be large and amplifying the influence of emission depth on effective emitting temperature relative to other factors. AMSR-E measurements are also temporally coincident with Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) LST measurements, eliminating time lag as a source of LST uncertainty and reducing LST errors due to undetected clouds. This paper presents monthly global emissivity and emission depth index retrievals for 2003 at 11, 19, 37, and 89 GHz from AMSR-E, MODIS, and SSM/I time series data. Retrieval model fit error, stability, self-consistency, and land surface modeling results provide evidence for the validity of the subsurface emission hypothesis and the retrieval approach. An analysis of emission depth index, emissivity, precipitation, and vegetation index seasonal trends in northern and southern Africa suggests that changes in the emission depth index may be tied to changes in land surface moisture and vegetation conditions.


With the introduction of the National Kidney Foundation Kidney Disease Outcomes Quality Initiative chronic kidney disease (CKD) guidelines, CKD has been identified as common, particularly in the elderly. The outcomes for those with CKD can be poor: mortality, initiation of renal replacement therapy, and progressive deterioration in kidney function, with its associated complications. In young people with CKD, the risk of poor outcome is high and the social cost substantial, but the actual number of patients affected is relatively small. In the elderly, the risk of poor outcome is substantially lower, but due to the high prevalence of CKD the actual number of poor outcomes attributable to CKD is higher. Predicting which patients are at greatest risk, and being able to tailor care appropriately, has significant potential benefits. Risk prediction models in CKD are being developed and show promise but thus far have limitations. In this review we describe the pathway for developing and evaluating risk prediction tools, and consider what models we have for CKD prediction and where next.


Summary. The most complicated part in the computation of ray amplitudes of seismic body waves in laterally inhomogeneous media with curved interfaces lies in the evaluation of the geometrical spreading. Geometrical spreading can be simply expressed in terms of the Jacobian J of the transformation from the Cartesian into ray coordinates. Several systems of ordinary differential equations to compute the function J are suggested. For general three-dimensional media, in which the velocity changes with all the three spatial coordinates, a system of three non-linear ordinary differential equations of the first order is derived. If the velocity does not depend on one coordinate, the system of equations reduces to only one non-linear differential equation. The initial conditions for these differential equations at point (or line) source and at points of intersection of the ray with curved interfaces are presented.


This book provides a comprehensive overview of magnetic levitation (Maglev) technologies, from fundamental principles through to the state-of-the-art, and describes applications both realised and under development. It includes a history of Maglev science and technology showing the various milestones in its advancement. The core concepts, operating principles and main challenges of Maglev applications attempted across various fields are introduced and discussed. The principle difficulties encountered when applying Maglev technology to different systems, namely air gap control and stabilization, are addressed in detail. The book describes how major advancements in linear motor and magnet technologies have enabled the development of the linear-motor-powered Maglev train, which has a high speed advantage over conventional wheeled trains and has the potential to reach speed levels achieved by aircraft. However, many expect that Maglev technology to be a green technology that is applied not only in rail transportation, but also in diverse other fields; to ensure clean transfer in liquid crystal display (LCD) manufacturing, in ropeless high speed elevators, small capacity rail transportation, space vehicle launchers, missile testers, energy storage, and so on. These potential applications and their unique challenges and proposed technological solutions are introduced and discussed in depth. The book will provide readers from academia, research institutes and industry with insights on where and how to apply Maglev technology, and will serve as a guide to the realization of their Maglev applications.


The institution of treaty-based proceedings in a particular forum or under particular set of arbitration rules depends on the consent provisions of the underlying investment treaty. Some 767 arbitration cases have been initiated so far under the total of 3,324 bilateral investment treaties and other international investment agreements signed to date. This chapter provides an overview of the technical and fairly complex procedures for initiating proceedings and constituting tribunals in investment treaty arbitration. It examines the prevalent practices from the perspective of the International Centre for Settlement of Investment Dispute (ICSID) Convention and Rules, and other leading sets of international arbitration rules such as the United Nations Commission on International Trade Law Arbitration Rules, the Rules of Arbitration of the International Chamber of Commerce, and the Arbitration Rules of the Arbitration Institute of the Stockholm Chamber of Commerce, which are among the non-ICSID Rules more commonly referenced in investment treaties.


Too many fat cells make us round. But on a molecular level, roundness makes fat cells, based on results from Rowena McBeath, Christopher Chen, and colleagues (Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD).

Figure

MSCs become fat cells (red) if RhoA is inactive (left) or osteoblasts (blue) if RhoA is active (right).

Fat cells derive from mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs), which are also the precursors of bone-depositing osteoblasts. Chen's group shows that the shape of an MSC determines which of these two cell types it will become.

MSCs that were spread out on a matrix formed osteoblasts, but round cells with only a small matrix-attached surface became fat cells. Changing the cell's surroundings after commitment did not alter the outcome, so the decision must be made at commitment, before differentiation.

Shape is detected via myosin- generated tension in the actin cytoskeleton. Levels of the RhoA GTPase effector ROCK, which activates myosin, were higher in spread than in round cells. Activating or inhibiting RhoA alone was even able to substitute for growth factors that induce osteoblasts or fat cells, respectively. It is not clear how shape is communicated, but perhaps spreading-induced lipid raft reorganization activates more RhoA.

Tension might be sensed at focal adhesions to determine which differentiation pathways are turned on. "Distortion [during morphogenesis] may initiate an adaptive response from cells to become a tissue that would deal with these stresses," says Chen. "The pushes and pulls that cause changes in shape may be used as a signal to decide what the cells are supposed to become." It is also possible that there is more matrix where bone will be made, but this link has not been demonstrated. ▪

Reference:

McBeath, R., et al. 2004. Dev. Cell. 6:483–495. [PubMed]


Researchers working on large cohort studies are always seeking for cost-effective designs due to a limited budget. An outcome-dependent sampling (ODS) design, a retrospective sampling scheme where one observes covariates with a probability depending on the outcome and selects supplemental samples from more informative segments, improves the study efficiency while effectively controlling for the budget. To take the advantage of the ODS scheme when multivariate failure times are main response variables, relevant study designs and inference procedures need to be studied. In this paper, we consider a general multivariate-ODS design for multivariate failure times under the framework of a semiparametric accelerated failure time model. We develop a weighted estimating equations approach, based on the induced smoothing method, for parameter estimation. Extensive simulation studies show that our proposed design and estimator are more efficient than other competing estimators based on simple random samples. The proposed method is illustrated with a real data set from the Busselton Health Study.


A time domain model is used to study the large signal dynamics of general Bragg-detuned cavities. Such structures, in which the grating pitch is spatially nonuniform so that a distributed phase shift is produced along the cavity, are often called corrugation-pitch-modulated distributed feedback lasers (CPM-DFB). Furthermore, by introducing a longitudinally dependent coupling coefficient /spl kappa/, a corrugation-pitch-modulated distributed-coupling-coefficient DFB laser (CPM-DCC-DFB) with quite different spectral properties can be realized. We present in this paper a comparison between these two kinds of components. It is shown that an adequate profile of the coupling coefficient (stronger coupling at the center of the cavity) in a CPM-DCC-DFB structure can help to achieve better steady-state singlemode operation with respect to conventional CPM-DFB lasers (uniform coupling coefficient). However, in CPM-DCC-DFB lasers, side modes are liable to be excited during the turn-on transient interval, thus imposing a limitation to the modulation depth requirement.


Graph Convolutional Networks (GCNs) play a crucial role in graph learning tasks, however, learning graph embedding with few supervised signals is still a difficult problem. In this paper, we propose a novel training algorithm for Graph Convolutional Network, called Multi-Stage Self-Supervised (M3S) Training Algorithm, combined with self-supervised learning approach, focusing on improving the generalization performance of GCNs on graphs with few labeled nodes. Firstly, a Multi-Stage Training Framework is provided as the basis of M3S training method. Then we leverage DeepCluster technique, a popular form of self-supervised learning, and design corresponding aligning mechanism on the embedding space to refine the Multi-Stage Training Framework, resulting in M3S Training Algorithm. Finally, extensive experimental results verify the superior performance of our algorithm on graphs with few labeled nodes under different label rates compared with other state-of-the-art approaches.


Wood fibre reinforced polylactic acid (PLA) composite foams have been successfully produced using supercritical carbon dioxide. A significant increase of specific properties, both stiffness and strength, was achieved by adding 5-10 wt% wood fibres. The experimental stiffness was comparable with a superposed micromechanical model for a three phase fibre reinforced foam. These first results on the integration of wood fibres into cellular PLA polymer are very encouraging.


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Mountain pine beetle infections are becoming more intense as weather warms in coniferous forests, like this one in central British Columbia. Infected trees die slowly, resulting in a forest full of various levels of colorful dieback.

PHOTO: TOM NEVESELY/ALL CANADA PHOTOS/CORBIS

Forests and woodlands cover about 20% of Earth's land surface, spanning all but the highest latitudes. In the millennia since humans dispersed across all forested continents, we have transformed large areas of natural forest. Historically, our greatest impacts were made in temperate regions, but they now extend to forests in the tropics and the boreal zone. Only a fraction of the forests present centuries ago have escaped human influence; in many regions the forest is gone, has regrown as secondary forest, or consists of managed and plantation forests. Humans have also introduced new species, including pests and pathogens of trees. Other influences—such as climate warming that causes tree species to shift geographically and anthropogenic drought that causes forest dieback—take effect more slowly and may occur far from their source.

Even though modern forests are generally much altered from their natural state, their "health" still matters. It will dictate whether forests persist and function into the future, sustaining wildlife, producing timber, sequestering carbon, and performing other services.

Yet forest health is difficult to define. Forests experience plenty of natural disturbances: fire, weather variations, competition between plant species, and attacks by insect pests and pathogens. They also experience longer-term successional change. When we speak of threats to forest health, we tend to imply the impacts of humans. However, it may not always be obvious whether human activity or a forest's natural dynamics are at play in, for example, the dieback of a stand or the outbreak of an insect herbivore.

Recognizing the signs of ill forest health and teasing apart the causes are important both for sustaining the services that humans rely on and for the effective conservation of forest biomes. Understanding how we influence forest health and function is a key challenge for the future, as we increasingly realize the importance of forests to the maintenance of a healthy planet.

 [1]: pending:yes


Ageing of Underground Storage Tanks (USTs) have come with risks whereby failure due to loss of containment can potentially cause catastrophic damage to humans and environment. The failure due to the loss of containments such as fuel and gas may trigger a domino effect of fire. This study aims to introduce an alternative approach of risk assessment by adopting Risk Based Assessment (RBA), Structural Health Monitoring (SHM) and Area Location of Hazards Atmospheric (ALOHA) Loss of Containment (LOC) to assess the fitness of the underground storage tank for operational purposes and the possibility of the risk engulfing petrol station. The RBA is a process that involves in collecting all the primary and secondary data such as policy, technical and maintenance data. These data will be the input to the SHM. SHM is a process of using unique acoustic emission and guided wave gadget Long Range Ultra Thickness (LRUTG) in capturing the thickness of the wall of UST, type material, temperature, level of pressure of the material, stress and strain. Both data from RBA and SHM will be the input to the Area Location of Hazards Atmospheric (ALOHA) by adopting the consequences model such as Loss of Containment (LOC). This tool will simulate and predict the magnitude and severity effect of the fire risk to the on-set and off-set of the petrol station. The result of the combination and holistic of the above approach will provide a novel way of monitoring and supervising the underground storage tank's integrity and prediction of an early information of the fire risk at petrol station. This approach can be implement and replicate to other petrol stations.


This paper presents empirical results on progressive incidence of water charges that contradict conventional wisdom in developing and many developed countries. Family size in Mauritius is larger among high-income categories relative to low-income groups. Because of this unusual demographic dimension, increasing block tariffs coupled with lifeline rates below long-term marginal costs applicable to low-volume users produce a different result. Regional disparities in water demand among residential users further contribute to a redistributive strategy. It is interesting to note that extensive metering in urban and rural areas allows low-income consumers to end up in low-rate blocks. Empirical estimates of price, income and household size elasticities for different income categories reveal that low-income households face more than average price elasticity of demand for water and less than average income and household size elasticity. In the light of these results, it has been established that increase in demand for water among richer households has the potential of improving equity in water charges. Computed marginal budget shares derived from a linear expenditure system show that the amount of supernumerary income would be higher for richer people, so that a percentage increase in income may result in higher level spending on water when compared to lower-income households.


PURPOSE
We determine patient and tumor characteristics, event-free and overall survival, methods of local control, rate of bladder preservation and proportion with normal bladder function for patients with localized bladder/prostate (BP) rhabdomyosarcoma (RMS) treated on the Fourth Intergroup Rhabdomyosarcoma Study (IRS IV).

MATERIALS AND METHODS
We reviewed the records of 90 patients with nonmetastatic BP RMS enrolled on IRS IV for presenting characteristics, details of therapy and outcome.

RESULTS
Of the 90 records 88 had sufficient information for review. Patient age distribution was less than 1 year for 7 patients, 1 to 9 years for 71 and 10 or greater years for 10. Tumors commonly arose in the bladder (70%), had favorable histology (embryonal or botryoid 80%), large (69% greater than 5 cm), unresectable (84% group III) and invasive (56% T2). Local therapy included radiation in 74 patients, and most patients underwent second-look operations after radiation. All patients received alkylating based chemotherapy. With a median followup of 6.1 years there have been 3 second malignancies, 1 toxic death and 18 relapses, for an event-free survival rate of 77%. Bladders were retained without relapse at last contact in 55 patients. Of those 55 patients 36 and of the entire group 40% had normal function determined by history.

CONCLUSIONS
Of patients with nonmetastatic BP RMS on IRS IV 82% survived 6 years. Bladder function was preserved in 55% (36/66) of event-free survivors. Of all patients entered on study 40% (36 of 88) survive event-free with apparently normal functioning bladders. More precise long-term evaluation of bladder and sexual function will require application of better tools such as urodynamic studies and validated patient surveys.


Tumor microenvironment is composed of tumor cells, fibroblasts, and infiltrating immune cells, which all work together and create an inflammatory environment favoring tumor progression. The present study aimed to investigate the role of the desmoplastic stroma in pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC) regarding expression of inflammatory factors and infiltration of immune cells and their impact on the clinical outcome. The PDAC tissues examined expressed significantly increased levels of immunomodulatory and chemotactic factors (IL-6, TGFβ, IDO, COX-2, CCL2, and CCL20) and immune cell-specific markers corresponding to macrophages, myeloid, and plasmacytoid dendritic cells (DCs) as compared to controls. Furthermore, short-time survivors had the lowest levels of DC markers. Immunostainings indicated that the different immune cells and inflammatory factors are mainly localized to the desmoplastic stroma. Therapies modulating the inflammatory tumor microenvironment to promote the attraction of DCs and differentiation of monocytes into functional DCs might improve the survival of PDAC patients.


Uses at different flows, non-intended consumption or other reasons can cause significant low flow consumption with regard to nominal metering magnitudes. It is important to assess this situation because it could cause measuring and billing inaccuracies due to both non-revenue water and metering errors. MCP (multivariate case profiling) methodology summarizes IWM (intelligent water metering) information by means of categories and levels suited to distinguish different causes concurring on each individual case. We characterised a significant group of 'Lowflow' cases showing at the same reading period: 'significant consumption at normal flows' but 'significant continuous consumption at flows lower than normal for intended uses'. We propose variables associated to the new MCP Lowflow category by analysing: (1) lowest intervals of the flow-volume histogram to assess 'consumption at flows lower than normal'; (2) minimal mean flow in the volume-time histogram to assess 'intended uses'. MCP yields Lowflow case classification tables, indexes and analytical tools applying those variables, the aim being to detect and assess such abnormal low flow consumptions for any case or group of cases.


In the Gash Delta of Eastern Sudan, spate irrigation (flood-recession farming) contributes substantially to rural livelihoods by providing better yields than rainfed dryland farming. However, spate irrigation farmers are challenged by the unpredictability of flooding. In recent decades, the number of farmers practicing spate irrigation has decreased, due to varying rainfall intensity and frequency, insufficient infrastructure and farmers' limited capacity to manage such variations. One solution that may help farmers face such challenges is for them to access real-time waterrelated information by using smart Information and Communication a Technology (ICT). This paper shows how integrating remote sensing, Geographical Information Systems (GIS), floodforecasting models and communication platforms can, in near real time, alert smallholder farmers and relevant government departments about incoming floods, using the Gash basin of Sudan as an example. The Ministry of Water Resources of Sudan used the findings of this study to transform farmers' responses to flood arrival from being 'reactive', to planning for the flood event. Intensive on-site and institutional efforts to build the capacity of farmers, farmer organizations, development departments and officers of the Ministry helped to develop the initiative from simply sending 'emergency alerts' to enabling stakeholders to visually see the flood event unfolding in the region and to plan accordingly for storing water, operating spate-irrigation systems and undertaking cropping activities. The research, initially conducted on a 60× 60 km site, was later extended to the entire Gash basin. The paper outlines how to develop tools that can monitor plot-specific information from satellite measurements, and supply detailed and specific information on crops, rather than providing very general statements on crop growth. Farmers are able to use such tools to optimize their farm profits by providing water to their crops in the right place, at the right time and in the right quantity. Finally, the work demonstrates the high potential of combining technology, namely remote sensing data and simple a agro-meteorological model with limited parameters, for large-scale monitoring of spate irrigation systems and information sharing to advise farmers as to how to apply this information to their managerial


Several series of polyethylene (PE) blends were prepared where one component is a conventional PE and the second is a conventional linear low-density polyethylene (LLDPE) or a metallocene-catalyzed LLDPE. A two-step isothermal annealing
(TSIA) procedure is developed enabling the satisfactorily resolution of endothermic peaks of blends of low-density polyethylene with LLDPE using standard thermoanalytical
techniques. The TSIA procedure enables the quantification of components in an unknown, previously calibrated blend. The quantitative analysis of PE blends by Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy is explored and achieved by the development of a linear relationship based on the ratio of two absorbances in an FT-IR spectrum. The method exhibits potential for routine analyses of PE blends that have been previously calibrated. Chemiluminescence (CL) monitoring is
successfully applied to study the oxidative degradation of PE blends. The CL data are consistent with the thermal and physicomechanical properties of the blends with a decreased blend miscibility reflected in the CL data as a departure from the idealized behaviour observed for more miscible blends. The physicomechanical and optical properties of PE blends are investigated and the results used to optimize the
composition of particular film blends and assess the effects of downgauging the film thickness.


In this paper, we propose a new system extracting potentially copyright infringement texts from the Web, called EPCI. EPCI extracts them in the following way: (1) generating a set of queries based on a given copyright reserved seed-text, (2) putting every query to search engine API, (3) gathering the search result Web pages from high ranking until the similarity between the given seed-text and the search result pages becomes less than a given threshold value, and (4) merging all the gathered pages, then re-ranking them in the order of their similarity. Our experimental result using 40 seed-texts shows that EPCI is able to extract 132 potentially copyright infringement Web pages per a given copyright reserved seed-text with 94% precision in average.


A femtosecond optical parametric oscillator is demonstrated that can operate in a regime where two signal pulses with well-separated center wavelengths are simultaneously resonant. Measurements show that the oscillator output contains a stable modulation at a frequency corresponding to the difference in the carrier-envelope phase-slip frequencies of the co-resonant pulses. The physical origin of this internal beat signal is attributed to second-order mixing effects, and its frequency is shown to be consistent with theory.


The Web services resource framework (WS-RF) and the Web services notification (WS-N) specifications are a crucial component of grid infrastructures. They provide a standardized interface to stateful services so that they can be managed remotely. There are already several implementations of these specifications and initial performance studies have compared them in terms of the overhead observed by a single client. In this paper, we address the problem of implementing the WS-RF and WS-N specifications for large scale systems. In particular, we discuss how to implement WS-RF and WS-N as the management interfaces to a grid workflow engine. In the paper we describe and compare two different architectures for mapping resources to processes. The first one mirrors the state of the process as a resource. The second one maps the client requests to access the state of a resource embedded into the grid workflow engine. We include an extensive performance evaluation, comparing the resulting systems in terms of scalability when servicing a large number of concurrent clients.


There have been more than 500,000 opioid overdose deaths since 2000. To analyze the opioid epidemic, a model is constructed where individuals choose whether to use opioids recreationally, knowing the probabilities of addiction and dying. These odds are functions of recreational opioid usage. Markov chains are estimated from the US data for the college and non-college educated that summarize the transitions into and out of opioid addiction as well as to a deadly overdose. The structural model is constructed to match the estimated Markov chains. The epidemic's drivers and the impact of medical interventions are examined.