Diabetes is often complicated by the development of neuropathy, with up to a third of the direct costs of diabetes attributed to neuropathyrelated morbidity (1). The incidence of diabetic neuropathy increases with duration of diabetes, affecting up to 50% of diabetic patients after 25 years of disease (2). To date, the development of neuroprotective and disease-modifying approaches for diabetic neuropathy has been disappointing. Therapeutic approaches with aldose reductase inhibitors and nerve growth factors have so far proved unsuccessful (3). Despite the promise of positive outcomes in research animal models, clinical trials of neuroprotective therapies have failed to yield significant benefit. In part, this lack of success reflects the absence of sensitive and robust methods for early detection of neuropathy (4). It is perhaps not surprising that initiation of therapy when axonal degeneration is advanced— well after the horse has left the gate—has resulted in trials that have been negative to date. When considering the design of large-scale clinical trials for diabetic neuropathy in the future, development of biomarkers that facilitate both early detection and monitoring of disease progression remains the Holy Grail. Results from standard clinical electrodiagnostic techniques such as nerve conduction studies and quantitative sensory testing are determined based on detection of axonal loss. By definition, this approach renders these conventional measurements of limited use in detecting early changes and thereby the prevention of neuropathic injury. As a consequence, diabetic neuropathy often becomes apparent only after irreversible nerve injury has occurred, leading in turn to foot infections, ulceration, and in severe cases, amputation (5). Even in today's modern era and despite the availability of advanced technologies, the mechanisms underlying diabetic neuropathy remain poorly defined. Nerve biopsies in diabetic neuropathy have demonstrated microangiopathy with multifocal fiber loss, most prominent distally and similar in nature to the abnormalities observed in experimental ischemic neuropathy (6). Diabetic nerves also exhibit an increased pathological vulnerability to ischemia (7). As part of an overarching ischemic hypothesis, considerable attention has focused on the role of metabolic derangements in diabetic neuropathy, mediated by decreased activity of the energy-dependent Na/K pump present on the axonal membrane (7,8). Although ischemia per se may lead to alterations in nerve activity, the abnormalities in Na/K pump function in diabetic neuropathy have also been linked to metabolic changes occurring as a result of hyperglycemia and C-peptide deficiency (9). Reduced function of the Na/K pump may also reflect the effects of activation of the polyol pathway, insulinopenia, and perturbations in insulin signal transduction (10). These changes in Na/K pump function lead to intra-axonal Na accumulation and a reduction in transmembrane Na conductances (11,12). Regardless of the cause, impairments of Na/K pump function would be expected to produce an alteration in membrane potential, specifically membrane depolarization, due to retention of intra-axonal Na (13,14). The importance of these changes is underscored by the fact that chronic alteration in ion channel function is capable of initiating a cascade of processes that ultimately result in axonal death (15). Given the intrinsic connection between membrane ion channel dysfunction and axonal loss, the development of clinical biomarkers that could identify the presence of early changes in ion channel function would clearly facilitate early detection of neuropathy thereby enabling treatment to be initiated well before irreversible nerve injury has set in. With this in mind, the study by Sung et al. (16) in this month's issue of Diabetes presents novel axonal excitability findings from a sample of 108 type 2 diabetic patients with results compared with age-matched healthy control subjects (16). These potentially landmark studies have not only demonstrated prominent changes in axonal membrane function that are detectable even in diabetic patients without neuropathy, but they also show that changes become progressively greater with development of neuropathy and increasing neuropathy severity. Using an array of specialized nerve excitability parameters that reflect both nodal and internodal function, the abnormalities (specifically, reductions in threshold electrotonus, superexcitability, and subexcitability) were indicative of progressive depolarization of the axonal membrane. Perhaps more critically, changes in excitability that were evident among diabetic patients without neuropathy were capable of differentiating these patients from healthy control subjects, suggesting that these abnormalities have the potential to be further developed and validated as a clinical biomarker of neuropathy onset. Although these results are intriguing, information regarding the relevance of these changes in relation to development of neuropathy will require longitudinal studies of larger population groups. However, these early studies hold the promise that identification of diabetic patients "at risk" of developing neuropathy is feasible in an objective clinical fashion. As a consequence, it may yet prove possible to initiate therapy in diabetic patients well before From the Department of Medicine, Prince of Wales Clinical School, University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia, and Neuroscience Research Australia, Sydney, Australia. Corresponding author: Matthew C. Kiernan, firstname.lastname@example.com. DOI: 10.2337/db12-0193 2012 by the American Diabetes Association. Readers may use this article as long as the work is properly cited, the use is educational and not for profit, and the work is not altered. See http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by -nc-nd/3.0/ for details. See accompanying original article, p. 1592.


This paper presents the stress analysis of the offset strip-fin type compact high temperature heat exchanger for use in the cooling cycle of an advanced nuclear reactor for hydrogen production by the sulfur iodine thermo-chemical cycle. Three different geometry types of heat exchangers were considered: geometry with rectangular fins; geometry with rounded fins and geometry with rounded fins which include manufacturing geometrical effects (fins with roundings on their bases). The material of the heat exchanger is liquid silicon impregnated carbon composite. The two working fluids for the heat exchanger are helium gas and molten salt with maximum temperature about 1000°C. The finite element code ANSYS 9.0 was used for the simulations. The boundary conditions for temperature and pressure were obtained as results of CFD and heat transfer calculations of the heat exchanger using the finite volume code FLUENT 6.1.18 The obtained results will be used for further optimization of the high temperature heat exchanger geometry.Copyright © 2005 by ASME


A contract is considered incomplete when the optimal solution for a contractual problem requires some information from the parts which is not observable by one or both parts. This problem is found in the biodiesel production chain among small scale farmers and biodiesel companies in Brazil, which is regulated by a certification called Social Fuel Seal under the framework of the PNPB (Brazilian Program for Production and Use of Biodiesel). In order to minimize this hindrance, an incentive structure was elaborated utilizing the nonlinear programming. The Principal-Agent approach was used to verify if these new incentives allow for the small scale soybean farmer to put great effort level in the agricultural production. When the incentive structure is evaluated through the model proposed, the result indicates that both the farmer and the biodiesel company will have their profits maximized if the producer puts on great effort. Thus, it is clear the importance to include this mechanism of stimulation to productivity increase into the PNPB framework in order to contribute to the competitiveness of the Biodiesel chain in Brazil.


OBJECTIVE
To examine the way patients with serious, progressive illnesses communicate their care preferences to their physician.

DESIGN
An observational, cross-sectional survey of 1031 clients with acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) or symptomatic human immunodeficiency virus disease. Self-report of communication was assessed in 861 clients who stated a treatment preference focused on extending life or focused on comfort even if it shortened life.

SETTING
The Robert Wood Johnson AIDS Health Services Program in 9 US cities.

PARTICIPANTS
Eight hundred sixty-one of 1031 clients recruited to the AIDS Health Services Program.

RESULTS
Eight hundred sixty-one subjects expressed a preferred treatment approach; however, only 35.8% had spoken to their physician about their preferred treatment. Black clients were half as likely (odds ratio, 0.49; confidence interval, 0.29-0.85) to have discussed their preferred treatment approach even after adjustment for age, function, education, income, and other covariates. Black clients were half as likely to prefer an approach to care that focused only on comfort (odds ratio, 0.51; 95% confidence interval, 0.34-0.76). Clients with AIDS who were symptomatic daily, college educated, and more functionally impaired were more likely to have discussed a preferred treatment approach with their physician.

CONCLUSIONS
Most persons with symptomatic human immunodeficiency virus infection have not discussed their preferred treatment approach with a physician. This disparity is greater for blacks, who were less likely to want a palliative treatment approach.


A 67-year-old man was referred to our attention for management of esophageal adenocarcinoma, localized at the level of the esophagogastric junction and obstructed the 1/3 of the esophageal lumen. Due to the extension of the disease (T3N1M0-Stage IIIA), the patient underwent neo-adjuvant chemo-radiation therapy and he was then scheduled for a minimally invasive surgical procedure including laparoscopic gastroplasty, uniportal thoracoscopic esophageal dissection and intrathoracic end-to-end esophago-gastric anastomosis. No intraoperative and post-operative complications were seen. The patient was discharged in post-operative day 9. Pathological study confirmed the diagnosis of adenocarcinoma (T2N1M0-Stage IIB) and he underwent adjuvant chemotherapy. At the time of present paper, patient is alive and well without signs of recurrence or metastasis. Our minimally approach compared to standard open procedure would help reduce post-operative pain and favours early return to normal activity. However, future experiences with a control group are required before our strategy can be widely used.


SELF-MANIPULATION AND DYNAMIC TRANSITIONS FOR A LEGGED ROBOT Aaron M. Johnson Daniel E. Koditschek How can we make a robot that can go anywhere on its own? This thesis presents several new behaviors on the RHex robot that greatly increase the variety of obstacles that it can overcome, including vertical jumps, flips, leaps onto and across ledges, aerial reorientations, and proprioceptively– aware behaviors. These behaviors inspire new tools to model and understand their transitional nature, wherein it is no longer useful to think of each step as being an equal part of a steady state gait. Legged robots will necessarily experience a variety of changing contact conditions as they locomote in complex environments epitomized by the rocky, sandy desert. Drawing on the much more mature literature of robot manipulation, this thesis presents the new modeling paradigm of "self–manipulation" that formally generates analytical equations of motion across all contact states. The framework is amenable to many ubiquitous simplifying assumptions (such as rigid bodies, plastic impact, persistent contact, Coulomb friction, and massless limbs) to reduce the complexity of these models despite the obvious physical inaccuracies that each incurs. Nevertheless the models capture enough of the physical world to represent the challenges confronting interesting behaviors in a qualitatively correct manor, including the effects of impulsive transitions between the various contact modes. More than numerical simulation, our goal is the distillation of these physically parametrized models into formal design insights (platform design, behavior design, and controller design), utilizing a variety of analytical and numerical methods. These behaviors are only possible with a robot designed to be both robust and powerful, and they make use of the unique capability of legged machines to interact with the environment in varied and, possibly, unpredictable ways. Careful actuator modeling is needed to achieve such acrobatic results, and so this thesis presents a spectrum of motor sizing tasks to ensure that the platform is up to the task. These tools are used to gain insight into various dynamic transitions for RHex, and we conjecture that their generalization will be of importance for a broad class of legged robots operating in remote and unstructured terrain.


John L. Sorenson and Melvin J. Thorne, eds., Rediscovering the Book of Mormon. Salt Lake City: Deseret Book and F.A.R.M.S., 1991. x + 274 pp., with scripture and subject indexes. $8.95. Reviewed by Cherry B. Silver While Church members who regularly read the scriptures would not normally expect faith-promoting insights from scholarly exegesis of Book of Mormon texts, three reasons appear for appreciating the evaluations offered in this collection of essays on the Book of Mormon. These scholars build outward evidence that the Book of Mormon is an ancient document from a Hebraic culture transplanted to Mesoamerica. Through close readings of the text, they also find internal evidence that the lx>ok shows consistency and complexity, more than could have been devised by a nineteenth-century farm boy dictating a manuscript over a period of a few months. And in these complexitiesthe turns of plot, the background details, the covenants and types, the personality of authors, and particularly the multiple layers of meaning of significant words-these scholars uncover a meshing of language with life exp~ricnces that heightens the spiritual message readers will receive. The twenty-three essays in Rediscovering the Book of Mormon bear the subtitle "Insights You May Have Missed Before." Certainly, provocative subject matter is one strength of this soft-cover publication. The essays are advertised as "easy to read" and, while the editors have made sure that each essay clarifies its points from the text itself with few footnotes and no erudite sources, the authors do not talk down to their readers. In fact "subtle and profound" (p. 182), "rich and complex" (p. 168), and "remarkable consistency" (p. 255) describe the Book of Mormon they uncover. They seem to write with two goals in mind: (1) to elucidate the message of the book and augment the power of its doctrine and (2) to argue against unseen critics in behalf of ancient authorship and authenticity, of telling Hebraic influences, of meaningful biblical allusions, and of a Mesoamerican context for wars and customs. The collection is divided into four sections. The first, "Authors and Editors," invites us to feel the personality of individual writers. We sense Jacob's anxiety from his use of the words dread and lonesome (Tanner, pp. 52·66). We see SORENSEN{I}lORNE, REDISCOVERING TJ/E BOOK (SILVER) 167 Nephi's use of Lehi's journal for travel narrative and doctrinal prophesyings (Brown, pp. 3-14). Nephi consciously identifies himself with Moses (Szink, pp. 38-51) and even more specifically compares himself to Joseph and Moses in order to justify himself, the younger brother, as the dominant political leader (Reynolds, pp. 220-29). Mormon, the general, includes war texts because, in those events significant to him, he finds moral lessons (Hardy, pp. 15-28). John Tvedtnes alerts us to consistency in the section headings (colophons; pp. 32-37) and to editorial care in fulflliing promised explanations (pp. 29-31). While essays in the second section, "Language and Literature," continue the argument for internal consistency, these scholars also point to external evidence that the Book of Mormon is based on ancient Hebrew vocabulary and literary structures. John Tvedtnes finds Hebraisms in Joseph Smith's expressions (pp. 77-92). The name of Ishmael's burial place, Nahom, seems to derive, says Alan Goff, from the Hebrew verb nal)am, suggesting (appropriately) "to mourn or to be consoled" in sufferings in the wilderness over which one munnurs (pp. 92-93). Further unveiling of the significance of types (Gileadi, pp. 197-206) and covenants (Ludlow, pp. 177-85, Ricks, pp. 209-19; Ostler, pp. 230-40) in the third and fourth sections links to Bible tradition in a convincing way. Poetry, imagery, and chiasmus have previously been treated as evidence that the Book of Mormon relates to Hebraic poetic forms. In essays by Rust (pp. 100-13 and 132-39) and Welch (pp. 114-31), the spiritual meaning of these language patterns is elaborated. These essays connect with those in the third section, "Ideas and Themes," where Eugene England elaborating on "At-one-ment" and Louis Midgley on "remembrance" suggest ways in which the meaningful repetition of these themes exens an awakening influence on the hearers, a call to action. "From the perspective of the Nephites, remembrance included active panicipation in some form .... To remember was to place the event upon the heart, or to turn the heart toward God" (p. 171). In such blending of language and message the third level of consciousness raising occurs-the heightening 0/ spiritual awareness. Just how does the reading of scripture alter a person's inner life? Is it stepping into another world. where the view of life is broader? Is it hearing godly injunctions with the heart or rereading a story that prompts application to a contemporary life situation? Some answers come from Rust's 168 REVIEW OF BooKs ON 1lfE BOOK OF MORMON 4 (1992) assertion that words and images and rhythm have "a peculiar exaltation" and "acquire depth by repetition" (pp. 105-6). A funher meshing of pattern with meaning appears as WeIch unfolds the power of Alma 36 (pp. 114-31). Chiasmus refers to "arranging a series of words or ideas in one order, then repeating it in reverse order" (p. 114). Alma had told his conversion story in a straightforward manner in Mosiah 27:1032, but in Abna 36 the poetic pattern of chiasmus dramatizes the darkness of his situation and the contrasting light. At the center of the chapter comes Alma's calling upon the name of "Jesus Christ, son of God." The structure of the chapter turns just as the conversion experience turns the man (p. 129). Essays in the last section are broadly categorized as dealing with "Society, Politics. and War." Kingship and political leadership are treated, along with coronations and covenant making, as they link to biblical tradition. The book concludes with defenses by William Hamblin and John Sorenson of the logic of patterns of war-making as described in the Book of Mormon, adding to the external evidence that this lx>ok "reflects its dual heritage of the ancient Near East and Mesoamerica" (p. 248). No one, after exposure to the insights of these essays, will be able to think of the Book of Mormon in the same way again. Careful reading does make a difference. To sit down with Rediscovering the Book of Mormon is like meeting a good friend who radiates exuberance over a new perspective, then coming away feeling buoyant with added light.


Braiding a Naturalist's Journey of Embracing Courage My
  synthesis
  is
  a
  sharing
  of
  my
  journey,
  the
  accomplishments,
  struggles
  and
  practices
  essential
  to embracing
  courage
  from
  a
  different
  space
  of
  intention,
  from
  a
  space
  of
  supporting
  others,
  while
  I continue
  to
  journey
  myself.

  But
  it's
  also
  a
  journey
  of
  tensions
  scaffold
  by
  walls
  built
  long
  ago
  that kept
  my
  tree
  from
  joining
  a
  collaborative
  forest.

  Through
  the
  repetitive
  process
  of
  revisiting,
  letting gestate,
  and
  revising
  my
  personal
  narrative,
  written
  papers,
  professional
  workbooks
  and
  daily writing
  practice,
  I
  share
  how
  the
  Science
  in
  a
  Changing
  World
  (SICW)
  program
  has
  manifest
  in
  my workplace
  and
  a
  growth
  of
  courage
  to
  practice.

  The
  inclusion
  of
  contextual
  personal
  narratives
  I've shared
  help
  demonstrate
  the
  complexity
  of
  how
  important
  process
  is
  as
  the
  structural
  roots
  of
  our learning,
  ever
  working
  to
  slowly
  reveal
  and
  shape
  new
  awareness
  much
  like
  how
  stories
  are
  working on
  us
  all
  the
  time,
  reshaping
  us
  in
  the
  way
  that
  flowing
  water
  gradually
  reshapes
  a
  rock.

  I
  believe story
  is
  the
  connective
  tissue
  that
  builds
  empathy
  and
  support
  for
  risk-‐taking
  rather
  than
  a
  weakness lacking
  academic
  or
  scientific
  rigor. More
  importantly,
  what
  I've
  come
  to
  understand
  is
  that
  just
  because
  a
  story
  defined
  me
  at
  one
  time
  in my
  life,
  it
  doesn't
  necessarily
  define
  me
  now.
  Much
  like
  a
  child
  who
  speaks
  later
  than
  expected developmental
  models,
  I
  too
  am
  finding
  my
  voice,
  my
  way
  of
  finding
  clarity,
  through
  a
  combination
  of creative
  modalities
  developed
  asynchronously
  yet
  in
  concert
  with
  each
  other.

  I
  share
  how experiences
  I
  once
  saw
  as
  broken
  limbs
  on
  my
  tree
  are
  now
  gifts
  in
  my
  own
  personal
  development. In
  tree
  physiology,
  these
  wounds
  compartmentalize
  rather
  than
  heal;
  they
  are
  always
  part
  of
  the
  tree, but
  hidden
  from
  surface
  awareness
  as
  calluses
  grow
  to
  cover
  scars.

  Only
  later
  in
  the
  life
  of
  the
  tree may
  these
  wounds
  become
  apparent
  again
  when
  the
  tree
  is
  stressed
  by
  wind. I
  invite
  the
  reader
  to
  see
  extended
  strands
  of
  the
  braid
  connected
  to
  their
  own
  life
  experiences
  by paying
  attention
  to
  what
  resonates
  or
  brings
  up
  tension
  for
  you,
  noticing
  the
  beginning
  of
  possible meta-‐awareness;
  to
  make
  conscious
  the
  story
  just
  beneath
  the
  surface
  of
  our
  talk
  and
  invite
  us
  to speak
  it.

  My
  synthesis
  helps
  readers
  to
  connect
  with
  an
  awareness
  that: • Story
  has
  power
  to
  shape
  our
  thinking,
  beliefs
  and
  behaviors
  and
  that
  our
  beliefs
  can
  grow but
  are
  always
  connected
  with
  the
  deeper
  layers
  of
  our
  narratives • Dreams
  and
  burdens
  are
  essential
  to
  the
  beauty
  of
  the
  journey • Courage
  and
  empowerment
  are
  grown
  through
  practice
  and
  community • Co-‐creative
  spaces
  of
  supportive
  non-‐judgment
  allow
  for
  risk-‐taking
  as
  a
  serious
  practice
  of learning
  and
  growth • Others
  need
  scaffolding
  to
  support
  their
  own
  growth
  and
  practice
  that
  might
  be
  similar
  or different
  than
  our
  own • Transparency
  of
  intentions
  may
  help
  build
  community
  despite
  tensions
  of
  differences Through
  my
  research,
  I've
  come
  to
  appreciate
  that
  my
  original
  inquiry
  is
  deeply
  rooted
  in
  my
  quest to
  understand
  my
  own
  connection
  with
  nature
  in
  the
  context
  of
  my
  life
  purpose
  and
  work.

  And
  I have
  been
  and
  continue
  to
  be
  on
  a
  journey
  framed
  in
  working
  to
  support
  exploration
  and
  change
  at the
  individual
  level
  of
  awareness
  rather
  than
  the
  bigger
  scale
  of
  the
  environmental
  movement.
  Yet I've
  also
  come
  to
  understand
  that
  the
  power
  of
  change
  is
  held
  within
  me
  and
  that
  supporting
  myself in
  this
  environment
  will
  translate
  into
  supporting
  others.

  My
  capstone
  synthesis
  is
  focused, therefore,
  on
  my
  development
  as
  a
  leader/mentor
  of
  people
  I
  work
  with
  while
  also
  honoring
  my personal
  development
  as
  a
  reflective
  practitioner. subject
  codes
  .COM
  .COR
  .FRP
  .RPN
  .WRL


My chosen PhD methodology (the BRIDGE approach to participatory design) required me to conduct focus groups with children and young people with limb difference to involve them in developing prototype prostheses. Although experienced in working with disabled children, I was a novice in this research method. I took the decision, therefore, to learn about and improve my skills in this method by carrying out a pilot focus group. This case presents my reflection on the experience of conducting a pilot focus group and the valuable lessons I learned. The pilot focus group was carried out with six children and focused on designing a television program (in order to be based on product design to mirror the questioning route for the main study). Many of the decisions I made in designing the pilot focus group were based on theoretical study of conducting focus groups. However, the practical experience of carrying out the pilot study taught me additional lessons: analysis of activities is important in the planning process, age of participants and group dynamics must be carefully considered, and practical issues (such as sound recording) can impact the quality of data collected.


At-scene investigations of road crashes for research purposes commenced in the 1950s in the United States and England. These investigations ranged from ones conducted by small multi-disciplinary teams of researchers to the use of specially trained police and medical officers, as exemplified by the Automotive Crash Injury Research program of Cornell University which laid the foundation for our understanding of the causes of injury in car crashes. The first attempt by a small team of researchers to investigate a representative sample of crashes at the scene was conducted in Adelaide in the early 1960s. The second Adelaide in-depth study, conducted in the mid-1970s, successfully investigated in great detail a sample of crashes that was representative of the population of crashes by time of day and day of week. Since then crash investigation at the scene has not been conducted on a representative basis but still with an ability to identify many factors that would otherwise be missed. At scene crash investigation has also formed the basis of case control studies such as those relating travelling speed with the relative risk of crash involvement. This paper will provide a brief review of at-scene crash investigation over the past 50 years, noting methodological lessons that have been learnt and, in some instances, forgotten. It concentrates on research conducted in the United States and Australia.


The growing demand for more sustainable materials has led to increased research on the properties of natural rubber. Chemistry, Manufacture and Applications of Natural Rubber summarizes this research and its significance for the industrial applications of natural rubber. Chapters in part one explore the properties and processing of natural rubber, including the biosynthesis of natural rubber in different rubber-producing species, chemical modification of natural rubber for improved performance, and the effect of strain-induced crystallization on the physical properties of natural rubber. Further chapters highlight hydrophobic and hydrophilic silica-filled cross-linked natural rubber and computer simulation of network formation in natural rubber. Part two focusses on applications of natural rubber, including eco-friendly bio-composites using natural rubber matrices and reinforcements, soft bio-composites from natural rubber and marine products, natural rubber for the tire industry, the application of epoxidized natural rubber in pressure sensitive adhesives (PSAs), and the use of natural rubber for vibration isolation and earthquake protection of structures. Finally, chapters in part three consider environmental and safety issues associated with natural rubber, including improving the sustainable development of natural rubber, the recycling of natural and synthetic isoprene rubbers and of sulfur cross-linked natural rubber, and recent research on natural rubber latex allergy. Chemistry, Manufacture and Applications of Natural Rubber is a comprehensive resource for academics, chemists, chemical engineers, mechanical engineers, and other professionals in the rubber industry, as well as those industries, including automotive, civil, and medical engineering, using natural rubber products.An updated review with systematic and comprehensive coverage of natural rubbersCovers a broad range of topics, including the chemistry, processing, sustainability, and applications of natural rubbersCoverage of the best international research, including key experts from Asia, the United States, South America, and Europe


In the Chemical Engineering Department at Worcester Polytechnic Institute we use COMSOL Multiphysics® not only as a modeling tool for research and to teach applied math modeling to advanced students, but also as a convenient tool to help undergraduates learn engineering fundamentals. In a laboratory class, for example, we use simulations to connect theory to experiment by solving and presenting the velocity, pressure, temperature, and concentration profiles within chemical process equipment. The simulations are used as pre-lab exercises to review fundamentals and prepare for subsequent encounters with the physical equipment. Until now, we have delivered the simulations using the full COMSOL Multiphysics® software via a Class Kit License. For each simulation, the students, most of whom have never used COMSOL Multiphysics®, make changes in the model parameters and rerun a model at various prescribed conditions to gain insight into the process studied. This requires them to follow a detailed stepby-step written tutorial designed to walk them through changing the existing model, running the simulation, and examining the results. The step-by-step procedure also prompts them to write down answers to questions about what they are learning from the model. They subsequently submit the answers to the questions for grading via a separate online survey program. In this presentation we describe our experience in converting these simulations and tutorials into applications and delivering them via COMSOL ServerTM. Each application is a self-contained control panel for a virtual experiment that allows changing input parameters, running the experiment, and viewing the results without opening COMSOL Multiphysics® and manipulating the model tree. The applications also include built-in quiz questions that students answer and submit directly from the application via email to a grader. With this implementation, students should spend more time thinking about the underlying physics and results than following a tedious procedure to help them navigate an unfamiliar program. Comparison between the two simulation delivery methods with regard to instructor preparation time and student satisfaction and learning will be presented.


With the advent of deep learning, object detection drifted from a bottom-up to a top-down recognition problem. State of the art algorithms enumerate a near-exhaustive list of object locations and classify each into: object or not. In this paper, we show that bottom-up approaches still perform competitively. We detect four extreme points (top-most, left-most, bottom-most, right-most) and one center point of objects using a standard keypoint estimation network. We group the five keypoints into a bounding box if they are geometrically aligned. Object detection is then a purely appearance-based keypoint estimation problem, without region classification or implicit feature learning. The proposed method performs on-par with the state-of-the-art region based detection methods, with a bounding box AP of 43.7% on COCO test-dev. In addition, our estimated extreme points directly span a coarse octagonal mask, with a COCO Mask AP of 18.9%, much better than the Mask AP of vanilla bounding boxes. Extreme point guided segmentation further improves this to 34.6% Mask AP.


OBJECTIVE
To report the clinical, genetic, neuroimaging, and neuropathologic studies of patients with the hereditary cerebral hemorrhage with amyloidosis linked to the APP E693K mutation.

DESIGN
Case series. Clinical details and laboratory results were collected by direct evaluation and previous medical records. DNA analysis was carried out in several affected subjects and healthy individuals. Neuropathologic examination was performed in 2 subjects.

SETTING
Southern Lombardy, Italy. Patients Individuals with and without amyloidosis in 4 unrelated Italian families (N = 37). Main Outcome Measure Genotype-phenotype relationship.

RESULTS
The affected individuals presented with recurrent headache and multiple strokes, followed by epilepsy and cognitive decline in most of them. The disease was inherited with an autosomal dominant trait and segregated with the APP E693K mutation. Neuroimaging demonstrated small to large hematomas, subarachnoid bleeding, scars with hemosiderin deposits, small infarcts, and leukoaraiosis. Amyloid-beta immunoreactivity was detected in the wall of leptomeningeal and parenchymal vessels and in the neuropil, whereas phosphorylated tau, neurofibrillary changes, and neuritic plaques were absent.

CONCLUSIONS
These findings expand the number of APP mutations linked to hereditary cerebral hemorrhage with amyloidosis, reinforcing the link between this phenotype and codon 693 of APP.


The usage of millimeter-wave radar systems is widened to a number of civil applications including: airborne radars for obstacle avoidance, altimetry and landing aids, automotive radars for collision avoidance, driving safety support, autonomous vehicle control, meteorological radars, radars for remote sensing applications, and radars for medical imaging and diagnostic. We review some of these developments supported by advances in millimeter-wave components and achievements in signal processing technique. A recently developed at the Institute of Radio Astronomy ground based millimeter-wave synthetic aperture radar (SAR) is described in more details as an example of the activity in the field. The hardware and software solutions introduced into the radar are described along with the results of the first radar tests.


This paper examines the role of safety within the Manhattan Project, the Allied effort to build an atomic bomb during World War II. As an integral component of the American national defense strategy, the atomic bomb project was afforded tremendous resources and incorporated the expertise of the country's top scientists, engineers, government officials, and military personnel. As a result, considerable Scientific and technological achievement was realized The Manhattan Project marked an important point in the ascendancy of science and technology throughout the twentieth century. However, the largely political and military goals of the project had consequences. Insufficient knowledge was gained regarding radiation hazards as a result of a preoccupation with speedy and secretive nuclear weapons development and the difficulty scientists had conducting health-related research. This paper argues that safety concerns were secondary to speed and secrecy in the search for the world's first atomic bomb.


This paper describes 'Fly's Eye View', a project devised and directed by David Smith and supported by a grant from the UK Techniquest Pantechnicon Millennium Awards (intended to help bridge the gap in public perception between science and art). 'Fly's Eye View' was specifically aimed at young children, aged 7–11 years (Key Stage Two of the UK National Curriculum). The project used a low-level VR fly-by system to represent a garden scene as it might be experienced by a dragonfly. The analogy between the mosaic visual 'perception' of insects and image representation in computer systems allowed some interesting explorations into what may be involved in 'seeing'. This analogy was used as the starting point for a series of exploratory activities using digital art work. The paper reviews the outcomes of the project and discusses their possible significance in the context of current approaches to art education and the stimulation of creative thinking in young children.


We revisit the issue of the high cyclicality of wages of new hires. We show that after controlling for composition effects likely involving procyclical upgrading of job match quality, the wages of new hires are no more cyclical than those of existing workers. The key implication is that the sluggish behaviour of wages for existing workers is a better guide to the cyclicality of the marginal cost of labour than is the high measured cyclicality of new hires wages unadjusted for composition effects. Key to our identification is distinguishing between new hires from unemployment versus those who are job changers. We argue that to a reasonable approximation, the wages of the former provide a composition-free estimate of the wage flexibility, while the same is not true for the latter. We then develop a quantitative general equilibrium model with sticky wages via staggered contracting, on-the-job search, and heterogeneous match quality, and show that it can account for both the panel data evidence and aggregate evidence on labour market volatility.


The use of thermal energy storage in buildings is well understood but
contemporary buildings with highly insulated, lightweight construction have low
thermal inertia. This causes them to respond rapidly to external temperature
changes, which results in significant internal temperature fluctuations and
overheating. This research addresses this problem by developing a thermal
interactive wall-lining through the inclusion of phase change materials.


Astrocytes respond to a hormone that signals satiety to control synaptic plasticity of neurons that regulate eating. Leptin is a hormone produced in the periphery that sends satiety signals to the brain to reduce food intake. Kim et al. created mice with knockout of the leptin receptor in astrocytes of adults and investigated the effects in the hypothalamic circuits involved in the regulation of eating and compared them with control mice. The total number of astroctyes in the arcuate nucleus region of the hypothalamus was unchanged, but the number and length of the astrocytic processes were reduced in the knockout mice. Coverage and direct contacts between the astrocytes and neurons in the hypothalamus of the knockout mice, including the POMC and AgRP neurons involved in the regulation of feeding, were reduced. In the hypothalamus of the knockout mice, POMC neurons had increased numbers of synapses, increased frequency of miniature inhibitory postsynaptic currents (mIPSCs), and increased amplitude of both mIPSCs and miniature excitatory postsynaptic currents (mEPSCs). In contrast, AgRP neurons of the hypothalamus of the knockout mice had increased frequency of both mIPSCs and mEPSCs, without any change in the amplitude. The knockout mice exhibited less reduction in feeding in response to leptin injection than did control mice, and leptin-stimulated transcription of Fos was also reduced in the knockout mice. Feeding in response to fasting or the hormone ghrelin was also increased in the knockout mice compared with that in control mice. Thus, leptin signaling in astrocytes in the region of the brain that controls appetite is necessary for the neuronal response to hormones that signal satiety or hunger. J. G. Kim, S. Suyama, M. Koch, S. Jin, P. Argente-Arizon, J. Argente, Z.-W. Liu, M. R. Zimmer, J. K. Jeong, K. Szigeti-Buck, Y. Gao, C. Garcia-Caceres, C.-X. Yi, N. Salmaso, F. M. Vaccarino, J. Chowen, S. Diano, M. O. Dietrich, M. H. Tschöp, T. L. Horvath, Leptin signaling in astrocytes regulates hypothalamic neuronal circuits and feeding. Nat. Neurosci. 17, 908–910 (2014). [PubMed]


This book analyses the complex relationship between corporate governance and economic development by focusing on the reform of corporate governance, the role of the legal system, and the interconnections with the financial system.


Summary
Strains of Plasmodium falciparum that are resistant to chloroquine and to other widely-used synthetic antimalarial drugs have posed major difficulties in several parts of the world. Intensive efforts have been and are being made to develop new antimalarial agents that will be effective against such parasites. Several promising prospective new antimalarial agents have been identified and are now undergoing detailed clinical evaluation. The advent of one or two useful new agents should not serve as a source of renewed complacency. Parasites resistant to the latter agents may emerge and may limit their usefulness. Other new antimalarial drugs may be needed as backstops. There is and will be a continuing need to wage a strong investigative attack not only to develop new antimalarial drugs but also to develop other improved means with which to combat malaria.


Compatible plant-nematode interactions involve the formation of an elaborate feeding site within the host root that requires the evasion of plant defense mechanisms by the parasite. Little is known regarding plant defense signaling pathways that limit nematode parasitism during a compatible interaction. Therefore, we utilized Arabidopsis thaliana mutants perturbed in salicylic acid (SA) biosynthesis or signal transduction to investigate the role of SA in inhibiting parasitism by the beet cyst nematode Heterodera schachtii. We determined that SA-deficient mutants (sid2-1, pad4-1, and NahG) exhibited increased susceptibility to H. schachtii. In contrast, SA-treated wild-type plants showed decreased H. schachtii susceptibility. The npr1-2 and npr1-3 mutants, which are impaired in SA signaling, also showed increased susceptibility to H. schachtii, whereas the npr1-suppressor mutation sni1 showed decreased susceptibility. Constitutive pathogenesis-related (PR) gene-expressing mutants (cpr1 and cpr6) did not show altered susceptibility to H. schachtii; however, constitutive PR gene expression was restricted to cpr1 shoots with wild-type levels of PR-1 transcript present in cpr1 roots. Furthermore, we determined that H. schachtii infection elicits SA-independent PR-2 and PR-5 induction in wild-type roots, while PR-1 transcript and total SA levels remained unaltered. This was in contrast to shoots of infected plants where PR-1 transcript abundance and total SA levels were elevated. We conclude that SA acts via NPR1 to inhibit nematode parasitism which, in turn, is negatively regulated by SNI1. Our results show an inverse correlation between root basal PR-1 expression and plant susceptibility to H. schachtii and suggest that successful cyst nematode parasitism may involve a local suppression of SA signaling in roots.


The male lifetime lekking performance was studied, and related to inbreeding‐outbreeding in a wild population of black grouse (Tetrao tetrix) in central Finland between 1989 and 1995. Inbreeding was measured as the mean heterozygosity and mean d2 of 15 microsatellite loci. We found a significantly positive relationship between mean d2 and lifetime copulation success (LCS), while the relationship between heterozygosity and LCS was close to significant. We also found that males that never obtained a lek territory had significantly lower mean heterozygosity than males that were observed on a territory at least during one mating season in their life. Furthermore, among males that were successful in obtaining a lek territory, LCS and mean d2 were highest for those males that held central territories. We suggest that inbred males have a disadvantage (or outbred males have an advantage) in the competition for territories that may explain the relationships with LCS and inbreeding. Furthermore, the fact that mean d2 was positively correlated with LCS whereas heterozygosity was not when we restricted the analysis to territorial males, suggests that mean d2 provides more information about levels of inbreeding‐outbreeding than heterozygosity alone, and potentially highlights the effects of heterosis. To our knowledge, this is the first time that measures of inbreeding and lifetime fitness have been linked in a non‐isolated population. This is important in establishing that the relationships found in previous studies are not artefacts of low gene flow created by limited dispersal but a general feature of wild vertebrate populations.


In this paper, the structural dependence of factor which mainly affects a bending loss property is theoretically investigated in all-solid photonic bandgap fibers (PBGFs). A design principle for realizing low bending losses is successfully figured out for the first-order photonic bandgap (PBG). In particular, one of the origins which causes the variation of bending loss property for each structural parameter is identified. In addition, we show that exploitation of a large pitch relative to a rod diameter, aiming to realize a large-mode area (LMA) structure, leads to a significant degradation of the bending loss property. Moreover, it is demonstrated that a V-value which is proposed for all-solid PBGFs is also reduced significantly for the LMA condition. The origin of the degradation is attributed to the newly-excited Bloch state which determines the second-order PBG edge.


Abstract Among other methods, passive imaging technique is widely applied to obtain surface‐wave velocities. This technique implies that the average cross correlations between diffuse wavefields recorded at two observers is proportional to the imaginary part of the Green's function. For this purpose, most applications rely on both seismic ambient noise and the coda of earthquakes. Instead, we use a generalized diffuse field (GDF), defined as the waves produced by a multiplicity of distant seismic sources. These wavefields undergo multiple scatterings along their way and at the local surface geology. In this communication, we use GDF to extract the locally generated surface waves in a 2D alluvial valley model for both inplane and antiplane cases from the retrieved Green's function. For the inplane case, an equipartitioned cocktail of plane P , SV , and Rayleigh waves is used, whereas for the antiplane case, the incidence is a set of plane SH waves. In addition to isotropic illumination, we explore the partial illumination from one side of the valley. In both cases, we obtain dispersion curves for the Rayleigh and Love waves' group velocities from the retrieved Green's functions and found good agreement with the exact result for the fundamental modes of both Love and Rayleigh waves in an infinite horizontal layer. This theoretical validation is a proof of concept within an ongoing project whose goal is to improve the characterization of Mexico City subsoil throughout tomography maps of surface‐wave velocities using a collection of historical strong earthquakes recorded by the Mexico City Accelerometric Network.


This book takes place at the cusp of the 20th and 21st centuries, in the pre- and post-September 11th world. It is a singular product of its time, packed full of words and images portraying the architectural projects and metaphysical mechanics that have defined Rem Koolhas's OMA-AMO firm over the past seven years. In the format of a small, thick magazine, this "book" is more of an anti-book, an informal tribute the ephemeral world we inhabit. Focusing on the theme "Go East," this visual journey follows OMA-AMO from San Francisco to Tokyo, traversing our massive and turbulent planet in search of "an opportunity to realize the visions that make remaining at home torturous."


Reward is the driving force for reinforcement-learning agents. This paper is dedicated to understanding the expressivity of reward as a way to capture tasks that we would want an agent to perform. We frame this study around three new abstract notions of"task"that might be desirable: (1) a set of acceptable behaviors, (2) a partial ordering over behaviors, or (3) a partial ordering over trajectories. Our main results prove that while reward can express many of these tasks, there exist instances of each task type that no Markov reward function can capture. We then provide a set of polynomial-time algorithms that construct a Markov reward function that allows an agent to optimize tasks of each of these three types, and correctly determine when no such reward function exists. We conclude with an empirical study that corroborates and illustrates our theoretical findings.


This thesis explores how gender can affect experiences of health and illness, with the understanding that gender is constructed differently across the life course, and is mediated by 'race' and class relations in Britain. Research was conducted with a small sample of informants drawn from African-Caribbean community groups in east London, using focus groups and in-depth interviews. Findings are three-fold. First, participation in health research itself was problematic for informants, relating directly to their experiences of personal and institutional racism in Britain. Evidence showed that these experiences encouraged informants to use public accounts of health and illness when more structured research methods were used. In-depth interviews encouraged informants to develop more private accounts of their illness experiences. A second finding was that social relations and low social status were often implicated in private accounts as contributing factors to illness. Women and men felt that racialised experiences, especially in the workplace, were problematic for black people collectively. Older female informants also connected personal health problems to their efforts in fulfilling the more traditional expectations of women in the home, family and workplace. Finally there is evidence that women and men have developed a variety of strategies to mediate the impact that social circumstances may have on their health. Some strategies influenced the way that illness discourses themselves were constructed, whilst others focused on building self-esteem through Caribbean or Black identity, or through developing a sense of 'self. ' Besides these findings, the methodology of this study is discussed. This was developed in response to the sensitive nature of the racialised research context. Key concerns have been to develop trust and rapport with informants, and to offer them the opportunity to comment critically on this research project and its findings. It was felt that this approach enhanced the insight into informants' reporting and understandings of health and illness. Conclusions of this research have theoretical, methodological and policy implications. Most topical are implications relevant to east London's Health Action Zone strategy. There are specific recommendations for understanding the mental health needs for African-Caribbean communities, and for developing appropriate ways to involve these communities in this initiative and offering them better access to information.


Indian mustard (Brassica juncea) grown on land with elevated arsenic concentration can absorb and accumulate high levels of arsenic. B. juncea is an important oil-bearing crop and broadly grown in Bangladesh and West Bengal, where the land is heavily contaminated with arsenic. Arsenic is documented as a group 1 carcinogen and can enter the biosphere through the food chain. With the high population density and a heavy agriculture-based economy in Bangladesh and West Bengal, issues related to food safety must be addressed to solve the problems associated with arsenic accumulation in B. juncea seed oil, which is caused by B. juncea tolerance to arsenic toxicity. Therefore, it is important to study the variation of arsenic tolerance among different Indian mustard cultivars and to understand the genetic mechanisms of arsenic tolerance in Indian mustard. Such results from the study could help to reduce potential arsenic toxicity in both plants and humans through diet as well as to benefit local agriculture industry in Bangladesh and West Bengal. In this research, a consistent trend was found between arsenic concentration and biomass accumulation in all B. juncea cultivars. When arsenic concentration increases, the biomass accumulation decreases. A positive correlation was identified between arsenic tolerance levels in B. juncea roots and arsenic absorption in the seed and seed oil. The observation of these correlations in B. juncea suggests that breeding arsenic resistant B. juncea cultivars could increase plant yield but may inadvertently lead to an increased arsenic concentrations in the seed and seed oil. However, variations in arsenic accumulation were observed in both arsenic resistant and susceptible cultivars, which provide possibilities to breed high arsenic-tolerant and low arsenic-absorptive strains of B. juncea. To study the genetic mechanisms underlying arsenic tolerance variation in Indian mustard, the model plant Arabidopsis thaliana was employed. Arsenic tolerance of various A. thaliana accessions was measured and arsenic tolerance genes were screened using a genetic mapping approach. Since no consistent trend was found between arsenic concentrations and arsenic tolerance in A. thaliana root and shoot tissues, it suggests that arsenic has a complex impact on those phenotypes examined in A. thaliana. To study the mechanisms underlying genetic variation of A. thaliana for arsenic tolerance, gene mapping including quantitative trait locus (QTL) mapping and genome-wide association mapping (GWAS) was employed to identify targeted genomic regions and candidate genes. One recombined inbred population was employed in QTL mapping and a worldwide collection of 39 A. thaliana accessions was used in GWAS analysis. QTL mapping analysis and GWAS revealed similar genomic regions and candidate genes. Among all revealed candidate genes, one gene (gene ID: At5G05560) with a known function of abiotic stress resistance was identified, which may be related to plant arsenic tolerance or detoxification. To understand the function of this gene, however, requires further analysis. Other genes associated with arsenic tolerance or detoxification function in the genetic region selected from gene mapping study may also be identified by further analysis. The functional analysis of candidate genes, and the molecular markers selection from revealed genomic regions could be applied to contribute to breeding B. juncea strains with higher arsenic tolerance and lower arsenic accumulation.


X-ray scatter can cause significant distortion in CT imaging, especially with the move to cone-beam geometries. Incoherent scatter (Compton scatter) is known to reduce the energy of scattered photons according to the angle of the scattering. The emergence of energy-resolved x-ray detectors offers an opportunity to produce and apply more accurate scatter estimates, leading to improved image quality. We have developed a scatter estimation algorithm that accounts for the variation in scatter with incident radiation energy. Where existing methods generate estimates of scatter for the complete detected energy band, our new method produces separate estimates for each of the energy bands that are measured, allowing a more focused correction of scatter. Our method is intended to be used in an iterative compensation framework like that of Rührnschopf and Klingenbeck (2011); it calculates the scatter contribution to each energy bin used in a scan based on the current volume estimate. Comparisons with Monte Carlo simulations indicate that this algorithm is effective at estimating the scatter level in separate energy bins. We found that the amount of scatter that loses enough energy to hop between energy bands is small enough to neglect, but that scatter intensity is dependent on the incident energy, so application of a spectrally-aware compensation technique is valuable.


This Briefing Paper presents one of six analyses of cross-sectoral coordination challenges that were conducted as part of the STEER research project and on which separate Briefing Papers are available. The extraction of minerals and metals comes with a large water footprint, both in terms of water needed for extraction itself and in terms of wastewater discharge and the potential pollution of water resources. Thus, coordination between the mining and water sectors is key. A number of instruments to that end have been devised, which aim to mitigate the negative impacts of mining on water resources and on water-resource dependent communities. Among these are environmental impact assessments (EIAs), stakeholder involvement within these processes and within river basin management, and payment schemes that incentivise wastewater treatment at the mine. Whether and how these instruments are implemented depends on the national, provincial and local context, since each instrument involves a number of preconditions. Assessing the effectiveness of these instruments thus requires a sound analysis of the governance system within which they operate. In this Briefing Paper, we focus on Mongolia as an example case study and look at stakeholder involvement and incentivising wastewater treatment as two key strategies to increase coordination. We assess how these strategies are translated into policies and how they are implemented on the ground in two adjacent river basins. In doing so, we pay particular attention to the human and financial capacities of lower-level administrative entities, as well as to the availability of water-related information, as essential prerequisites for effective natural resource governance. We find that the Mongolian governance system stipulates the implementation of stakeholder involvement through multiple processes, most importantly through River Basin Multi-Stakeholder Platforms (RB-MSPs) and community consultation within the EIA procedure. In practice, however, the RB-MSP in the study area has yet to diversify its membership from mostly lower-level administrative staff, and community consultations rarely take place. In terms of incentivising wastewater treatment, Mongolia passed amendments to its Water Pollution Fee Law in summer 2019 and is now working on implementation guidelines. Challenges here relate to the collection of data for a baseline on water quality and to guarantees for adequate sampling and analysis. This is tied to the limited human and financial capacity of lower-level administrative entities, which struggle to access or evaluate relevant data. We recommend that: * the diversity of stakeholders in RB-MSPs is increased to better include the private sector and civil society, with sensitivity to differences in socioeconomic standing to ensure equitable access to and deliberation within the platform; * the enacting of public consultations as part of EIAs is ensured and governmental procedures (i.e. mining licensing and approval of EIAs) are made more transparent and accountable; * public availability of water data is increased; * the Water Pollution Fee Law is implemented swiftly to provide incentives for the treatment of mining wastewater before discharge; * funding and institutional capacity development for lower-level administrative bodies are increased and funding for RB-MSPs is provided to enable them to fulfill their mandates.


The ability to perform quantum error correction (QEC) arbitrarily many cycles is a significant challenge for scalable quantum information processing (QIP). Key requirements for multiple-round QEC are a high degree of quantum control, the ability to efficiently characterize both intrinsic and extrinsic noise, and the ability to dynamically and efficiently extract entropy from ancilla qubits. Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) based quantum devices have demonstrated high control fidelity with up to 12 qubits, and the noise characterizations can be performed using an efficient protocol known as randomized benchmarking. One of the remaining challenges with NMR systems is that qubit initialization is normally only attainable via thermal equilibration. This results in very low polarizations in reasonable experimental conditions. Moving to electron-nuclear coupled spin systems in a single crystal is a promising solution to the ancilla qubit preparation problem. One obvious advantage of incorporating electron spins comes from higher gyromagnetic ratio of the electron which yields about three orders of magnitude larger thermal spin polarization than that of nuclear spins in the same experimental condition. In addition, fast control of nuclear spins is possible provided appropriate level of anisotropic hyperfine interaction strength. The nuclear spins can be polarized even beyond the thermal electron spin temperature using a technique Heat-Bath Algorithmic Cooling (HBAC). With theoretical ideas in hand, the next step is to develop classical instrumentations to control electron-nuclear coupled systems and accomplish high fidelity coherent control. Noise characterizations are also necessary for benchmarking the quality of control over the electron-nuclear spin system. I first present example applications of NMR QIP with small number of qubits: Testing a foundational question in quantum mechanics and measuring spectral density of noise in a quantum system. Then I report on our home-built X-band electron spin resonance (ESR) spectrometer and progress in achieving high fidelity coherent control of electron and nuclear spins for QIP. We focus on implementing nuclear spin manipulation via anisotropic hyperfine interaction and microwave (mw) control, but discussions also include electron nuclear double resonance (ENDOR) control techniques. We perform realistic algorithmic simulations to show that an experimental cooling of nuclear spins below electron thermal temperature is feasible, and to present the electron-nuclear spin systems as promising testbeds for scalable QIP.


Minnesota's rural crash records were analyzed in order to develop a better understanding of crashes at rural intersections and their cause. The objective in studying the causes of crashes at rural intersections is to support development of technology based strategies to mitigate high crash rates. Since previous research found that 80% of intersection crashes at thru-STOP intersections may be related to selection of insufficient gaps, the development and validation of Intersection Decision Support (IDS) technology that assists in proper gap selection was identified as a primary goal. A database of over 3,700 intersections was examined. Using the critical crash rate as an indicator, 23 rural expressway intersections and 104 rural two-lane intersections were identified as unusually "dangerous" locations. Right angle crashes (which are most often related to gap selection) were observed to account for approximately 50% of all crashes at the "dangerous" intersections, up from 28% for all rural thru-STOP intersections. A specific intersection was identified, evaluated and then selected for testing IDS technologies that can track vehicles approaching on the major roadway, compute the gap and communicate the information to drivers stopped on the minor street waiting to enter the intersection. The data acquisition system to be installed will allow analysis of driver decision making behavior and study the effects of introducing an IDS technology under development at the University of Minnesota.


This study examined ways that seven high school English teachers attempted to promote higher levels of self-regulation and students' responses to their efforts. Researchers met with teachers once a week for three months to design higher-order reasoning questions for assignments and quizzes, review student responses and plan instructional strategies. They functioned as participant observers in these sessions examined student homework logs, and interviewed students and teachers. Teachers' responses emphasized the value of collaboration and asking higher-order reasoning questions. Although students continued to articulate performance goals that focused on grades and rewards, their responses demonstrated greater awareness of self-regulation and goal setting. Most students were able to use the language of self-regulation to describe relations among goals, effort, and outcomes. Results of this case study suggest that efforts to promote self-regulation more explicitly within the fabric of lessons might be productive, especially if offered for an extended amount of time.


James v. Illinois permits illegally-obtained evidence to impeach defendants, but not defense witnesses. Thus far, all courts have construed James to allow impeachment of defendants' hearsay declarations. This article argues against allowing illegally-obtained evidence to impeach defendants' hearsay declarations because doing so unduly diminishes the exclusionary rule's deterrent effect. The distinction between impeaching defendants and defense witnesses disappears when courts allow prosecutors to impeach defendants' hearsay declarations. Because defense witnesses report exculpatory conduct of a defendant who always has a substantial interest in disguising his criminality, their testimony routinely incorporates defendant hearsay. Defense witness testimony thus routinely paves the way for illegally-obtained evidence, contradicting James's intention that substantial deterrence result from prohibiting impeachment of defense witnesses. Moreover, in the few cases finding that defense witnesses' testimony did not invite illegally-obtained evidence by incorporating defendant hearsay, prosecutors overlooked winning evidentiary arguments or the courts made evidentiary errors. The unpredictable nature of these instances of exclusion adds insult to injury: Because competent defense counsel will refrain from calling a defense witness rather than hope for prosecutorial neglect or judicial error, the prosecution benefits from its illegally-obtained proof, eliminating the deterrence James contemplates. Meanwhile, less than competent counsel will stumble into calling defense witnesses and occasionally reap the benefits of prosecutorial neglect or judicial error when illegally-obtained evidence is not admitted despite its impeaching effect on defendant hearsay. Thus, the status quo imposes costs to the truth without any compensating deterrence of constitutional violations. By comparison, flipping a coin to decide whether prosecutors can use suppressed evidence to impeach would greatly improve matters. It assures that a limited impeachment exception engenders at least some additional deterrence beyond that already provided by suppression on the prosecution's case in chief to justify its truth seeking costs. Flipping a coin is hardly an acceptable solution. Nonetheless, that it improves the status quo vividly illustrates the error of applying the exception to impeach defendant hearsay and the futility of pursuing an impeachment exception whose parameters purport to promote accurate fact finding without undermining the exclusionary rule's deterrence of constitutional violations.


With conservation and ethical concerns facing cetaceans, minimally invasive research on reproduction is important for population management. Belugas (Delphinapterus leucas) are endangered in parts of their range, yet little is known about their breeding behavior and much of the existing research depends on postmortem sampling. To date, there have been no directed studies of social interactions between belugas during the breeding season, and few studies have attempted to correlate reproductive physiology with behavior in any species of cetacean. Improved understanding of reproductive strategies in this species would facilitate management. This work describes the development of minimally invasive methods for determining sex, maturity, and reproductive cycle stage in belugas, and the utilization of these methods to assess relationships between reproductive physiology and behavior in a social group of belugas in an aquarium. The results of this work are interpreted in the context of the current understanding of beluga reproductive physiology and ecology. Chapter 1 describes the physiological validation of blow (exhale) sampling for measuring testosterone and progesterone in belugas. Concentrations of both progesterone and testosterone in blow are correlated with circulating concentrations and reflect variation in the reproductive status of individuals. Chapter 2 presents the development of DNA isolation from beluga blow samples and determines the relationship between various sample characteristics and DNA yield and performance in polymerase chain reactions (PCR). Although yield and quality varied greatly among samples, single exhale samples from wild and aquarium belugas enabled PCR amplification of genes used in sex determination or population genetics. Chapter 3 describes the seasonal variation in testicular volume and testosterone in male belugas studied longitudinally. This work revealed a seasonal increase in testes size in belugas of approximately 50%, filling a significant gap in knowledge for wild belugas. Chapter 4 utilizes methods developed and validated in Chapters 1 and 3 to evaluate social behavior in a group of aquarium belugas in the context of reproductive physiology. Reproductive seasonality and the occurrence of reproductive events were detected using non-invasive techniques and used to contextualize patterns of association and the frequency of social behaviors of interest, including courtship. Appendix 1 presents a general review of the literature regarding beluga mating strategies and reproductive biology; specific literature reviews are included with each chapter. Appendix 2 provides a synthesis of the dissertation and discusses the implications of these findings on the current understanding of beluga mating strategies, and by extension, the management and conservation of this species. Appendix 3 presents laboratory protocols utilized in this dissertation, and provides supplementary data that was not included in Chapter 1.


This section discusses the regulation of "lifestyle risks", a term that can apply to both substances and behaviours. Lifestyle risks take place along the line of "abstinence – consumption – abuse – addiction". This can concern substances such as food, alcohol or drugs, as well as behaviours such as gambling or sports. The section also addresses the question of the appropriate point of equilibrium between free choice and state intervention (regulation), as well as the question of when risks can be considered to be acceptable or tolerable. In line with the interdisciplinary scope of the journal, the section aims at updating readers on both the regulatory and the scientific developments in the field. It analyses legislative initiatives and judicial decisions and at the same time it provides insight into recent empirical studies on lifestyle risks.


The design and conduct of climate change policy necessarily confronts uncertainty along multiple fronts. We explore the consequences of ambiguity over various sources and configurations of models that impact how economic opportunities could be damaged in the future. We appeal to decision theory under risk, model ambiguity and misspecification concerns to provide an economically motivated approach to uncertainty quantification. We show how this approach reduces the many facets of uncertainty into a low dimensional characterization that depends on the uncertainty aversion of a decision-maker or fictitious social planner. In our computations, we take inventory of three alternative channels of uncertainty and provide a novel way to assess them. These include i) carbon dynamics that capture how carbon emissions impact atmospheric carbon in future time periods; ii) temperature dynamics that depict how atmospheric carbon alters temperature in future time periods; iii) damage functions that quantify how temperature changes diminish economic opportunities. We appeal to geoscientific modeling to quantify the first two channels. We show how these uncertainty sources interact for a social planner looking to design a prudent approach to the social pricing of carbon emissions.


Abstract Balcer-Kubiczek, E. K., Harrison, G. H., Davis, C. C., Haas, M. L. and Koffman, B. H. Expression Analysis of Human HL60 Cells Exposed to 60 Hz Square- or Sine-Wave Magnetic Fields. A total of 960 complementary DNA (cDNA) clones from an HL60 cell cDNA library were screened to discover genes that were differentially expressed in HL60 cells exposed to 60 Hz square-wave magnetic fields (MFs) compared to sham-exposed cells. Square-wave fields are rich in odd harmonic frequency content. We used a two-gel cDNA library screening method (BIGEL) to identify treatment-induced alterations in gene expression. Four cDNA clones were tentatively identified as differentially expressed after exposure to square-wave MFs at 2 mT for 24 h. BIGEL-identified genes (GenBank accession number) corresponding to these clones were: TI227H (D50525), EST Homo sapiens partial cDNA (Z17814), human ribosomal protein S13 (L01124), and AICAR transformylase mRNAs (D82348). The differences in mRNA levels were not confirmed in test compared to experimental cells by Northern analysis. In other experiments, we used concurrent exposure to 60 Hz sine- or square-wave MFs (0 or 2 mT, duration of 3 or 24 h, no postexposure delay). In addition to the four BIGEL genes, we also investigated MYC, HSP70, RAN and SOD1. In the case of MYC and HSP70, square-wave MFs appeared to exhibit more marked alterations when compared to sinusoidal waveforms, but the overall results indicated no effect of possible differential magnetic-field-induced expression of all eight genes. In contrast, alterations of mRNA levels were observed for seven genes after exposure to X irradiation, hyperthermia and TPA. These results are contrary to previously proposed similarities between the action of these agents and MF effects on gene transcription.


The neurotransmitter dopamine is cleared from synapses by presynaptic dopamine transporters, which thus play a key role in regulating dopaminergic signaling. Mazei-Robison et al., who previously identified a mutant form of the dopamine transporter in two brothers with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), investigated the effects of this mutation on transporter function. When transfected into human embryonic kidney (HEK) 293T cells, the total and surface abundance of the mutant transporter [in which an alanine at residue 559 is substituted with valine (hDAT A559V)] was similar to that of the transfected wild-type human dopamine transporter (hDAT), as was dopamine uptake. Amperometric recordings of cells preloaded with dopamine, however, revealed that, whereas cells expressing hDAT showed little dopamine efflux, hDAT A559V cells exhibited pronounced dopamine efflux currents. Whole-cell patch clamp analysis combined with experiments in which the intracellular concentrations of Na+ or dopamine were varied indicated that hDAT A559V showed an exaggerated increase in dopamine efflux in response to depolarization compared with hDAT and an increased sensitivity to intracellular Na+. Intriguingly, amphetamine, which is used to treat ADHD, enhanced hDAT-mediated dopamine efflux (as it typically does) but inhibited hDAT A559V–mediated efflux. The authors thus propose that alterations in dopamine efflux through hDAT may play a role in ADHD and perhaps other brain disorders associated with altered dopamine signaling. M. S. Mazei-Robison, E. Bowton, M. Holy, M. Schmudermaier, M. Freissmuth, H. H. Sitte, A. Galli, R. D. Blakely, Anomalous dopamine release associated with a human dopamine transporter coding variant. J. Neurosci. 28, 7040-7046 (2008). [Abstract] [Full Text]


This paper contributes to the analysis of the integration of immigrants in the Canadian labour market by focusing in two relatively new dimensions. We combine the large samples of the restricted version of the Canadian Census (1991-2006) with both a new measure of linguistic proximity of the immigrant's mother tongue to that of the destination country, and with information of the occupational skills embodied in the jobs immigrants hold. This allows us to assess the role that language plays in the labour market performance of immigrants and to better study their career progression relative to the native born. Weekly wage differences between immigrants and the native born are driven mostly by penalties associated with immigrants' lower returns to social skills, but not to analytical or manual skills. Interestingly, low linguistic proximity between origin and destination language imposes larger wage penalties to the university-educated, and significantly affects the status of the jobs they hold. The influence of linguistic proximity on the skill content of jobs immigrants hold over time also varies by the educational level of the migrant. We also show that immigrants settling in Quebec and whose mother tongue is close to French have similar or better labour market outcomes (relative to native-born residents in Quebec) than immigrants with close linguistic proximity to English settling outside Quebec (relative to native born residents in the rest of Canada). However, since wages in Quebec are lower than elsewhere, immigrants in Quebec earn less in absolute terms than those residing elsewhere.


Student voice: authentic or contrived? In this essay I argue that authenticity in student voice has been largely conflated with a notion of objective truth. I trouble this view for the ways in which it masks power dynamics in student voice in a quest for truth. Instead I proffer a view of student voice as socially constructed through discourses that act as regimes of truth to open up but also discipline and constrain possibilities for action and identity within student voice initiatives. I 'plug in' this 'student voice as regimes of truth' concept to think with data from a recent collaborative action research project and turn a critically reflexive gaze on the influences dominant discourses of student voice exerted on the practice of participating students and teachers. I argue that this socially constructed view of authenticity offers a generative starting point to open up more socially just possibilities for student voice practice in the middle years


The Kadawçb and Homogar Volcanic Groups occur in the Sudanese portion of the Nubian Shield and are late Proterozoic in age (723 Ma and 671 Ma, respectively). The lavas of both groups display a calc-alkaline character, are broadly similar in terms of their lithology, phenocryst mineralogy and major element composition, and geochemically they are similar to modern arc lavas associated with converging plate margins. However, a clear distinction can be made between the two groups on the basis of the trace element geochemistry of the basaltic components of the suites. The Homogar basalts are chemically more evolved and are enriched in large ion lithophile elements (LILE) and rare earth elements (REE) having high La/Nb, Ce/YbN and 87Sr/86Sr ratios compared with those of the Kadawçb group. These chemical differences possibly follow an evolutionary trend as the less developed Kadawçb lavas are some 50 Ma older than those of the evolved Homogar group. It is suggested that the older Kadawçb lavas were erupted along an intra-oceanic island arc system, while the younger Homogar lavas were extruded along a more evolved transitional arc or possibly a continental margin. The differences in light/heavy REE and LIL/high-field strength element ratios may reflect variation in the degree of alteration of an overlying mantle wedge, possibly due to the introduction of LILE- and REE-enriched fluids derived from dehydrating subducted oceanic lithosphere.


A planning domain, as any model, is never "complete" and inevitably makes assumptions on the environment's dynamic. By allowing the specification of just one domain model, the knowledge engineer is only able to make one set of assumptions, and to specify a single objective-goal. Borrowing from work in Software Engineering, we propose a multi-tier framework for planning that allows the specification of different sets of assumptions, and of different corresponding objectives. The framework aims to support the synthesis of adaptive behavior so as to mitigate the intrinsic risk in any planning modeling task. After defining the multi-tier planning task and its solution concept, we show how to solve problem instances by a succinct compilation to a form of non-deterministic planning. In doing so, our technique justifies the applicability of planning with both fair and unfair actions, and the need for more efforts in developing planning systems supporting dual fairness assumptions.


Monitoring people afoot as well as vehicles has become crucial, not only for safety but also for several practical business applications, facility management, and services. In relation to that, the proliferation of IoT-based services and the growing industry of telecommunications are playing a vital role in providing the perfect ecosystem for advanced smart city use cases. Numerous research and studies supported by the private sector are addressing the various use cases for mobility tracking and safety services. The purpose of this work is to make contributions to the mobility tracking and safety services of smart cities with the help of IoT devices and telecommunication infrastructures. Hence, IoT based WiFi sensors and MEC based virtual sensors were used for mobility tracking and safety systems in our work. The WiFi sensor devices detect the presence of people from the WiFi signals, the WiFi probe request frames of smartphones. We have considered two types of devices, namely, commercial, off-the-shelf WiFi scanners and ad-hoc designed WiFi scanners implemented with Raspberry PIs. They provide different levels of visibility of the captured traffic. The detected probe request packets contain the associated MAC address of the transmitting device. Since the MAC address is considered personal data by the EU GDPR, a privacy protection mechanism was required for tracking people's movements. Although the currently available technologies have made efforts through anonymization techniques, the privacy concern remains vulnerable for MAC addresses. Thus, we have implemented a privacy-preserving scheme for addressing the privacy challenge and tackled the problem of identifying people's movement for the popular mobility patterns in an urban environment by using WiFi sensors connected to the cellular network. Furthermore, events and group activities were captured with the support of a model. We illustrate our approach and present results derived from live measurements in a testbed deployed in the city of Turin


High strain accumulation across the fold-and-thrust belt in SW Taiwan are revealed by the Continuous GPS (cGPS) from 2007 2015. This high strain is generally accommodated by the major active structures in fold-and-thrust belt of western Foothills. In addition, the plastic deformation of mudstone in the Gutingkeng formation might play a crucial role for aseismic creeping. Furthermore, the distributed rightlateral shear zone, fault-related folding and aseismic creeping are also dominated from Lungchuan fault and Chishan fault to the north of Kaohsiung area. Based on distribution of coseismic uplift across the Lungchuan fault to the Tainan tableland, a clear evidence of multiple fault slips was triggered by the 2016 Mw 6.4 Meinong earthquake at ~15 km. The surface coseismic deformation is mainly controlled by a fault-related folding structures connected to the shallow décollement around 5 10 km depth, in which the moderate earthquakes locate in mid-crust could trigger slip along the weak décollement. The pre-seismic baseline variation of cGPS is observed in 8 baselines near the epicenter of the Meinong earthquake. The rate-slow-down anomalies of these baseline variation could be considered as a possible precursor of the Meinong earthquake. Article history: Received 4 October 2016 Revised 17 April 2017 Accepted 19 April 2017


Measures of injury severity are a prerequisite for the study of injury and its causes. Injury severity scoring systems have been used to control for differences in casemix, quantifying the burden of injury, and estimating the use of resources to treat casualties. The most widely used anatomic based measure of injury severity is the Abbreviated Injury Scale (AIS). However, the International Classification of Disease (ICD) is the standard taxonomy used by Australian health care system to record diagnoses. As an alternative to using AIS directly, mappings from ICD-9-CM to AIS have been successfully employed. With the introduction of ICD-10-AM this is no longer possible because the corresponding mappings between this revision of ICD and AIS have not yet been developed. This paper will describe methods of assigning AIS values to ICD-10-AM injury codes. Measures of injury severity that are independent of the AIS will also be explored, including how these may address the contribution of the host, environment and the mechanism of injury, and the effect of multiple injuries on the casualty's survival and long term recovery. This is a work in progress.


When the U.S. Supreme Court issued its landmark "right to die" decision in Cruzan v. Director, Missouri Department of Health thirty years ago, the dissenting Justices and many observers criticized the Court for rejecting a right of Nancy Cruzan's parents to refuse medical care on her behalf. Ms. Cruzan had not written a living will or a durable power of attorney, nor did it appear that she had left clear oral instructions about her wishes. But she did have loving parents who were dedicated to doing what was best for her. Nevertheless, according to the Cruzan Court, "If the State were required by the United States Constitution to repose a right of 'substituted judgment' with anyone, the Cruzans would surely qualify. But we do not think the Due Process Clause requires the State to repose judgment on these matters with anyone but the patient herself."

This article argues that the Cruzan Court neglected an important justification for the right of patients to have medical decisions made for them by family members. If patients leave clear evidence of their treatment preferences, treatment must be based on those preferences. Similarly, if patients leave clear evidence that they would want a spouse or other family member to make medical decisions for them, the desired surrogate should be able to make medical decisions for the patient. A formal power of attorney appointment is an important way to provide clear evidence, and just as oral statements and other evidence can be used to establish the patient's treatment preferences, so should oral statements and other evidence be able to establish the patient's preferences for a surrogate decision-maker.


Laboratory for Atmospheres, NASA/GSFC, Greenbelt, MD 20770 C. Riley and W. Rose Michigan Technological University, Houghton, M149931 December 15, 1998 Table of contents Introduction Measurements of Mt.Spurr ash fallout samples Modeling of the ash scattering properties in the UV 3.1 Extinction cross-section 3.2 Single scattering albedo 3.3 Phase function 4. Multiple scattering model 5. Effects of on optical thickness effective radius retrievals 6. Effect on Mass retrieval 7. Conclusions


We consider the problem of including additional knowledge in estimating sparse Gaussian graphical models (sGGMs) from aggregated samples, arising often in bioinformatics and neuroimaging applications. Previous joint sGGM estimators either fail to use existing knowledge or cannot scale-up to many tasks (large $K$) under a high-dimensional (large $p$) situation. In this paper, we propose a novel \underline{J}oint \underline{E}lementary \underline{E}stimator incorporating additional \underline{K}nowledge (JEEK) to infer multiple related sparse Gaussian Graphical models from large-scale heterogeneous data. Using domain knowledge as weights, we design a novel hybrid norm as the minimization objective to enforce the superposition of two weighted sparsity constraints, one on the shared interactions and the other on the task-specific structural patterns. This enables JEEK to elegantly consider various forms of existing knowledge based on the domain at hand and avoid the need to design knowledge-specific optimization. JEEK is solved through a fast and entry-wise parallelizable solution that largely improves the computational efficiency of the state-of-the-art $O(p^5K^4)$ to $O(p^2K^4)$. We conduct a rigorous statistical analysis showing that JEEK achieves the same convergence rate $O(\log(Kp)/n_{tot})$ as the state-of-the-art estimators that are much harder to compute. Empirically, on multiple synthetic datasets and two real-world data, JEEK outperforms the speed of the state-of-arts significantly while achieving the same level of prediction accuracy. Available as R tool @ this http URL


Online optimization has been a successful framework for solving large-scale problems under computational constraints and partial information. Current methods for online convex optimization require either a projection or exact gradient computation at each step, both of which can be prohibitively expensive for large-scale applications. At the same time, there is a growing trend of non-convex optimization in machine learning community and a need for online methods. Continuous DR-submodular functions, which exhibit a natural diminishing returns condition, have recently been proposed as a broad class of non-convex functions which may be efficiently optimized. Although online methods have been introduced, they suffer from similar problems. In this work, we propose Meta-Frank-Wolfe, the first online projection-free algorithm that uses stochastic gradient estimates. The algorithm relies on a careful sampling of gradients in each round and achieves the optimal $O( \sqrt{T})$ adversarial regret bounds for convex and continuous submodular optimization. We also propose One-Shot Frank-Wolfe, a simpler algorithm which requires only a single stochastic gradient estimate in each round and achieves an $O(T^{2/3})$ stochastic regret bound for convex and continuous submodular optimization. We apply our methods to develop a novel "lifting" framework for the online discrete submodular maximization and also see that they outperform current state-of-the-art techniques on various experiments.


A geophysical survey to delineate the fresh-saline groundwater interface and associated subbottom sedimentary structures beneath Indian River Bay, Delaware, was carried out in April 2010. This included surveying at higher spatial resolution in the vicinity of a study site at Holts Landing, where intensive onshore and offshore studies were subsequently completed. The total length of continuous resistivity profiling (CRP) survey lines was 145 kilometers (km), with 36 km of chirp seismic lines surveyed around the perimeter of the bay. Medium-resolution CRP surveying was performed using a 50-meter streamer in a baywide grid. Results of the surveying and data inversion showed the presence of many buried paleochannels beneath Indian River Bay that generally extended perpendicular from the shoreline in areas of modern tributaries, tidal creeks, and marshes. An especially wide and deep paleochannel system was imaged in the southeastern part of the bay near White Creek. Many paleochannels also had high-resistivity anomalies corresponding to low-salinity groundwater plumes associated with them, likely due to the presence of fine-grained estuarine mud and peats in the channel fills that act as submarine confining units. Where present, these units allow plumes of low-salinity groundwater that was recharged onshore to move beyond the shoreline, creating a complex fresh-saline groundwater interface in the subsurface. The properties of this interface are important considerations in construction of accurate coastal groundwater flow models. These models are required to help predict how nutrient-rich groundwater, recharged in agricultural watersheds such as this one, makes its way into coastal bays and impacts surface-water quality and estuarine ecosystems.


A holographic interferometry technique for the measurement of optical glass homogeneity of plate samples is presented. It is shown that this immersion technique is more accurate than methods used for this purpose based on classical interferometry without the need of quality optics.


This paper explores value creation from government use of information technologies (IT). While the majority of studies in the information systems (IS) discipline have focused on discovering IT business value in for-profit organizations, the performance effects of IT in the public sector have not been extensively studied in either the IS or the public administration literature. We examine whether IT improves administrative efficiency in U.S. state governments. Utilizing IT budget data in state governments, the census data on state government expenditures, and a variety of information on public services that states provide, we measure technical efficiency with a stochastic frontier analysis and a translog cost function and estimate the effect of IT spending on efficiency. Our analyses provide evidence for a positive relationship between IT spending and cost efficiency and indicate that, on average, a $1 increase in per capita IT budget is associated with $1.13 in efficiency gains. This study contributes to the IS literature by expanding the scope of IT value research to public sector organizations and provides meaningful implications for elected officials and public sector managers.


Superfluorescence from a Two-Dimensional Electron-Hole System: Magnetic Field, Temperature, and Density Dependence by Kankan Cong In the phenomenon of superfluorescence (SF), a macroscopic polarization spontaneously builds up from an initially incoherent ensemble of excited dipoles and then cooperatively decays, producing giant pulses of coherent radiation. SF arising from electron-hole recombination has recently been observed in semiconductor quantum wells, but its observability conditions have not been fully understood. Here, by fully mapping out the magnetic field (B), temperature (T), and electron-hole pair density (n) dependence of SF intensity and linewidth, we have constructed a 'phase' diagram, showing the B-T-n region in which SF is observable. In general, SF can be observed only at low enough temperatures, high enough magnetic fields, and high enough laser powers with characteristic threshold behaviors. These results lay the foundation of our understanding of electron-hole SF and provide guidelines for our search for a Bardeen-Cooper-Schrieffer state of excitons.


The objective of this study is to presume the human psychological condition with the biological signal in order to feedback the result to the person and to control the living environment automatically depending on the result. In this paper, the influence of living environment on the human body was examined as a fundamental study. The elements of living environment which compose the living environment includes sound, temperature, humidity and light, etc. Among them, the influence of environment light on biological response was evaluated. Biological reactions stimulated by red, green and blue light were analyzed using an ECG (electrocardiogram), EEG (electroencephalogram) and MEG (magnetoencephalogram). As a result, a significant difference was observed between green and red light in LF/HF obtained from ECG, in percentage of alpha wave rate obtained from EEG and in latent time of P300 and amplitude of P300 obtained from MEG. In addition, the possibility was suggested that green light induces a rest state whereas red light induces a concentrated state. Based on the results, automated control system of environment light by biological signal was constructed.


Abstract The use of agricultural residue as a substrate for plant growth is a promising alternative for the cultivation of orchids, whether by providing cost reduction or contributing to minimize pollution through the accumulation of these materials in environment. The objective of this work was to evaluate the development of Cattleya hybrid in substrates based on coffee husk. The experi-ment was in complete randomized design, with six treatments (xaxim; coffee husk; coffee husk + coconut powder; coffee husk + fibered coconut, coffee husk + pinus husk; coffee husk+ carbonized rice husk) and ten replications. After 24 months, some plant traits were evaluated: plant height, number of buds, number of flowers; the largest pseudo-bulb diameter, the longest root length and root dry matter. Chemical analysis and evaluation of pH, electric conductivity, density and water retention ca-pacity of substrates were taken, with exception of the chemical composition of coconut based substrates. There was no sig-nificant difference between the substrates when considering the plant height, number of flower and root dry matter, with an average of 33 cm; 1.1 g, and 3.5 g respectively. Regarding coffee husk and mixtures, no differences were found in the length of roots. Mixing coffee husk with coconut powder increased the number of shoots and diameter of the largest pseudobulbs, whereas mixing coffee husk with carbonized rice husk increased the the number of shoots. The coffee husk can be used in the cultivation of orchid hybrid (