This work deals with separations of metal ions by capillary electrophoresis (CE) using
metallochromic ligands and with some related problems in separation and detection.
In the first part, some important instrumental factors relevant to CE of metal ions using
metallochromic ligands were investigated. The positioning of the separation capillary
relative to the electrode in the electrolyte vial and buffering of the background
electrolyte (BGE) in CE have been found to have a crucial influence on the magnitude
of pH changes of the BGE in the capillary. On-capillary measurement of the pH
changes accomplished by the addition of a suitable pH indicator dye to the BGE and
employing absorbance detection in the visible region showed that pH changes of
more than 2.5 pH units occurred when the capillary end was positioned close to the
electrode surface. This effect was explained by direct observations of pH changes
around a platinum electrode placed in a photometric cell serving as a BGE reservoir
which showed a zone of altered pH being generated close to the electrode and
spreading over time through the surrounding BGE by thermal convection. Light
emitting diodes (LEDs) in the range from 563 to 654 nm were examined as light
sources for on-capillary detection in CE. The detector linearity and noise for the LEDs
were compared to mercury and tungsten lamps used with interference filters. Both a
theoretical model, taking into account both stray light and polychromatic light, and
experimental results showed stray light as the major factor which determines linearity
under typical CE operating conditions. Noise was found to be same or better for the
LEDs as for the other sources. In the second part, several factors concerning chemistry of separations of metal ions
by CE were studied. Methods for analysis of metallochromic ligands by CE and
micellar electrokinetic capillary chromatography were developed using an uncoated
fused silica capillary and an alkaline BGE containing a zwitterionic additive and a
strong complexing agent (EDTA) which was crucial for obtaining good peak shapes.
Further, it was shown that ligand purity can play a crucial role in the separations of
metal ions by CE in the form of kinetically labile complexes using addition of the ligand
to the BGE. Using separation of uranium(VI) and lanthanides with arsenazo III as a
model system, solute-wall interactions were studied and found to vary for a number of
capillary wall chemistries. Least analyte adsorption was observed in an untreated
bare fused silica pre-run coated with a hydrophilic polymer, whilst the frequently used
hydroxide treated capillary exhibited greatest adsorption. The applicability of polymer
capillaries (polypropylene and polytetrafluoroethylene) for CE of metal ions/complexes
was also investigated. Complexation equilibria in the BGE were studied and the
secondary ligand type, pH and concentrations of secondary ligand and arsenazo Ill
were found to have a strong influence on the peak shapes and on the selectivity and
sensitivity. Mechanisms for these effects are discussed. A validated method is
presented for determination of Ba" and Sr" in the presence of up to 40,000 fold excess
levels of calcium(II) and magnesium(II) using an electrolyte containing sulfonazo Ill,
with a limit of detection of approx. 50 ppb for both metals. Analytical potential of the
general approach of using metallochromic ligands in CE is discussed.


Spiral galaxies range from bulge-dominated early-type galaxies to late types with little or no bulge. Cosmological models do not predict the formation of disk-dominated, essentially bulgeless galaxies, yet these objects exist. A particularly striking and poorly understood example of bulgeless galaxies are flat or superthin galaxies with large axis ratios. We therefore embarked on a study aimed at a better understanding of these enigmatic objects, starting by compiling a statistically meaningful sample with well-defined properties. The disk axis ratios can be most easily measured when galaxies are seen edge-on. We used data from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) in order to identify edge-on galaxies with disks in a uniform, reproducible, automated fashion. In the five-color photometric database of the SDSS Data Release 1 (2099 deg 2 ) we identified 3169 edge-on disk galaxies, which we subdivided into disk galaxies with bulge, intermediate types, and simple disk galaxies without any obvious bulge component. We subdivided these types further into subclasses: Sa(f), Sb(f), Sc(f), Scd(f), Sd(f), Irr(f), where the (f) indicates that these galaxies are seen edge-on. Here we present our selection algorithm and the resulting catalogs of the 3169 edge-on disk galaxies including the photometric, morphological, and structural parameters of our targets. A number of incompleteness effects affect our catalog, but it contains almost a factor of four more bulgeless galaxies with prominent simple disks (flat galaxies) within the area covered here than previous optical catalogs, which were based on the visual selection from photographic plates (cf. Karachentsev et al. 1999, Bull. Special Astrophys. Obs., 47, 5). We find that approximately 15% of the edge-on disk galaxies in our catalog are flat galaxies, demonstrating that these galaxies are fairly common, especially among intermediate-mass star-forming galaxies. Bulgeless disks account for roughly one third of our galaxies when also puffy disks and edge-on irregulars are included. Our catalog provides a uniform database for a multitude of follow-up studies of bulgeless galaxies in order to constrain their intrinsic and environmental properties and their evolutionary status.


We study a decidable fixpoint extension of temporal description logics. To this end we employ and extend decidability results obtained for various temporally first-order monodic extensions of (firstorder) description logics. Using these techniques we obtain decidability and tight complexity results for various fixpoint extensions of temporal description logics.


This thesis investigates three distinct facets of the theory of quantum information. The first two, quantum state estimation and quantum process estimation, are closely related and deal with the question of how to estimate the classical parameters in a quantum mechanical model. The third attempts to bring quantum theory as close as possible to classical theory through the formalism of quasi-probability. Building a large scale quantum information processor is a significant challenge. First, we require an accurate characterization of the dynamics experienced by the device to allow for the application of error correcting codes and other tools for implementing useful quantum algorithms. The necessary scaling of computational resources needed to characterize a quantum system as a function of the number of subsystems is by now a well studied problem (the scaling is generally exponential). However, irrespective of the computational resources necessary to just write-down a classical description of a quantum state, we can ask about the experimental resources necessary to obtain data (measurement complexity) and the computational resources necessary to generate such a characterization (estimation complexity). These problems are studied here and approached from two directions. The first problem we address is that of quantum state estimation. We apply high-level decision theoretic principles (applied in classical problems such as, for example, universal data compression) to the estimation of a qubit state. We prove that quantum states are more difficult to estimate than their classical counterparts by finding optimal estimation strategies. These strategies, requiring the solution to a difficult optimization problem, are difficult to implement in practise. Fortunately, we find estimation algorithms which come close to optimal but require far fewer resources to compute. Finally, we provide a classical analog of this quantum mechanical problem which reproduces, and gives intuitive explanations for, many of its features, such as why adaptive tomography can quadratically reduce its difficulty. The second method for practical characterization of quantum devices takes is applied to the problem of quantum process estimation. This differs from the above analysis in two ways: (1) we apply strong restrictions on knowledge of various estimation and control parameters (the former making the problem easier, the latter making it harder); and (2) we consider the problem of designing future experiments based on the outcomes of past experiments. We show in test cases that adaptive protocols can exponentially outperform their off-line counterparts. Moreover, we adapt machine learning algorithms to the problem which bring these experimental design methodologies to realm of experimental feasibility. In the final chapter we move away from estimation problems to show formally that a classical representation of quantum theory is not tenable. This intuitive conclusion is


The results of the study of discrimination in mortgage lending by Munnell, Browne, McEneaney, and Tootell (1992) have been questioned by some who claim that the authors failed to control adequately for the expected profitability of each loan. Critics assert that an examination of default rates for minorities and whites would explain the disparate treatment minorities received in obtaining mortgage loans. ; This article will demonstrate that studies of denials are a valid approach to testing for discrimination and that, in fact, examination of defaults cannot, in general, reveal much about the issue. Since studies of defaults leave out the observations that are most important to the examination of discrimination, denied applications, they cannot compare the profitability of rejected minority applications to accepted white ones. Only by including these observations, as is done in studies of denials, can definitive evidence about discrimination be found.


In many settlements across the world (e.g. Pimpama Coomera and Mawson Lakes – Australia, Hong Kong – China, Majuro – Marshall Islands, Tarawa – Kiribati, and Windhoek – Namibia), dual water reticulation systems have been implemented in response to increasing water demands and decreasing freshwater availability. A dual water reticulation system comprises separate pipes that supply different water qualities to the end consumer. A set of pipes supply potable water while another set of pipes supply non-potable water. The non-potable water is targeted at meeting water requirements traditionally met using potable water (e.g. toilet and urinal flushing, landscaping irrigation, and industrial cooling). This therefore frees potable water to be used for previously unmet or increasing potable water requirements. For several reasons including the dearth of relevant national regulatory and guideline documents, consumer and decision-maker perceptions, ignorance, and appropriate decision-making tools, the use of dual water reticulation systems in South Africa has been limited. The aim of this study was therefore to develop a decision-making framework, using robust criteria, for assessing the viability of implementing dual systems in South Africa. This aim was achieved through undertaking literature reviews on the subject, an investigation of non-potable water consumers' and decision-makers' perceptions using questionnaires, and the actual development of a framework using data obtained from the literature review and questionnaires. The questionnaires were developed using seven key issues i.e. public health and safety, economics, technical feasibility, legislation/regulations and guidelines, organisational capacity, social acceptance, and public education. The various aspects of the Triple Bottom Line of sustainability (i.e. economic, environmental and social) provided structure to the framework while the Triple Bottom Line approach was utilised in the assessment of the different criteria.


A COMPUTATIONAL STUDY OF ENGINE DEFLECTION USING A CIRCULATION CONTROL WING Bryan H. Blessing In the past, research into Short Takeoff and Landing aircraft has led to the investigation of the coupling of a Circulation Control Wing and Upper Surface Blowing engine. The Circulation Control Wing entrains the flow of the engine to be deflected downward such that a component of the thrust is now in the vertical direction. The unfortunate consequence of the Upper Surface Blowing engine is the poor cruise performance due to scrub drag. Cal Poly's research into a Cruise Efficient Short Takeoff and Landing Aircraft offers a solution by pylon mounting over the wing engines. Analysis shows that the engine thrust is still deflected downward resulting in very high lift coefficients above 6.6. In the culmination of this project Cal Poly would like to find a correlation between the location of the engine and the deflection angle of the thrust. The results of this study show some engine deflection for an over the wing engine. The configurations explored were able to provide 3-8.5◦ of deflection. The deflection falls short of the results by previous static and wind tunnel tests of upper surface blowing engines. The results show that the closer to the wing and further forward the engine is located the more engine deflection will be seen. This paper explores the trends of coupling an over the wing engine with a circulation control wing as well as compare the results to the idealized claims of previous experiments.


Graphene oxide (GO) is considered a promising 2D material for biomedical applications. However, the biological health effects of GO are not yet fully understood, in particular for highly sensitive populations such as pregnant women and their unborn children. Especially the potential impact of GO on the human placenta, a transient and multifunctional organ that enables successful pregnancy, has not been investigated yet. Here we performed a mechanistic in vitro study on the placental uptake and biological effects of four non-labelled GO with varying physicochemical properties using the human trophoblast cell line BeWo. No overt cytotoxicity was observed for all GO materials after 48 h of exposure at concentrations up to 40 µg ml−1. However, exposure to GO materials induced a slight decrease in mitochondrial activity and human choriogonadotropin secretion. In addition, GO induced a transient opening of the trophoblast barrier as evidenced by a temporary increase in the translocation of sodium fluorescein, a marker molecule for passive transport. Evidence for cellular uptake of GO was found by transmission electron microscopy analysis, revealing uptake of even large micro-sized GO by BeWo cells. Although GO did not elicit major acute adverse effects on BeWo trophoblast cells, the pronounced cellular internalization as well as the potential adverse effects on hormone release and barrier integrity warrants further studies on the long-term consequences of GO on placental functionality in order to understand potential embryo-fetotoxic risks.


Query autocompletions help users of search engines to speed up their searches by recommending completions of partially typed queries in a drop down box. These recommended query autocompletions are usually based on large logs of queries that were previously entered by the search engine's users. Therefore, misinformation entered -- either accidentally or purposely to manipulate the search engine -- might end up in the search engine's recommendations, potentially harming organizations, individuals, and groups of people. This paper proposes an alternative approach for generating query autocompletions by extracting anchor texts from a large web crawl, without the need to use query logs. Our evaluation shows that even though query log autocompletions perform better for shorter queries, anchor text autocompletions outperform query log autocompletions for queries of 2 words or more.


The chapter aims to reveal the complex relationships between antibiotic resistance in bac- teria and heavy metal pollution at the human/animal interface. The antibiotic resistance is a continuously growing threat for both people and animals. Animals could represent a source for zoonotic microbial contamination of humans as subject for consumption and also as contacts (companion, sports, zoo animals, etc.). Antimicrobial treatments in animals, if uncontrolled or injudicious, could raise antibiotic-resistant strains to be transferred to humans where they can cause even more severe diseases. Moreover, the environment has its own microbiome, including some nonpathogenic but antibiotic-resistant species. Human industrial activities are carried out in certain environments, with particular microbiomes and also where animals bearing antibiotic-resistant bacteria are present. Thus, the degree of pollution with heavy metals, as part of the global pol- lutants to the environment, could impact on the bacteria and their resistome with severe consequences for inhabitants of the area.


Coal briquette been an solid fuel made from coal, solid fuel is alternative fuel or constituting a substitute kerosene the cheapest and predicted to developed in mass in a relatively short time considering technology and equipment used relatively simple. Sulfur dioxide gas is preeminently resulting from the burning fossil fuels such as coal. Research aims to know levels gas SO 2 and complaint respiratory on society around food industry light that uses coal briquette in the Bakaran Batu village burnt stone sub-district Batang Kuis district Deli Serdang. The design of research is descriptive. Population in this research of 180 the housewife in hamlet 1 and 2. Samples totaled 58 people housewife with used technique the sample in simple random sampling. The object of the research was done. Data were analyzed by descriptive in the form of tables and narratives. The result showed that respondents from > 40 years ( 37.9 % ), the level of education highest is sma ( 56,9 % ), respondents have been living in the village of burnt offering stone > 20 years ( 53,4 % ). On the basis of the results obtained a picture that the level of air pollution by SO 2 on the settlement near the snacks industry light that uses coal briquette in the village of burnt offering stone sub-district Batang Kuis value at the average of 52,27 µg/m 3 , Means levels of sulfur dioxide measured is still qualify in quality standards according to PP RI No.41 1999 that is, ( 900 µg/m 3 ). The conclusion of this research is gas SO 2 in the air ambient on snacks industry in the Bakaran Batu village of burnt offering stone does not exceed quality standards. The result analysis of data that respondents describe that experience complaints of the respiratory tract as many as 39,7%. Nevertheless other malignancies in a recurrent manner can cause respiratory disorders. Keywords: Coal Briquette, The Concentration Of Sulphur Dioxide, Complaint The Respiratory Tract


Teachers intentionally pick the most informative examples to show their students. However, if the teacher and student are neural networks, the examples that the teacher network learns to give, although effective at teaching the student, are typically uninterpretable. We show that training the student and teacher iteratively, rather than jointly, can produce interpretable teaching strategies. We evaluate interpretability by (1) measuring the similarity of the teacher's emergent strategies to intuitive strategies in each domain and (2) conducting human experiments to evaluate how effective the teacher's strategies are at teaching humans. We show that the teacher network learns to select or generate interpretable, pedagogical examples to teach rule-based, probabilistic, boolean, and hierarchical concepts.


The Web Design Pocket Guide boxed set is for both beginning users, who want a brief introduction to core web technologies, and more advanced users, who are looking for a convenient reference. It's a valuable companion to creating standards-compliant markup that will help Web designers quickly define content, meaning, presentation, and behavior. Accessible, convenient, and inexpensive, this boxed set is exactly what many web designers need. It includes the following pocket guides package in an attractive slip-cover case:The HTML Pocket Guide The CSS Pocket Guide The JavaScript Pocket Guide


In March 2020, the coronavirus disease 2019 outbreak was declared a pandemic by the World Health Organization and became a global health crisis. Authorities worldwide implemented lockdowns to restrict travel and social exchanges in a global effort to counter the pandemic. In France, and in French overseas departments, the lockdown was effective from 17 March to 11 May 2020. It was in this context that the 2–6 April 2020 eruption of Piton de la Fournaise (La Réunion Island, Indian Ocean) took place. Upon the announcement of the lockdown in France, a reduced activity plan was set up by the Institut de Physique du Globe de Paris, which manages the Observatoire Volcanologique du Piton de la Fournaise (OVPF). The aim was to (1) maintain remote monitoring operations by teleworking and (2) authorize fieldwork only for critical reasons, such as serious breakdowns of stations or transmission relays. This eruption provided an opportunity for the observatory to validate its capacity to manage a volcanic crisis with 100% remotely operated monitoring networks. We thus present the long- and short-term precursors to the eruption, and the evolution of the eruption recorded using the real-time monitoring data as communicated to the stakeholders. The data were from both continuously recording and transmitting field instruments as well as satellites. The volcano observatory staff remotely managed the volcano crisis with the various stakeholders based only on these remotely functioning networks. Monitoring duties were also assured in the absence of ad hoc field investigation of the eruption by observatory staff or face-to-face communications. The density and reliability of the OVPF networks, combined with satellite observations, allowed for trustworthy instrument-based monitoring of the eruption and continuity of the OVPF duties in issuing regular updates of volcanic activity in the context of a double crisis: volcanic and health.


We have cloned a Xenopus cDNA that encodes a homologue of the human myogenic factor, Myf-5. Xenopus Myf-5 (XMyf5) transcripts first accumulate in the prospective somite region of early gastrulae. The pattern of XMyf5 expression is similar to that of the Xenopus MyoD (XMyoD) gene, except that XMyf5 transcripts are largely restricted to posterior somitic mesoderm even before any somites have formed. Transient ectopic expression of XMyf5 activates cardiac actin and XMyoD genes in animal cap cells, but does not cause full myogenesis, even in combination with XMyoD. These results suggest that XMyf5 acts together with XMyoD as one of the set of genes regulating the earliest events of myogenesis, additional factors being required for complete muscle differentiation.


In her classic 1993 article, "The Struggle for the Soul of Health Insurance," Deborah Stone contrasted the principle of mutual aid—"the essence of community" in the face of sickness—and the principle of actuarial fairness, under which "each person should pay for his own risk." Stone claimed that "in most societies sickness is widely accepted as a condition that should trigger mutual aid," while in the United States, a competitive insurance industry fosters in people "a sense of their difference, rather than their commonalities, and their responsibility for themselves only, rather than their interdependence," leading to the fragmentation of "communities into ever-smaller, more homogeneous groups" and "the destruction of mutual aid."

The United States has, as Stone observes, long been an outlier in its approach to financing care for sickness. Over the past half century, we have developed mutual aid-based programs to care for some, but most Americans have had to pay the "actuarially fair" cost of their care, either as individuals or as employee groups. Mutual aid has existed only on a limited scale. The Affordable Care Act is the most comprehensive attempt to date to remedy this situation.


Introduction The JAG Endoscopy Training System (JETS) e-portfolio was released in September 2009 and has been set up by over 75% of trusts at the time of writing. Following each training list, trainees have the option to submit anonymised feedback on the training received. This feedback populates the trainer's e-portfolio and informs the training programme director (TPD) on the quality of training received at a trust level (anonymised data). Characteristics of a good trainer include: interpersonal skills, endoscopic skills, technical teaching attributes and motivation to teach.1 Recent surveys have shown that many trainees feel inadequately supervised in endoscopy throughout their training.2,3 Quality of time spent with a trainer therefore becomes more invaluable. The standard of training can now be determined by the trainees themselves. Methods Since the release of the JETS e-portfolio, 3074 trainer feedback forms have been completed. At the time of writing an average of 320 feedback forms are being completed each month by 140 trainees. In total, 376 trainees have completed trainer feedback on the JETS e-portfolio (out of 712 trainees currently using the system). Using a Likert scale trainees can provide scores on items such as: giving constructive feedback (FB), providing fair evaluation, putting the trainee at ease and whether the endoscopist is a skilled teacher. FB scores were evaluated by either averaging scores over a calendar year comparing scores over time or by comparing the first and last 5 scores of the trainers from September 2009. Results 87% of trainers obtained scores of over 4.0. Average FB scores were relatively stable (4.45 in 2008 to 4.48 in '09 and 4.50 in'10). The median score was 4.52. Table 1 PTU-133 Average feedback score of trainers in 1 year and percentage of trainers receiving this score Average FB Score in 1 year Number of Trainers Percentage of scores 5–4.9 39 8 4.8 35 7 4.7 63 13 4.6 68 14 4.5 64 13 4.4 55 11 4.3 55 11 4.2–4 81 17 <3.9 20 4 Conclusion This data confirms that trainees are willing to provide anonymous feedback on training received. The feedback then populates the trainer's portfolio enabling the trainers to reflect on their training ability. Furthermore, TPDs can now access summated, anonymised feedback data for a trust, therefore supporting quality assurance of training for trainees in that region. On the whole the majority of UK trainees that gave FB anonymously on the JETS website feel they receive a high standard of training. This correlates with a previous study when 75% of trainees rated their endoscopy training as quite good to excellent.2


We develop multivariate copulas for modeling multiple joint distributions of wind speeds at a wind farm site and neighboring wind source. A n- dimensional Gaussian copula and multiple copula graphical models enhance the quality of the prediction site distribution. The models, in comparison to multiple regression, achieve higher accuracy and lower cost because they require less sensing data.


Domestic violence, a serious problem around the world, remains a hidden concern among the Islamic Gulf States. Yet signs indicate the situation is changing. A team of American lawyers and professors, responding to student initiative and the Qatari development strategy, recently initiated Qatar's first law school clinic, focusing exclusively on domestic violence. By highlighting the students' experience, this article outlines the issues involved and the problems that were encountered, and resolved, during the development of this clinic. The students first studied the issue of domestic violence, then made presentations to the larger community to raise awareness of the topic. Subsequent to a review of international law, the Qatari criminal code and model domestic violence statutes from other jurisdictions, the students drafted legislation designed to criminalize domestic violence in Qatar. Finally, they developed what they called An Action Plan to Stop Domestic Violence in Qatar. This article also explores how the clinic's work was informed by the sex-segregated educational environment, by Islamic culture at large, and by feminist and traditional interpretations of the Qur'an. The authors offer reflections on the lessons they learned and propose suggestions about how such pedagogy might proceed in future.


Preservation of rivers and water resources is crucial in most environmental policies and many efforts are made to assess water quality. Environmental monitoring of large river networks are based on measurement stations. Compared to the total length of river networks, their number is often limited and there is a need to extend environmental variables that are measured locally to the whole river network. The objective of this paper is to propose several relevant geostatistical models for river modelling. These models use river distance and are based on two contrasting assumptions about dependency along a river network. Inference using maximum likelihood, model selection criterion and prediction by kriging are then developed. We illustrate our approach on two variables that differ by their distributional and spatial characteristics: summer water temperature and nitrate concentration. The data come from 141 to 187 monitoring stations in a network on a large river located in the Northeast of France that is more than 5000 km long and includes Meuse and Moselle basins. We first evaluated different spatial models and then gave prediction maps and error variance maps for the whole stream network. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.


Objective To investigate response inhibition after total sleep deprivation (TSD) and the restorative effects of one night of recovery sleep (RS). Methods Fourteen healthy male participants performed a visual Go/NoGo task, and electroencephalogram recordings were conducted at five time points: (1) baseline, (2) after 12 h of TSD, (3) after 24 h of TSD, (4) after 36 h of TSD, and (5) following 8 h of RS. The dynamic changes in response inhibition during TSD and after 8 h of RS were investigated by examining the NoGo-N2 and NoGo-P3 event-related potential components. Results Compared with baseline, NoGo-P3 amplitudes were decreased, while the NoGo-N2 latency increased along with the awake time prolonged. NoGo anteriorization, which was minimized after 24 h of TSD, progressively decreased with increasing TSD. After 8 h of RS, recoveries of both the NoGo-P3 amplitude and NoGo-N2 latency in the prefrontal cortex were observed compared with the values after 36 h of TSD. Conclusion TSD induced a dose-dependent functional decline in the response inhibition of NoGo-N2 and NoGo-P3 on prefrontal cortex activation, and 8 h of RS resulted in recovery or maintenance of the response inhibition. However, it was not restored to baseline levels. Limitations Participants were chosen male college students only, thus the findings cannot be generalized to older people and women. Additionally, the sample size was small, and, thus, speculations on the meaning of the results of this study should be cautious. The EEG continuous recording should be employed to monitor the decline of alertness following TSD.


In information societies, operations, decisions and choices previously left to humans are increasingly delegated to algorithms, which may advise, if not decide, about how data should be interpreted and what actions should be taken as a result. More and more often, algorithms mediate social processes, business transactions, governmental decisions, and how we perceive, understand, and interact among ourselves and with the environment. Gaps between the design and operation of algorithms and our understanding of their ethical implications can have severe consequences affecting individuals as well as groups and whole societies. This paper makes three contributions to clarify the ethical importance of algorithmic mediation. It provides a prescriptive map to organise the debate. It reviews the current discussion of ethical aspects of algorithms. And it assesses the available literature in order to identify areas requiring further work to develop the ethics of algorithms.


The aim of this paper is to investigate how a substantial cognitive load overshadows the physiological arousal effect, in an attempt to study cognitive abilities of participants engaged on decision-making tasks in serious games. Participants were engaged in a dynamic serious game environment displaying online biofeedback based on the physiological measurements of arousal. The pupil diameter was analyzed in relation to the heart rate during a challenging decision-making task. It was found that the moment when a substantial cognitive load overshadows the physiological arousal effect is observable on the pupil diameter in relation to the heart rate.


Because of growing concern about the significant increase in American household transportation costs, federal agencies have endorsed the notion that it is not merely the affordability of housing alone that is important but the affordability of housing and transportation taken together. Most transportation studies have focused on the relationship between the costs of housing and commuting. Thus the relationship between household expenditures on housing and overall transportation has remained mostly unexamined. With the use of U.S. Consumer Expenditure Survey data, this study made an effort to bridge the gap in the existing knowledge base through an examination of this relationship. In the absence of theories about the relationship between the two types of expenditures, this study leaned heavily on a stream of literature on lifestyle choice, which was advanced to explain the absence of a trade-off between the costs of housing and commuting postulated by urban economic theorists. To account for endogeneity between household expenditures on housing and transportation, three-stage least-squares models were used with the two types of expenditures defined in dollar amounts and as shares of income. For the sake of comparison, a third model, which defined the two types of expenditures as shares of household total expenditures, was used. The relationship between the two types of expenditures varied depending on the definition used. In addition, the models showed the way in which dwelling type, building age, number of household automobiles, public transit use, and metropolitan area size affected transportation expenditure. The implications are discussed.


Some European Community (EC) countries give preferred market access and high prices to bananas from selected developing countries or EC regional suppliers. This preferential status is regarded as a form of aid to these countries, most of which are developing small island economies. EC marketers of bananas from these preferred suppliers also benefit because of the high retail prices. Nonpreferred suppliers - mainly developing countries of Latin America - are hurt by the policies because access is denied or restricted and the lower demand depresses the world price for bananas. The Community's commitment to establish a single unified EC banana market on December 31, 1992 provides a timely opportunity to reform existing distortionary trade policies. The recently announced proposal of the Commission of ECs to regulate banana trade within a unified market relies on quotas to control imports. The proposal is extremely complicated. It is designed to severely restrict competition and to maintain the advantages of selected groups. The authors update their earlier analysis of world banana trade to reflect the market in 1993. They evaluate the implications of the Commission's proposal alongside existing and alternative policies. They find that current policies cost EC consumers about $1.6 billion annually to transfer a net benefit of $0.3 billion a year to preferred suppliers. So, it costs EC consumers about $5.30 to transfer $1.00 of aid toselect developing countries or regions. Additionally, every dollar of aid reaching preferred suppliers costs other developing country suppliers $0.32. EC marketers are the main beneficiaries. Of the $5.30 cost to EC consumers, over $3.00 is collected as excessive marketing margins by protected importers and wholesalers. About $1.00 is lost in outright waste. Several plausible versions of the Commission's proposal are modelled. At best they are found to be slightly less costly than existing policies and at worst, considerably more costly. A 3.5 percent reduction in the quota allocation is estimated to lead to a 30 percent increase in the cost of the proposal. The authors conclude that the Commission's proposal for a unified EC banana policy appears to be little more than a way of replacing existing distortionary national policies with an almost equally distortionary single policy and market. The only difference: the costs would be borne by consumers in all EC countries rather than consumers in only some countries. Worse still, costs could increase. Markets that now gain the benefits of mostly open and competitive marketing such as Germany would face closed and uncompetitive conditions. For developing countries exporting bananas, the proposal offers little. At best conditions may be no worse than they are now. At worst the policy could hurt Latin American suppliers even more than current policies and introduce considerable confusion about the level of support to preferred suppliers. Under the proposed quota system aid will not be well targeted. A more efficient way of achieving the EC's aid commitment is through a small tariff of about 17 percent, used to fund a system of well-targeted deficiency payments or direct aid. The only reason for choosing the Commission's proposal over simpler, tariff-based options seems to be to maintain the vested interests of protected EC markteters. But this is contrary to the objectives of unification, which are to seek gains from increased competition and trade.


This bibliography contains journal articles, book chapters, books, edited volumes, theses, grey literature, bibliographies and other resources on life cycles of terrorism (i.e., the history, origin, evolution, decline, and end of terrorist organizations, movements, types, and individuals). Though focusing on recent literature, the bibliography is not restricted to a particular time period and covers publications up to September 2017. The literature has been retrieved by manually browsing more than 200 core and periphery sources in the field of Terrorism Studies. Additionally, full-text and reference retrieval systems have been employed to expand the search.


Ultra high energy cosmic rays over 1019eV are thought to come from very powerful objects such
as Active Galatic Nucleus(AGN). However, the number of AGNs and ultra high energy cosmic
rays is not large enough to experimentally declare the correlation between them. We use Watson
and Mortlock's bayesian statistical method to compare the arrival direction data of large ground
arrays such as the Telescope Array experiment with AGNs in the Veron-Cety and Veron (VCV)
catalog. We also test the linearity using toy monte carlo simulation. In this presentation, we
present the probability that the TA's cosmic rays come from AGNs.


A series of vinylogous amphetamine analogs was synthesized and examined for their activity at biogenic amine transporters and serotonin-2 receptor (5-HT2) subtypes. (1S,3E)-1-Methyl-4-phenyl-but-3-enylamine (S-6) is a potent dual dopamine/serotonin (DA/5-HT) releaser with no activity at 5-HT2 receptors. This unique profile of actions suggests that analog S-6 is a viable lead compound for identifying new structural classes of DA/5-HT releasers with therapeutic benefit and reduced abuse liability.


As the adoption of deep learning techniques in industrial applications grows with increasing speed and scale, successful deployment of deep learning models often hinges on the availability, volume, and quality of annotated data. In this paper, we tackle the problems of efficient data labeling and annotation verification under the human-in-the-loop setting. We showcase that the latest advancements in the field of self-supervised visual representation learning can lead to tools and methods that benefit the curation and engineering of natural image datasets, reducing annotation cost and increasing annotation quality. We propose a unifying framework by leveraging self-supervised semi-supervised learning and use it to construct workflows for data labeling and annotation verification tasks. We demonstrate the effectiveness of our workflows over existing methodologies. On active learning task, our method achieves 97.0% Top-1 Accuracy on CIFAR10 with 0.1% annotated data, and 83.9% Top-1 Accuracy on CIFAR100 with 10% annotated data. When learning with 50% of wrong labels, our method achieves 97.4% Top-1 Accuracy on CIFAR10 and 85.5% Top-1 Accuracy on CIFAR100.


Genetic and molecular studies have indicated that an epigenetic imprint at mat1, the sexual locus of fission yeast, initiates mating type switching. The polar DNA replication of mat1 generates an imprint on the Watson strand. The process by which the imprint is formed and maintained through the cell cycle remains unclear. To understand better the mechanism of imprint formation and stability, we characterized the recruitment of early players of mating type switching at the mat1 region. We found that the switch activating protein 1 (Sap1) is preferentially recruited inside the mat1M allele on a sequence (SS13) that enhances the imprint. The lysine specific demethylases, Lsd1/2, that control the replication fork pause at MPS1 and the formation of the imprint are specifically drafted inside of mat1, regardless of the allele. The CENP-B homolog, Abp1, is highly enriched next to mat1 but it is not required in the process. Additionally, we established the computational signature of the imprint. Using this signature, we show that both sides of the imprinted molecule are bound by Lsd1/2 and Sap1, suggesting a nucleoprotein protective structure defined as imprintosome.


The v-erb A oncogene of avian erythroblastosis virus is a mutated and virally transduced copy of a host cell gene encoding a thyroid hormone receptor. The protein expressed by the v-erb A oncogene binds to DNA and ads as a dominant negative inhibitor of both the thyroid hormone receptor and the closely related retinoic acid receptor. The v-erb A protein has sustained two amino acid alterations within its DNAbinding domain relative to that of c-erb A, one of which, at serine 61, is known to be important for v-erb A function in the neoplastic cell. We report here that the second alteration, at threonine 78, also plays an important, although more indirect, role: alteration of the sequence at threonine 78 such that it resembles that of c-erb A can act as an intragenic suppressor and can partially restore function to a v-erb A protein rendered defective due to a mutation at position 61. Threonine 78 lies within the D-box of the v-erb A protein, a region thought to mediate receptor-receptor dimerizations, and is not in physical proximity to the serine at position 61. It therefore appears that an indirect interaction occurs between these two sites and that this interaction is crucial for v-erb A function.


A weakly nonlinear model is developed from the Hamiltonian formulation of water waves, to study the bifurcation structure of gravity-capillary waves on water of finite depth. It is found that, besides a very rich structure of symmetric solutions, non-symmetric Wilton's ripples exist. They appear via a spontaneous symmetrybreaking bifurcation from symmetric solutions. The bifurcation tree is similar to that for gravity waves. The solitary wave with surface tension is studied with the same model close to a critical depth. It is found that the solution is not unique, and that further non-symmetric solitary waves are possible. The bifurcation tree has the same structure as for the case of periodic waves. The possibility of checking these results in low-gravity experiments is postulated.


Background Several epidemiological studies have demonstrated the risk factors for fall, while few studies investigated the association between frailty and risk of fall in diabetic patients aged ≥45 years. Methods In this multicity observational study, participants with type 2 diabetes aged ≥45 years were enrolled. Frailty status was measured by a frailty index (FI) of deficit accumulation. We used multivariable regression models to examine the relationship between frailty and fall in diabetic patients, and further investigated the associations between frailty and fall in varied subgroups. Results A total of 2049 participants with type 2 diabetes were identified in our study. Our results showed a per-s.d. and a per-0.01 increment of FI were associated with an increased risk of fall, with a fully adjusted OR of 1.89 (95% CI: 1.50, 2.38), 1.06 (95% CI: 1.04, 1.09), respectively. The effects were magnified when frailty was considered as dichotomous, with an OR of 3.08 (95% CI: 2.18, 4.34). In further subgroup analyses, we found that the females, the older, rural residents, individuals with no sitting toilet, people with poor balance performance and those in poor health status were susceptible to fall. Especially, for the risk of fall in the older, a per-s.d. increase of FI corresponded to an OR of 2.46 (95% CI: 1.68, 3.62). When frailty was regarded as a binary variable, the effect increased to 4.62 (95% CI: 2.54, 8.38) in the older subgroup. Conclusion Frailty was associated with a higher risk of fall in people with type 2 diabetes, and the effects were higher in vulnerable groups. This evidence suggested that more attention should be paid to vulnerable groups for fall prevention.


Sand rivers can be found in arid and semi-arid areas of the world where water is in short supply. Despite their dry appearance, useable quantities of water often reside in aquifers beneath the surface and can provide a sustainable and safe supply for rural communities. Nevertheless, dry rivers are often overlooked as a realizable source of water.
This book sets out to address this issue and promotes the abstraction of water from sand rivers as a viable and affordable option for dryland areas. It enables the reader to assess the potential for abstraction from beneath a dry river bed and provides practical guidelines for doing so.
The book is a 'how to' manual and is essential reading for engineers, technicians, fieldworkers and project planners who are faced with the challange of providing and sustaining safe and reliable water sources for low-income communities. It is also aimed at providing decision-makers in the water industry, commercial, government and non-governmental organizations with an overview of an alternative, appropriate water supply solution for dryland areas.


Small and medium-sized commercial buildings can be retrofitted to significantly reduce their energy use, however it is a huge challenge as owners usually lack of the expertise and resources to conduct detailed on-site energy audit to identify and evaluate cost-effective energy technologies. This study presents a DEEP (database of energy efficiency performance) that provides a direct resource for quick retrofit analysis of commercial buildings. DEEP, compiled from the results of about ten million EnergyPlus simulations, enables an easy screening of ECMs (energy conservation measures) and retrofit analysis. The simulations utilize prototype models representative of small and mid-size offices and retails in California climates. In the formulation of DEEP, large scale EnergyPlus simulations were conducted on high performance computing clusters to evaluate hundreds of individual and packaged ECMs covering envelope, lighting, heating, ventilation, air-conditioning, plug-loads, and service hot water. The architecture and simulation environment to create DEEP is flexible and can expand to cover additional building types, additional climates, and new ECMs. In this study DEEP is integrated into a web-based retrofit toolkit, the Commercial Building Energy Saver, which provides a platform for energy retrofit decision making by querying DEEP and unearthing recommended ECMs, their estimated energy savings and financial payback. © 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.


This study utilized quantitative receptor autoradiography to examine the effects of repeated administration of antidepressants to rats on the binding of the beta adrenoceptor antagonist, 125I-iodopindolol (125I-IPIN) to either beta-1 or beta-2 adrenoceptors in various regions of brain. Antidepressants were selected to represent various chemical and pharmacological classes including tricyclic compounds (desipramine and protriptyline), monoamine oxidase inhibitors (clorgyline, phenelzine and tranylcypromine), atypical antidepressants (mianserin and trazodone) and selective inhibitors of the uptake of serotonin (citalopram and sertraline). Additionally, rats were treated with various psychotropic drugs that lack antidepressant efficacy (cocaine, deprenyl, diazepam and haloperidol). Repeated treatment of rats with desipramine, protriptyline, clorgyline, phenelzine, tranylcypromine or mianserin reduced the binding of 125I-IPIN to beta-1 adrenoceptors in many brain areas. Only in the basolateral and lateral nuclei of the amygdala did all six of these antidepressants significantly reduce 125I-IPIN binding to beta-1 adrenoceptors. In these amygdaloid nuclei, the magnitude of the reduction in the binding of 125I-IPIN caused by each of these drugs was comparable to or greater than the reduction in binding produced in any other region of brain. Reductions of binding of 125I-IPIN after antidepressant treatments were not consistently observed in the cortex, the area of brain examined most often in homogenate binding studies. Only the monoamine oxidase inhibitors caused reductions in the binding of 125I-IPIN to beta-2 adrenoceptors, and this effect was generally localized to the amygdala and hypothalamus. Repeated treatment of rats with citalopram, sertraline, or trazodone or with drugs lacking clinical antidepressant efficacy caused no significant effects on the binding of 125I-IPIN to either subtype of beta adrenoceptor in any region of brain. These results demonstrate that amygdaloid beta-1 adrenoceptors are particularly susceptible to regulation by certain antidepressant treatments and implicate the amygdala as an important site of action for antidepressants with pharmacological activity on noradrenergic neurons.


A high-speed ring-assisted Mach-Zehnder interferometer (RAMZI) silicon modulator is reported and experimentally demonstrated. The RAMZI optical structure relaxes the optimum coupling condition of the ring without degrading the modulator performance, which therefore improves the modulator robustness against fabrication deviations and could eventually lead to an enhanced modulation bandwidth. Hence, our RAMZI silicon modulator, based on carrier depletion in a pipin active structure, exhibits a 3 dB electro-optical bandwidth of 19 GHz, enabling up to 20 Gbit/s data transmission over a RF/optical interaction length of only ~200 μm.


Abstract Explicit relations are developed to estimate isotope enrichment factors for iQF6 vapors diluted in a carrier gas G, which are isotope selectively laser-excited and flow subsonically through a wall-cooled cylindrical cell. At gas mix pressures below 100 millitorr, laser-assisted condensation repression on cold walls can induce isotope separations for some vapors at certain cryogenic temperatures. For example, for iSF6/N2 mixtures, narrow temperature "windows" are found in the 70 to 90 K region where enrichments exceed βi = β33 = 1.7. For iUF6/G gas mixes, enrichment under full condensation conditions is not possible since the surface potential well (~1150 cm–1) of a UF6 condensate layer is higher than the vibration-to-translation conversion quantum of the v3 vibration (~628 cm–1). However, for UF6* adsorptions on a bare surface of F2-passivated gold with well depth of 400 cm–1 or less, initial isotope enrichments with β ~ 1.1 are possible before the surface is covered with UF6 condensate. Throughputs in cold-wall isotope separations are low because of low operating pressures. For enrichments of milligrams of a radioactive isotope in nuclear medicine, this is still useful and offers a low-footprint alternative to calutron or ultracentrifuge separations. Since feed and product streams are the same, the method lends itself to multistaging, with one laser irradiating four or more chambers in series.


Notes from Home is an installation of five hand-made photobooks presented on domestic-style shelves. It represents a new turn in my exploration of autobiographical storytelling. Using material shot in the early 2000s – mostly unseen until this work – the project focuses in minute detail on the tiny stories present in everyday life within a domestic interior. In a development from my earlier projects on cockroaches and cupboards, Notes from Home concentrates more on banal events dramatised through vivid colour and close-up photography.
The five series are: Gifts from the Cats (dead animals of various sorts); Making Cakes (eccentric cakes made with my youngest son); The Rise and Fall of Father Christmas (the making of a papier-mâche life size FC by my older son over a period of months and then its demise); Pete's Food and Flowers (obsessive dinners made and flowers picked by the lodger) and Super Snacks (me eating personally constructed snacks).

A small selection of the original photos was published as single images in my monograph Anna Fox Photographs 1983 (ed. Val Williams, Photoworks, 2007). However, the final project only emerged with the subsequent production of the concertina books. These introduce a narrative structure that brings together a vast number of previously unseen images, combining them with short texts at the end of each sequence. Notes from Home was first realized in its current form as an installation/book project in 2008 for the exhibition Cockroach Diary and Other Stories, and was re-exhibited in the Deutsche Borse Prize 2010. Its development in an exhibition setting provided my first opportunity to fully explore installation as a central part of a photographic work. The installation of the books on shelves designed to look like those in a domestic setting is integral to the meaning of the work as a whole.


I. INTRODUCTION The United States prides herself on recognizing the individual rights of every citizen. Americans are shocked by the treatment of women in Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia, and other foreign countries; they are embarrassed by their nation's own history of slavery and female disenfranchisement. Americans consider themselves superior in this respect; they have risen above these injustices and now inhabit a modern society that should be the envy of and blueprint for the rest of the world. Despite these advances, the United States is not doing a very good job protecting the rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness of this nation's children, who lack the capacity to defend their rights on their own. (1) Every day, thousands of children are beaten, starved, abandoned, and sexually abused. Courts and social services try to step in when they can, and when society hears of the most horrific cases, individuals are quick to express their outrage and anger. Nevertheless, the same situations are perpetrated again and again. In a nation that seems so dedicated to honoring the individual rights of each and every human being, why do so many adults feel entitled to treat children this way? This Note will explore the connection between the mistreatment of children and the dehumanization of unborn children, (2) and will argue that both wrongs stem from the misguided premise that human lives only deserve constitutional rights once a set level of development is reached. True recognition of the civil rights of children will not meaningfully progress until America learns to value children at all stages of development. Part II of this Note will explore how the Supreme Court's abortion cases have denied the personhood of unborn children, therefore failing to give the developing life any individual consideration separate from the governmental interests involved. Part III will examine cases in which courts have undervalued children by focusing on state and parental rights, rather than the individual child's interests. This section will also outline two of the most serious ways in which such a scheme has negatively affected our children: child abuse and infanticide. Part IV will discuss the connection between the lack of personhood afforded unborn children and the dearth of judicial consideration of individual children's rights. Finally, Part V will offer an alternative framework, one that explicitly recognizes the innate right of all individuals to have their existence recognized and honored by the government and courts. Although this new framework might not change the outcome of many children'srights or abortion cases, by giving explicit acknowledgment to the individual rights of every human life and considering these rights in the balancing process, courts will reaffirm the honor and dignity of every individual, a change that would benefit not only children, but everyone in society. II. ABORTION AND THE SUPREME COURT: WOMEN VERSUS THE STATE A. Child or Choice? The Supreme Court's abortion decisions, even though impacting the lives, or potential lives, (3) of unborn children, cast the central issue as the woman's right to choose whether to bear a child versus the state's right to protect potential life. (4) The unborn child's right to maintain his life does not enter the equation because the developing entity, as the Roe v. Wade Court asserted, is simply not a person within the meaning of the Constitution, (5) The Roe Court sidestepped the difficult matter of considering the humanity of that subpopulation's constituent members, instead reducing the question to one of state power. After arriving at the biologically anomalous determination that an unborn baby is not a person, (6) the Court determined exactly when the unborn should be worthy of protection, setting deadlines and drawing boundaries between when life should be protected and when it should be disposable by the person the Roe Court referred to as the mother. …


As an increasing number of customers is using multiple channels, organizations face complex challenges to offer these customer the seamless journey experience they demand. An extensive literature research resulted in the identification of agile processes as the key facilitating factor for continuously improving the customer performance within an omnichannel strategy. Besides agile processes other facilitating factors have been identified. These are the omnichannel strategy, people, organizational structure, and information systems. As little empirical evidence is available a conceptual model has been developed to test four hypotheses. The next step is to design and validate a measurement tool based on the conceptual model: the Agile Marketing Maturity Model (AM3).


For self-styled 'book girl,' third-year high school student Tohko Amano, being the head of the literary club is more than just an extracurricular activity with minor perks. It's her bread and butter . . . literally! Tohko is actually a literature-gobbling demon, and instead of the less palatable option of water-soaked bread, she opts to munch on torn out pages from all kinds of stories. But for Tohko, the real delicacies are handwritten stories. And to satisfy her gourmet tastes, she's employed (aka. browbeaten) one Konoha Inoue, an underclassman who has retreated from writing novels after his experiences with getting published at an early age. So day in and day out, Konoha scribbles away to satisfy Tohko's appetite. But when, one day, another student comes knocking on the literary club door to seek advice on writing love letters, will Tohko discover a new kind of delicacy to whet her voracious appetite?


Transparent conducting oxides have a unique combination of properties as they are both optical transparent in the visible region of the electromagnetic spectrum, and obtain a near-metallic conductivity. This makes them extensively used in a wide variety of technological applications. The industrial demand for developing better, cheaper, and faster methods for producing these materials is increasing continuously. Thus, the motivation for this master thesis is to find a cheaper and faster way to produce transparent conductive oxides while still retaining the optoelectronic properties. A possible way of doing this is by replacing the conventional furnace heat-treatment step of sol-gel derived transparent conductive oxides with photochemical activation. The aim of this work is hence to compare the quality of sol-gel derived indium tin oxide and indium zinc oxide thin films cured using thermal and ultraviolet radiation methods. Indium tin oxide and indium zinc oxide thin films were prepared by spin coating a sol synthesized by an environmental friendly Pechini method onto glass and silicon substrates. The thin films were subsequently characterized with respect to crystal structure, morphology, optical properties, and electrical properties. The thermally cured indium tin oxide and indium zinc oxide thin films obtained a non-directional phase pure cubic bixbyite crystal structure, while the ultraviolet curing at room temperature and 150 °C gave an amorphous structure. By studying the morphology of the thin films it could be observed that the thermal curing gave the highest homogeneity, while the ultraviolet curing at 150 °C gave the lowest homogeneity. The same trend was also found for surface roughness, where the lowest roughness was obtained for the thermally cured films. The thin films obtained a high optical transparency with an average value of 88-97 % in the visible region of the electromagnetic spectrum. No clear trend could be seen with regards to the effect of the different curing methods on the absolute value of the transparency, whereas an evident trend was seen for the curve shape. The transmission curves had an absorption band edge at about 300 nm, and a band gap of 3.8 eV and 3.7 eV was observed for indium tin oxide and indium zinc oxide, respectively. The optical constants refractive index and extinction coefficient indicates a difference in the optical properties for indium tin oxide and indium zinc oxide. For the thermally cured indium tin oxide thin films the lowest resistivity values obtained on glass and silicon substrates were 2.8×10-3 Ω cm and 2.2×10-3 Ω cm, respectively, while the lowest resistivity values obtained for the indium zinc oxide thin films on glass and silicon substrates were 0.4 Ω cm and 0.1 Ω cm, respectively. It was not possible to obtain resistivity measurements for any of the ultraviolet curing methods, indicating that these films are non-conducting. This is most likely due to incomplete decomposition of organics in the thin films.


The majority of pharmacogenomic (PGx) studies have been conducted on European ancestry populations, thereby excluding minority populations and impeding the discovery and translation of African American–specific genetic variation into precision medicine. Without accounting for variants found in African Americans, clinical recommendations based solely on genetic biomarkers found in European populations could result in misclassification of drug response in African American patients. To address these challenges, we formed the Transdisciplinary Collaborative Center (TCC), African American Cardiovascular Pharmacogenetic Consortium (ACCOuNT), to discover novel genetic variants in African Americans related to clinically actionable cardiovascular phenotypes and to incorporate African American–specific sequence variations into clinical recommendations at the point of care. The TCC consists of two research projects focused on discovery and translation of genetic findings and four cores that support the projects. In addition, the largest repository of PGx information on African Americans is being established as well as lasting infrastructure that can be utilized to spur continued research in this understudied population.


Shrimps are extremely valuable resources, in view of their large domestic as well as
export demand. Their high value emphasizes the importance of resource management, especiaJly, since substantial increase in global shrimp production is not expected, to make roost efficient use of the stocks in existing fisheries. However, shrimp management is somewhat different in concept than management of other fisheries, owing to its unique life history. The important biological characteristic of penaeids is the presence of two distinct phases in their life cycle, involving postlarval and juvenile phase living close to inshore waters or in estuaries which serve as their nursery and an aduh phase in deeper waters, where they mature and spawn. Different species spend variable amount of time, ranging from few weeks to several months in their nursery habitats. The open estuary and tidal ponds of Cochin, where traditional prawn fisheries exist are ideal nurseries for prawns. Fishery of the tidal ponds involves trapping wild seeds during nursery phase and allowing them to feed naturally and grow till they emigrate when they are caught in filtemets. Tidal ponds are generally extensive in nature with little or no management. These habitats, however, provide a potential and biologically healthy environment for the growth of prawns and fishes.
In seasonal ponds, paddy and prawn are cuhivated ahemately. Paddy is cuhivated during
monsoon, when salinity becomes low. After paddy harvesting in October, prawn and fish seeds are allowed to enter the field during high tides. Harvesting starts in November and is carried out fur 6-7 days around every full and new moon. The process of trapping and filtration continue till the middle of April, when ponds are drained and the entire stocks were harvested. Perennial ponds are non-drainable and filtration is carried out round the year. However, occasional partial harvesting is resorted, when any calamities struck or large proportion of good-sized prawns encountered in the catch. Shrimp fishery of tidal ponds is supported mainly by M dobsoni, P. indicus and M monoceros. Despite, having many biological features in common, like backwater nursery phase, variations are expected to occur in the degree to which the brackishwater environment is put to use by each species and their distribution.


The introduction of intelligent devices with short range wireless communication techniques has motivated the development of Mobile Ad hoc NETworks (MANETs) during the last few years. However, traditional end-to-end based routing algorithms designed for MANETs are not much robust in the challenged networks suffering from frequent disruption, sparse network density and limited device capability. Such challenged networks, also known as Intermittently Connected Networks (ICNs) adopt the Store-Carry-Forward (SCF) behavior arising from the mobility of mobile nodes for message relaying. In this article, we consider the term ICNs as Delay/Disruption Tolerant Networks (DTNs) for the purpose of generalization, since DTNs have been envisioned for different applications with a large number of proposed routing algorithms. Motivated by the great interest from the research community, we firstly review the existing unicasting issue of DTNs because of its extensive research stage. Then, we also address multicasting and anycasting issues in DTNs considering their perspectives. A detail survey based on our taxonomy over the period from 2006 to 2010 is not only provided but also a comparison is given. We further identify the remaining challenges and open issues followed by an evaluation framework proposed for routing in DTNs. Finally, we summarize our contribution with three future research topics highlighted.


This work presents the prototype design of a secure microprocessor that executes encrypted programs. The aim of such a secure processor is to prevent programs from being copied; otherwise the encrypted programs will not run on ordinary platforms. The idea is demonstrated through a concrete design of a 16-bit soft processor, namely CryptOdin, along with the simulations and physical implementation on FPGA. This processor is expected to easily hide critical algorithms/programs without sacrificing the performance by the help of a dedicated decryption unit implemented in the processor.


The low phosphorus concentrations observed in the western North Atlantic and the western Central Atlantic suggest that phosphorus bioavailability may limit Trichodesmium productivity and N2 fixation. However, the degree to which the concentration and composition of the total phosphorus pool affects actual bioavailability is poorly understood. To better examine how phosphorus bioavailability may constrain primary production and marine N2 fixation, we have developed a molecular diagnostic tool for quickly detecting the phosphorus status of the diazotroph Trichodesmium. This diagnostic method uses a commercially available substrate to fluorescently tag cells expressing the phosphate-regulated enzyme, alkaline phosphatase. Using this diagnostic tool, we were able to distinguish phosphorus-replete from phosphorus-stressed Trichodesmium populations along a transect from Grand Bahama Island to Bermuda in November 2000.


Benzene-1,3,5-tricarboxamide (BTA) molecules self-assemble into one-dimensional columnar structures that possess a macrodipole moment along the stacking direction. Application of an external electric field on their liquid crystalline (LC) phase consisting of aligned stacks leads to a net polarization whose sign can be reversed by changing the direction of the field. Atomistic molecular dynamics simulations predict that such an experiment must be associated with the reversal of helical handedness of the stacks as well. An experiment to demonstrate this prediction in a chiral supramolecular assembly is proposed.


Advances in modern cryptography coupled with rapid growth in processing and communication speeds make secure two-party computation a realistic paradigm. Yet, thus far, interest in this paradigm has remained mostly theoretical.

This paper introduces Fairplay [28], a full-fledged system that implements generic secure function evaluation (SFE). Fairplay comprises a high level procedural definition language called SFDL tailored to the SFE paradigm; a compiler of SFDL into a one-pass Boolean circuit presented in a language called SHDL; and Bob/Alice programs that evaluate the SHDL circuit in the manner suggested by Yao in [39].

This system enables us to present the first evaluation of an overall SFE in real settings, as well as examining its components and identifying potential bottlenecks. It provides a test-bed of ideas and enhancements concerning SFE, whether by replacing parts of it, or by integrating with it. We exemplify its utility by examining several alternative implementations of oblivious transfer within the system, and reporting on their effect on overall performance.


We apply the time-dependent current-density-functional theory to the study of the relaxation of a closed many-electron system evolving from a nonequilibrium initial state. We show that the self-consistent unitary time evolution generated by the exchange-correlation vector potential irreversibly drives the system to equilibrium. We also show that the energy dissipated in the Kohn-Sham system, i.e., the noninteracting system whose particle and current densities coincide with those of the physical system under study, is related to the entropy production in the real system.


Buddhism in the United States is often viewed in connection with practitioners in the Northeast and on the West Coast, but in fact, it has been spreading and evolving throughout the United States since the mid-nineteenth century. In "Dixie Dharma," Jeff Wilson argues that region is crucial to understanding American Buddhism. Through the lens of a multidenominational Buddhist temple in Richmond, Virginia, Wilson explores how Buddhists are adapting to life in the conservative evangelical Christian culture of the South, and how traditional Southerners are adjusting to these newer members on the religious landscape. Introducing a host of overlooked characters, including Buddhist circuit riders, modernist Pure Land priests, and pluralistic Buddhists, Wilson shows how regional specificity manifests itself through such practices as meditation vigils to heal the wounds of the slave trade. He argues that southern Buddhists at once use bodily practices, iconography, and meditation tools to enact distinct sectarian identities even as they enjoy a creative hybridity.


We extend the definition of chordal from graphs to clutters. The resulting family generalizes both chordal graphs and matroids, and obeys many of the same algebraic and geometric properties. Specifically, the independence complex of a chordal clutter is shellable, hence sequentially Cohen-Macaulay; and the circuit ideal of a certain complement to such a clutter has a linear resolution. Minimal non-chordal clutters are also closely related to obstructions to shellability, and we give some general families of such obstructions, together with a classification by computation of all obstructions to shellability on 6 vertices.


This paper presents findings from a field survey in a naturally ventilated primary school building in Southampton, UK. The study included thermal comfort surveys and simultaneous measurements of indoor environmental variables. Approximately 230 pupils aged 7-11 in all 8 classrooms of the school were surveyed in repeated survey runs outside the heating season, from April to July 2011. In total 1314 responses were gathered. The survey involved questions on the thermal sensation and preference of the pupils. This paper investigates the children's thermal sensation trends, their perception of overall comfort and tiredness. Furthermore, it compares the survey results to predictions achieved with current adult-based comfort standards, namely ISO 7730 and EN 15251. The results suggest that children have a different thermal perception than adults. Possible explanations are discussed in relation to the particularities and specific character of school environments.


This paper describes a system for the simultaneous dynamic control and thermal characterization of the heating of an Ultra Low Power (ULP) micromachined sensor. A Pulse Width Modulated (PWM) powering system has been realized using a microcontroller to characterize the thermal behavior of a device. Objectives of the research were to analyze the relation between the time period and duty cycle of the PWM signal and the operating temperature of such ULP micromachined systems, to observe the thermal time constants of the device during the heating phase and to measure the total thermal conductance. Constant target heater resistance experiments highlighted that an approximately constant heater temperature at regime can only be obtained if the time period of the heating signal is smaller than 50 𝜇s. Constant power experiments show quantitatively a thermal time constant 𝜏 that decreases during heating in a range from 2.3 ms to 2 ms as a function of an increasing temperature rise Δ𝑇 between the ambient and the operating temperature. Moreover, we calculated the total thermal conductance. Finally, repeatability of experimental results was assessed by guaranteeing the standard deviation of the controlled temperature which was within ±5.5∘C in worst case conditions.


V.S. Pritchett explores the connections between Chekhov's life and art, showing how Chekhov (1860-1904) often based his fiction on experiences of his difficult early years where he was responsible for his impoverished family, and as a young doctor, reported on the conditions of the Russian penal colony at Sakhalin. Later he continued his medical career, even when he became a well-known writer and playwright. This book focuses on the short stories of Chekhov often neglected in favour of his plays and discusses why Chekhov was a success in both mediums. The author has previously written "Collected Stories", a selection of short stories, in addition to "Nothing like Leather" and "Dead Man Leading".


In September 2000, leaders from 189 nations ratified the Millennium Declaration. The declaration is an unprecedented global commitment and one of the most significant United Nations documents of recent time. It offers a common and integrated vision on how to tackle some of the major challenges facing the world. The declaration has resulted in eight Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) focused on reducing poverty, improving the quality of peoples' lives, ensuring environmental sustainability, and building partnerships to ensure that globalization becomes a more positive force for all the world's people. Specific targets and indicators have been set for each of the goals, to be achieved by 2015. These goals might remain elusive unless much emphasis is laid on the development of entrepreneurial skills. Entrepreneurs can provide the new approaches needed to hasten the process of reducing poverty and hunger. This paper shows that while the MDGs do not formally set targets for financial sector, Nigeria needs microfinance to empower the skilled economically active poor through an integrated microfinance model in order to achieve the MDGs.


We study the role of $L_2$ regularization in deep learning, and uncover simple relations between the performance of the model, the $L_2$ coefficient, the learning rate, and the number of training steps. These empirical relations hold when the network is overparameterized. They can be used to predict the optimal regularization parameter of a given model. In addition, based on these observations we propose a dynamical schedule for the regularization parameter that improves performance and speeds up training. We test these proposals in modern image classification settings. Finally, we show that these empirical relations can be understood theoretically in the context of infinitely wide networks. We derive the gradient flow dynamics of such networks, and compare the role of $L_2$ regularization in this context with that of linear models.


With the advent of the Internet, and the development of new business models, companies increasingly hold large amounts of personal data about their employees and their customers. While there is a plethora of literature on the data privacy challenges created by the Internet and these new business models, this paper explores the limits placed by EU competition law on the acquisition and processing of personal data. There is a dearth of literature, and no real precedent, addressing this question. Hence, this paper is a first attempt to address the interface between personal data and competition law. We hope that it will trigger further analysis and debate on what will increasingly become an important policy question.It is common knowledge that a fast growing number of companies, such as, for instance, telecommunications operators, banks, credit card companies, large retailers, Internet service providers, search engine providers, and social networks, collect large amounts of personal data. Other companies specialise in the processing and selling of these data. In particular, personal data are at the core of the Internet. Companies, such as Google or Facebook, have developed services and business models whose success heavily rely on the acquisition and treatment of personal data. Such data allow these companies to improve the quality of their services and make them more attractive to users. They also enable them to monetise their services through targeted (also referred to as "behavioural") advertising. The volume, but also the quality of the personal data acquired is thus key competitive differentiators in the Internet economy. Online service users certainly benefit from the ability of their providers to use personal data they may have acquired in terms of better services (more relevant search results, etc.) and more targeted advertising. The acquisition of large volumes of data by "first mover" providers may, however, raise barriers to entry and thus deprive users from the benefits of competition. There is also a risk that online service providers may seek to prevent other companies from acquiring the data they need to compete, hence perpetuating their lead.Against this background, this paper is divided into four sections. Section II further elaborates on the critical importance of the acquisition of personal data for most key Internet players (which are referred to hereafter as "online service providers"). Section III analyses the extent to which certain practices aiming at collecting data or at depriving access to such data to competitors can be anticompetitive and constitute a breach of EU competition rules. It also analyses whether EU competition law could be used to force dominant companies to share their data with competitors so as to stimulate competition on one or several markets. Finally, Section IV concludes.


Biological growth has been observed on insulators installed all over the world. However, so far, its impact on insulator performance is not well known. This paper summarizes a majority of the work published in the field. Based on the gathered experiences, it can be concluded that microbiological growth is unlikely to cause severe degradation of the rubber housings of non-ceramic insulators. Furthermore, it seems that the impact of growth on the insulator performance is rather low. Techniques available for detection and characterisation of growth on insulators are also described and discusses. Among those, laser-induced fluorescence (LIF) spectroscopy has been found to give good results in remote detection of micro-organisms


Hyperkalemia is a frequent complication among kidney transplant recipients that can lead to fatal arrhythmias. The causes of hyperkalemia post kidney transplant are multifactorial and often are drug-induced, and include decreased glomerular filtration rate, tubular dysfunction, and impaired sodium delivery in the distal nephron. This review will discuss pathophysiology and management of both acute and chronic hyperkalemia in kidney transplant recipients.


Abstract This research examined the onset, duration, and termination of hibernation in Desert Tortoises (Gopherus agassizii) over several years at multiple sites in the northeastern part of their geographic range, and recorded the temperatures experienced by tortoises during winter hibernation. The timing of hibernation by Desert Tortoises differed among sites and years. Environmental cues acting over the short-term did not appear to influence the timing of the hibernation period. Different individual tortoises entered hibernation over as many as 44 days in the fall and emerged from hibernation over as many as 49 days in the spring. This range of variation in the timing of hibernation indicates a weak influence at best of exogenous cues hypothesized to trigger and terminate hibernation. There do appear to be regional trends in hibernation behavior as hibernation tended to begin earlier and continue longer at sites that were higher in elevation and generally cooler. The emergence date was generally more similar among study sites than the date of onset. While the climate and the subsequent timing of hibernation differed among sites, the average temperatures experienced by tortoises while hibernating differed by only about five degrees from the coldest site to the warmest site.


Nagkesar (Mesua ferrea Linn.) belonging to the family Guttiferae, has a great medicinal value, so far, proper pharmacognostical and phytochemical studies of stamens have not been reported. Morphological and anatomical aspects as well as differential microchemical response have been worked out to identify the diagnostic features of the stamens. Physical constant values involving moisture content, ash and extractives as well as qualitative and quantitative estimation of various phytochemicals have been studied. The hydro-alcoholic extracts of Mesua ferrea were evaluated for anthelmintic activity using adult earthworms; the extract of Mesua ferrea exhibited a dose dependent inhibition of spontaneous motility (paralysis) and evoked responses to pin-prick. With lower doses the effects were comparable with that of albendazole. However, there was no final recovery in the case of worms treated with hydro-alcoholic extract. The result showed that the hydro-alcoholic extract possessed wormicidal activity and thus, may be useful as an anthelmintic.


Activation of PAR1 by a matrix metalloprotease mediates early thrombosis formation. Rupture of atherosclerotic plaques in blood vessels disrupts endothelium and exposes collagen, a potent trigger for recruiting and aggregating platelets during thrombosis. A key signaling pathway in this process is the thrombin-mediated cleavage of protease-activated receptor 1 (PAR1) on platelets. Trivedi et al. found that matrix metalloprotease 1 (MMP-1) on platelets also cleaves PAR1, but at a site distinct from that cleaved by thrombin. Treatment of platelets with a peptide corresponding to the MMP-1 cleavage product of PAR1 activated the guanosine triphosphatase RhoA (which was blocked by the PAR1 antagonist RWJ-56110) and the p38 mitogen-activated protein kinase (MAPK). The inactive form of MMP-1 (pro-MMP-1) associated with the collagen receptor αIIbβ3 integrin. Like the MMP-1–generated PAR1 cleavage fragment, collagen treatment of platelets activated RhoA and p38 MAPK, which was blocked by PAR1 antagonists or the MMP-1 inhibitor FN-439. An in vitro assay in which anticoagulated blood was flowed over collagen-coated surfaces at rates that produced high shear stress conditions showed that pretreatment of platelets with either MMP-1 or PAR1 inhibitors did not affect their adhesion but decreased the initiation and propagation of thrombi, an effect not observed with thrombin inhibitors. Platelet activation in guinea pigs in response to direct injection of collagen was reduced by inhibition of MMP-1 or PAR1. FeCl3 injection causes injury in the carotid artery similar to that caused by rupture of atherosclerotic plaques, and eventually the artery becomes occluded because of thrombosis at the injury site. However, administration of either MMP-1 or PAR1 antagonists increased the time required for complete arterial occlusion. Furthermore, platelets in clots contained higher MMP-1 activity compared with platelets from uninjured animals or animals treated with FN-439 before FeCl3 injection. The authors propose that MMP-1 activation of PAR1 is required for the early stages of thrombosis and may be a potential therapeutic target for preventing arterial thrombosis. V. Trivedi, A. Boire, B. Tchernychev, N. C. Kaneider, A. J. Leger, K. O'Callaghan, L. Covic, A. Kuliopulos, Platelet matrix metalloprotease-1 mediates thrombogenesis by activating PAR1 at a cryptic ligand site. Cell 137, 332–343 (2009). [Online Journal]


Computer systems and internet are becoming pervasive in our everyday life. Being online brings the consequence that such systems are prone to malicious attack. This vulnerability, along with our reliance on these systems, implies that it is important for us to do our best in securing them to ensure their proper functioning. In this paper, we are trying to tackle the security issues from both technical and human perspectives. From this dual standpoint, we hope to obtain a better understanding on how computer attacks are performed, including how to gain illicit access, the types of attacks, as well as the potential damage that they can cause. We also uncover sociological and psychological traits of the attackers, including their community, taxonomy, motives and work ethics. This survey paper will not provide a concrete solution on how to secure computer systems, but it highlights the socio-technical approach that we must take in order to obtain that goal.


The Late Triassic (Norian) outcrops of the Malmros Klint Formation, Jameson Land (Greenland) have yielded numerous specimens of non-sauropod sauropodomorphs. Relevant fossils were briefly reported in 1994 and were assigned to Plateosaurus trossingensis. However, continuous new findings of early non-sauropod sauropodomorphs around the globe facilitate comparisons and allow us to now revise this material. Here, the non-sauropod sauropodomorph Issi saaneq gen. et sp. nov. is described based on two almost complete and articulated skulls. The two skulls represent a middle-stage juvenile and a late-stage juvenile or subadult. Issi saaneq differs from all other sauropodomorphs by several unique traits: (1) a small foramen at the medial surface of the premaxilla; (2) an anteroposteriorly elongated dorsoposterior process of the squamosal; (3) a relatively high quadrate relative to rostrum height; (4) a well-developed posterodorsal process of the articular. These features cannot be explained by taphonomy, ontogeny, or intraspecific variation. Issi saaneq shows affinities to Brazilian plateosaurids and the European Plateosaurus, being recovered as the sister clade of the latter in our phylogenetic analysis. It is the northernmost record of a Late Triassic sauropodomorph, and a new dinosaur species erected for Greenland. Issi saaneq broadens our knowledge about the evolution of plateosaurid sauropodomorphs.


I estimate welfare benefits of eliminating idiosyncratic consumption shocks unrelated to the business cycle as 47.3% of household utility and benefits of eliminating idiosyncratic shocks related to the business cycle as 3.4% of utility. Estimates of the former substantially exceed earlier ones because I distinguish between idiosyncratic shocks related/unrelated to the business cycle, estimate the negative skewness of shocks, target moments of idiosyncratic shocks from household-level CEX data, and target market moments. Benefits of eliminating aggregate shocks are 7.7% of utility. Policy should focus on insuring idiosyncratic shocks unrelated to the business cycle, such as the death of a household's prime wage earner and job layoffs not necessarily related to recessions.


We propose the development of a set of software technologies ("SwitchWare") which will enable rapid development and deployment of new network services. The key insight is that by making the basic network service selectable on a per user (or even per packet) basis, the need for formal standardization is eliminated. Additionally, by making the basic network service programmable, the deployment times, today constrained by capital funding limitations, are tremendously reduced (to the order of software distribution times). Finally, by constructing an advanced, robust programming environment, even the service development time can be reduced. A SwitchWare switch consists of input and output ports controlled by a software-programmable element; programs are contained in sequences of messages sent to the SwitchWare switch's input ports, which interpret the messages as programs. We call these "Switchlets". This accelerates the pace of network evolution, as evolving user needs can be immediately reflected in the network infrastructure. Immediate reconfigurability enhances the adaptability of the network infrastructure in the face of unexpected situations. We call a network built from SwitchWare switches an active network. Comments University of Pennsylvania Department of Computer and Information Science Technical Report No. MSCIS-96-38. Author(s) Jonathan M. Smith, David J. Farber, Carl A. Gunter, Scott M. Nettles, D. C. Feldmeier, and W. David Sincoskie This technical report is available at ScholarlyCommons: http://repository.upenn.edu/cis_reports/211 Switchware: Accelerating Network Evolution (White Paper)


Laitinen Niina Development of a ceramic membrane filtration equipment and its applicability for different wastewaters Lappeenranta 2002 126 pp. Acta Universitatis Lappeenrantaensis 130 Diss. Lappeenranta University of Technology ISBN 951-764-689-5, ISSN 1456-4491 In this thesis the membrane filtration equipment for plate type ceramic membranes was developed based on filtration results achieved with different kinds of wastewaters. The experiments were mainly made with pulp and board mill wastewaters, but some experiments were also made with a bore well water and a stone cutting mine wastewater. The ceramic membranes used were -alumina membranes with a pore size of 100 nm. Some of the membranes were coated with a alumina layer to reduce the membrane pore size to 10 nm, and some of them were modified with different metal oxides in order to change the surface properties of the membranes. The effects of operation parameters, such as cross-flow velocity, filtration pressure and backflushing on filtration performance were studied. The measured parameters were the permeate flux, the quality of the permeate, as well as the fouling tendency of the membrane. A dynamic membrane or a cake layer forming on top of the membrane was observed to decrease the flux and increase separation of certain substances, especially at low cross-flow velocities. When the crossflow velocities were increased the membrane properties became more important. Backflushing could also be used to decrease the thickness of the cake layer and thus it improved the permeate flux. However, backflushing can lead to a reduction of retentions in cases where the cake layer is improving them. The wastewater quality was important for the thickness of the dynamic membrane and the membrane pore size influenced the permeate flux. In general, the optimization of operation conditions is very important for the successful operation of a membrane filtration system. The filtration equipment with a reasonable range of operational conditions is necessary, especially when different kinds of wastewaters are treated. This should be taken into account already in the development stage of a filtration equipment.


International standards on indigenous peoples contain a theoretical promise of spatial empowerment and traditional governance as part of autonomy which in practice is not absent of conflict and human rights concerns. Western "square" individual property rights conceptions are confronted with "circular" communal property relations. Legitimate interests of indigenous communities conflict with non-indigenous ones. The communal administration of the land is to be balanced with environmental protection. This article problematizes these dilemmas by analyzing the development of a communal property system within the Atlantic Coast Autonomy of Nicaragua. It identifies essentialist and constructivist ideas on indigenous identity and other policy assumptions behind it, the technical answers given to indigenous claims (de facto restitution, participatory demarcation and titling, conflict resolution mechanisms) and their consequences. It argues that a set of norms which is considered legitimate by all communities and which respects the rights of non-indigenous persons, including a fair dispute resolution mechanism, is needed for its success in protecting environmental and social stability and preventing violence. To achieve such objective in this or similar scenarios, an open minded approach to group identities and to available options (inclusive of others or exclusive to a community, collective or individual rights) in the design of special property regimes would be useful.


Explored in an ongoing PhD study is the notion that reflective practice has the potential to scaffold enhanced cognitive engagement and articulation of tacit knowledge through visual arts and design education. The study seeks to make connections between the reflective process, the articulation of tacit knowledge inherent in the creative process and artefact, and the transfer of that knowledge to future problems. This paper focuses in particular on the research methodology developed for the study A case study strategy of inquiry has been employed, which draws on a mixed methods research approach, and is framed by cognitive psychology theory An intervention in the form of a structured critical reflective learning framework has been developed and applied. To analyse the participant artefacts emerging from the learning framework, taxonomy identifying levels of cognition evident in the artefacts has been developed. The rationale for this methodology is discussed, along with how the approach was implemented. Preliminary findings from the case study are reported in this paper Initial observations from the data would suggest that structured critical reflection can play an important scaffolding role to encourage enhanced cognitive engagement and support the articulation and transfer of tacit knowledge by the tertiary student This would indicate that the methods used are highly suitable for a study of this type.


Ab s t r Ac t Background: Transfusion of blood is regarded as of key importance in the spinal procedure. In spite of increase in rate of spinal surgeries, the audit of blood transfusion throughout spinal procedures in regional traumatic centers is important. Therefore, the present study was undertaken to evaluate blood transfusion practices in adult spine surgeries and also determine the extent of utilization, wastage of blood products, and prescription of blood during spine surgery with the help of indices (C/T, %T, and TI) for assessing blood ordering. Materials and methods: A retrospective observational study among 130 patients was conducted to audit the blood transfusion practice during the intraoperative period for adult spine surgery over a period of 1 year. The rate of blood transfusion and indices of blood utilization were calculated. Results: Out of 510 blood units cross-matched for 130 study subjects, just 112 units were transfused to 60 cases, indicative of only 46.15% of cases required transfusions of blood. We observed that factors related to a greater chance of transfusion of blood were preoperative hemoglobin, indication of surgery, surgical approach, and region of spine by Chi-square. Of all of these variables, only indication of surgery was relevant in the multivariate model. The transfusion probability (%T), "transfusion index" (TI), and "cross-match transfusion (C/T) ratio" were 46.2, 0.86, and 4.5%, respectively. Conclusion: The independent factor associated with more number of blood transfusions was indication of surgery. Transfusion probability and TI in the present study are indicative of optimal utilization of blood. However, the high C/T ratio suggests the over cross-matching, which should be minimized in future.