The Cluster Lensing And Supernova survey with Hubble (CLASH) is a 524-orbit Multi-Cycle Treasury Program to use the gravitational lensing properties of 25 galaxy clusters to accurately constrain their mass distributions. The survey, described in detail in this paper, will definitively establish the degree of concentration of dark matter in the cluster cores, a key prediction of structure formation models. The CLASH cluster sample is larger and less biased than current samples of space-based imaging studies of clusters to similar depth, as we have minimized lensing-based selection that favors systems with overly dense cores. Specifically, 20 CLASH clusters are solely X-ray selected. The X-ray-selected clusters are massive (kT > 5 keV) and, in most cases, dynamically relaxed. Five additional clusters are included for their lensing strength (θEin > 35″ at zs = 2) to optimize the likelihood of finding highly magnified high-z (z > 7) galaxies. A total of 16 broadband filters, spanning the near-UV to near-IR, are employed for each 20-orbit campaign on each cluster. These data are used to measure precise (σz ∼ 0.02(1 + z)) photometric redshifts for newly discovered arcs. Observations of each cluster are spread over eight epochs to enable a search for Type Ia supernovae at z > 1 to improve constraints on the time dependence of the dark energy equation of state and the evolution of supernovae. We present newly re-derived X-ray luminosities, temperatures, and Fe abundances for the CLASH clusters as well as a representative source list for MACS1149.6+2223 (z = 0.544).


Purpose - – The purpose of this study is to introduce strategic flexibility as an important dynamic capability into the field of strategic human resource management (SHRM) and explore its mediating role between network-building HR practices for top management team (TMT) and firm performance. Moreover, based on the context of transition economy in China, the authors examine environmental uncertainty as a moderator in these relationships and empirically test the questions above. Design/methodology/approach - – The authors have conducted questionnaire surveys on 780 top managers in 390 companies mainly located in Beijing, Tianjin, Shanghai, Jiangsu and Zhejiang and finally received 241 valid samples. Findings - – The results show that network-building HR practices have positive effects on firm performance and strategic flexibility plays a fully mediating role between them. In addition, environmental uncertainty moderates the relationship between network-building HR practices for TMT and strategic flexibility, while it has no moderating effect in the relationship between strategic flexibility and firm performance. Originality/value - – These conclusions have important implications for the development and application of SHRM in dynamic environments. Theoretically, the authors enrich the functions of network-building HR practices for TMT and provide the evidence to advocate the development of the innovative HR practices in China. In terms of the practical implications of the study, it is argued that network-building HR practices for TMT and strategic flexibility can help firms to deal with uncertainty and achieve high performance, which provides constructive guidance in the development of enterprises in the China's transition economy.


Sinusoidal fluctuations of the flux at the soil surface dampen with depth in the vadose zone such that beyond a certain depth, flow may be approximated as steady. To investigate the damping with depth, we developed a new analytic solution for vertical periodic flow in the vadose zone, with a sinusoidal flux specified at the soil surface. The solution is based on the use of the Gardner–Kozeny model for hydraulic conductivity and soil moisture and on a linearization of the diffusive and advective terms in the governing differential equation. A characteristic length is presented for the damping of the flux with depth. At a depth of three times the characteristic length, the amplitude of the flux had reduced to 5% of the value at the surface. We compared the analytic solution to finite‐element solutions of the original, nonlinear differential equation for 16 soils based on four reference soils, using a daily sinusoidal cycling of evaporation and infiltration at the soil surface. For the soils and circumstances investigated, the analytic solution produced reasonable values of the damping factor at any depth in the soil profile compared with the finite‐element solutions. The solution is more accurate when the fluctuations (both amplitude and period) are smaller. The presented solution may be used for general cases of one‐dimensional infiltration when the surface flux is written as a Fourier series.


IMPORTANCE
Typically developing children who are sensitive to sensory stimulation appear to have more sleep difficulties than children with average sensory sensitivities; however, at what age sleep difficulties emerge and whether they extend to children outside of sleep clinics are unclear.

OBJECTIVE
To investigate cross-sectional and longitudinal relationships between sleep and sensory processing in typically developing infants and toddlers.

DESIGN
Observational; cross-sectional and longitudinal.

SETTING
Community.

PARTICIPANTS
Children (N = 160) enrolled in a larger four-armed randomized controlled trial of overweight prevention in infancy (40 randomly selected from each arm).

OUTCOMES AND MEASURES
Parent-reported sleep patterns at ages 6 mo, 1 yr, 2 yr, and 2.5 yr. Sensory Processing Measure-Preschool questionnaire covering five sensory systems and higher level functions: praxis and social participation at age 2.5 yr. Relationships between sleep and sensory variables were analyzed using multiple linear regression models.

RESULTS
More problematic sleep at age 2.5 yr was associated with more difficulties in social-relational skills (p < .001), a finding supported by the longitudinal data. Longer settling times were associated with higher vision (p = .036) and touch (p = .028) sensitivities at age 2.5 yr; in the longitudinal data (ages 6 mo-2.5 yr), longer settling times were associated with more sensitive hearing (p = .042).

CONCLUSIONS AND RELEVANCE
Results support a link between sleep patterns and sensory processing difficulties in toddlers that, in some, can emerge in infancy. Practitioners should be alert to this association in young children presenting with sensory sensitivity or sleep challenges.

WHAT THIS ARTICLE ADDS
Study findings illustrate that bedtime challenges in typically developing toddlers could be related to sensory processing. A possible way to assist more sensitive children in settling to sleep is to pay attention to visual, tactile, and auditory stimuli that potentially interfere with sleep onset.


Supplemental Digital Content is available in the text. Objective: Macronutrients may relate differently with serum lipids depending on their source, and understanding this relationship is important for cardiovascular disease prevention. We aimed to investigate the associations between macronutrients and macronutrients from different sources with serum lipids in UK Biobank. Approach and Results: Serum lipids were obtained from serum collected at baseline in 24 639 participants with diet assessed using ≥2 twenty-four–hour dietary assessments completed at baseline and during follow-up. Multivariable linear regressions were conducted to calculate geometric mean concentrations of serum lipids by quintiles of macronutrients. We modeled the association between isoenergetic substitution of 5% energy intake from saturated fatty acids (SFA) with other macronutrients and serum lipids. Free sugar intake was positively associated with triglycerides (0.15 mmol/L geometric mean difference between highest and lowest quintile of intake [95% CI, 0.12–0.17 mmol/L]), whereas nonfree sugar intake was inversely associated with triglycerides (−0.08 [−0.10 to −0.05]). SFA intake was positively associated with LDL-C (low-density lipoprotein cholesterol; 0.17 [0.13–0.20]), omega-3 fatty acid intake was inversely associated with triglycerides (−0.15 [−0.17 to −0.12]). Modeled substitution of SFA with polyunsaturated fatty acids was associated with lower total cholesterol, LDL-C, and triglycerides. Conclusions: The relationship between carbohydrates and triglycerides may depend on their quality, and reducing free sugar intake may be important in cardiovascular disease prevention. Consistent with previous studies, SFA intake is associated with LDL-C and substitution of SFA intake with polyunsaturated fatty acids intake may be associated with a more favorable serum lipid profile.


It is widely understood that the environment is critical for the preservation of historic collections and interiors, if the environment is unsuitable it can create an increased risk of damage. In historic houses collections are usually on open display, and the room environment often has little control thus it is vulnerable to changes in the outdoor environment. The future outdoor environment is projected to change so the aim of this work has been to develop a widely applicable model to investigate the potential impact of climate change on historic interiors.
A simple transfer function has been used to predict indoor temperature and relative humidity. The method is widely applicable and easily transferable between unheated buildings. It has been shown that it is important to assess each location and room on an individual basis. The method has been coupled with future climate output, from both the UKCP09 weather generator and the Hadley model, where data has been downscaled.
The high resolution climate output allows for projections of future indoor environment. Future temperature is projected to increase in unheated historic houses around the UK and across Europe, although less than outdoors. Annual average relative humidity is largely unchanged in the future.
Damage functions are used to determine the impact of the future indoor environment on materials. Typically temperature driven damage such as chemical degradation of paper and silk and insect pest activity increase in the future, whereas damage driven by relative humidity, such as salt transitions, depends upon the location assessed. In general risk of mould growth increases, and dimensional changes to wood decrease. The significance of future changes is an important consideration, requiring some further work.
Annual averages are shown to hide seasonal changes, thus it is important to assess these, which can impact upon management strategies. At Knole it is projected that the summer humidity will decrease and the winter humidity increase slightly, which raises the risk of mould growth. The application of conservation heating has been shown to be less effective in future, but is still an effective strategy, although dehumidification may become more appropriate in some locations. The future energy use of conservation heating has a negligible change.
There are a number of inherent uncertainties associated with the models used here. Specifically with climate modelling, future emissions are unknown and the physical processes of the climate are not fully understood. There is a statistical error associated with the transfer function, and the damage functions also have a number of related uncertainties. It is important to consider these when assessing future indoor projections.
The results allow for long term planning by collection managers, to prepare for the impact of climate change, thus preserving heritage for future generations.


An explanation for the spatial variability of seasonal cholera patterns has remained an unresolved problem in tropical medicine. No simple and unified theory based on local climate variables has been formulated, leaving our understanding of seasonal variations of cholera outbreaks in different regions of the world incomplete. A mechanistic model for the Bengal region, which encompasses the variety of seasonal patterns worldwide, may provide a unique opportunity to gain insights on the conditions and factors responsible for endemicity around the globe, and therefore, to also revise our understanding of the ecology of Vibrio cholerae. Through the analysis of a unique historical dataset, we propose the first mechanistic, rainfall-driven, SIR-based stochastic model we are aware of for the population dynamics of cholera, capable of capturing the full range of seasonal patterns in this large estuarine region. Parameter inference was implemented via new statistical methods that allow the computation of maximum-likelihood estimates for partially observed Markov processes through sequential Monte-Carlo. The results indicate that the hydrological regime is a decisive driver determining the seasonal dynamics of cholera. It was found that rainfall and longer water residence times tend to buffer the propagation of the disease in wet regions due to a dilution effect, while also enhancing cholera incidence in dry regions. This indicates that overall water levels matter and appear to determine whether the seasonality is unimodal or bimodal, as well as whether it is pre-, post-, or in-phase with the monsoon. We present evidence that the environmental reservoir is responsible for the persistence of the disease, and therefore its endemicity. Given the undeniable interplay between the seasonality of cholera and the environment, a deeper understanding of the underlying mechanisms could allow for the better management and planning of public health policies with respect to climate. In terms of disease prevention and mitigation strategies this is of paramount importance today, as changes in the population dynamics of infectious diseases are expected in response to fast anthropogenic climate change.


This article is a historical account of the production of opium and its monopoly in early colonial Taiwan. It analyses how the Japanese colonial government successfully turned the "opium problem" in Taiwan into a well-controlled substance on the island and details the mechanisms that led it to be a profitable monopoly business. Taking a material-oriented and STS approach, this research focuses on the practical details of the production of opium pastes. It examines the interplay between the many varieties of opium, local workers and connoisseurs, Japanese technicians and authorities within the laboratory and factory in which opium was studied, analyzed and made. The study of opium monopoly in colonial Taiwan (1895-1945) extends our understanding of opium smoking by showing the impact laboratory and factory, as well as modern measurement and standardization, had on the making and mass-producing of opium pastes in early colonial period, and reminds readers of the power and socioeconomic structure that was behind and sustained these technoscientific practices.


The strategic pendulums of the online video space in China have swung between amateurism and professionalism over the past decade. Coevolving with platform strategies is the expanding online screen ecology, where entrepreneurial creators have become a considerable source of economic and cultural value. This article seeks to go beyond the professional/amateur dichotomy and examine the professionalization of amateur production in China's online video space. It begins by tracing the initial enthusiasm toward user-generated content (UGC), the subsequent frustration and disillusionment, and then the resurgence and revalidation of UGC when platforms attempt to professionalize amateur production with a dynamic perspective. Following that, it analyses prominent productions by professionalizing amateurs, the creative strategies and potential barriers as they negotiate creativity/commerce/community relations, while navigating platform politics and the regulatory landscape. By so doing, this article reveals cultural and political implications of the emerging form of digital entrepreneurship found in professionalizing amateurs in China.


In the spring of 2005, the University of Lancaster was successful in winning a £4.85 million bid to fund a Centre of Excellence in Teaching and Learning (CETL). In common with other CETLs, the Lancaster CETL has the core aim of achieving excellence in teaching, however our specific focus on the development of postgraduate statistics taught both within the discipline of statistics and more broadly in other disciplines is more unique. The award is partially funding a £3.3 million building, the Postgraduate Statistics Centre (PSC), to expand the postgraduate activities of the department and will provide state of the art new teaching spaces for teaching statistics courses. In addition to this, funding has provided the department with several new members of staff and will allow a range of new resources to be developed within the centre. This article will give a general overview of the PSC and will discuss the main aims and objectives of the project followed by a brief summary of our achievements to date.


Type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) is a highly prevalent, progressive disease that often is poorly controlled. The combination of an incretin-based therapy and insulin is a promising approach to optimize the management of glycemic control without hypoglycemia and weight gain. Linagliptin, a recently approved oral dipeptidyl peptidase-4 inhibitor, has a unique pharmacological profile. The convenient, once-daily dosing does not need adjustment in patients with hepatic and/or renal impairment. In clinical studies linagliptin shows an important reduction of blood glucose with an overall safety profile similar to that of placebo. So far, the combination of linagliptin and insulin has been tested in three major clinical studies in different populations. It has been shown that linagliptin is an effective and safe add-on therapy to insulin in patients with T2DM. The efficacy and safety of this combination was also shown in vulnerable, elderly T2DM patients and in patients with T2DM and renal impairment. Favorable effects regarding the counteraction of hypoglycemia make linagliptin especially interesting as an add-on therapy to insulin. This review aims to present the existing clinical studies on the efficacy and safety of linagliptin as add-on therapy to insulin in patients with T2DM in the context of current literature. Additionally, the possible advantages of linagliptin as an add-on therapy to insulin in relation to cardiovascular safety, patient-centered therapy and the prevention of hypoglycemia, are discussed.


OBJECTIVES To describe the distribution of nosocomial infections among surgical patients by site of infection for different types of operations, and to show how the risk of certain adverse outcomes associated with nosocomial infection varied by site, type of operation, and exposure to specific medical devices. DESIGN Surveillance of surgical patients during January 1986-June 1992 using standard definitions and protocols for both comprehensive (all sites, all operations) and targeted (all sites, selected operations) infection detection. SETTING AND PATIENTS Acute care US hospitals participating in the National Nosocomial Infection Surveillance (NNIS) System: 42,509 patients with 52,388 infections from 95 hospitals using comprehensive surveillance protocols and an additional 5,659 patients with 6,963 infections from 11 more hospitals using a targeted protocol. RESULTS Surgical site infection was the most common nosocomial infection site (37%) when data were reported by hospitals using the comprehensive protocols. When infections reported from both types of protocols were stratified by type of operation, other sites were most frequent following certain operations (e.g., urinary tract infection after joint prosthesis surgery [52%]). Among the infected surgical patients who died, the probability that an infection was related to the patient's death varied significantly with the site of infection, from 22% for urinary tract infection to 89% for organ/space surgical site infection, but was independent of the type of operation performed. The probability of developing a secondary bloodstream infection also varied significantly with the primary site of infection, from 3.1% for incisional surgical site infection to 9.5% for organ/space surgical site infection (p < .001). For all infections except pneumonia, the risk of developing a secondary bloodstream infection also varied significantly with the type of operation performed (p < .001) and was generally highest for cardiac surgery and lowest for abdominal hysterectomy. Surgical patients who developed ventilator-associated pneumonia were more than twice as likely to develop a secondary bloodstream infection as nonventilated pneumonia patients (8.1% versus 3.3%, p < .001). CONCLUSIONS For surgical patients with nosocomial infection, the distribution of nosocomial infections by site varies by type of operation, the frequency with which nosocomial infections contribute to patient mortality varies by site of infection but not by type of operation, and the risk of developing a secondary bloodstream infection varies by type of primary infection and, except for pneumonia, by type of operation.


With human rights issues increasingly in the news (the fiftieth anniversary of the Universal Declaration , the Pinochet case, and more), we have seen a renewed interest in extending the concept of rights to nonhuman entities. Despite the wellestablished hesitation or even skepticism about this "extensionism" in the writings of many environmental philosophers, there is an almost casual acceptance of the idea among many others, and an assumption that it must be the next and obvious step for the enlightened mind to take. This essay goes in the opposite direction, examining the arguments for human rights and denying their applicability beyond humanity. Nor do I think rights , within the usual meaning of the word, can be secured for nonhuman entities by any other route. Thomas Sieger Derr, "Human Rights and the Rights of Nature," Journal of Markets & Morality 3, no. 2 (Fall 2000): 173-189


A proposal to harvest and use the water runoff produced in the San Fernando Valley watershed. By mapping the places throughout the San Fernando Valley in which water runoff is wasted, used, sunk into groundwater, or contaminated, Hadley and Peter Arnold argue that even places with water scarcity can maximize their water use with the right type of urban design.


This paper points out a deficiency in virtual worlds as they are
envisioned today. Several of the more important aspects of human
communicative behavior are missing, since there is no way to accommodate
natural linguistic interaction with and through the interface. We point out
some explicit cases where natural language interaction would be useful in a
VR framework, and identify some areas where natural language interpretation
actually might benefit from being situated in a highly formalized
environment.


We report a theoretical study on the optical resolution of coherent nonlinear microscopy by means of double-sided Feynman diagrams. Through the use of the diagrams, we offer a simple technique to calculate the coherent transfer function (CTF), which is employed as the indicator of the optical resolution. In particular, we deal with the CTFs of coherent anti-Stokes Raman scattering (CARS) microscopy and stimulated Raman scattering (SRS) microscopy. Our results show that CARS and SRS microscopy possess nearly identical optical resolutions if a molecular-vibrational frequency of interest is assumed to be negligible compared with excitation photon energy. The peculiar image-formation properties of third-harmonic generation (THG) microscopy also can be explained by our technique.


I wanted to implement a teaching model that requires students to obtain mastery of a concept. Students typically understand the premise of games and how games are played. Gamification requires that students master a specific level or learning objective before continuing on in the course. Although gamification is a relatively new model of instruction, it incorporates elements of standards based grading and mastery learning. The purpose of this study was to determine if gamification increased student achievement, student mastery and student motivation. Learning objectives were separated and all class activities centered on leveled learning objectives. Students were not able to test out of a set of learning goals until they had demonstrated mastery of the content. Student test and quiz scores were recorded over a 27-week period. Students took surveys, participated in interviews and discussions as part of the study as well. Results showed there was a significant increase in scores with implementation of gamification. Particular success was shown in non-honors classes rather than honors courses. Student mastery and achievement increased with implementation because students were not allowed to move forward in content if they did not receive at least an 80% on quiz scores. I will continue to adjust and modify this learning model based on the positive outcomes of the study.


Teacher judgments have been identified as a primary source of information regarding student academic achievement. Research examining the accuracy of teachers' judgments in assessing students' academic abilities has shown relatively high accuracy. However, previous studies have relied primarily on norm-referenced measures to obtain estimates of students' achievement in reading and mathematics. Recent developments in the assessment of students' academic skills, such as Curriculum-Based Measurement (CBM), provide a direct estimate of students' skill levels in basic areas such as reading and mathematics. The purpose of the present study was to examine the extent to which teachers' perceptions of students' reading and mathematics skills corresponded to direct estimates of students' reading and mathematics skills. Two second-grade teachers estimated the reading and mathematics skills of 33 second-grade students. Results of this study indicated that teachers were not accurate in assessing their students' mathematics functioning. Teachers were more accurate in assessing the occurrence of Mastery mathematics levels in basic addition, but were very inaccurate in assessing the occurrence of Mastery, Instructional, or Frustrational mathematics levels in all other skills assessed. In reading, teachers' judgment accuracy varied as a function of grade-level material and instructional level. Specifically, teachers experienced considerable difficulty accurately identifying students who were reading at a Mastery level in grade-level or above-grade-level material. © 2006 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Psychol Schs 43: 247–265, 2006.


In this paper, we address the problem of entity resolution, where given many references to underlying objects, the task is to predict which references correspond to the same object. We propose a probabilistic model for collective entity resolution. Our approach differs from other recently proposed entity resolution approaches in that it is a) unsupervised, b) generative and c) introduces a hidden 'group' variable to capture collections of entities which are commonly observed together. The entity resolution decisions are not considered on an independent pairwise basis, but instead decisions are made collectively. We focus on how the use of relational links among the references can be exploited. We show how we can use Gibbs Sampling to infer the collaboration groups and the entities jointly from the observed co-author relationships among entity references and how this improves entity resolution performance. We demonstrate the utility of our approach on two real-world bibliographic datasets. In addition, we present preliminary results on characterizing conditions under which collaborative information is useful.


In recent decades, peace has been studied as a transdisciplinary issue from the perspective of several disciplinary orientations which include Psychology, Education and more recently Linguistics. In this article, I argue for the contributions of World Englishes and the budding field of Peace Sociolinguistics and describe them as critical to a better understanding of peace dynamics across many areas. Concepts from Peace Studies are used to describe linguistic relations both at the macro and the micro level. In this context, peace and language relate to each other in various ways which include the use of language to achieve a situation of peace, education for peace through language, and finally making peace with languages (such as English) by promoting their harmonizing functions.


We study the impact of legal access to alcohol on a range of behavioral and physical outcomes of U.S. Army soldiers in a regression discontinuity design. The wealth of novel data collected by the military on cognitive ability, psychological health, and family history allows us to explore how impacts vary with risk factors for alcohol consumption. Overall, we observe a large and significant increase in drinking after the 21st birthday, but the increases are largest amongst those who were depressed, had a family history of mental health problems, had better coping ability, and had higher cognitive ability. Despite the large increase in consumption, we do not find any meaningful impacts of legal access to alcohol - overall or in any sub-group - on any of the short-term outcomes we observe, including suicidal tendencies, depression, tobacco use, physical fitness, psychological health, deployability, smoking, and job-related infractions. Acknowledging the limitations for extrapolation out of sample, we discuss the policy implications of our results.


A transmission matrix describes the input-output relationship of a complex wavefront as it passes through/reflects off a multiple-scattering medium, such as frosted glass or a painted wall. Knowing a medium's transmission matrix enables one to image through the medium, send signals through the medium, or even use the medium as a lens. The double phase retrieval method is a recently proposed technique to learn a medium's transmission matrix that avoids difficult-to-capture interferometric measurements. Unfortunately, to perform high resolution imaging, existing double phase retrieval methods require (1) a large number of measurements and (2) an unreasonable amount of computation. In this work we focus on the latter of these two problems and reduce computation times with two distinct methods: First, we develop a new phase retrieval algorithm that is significantly faster than existing methods, especially when used with an amplitude-only spatial light modulator (SLM). Second, we calibrate the system using a phase-only SLM, rather than an amplitude-only SLM which was used in previous double phase retrieval experiments. This seemingly trivial change enables us to use a far faster class of phase retrieval algorithms. As a result of these advances, we achieve a 100x reduction in computation times, thereby allowing us to image through scattering media at state-of-the-art resolutions. In addition to these advances, we also release the first publicly available transmission matrix dataset. This contribution will enable phase retrieval researchers to apply their algorithms to real data. Of particular interest to this community, our measurement vectors are naturally i.i.d. subgaussian, i.e., no coded diffraction pattern is required.


The effect of cellular injury caused by depletion of intracellular ATP stores was studied in the Madin-Darby canine kidney (MDCK) and JTC cell lines. In prior studies, it was shown that ATP depletion uncouples the gate and fence functions of the tight junction. This paper extends these observations by studying the changes in the actin cytoskeleton and tight junction using electron microscopy and confocal fluorescence microscopy in combination with computer-aided three-dimensional reconstruction. Marked regional differences in the sensitivity to the effects of ATP depletion were observed in the actin cytoskeleton. Actin depolymerization appears to first affect the cortical actin network running along the apical basal axis of the cell. The next actin network that is disrupted is the stress fibers found at the basal surface of the cell. Finally, the actin ring at the level of the zonulae occludens and adherens is compromised. The breakup of the actin ring correlates with ultrastructural changes in tight junction strands and the loss of the tight junction's role as a molecular fence. During the process of actin network dissolution, polymerized actin aggregates form in the cytoplasm. The changes in the junctional complexes and the potential to reverse the ATP depletion suggest that this may be a useful method to study junctional complex formation and its relationship to the actin cytoskeletal network.


This paper reports on a study aimed at identifying financial management practices important in explaining farmer satisfaction with their business performance in the dairy farming industry in the state of New South Wales (NSW), Australia. Principal components analysis was performed on survey data from 204 NSW dairy farming businesses measuring the extent to which a wide variety of financial management practices were undertaken. This analysis identified five financial management dimensions: appraisal practices, environmental accounting, budgeting, aid use and analysis practices. Regression analysis, including control variables, indicated that greater emphasis on financial management was associated with greater satisfaction with business performance. Appraisal practices, including calculating the payback period for investments and assessing the relevant costs and benefits of decision alternatives, were found to be particularly important in explaining satisfaction. The emerging techniques of environmental accounting were also found to have a unique relationship with farmer satisfaction. The findings provide further support for prescriptions in the literature that farmers should invest time and effort into financial management.


Masters of the Comic Book Universe Revealed!, by Arie Kaplan. Chicago: Chicago Review Press, 2006. 263 pp. $18.95. From Krakow to Krypton: Jews and Comic Books, by Arie Kaplan; forword by Harvey Pekar and J. T. Waldman. Philadelphia: The Jewish Publication Society, 2008. 225 pp. $25.00. The Jewish contribution to comics in its varied forms - the traditional superhero comic (e.g., Superman), the humor magazine (e.g., MAD Magazine), alternative comics (e.g., RAW), and the graphic novel (e.g., Maus) - is vast and remarkable. Jews have been front and center in all areas of the comics genre, and Arie Kaplan chronicles this fascinating history in From Krakow to Krypton: Jews and Comic Books. An earlier book, Masters of the Comic Book Universe Revealed!, composed of short biographies based heavily on Kaplan's interviews with prominent comics figures, does not focus exclusively on Jewish comic artists and writers. By virtue of the enormous Jewish presence in the comics industry, however, six of the eleven chronologically presented chapters feature Jews (Will Eisner, Jerry Robinson, Stan Lee, Trina Robbins, Art Spiegelman, and Neil Gaiman). Naturally, the first interview in Masters of the Comic Book Universe Revealed! looks at the creator of The Spirit, the head of a seminal cartooning studio, and the father of the graphic novel: Will Eisner. As Kaplan puts it in the reverent tone that permeates much of his book, "What Ibsen was to modern drama, what Chaplin was to film, what Rodgers and Hart were to musical theater, Eisner was to comicdom" (p. 3). Tb be sure, Kaplan's position as an avid comics fan is apparent throughout, but that does not prevent him from offering criticism when warranted; he correctly critiques Eisner's posthumously published graphic work The Plot, a portrayal of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion conspiracy, for its under-attention to imagery and failure to follow the cardinal rule of comics, "show, don't tell" (p. 19), and he honestly describes the touchy subject of in-fighting over credit for comic creations between Bill Finger and Bob Kane (pp. 26-27), and Stan Lee with Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko, among others (pp. 68-71). Along with drawing out his interview subjects' biographical details, struggles in the field to gain recognition, and various comic influences, in the course of the interviews Kaplan sometimes elicits noteworthy anecdotes. Jerry Robinson, for instance, reveals that Batman's sidekick Robin was inspired by N. C. Wyeth's images of Robin Hood (pp. 29-30). Yet, while the book is anchored by interviews, Kaplan weaves a short history of the American comics industry, both Jewish and non-Jewish, throughout. For example, readers learn which comic makers created which characters, who worked with whom, and how comics were perceived at various times - including Frederick Wertham's infamous assertion in his 1954 study Seduction of the Innocent that comic books corrupted readers and caused juvenile delinquency. Some of the interviews with non-Jewish comic creators are worthy of note, especially Gilbert Hernandez, but it seems as if in a few instances Kaplan aimed for diversity rather than talking with the most influential "masters of the universe"; the five gentiles he profiles are Hernandez, a Latino; Kyle Baker, Dwayne McDuffie, and Ho Che Anderson, African Americans; and Marjane Satrapi, an Iranian. It is Satrapi whose inclusion feels the most forced. Certainly Persepolis is a graphic novel milestone, but this work, published in 2003 and followed by Persepolis 2 in 2004 and two other graphic novels before Kaplans book went to press (the movie version of Persepolis had not yet been picked up by a studio), does not a mistress of the universe yet make. Highly influential figures like R. Crumb and Alan Moore, non-Jews, are absent, but perhaps they did not agree to an interview. As for Jews, Aline Kominsky-Crumb would have been an interesting artist to include, as would the writers Chris Claremont and Harvey Pekar. …


Shepard's exponential law provides a functional explanation of generalization. The account complements the more common mechanistic models. The elegant and powerful analyses answer one of Tinbergen's (1963) four whys of behavior: a benefit conferred on the animal by generalizing in this way. A complete account might address evolutionary and developmental questions in addition to mechanistic and functional ones. [Shepard]


Steven Rivkin's widely read "Cable Television: A Guide to Federal Regulations" was written in 1972 and was originally published by the Rand Corporation. It appeared soon after the Federal Communications Commission (following five years' deliberation) had issued its comprehensive regulations regarding cable television, and the book undertook to explain the "intended, likely" meaning of the complex of rules and regulations with which cable television systems were required to be in compliance."A New Guide to Federal Cable Television Regulations" revisits and updates the subject, now that some five years of elaboration and "fine-tuning" in government controls have elapsed. Rivkin examines how these rules and regulations have fared in actual practice and he details the subsequent changes that have been made in them as a result of citizen and industry feedback over the period. He has made full use of the thousands of certifications granted by the FCC and a like number of interpretive proceedings it has held to resolve and refine disputed and ambiguous points.A significant feature of the new book is the material it contains on the expected impact of the new copyright law pertinent to cable television that becomes effective January 1, 1978.In outlining the purpose and structure of his book, the author writes: "Whatever the merit of the FCC's accomplishments, the record of Federal regulation of cable television during the past five years has become a subject worthy of objective study and analysis, whether as a basis for prescribing some future change, as a case study of regulatory triumph, tragedy, or mediocrity (take your pick), or merely to enable the many interests affected by regulation to cope with the volume of particular details spawned by regulation. Whatever the reader's purpose, making such up-to-date wisdom available to whoever wishes to use it is the aim of this book."As in the earlier volume, that ecumenical aim dictates the format of this book. The presentation will seek to attain objectivity, by both articulating the FCC's regulatory posture and identifying unresolved issues known or suspected to exist. Moreover, this book will again attempt to be practically helpful to users however far they may be from the umbilical center of regulation in Washington, D.C. by including in a single sourcebook all key reference materials and forms. (The rules themselves, as in effect in mid-1977, are reproduced as they relate to this commentary, throughout the book, and other useful and exemplary material is contained in the Appendix, complementing the expository sections of the book.) The plan of the book--presenting a summary overview for the general reader in the first chapter, with detailed exploration of particular rules in the ensuing topical chapters--aims to make sense to readers of various orientations, interests, and professional backgrounds who must develop and maintain a working grasp of Federal cable television regulation."This study was undertaken with the support of the National Science Foundation.


The Indonesian market is a critical market to the South East Asian region, being that region's largest economy. The primary sectors of the Indonesian economy, incorporating Agriculture and Mining, are of critical importance to the country, representing approximately one quarter of GDP and providing nearly 40% of the nation's employment. Mining and Agriculture stock returns significantly outperformed the Indonesian Stock Exchange (IDX) composite index in the five years leading up to Global Financial Crisis (GFC), and experienced savage falls during the GFC. Against this background, we examine the market and credit risk of these sectors during the pre-GFC, GFC and post-GFC periods. Market risk is measured using Value at Risk (VaR) and Conditional Value at Risk (CVaR). VaR is a popular metric which measures potential losses over a specific time period, up to a selected threshold. A key downside of this metric is that it says nothing of the extreme risk beyond VaR, which is a major limitation for this study, given the extreme volatility experienced by the primary sectors in Indonesia over the studied period. We therefore also use CVaR, which measures the extreme risk beyond VaR. For credit risk, we use the Merton-KMV Distance to Default (DD) metric, as well as our own Conditional DD (CDD) metric to measure extreme default risk. The key advantage that the Merton-KMV model has over other credit models, it that it incorporates fluctuating asset values. This makes it more responsive to changes in market conditions than most other credit models which remain static between rating periods. The importance of fluctuating asset values in measuring credit risk has been raised by the Bank of England (2008), who make makes the point that not only do asset values fall in times of uncertainty, but rising probabilities of default make it more likely that assets will have to be liquidated at market values. Similar to VaR, the Merton-KMV model has deficiencies in that it uses the standard deviation of asset value fluctuations, which tends to smooth the volatility and does not capture tail risk over that period. Our CDD model is able to measure risk at the most extreme times of the economic cycle, which is precisely when firms are most likely to fail, and when banks are most likely to experience high credit losses. We find that market risk for the primary industries is significantly higher than the broader market, and that there is a relatively higher difference between VaR and CVaR, indicating a higher tail risk. Mining, in particular has a higher market risk than other Indonesian sectors. Interestingly, this is not the case with credit risk, where the risk for Agriculture is lower than the overall market, and the risk for Mining is not significantly different to the overall market. This is because the leverage of a firm is a key component of the Merton-KMV model and we find the leverage for the Agriculture and Mining industries to be far more conservative than the broader market. This means that these primary sectors are able to withstand relatively higher levels of asset volatility. These findings can benefit both lenders and investors when considering the inclusion of these sectors in their investment or loan portfolio mix.


The more complex our cities become, the more difficult it is for designers to use traditional tools for understanding and analyzing the inner essence of an eco-system such as the contemporary urban environment. Even many of the recently crafted digital tools fail to address the necessity for a more holistic design approach which captures the virtual and the physical, the immaterial and the material. Handling of massive chunks of information and classification and assessment of diverse data are nowadays more crucial than ever before. We see a significant potential in combining the fields of composition in music and architecture through the use of information technology. Merging the two fields has the intense potential to release new, innovative tools for urban designers. This article describes an innovative tool developed at the Technical University of Crete, through which an urban designer can work on the music transcription of a specific urban environment applying music compositional rules and filters in order to identify discordant entities, highlight imbalanced parts, and make design corrections. Our cities can be tuned.


EVIDENCE-BASED ANSWER Either oral or vaginal metronidazole or vaginal clindamycin provides equivalent treatment for bacterial vaginosis in nonpregnant women (TABLE). Oral clindamycin 300 mg twice daily for 7 days is an effective alternative. There is conflicting evidence regarding the efficacy of a single 2-g dose of oral metronidazole. Ofloxacin 200 mg or 300 mg twice daily is less effective but could be considered for women with intolerance to metronidazole or clindamycin. Overall recurrence rates of up to 30% have been reported. (Grade of recommendation: A, based on systematic reviews and randomized controlled trials)


We present a novel technique for synthesizing controllers for distributed real-time environments with safety requirements. Our approach is an abstraction refinement extension to the on-the-fly algorithm by Cassez et al. from 2005. Based on partial compositions of some environment components, each refinement cycle constructs a sound abstraction that can be used to obtain under- and over-approximations of all valid controller implementations. This enables (1) early termination if an implementation does not exist in the over-approximation, or, if one does exist in the under-approximation, and (2) pruning of irrelevant moves in subsequent refinement cycles. In our refinement loop, the precision of the abstractions incrementally increases and converges to all specification-critical components. We implemented our approach in a prototype synthesis tool and evaluated it on an industrial benchmark. In comparison with the timed game solver UPPAAL-Tiga, our technique outperforms the nonincremental approach by an order of magnitude.


Precopulatory mate guarding primarily occurs when males encounter receptive females at a low enough rate that such females become a valuable resource once encountered. Such circumstances are common in aquatic crustaceans wherein females are only receptive for a short period directly after molting. In these species, males commonly mate guard by physically attaching themselves to their prospective mates for hours to days at a time. To be effective in mate guarding, males must be able to assess the time to receptivity in their mates, which is commonly via chemical cues associated with molting. Clam shrimp in the genus Eulimnadia exhibit mate guarding, but with an important variation: these species are mixtures of males and hermaphrodites (androdioecy) rather than males and females. Nonetheless, the mate guarding behaviors of these shrimp are much the same as in other aquatic crustaceans. In this study, three projects were undertaken to determine the ability of Eulimnadia texana males to assess hermaphroditic receptivity. Males were found to be unable to assess receptivity without physically contacting hermaphrodites. However, after physical contact, males spent a significantly greater amount of time guarding receptive relative to non-receptive hermaphrodites. Additionally, male interest in mate guarding was highest during the period between the dropping of one clutch of eggs and the extrusion of the following clutch. Because this period is also associated with hermaphroditic molting, it is consistent with the notion that males cue into chemicals associated with molting to determine hermaphroditic receptivity. These findings are consistent with previous studies of mating behavior in this species, and we discuss their importance to future tests of optimal mate guarding planned for these shrimp. Ethology


Deception has been shown to be a complicated cognitive process that utilizes several features of executive control. The question of whether the use of linguistic cues associated with deception varied by level of executive control was investigated. Subjects were tested for level of executive control and then were asked to provide their honest opinion to a current social issue as well as their false opinion to a separate issue in an interview scenario. The responses were videotaped and a researcher coded the subjects' response latency to a series of questions, the subjects' frequency of use of the word "um," and the subjects' use of exclusive words. Results showed that participants used "um" more frequently when telling the truth than when lying. However, no differences were observed between deception conditions in the response latency or use of exclusive words. No relationship was observed between executive control and the three linguistic markers of deception. Despite the lack of significant results, future research may reveal individual differences in linguistic styles of deception with the use of a more sensitive measure of executive control.


Biallelic loss-of-function mutations in the insulin receptor (INSR) commonly cause extreme insulin resistance and early mortality. Therapeutic options are limited, but anti-INSR antibodies have previously been shown to activate two mutant receptors. This study evaluated four murine anti-INSR monoclonal antibodies, each capable of stimulating wildtype INSR signaling, against ten known pathogenic INSR mutants and one novel mutation, F248C. All the mutant INSR bound antibody. Eight mutants showed antibody-induced autophosphorylation while co-treatment with antibody and insulin increased maximal phosphorylation. After simultaneous knockdown of mouse Insr and expression of mutant INSR in 3T3-L1 adipocytes two antibodies activated signaling via AKT preferentially over signaling via ERK1/2 for seven mutants. Two antibodies (83-7 and 83-14) stimulated glucose uptake via P193L, S323L, F382V, and D707A mutant INSR, with antibody response greater than insulin response for D707A. These findings suggest that selected monoclonal anti-INSR antibodies elicit sufficient signaling by some mutated INSR to be clinically significant. One sentence summary Anti-insulin receptor monoclonal antibodies can activate selected naturally occurring mutated human insulin receptors, raising the prospect of novel therapy for lethal recessive insulin resistance.


The wound dressing interface represents the zone of contact between the wound surface and the material applied to it. Professionals choose the right dressing after a clinical wound assessment bearing in mind that the interface is of great importance. Pain management , silver ions or nanodelivered particles, control of exudates and bacteriological balance using antimicrobial materials are all factors impacting on the dressing surface. The dressing interface is so important that some medical materials are specifically designed to relieve pain at dressing change, others to deliver medication continuously , or to increase granulation tissue and enhance the stimulation of fibroblasts. The shape of the dressing, the chemical content and adherence to the tissue are important. Mechanical forces imposed on the wound by the dressing are also relevant, like the foam used in negative pressure therapy.


For autonomous driving application, a car shall be able to track objects in the scene in order to estimate where and how they will move such that the tracker embedded in the car can efficiently alert the car for effective collision-avoidance. Traditional discriminative object tracking methods usually train a binary classifier via a support vector machine (SVM) scheme to distinguish the target from its background. Despite demonstrated success, the performance of the SVM-based trackers is limited because the classification is carried out only depending on support vectors (SVs) but the target's dynamic appearance may look similar to the training samples that have not been selected as SVs, especially when the training samples are not linearly classifiable. In such cases, the tracker may drift to the background and fail to track the target eventually. To address this problem, in this paper, we propose to integrate the point-to-set/ image-to-imageSet distance metric learning (DML) into visual tracking tasks and take full advantage of all the training samples when determining the best target candidate. The point-to-set DML is conducted on convolutional neural network features of the training data extracted from the starting frames. When a new frame comes, target candidates are first projected to the common subspace using the learned mapping functions, and then the candidate having the minimal distance to the target template sets is selected as the tracking result. Extensive experimental results show that even without model update the proposed method is able to achieve favorable performance on challenging image sequences compared with several state-of-the-art trackers.


Patterns of climate variability of the Northern Hemisphere wintertime circulation by Roberta Quadrelli Chair of Supervisory Committee: Professor John M. Wallace Atmospheric Sciences The principal patterns of variability of the extratropical Northern Hemisphere (NH) wintertime circulation are examined. The two-dimensional phase space defined by the two leading PCs of the monthly-mean sea-level pressure (SLP) field poleward of 20N is used as a basis for surveying the structure of the geopotential height and other fields. The leading EOF corresponds to the NH annular mode (NAM) and the second EOF resembles the Pacific-North American (PNA) pattern. Together these two patterns account for roughly half the variance of SLP on interannual time scales and longer, and virtually all the planetary-scale SLP trends over the 42 year period of record. Also, all the most important NH patterns of variability can be described in terms of our two basis functions; therefore, several of the pattern definitions found in the climate literature are shown to be redundant. The relationship between the low frequency variability and time scales closer to the synoptic time scale are investigated by studying the variability observed within four different subsets of the climatology as defined by the high-index and low-index polarities of the 10-day mean projections of the two SLP PCs. The variability of the flow is substantially different within those different mean states. Within the individual subsets of the climatology there are suggestions of multiple circulation regimes; teleconnection patterns for the subsets of the climatology are also discernibly different; cold temperature anomalies associated with low polarities of both PCs are observed more frequently than expected on the basis of linear correlation analysis. These results constitute evidence of non-normal or non-linear behavior of 10-day mean fields, and provide indications that the intraseasonal variability depends on the mean state of the flow in which it is embedded. The latter idea is extended to investigate the effects of changes in the winter mean background flow observed in association with the ENSO cycle upon the extratropical month-to-month variability. The structure of the NAM is shown to be significantly different during warm and cold winters of the ENSO cycle. Furthermore, the observed NH surface trends of the period 1958-99 were much stronger during the years characterized by warm ENSO events.


Liz was the first person in the nation to graduate with a B.S. in Engineering Education from Ohio Northern University with a minor in Mathematics in May, 2014. In generalities, this degree acts as a general engineering degree with a concentration in Computer Science and a Mathematics Education degree with a minor in Mathematics. With this, Liz earned her 7-12 Ohio teaching license in Mathematics. Currently, she is a graduate students at Virginia Tech where she is working on completing her Masters in Data Analytics and Applied Statistics and her PhD in Engineering Education surrounding computer science design standards for cognitively disabled individuals. Liz is a Graduate Assistant for the Instructional Technology Team. She provides technical support for the engineering software used by faculty and students throughout the College of Engineering including DyKnow, OneNote, Microsoft, and Inking. Additional tasks tasks include the support and editing of website content, documentation and creation of software tutorials, teaching of support classes, and support for tablet use.


We conduct experimental games with police applicants in Germany to investigate whether intrinsically motivated agents self-select into this type of public service. Our focus is on trustworthiness and the willingness to enforce norms of cooperation as key dimensions of intrinsic motivation in the police context. We find that police applicants are more trustworthy than non-applicants, i.e., they return higher shares as second-movers in a trust game. Furthermore, they invest more in rewards and punishment when they can enforce cooperation as a third party. Our results provide clear evidence for self-selection of motivated agents into the German police force, documenting an important mechanism that influences the match between jobs and agents in public service. (JEL C91, D73, J41, J45)


Abstract. Ballistic tests were carried out using carbon/epoxy composite panels and standard ball munitions. Impact and residual velocities of the projectiles and damage area, including delamination, of the test panels were measured. FATEPEN prediction and Dyna3D simulation were conducted. Residual velocities and hole areas predicted by FATEPEN are comparable to, but do not accurately agree with, the measured residual velocities and the visible damage areas on the specimens. Residual velocities predicted by Dyna3D are closer to the measured velocities. Similar to the FATEPEN prediction, hole areas predicted by Dyna3D are comparable to the visible damage areas on the specimens. Delamination areas predicted by Dyna3D appear to agree with the measurement reasonably well. Hence Dyna3D appears to be a useful tool for evaluation of delamination and thus structure residual strength of composite panels after ballistic impact.


The objective of this research was to develop a rapid method to measure the air permeability of multiple layers of a coarse‐textured soil column or core. The method required dry air to be pumped through an initially wet soil column, which evaporated the water from the soil within 24 to 48 h. During the drying process, the airflow rate was recorded, and the air pressure was measured at multiple locations along the length of the column. Concurrently, a γ‐ray system was employed to collect water content and dry bulk density measurements. The air permeability as a function of water content was then calculated for each measured interval along the length of the soil column. The method was applied to a hand‐packed soil sample intended to be as homogenous as possible, and it was shown that small variations in bulk density contributed to measurable variation in the resulting air permeability. A two‐layer, hand‐packed soil sample was similarly tested, and the method clearly identified the air permeability of both layers. The method was also successfully performed on an intact heterogeneous field sample collected in a brass sampling tube. Measured air permeabilities from the three tests ranged from 9.8 × 10−13 to 2.1 × 10−10 m2 The method is not appropriate for fine‐textured soils or those that shrink significantly when dried.


In personalized federated learning, each member of a potentially large set of agents aims to train a model minimizing its loss function averaged over its local data distribution. We study this problem under the lens of stochastic optimization, focusing on a scenario with a large number of agents, that each possess very few data samples from their local data distribution. Specifically, we prove novel matching lower and upper bounds on the number of samples required from all agents to approximately minimize the generalization error of a fixed agent. We provide strategies matching these lower bounds, based on a gradient filtering approach: given prior knowledge on some notion of distance between local data distributions, agents filter and aggregate stochastic gradients received from other agents, in order to achieve an optimal bias-variance trade-off. Finally, we quantify the impact of using rough estimations of the distances between local distributions of agents, based on a very small number of local samples.


Multimodal conversational spoken dialogues using physical and virtual agents provide a potential interface to motivate and support users in the domain of health and fitness. In this paper we present how such multimodal conversational Companions can be implemented to support their owners in various pervasive and mobile settings. In particular, we focus on different forms of multimodality and system architectures for such interfaces.


Organized after-school activities promote positive youth development across a range of outcomes. To be most effective, organized activities need to meet high-quality standards. The eight features of quality developed by the National Research Council's Committee on Community-Level Programs for Youth have helped guide the field in this regard. However, these standards have largely been defined in terms of universal developmental needs, and do not adequately speak to the growing ethnic and racial diversity within the United States, which is further complicated by issues of power and social class differences. Given U.S. population shifts and after-school funding priorities, the time has come to consider new ways to provide organized after-school activities that are responsive to youth's culture and everyday lives. The goal of this article is to explore how we can help ensure that after-school activities are culturally responsive and address the specific needs of the youth who participate in these activities. Based on theory and empirical evidence, we provide proposed practices of cultural responsiveness for each of the eight features of quality for program structure and staff. The article concludes with future directions for research and strategies to implement culturally responsive practices and harness resources.


Adolescents living with HIV (ALHIV) face many psychosocial challenges, including HIV disclosure to others. Given the importance of socialization during the adolescent transition process, this study investigated the psychological and social factors influencing self-disclosure of own HIV status to peers. We examined social HIV self-disclosure to peers, and its relationship to perceived HIV-related stigma, self-efficacy to disclose, self-esteem, and social support among a sample of n = 582 ALHIV aged 13–17 years in Kampala, Uganda, and Western Kenya. Data were collected between February and April 2011. Among them, 39% were double orphans. We conducted a secondary data analysis to assess the degree of social disclosure, reactions received, and influencing factors. Interviewer-administered questionnaires assessed medical, socio-demographic, and psychological variables (Rosenberg self-esteem scale; self-efficacy to disclose to peers), HIV-related stigma (10-item stigma scale), and social support (family–life and friends). Descriptive, bivariate, and logistic regression analyses were performed with social self-disclosure to peers with gender as covariates. Almost half of ALHIV had told nobody (except health-care providers) about their HIV status, and about 18% had disclosed to either one of their friends, schoolmates, or a boy- or girlfriend. Logistic regression models revealed that having disclosed to peers was significantly related to being older, being a paternal orphan, contributing to family income, regular visits to the HIV clinic, and greater social support through peers. Low self-efficacy to disclose was negatively associated to the outcome variable. While social self-disclosure was linked to individual factors such as self-efficacy, factors relating to the social context and adolescents' access to psychosocial resources play an important role. ALHIV need safe environments to practice disclosure skills. Interventions should enable them to make optimal use of available psychosocial resources even under constraining conditions such as disruptive family structures.


Wearable cognitive assistance applications can provide guidance for many facets of a user's daily life. This thesis targets the enabling of a new genre of such applications that require both heavy computation and very low response time on inputs from mobile devices. The core contribution of this thesis is the design, implementation, and evaluation of Gabriel, an application framework that simplifies the creation of and experimentation with this new genre of applications. An essential capability of this framework is to use cloudlets for computation offloading to achieve low latency. By implementing several prototype applications on top of Gabriel, the thesis evaluates the system performance of Gabriel under various system conditions. It also shows how Gabriel is capable of exploiting coarse grain parallelism on cloudlets to improve system performance, and conserving energy on mobile devices based on user context.


There are many situations in which a researcher would like to analyse data from a two‐way layout. Often, the assumptions of linearity and normality may not hold. To address such situations, we introduce a semiparametric model. The model extends the well‐known density ratio model from the one‐way to the two‐way layout and provides a useful framework for semiparametric analysis of variance type problems under order restrictions. In particular, the likelihood ratio order is emphasized. The model enables highly efficient inference without resorting to fully parametric assumptions or the use of transformations. Estimation and testing procedures under order restrictions are developed and investigated in detail. It is shown that the model is robust to misspecification, and several simulations suggest that it performs well in practice. The methodology is illustrated using two data examples; in the first, the response variable is discrete, whereas in the second, it is continuous.


Abstract. Among the atmospheric emission sources, wildfires are episodic events characterized by large spatial and temporal variability. Therefore, accurate information on gaseous and aerosol emissions from fires for specific regions and seasons is critical for air quality forecasts. The Spinning Enhanced Visible and Infrared Imager (SEVIRI) in geostationary orbit provides fire observations over Africa and the Mediterranean with a temporal resolution of 15 min. It thus resolves the complete fire life cycle and captures the fires' peak intensities, which is not possible in Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) fire emission inventories like the Global Fire Assimilation System (GFAS). We evaluate two different operational fire radiative power (FRP) products derived from SEVIRI, by studying a large forest fire in Antalya, Turkey, in July–August 2008. The EUMETSAT Land Surface Analysis Satellite Applications Facility (LSA SAF) has higher FRP values during the fire episode than the Wildfire Automated Biomass Burning Algorithm (WF_ABBA). It is also in better agreement with the co-located, gridded MODIS FRP. Both products miss small fires that frequently occur in the region and are detected by MODIS. Emissions are derived from the FRP products. They are used along-side GFAS emissions in smoke plume simulations with the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model and the Community Multiscale Air Quality (CMAQ) model. In comparisons with MODIS aerosol optical thickness (AOT) and Infrared Atmospheric Sounding Interferometer (IASI), CO and NH3 observations show that including the diurnal variability of fire emissions improves the spatial distribution and peak concentrations of the simulated smoke plumes associated with this large fire. They also show a large discrepancy between the currently available operational FRP products, with the LSA SAF being the most appropriate.


Background: Numerous studies have established a higher incidence of psychiatric disorders among general hospital inpatients. Hence we explored if patients in the Intensive Care Units have more psychiatric morbidity due to their longer stay, more critical health conditions, and other stressors. Materials and Methods: A total of 100 patients in the MICU were interviewed using the Symptom Checklist Revised (SCL-90-R) once they got stabilized and just before they were transferred to a step-down ward. Results: Nearly 52% of the participants had no psychiatric morbidity. 36% had mild and 12% had moderate psychiatric morbidity as per the SCL-90-R Scale. There was no participant with severe psychiatric morbidity. Factors such as age, gender, educational level, or duration of stay had no significant influence on the outcome. Among the psychiatric manifestations, interpersonal sensitivity and somatization were found to be the most prevalent symptoms at 60.3% and 59.1%, respectively. Conclusion: Psychiatric morbidity is high among patients in Intensive Care Units, and severity of presentation may also be more than that in general medical patients. Identifying them early and prompt intervention may be necessary to reduce the cost, the duration, and the suffering of the patients.


This lavishly illustrated artist's book is the largest and most ambitious publication yet produced by the Los Angeles-based video artist and photographer Doug Aitken--an artist known for his groundbreaking publications. Featuring a short text by Heidi Zuckerman Jacobson, Director and Chief Curator of the Aspen Art Museum, it focuses on Aitken's still images, more than half of which have never been reproduced before.Known primarily for his multi-screen video installations, Aitken has gained international recognition for his immersive explorations of the experience of time and location. His exhibition at the Aspen Art Museum was the first dedicated solely to his photography. From nighttime cityscapes to deserted gas stations, airports and bus depots, Aitken's dreamlike photographs contain the same spatial and temporal dislocation and narrative suggestion as his installations.


PurposeThe study aims to analyze the posts shared by public libraries in Turkey on their official Facebook pages. The targets of the study are to detect content categories shared by the libraries and to describe user interaction of libraries on the basis of their posted content.Design/methodology/approachThe study examined data relating to 23,027 posts shared by 116 public libraries through descriptive and content analyses. The content analysis on the posts identified general topic and sub-topics through both machine-tagging and checks by the authors. Turkish word parsing applications and stop lists were employed in the designation of sub-categories. In this process, word clusters were identified to allow for the designation of sub-topic headings through the use of the Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) technique.FindingsThe present study identified that a significant portion of the 116 public libraries in Turkey with official Facebook pages had started to use this platform in the year 2017. According to the findings, the user interaction of libraries generally occurs in the form of likes. Analyses on the topic categories of the posts established that a remarkable number of public libraries in Turkey targeted users from pre-school children to young adults.Originality/valueThe study contributes to the existing body of literature as one of the first research studies describing the current situation concerning public libraries in Turkey through the analysis of the content they generate on Facebook pages.


Figure 1. Model for the role of LRP-2 in vulval lineage cell polarity: LRP-2 is proposed to work with CAM-1 and VANG-1 to respond to the Wnt protein EGL-20 and stabilize SYS-1 in the posterior daughter of a vulval precursor cell. Description We investigated the role of the low-density lipoprotein receptor lrp-2 in C. elegans vulval cell lineage polarity. We find that despite the high conservation of the Wnt signaling component, LRP5/6, in higher order organisms it appears to have evolved after the split of Nematoda due to its absence in all nematode genomes examined. C. elegans contains multiple low-density lipoprotein receptors within its genome, two of which are lrp-1 and lrp-2. Due to the position in the genome and high sequence similarity we believe that lrp-2 is the product of a recent duplication of lrp-1 within the Caenorhabditis lineage (Minor and Sternberg, 2019d). To understand the potential role of lrp-1 and lrp-2, we sought to score the vulval phenotypes of these mutants during L4 stage. lrp-1(ku156) mutants are sick and arrest during an early larval stage. For this reason we were not able to examine the role of lrp-1 in vulval formation. Despite high sequence similarity and proposed functional redundancy with lrp-1, lrp2 mutants are remarkably wild-type. lrp-2 is expressed in the developing vulva at the same time as both cam-1 and vang1. By examining double and triple mutant strains we find that lrp-2 is likely to function downstream of egl-20 along with transmembrane proteins cam-1 and vang-1 (Minor and Sternberg, 2019b; Minor and Sternberg, 2019c). All three genes antagonize the lin-17/Frizzled pathway by directing the aberrant localization of SYS-1 to the posterior daughter cell of P7.p, thereby leading to the posterior orientation of the P7.p lineage (Minor and Sternberg, 2019a). These observations suggest the simple model shown in Figure 1, in which LRP-2 cooperates with CAM-1 and VANG-1 to respond to EGL20. This work provides evidence that despite lacking a true LRP5/6 ortholog, the formation of the C. elegans vulva is controlled by another member of the low-density lipoprotein superfamily, lrp-2. This data could potentially lead to insight into the evolution of both structure and function of the highly important Wnt pathway component, LRP5/6. Despite strong genetic evidence, this work does not describe the physical interaction between LRP-2 and CAM-1, VANG-1, EGL-20. Can LRP-2 bind with the other transmembrane proteins, CAM-1 and VANG-1, involved in this pathway? Can LRP-2 physically bind the Wnt ligand, EGL-20? Future work should focus on the biochemistry of this pathway. Answers to these questions could provide interesting insights into the evolution of low-density lipoprotein receptors, including LRP5/6, as 8/27/2019 Open Access well as how Wnt signaling has evolved within nematodes without the presence of one of the most important and highly conserved transmembrane proteins. Reagents Strains: Strains obtained from the CGC and provided by the C. elegans Reverse Genetics Core Facility at the University of British Columbia, which is part of the international C. elegans Gene Knockout Consortium. MH210: lrp-1(ku156)/gld-1(q266) VC621: lrp-2(gk292) VC543: lrp-2(gk272) References Minor, P.J. and Sternberg, P.W. (2019a). LRP-2 control the localization of C. elegans SYS-1/beta-catenin. microPublication Biology. 10.17912/micropub.biology.000151 DOI: 10.17912/micropub.biology.000151 Minor, P.J. and Sternberg, P.W. (2019b). LRP-2 functions in vulval precursor cell polarity. microPublication Biology. 10.17912/micropub.biology.000152 DOI: 10.17912/micropub.biology.000152 Minor, P.J. and Sternberg, P.W. (2019c). LRP-2 likely acts downstream of EGL-20/Wnt. microPublication Biology. 10.17912/micropub.biology.000153 DOI: 10.17912/micropub.biology.000153 Minor, P.J. and Sternberg, P.W. (2019d). Low density lipoprotein receptors LRP-1 and LRP-2 in C. elegans. microPublication Biology. 10.17912/micropub.biology.000154 DOI: 10.17912/micropub.biology.000154 Funding: Howard Hughes Medical Institute, with whom PWS was an Investigator. The National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke of the National Institutes of Health under award number 1F32NS098658-01A1 awarded to PJM. Reviewed By: David Eisenmann History: Received July 29, 2019 Accepted August 26, 2019 Published August 27, 2019 Copyright: © 2019 by the authors. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. Citation: Minor, PJ; Sternberg, PW (2019). The role of lrp-2 in C. elegans vulval cell lineage polarity. microPublication Biology. https://doi.org/10.17912/micropub.biology.000155 8/27/2019 Open Access


The received wisdom suggests that Unix's unusual combination of fork() and exec() for process creation was an inspired design. In this paper, we argue that fork was a clever hack for machines and programs of the 1970s that has long outlived its usefulness and is now a liability. We catalog the ways in which fork is a terrible abstraction for the modern programmer to use, describe how it compromises OS implementations, and propose alternatives. As the designers and implementers of operating systems, we should acknowledge that fork's continued existence as a first-class OS primitive holds back systems research, and deprecate it. As educators, we should teach fork as a historical artifact, and not the first process creation mechanism students encounter.


Some of the most challenging issues in data outsourcing scenario are the enforcement of authorization policies and the support of policy updates. Ciphertext-policy attribute-based encryption is a promising cryptographic solution to these issues for enforcing access control policies defined by a data owner on outsourced data. However, the problem of applying the attribute-based encryption in an outsourced architecture introduces several challenges with regard to the attribute and user revocation. In this paper, we propose an access control mechanism using ciphertext-policy attribute-based encryption to enforce access control policies with efficient attribute and user revocation capability. The fine-grained access control can be achieved by dual encryption mechanism which takes advantage of the attribute-based encryption and selective group key distribution in each attribute group. We demonstrate how to apply the proposed mechanism to securely manage the outsourced data. The analysis results indicate that the proposed scheme is efficient and secure in the data outsourcing systems.


Teenage talk is fascinating, though so far teenage language has not been given the attention in linguistic research that it merits. The dearth of investigations into teenage language is due in part to under representation in language corpora. With the Bergen Corpus of London Teenage Language (COLT) a large corpus of teenage language has become available for research. The first part of Trends in Teenage Talk gives a description how the COLT corpus was collected and processed; the speakers are presented with special emphasis on the recruits and their various backgrounds; ending with a description what the COLT teenagers talk about and how they do it. The second part of the book is devoted to the most prominent features of the teenagers' talk: 'slanguage'; how reported speech is manifested; a survey of non-standard grammatical features; the use of intensifiers; tags; and interactional behaviour in terms of conflict talk.


Abstract The intense heat and pressure resulting from the detonation of the world's first nuclear device in the New Mexico desert, July 16, 1945, severely altered the arkosic sand, producing the fused, glassy material referred to as Trinitite. The study of Trinitite is key to the development of nuclear forensic techniques that can provide crucial information about a nuclear event, such as device composition and radionuclide distribution. Moreover, nuclear blasts are often considered analogs to catastrophic natural events such as meteorite impacts, and it is well-documented that with increasing impact severity, zircon and quartz grains deform systematically. In Trinitite, a sufficient number of primary quartz and zircon grains remain identifiable. Here, a multi-technique approach (focused ion beam, scanning electron microscopy, transmission electron microscopy, and micro-Raman spectroscopy) is employed to study the micrometer-to-nanometer-scale deformation features in altered grains of zircon and quartz to constrain blast pressure and temperature conditions. Trinitite zircon grains consistently show an outer halo of fibrous baddeleyite, radiating from a relatively unaltered core; HRTEM images show complex twinning, likely originating from an intermediate, tetragonal zirconia precursor. Trinitite quartz grains show various states of melting that appear to vary predictably with depth below the surface of the desert sand. Grains occurring deeper than ~1.5 cm are crystalline, with occasional planar fractures at the optical scale. At shallower depths, a systematic increase in quartz vitrification is observed. Considered together, these data suggest maximal temperatures in excess of 1500 °C and pressures of <10 GPa, the latter being considerably less than for any natural impact event. Taken in a broader context, the implications of this work extend toward exploiting the use of advanced imaging techniques to improve our understanding of mineral processes in extreme, non-equilibrium environments at the near-atomic scale.


Objectives - To describe the practical difficulties experienced by patients when completing the Oxford hip score, and to highlight the need to reconsider aspects of its structure and conceptual base. Design - Qualitative study incorporating the Oxford hip score in semi-structured interviews with patients before and four months after their operation. Setting - Two hospitals in the North of England. Subjects - Osteoarthritic patients undergoing primary elective total hip replacement. Results - Use of the Oxford hip score provided quantitative data on disability in the sample, particularly about pain and immobility. It also facilitated the collection of qualitative data, serving as a useful starting point for interviews and as a prompt for indepth discussion. Concerns about the clarity, coverage, and content validity of the score were identified, however, raising questions about the measure's conceptual base. Conclusion - The Oxford hip score was found to be a useful precursor to the semi- structured interviews. However, deficiencies in instruction and lack of clarity in purpose have implications for its ongoing development and future application, both in this type of study and other, more general, contexts.


The recent events that followed the US decision not to comply with the Kyoto Protocol seem to drastically undermine the effectiveness of the Protocol in controlling GHG emissions. Therefore, it is important to explore whether there are economic factors and policy strategies that might help the US to modify its current policy and move back to the Kyoto-Bonn agreement. For example, can an increased participation of developing countries induce the US to effectively participate in the effort to reduce GHG emissions? Is a single emission trading market the appropriate policy framework to increase participation in the Kyoto-Bonn agreement? This paper addresses the above questions by analysing whether the participation of China in the cooperative effort to control GHG emissions can provide adequate incentives for the US to move back to the Kyoto process and eventually ratify the Kyoto Protocol. This paper analyses three different climate regimes in which China could be involved and assesses the participation incentives for the major world countries and regions in these three regimes.


Mandating interactive governance arenas presents itself as an appealing strategy for determined public policy-makers at the frontier of New Public Governance. Yet, it also confronts researchers and practitioners with a new set of policy execution problems that prompts re-examination of one of the oldest research questions in public administration research: how and why the high hopes of central policy-makers are (not) translated into practice. By combining insights from the public policy implementation literature, network governance literature and theories of institutional design, the article suggests an analytical framework for studying top-down implementation of interactive governance arenas. The framework enables researchers and practitioners to identify a number of critical junctions in the implementation process with important implications for the final design of the interactive arenas. To demonstrate the usefulness of the framework, a longitudinal case-analysis of the implementation of ten Local Crime Prevention Councils in one of twelve Danish police districts is conducted. Finally, the article advances a set of propositions on the specific dynamics of top-down implementation of mandated governance arenas and contemplates three types of managerial strategies for successfully setting up New Public Governance structures.


UNLABELLED
This study aims to evaluate whether indoor particles are associated with elevated blood pressure (BP) and heart rate (HR). We recruited 40 young, healthy students from universities in Taipei. We made four home visits in which we took consecutive 48-h measurements of systolic BP, (SBP) diastolic BP (DBP), and HR in each participant. Particulate matter less than 10 microm in diameter (PM(10)), 2.5 microm in diameter (PM(2.5)), and nitrogen dioxide levels were measured at each participant's home. Participants were asked to keep their windows open during the first two visits, and keep their windows shut during the last two visits. We used linear mixed-effects models to associate BP and HR with indoor air pollutants averaged over 1- to 8-h periods prior to physiological measurements. We found indoor PM(10) and PM(2.5) exposures at 1- to 4-h means were associated with an elevation in SBP, DBP, and HR. Effects of indoor PM(10) and PM(2.5) on BP and HR were greatest during the visits with windows open. During windows-closed visits, participants showed no significant change in BP and HR with indoor PM(10) exposure. We concluded that exposures to infiltrated outdoor particles are associated with short-term increases in BP and HR in young and healthy students. Closing windows can reduce indoor PM concentrations and modify the effect of PM(10) on BP and HR in young adults.

PRACTICAL IMPLICATIONS
Particulate matter exposure, high blood pressure (BP) and heart rate (HR) have been reported to be associated with increased risk of cardiovascular morbidity and mortality. Exposure to indoor particles is found to be associated with Elevated BP and HR. Closing windows may reduce indoor particles concentrations and modify the effect of particles on BP and HR in young adults in heavily polluted cities.


The final, unfinished project of the Hamburg art historian and Kulturwissenschaftler Aby M. Warburg (1866–1929)—the so-called Mnemosyne image atlas (Bilderatlas)—has recently drawn increased attention not only from scholars but also from artists and museum curators. Within this reception, the idea has gained currency that Warburg's strategy of image arrangement in the Mnemosyne atlas bears a significant relationship to the techniques and aesthetics of cinema. Yet little evidence exists that Warburg ever paid much attention to cinema's formal or technical means of expression, or much enjoyed going to the movies. How, then, has it become a critical commonplace that Warburg's late methods of ordering images resemble, especially, Soviet methods of film montage? The first two parts of this article show how such comparisons may be inaccurate or misleading. The third part argues that Warburg's conception of the Mnemosyne atlas and of the related late Bilderreihen (image series) was conditioned more by a historical understanding of print media than by any relationship to cinema.


Thesis (M.A.L.S.)--Georgetown University, 2009.; Includes bibliographical
 references. Ancient Rome had a longstanding history of conflict with Eastern queens beginning,
 before its very foundation, with Dido and most famously exemplified by Cleopatra. Literature
 suggests powerful women from the East were particularly feared and loathed. Yet the Palmyrene
 ruler Zenobia, who claimed descent from Cleopatra and briefly conquered Egypt, was reportedly
 admired and, once vanquished by Aurelian, was allowed to retire comfortably to a villa in
 Tivoli. By examining surviving historical texts of the 3rd century, and comparing them with
 surviving historical and literary texts from the Augustan age, this thesis will postulate why
 the Roman perception of Zenobia appears to have differed so radically. It will conclude that
 Aurelian, who was markedly sensitive to his public image, waged a propaganda campaign that
 emulated that of Augustus in some respects, but ultimately differed because he needed for
 Zenobia to be admired in order to justify his victory over a woman.


Innovativeness is considered to be an important factor for firm's survival and their ability to compete in today's market. Therefore, researchers have become more interested in studying innovativeness and its drivers. Studies have also showed that there's a positive relationship between environmental uncertainty and innovativeness. Organisations are responsive to turbulent environments through innovativeness in order to stay competitive and improve performance. The purpose of this thesis is to rank critical environmental factor's effect on organisational innovativeness of small and medium enterprises in Sweden, through investigating the impact of market/demand turbulence and technological turbulence on innovativeness. Additionally, we want to examine the relationship between innovativeness and business performance, as well as the indirect relationship between environmental uncertainty and performance. Based on previous literature, we have developed hypotheses and proposed a research model to study the formulated problems. Data for the study were collected from 50 SMEs in Sweden, through a survey with well-known scales and were analysed using regression analysis. The results of the study, reveal that environmental uncertainty has a positive effect on the innovativeness of SMEs. In addition, technological turbulence showed to have a positive significant effect on an SME's innovativeness; however, contrary to general belief, market/demand turbulence did not have any prominent effect. Our findings also proved that innovativeness have a strong positive impact on business performance, and that only technological turbulence have an indirect influence on performance through innovativeness. This study aimed to contribute to the management a better understanding, of which conditions of environmental turbulences SMEs should adapt to, in order to increase their level of innovativeness. Keywords: environmental uncertainty, organizational innovativeness, performance, market/demand turbulence, technological turbulence, SMEs.


Complete Streets is a national movement that promotes accessibility for all users. Typical Complete Streets components accommodate pedestrians, bicycles, transit users, personal vehicles and freight trucks. A growing number of communities in Washington State and nationwide have existing Complete Streets policies or ordinances. Washington State passed a Complete Streets Bill (HB 1071) that went into effect July 2011, creating a program that would provide grants to communities that met appropriate criteria. Washington State is initiating a Grant Program that would provide a funding source for Complete Streets and Main Street Highways projects. There are 500 miles of Main Streets in Washington State that are also State Highways. Complete Streets and Main Street Highways treatments must be context-specific based on size, location, and community needs. The Complete Streets and Main Street Highways conversation is a continuum, encompassing a range of project size, scope, and systems.


In these LiveLessons, Jiva DeVoe covers the advanced features of the Objective-C language. Viewers will learn how to use blocks, use categories to extend the capabilities of existing classes, use keyvalue coding and keyvalue observing, use threading to harness the power of multiprocessor and multicore machines, understand design patterns e commonly used in Objective-C, and how to serialize and deserialize objects to property lists and to JSON strings. Finally, the video covers best practices for programming clean code in Objective-C. When viewers have completed these lessons, they will have an understanding of the necessary aspects of Objective-C that are needed to begin writing applications using cocoa and cocoa touch.

About the Author:
Jiva DeVoe is the founder of Random Ideas, LLC, a software company specializing in iPhone and Mac OS X applications. He's an author, blogger and software developer with nearly 20 years of experience in the software industry. Today, Jiva works primarily with Objective-C, Cocoa and Cocoa Touch, developing applications for the iPhone and Mac OS X. Jiva has written several award winning apps and is the author of Objective-C Developer Reference and Cocoa Touch for iPhone OS 3 Developer Reference. Contact Jiva through his blog at www.random-ideas.net.


Background— The aim of the present study was to estimate the impact of inherited thrombophilia (IT) on the risk of venous thromboembolism (VTE) onset and recurrence in children by a meta-analysis of published observational studies. Methods and Results— A systematic search of electronic databases (Medline, EMBASE, OVID, Web of Science, The Cochrane Library) for studies published from 1970 to 2007 was conducted using key words in combination as both MeSH terms and text words. Citations were independently screened by 2 authors, and those meeting the inclusion criteria defined a priori were retained. Data on year of publication, study design, country of origin, number of patients/controls, ethnicity, VTE type, and frequency of recurrence were abstracted. Heterogeneity across studies was evaluated, and summary odds ratios and 95% CIs were calculated with both fixed-effects and random-effects models. Thirty-five of 50 studies met inclusion criteria. No significant heterogeneity was discerned across studies. Although >70% of patients had at least 1 clinical risk factor for VTE, a statistically significant association with VTE onset was demonstrated for each IT trait evaluated (and for combined IT traits), with summary odds ratios ranging from 2.63 (95% CI, 1.61 to 4.29) for the factor II variant to 9.44 (95% CI, 3.34 to 26.66) for antithrombin deficiency. Furthermore, a significant association with recurrent VTE was found for all IT traits except the factor V variant and elevated lipoprotein(a). Conclusions— The present meta-analysis indicates that detection of IT is clinically meaningful in children with, or at risk for, VTE and underscores the importance of pediatric thrombophilia screening programs.


Cardiologists using intravascular ultrasound (IVUS) towards the end of the past millennium can recall the time when enthusiasm for a method that was initially seen purely as a powerful research tool began to be substituted by the awareness that intravascular imaging had the potential to revolutionise our understanding of the mechanisms of coronary interventions. Such a revolution occurred in Milan when Antonio Colombo and his group applied ultrasound to elucidate the mechanism of stent thrombosis, at that time common despite high levels of anticoagulation.1

Many early adopters of optical coherence tomography (OCT) have a similar perception now. A research tool initially confined to the interest of a few connoisseurs has now achieved more widespread attention, including among some practitioners not previously known to be particularly interested in intravascular imaging. Such is the rapidity of the phenomenon that it has caught most OCT experts by surprise, as well as the few current manufacturers of commercially available systems. This change is mainly attributed to a recent technical development—namely, the increased acquisition rate allowed by frequency domain OCT. A rapid pull-back at a speed of 2 cm/s minimises the amount of contrast required to clear blood during image acquisition, with an average injection of 15–18 ml now required for the maximal imaging length currently available of 5.6 cm.2 3 A further reason, however, is often neglected. The crisp separation between vessel wall and lumen and the definition of stent struts provided by …