Peer learning means learning from and with each other. Collaboration and co-operation in a friendly environment is, however, something that is neither easy nor obvious for students attending the university. Though, different methods and technological solutions can be implemented to facilitate and improve peer learning as well as dialogue and reflection. The aims of this thesis were to study the implementation and use of inno-vative methods and technologies, and its effects on the learning process in mediated peer learning in higher education, as well as methods for facilitating peer learning through students' individual and group reflection. The aim was also to study end-user involvements in the development processes. Dialogue sheets as a medium, i.e. a large sheet of paper with questions (about learning and reflection in this case) printed around its perimeter as support and guidance to the dialogue, have been investigated. Furthermore, the use of peer-to-peer (P2P) technology as mediator in learning has also been studied. The use of P2P technology in learning can be encapsulated in the expression peer-to-peer learning, hence the title "Mediated peer (to peer) learning". In addition, the evolvement of content-based services in the 3G market has also been studied, introducing a proposed general interpretation of how technology evolution affects the players in a certain market. Dialogue sheets and P2P technology are but two examples of media enhancing peer learning. Many other forms of media can of course enhance peer learning as well, but as computers and the Internet are considered to be the media into which all previous media converge, the thesis starts with the "oldest" medium, the paper, and ends with the "newest" medium, the Internet. The conclusions of this thesis can be summarised as: The future of learning involves various media enhancing the learning experience. The development and evolution of these media should be the result of cooperation and interaction between learners, teachers, and the university. Failing to cooperate can cause serious problems for the universities. By building and maintaining an infrastructure, both analogue and digital, the learning institutions can enable flexible learning, including peer learning, utilising multiple media forms, and also support learners' indi-vidual learning styles, i.e. promote the learner-centric approach to learning, as well as increase the need for and appreciation of teachers as guides and mentors. • By promoting various forms of mediated learning, including P2P technology solutions, teachers and universities can contribute to the defusing of P2P in the public debate, as also socially unquestionable activities then can be associated with the technology. They also foster students in respecting others' intellectual rights, and can promote alternative copyright schemes, such as creative common


The proposed Surface Water and Ocean Topography (SWOT) mission will provide global, space-based estimates of water elevation, its temporal change, and its spatial slope for terrestrial water bodies. Using derivations of water slope from the Shuttle Radar Topography Mission (SRTM) elevation data, river bathymetry and Manning's equation, the potential of SWOT for discharge estimation of large braided rivers in humid climates, such as the Brahmaputra river, was found to be promising (Jung , in Earth Surface Processes and Landforms, 2010). In this study we extend the work on assessing SWOT for braided rivers to understand the sensitivity of two river hydraulic parameters to discharge estimation: 1) section factor (AR2/3) derived from land-water classification and in situ river bathymetry and 2) Manning's roughness coefficient. For braided rivers, the first parameter, is intimately dependent on how braided rivers are classified of the multiple channels (water) and in-stream braided bars (land) that consequently dictates the accuracy of wetted perimeter and area of flow estimation from water elevation data. We show that the use of the minimum water elevation data at a river cross section minimizes estimation of section factor which consequently minimizes outlier discharge estimation reported in the Jung study. We also show that by treating roughness coefficient "flexible" as a calibration parameter, discharge estimation from SRTM elevation data can be further improved through trial and error manual optimization. Our sensitivity study illustrates the value of treating section factor and roughness coefficient as calibration parameters for data assimilation systems that use SWOT observables to estimate river discharge in braided rivers.


Horses played a vital role in the economy of pre-industrial England. They acted as draught animals, pulled ploughs, waggons and coaches, worked machines, and transported goods around the country. As saddle animals they enabled their riders to carry out a wide variety of tasks, and at all levels of society they were regarded as status symbols in a unique relationship with man shared by no other animal. During the Tudor and Stuart period, horses were needed in ever-growing numbers, and for a greater variety of tasks. As demand grew, improvements became necessary in the means of supply and distribution. The agents of change, the specialist dealers, were often condemned as rogues and cheats, whose actions raised prices and caused shortages. Dr Edwards argues that, far from being generally unscrupulous, the dealers were no better or worse than those amongst whom they lived and worked.


Senator John McCain was born a citizen in 1936. Professor Gabriel J. Chin challenges this view in this Symposium, arguing that McCain's birth in the Panama Canal Zone (while his father was stationed there by the Navy) fell into a loophole in the governing statute. The best historical evidence, however, suggests that this loophole is an illusion and that McCain is a "natural born Citizen" eligible to be president.A person need not be born on U.S. soil to be a citizen at birth. Section 1993 of the Revised Statutes, the statute defining foreign-born citizenship at the time of McCain's birth, made citizens of certain children "born out of the limits and jurisdiction of the United States." The Canal Zone was "out of the limits" of the United States -- i.e., outside its borders and outside the Fourteenth Amendment's grant of citizenship to those born "in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof." But the United States had exclusive control of the Canal Zone at the time, arguably placing it within U.S. "jurisdiction" if not its limits. Thus, Chin claims, McCain was not "born out of the limits and jurisdiction of the United States," falling instead into a "gap in the law." When Congress changed the law in 1937, it would have been too late for McCain to become a natural born citizen (assuming, with Chin, that this means a citizen at birth).Chin's sophisticated analysis deserves to be taken seriously, but history may point in another direction. The key statutory language, "the limits and jurisdiction of the United States," was first added in 1795. At the time, this language apparently referred to a unitary concept -- the United States proper, the area within its borders-rather than two independent concepts of "limits" and "jurisdiction." Like "metes and bounds" or "cease and desist," the phrase was a mere repetition -- a doublet, or (in the words of Judge Posner) one of the many "form[s] of redundancy in which lawyers delight." To be born "out of the limits and jurisdiction of the United States," it seems, was historically understood as synonymous -- and not just coextensive -- with being born outside the United States proper.The historical usage of the phrase and its continuous construction over the first century after 1795 supports this reading. Early interpreters -- including scholars, congressmen, and state and federal courts -- repeatedly referred to the "limits and jurisdiction" of the United States to mean the same thing as the nation's "limits" (i.e., its borders). Indeed, the term "limits and jurisdiction" was frequently used this way in contexts unrelated to citizenship. When separate requirements of limits and jurisdiction might otherwise have conflicted, courts and commentators uniformly adhered to a unitary interpretation of the statute. This interpretation was also consistent with the recognized purposes of the citizenship statutes, avoiding the absurdities of a restrictive reading. Only recently have some questioned this traditional interpretation; but because Congress did not alter the key language between 1795 and 1936, the provision's original meaning was preserved up to the date of McCain's birth. Thus, the balance of the evidence favors a view that John McCain -- and other children like him -- were citizens of the United States from birth.


The EU decarbonization strategy foresees deep cuts in CO2 in the transport sector. Investment in infrastructure, manufacturing of new technology vehicles and production of alternative fuels induce macroeconomic changes in activity and employment for both national and regional economies. The objective of the paper is to present a newly built macroeconomic-regional model (GEM-E3-R general equilibrium model for economy, energy and environment for regions) for assessing impacts of transport sector restructuring on regional economies of the entire EU, segmented following NUTS-3 (nomenclature of territorial units of statistics). The model combines general economic equilibrium theory with location choice and New Economic Geography and implements a dynamic, fully endogenous agglomeration-dispersion mechanism for people and industries coupled with a gravity model for bilateral interregional flows. A novelty of the model is a two-layers structure: (i) the country-wide layer formulated as a global multi-sector, multi-country and multi-period computable general equilibrium (CGE) model; and (ii) the regional economy layer, which simulates impacts on regional economies, while considering country-wide economic trends as boundary conditions. The paper presents a use of the model in the assessment of regional economic effects of electrification of car mobility in Europe and wide use of domestically produced advanced biofuels.


As the project management techniques get applied to more and more human resource intensive projects, the topic of more effective resource planning has become one of the major issues in project planning and control. In most of computerized project management systems currently available, however, the resource management is not adequately handled. The problem stems from the fact that resource planning is handled separately from scheduling activities; first, activities are scheduled, then, resource constraints are considered. By handling otherwise closely related activity scheduling and resource planning separately in a sequential manner, project management systems quite often schedule activities in a time period even when the required resources are not available, or take too conservative an approach in scheduling activities by unnecessarily delaying the whole activity instead of just stretching out the activity (or, 'thinning out resource requirements'). This problem normally results in misinforming the project management staff on the project target schedule, and eventually leads to project delays and claims. This paper presents the Resource-Driven Scheduling (RDS) approach where the activity scheduling and resource scheduling are combined into a single process. This framework provides a flexible and comprehensive way to integrate the scheduling aspect and the resource planning aspect in project management. This approach is also a more natural and practical one in that it represents more accurately the way most project management staff think and operate.


In high-resolution MCS data from Yaquina Basin off Peru we observed various intricate reflection patterns related to gas and gas-hydrate. The BSR variations classify theprofile into five areas: Where the BSR follows stratigraphy, it is disrupted by several faults but strong in amplitude. Reflection amplitudes from the overburden are reduced.Blanking occurs beneath the BSR. Continuing down slope where the BSR crosses stratigraphy the BSR amplitude decreases, reflections from above and beneath haveregular strength. Further down slope BSR continuity dissolves into a patchy occurrence with blanking beneath. Up slope the BSR continues with reduced reflectionamplitude and touches the sea floor. Towards coastline the BSR disappears completely.One of the most important tools to unravel the origin of the reflections is the high resolution velocity analysis of OBS data. On top of the MCS line a OBS/OBH profile hasbeen shot. Sources were two 1.7 l GI-guns (Sodera) with a peak frequency of 80 - 100 Hz. Eleven OBS/OBH of the GEOMAR type recorded with a sampling rate of 1 ms. Thisdata set allows a high resolution velocity analysis. Two different processing flows have been applied to the data. The data have undergone a Kirchhoff wave-equationdatuming and adjacent coherence filtering to eliminate the one sided travel path through the water column. Both datumed and not datumed seismograms have beenexamined with a semblance supported interactive velocity analysis. Data have also been analyzed with high and low resolution in depth in order to find an optimumtrade-off between vertical resolution and minimization of errors caused by sensitivity of the DIX' formula regarding velocity variations at thin layers. The data help tounderstand the reflection pattern in terms of gas-hydrate occurrence and dissociation, fluid migration and anisotropic permeability of sediments.


User-generated content has become a valuable journalistic tool for news coverage and production. This convergence of new and old media, however, poses several challenges to established news organisations. Social media sites produce a wealth of data in the form of text, images and video that must be processed, compiled and verified within a very short timespan before being incorporated into a news story. This unstructured data that lies scattered across the web can be formalised and organised into a 'web of data' by Semantic Web technologies. Specifically, Semantic Web technologies have the potential to formalise and integrate artifacts produced and shared across the Social Web. Social Semantic Journalism proposes the utilisation of Semantic Web technologies, and specifically Social Semantic Web ontologies such as FOAF and SIOC, in the process of news production. This potentially provides a journalistic tool to assist in finding, aggregating and verifying user-generated content for news production.


Data mining has made a great progress in recent year but the problem of missing data or value has remained great challenge for data mining. data mining is the field of studying experimental data sets for the discovery of interesting and potentially useful relationships. Missing data or value in a datasets can affect the performance of classifier which leads to difficulty of extracting useful information from datasets. There are a number of alternative ways of dealing with missing data. Several methods like Listwise Deletion, Pairwise Deletion, Mean Imputation, Regression Imputation, K-Means Imputation(KMI), Fuzzy K-means clustering Imputation (FKMI), Support Vector Machine Imputation (SVMI) for imputation of missing values using available values in the data set. In this study, different methods are reviewed and compared with their advantages and disadvantages


The literature reports a tendency that future losses are discounted less than future gains, the so-called sign effect in intertemporal decision making. In this article, we study implications of the sign effect on risk taking: If future losses are discounted less than future gains, mixed lotteries involving both gains and losses should become less attractive when payments are delayed into the future. We refer to this phenomenon as Hyperopic Loss Aversion and provide experimental evidence for it: First, we provide a robust conceptual replication of the sign effect where we find non-positive discount rates for losses. Second, we confirm our hypothesis that mixed lotteries become less attractive over time. This effect can be attributed to Hyperopic Loss Aversion in our design, as a delay does not change the valuation of either pure gain and pure loss lotteries. Finally, we apply the notion of Hyperopic Loss Aversion to investment decisions and show that it offers a novel behavioral explanation for the equity premium puzzle. While our empirical analyses are entirely model-free, we also introduce a theoretical basis to analyze Hyperopic Loss Aversion. Our model, termed Discounted Prospect Theory, can be regarded as a natural extension of Prospect Theory to the intertemporal domain.


Novelist, television personality, political candidate, and maverick social commentator, Gore Vidal is one of the most innovative, influential, and enduring American intellectuals of the past fifty years. In How to Be an Intellectual in the Age of TV , Marcie Frank provides a concise introduction to Vidal's life and work as she argues that the twentieth-century shift from print to electronic media, particularly TV and film, has not only loomed large in Vidal's thought but also structured his career. Looking at Vidal's prolific literary output, Frank shows how he has reflected explicitly on this subject at every turn: in essays on politics, his book on Hollywood and history, his reviews and interviews, and topical excursions within the novels. At the same time, she traces how he has repeatedly crossed the line supposedly separating print and electronic culture, perhaps with more success than any other American intellectual. He has written television serials and screenplays, appeared in movies, and regularly appeared on television, most famously in heated arguments with Norman Mailer on The Dick Cavett Show and with William F. Buckley during ABC's coverage of the 1968 Democratic National Convention.

Frank highlights the connections between Vidal's attitudes toward TV, sex, and American politics as they have informed his literary and political writings and screen appearances. She deftly situates his public persona in relation to those of Andy Warhol, Jacqueline Susann, Mary McCarthy, Susan Sontag, and others. By describing Vidal's shrewd maneuvering between different media, Frank suggests that his career offers a model to aspiring public intellectuals and a refutation to those who argue that electronic media have eviscerated public discourse.


This review essay offers an assessment of two recent monographs by Larry
 Rasmussen and Cynthia Moe-Lobeda in the field of ecotheology. It focuses on the category of
 moral vision that both authors employ. It shows how the notion of critical moral vision helps to
 identify and assess the root causes of economic inequalities and ecological destruction in terms
 of structural violence, structural evil and the very nature of sin. It also explains why such
 moral vision forms the key but by itself remains insufficient for social transformation. The
 influence of such insights in the South African context is illustrated with reference to
 teaching and research done at the University of the Western Cape and, more specifically, the
 category of transfiguration in Desmond Tutu's theology.


Aerial photography from unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) bridges the gap between ground-based observations and remotely sensed imagery from aerial and satellite platforms. UAVs can be deployed quickly and repeatedly, are less costly and safer than piloted aircraft, and can obtain very high-resolution imagery. At the Jornada Experimental Range in New Mexico, ongoing research is aimed at determining the utility of UAVs for rangeland mapping, assessment and monitoring. Digital images of arid rangelands were acquired with two UAVs that differed in size/weight, payload capacity, flight duration, GPS guidance capability and cost. The first system was a modified model airplane equipped with GPS and able to fly along preloaded waypoints and acquire images with a digital camera. The second UAV was a BAT 3 (MLB Systems) with fully autonomous flight capability and equipped with color video and digital cameras. Both units provide a data file containing GPS and elevation for each image, but the BAT also records roll, pitch and heading data. Both systems acquired high quality, high-resolution images of approximately 5 cm ground resolution (at 150 m flying height). Because the images have a small footprint (152 m x 114 m), mosaicking is required for further image analysis. Inclusion of camera calibration parameters (lens distortion, focal length, principal point) greatly increased the accuracy of the aero triangulation process and the resulting orthophotos. Due to the greater stability of the BAT and its longer flight range, the BAT imagery is better suited for analysis of larger areas than the imagery from the model airplane. However, the model airplane offers comparable image resolution and a cost effective alternative to the larger and more expensive UAV systems. Details of both systems, image acquisition and image processing results are discussed and compared.


By way of a fully developed conclusion, this article offers a broad analytical overview of the insights that have been jointly and severally generated by the main sub-studies on which the articles in this volume are based. It offers such overarching discussions, one after the other, in relation to the nature, attainments, problems, and prospects of Canadian-Nigerian international human rights engagements. Drawing upon these analytical insights, the article then makes some pertinent recommendations that are addressed to the relevant stakeholders, especially in Canada and Nigeria, i.e. policy-makers, practitioners and theorists alike (depending on which of the itemized points they find relevant), regarding some ways of improving Canadian-Nigerian international human rights engagements.


A national strategy to promote safety can be achieved through the implementation of a local model for a 'Safe Community of Opportunity'. The model is the outcome of work undertaken over the course of the past five years and draws from widely inclusive consultation and literature review. It proposes a 'people on top' approach : The traditional view of government as a pyramid with national government on top is up-ended. Instead, national government provides essential guidance and substantive support in an attempt to create a balanced South Africa.


BACKGROUND
Antibiotic resistance of bacteria is on the rise and thus, the discovery of alternative therapeutic agents is urgently needed. Honey possesses good therapeutic potential, including wound healing properties and antimicrobial activity.

CASE REPORT
The authors report on the case of a 55-year-old woman with extensive phlegmonous and necrotic lesions of the abdominal integuments and the lumbar area following traumatic colonic rupture, treated with Manuka honey wound dressings and the GENADYNE A4 negative pressure wound healing system.

CONCLUSIONS
The application of the Manuka honey and the GENADYNE A4 negative pressure wound healing system in treating phlegmonous lesions of the abdominal integuments after rupture of the colon brought good effects, ultimately enabling skin autografting on the wound site and complete wound healing.


As the primary arena for viral misinformation shifts toward transnational threats, the search continues for scalable countermeasures compatible with principles of transparency and free expression. We conducted a randomized field experiment evaluating the impact of source credibility labels embedded in users' social feeds and search results pages. By combining representative surveys (n = 3337) and digital trace data (n = 968) from a subset of respondents, we provide a rare ecologically valid test of such an intervention on both attitudes and behavior. On average across the sample, we are unable to detect changes in real-world consumption of news from low-quality sources after 3 weeks. We can also rule out small effects on perceived accuracy of popular misinformation spread about the Black Lives Matter movement and coronavirus disease 2019. However, we present suggestive evidence of a substantively meaningful increase in news diet quality among the heaviest consumers of misinformation. We discuss the implications of our findings for scholars and practitioners.


The employment of Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance (ISR) assets, including Remotely Piloted Aircraft (RPA), has been battle-tested in the overseas environment for more than ten years of war. However, employing these same assets to acquire airborne imagery during operations in the United States, such as during training or in support of civil authorities, requires an entirely different analysis to ensure compliance with Intelligence Oversight rules, the Posse Comitatus Act and other laws and policies which ensure mission accomplishment while protecting personal privacy. While the guidance is plentiful, determining the appropriate level of approval authority and applicable operational constraints for a particular mission sometimes remains a challenge.In this article, I review the spectrum of capability-based and mission-focused guidance applicable to U.S. military operations involving airborne domestic imagery and propose a comprehensive analytical framework to determine the approval authority and constraints on action. I suggest utilizing a common-sense approach that cross-references the guidance based on (1) which capability is to be used: intelligence capability (IC); RPA; or non-IC/non-RPA and (2) what mission, or what "like-mission," is to be performed: Defense Support to Civil Authorities; support to law enforcement activities; civil search and rescue; force protection; civil disturbance operations, counter-drug missions, training and exercise; and other authorized Department of Defense (DoD) missions. This work is the first of its kind to integrate the full range of guidance across disparate disciplines to form a cohesive approval authorities framework for DoD domestic imagery operations, missions and training in the United States.


Sparsity-inducing multiple kernel Fisher discriminant analysis (MK-FDA) has been studied in the literature. Building on recent advances in non-sparse multiple kernel learning (MKL), we propose a non-sparse version of MK-FDA, which imposes a general lp norm regularisation on the kernel weights. We formulate the associated optimisation problem as a semi-infinite program (SIP), and adapt an iterative wrapper algorithm to solve it. We then discuss, in light of latest advances in MKL optimisation techniques, several reformulations and optimisation strategies that can potentially lead to significant improvements in the efficiency and scalability of MK-FDA. We carry out extensive experiments on six datasets from various application areas, and compare closely the performance of lp MK-FDA, fixed norm MK-FDA, and several variants of SVM-based MKL (MK-SVM). Our results demonstrate that lp MK-FDA improves upon sparse MK-FDA in many practical situations. The results also show that on image categorisation problems, lp MK-FDA tends to outperform its SVM counterpart. Finally, we also discuss the connection between (MK-)FDA and (MK-)SVM, under the unified framework of regularised kernel machines.


We report the spatially resolved detection of methyl radicals in a methane-air flat flame, using degenerate four-wave mixing (DFWM). A frequency-tripled dye laser pumped with a frequency-doubled Nd:YAG laser was used to access the Herzberg beta(1) band of methyl near 216 nm. Using a nearly phase-conjugate geometry, we detected methyl with high spatial resolution [0.2 mm (0.3 mm) vertical (horizontal) and ~6 mm longitudinal] and with good signal-to-noise ratio in a rich (ø = 1.55) flame. Compared with laser absorption spectra, DFWM spectra were much less influenced by a broad featureless background. From the absorption data, we measured the peak methyl concentration to be 650 parts in 10(6), resulting in an estimated DFWM detection limit of 65 parts in 10(6).


Prisoners of the American Dream is Mike Davis's brilliant exegesis of a persistent and major analytical problem for Marxist historians and political economists: Why has the world's most industrially advanced nation never spawned a mass party of the working class? This series of essays surveys the history of the American bourgeois democratic revolution from its Jacksonian beginnings to the rise of the New Right and the re-election of Ronal Reagan, concluding with some bracing thoughts on the prospects for progressive politics in the United States.


Abstract The treatment of sea ice in USA and Canadian law has failed adequately to allocate and manage demands on Arctic sea ice among competing uses. Decision makers have generally categorized sea ice as either land or water, a binary approach that ignores its unique characteristics and the services it provides to many different users. Agency action and related litigation in the USA demonstrate sea ice user conflicts and highlight the tendency of US law to protect only one type of user at a time. In Canada, two recent Inuit Land Claims Agreement create zones that encompass sea ice. Yet both systems are beginning to acknowledge sea ice as a component of larger systems and as a resource with multiple uses and users. Both countries have the seeds of mechanisms in place to allow multiple users of sea ice to provide input on planning decisions affecting sea ice. While much work lies ahead, and none of these steps on its own clarifies the legal status of sea ice, combined they provide a modest foundation for beginning to better balance competing uses of sea ice in a warming Arctic.


Asthma, obesity, and irrational use of antibiotics early in a life can be considered to be the three epidemics of modern times, which encourage one another and whose base is the loss of bioavailability. Disruption of the intestinal microbiome early in the life is the basis for the development of metabolic diseases, allergic immunological diseases, and high mortality rate due to infection with resistant strains of bacteria. During the irratio‐ nal use of penicillin and macrolides postnatally, the composition of the intestinal micro‐ biota and its functions change 12–24 months after the antibiotics treatment, the settlement of advantage intestinal flora with probiotic microorganisms is delayed, the maturation of the intestinal mucosa is compromised. Respiratory and systemic inflammation is strongly influenced by the rich adipocyte metabolism so that the treatment of these chil ‐ dren is complex, and their asthma often remains only partially controlled. The phenotype "obese asthma" is characterized by a steroid and bronchodilator resistance. Therapeutic solution could be the body weight reducing, vitamin D3 substitution, and antileukotriene application. The prophylactic therapy of this asthma, using macrolides for a long time, should be supported, mandatory, with the substitution of probiotic/synbiotic during, and at least 6–9 months after discontinuation of therapy with macrolide.


This paper evaluates six options to achieve across-the-board reductions to a group of major exclusions and deductions in the income tax: (1) limiting their tax benefit to a maximum percentage of income; (2) imposing a fixed dollar cap; (3) reducing them by a fixed-percentage amount; (4) limiting their tax saving to a maximum percentage of their dollar value; (5) replacing preferences with fixed rate refundable credits; and (6) including them in the base of the existing Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT). We discuss issues of design, implementation, and administration, and simulate the revenue, distributional, and incentive effects of the various options.


Background Establishment of a biological pacemaker is expected to solve the persisting problems of a mechanical pacemaker including the problems of battery life and electromagnetic interference. Enhancement of the funny current (I f) flowing through hyperpolarization-activated cyclic nucleotide-gated (HCN) channels and attenuation of the inward rectifier K+ current (I K1) flowing through inward rectifier potassium (Kir) channels are essential for generation of a biological pacemaker. Therefore, we generated HCN4-overexpressing mouse embryonic stem cells (mESCs) and induced cardiomyocytes that originally show poor I K1 currents, and we investigated whether the HCN4-overexpressing mESC-derived cardiomyocytes (mESC-CMs) function as a biological pacemaker in vitro. Methods and Results The rabbit Hcn4 gene was transfected into mESCs, and stable clones were selected. mESC-CMs were generated via embryoid bodies and purified under serum/glucose-free and lactate-supplemented conditions. Approximately 90% of the purified cells were troponin I-positive by immunostaining. In mESC-CMs, expression level of the Kcnj2 gene encoding Kir2.1, which is essential for generation of I K1 currents that are responsible for stabilizing the resting membrane potential, was lower than that in an adult mouse ventricle. HCN4-overexpressing mESC-CMs expressed about a 3-times higher level of the Hcn4 gene than did non-overexpressing mESC-CMs. Expression of the Cacna1h gene, which encodes T-type calcium channel and generates diastolic depolarization in the sinoatrial node, was also confirmed. Additionally, genes required for impulse conduction including Connexin40, Connexin43, and Connexin45 genes, which encode connexins forming gap junctions, and the Scn5a gene, which encodes sodium channels, are expressed in the cells. HCN4-overexpressing mESC-CMs showed significantly larger I f currents and more rapid spontaneous beating than did non-overexpressing mESC-CMs. The beating rate of HCN4-overexpressing mESC-CMs responded to ivabradine, an I f inhibitor, and to isoproterenol, a beta-adrenergic receptor agonist. Co-culture of human induced pluripotent stem cell-derived cardiomyocytes (hiPSC-CMs) with aggregates composed of mESC-CMs resulted in synchronized contraction of the cells. The beating rate of hiPSC-CMs co-cultured with aggregates of HCN4-overexpressing mESC-CMs was significantly higher than that of non-treated hiPSC-CMs and that of hiPSC-CMs co-cultured with aggregates of non-overexpressing mESC-CMs. Conclusions We generated HCN4-overexpresssing mESC-CMs expressing genes required for impulse conduction, showing rapid spontaneous beating, responding to an I f inhibitor and beta-adrenergic receptor agonist, and having pacing ability in an in vitro co-culture system with other excitable cells. The results indicated that these cells could be applied to a biological pacemaker.


One of the essential ingredients for health information technology implementation is a well trained and competent workforce. However, this workforce has not been quantified or otherwise characterized well. We extracted data from the HIMSS Analytics Database and extrapolated our findings to the US as a whole. We found that there are approximately 108,390 IT professionals in healthcare the US. In addition, the amount of IT staff hired varies by level of EMR adoption, with the rate of IT FTE per bed started at a level of 0.082 FTE per bed at the lowest level of the EMR Adoption Model (Stage0) and increasing to 0.210 FTE bed at higher levels(Stage 4). We can extrapolate nationally to conclude that to move the entire US to higher levels of adoption (Stage 4) will require an additional 40,784 IT professionals. There are limitations to this analysis, including that the data are limited to IT professionals who are mainly in hospitals and do not include those who, for example, work for vendors or in non-clinical settings. Furthermore, data on biomedical informatics professionals are still virtually non-existent. Our analysis adds to data that show there must be increasing attention paid to the workforce that will develop, implement, and evaluate HIT applications. Further research is essential to better characterize all types of workers needed for adoption of health information technology, including their job roles, required competencies, and optimal education.


Background: The rare presence of malignant cancerous cells afar any type of pregnancy is known as gestational trophoblastic neoplasia (GTN). GTN are benign lesions which mostly happen due to the activity of extravillous trophoblast cells and the placental villous tree development. These kinds of diseases would be occurring mainly due to the following clinicopathologic conditions: (I) existence of epithelioid trophoblastic tumor (ETT), (II) rare type of choriocarcinoma cancer, (III) gestational trophoblastic tumor of mole, and (IV) the rare malignant tumor of placental site trophoblastic tumor. Objective: This comprehensive study is trying to review the most recent approaches in comprehension of pathogenesis, more precise diagnosis, and also the most effective therapeutic procedures for patients who suffer from GTN disorders. Materials and Method: A comprehensive research was carried out on scientific databases of Science Citation Index (SCI), MEDLINE, EMBASE, HMIC, PubMed, CINAHL, Google Scholar, Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews (CDSR), and PsycINFO over the time period of 2005 to 2019. The keywords which applied for discovering more related records were including: Gestational trophoblastic diseases (GTD), Gestational trophoblastic neoplasia (GTN), molar pregnancy, choriocarcinoma, human chorionic gonadotropin (hCG), diagnosis, management and treatment. Conclusion: In spite of the fact that GTN patients are treated with conventional surgical therapies or/and chemotherapy, in some patients with resistant disease, these therapies may not be effective and patients may die. Some novel remedial agents are required for decreasing the level of toxicity caused through administering conventional chemotherapy and also treating the patients who suffer from refractory or resistant disease. The newest issues are related to GTN diagnosis, process of progression of hydatidiform mole (HM) to GTN, and the issue of GTN drug resistance. In this regard, we should have a comprehensive knowledge on GTN genetics for answering all the available questions about this disorder.


Several species of plant-feeding nematodes are present in most vineyards, however few rootstocks have resistance to more than one species. Our goal is to develop grape rootstocks with broad and durable resistance to important nematode species. We have screened rootstock candidates against: the root knot nematode (Meloidogyne incognita race 3), two strains of root- knot nematode that overcome the resistance of Harmony rootstock (Meloidogyne arenaria strains A and C), and the dagger nematode (Xiphinema index). From these selections, several candidate rootstocks with strong resistance to the individual nematode species, and some with broad resistance to two or more of the nematode species, were selected. Of the thousands of seedlings produced from these crosses, only 14 have graduated through the rooting trial and individual nematode screening trials. These are extremely valuable plants. We know of no other examples of rootstocks for perennial crops selected for broad (multi-species) nematode resistance. To test the durability of the resistance, some of the rootstock selections resistant to all four nematodes when inoculated individually were exposed to all of the species at the same time. Preliminary results are puzzling and need to be repeated. When inoculated together there appeared to be some galling. However, there were some logistical problems in conducting these preliminary experiments. We also need to test durability of resistance to root-knot and dagger nematodes when the plants are inoculated with other nematode species, including ring, citrus, pin and lesion nematodes.


Abstract. To study key processes of the water cycle, two special observation periods (SOPs) of the Hydrological cycle in the Mediterranean experiment (HyMeX) took place during the autumn 2012 and winter 2013. The first SOP aimed to study high precipitation systems and flash-flooding in the Mediterranean area. The AROME-WMED (West-Mediterranean) model (Fourrié et al., 2015) is a dedicated version of the mesoscale Numerical Weather Prediction (NWP) AROME-France model 5 which covers the western Mediterranean basin providing the HyMeX operational centre with daily real-time analyses and forecasts. These products allowed adequate decision-making for the field campaign observation deployment and the instrument operation. Shortly after the end of the campaign, a first re-analysis with more observations was performed with the first SOP operational software. An ensuing comprehensive second re-analysis of the first SOP which included field research observations (not assimilated in real-time), and some reprocessed observation datasets, was made with AROME-WMED. Moreover, a more recent version of the AROME model was used with updated background error statistics for the assimilation process. This paper depicts the main differences between the real-time version and the benefits brought by HyMeX re-analyses with AROME-WMED. The first re-analysis used 9 % of additional data and the second one 24 % more compared to the real-time version. The second re-analysis is found to be closer to observations than the previous AROME-WMED analyses. The second re-analysis forecast errors of surface parameters are reduced up to the 18-h or 24-h forecast range. In the mid and in the upper troposphere, upper-level fields are also improved up to the 48-h forecast range when compared to radiosondes. Integrated Water Vapour comparisons indicate a positive benefit for at least 24 hours. Precipitation forecasts are found to be improved with the second re-analysis for a thresholds up to 10 mm/24-h. For higher thresholds, the frequency bias is degraded. Finally, improvement brought by the second re-analysis is illustrated with the Intensive Observation Period (IOP 8) associated with heavy precipitation over Eastern Spain and South of France.


Zhaoqing Xijiang steel box x-arch bridge on the Nanning-Guangzhou railway is located at the mountain area near the southern coast of China. The main span is 450 m, which is the longest among the same type of bridges. The average occurring frequency of typhoon is about 3 times per year, and the maximum wind speed exceeds grade 12 (32.6 m/s). To monitor the behavior of the bridge under the train and environment actions, an online health monitoring system based on DASP-MTS (Data Acquisition and Signal processing-Monitoring Test System) was established, which can transfer real-time monitoring data to cloud server via 3G wireless network. This monitoring system works in a browser/server frame, providing an easy remote monitoring method. Users can obtain real-time data from this system at any location. Field measurement of wind characteristics are discussed in this paper.


Contrary to popular belief, the problem with U.S. higher education is not too much politics but too little. Far from being bastions of liberal bias, American universities have largely withdrawn from the world of politics. So conclude Bruce L. R. Smith, Jeremy Mayer, and Lee Fritschler in this illuminating book. Closed Minds? draws on data from interviews, focus groups, and a new national survey by the authors, as well as their decades of experience in higher education to paint the most comprehensive picture to date of campus political attitudes. It finds that while liberals outnumber conservatives within faculty ranks, even most conservatives believe that ideology has little impact on hiring and promotion. Today's students are somewhat more conservative than their professors, but few complain of political bias in the classroom. Similarly, a Pennsylvania legislative inquiry, which the authors explore as a case study of conservative activism in higher education, found that political bias was "rare" in the state's public colleges and universities. Yet this ideological peace on campus has been purchased at a high price. American universities are rarely hospitable to lively discussions of issues of public importance. They largely shun serious political debate, all but ignore what used to be called civics, and take little interest in educating students to be effective citizens. Smith, Mayer, and Fritschler contrast the current climate of disengagement with the original civic mission of American colleges and universities. In concluding, they suggest how universities can reclaim and strengthen their place in the nation's political and civic life.


Rationale: Chronic rejection, accelerated coronary atherosclerosis, myocardial infarction, and ischemic heart failure determine the unfavorable evolution of the transplanted heart in humans. Objective: Here we tested whether the pathological manifestations of the transplanted heart can be corrected partly by a strategy that implements the use of cardiac progenitor cells from the recipient to repopulate the donor heart with immunocompatible cardiomyocytes and coronary vessels. Methods and Results: A large number of cardiomyocytes and coronary vessels were created in a rather short period of time from the delivery, engraftment, and differentiation of cardiac progenitor cells from the recipient. A proportion of newly formed cardiomyocytes acquired adult characteristics and was integrated structurally and functionally within the transplant. Similarly, the regenerated arteries, arterioles, and capillaries were operative and contributed to the oxygenation of the chimeric myocardium. Attenuation in the extent of acute damage by repopulating cardiomyocytes and vessels decreased significantly the magnitude of myocardial scarring preserving partly the integrity of the donor heart. Conclusions: Our data suggest that tissue regeneration by differentiation of recipient cardiac progenitor cells restored a significant portion of the rejected donor myocardium. Ultimately, immunosuppressive therapy may be only partially required improving quality of life and lifespan of patients with cardiac transplantation.


In our everyday life we come across countless reactive systems. These are the systems that engage in stimulus-response behaviour. The development of distributed reactive systems is quite complex. Being able to rapidly develop and incrementally deploy new services, while avoiding interactions with existing ones, is a challenging task. In this thesis, service examples of a distributed reactive system are modeled using the service engineering approach proposed by Humberto Nicolas Castejon in his PhD thesis; Collaborations in Service Engineering: Modeling, Analysis and Execution. First, services are modeled as collaborations between roles. Thereafter, the behaviour of each system component is designed as a composition of the roles it plays in the different services. In many cases, a component may be requested to participate simultaneously in several occurrences of the same service, or of different services (e.g. a UserAgent representing a user in a telecommunication system may be requested to participate in several phone calls simultaneously). To address such problems, extra coordination functionality is introduced in this thesis to coordinate the roles or role instances that a system component may play at a given point in time. For this, another role is defined, which is external to the service roles and serves to coordinate role binding. This role is named as 'Controller'. The Controller is designed to keep track of the resource status, assign the resource if it is free, and if it is not then respond to the service invitation requests according to the preferences of the actors that receive them. Depending upon how the Controller performs the coordination functionality, some coordination patterns have been investigated. Apart from modeling the service from scratch and investigating the coordination patterns for it, it has been explored in this thesis how this coordination functionality can be added into an existing service model in a modular way. Some solutions are discussed but these are the initial thoughts which can be further explored in depth. The general structure of the coordination patterns has also been identified, which further strengthened the generality of the coordination patterns.


V1137 Aql = SON 8114 was discovered by Hoffmeister (1964), who detected its brightness variations between mpg = 14m.5 and 16m.5. The variability type SR: was assigned to the object in the General Catalogue of Variable Stars (Kholopov et al., 1985). The star was detected by several satellite infrared (IR) surveys (RAFGL 2413, Price & Murdock, 1983; IRAS 19307+1338; MSX5CG049.893302.7331, Egan et al., 1999).


The pseudoautosomal region (PAR) is a short region of homology between the mammalian X and Y chromosomes, which has undergone rapid evolution. A crossover in the PAR is essential for the proper disjunction of X and Y chromosomes in male meiosis, and PAR deletion results in male sterility. This leads the human PAR with the obligatory crossover, PAR1, to having an exceptionally high male crossover rate, which is 17-fold higher than the genome-wide average. However, the mechanism by which this obligatory crossover occurs remains unknown, as does the fine-scale positioning of crossovers across this region. Recent research in mice has suggested that crossovers in PAR may be mediated independently of the protein PRDM9, which localises virtually all crossovers in the autosomes. To investigate recombination in this region, we construct the most fine-scale genetic map containing directly observed crossovers to date using African-American pedigrees. We leverage recombination rates inferred from the breakdown of linkage disequilibrium in human populations and investigate the signatures of DNA evolution due to recombination. Further, we identify direct PRDM9 binding sites using ChIP-seq in human cells. Using these independent lines of evidence, we show that, in contrast with mouse, PRDM9 does localise peaks of recombination in the human PAR1. We find that recombination is a far more rapid and intense driver of sequence evolution in PAR1 than it is on the autosomes. We also show that PAR1 hotspot activities differ significantly among human populations. Finally, we find evidence that PAR1 hotspot positions have changed between human and chimpanzee, with no evidence of sharing among the hottest hotspots. We anticipate that the genetic maps built and validated in this work will aid research on this vital and fascinating region of the genome.


Introduction: The present study aims to standardize a polyherbal formulation (HC9) that was previously shown to exhibit excellent antioxidant and cytotoxic activity in breast cancer cells. Here, we have compared the cytotoxic activity of HC9 with its individual components in breast cancer and non-cancerous cells. Methods: Physico-chemical and phytochemical evaluation of HC9 was performed. Qualitative and quantitative HPTLC analysis of component herbs and HC9 was done by using specific markers. The cytotoxic activity of HC9 with its individual components was evaluated in breast cancer (MCF-7 and MDA MB-231) and non-cancerous cell lines (HEK-293, HaCaT and MCF10A) by MTT dye uptake. Results: Physico-chemical results revealed that HC9 contained 7.24% total ash content, 9.52% of alcohol-soluble extractive, 0.801 specific gravity, 0.50g/ml bulk density and exhibited 7.18% loss on drying. Phytochemical results revealed the presence of alkaloids, carbohydrates, flavanoids, saponins, tannins and phenolic compounds, and absence of terpenoids. The individual herbs of HC9 and the formulation showed the presence of marker compounds such as picroside-I, nootkatone, 6-gingerol, matairesinol, swertiamarin, berberine, connesine and 2-hydroxy-4-methoxybenzaldehyde. At 160μg/ml concentration, HC9 exhibited cytotoxicity in both MCF7 and MDA MB231 with no cytotoxicity in MCF-10A, HaCaT and HEK-293. In contrast, at this concentration, the individual herbs of HC9 exhibited cytotoxicity not only in cancerous cells, but also in non-cancerous cells. Conclusion: These results suggest that the standardized HC9 formulation was safe to non-cancerous cells and exhibited significant antineoplastic potential in breast cancer cells. Thus, HC9 could be a potential drug candidate in breast cancer.


This paper explores the cinematic treatment of a cluster of themes – law, justice, morality, human emotions and social relationships – in what appears in genre to be a fairly straightforward Chinese martial arts film, Wu Xia (2011). The film is atypical for its genre, however, both in the characters it depicts and in the narrative it constructs. In particular, Wu Xia has only three fight scenes and is heavy with dialogue (both in the broad, conversational sense of spoken dialogue and in the more technical, Bakhtinian sense of dialogism (1992)). In a striking departure from genre conventions, the film develops what amounts to a cinematic commentary on jurisprudential debates about free will, punishment and ways of attributing responsibility and blame for human behaviour (for legal discussion of these issues, see Rawls 1999). Taking Bordwell (1989)'s approach to interpreting filmic meaning as exemplary in its attention simultaneously to conventional form, distinctive rhetorical styles, and historicity, this article offers a reading of Wu Xia that is especially concerned with interconnections between the film's formal characteristics, its stated and implied meanings, and its likely impact on specific cinema audiences. Focusing on the film's distribution simultaneously in two different Chinese language versions, one released in Hong Kong and the other throughout mainland China, the analysis compares significant language choices made in the film's soundtrack and relates them to the respective social, political and historical contexts of film's distribution in its two different cuts. Overall, the article suggests that Wu Xia is highly distinctive in several ways: in how it depicts the practice of law as being starkly at odds with the emotional experience of being human; in how little faith it expresses in the rule of law; and, perhaps most significantly, in its open ridiculing of a formalistic approach to justice. The article concludes by discussing the significance of these aspects of the film in the political dynamics of China and postcolonial Hong Kong.


Abstract A framework of mathematical modelling was applied to investigate the flow and sediment pattern at Ijok Intake, Ijok River, Perak, Malaysia. Ijok Intake was constructed to supplement the Kerian Irrigation Scheme via Ijok Canal. Ijok Intake is facing sedimentation problems that reduced the flow capacity into Ijok Canal. This paper presents the applications of one-(HEC-RAS) and two-dimensional model (CCHE2D) to simulate hydraulic and sediment transport. Results from HEC-RAS were used as input for CCHE2D. A turbulence closure schemes (Parabolic Eddy Viscosity (PEV) and Mixing Length Model) and several sediment transport functions were tested. Results indicated that PEV scheme and Wu equation were suitable to represent the hydraulic and sediment transport in the study reach, where good agreement were obtained between computed and measured data. Different flow conditions were simulated to obtain the perfection. Results showed that the rate of flows affect the sediment distribution and accumulation along the study reach. The combination of HEC-RAS and CCHE2D models are able to simulate the flow and sediment pattern at river intake for solving the river engineering problems.


Yeast biodiversity is considered to be almost untapped from a biotechnological
viewpoint. Although Saccharomyces cerevisiae has been the most widely studied and
exploited yeast species, other yeasts are fast emerging as microorganisms of important
scientific and commercial value. In this research, five different yeast strains (isolated
from several aquatic and food sources) were identified using API 20C AUX kit as
belonging to the genus of Rhodotorula, Pichia and Candida. The isolate designated as
YL3, was identified with high degree of confidence as a putative haploid strain of
Pichia ohmeri. It has a rapid growth rate and was able to tolerate growth temperature of
up to 42°C and salt osmolarity of 2.5 M NaCl. Subsequently, YL3 was chosen as the
candidate strain for the investigation of its physiological and molecular characteristics.
Mutants of YL3 were generated using UV mutagenesis to establish suitable genetic
markers. The UV dose of 115 J/m² (that yielded 10% cell survival) was used for the
large-scale irradiation. The screening of 3x 10³ UV -irradiated random mutants yielded seven auxotrophic mutant with different amino acid biosynthesis defects; twenty
temperature-sensitive (ts) mutants; and sixteen osmotic-sensitive (os) mutants. The
stable auxotrophic mutants were two adenine-deficient (SAx and 22Ax), one
methionine-deficient (2Ax) and one histidine-deficient (2SAx). Among the ts mutation
observed, three were absolute ts mutant (7D, 9D and 11A) which showed tight growth
arrest at 37°C and 40°C. The os mutants showed varying growth sensitivity to NaCI
concentrations of 100 mM to 2 M. The majority of the ts and os mutants showed
abnormal cell morphology compared to the YL3 wild-type under the stressful
conditions. Temperature and osmotic shift experiments revealed that two mutants, 9D
(a ts mutant) and 3B (an os mutant), have showed profound decrease in cell viability at
increased temperature and osmotic stress, respectively. Interestingly, 75% of the os
mutants simultaneously showed ts phenotype, indicating a close relation between the
two sets of mutations. Further characterization of 9D using 4',6-diamidino-2-
phenylindole (DAPI) staining revealed that these cells formed chain-like morphology
with each cell compartment contained multiple nuclei under temperature stress. It is
evident that the normal cell division of 9D was strongly impaired.


High-energy particles stream during coronal mass ejections or flares through the plasma of the solar wind. This causes instabilities, which lead to wave growth at specific resonant wave numbers, especially within shock regions. These amplified wave modes influence the turbulent scattering process significantly. In this paper, results of particle transport and scattering in turbulent plasmas with excited wave modes are presented. The method used is a hybrid simulation code, which treats the heliospheric turbulence by an incompressible magnetohydrodynamic approach separately from a kinetic particle description. Furthermore, a semi-analytical model using quasilinear theory (QLT) is compared to the numerical results. This paper aims at a more fundamental understanding and interpretation of the pitch-angle scattering coefficients. Our calculations show a good agreement of particle simulations and the QLT for broad-band turbulent spectra; for higher turbulence levels and particle beam driven plasmas, the QLT approximation gets worse. Especially the resonance gap at μ = 0 poses a well-known problem for QLT for steep turbulence spectra, whereas test-particle computations show no problems for the particles to scatter across this region. The reason is that the sharp resonant wave-particle interactions in QLT are an oversimplification of the broader resonances in test-particle calculations, which result from nonlinear effects not included in the QLT. We emphasise the importance of these results for both numerical simulations and analytical particle transport approaches, especially the validity of the QLT.
 Appendices A-D are available in electronic form at http://www.aanda.org


This study evaluated the relationship between participative management practices and institutional goal attainment among Nigerian universities, with University of Calabar in focus. To achieve the purpose of the study, two research questions and two null hypotheses where developed to guide the study. The descriptive survey research design was adopted for the study. The population and sample of the study was one hundred and twenty-two (122) deans of faculties and heads of departments using the census approach. An instrument titled Participative Management Practices and Institutional Goal Attainment Questionnaire (PMPIGAQ) was used for data collection. The instrument was validated by three experts in Higher Education Administration and Measurement and Evaluation. The instrument yielded Cronbach's reliability alpha ranging from α=.75-86. Data were collected and analyzed through mean, Standard deviation, Pearson Product Moment Correlation Analysis. The results of the study showed that there is a significant relationship between participation in decision making, participation in planning and institutional goal attainment. It was recommended that managers of universities should promote participatory management practices to enhance high morale, commitment and enthusiasm among staff in the pursuit and attainment of institutional goals.


The use of Bell Laboratories layered space-time (BLAST) architecture as a digital signal processing algorithm is proposed in this letter. It is aimed at improving the nonlinearity tolerance of a polarization division multiplexing (PDM) coherent optical orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (CO-OFDM) system. The application of this channel estimation algorithm simulates system performance under different dispersion compensation (DC) maps. Simulation results show that, compared with intra-symbol frequency-domain averaging (ISFA) algorithm, at least 5-dB Q-factor improvement is achieved for the PDM CO-OFDM system at 112-Gb/s data rate over an 800-km standard single-mode fiber (SSMF) without DC.


ALTERNATIVES TO CONTROL MICROBIOLOGICAL CHEESE DEFECTS: USE OF AROMATIC PLANTS 1. Introduction Cheeses are traditionally affected by microbiological spoilage that leads to great economic loss. On the one hand, bacteria such as coliforms or butyric acid are some of the responsible for early and late cheese blowing, respectively (COGAN, 2011; GARDE et al., 2011). These are two cheese paste defects characterised by the internal presence of numerous and odorous holes (MCSWEENEY, 2007; MULLAN, 2000). On the other hand, moulds have been described as being the most important cheese production problem (NEAVES and WILLIAMS 2012). They can affect cheese appearance, flavour and texture, and can even be involved in human health problems due to mycotoxins production (BELITZ, 2009). Nowadays, the control methods available are expensive, like bactofugation or ultrafiltration (FOX and COGAN, 2003). Moreover, the use of some substances like nitrate salts or antifungal agents is under extreme controlled or is not always allowed (FDA, 2012). This Thesis aims to provide a natural and alternative way to control these important microbiological cheese defects by using aromatic plants extracts which are well-known for their antimicrobial properties. 2. Research To achieve this objective, it was necessary to assay in vitro a collection of 15 plants in their essential oil (EO) and aqueous extract (AE) forms against microorganisms Escherichia coli, Clostridium tyrobutyricum and Penicillium verrucosum. After this test, the three most active extracts were selected to be added to cheese milk. Prepared cheeses were analysed in terms of volatile composition to determine the transfer of compounds and they were tested against target microorganisms to evaluate their antimicrobial properties. When continuing with the experimental food matrices trials, safranal (the main compound responsible for Crocus sativus L. aroma) was added to milk to produce cheese and ?requeson? (whey cheese) and their transfer through cheesemaking and antimicrobial properties were studied. 3. Conclusions This Thesis found that Thymus vulgaris EO was the most suitable extract for the control of mould growth but also was able to inhibit the clostridial bacteria. Although the great efficacy of Melissa officinalis EO against C. tyrobutyricum it was not adequate for cheese production. This essential oil had a negative effect on lactic acid bacteria, which are necessary for the correct ripening of cheeses. Moreover the whey from cheese fabrication with the addition of safranal, presented good antifungal properties, suggesting even a synergistic effect among the ovine whey compounds and safranal. This Thesis met its main objective: to provide an alternative to control microbiological cheese defects by using aromatic plants. 4. Bibliography BELITZ, H.-D., GROSCH, W. and SCHIRBERLE, P. 2009. Food Contamination, Food Chemistry. Springer-Verlag, Berlin, 472-475. COGAN, T.M. 2011a. Cheese | Microbiology of Cheese. In: Encyclopedia of Dairy Sciences (Second Edition). editor-in-chief: JOHN, W.F. Academic Press, San Diego, 625-631. FDA. 2012. Food Additives Status List. In: ADMINISTRATION, U.F.A.D. FOX, P.F., COGAN, T.M. 2003. Factors that affect the quality of cheese. In: Cheese: Chemistry, Physics and Microbiology, vol. 1. FOX, P.F., McSWEENEY, P.L.H., COGAN, T.M., GUINEE. Elsevier Academic Press, London, 605-607. GARDE, S., ARIAS, R., GAYA, P., NUNEZ, M. 2011. Occurrence of Clostridium spp. in ovine milk and Manchego cheese with late blowing defect: Identification and characterization of isolates. International Dairy Journal 21, 272-278. MCSWEENEY, P.L.H. 2007. What is late gas blowing and how may this defect be avoided? In: Cheese problems solved: The microbiology of cheese ripening. MCSWEENEY, P.L.H. Woodhead Publishing Limited, Cambridge. 198-199. MULLAN, M. 2000. Causes and control of early gas production in cheddar cheese. International Journal of Dairy Technology 53, 63-68. NEAVES, P., WILLIAMS, A.P. 2012. Microbiological surveillance and control in cheese manufacture. In: Technology of Cheesemaking, (Second edition). LAW, B.A., TAMINE, A.Y. Wiley Blackwell Ltd., Oxford, 384-412.


The concern of this international mathematical journal is to disseminate theoretical knowledge in the field of Convex Analysis and, at the same time, cultivate and extend its applications. In this sense it publishes research articles touching the areas of Calculus of Variations, Control Theory, Measure Theory, Functional Analysis, Differential Equations, Integral Equations, Optimization and Mathematical Programming,
and Mathematical Economics. Of particular interest are topics related to nonsmooth analysis, generalized differentiability, and set-valued functions.


Gene transfer technologies offer great potential both to investigate and alter the course of vessel wall pathophysiology. Replication-deficient adenovirus vectors appear particu larly useful for the transfection of blood vessels, because of their ability to accommodate large cDNA inserts and to rapidly and efficiently infect mammalian endothelial and smooth muscle cells. The potential effects of transfection with a replication-deficient adenovirus on vasomotor function have not, however, been described. This study reports gene transfer experiments with a replication-deficient adenovirus containing a cytome galovirus promotor and a nuclear localizing variant of the bacterial β-galactosidase gene. Excised carotid artery segments from 6 rabbits were divided into four segments and infected in pairs for thirty minutes with four viral titers (control [0], 2.5×109, 5×109, and 1×1010 pfu/mL) at 37°C in serum-free culture media (M199). Expression of β-galac tosidase and in vitro vasomotor function were determined after seventy-two hours' incu bation. Isometric tension studies were performed to examine the response of the vessel segments to the contractile agonist norepinephrine. β-galactosidase was expressed in all vessel segments exposed to the adenovirus. There was a significant difference in the sensitivity to norepinephrine (P < 0.04) of the segments treated with the highest and lowest viral titers (mean ±sem, -log10 [EC50] of 5.98 ±0.09, 5.77 ±0.11, 5.68 ±0.14, and 5.52 ±0.13 for the control, 2.5×109, 5×109, and 1×1010 plaque-forming units (pfu)/mL groups respectively). Replication-deficient adenovirus vectors can rapidly and efficiently infect rabbit carotid vessels, but there is, however, a dose-dependent alteration of in vitro vessel vasomotor function that may be mediated by a cytotoxic effect of the viral vector. Although further in vivo work is required to verify these results, this effect needs to be taken into account in studies involving adenoviral gene transfer.


The importance of the kynurenine pathway in normal immune system function has led to an appreciation of its possible contribution to autoimmune disorders such as rheumatoid arthritis. Indoleamine-2,3-dioxygenase (IDO) activity exerts a protective function, limiting the severity of experimental arthritis, whereas deletion or inhibition exacerbates the symptoms. Other chronic disorder with an inflammatory component, such as atherosclerosis, are also suppressed by IDO activity. It is suggested that this overall anti-inflammatory activity is mediated by a change in the relative production or activity of Th17 and regulatory T cell populations. Kynurenines may play an anti-inflammatory role also in CNS disorders such as Huntington's disease, Alzheimer's disease and multiple sclerosis, in which signs of inflammation and neurodegeneration are involved. The possibility is discussed that in Huntington's disease kynurenines interact with other anti-inflammatory molecules such as Human Lymphocyte Antigen-G which may be relevant in other disorders. Kynurenine involvement may account for the protection afforded to animals with cerebral malaria and trypanosomiasis when they are treated with an inhibitor of kynurenine-3-monoxygenase (KMO). There is some evidence that changes in IL-10 may contribute to this protection and the relationship between kynurenines and IL-10 in arthritis and other inflammatory conditions should be explored. In addition, metabolites of kynurenine downstream of KMO, such as anthranilic acid and 3-hydroxy-anthranilic acid can influence inflammation, and the ratio of these compounds is a valuable biomarker of inflammatory status although the underlying molecular mechanisms of the changes require clarification. Hence it is essential that more effort be expended to identify their sites of action as potential targets for drug development. Finally, we discuss increasing awareness of the epigenetic regulation of IDO, for example by DNA methylation, a phenomenon which may explain differences between individuals in their susceptibility to arthritis and other inflammatory disorders.


Video style transfer is attracting increasing attention from the artificial intelligence community because of its numerous applications, such as augmented reality and animation production. Relative to traditional image style transfer, video style transfer presents new challenges, including how to effectively generate satisfactory stylized results for any specified style while maintaining temporal coherence across frames. Towards this end, we propose a Multi-Channel Correlation network (MCCNet), which can be trained to fuse exemplar style features and input content features for efficient style transfer while naturally maintaining the coherence of input videos to output videos. Specifically, MCCNet works directly on the feature space of style and content domain where it learns to rearrange and fuse style features on the basis of their similarity to content features. The outputs generated by MCC are features containing the desired style patterns that can further be decoded into images with vivid style textures. Moreover, MCCNet is also designed to explicitly align the features to input and thereby ensure that the outputs maintain the content structures and the temporal continuity. To further improve the performance of MCCNet under complex light conditions, we also introduce illumination loss during training. Qualitative and quantitative evaluations demonstrate that MCCNet performs well in arbitrary video and image style transfer tasks. Code is available at https://github.com/diyiiyiii/MCCNet.


A variational approach, based on a discrete representation of the chain, is used to calculate free energy and conformational properties in polyelectrolytes. The true bond and Coulomb potentials are approximated by a trial isotropic harmonic energy containing force constants between all monomer-pairs as variational parameters. By a judicious choice of representation and the use of incremental matrix inversion, an eecient and fast-convergent iterative algorithm is constructed, that optimizes the free energy. The computational demand scales as N 3 rather than N 4 as expected in a more naive approach. The method has the additional advantage that in contrast to Monte Carlo calculations the entropy is easily computed. An analysis of the high and low temperature limits is given. Also, the variational formulation is shown to respect the appropriate virial identities. The accuracy of the approximations introduced are tested against Monte Carlo simulations for problem sizes ranging from N = 20 to 1024. Very good accuracy is obtained for chains with unscreened Coulomb interactions. The addition of salt is described through a screened Coulomb interaction, for which the accuracy in a certain parameter range turns out to be inferior to the unscreened case. The reason is that the harmonic variational Ansatz becomes less eecient with shorter range interactions. As a by-product a very eecient Monte Carlo algorithm was developed for comparisons, providing high statistics data for very large sizes { 2048 monomers. The Monte Carlo results are also used to examine scaling properties, based on low-T approximations to end-end and monomer-monomer separations. It is argued that the former increases faster than linearly with the number of bonds.


Bryan Gray MBE, High Sheriff of Lancashire and Chairman of the North West
Development Agency, will officially open the University of Central Lancashire's
(UCLan's) new Computing and Technology building on Wednesday, 3 March at
I lam.
The £4.3 million building on Fylde Road is at the heart of the University campus,
opposite the Students' Union. It provides superb new facilities including eight new
spedalist computing laboratories and over 200 latest specification PCs.
And during a tour of the building the High Sheriff will meet pupils from All Saints
Hesketh-With- Becconsall CofE Primary School who have been taking part in a
ground-breaking research project which focuses on the usability of handwriting
recognition technology for children (case study included).
UCLan students will have plenty of opportunity to make use of the facilities in the
new building as they will be able to use it twenty four hours a day, seven days a week.
A special swipe card system is in place which will keep the building secure at the
same time as giving students access.
Martin Brown, Head of the Department of Computing, says: ''This is a flagship
building which greatly enhances the teaching and research provision in computing
and technology. The new facilities and the open-all-hours policy are already making
a significant difference to students on our courses."
Students using the building study on a range of courses from web/multin1edia design
and software engineering to media technology and electronic engineering. A phase 2
extension of the building ill currently under construction and will be completed by the
Summer of 2004.
Notes To Editor
A photo opportunity of children from All Saints Hesketh-with-Becconsall CofE
Primary School demonstrating the CobWeb handwriting recognition software to
Bryan Gray, Chairman of the North West Development Agency, and UCLan Vice
Chancellor Dr Malcolm McVicar will take place at 10.45am on Wednesday, 3 March
in the new Computing and Technology building, located on Fylde Road.
*Handwriting Recognition For Text Entry Research Project- Case Study
'CobWeb' i..<; a prototype writing environment which enables children to write with a
special pen onto a tablet device (similar to a magic slate) which captures their writing
to the computer, displays it on the screen, and then allows the handwriting to be
turned into computer text.
Leader of the project is researcher and Senior Lecturer Janet Read who works within
the University's Child Computer Int'eraction (ChiCI) Group**. Her motivation for
undertaking this research stemmed from watching children struggle to master the
QUERTY keyboard.
''I'm carrying out the research amongst children in the 6- 9 year old age range," It' s a
time when children traditionally make great strides in improving their verbal and
written communication skills. However this process can sometimes be hampered by
the additional task of learning to use a computer keyboard.
"Keyboarding takes time and children can easily loose the thread of their story as they
search for a letter; in addition, the breaking up of words into letters appears to cause
anxiety about spelling."
Janet's research has identified key usability problems for children using handwriting
recognition technology. These were drawn from a range of studies using local school
children and this work has been used to inform the design of the prototype writing
environment (CobWeb).
Children fmd the CobWeb system easy to use and easy to learn. They are tolerant of
the errors that the recognition software makes and the high visibility of the text
encourages discussion. There is research evidence that good spelling is related to
kinaesthetic memory (memory of hand movements in the actual writing process). This
is supported by the handwriting recognition software but unsupported in keyboard
input devices.
**The Child Computer Interaction (ChiCI) (www.chici.org) Group is well est ablished
as an innovative research team based in the Department of Computing at the
University of Central Lancashire. In its short history, the group has become
internationally known, and has es tabli..<;hed itself as a leader in its field.
The group is primarily concerned with research relating to the design and evaluation
of interactive artefacts for children. Themes include interface design, novel interaction
technologies, usability testing, evaluation paradigms, and educational applications.
The group recently hosted the 2003 International Interaction Design and Children
Conference (IDC2003). In recent years, the Human Computer Interaction community
has begun to take a more active interest in the design and evaluation of technology for
child users. Growth areas include the study of play and the support of teachers and
parents in their use and selection of interactive products.


Background: Hepatitis B is the world's most common blood-borne viral infection, accounting for 2 billion infections, 350 million carriers, and 6 lakh deaths annually. Country like India still harbors approximately 30–60 million hepatitis B virus (HBV) carriers. A modest estimate would put the number of deaths occurring due to HBV infection per year in India to around 100,000. To prevent transmission and progression of the disease, proper community awareness including prevention is necessary. Therefore, this study aims to study the knowledge awareness among the healthy population about hepatitis B including knowledge regarding vaccine. Methodology: A community-based cross-sectional study was undertaken in two districts of Gujarat. Cluster sampling (30 clusters) was used, and pretested questionnaire was administered to 600 (with a prevalence rate of 5% in Gujarat having design effect of 2 within 95% confidence interval and 10% nonrespondent) healthy individuals, who heard about hepatitis B. Data handled and analyzed in EpiData Analysis V220.127.116.11. Results: Majority of the participants knew about symptoms whereas only 41% knew about prevention methods and few 34% knew about the mode of transmission. Although 40% sample has knowledge about the availability of vaccination, only 20% were self-vaccinated. The common reason for nonvaccination was lack of awareness. Conclusions: Only one-third of the populations in study districts are aware about hepatitis B and its vaccine. Less than one-fifth of the populations are vaccinated for hepatitis B. Important knowledge deficits about the routes of hepatitis B transmission/prevention were identified. Continued efforts should be made to develop and implement hepatitis B educational campaigns/health promotion for these communities.


Confinement sheep production is currently the subject of considerable research effort and commercial investment. This study evaluates the economic potential of confinement sheep production for the region of the Northern Rocky Mountains and the Northwestern Great Plains. The extent and composition of confinement sheep production within the region is surveyed. The main elements available to alternative sheep production systems are cataloged, and the ramifications of each element for different systems are estimated. Four sheep production systems representative of the range of alternatives are defined and budgeted. These four systems are economically evaluated by means of multi-period simulation. Sensitivity analysis is used both to replicate variations in the four systems and to measure the importance of variations in the budget estimates. It is concluded that a major transition to confinement production is unlikely under current conditions. However, confinement production can be a viable alternative under certain circumstances. It is also demonstrated that marginal tax rates are important factors in determining net profitability and should be included in economic evaluations of production alternatives.


This paper describes a public web service for active music listening, Songle, that enriches music listening experiences by using music-understanding technologies based on signal processing. Although various research-level interfaces and technologies have been developed, it has not been easy to get people to use them in everyday life. Songle serves as a showcase to demonstrate how people can benefit from music-understanding technologies by enabling people to experience active music listening interfaces on the web. Songle facilitates deeper understanding of music by visualizing music scene descriptions estimated automatically, such as music structure, hierarchical beat structure, melody line, and chords. When using music-understanding technologies, however, estimation errors are inevitable. Songle therefore features an efficient error correction interface that encourages people to contribute by correcting those errors to improve the web service. We also propose a mechanism of collaborative training for music-understanding technologies, in which corrected errors will be used to improve the music-understanding performance through machine learning techniques. We hope Songle will serve as a research platform where other researchers can exhibit results of their music-understanding technologies to jointly promote the popularization of the field of music information research.


The development of professional identity amongst lecturers training to teach in further education (FE) colleges in England involves processes of adaptation. These partly take place during teaching placement in FE, as trainees navigate between their own anticipated professional identity and the identities which they feel under pressure to assume as they engage in their work with students. This article explores these processes of development, focusing in particular on the identities that trainee lecturers develop in their work with disengaged 16-19 year-old students. Using case studies of two trainee lecturers, the article explores the way in which they are pushed towards adopting what they see as a 'pedagogic', 'teacherly' identity, which they had previously associated with schoolteachers, in their work with such students. The article suggests that the notion of 'schooling' identities and cultures, whilst contrasting with the vocational habitus proposed by others, is a useful way to explore how cultures and identities in general FE are created through similar processes of identity construction and reconstruction.


This study aimed at estimating the kinetic parameters of ruminal degradation of neutral detergent fiber from agroindustrial byproducts of cashew (pulp and cashew nut), passion fruit, melon, pineapple, West Indian cherry, grape, annatto and coconut through the gravimetric technique of nylon bag, and to evaluate the prediction equation of indigestible fraction of neutral detergent fiber suggested by the Cornell Net Carbohydrate and Protein System. Samples of feed crushed to 2 mm were placed in 7 × 14 cm nylon bags with porosity of 50 µm in a ratio of 20 g DM/cm² and incubated in duplicate in the rumen of a heifer at 0, 3, 6, 9, 12, 16, 24, 36, 48, 72, 96 and 144 hours. The incubation residues were analyzed for NDF content and evaluated by a non-linear logistic model. The evaluation process of predicting the indigestible fraction of NDF was carried out through adjustment of linear regression models between predicted and observed values. There was a wide variation in the degradation parameters of NDF among byproducts. The degradation rate of NDF ranged from 0.0267 h-1 to 0.0971 h-1 for grape and West Indian cherry, respectively. The potentially digestible fraction of NDF ranged from 4.17 to 90.67%, respectively, for melon and coconut byproducts. The CNCPS equation was sensitive to predict the indigestible fraction of neutral detergent fiber of the byproducts. However, due to the high value of the mean squared error of prediction, such estimates are very variable; hence the most suitable would be estimation by biological methods.


Within the general context of auditory perception of ecological information a previously rather less studied aspect is the one of the convection of continuous dynamic physical attributes. The study focuses on velocity information in a scenario of interactive control, the one of balancing a virtual ball on a tiltable track. In a ta rget reaching experiment control movements and performance times are measured and recorded under different conditions of auditory feedback in addition to a wide‐screen graphical display. The presence and relevance of auditory perception of velocity information can be inferred from analysis of experimental results and conclusions can be drawn concerning the design of auditory feedback of ecological or rather abstract nature.


THE QUESTION CONCERNING THE RELATION between logic and ontology in Aristotle's thought has recently attracted renewed attention, as several scholars have found reason to reconsider the argumentative structure of the seventh book of the Metaphysics. What initially provoked discussion was Myles Burnyeat's study A Map of Metaphysics Zeta and its suggestion that, in order to understand the aim and direction of that particular book, we should distinguish between two different levels of discourse within it, the one "logical" and the other "metaphysical" in kind. (1) Whereas the logical level of discourse explores such concepts and principles that must be assumed by any ontology whatsoever, the metaphysical level conveys precisely Aristotle's ontology with its specific assumptions as regards the nature of reality. Burnyeat's proposal has been met with approval by many scholars, who, though they sometimes prefer a different terminology from his, in general agree that the suggested distinction provides us with a useful tool for the interpretation of this notoriously difficult book. (2) For example, if part of Aristotle's discussion here is "logical" in the sense of not presupposing any specific metaphysical notion of substance, then this may explain why he refrains from drawing upon his own concept of form in what seem to be pivotal passages as regards the inquiry into substance, but instead speaks with a more or less Platonic tongue. (3) Accordingly, recognizing two distinct levels of argument in the discussion of substance might also enable us to shed new light on Aristotle's attitude toward Plato, and perhaps even toward the tradition in general, in ontological matters. This approach toward Aristotle's logic has found several proponents in the recent literature. More precisely, it is a rather common belief today that Aristotle's logic can be regarded as a kind of prolegomenon to his ontology, providing a "general essentialism" (4) which serves as a basis for the metaphysical inquiry into substance. One apparent consequence of this belief is the recurrent attempt to come to grips with the problems facing the discussion of substance in the Metaphysics, not least that of deciding whether substance as form is to be understood as a particular or universal entity, by means of distinguishing between different kinds of predication, so that form is allowed to be predicated of matter but not of its object. (5) In this way, one assumes that the question of ousia, at least in important respects, may profitably be treated as a question of logic. (6) In this article, I will elaborate a different view of the so-called logical level of discourse in the Metaphysics as well as of its relation to ontology. While not denying that Aristotle refrains from introducing his own ontological theory in his logical discussion, I will nevertheless suggest that the latter, far from being free from metaphysical presuppositions, is on the contrary in conflict with the ontology presented at the metaphysical level, in such a way that it has implications for the nature of substance which Aristotle cannot accept straight off. More precisely, the idea is that Aristotle himself discovers problems that emerge out of the logical perspective, so that a major task of the inquiry at the ontological level is precisely to come to grips with these problems. In the first part of the article, which seeks to determine the aim and nature of "logical" discussions, I suggest that the conflict between different levels of discourse should be understood as a conflict between different approaches to ontology pursued by Aristotle in the Metaphysics, all of which are not of his own making but primarily retrieved from the tradition. This means that a major problem Aristotle is facing in the Metaphysics, notably in Book 7, is that of reconciling different extant discourses on reality within his own project, so that each of them is granted its proper, delimited place. The difficulty of this task is what makes this book so difficult to understand. …


All scalar degrees of freedom that have been employed so far turned out to be composite. In particular, the Cooper pairs – a composite of two electrons – in an ordinary superconductivity and the chiral condensate in the ordinary QCD are two time-honored examples. A thorough and comprehensive study over the past few decades of strongly interacting field theories poses a considerable challenge for theoretical physicists. Strong dynamics is intensively studied in extensions of the standard model of particle interactions while very little is known in cosmology. Inspired by the composite Higgs paradigms, it would be of great interest to imagine a natural strong dynamics underlying the cosmic inflation. In this work, we investigate a number of models of inflation in which the inflaton emerges as a composite state stemming from different kinds of four-dimensional strongly interacting gauge theories. We begin by briefly reviewing the standard cosmology and inflationary paradigm. To be more relevant to phenomenology, we preliminarily provide a road map to non-Gaussian effects. We then summarize a compelling model of dynamical electroweak symmetry breaking, namely the minimal walking technicolor (MWT) theory. We briefly review the basic concepts of the Yang-Mills theory. We propose minimal walking and glueball inflationary models. We show that they are all viable to obtain successful inflation via non-minimal coupling to gravity. We discover that the compositeness scale of inflation is of the order of the expected grand unification scale.


Chris Heimerdinger, Tennis Shoes among the Nephites: A Novel. Salt Lake Oty: Covenant, 1989. 228 pp. $6.95. Reviewed by Elouise Bell Historical fiction, whether in print or on film, generally suffers from a common disorder. In a word, rheumatism. Stiffness. Creaky joints. And scripturally based stories are particularly susceptible to the malady. Historical and scriptural characters rarely come alive in print, burdened down as they are with all our knowledge of their ultimate destiny, with the heavy background theme song, "Little Do They Know That-," and especially with our idealization of them. All the more reason why Chris Heimerdinger's Tennis Shoes among the Nephites comes as a happy surprise. This is not only historical and scripturally based fiction, it is-what else?-a time-travel narrative. Jim, Garth, and Jennifer are contemporary kids from Cody, Wyoming, who beam their flashlights down one dark cave too many, and wind up smack in the middle of the Book of Mormon era, during one of the Nephites' bloodier stretches. The book unfolds their adventures among the strangers whose names and intrigues are so well known to them, or at least to Garth, who seems to have the Book of Mormon memorized. Tennis Shoes, designed for teen and young adult readers, may have its flaws, but its characters are definitely not stiff. The author seems to understand that people are people, whatever their era. Except in the case of a prophet or two, his characters speak believable dialogue and behave like members of the human race we all know and love. The book is, as one would expect, action-centered. It barrels along like a tropical version of Star Wars. (If you read closely, you'll even find the equivalent of a Jedi sword.) Adult readers may feel as though they had accompanied some young friends on an extended roller coaster ride; after a while, you 're reluctant to scream and throw your hands in the air, even to preserve the name of good sportsmanship. But for the right audience, the book's rapid-fire pace is just the ticket Heimerdinger has done his homework, to the extent possible, and the setting is convincing, whatever technical flaws may be visible to a squinting eye. He handles detail and description well; in terms of the old creative writing maxim, he shows, rather than merely tells. HEIMERDINGER, TE;NNIS SHOES AMONG THE NEPHfl'ES (BELL) 97 But the author's greatest achievement is his commitment to the two central characters. From first to last, Heimerdinger stands by them, and to the extent possible in an adventure book of this sort, refuses to use them, to accord them less than the fullest humanity possible. Garth is a nerdish scripture-freak, and it would be easy to let him drift into caricature. But his personal passion for the world he has come to know through studying the Book of Mormon is never compromised; indeed, it deepens and rings truer as the novel progresses. Jim, the narrator, seems a mighty precocious thirteen-year-old, but he also is true to himself throughout-ironic, skeptical, teaching, and loyal-not at all a bad combination for a time-traveler, or anybody else. This is a book written with imagination, care, a surprising amount of skill, and the right kind of conviction. Its shortcomings don't really matter. I plan to give it to my favorite teenager as soon as he gets home from seeing Back to the Future, Part/II.


Gibbs ensemble Monte-Carlo simulations are reported for the vapour-liquid phase coexistence of the binary argon + krypton mixture. The calculations employ accurate two-body potentials in addition to contributions from three-body dispersion resulting from third-order triple-dipole interactions. The calculations are in good overall agreement with experiment. The composition of coexisting vapour and liquid phases is relatively unaffected by three-body interactions. In contrast, three-body interactions affect substantially the density of the liquid phase.


Over the past years, several classes of molecules have been shown to act as signaling molecules. Examples of such molecules acting on receptors or enzymes have now been documented: the prostaglandins, platelet-activating factor (PAF), the cannabinoids and diacylglycerol. Lysophosphatidate (LPA) is a phospholipid with a range of cellular actions, including Ca2+ accumulation, platelet aggregation and cytoskeletal effects. There is now biochemical evidence that LPA acts through a specific membrane receptor coupled to several G proteins. The varied cellular effects of LPA and the molecular biology of its signaling pathway as far as it has been dissected thus far are the subject of this text. There are still many questions left regarding the functions of LPA and the details of its intracellular signaling pathway.


Background Several recent studies have reported an association between the serotonin transporter 5HTTLPR (s-allele) and aggression; however, nonreplications have also been reported. Inconsistencies may be explained by gene–environment interactions. Using a large general population sample, we sought to test for an association between 5HTTLPR and conduct problems, and to explore for a possible 5HTTLPR by maltreatment interaction. Methods Using Caucasian adolescents from the genetic-pairs sample of the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (n=1736), we tested for an association between 5HTTLPR and both a categorical and, separately, a continuous measure of conduct problems using regression analyses while controlling for sex, family effects, and age. We then tested for an association between 5HTTLPR and conduct problems using the within-family test Quantitative Transmission Disequilibrium Test. Analyses were repeated for a measure of adolescence-limited delinquency. Results Results did not support an association between 5HTTLPR and conduct problems or delinquency. The Quantitative Transmission Disequilibrium Test analyses, which account for population stratification, were nonsignificant (F=0.17; P=0.68); introducing maltreatment as a covariate into the model did not affect this association (F=0.17; P=0.68). No association was seen between 5HTTLPR and a measure of adolescence-limited delinquency (F=0.54; P=0.46). Discussion Using two methods in a large general population sample we did not find a significant association between 5HTTLPR and conduct problems. A gene by maltreatment interaction was not supported.