Unresolved complex mixtures (UCMs) of aromatic hydrocarbons have been found in a wide range of environmental matrices at high concentrations. However, limited consideration has been given to the potential detrimental effects of the accumulation of these compounds in the marine environment. In particular, there is a need to evaluate these compounds in the light of recent evidence that points to the long term effects of oil in the marine environment. The overall aim of this work was therefore to investigate unresolved complex mixtures of aromatic hydrocarbons in the marine environment with particular emphasis on assessment of toxicity, aqueous solubility and photodegradation behaviour. A previously established link between the reduced Scope for Growth (SFG) of mussels with the concentration of 2-3 ringed aromatic hydrocarbons in mussels from petroleum impacted sites was found also to correlate well with concentrations of aromatic hydrocarbon UCMs in mussel tissues found at the same sites. This suggests that aromatic hydrocarbon UCMs or components within may be responsible for the observed effects. To determine whether an aromatic hydrocarbon UCM was capable of eliciting a toxic response in mussels, a monoaromatic UCM was isolated from a Gullfaks (North Sea) produced crude oil. At the highest nominal aqueous concentration tested, mussel feeding rate was reduced by -40 % in the 24 hour exposure period, during which the mussels accumulated a body burden similar to the body burden of monoaromatic UCM hydrocarbons in wild mussel populations, previously shown to exhibit reduced SFG. Recent studies of hydrocarbon UCM composition using chemical degradation methods have led to the proposition of alkylcyclohexyltetralins as `average' structures for some monoaromatic UCM hydrocarbons. The aromatic hydrocarbon 7-cyclohexyl-lmethyltetralin was synthesised herein in good yield and purity. This compound reduced mussel feeding rate by 50% during the 24-hour exposure period. The aqueous solubility of a compound is an important physicochemical parameter that influences behaviour within the marine environment and is thought to be a limiting factor in the onset of measurable toxicological response. The aqueous solubilities of three `model' aromatic UCM hydrocarbons were determined in distilled water at 25°C using a generator column set-up. The effects of salinity and temperature on aqueous solubility were also investigated. An aqueous solution comprising an aromatic UCM was also generated. Another influence on the fate of aromatic hydrocarbons in the environment is the action of sunlight (phototransformation). Therefore aqueous solutions of three model aromatic UCM hydrocarbons were exposed to light simulated under environmental conditions. The halflives of these compounds suggested that if these compounds are indeed representative of the aromatic UCM phototransformation may influence its fate in the marine environment. The results of this study have furthered knowledge on the environmental behaviour of unresolved aromatic hydrocarbons, and suggest that these compounds should be considered in the long term impacts of oil in the environment and also warrant further study. Parts of this work have been published and the author (Smith, E. L. ) was awarded the Procter and Gamble Eurorcar prize at the 3`d World Congress of the Society of Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry, 21-25 May 2000, Brighton, for the best presentation by a young scientist.


Noisy intermediate-scale quantum (NISQ) hardware [1] is typically limited to lowdepth quantum circuits to limit the number of opportunities for introduction of error by unreliable quantum gates. A less-explored alternative approach is to repeatedly apply a quantum channel with a desired quantum state as a stable fixed point. Increased circuit depth can in this case be beneficial rather than harmful due to dissipative selfcorrection. The quantum channels constructed from MERA circuits can be interpreted in terms of the renormalization group(RG), and their fixed points are RG fixed points, i.e. scale-invariant systems such as conformal field theories. Here, building upon the theoretical proposal of Kim and Swingle [2], we numerically and experimentally study the robust preparation of the ground state of the critical Ising model using circuits adapted from the work of Evenbly and White[3]. The experimental implementation exhibits self-correction through renormalization seen in the convergence and stability of local observables, and makes essential use of the ability to measure and reset individual qubits afforded by the "quantum CCD" architecture of the Honeywell ion-trap[4]. We also numerically test error mitigation by zero-noise extrapolation schemes specially adapted for renormalization circuits, which are able to outperform typical extrapolation schemes using lower gate overhead.


It is the purpose of the present paper to outline an introduc- tion in theory of embeddings in the 2-osculator bundle. First, we recall the notion of 2-osculator bundle ((9), (2), (4)) and the notion of submani- folds in the 2-osculator bundle ((9)). A moving frame is constructed. The induced connections and the relative covariant derivation are discussed in the fourth and fifth section ((15), (16)). The Ricci identities for the deflection tensors are presented in the seventh section.


Adaptation to local environments via natural selection is a powerful mechanism for population divergence and likely one of the primary causes of speciation. To understand how specific habitats shape local adaptation, it is helpful to study closely-related populations from widely differing ecosystems that have not had sufficient time to diverge by genetic drift. Throughout the following chapters I examine the distribution of morphological, behavioral, and reproductive phenotypes within and between two subspecies of the swamp sparrow. These two populations, the tidal salt marsh endemic Melospiza georgiana nigrescens and the nominant inland subspecies, M. g. georgiana were incompletely isolated from each other following the retreat of the Wisconsin glaciation. Since that time the increased nest predation, temperature, season length, salinity and tidal flow of the coastal marshes relative to inland wetlands has resulted in a number of adaptations among coastal sparrows due to natural selection, sexual selection, and phenotypic plasticity. Specifically I examine the habitat preferences of the coastal plain swamp sparrow, the difference in clutch size between the two subspecies, the rates of extrapair fertilization relative to male quality, the ecosystem-specific interactions between natural and sexual selection on plumage badges, and the role of conspecific attraction in nest placement. The environmental differences of the tidal salt marsh have played strong roles in the local adaptation and divergence of coastal plain swamp sparrows from their freshwater ancestors. Many of these divergent mechanisms may be similar among other tidal marsh endemics, although some (especially those related to sexual selection) may be specific to the swamp sparrow. In general, however, we see that the added environmental challenges of tidal ecosystems strongly alter selection regimes on a terrestrial vertebrate inhabiting this dynamic ecotone. The swamp sparrow system can further increase our understanding of how the interplay between environmental resources, sexual selection, and natural selection affects the local adaptations leading to evolutionary divergence.


Flip Twitter the bird.Tell Facebook to f#@% off.Lose it on LinkedIn.Somewhere between the advent of Facebook and launching Twitter to the masses, the Internet betrayed us. It allowed pages to be viewed by job interviewers, newsfeeds to be flooded by Aunt Julie, and for constant tweets about what color socks that random girl from the study group is going to wear today.This book is the hilarious reply all that says: enough is enough. We don't want to see the pictures from your business trip to Omaha. We don't want a page-by-page account of what's going on in Twilight. We definitely don't want a virtual drink!When you can't fix the problem, fix the blame. And since there's no way in 2.0-hell that you can put an end to the bastardization of the Book, you may as well have a good laugh while pointing the finger at those who ruined their online experience.


Sandstones from Ordovician sediments of the South Mayo Trough, western Irish Caledonides, show marked stratigraphic variation in their major and trace element geochemistry. High Cr, Ni, and Mg concentrations of ultramafic derivation succeed high Ti and Fe concentrations of mafic provenance This sequence is interpreted as the result of the progressive unroofing of an ophiolite. A possible sedimentary linkage with ophiolite lithologies in the Clew Bay Domain to the north would indicate minimal post-Arenig transcurrent displacement. The South Mayo flysch with its ophiolitic detritus is typical of Caledonian flysch sequences which pre-date the mid-Ordovician Taconic deformation, but differs in character from those of late Ordovician age.


A great number of studies have shown that the composition of the board of directors can have a significant impact upon firm performance. Early studies on board composition focused on factors such as independence of directors, with the impact of cognitive diversity in decision making gaining recognition only in the last few years. Recent diversity studies have focused on gender diversity with interesting but mixed results. We further explore the relationship between diversity and firm performance by studying the companies listed on the OMX Stockholm exchange between 2005 and 2009. Proportionally selecting one third of companies and every other year - total sample size of 258 measurements - we performed regression analysis of the effects of age diversity on the board (given by standard deviation of ages) upon financial and market performance (given by ROA and Tobin"s Q respectively). The analysis tested whether age diversity on the board improved firm performance, whether the effects were greater in small firms, and whether nonlinear "diminishing returns" appeared in situations with very high board diversity. As other studies have shown that board size, director tenure and gender diversity can all affect performance, we control for these factors as well as for mean director age, industry and firm size. After discovering that our metrics, ROA and Tobin"s Q, do not correlate for small and medium size firms, but only for large firms with a market cap above EUR 1 billion, we argue that ROA is a better measurement of firm performance. We found that age diversity significantly affects firm performance as measured by ROA, but not as measured by Tobin"s Q. We further found that the effects are only evident when the company belongs to the small-cap category with a market cap below EUR 150 million. The size of the effect differs depending on what measurement years are included in the analysis, and how long the time delay is between the measurement of age diversity and firm performance. We found that the effect of age diversity is slightly lower for ROA measured during the same year, compared to ROA measured two years later. Finally, our data did not support conclusions either way as to diminishing returns occuring in situations of extremely high age diversity, as too few such firms were found in the sample. In light of these findings, age diversity should be given equal weight to other considerations when composing a successful corporate board in small firms.


ABSTRACT The article presents the statistical analysis of the impact of the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster on the German program of Energy Transition. It argues that the spectacular growth of renewable energy production in recent years was triggered not only by the increasing subsidies but also by the decision to phase out the nuclear power plants. However, the results seem to be far from what was desired by the architects of the Energy Transition. Except for 2014, the share of high-emission combustible fossils in the energy mix was growing. Meanwhile, the role of the two "transition fuels" (natural gas and nuclear energy) significantly decreased. The article also shows how the media, news, and communication in the modern world can seriously impact the economic policy of a state. It concludes that the decision made by the German government was largely irrational (except for electoral considerations) and it resulted in significant financial consequences.


In the Ebro Delta coastal lagoons, one of the main anthropogenic pressures is the artificial freshwater input. Each coastal lagoon has different water management schemes causing profound changes in its physicochemical characteristics. The main objective of this water management is to favour some bird species with interest either for conservation or hunting activities. The present study assesses the influence of hydrological alteration on the fish assemblages of three coastal lagoons in the Ebro Delta. The small-bodied fish fauna was mainly composed of five families: Gobiidae, Poecilidae, Cyprinodontidae, Atherinidae and Mugilidae. Salinity was found to be the main factor structuring fish community in the lagoons. The dominant species was the common goby ( Pomatochistus microps ) when the lagoons reached higher salinity values, whereas the invasive eastern mosquitofish ( Gambusia holbrooki ) dominated during the period of higher freshwater inputs. The juveniles of the family Mugilidae showed low catch per unit effort, especially during the period of lower salinity. This same pattern was found for the endangered Spanish toothcarp ( Aphanius iberus ). Overall, introduced species were favoured by low salinity, which highlights the importance of changing the present water management by reducing the freshwater inputs in order to maintain suitable levels of salinity to favour native species that are important for both commercial and conservation purposes.


This paper describes a technique for verifying timing conditions inherent in self-timed VLSI designs that make use of the micropipeline design strategy. By checking bundling constraints during simulations, design faults may be detected, whilst timing information extracted during the processing may be used to identify modules requiring optimisation. These analyses may be built around existing simulators.


Alternative splicing (AS) has been shown to participate in prostate cancer development and progression; however, a link between AS and prostate cancer health disparities has been largely unexplored. Here we report on the cloning of a novel splice variant of FGFR3 that is preferentially expressed in African American (AA) prostate cancer. This novel variant (FGFR3-S) omits exon 14, comprising 123 nucleotides that encode the activation loop in the intracellular split kinase domain. Ectopic overexpression of FGFR3-S in European American (EA) prostate cancer cell lines (PC-3 and LNCaP) led to enhanced receptor autophosphorylation and increased activation of the downstream signaling effectors AKT, STAT3, and ribosomal S6 compared with FGFR3-L (retains exon 14). The increased oncogenic signaling imparted by FGFR3-S was associated with a substantial gain in proliferative and antiapoptotic activities, as well as a modest but significant gain in cell motility. Moreover, the FGFR3-S–conferred proliferative and motility gains were highly resistant to the pan-FGFR small-molecule inhibitor dovitinib and the antiapoptotic gain was insensitive to the cytotoxic drug docetaxel, which stands in marked contrast with dovitinib- and docetaxel-sensitive FGFR3-L. In an in vivo xenograft model, mice injected with PC-3 cells overexpressing FGFR3-S exhibited significantly increased tumor growth and resistance to dovitinib treatment compared with cells overexpressing FGFR3-L. In agreement with our in vitro and in vivo findings, a high FGFR3-S/FGFR3-L expression ratio in prostate cancer specimens was associated with poor patient prognosis. Implications: This work identifies a novel FGFR3 splice variant and supports the hypothesis that differential AS participates in prostate cancer health disparities.


The development of the vertebrate nervous system depends upon striking a balance between differentiating neurons and neural progenitors in the early embryo. Our findings suggest that the homeodomain-containing gene Xdbx regulates this balance by maintaining neural progenitor populations within specific regions of the neuroectoderm. In posterior regions of the Xenopus embryo, Xdbx is expressed in a bilaterally symmetric stripe that lies at the middle of the mediolateral axis of the neural plate. This stripe of Xdbx expression overlaps the expression domain of the proneural basic/helix-loop-helix-containing gene, Xash3, and is juxtaposed to the expression domains of Xenopus Neurogenin related 1 and N-tubulin, markers of early neurogenesis in the embryo. Xdbx overexpression inhibits neuronal differentiation in the embryo and when co-injected with Xash3, Xdbx inhibits the ability of Xash3 to induce ectopic neurogenesis. One role of Xdbx during normal development may therefore be to restrict spatially neuronal differentiation within the neural plate, possibly by altering the neuronal differentiation function of Xash3.


Radial Basis Function Networks axe universal function approximators which can be easely constructed from rule sets learned by a symbolic learner. This paper proposes the use of a more expressive concept description language, based on first order Ingics, and of a learning system (FLASH) working in such an environment, in order to incorporate the feature selection phase into the learning process. The main advantage of the first order description language used by FLASH, is that it allows to define and manipulate a large number of feztures while keeping simple the description of instances. The method is tested on two non trivial problems of functional regression represented by the Mackey-Glass temporal series and by the control function for a manipulation robot. The obtained results demonstrate the high accuracy of the proposed method.


Through building waves of legal scholarship and litigation, a group of legal academics and practitioners is advancing a theory of the public trust doctrine styled as the "atmospheric trust." The atmospheric trust would require the federal and state governments to regulate public and private actors to reduce greenhouse gas emissions so as to abate climate change. The traditional common law version of the American public trust doctrine requires the states to hold title to lands submerged under navigable waters in trust for the public to use for navigation, fishing, and commerce, and that the states not alienate such resources to the detriment of this public interest. Some states have incrementally expanded the public trust doctrine to other resources and other uses, but thus far no federal or state court of last resort has adopted anything like the atmospheric trust.

Advocates of the atmospheric trust argue that it, like the traditional doctrine, enjoys a pedigree that traces back in an "unbroken line" to Roman law and that Roman law is therefore persuasive, if not binding, regarding the scope and substance of the doctrine in modern times. This claim has given rise to critics who argue that Roman law evidences no glimmer of either version, traditional or atmospheric. The debate has spilled into the pages of law reviews and judicial opinions and, given how high the political and economic stakes are if courts adopt the atmospheric trust, it is not a trivial matter.

This Article is the first contribution to legal scholarship on this debate that teams a Roman law scholar and a natural resources law scholar to interrogate what we call the Roman roots narrative. Our concern is that the debate has focused on the meaning of a mere snippet of Roman law — a brief passage from the Institutes of Justinian published in A.D. 533 — and ignored the rich and important context that dates back long before publication of the Institutes. To a Roman law scholar, using the highly-abbreviated version of Roman law captured in the passage from the Institutes is problematic, to say the least. Although a few legal academics have grabbed on to additional sources of Roman law in an attempt to inform the debate, no one weighing in has fully employed the historical sources and methods of interpretation used by modern Roman law scholars and then, leveraging expertise in natural resources law, assessed the atmospheric trust's claim to Roman pedigree. We do so in this Article.

The Article proceeds in four parts. Part I sets the stage by revealing the incompleteness of the accounts of Roman law used by both the atmospheric trust advocates and their critics. Part II traces the origins and evolution of the Roman roots narrative from its earliest presence in American law and legal commentary to the current scholarship and litigation positions behind the atmospheric trust, showing the gradual devolution of the narrative from a serious intellectual effort to one of rubber-stamping a citation to the Institutes. To fill the gap, Part III presents our interpretation of the relevant Roman law sources bearing on their version of the public trust. Part IV compares our constructed Roman public trust doctrine to the atmospheric trust theory being advanced today in litigation and legal scholarship, assessing how close or far apart they are in different respects.

While it would be preposterous to claim that the Romans operated under anything like an atmospheric trust, our conclusion is that the American public trust doctrine has much stronger connections to Roman law than recent critics of the Roman roots narrative suggest. The Roman public trust doctrine actually dates back centuries before Justinian's Institutes, and draws from two streams of Roman property law, one of which has been left out of the modern debate by both sides. Advocates of the atmospheric trust may wish to update their thinking on the Roman roots narrative — there is far more to work with than a snippet from Justinian's Institutes.


Author(s): Wright, Sandra E.; Dolbeer, Richard A. | Abstract: The authors analyzed data on civil aircraft strikes with wild ungulates (deer [Odocoileus spp.], elk [Cervus canadensis] and moose [Alces alces]) in the U.S. from the Federal Aviation Administration Wildlife Strike Database and the National Transportation Safety Board Aviation Accident Database for 1983 to 1997. Prior to 1991, the FAA Form 5200-7 for reporting strikes was designated solely for bird strike data, thus, strike reports for non-avian species prior to 1991 are underrepresented. A total of 343 ungulate strikes was reported, 48 from 1983 to 1990 and 295 from 1991 to 1997. Forty-four states reported ungulate strikes with 77% of the reports from states east of the Mississippi River. November had more (P l 0.01) strikes (23%) than any other month. The strike rate (number/hr) was four to nine times greater (P l 0.01) at dusk than at night or dawn. Almost two-thirds of strikes (P l 0.01) occurred during landing, making landing at dusk in November the most likely time for deer strikes. About 79% of strikes had an effect on flight. Aircraft were damaged in 83% of strikes. Only 14% of reports indicating damage provided estimates of cost of repairs. The mean cost for these reports was $74,537. Reported human injuries have been few, but the potential exists for a major disaster. Aircraft with capacity of 101 to 380 passengers were involved in 45 (14%) of the reported strikes. Airports should adopt a "zero tolerance" for deer within the operations area. Deer removal by professional shooters, in conjunction with permanent exclusion with 3 m-high fencing, is the preferred management action.


Offering a new interpretation of the sermon 'De ordinatione beati Gregorii anglorum apostoli', a text preserved in Eadmer's 'personal manuscript' (Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, MS 371), this article argues that the cult of St Gregory the Great was promoted by Archbishop Lanfranc (1070–89) and Archbishop Anselm (1093–1109) in order to undermine the pretensions to apostolic rank of St Augustine's Abbey, Canterbury. It draws attention to the existence of a hitherto unrecognised but major conflict over apostolic authority that took place in England after the Norman Conquest; a conflict that involved the king as well as Canterbury's most important churchmen. In so doing, this essay contributes, more generally, to our understanding of the roles that the cult of saints and its rhetorical structures played in battles over status and rank order.


Frequently the choice of a library management program is conditioned by social, economic and/or political factors that result in the selection of a system that is not altogether suitable for the library's needs, characteristics and functions. Open source software is quickly becoming a preferred solution, owing to the freedom to copy, modify and distribute it and the freedom from contracts, as well as for greater opportunities for interoperability with other applications. These new trends regarding open source software in libraries are also reflected in LIS studies, as evidenced by the different courses addressing automated programs, repository management, including the Linux/GNU operating system, among others. The combination of the needs of the centres and the new trends for open source software is the focus of a virtual laboratory for the use of open source software for library applications. It was the result of a project, whose aim was to make a useful contribution to the library community, that was carried out by a group of professors of the School of Library and Information Science of the University of Barcelona, together with a group of students, members of a Working Group on Open Source Software for Information Professionals, of the Professional Library Association of Catalonia.


Background: Studies on the prevalence of multiple sclerosis have been carried out worldwide, showing a heterogeneous distribution between countries and even between the different regions of the same country. Methods: We estimated the regional and national prevalence of multiple sclerosis in France on 1 January 2003, based on the computerised database of the national farmer health insurance system ("Mutualité Sociale Agricole"). Results: There were 2667 cases of multiple sclerosis registered on the prevalence date, out of 4 098 477 affiliates. After standardisation on age, estimates for the national prevalence of multiple sclerosis in French farmers were 65.0 per 100 000 inhabitants (95% confidence interval 62.5 to 67.5), 41.9 per 100 000 in men (39.1 to 44.7) and 96.3 per 100 000 in women (92.0 to 100.6). The prevalence of multiple sclerosis was significantly higher in the north eastern regions (approximately 100 per 100 000 inhabitants) compared with the south western regions (around 50 per 100 000 inhabitants). Conclusion: Our study is the first to evaluate the overall prevalence of multiple sclerosis in France and its 22 regions using the same methodology. Our results may be generalised to the whole French population as there is no convincing evidence of an increased or decreased susceptibility to multiple sclerosis among farmers or persons living in the countryside. This places France among the countries of medium to high prevalence. Confirming the uneven distribution of multiple sclerosis that correlates with latitude, raises once more the question of the role of genetic and environmental factors in the susceptibility to multiple sclerosis.


Fast and efficient detection of single atoms is a universal requirement concerning modern experiments in atom physics, quantum optics, and precision spectroscopy. In particular for future quantum information and quantum communication technologies, the efficient readout of qubit states encoded in single atoms or ions is an elementary prerequisite. The rapid development in the eld of quantum optics and atom optics in the recent years has enabled to prepare individual atoms as quantum memories or arrays of single atoms as qubit registers. With such systems, the implementation of quantum computation or quantum communication protocols seems feasible.

This thesis describes a novel detection scheme which enables fast and efficient state analysis of single neutral atoms. The detection scheme is based on photoionisation and consists of two parts: the hyperfine-state selective photoionisation of single atoms and the registration of the
generated photoion-electron pairs via two channel electron multipliers (CEMs). In this work, both parts were investigated in two separate experiments. For the first step, a photoionisation probability of p_ion = 0.991 within an ionisation time of t_ion = 386 ns is achieved for a single 87Rb-atom in an optical dipole trap. For the second part, a compact detection system for the ionisation fragments was developed consisting of two opposing CEM detectors. Measurements show that single neutral atoms can be detected via their ionisation fragments with a detection
efficiency of eta_atom = 0.991 within a detection time of t_det = 415.5 ns. In a future combined setup, this will allow the state-selective readout of optically trapped, single neutral 87Rb-atoms via photoionisation detection with an estimated detection efficiency eta = 0.982 and a
detection time of t_tot = 802 ns.

Although initially developed for single 87Rb-atoms, the concept of photoionisation detection is in principle generally applicable to any atomic or molecular species. As efficient readout unit for single atoms or even ions, it might represent a considerable alternative to conventional detection methods due to the high optical access and the large sensitive volume of the CEM detection system. Additionally, its spatial selectivity makes it particularly suited for the readout of single atomic qubit sites in arrays of neutral atoms as required in future applications
such as the quantum-repeater or quantum computation with neutral atoms.

The obtained high detection efficiency eta and fast detection time t_tot of the new detection method fullfill the demanding detector requirements for a future loophole-free test of Bell's inequality under strict Einstein locality conditions using two optically trapped, entangled 87Rb-atoms at remote locations. In such a configuration, the locality and the detection loophole can be simultaneously closed in one experiment.


I don't think I understood how science is done until I was a researcher in an ecology lab. From doing research, I realize now that science is not a linear process. Questions drive the process more than I ever knew. Now [that] I can actually do inquiry with my students, science has come alive for me through the research I've done in an actual lab. Teachers as researchers. Students as researchers. For inquiry to actually become the bedrock of biology classrooms, more teachers need to be engaged in actual scientific research. By doing science, these teachers gain a stronger understanding of the process, the methods, and the struggles, as well as the successes, of this enterprise we call science. In 1990, the American Physiological Society began the Frontiers in Physiology Research Teacher Program. This summer program is designed for middle and high school science teachers. Each teacher is paired with a physiologist/biomedical researcher in his/her local community and conducts seven to eight weeks of actual research in the labs of these scientists. A week-long pedagogical workshop is also part of the experience, introducing teachers to effective in-class and online strategies in science teaching. The teachers also create inquiry experiences for their classrooms based on their research experience. As one teacher says: APS's Frontiers in Physiology program has had an enormous impact on the way that I view the nature of science and therefore has dramatically changed the way that I teach science. Through the summer research program, I was able to participate in true scientific research which led me to a better understanding of the work of scientists. I learned how the continual search for answers leads them to investigations that are meaningful and challenging. My new understanding of science was then passed on to my students by providing them with the opportunity to conduct meaningful investigations of their own. APS has also taught me the true nature of inquiry based learning and how to utilize sound pedagogy in my classroom as well as how to write curriculum that reflects my new understanding of science and the principles put forth in the National Science Education Standards. APS's Frontiers in Physiology program has truly had a positive impact on my teaching and therefore on students as well! --Cathy Box, Tahoka High School, Tahoka, Texas By having research experiences, teachers better understand basic research techniques (Pasley, 1998) and procure an increased understanding of science as a research endeavor (Dotterer & Pasley, 2000). Teachers come away from research experiences with an increased awareness of the creativity, resourcefulness, diligence, and stress that research involves (Pasley, 1998). Dean and Wood (2004) state how research helps teachers have a greater sense of authority when describing the research process with students. Since these teachers experience physiological concepts in action, their understanding of these concepts is deeper and more thorough than without the experience (Pasley, 1998). As a result, these teachers become more proficient in using open-ended inquiry with their students. The idea of students doing actual scientific research becomes more of a priority for these teachers. Science is no longer a passive pursuit but one of wonder and curiosity with questions posed by students. For these teachers, the research experience: * increased their understanding of what inquiry is and how it can be done in the classroom. * increased their understanding of the important role inquiry plays in the science classroom. * increased their understanding of the implementation of inquiry as well as an increased preparedness to using inquiry-based strategies. …


Continued advances in binary image printers have spurred an increased interest in the use of digital image halftoning to generate low-cost images that have the appearance of gray levels. However, at current print resolutions for desktop applications, i.e., 300–400 dots/in. (dpi), the binary noise resulting from halftoning is clearly visible at normal viewing distances. Halftoning algorithms that reduce the visibility of this noise result in smoother gray levels and higher-quality output images. We introduce a new method of gray-level image halftoning that uses visual modeling within the framework of error diffusion to improve the image quality of halftoned images.


Logistics processes, where RFID technologies are applied to improve process efficiency and flexible organisation of collaboration is required in the foreground, pose challenges to process modelling, analysis and design in business process management. To meet these challenges, we propose in this paper an integrated approach which bundles XSLT nets, a novel variant of high-level Petri nets to model RFID-based logistics processes and to enable their automatic execution, as well as social networking coordinated by community processes to support the interconnection and web-based collaboration of logistics partners. The utility of the approach is demonstrated in two modelling use cases. We also present a general architecture framework of process-oriented social information systems.


Financial inclusion is the broad based delivery of banking and other financial services at affordable cost to the poorest sections of society. In India, financial inclusion emphasizes to include maximum number of people under formal financial systems. The most important part of financial services in a region is typically measured by number of people who have access to bank accounts. The present study investigates the drive to financial inclusion in the form of the growth in bank accounts of scheduled commercial banks and the changes in below poverty line population. The result suggests that the growth in bank accounts is not significantly associated with the reduction in below poverty line population across states. Providing banking services to maximum number of people is unsuccessful as a poverty reduction strategy. As a poverty reduction strategy, developing inclusive financial systems should give priority, which is financially and socially sustainable.


This paper describes an algorithm for semantic decomposition. For that we surveys languages used to enrich contextual information with semantic descriptions. Such descriptions can be e.g. applied to enable reasoning when collecting vast amounts of information. In particular, we focus on the elements of the languages that make up their semantic. To do so, we compare the expressiveness of the well-known languages OWL, PDDL and MOF with a theory from linguistic called the Natural Semantic Metalanguage. We then analyze how the semantic of the language is build up and describe how semantic decomposition based on the semantic primes can be used for a so called mental lexicon. This mental lexicon can be used to reason upon semantic service description in the research domain of service match making.


Migration of corals through a hot water bottleneck in the Southern Red Sea, following the last glacial period, has led to a situation where corals in the Northern Red Sea now express high thermal thresholds while living at suboptimal lower temperatures. We tested to what extent the coral Stylophora pistillata is capable of resisting future ocean conditions as a result of this selection. We combined chlorophyll fluorescence analysis, biochemical markers, and respirometry with state of the art correlative TEM and NanoSIMS techniques to obtain a holistic picture on the physiological impact of the isolated and combined effects of temperature (+5°C) and pH (-0.3 units relative to ambient). After 2 months, most physiological variables were either unaffected or improved by the combined effect of high temperature and low pH. Net oxygen production effectively doubled due to changes in photochemistry and higher symbiont pigmentation, and we observed higher values for holobiont productivity with P:R ratios of up to 1.72. No significant change in the activity of enzymatic antioxidants or daily calcification was detected. NanoSIMS data revealed that carbon and nitrogen assimilation in the symbiont and host gastrodermis are negatively affected by isolated temperature stress. However, no difference in the proportion of symbiont-derived carbon in the host lipids was observed and neither protein nor overall carbohydrate content was affected in either partner. Our data point to a high degree of physiological resistance of this coral to the expected global trends in ocean conditions and emphasize the urgency of reducing local stressors in this region.


The objective of this report is to explore (a) the incomes of retirees in Ireland and (b) the distribution of supplementary pensions among them, although clearly there is a close relationship between (a) and (b). Our focus is on retirees and not on the full population of those aged 65 and over. For this reason, the analysis focuses on (a) men who are now retired but who have worked for at least fifteen years and (b) women who are now retired but who have worked for at least ten years. We find that the average income of male retirees is 58 per cent higher than that of female retirees. Much of this difference is driven by the fact that about half of the male retirees have supplementary pension compared to about a third of female retirees. In the case of both genders, factors such as education and having been a public sector worker are associated with having supplementary pensions. Career continuity matters for both genders too but in slightly different ways. For men, longer tenure with the same employer is important in determining the access to a supplementary pension but for women total work experience across all employers matters. The analysis suggests that any universal cut in the State pension would be regressive because the incomes of lower income groups would be disproportionately reduced.


The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) represented a gallant effort by Congress to decrease discrimination against students with physical and developmental disabilities and to create an inclusionary school environment for all students. To facilitate IDEA's purposes, Congress created two unique mandates. First, the free and appropriate public education (FAPE) mandate requires schools to provide students with disabilities an education tailored to their needs. Second, the least restrictive environment (LRE) mandate requires schools to educate students with disabilities in classrooms with their non-disabled peers to the greatest extent possible. Currently, African-American students, particularly African-American male students, are disproportionately identified as having emotional disturbance. Due to this disparity, these students are increasingly segregated from their non-disabled peers, violating the FAPE and LRE mandates. The current definition of emotional disturbance, codified at 34 C.F.R. [section] 300.8(4)(ii), contributes to this over-identification problem and, therefore, needs revision. This Article traces the history of the Department of Education's emotional disturbance definition, the policy and legal issues that the current definition creates, and the effects of over-identification on students and society. The Article then analyzes why current IDEA enforcement mechanisms do not correct the problem. Finally, this Article presents a definition of emotional disturbance that addresses the need for culturally-sensitive assessments, proposes definitions of key terms, and provides guidelines for courts to utilize when reviewing a challenge to a student's identification of emotional disturbance. I. INTRODUCTION In an interview, Jessie, (1) a high school African-American male student diagnosed with emotional disturbance, stated that in his special education class he did: Basically nothin' ... We did worksheets, that's it ... it was really boring.... The only reason I was really there is because I challenged my teachers.... [T]hose teachers make you feel as though a Black man is not supposed to challenge their teachers.... I was always taught to not be afraid to challenge.... The kids that are in special education ain't gettin' an education. White kids get the better education ... they get a better chance in life. (2) When asked what color he would use to describe the special education room, Jessie replied, "Black ... because it's predominantly Black. All you see is Black faces." (3) The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) (4) requires school districts to follow certain procedures in identifying a student with a disability and creating an individual education plan for that student. (5) Pursuant to IDEA's procedures, (6) Jessie's school incorrectly identified him as a child with emotional disturbance and placed him in a self-contained classroom for students with disabilities, completely isolated from his non-disabled peers. (7) Jessie's situation (and that of others'), though created by IDEA, contravenes IDEA's purposes. IDEA "represented a gallant and determined effort" to eliminate discrimination against students with disabilities. (8) Notwithstanding the significant progress made in decreasing discrimination for students with disabilities, African-American students are often incorrectly identified with emotional disturbance and segregated from their non-disabled peers. African-American students are more than twice as likely as all other ethnic groups to be identified as having emotional disturbance. (9) Leading theories for this disparity include a cultural misunderstanding between African-American students and their predominantly white teachers and administrators, and the conscious and subconscious biases of teachers and administrators. (10) Due to these cultural misunderstandings and biases, teachers overly refer African-American students for special education evaluations. …


The concept of 'social return on investment' (SROI) has come to play an important role in debates about how social enterprises and charities conceptualise, measure and communicate their achievements. In this paper we analyse the nature and role of SROI as used in the United Kingdom for impact assessment of such organisations. The paper offers insight into methodological and procedural aspects of the framework. Key issues explored include the quantification of benefits, the valuing of volunteering and the ways in which judgement and discretion are exercised. There is a particular tension between the participatory element in the design of each SROI exercise and its use for the purpose of competition. The paper concludes by proposing a research agenda that includes an examination of the context in which discretion and judgement are applied and the use and usefulness of SROI in the new policy and funding environment in which third sector organisations currently find themselves.


The culture supernatants of the emerging Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus (MERS‐CoV) were submitted to three temperatures over time and tested for infectivity by TCID50 method on Vero E6 cells. At 56°C, almost 25 minutes were necessary to reduce the initial titre by 4 log10. Increasing temperature to 65°C had a strong negative effect on viral infectivity as virucidy dropped significantly to 1 minute. On the contrary, no significant decrease in titre was observed after 2 hours at 25°C. These data might be useful in establishing biosafety measures in laboratories against MERS‐CoV.


Technical Education emphasizes on teaching and learning practical knowledge relevant to the job requirements in the industrial sector. This study was conducted to investigate the world of work relevance of DAE curricula of the selected three conventional technologies i.e. Electrical, Electronics and Mechanical and three emerging technologies i.e. Food, Instrumentation and Petroleum.

The population of the study was all the graduates of the selected technologies of session 1996-99 and their work supervisors. For sample selection, the primary sample units consisted of 30% institutes offering the specified technology with the condition of including all institutes in the sample if the number was equal to or less than five. All the graduates, 507, of the sample institutes and their supervisors constituted the sample. The questionnaire was sent to all the graduates. Out of a total number of 364 respondents only 323 were employed. The questionnaire was mailed to 323 supervisors and 230 responses were received back.

The information received from the DAE graduates and their immediate supervisors was analyzed by competencies and by broad areas of competencies grouped together as clusters. The mean weights of each competency as well as for clusters were calculated for determining the degree of relevance of curricula. The curricula of Electrical, Electronics, Food and Petroleum technology were found generally relevant to the need of the job market with minor changes required under certain subjects. The curricula of Instrumentation technology were considered only partial or somewhat relevant requiring detailed review of the concepts included in the subjects of Microprocessor Applications, Electricity Principles, Industrial Instrumentation and Control, Instrumentation Servicing and Calibration and Industrial Electronics. The curricula of Mechanical Technology were found in need of partial modification .particularly in the subjects of Metallurgy, Applied Electricity and Electronics, Thermodynamics and Energy Conservation.


This article addresses the links between Renaissance clothing and identity, focusing on the reigns of the first Medici grand dukes, a period when the political and social make‐up of the Florentine elite underwent profound changes. Drawing on a wide range of sources, from sumptuary legislation, court correspondence and family account books to tailors' patterns, it examines different ways of thinking about and analysing dress styles. Taking the under‐explored subject of male dress, it concentrates on two specific clothing types: the traditional full‐length cloak, known as the lucco, worn by government office holders, and the liveries of the Medici courtiers. It concludes with the role played by local textile production, a vital aspect of Florentine culture as well as its economy. Although the Medici family's efforts to shape the dress of its subjects were partially successful, certain fundamental elements of the city's sartorial ethos resisted change.


Capturing place semantics is critical for enabling location-based applications. Techniques for assigning semantic labels (e.g., "bar" or "office") to unlabeled places mainly resort to mining user activity logs by exploiting visiting patterns. However, existing approaches focus on inferring place labels with a static user activity dataset, and ignore the visiting pattern dynamics in user activity streams, leading to the rapid decrease of labeling accuracy over time. In this paper, we tackle the problem of semantic place labeling over user activity streams. We formulate this problem as a classification problem by characterizing each place through its fine-grained visiting patterns, which encode the visiting frequency of each user in each typical time slot. However, with the incoming activities of new users in data streams, such fine-grained visiting patterns constantly grow, leading to a continuously expanding feature space. To solve this issue, we propose an updatable sketching technique that creates and incrementally updates a set of compact and fixed-size sketches to approximate the similarity between fine-grained visiting patterns of ever-growing size. We further consider the discriminative weights of user activities in place labeling, and seamlessly incorporate them into our sketching method. Our empirical evaluation on real-world datasets demonstrates the validity of our approach and shows that sketches can be efficiently and effectively used to infer place labels over user activity streams.


Studies relating the magnesium (Mg) content of calcified skeletons to temperature often report unexplained deviations from the signature expected for inorganically grown calcite. These "vital effects" are believed to have biological origins, but mechanistic bases for measured offsets remain unclear. We show that a simple hydrophilic peptide, with the same carboxyl-rich character as that of macromolecules isolated from sites of calcification, increases calcite Mg content by up to 3 mole percent. Comparisons to previous studies correlating Mg content of carbonate minerals with temperature show that the Mg enhancement due to peptides results in offsets equivalent to 7° to 14°C. The insights also provide a physical basis for anecdotal evidence that organic chemistry modulates the mineralization of inorganic carbonates and suggest an approach to tuning impurity levels in controlled materials synthesis.


In this study fatty acid contents, because of the importance in human ' s life, and their seasonal variations of a dominant bivalve of Haleh Creek were determined for the first time. Fatty acid identification was done by GC-MS (Gas Chromatography–Mass Spectrometry) method. After collecting and dissecting the species from the shells, samples weighed and frozen for further experiments. All the samples esterified and made ready for injection to the GC-MS. Temperature as an important environmental parameter monitored monthly, variability of the fatty acid components studied in two seasons, and the effect of temperature changes on seasonal variations of the fatty acids were studied by statistical analysis. In conclusion sixteen fatty acids identified in Callista umbonella, including twelve saturated and four unsaturated, which the most important were oleic, palmitic, myristic, hexadecanoic and nonadecanoic acids while saturated fatty acids were dominated over unsaturated ones. The most abundant saturated fatty acid was palmitic acid and unsaturated one was oleic acid in this species. Although fatty acids' seasonal changes did not show any significant difference and also any significant correlation with temperature in the species in this area, but in general fatty acid amounts might be vary in different temperatures and it could be related to many environmental and biological factors in species.


For over a century, America's legal system has made substantial reforms to change its treatment of adolescents. Every day, we see that our legal system treats adolescents differently from their adult counterparts. With regards to driving privileges, voting rights, and the ability to drink, our laws recognize that adults and adolescents are different and therefore require a different set of standards. America extended this treatment to the realm of juvenile justice in 1899, when Cook County, Illinois, created the country's first juvenile court. Originating in this court was the overarching purpose of America's juvenile justice system—rehabilitation of juvenile offenders. Though over a century has passed since the creation of America's first juvenile court, only recently has the law begun to treat juveniles differently from their adult counterparts. In the past decade, landmark Supreme Court decisions Roper v. Simmons, Graham v. Florida, J.D.B. v. North Carolina, and Miller v. Alabama have implemented constitutional shields for juveniles against the death penalty, life without parole, and improper Miranda waivers. In implementing these safeguards, the Supreme Court has employed new scientific understandings of juveniles, as well as common sense, to conclude that juveniles are different from adults and should be treated differently by the law. Though the Supreme Court created safeguards for juveniles in death penalty and life without parole circumstances, situations still exist that threaten the lives of juvenile offenders. Illinois accountability theory is one such situation. In Illinois, accountability theory is the mechanism by which the State can convict an offender of a crime which they did not actually commit. In Illinois, an individual who exhibited more than "mere presence" at the scene of the crime can be convicted of the same crime and sentenced in the same manner as the individual who committed the crime. Given the recent landmark Supreme Court cases, new scientific findings relating to the psychological understanding of juveniles, as well as simple common sense, accountability theory should not be used to prosecute juvenile offenders in Illinois.


A finite element model is used to explore the stress-strain responses of the mandibular central incisor and its associated periodontal ligament (PDL) while opening the bite. The finite element model consisted of the mandibular teeth, the alveolar bone, and the PDL of the mandibular incisors. The clinical scenario was simulated by applying a force of 10 cN to the mandibular incisor in a crown-root direction. The von Mises stress in the incisor and its PDL were calculated. Results: An obvious stress concentration at the tip and at the top of the alveolar ridge of the mandibular central incisors was found. In the PDL, tensile strain was recorded in one-third of the cervical and middle regions, whereas compressive stress occurred on one-third of the apex and both the distal and labial sides of the PDL. This illustrates the difficulty in achieving the desired intrusive movement along the long axis of the tooth in a clinical setting. The highest stress concentration in the PDL was located at the cervical margin and declined steadily to the apex. The maximum stress was 20.5GPa at the alveolar crest. This study indicated that finite element modeling is a feasible and effective method for studying the open-bite technique. Areas subjected to greater stress may develop cell hyalinization within the ligament.


A new numerical method is presented which is suitable for the analysis of scattering by dielectric structures which are periodic in one dimension. This method is based on a rigorous differential equation formulation of the scattering problem. It is particularly appropriate for structures which have periods on the order of the incident wavelength, and which have a depth of several wavelengths or less. Results are presented for periodic dielectric structures for TE polarization. Comparisons with results that have been obtained by other authors, and with a case involving inhomogeneous dielectric for which the exact solution can be found, are made for transmission type dielectric structures. These results establish the accuracy of the method. Further results are presented for reflection structures consisting of arrays of rectangular dielectric cylinders over a ground plane, and for transmission structures consisting of arrays of rectangular cylinders in free space, as well as for transmission structures consisting of semi-infinite dielectric media with sinusoidal or rectangular surface height variation.


Ribosomally synthesized natural antimicrobial peptides (AP) and their synthetic derivatives are small, cationic, amphipathic molecules of 12–50 amino acids with unusually broad activity spectra. These peptides kill microorganisms by a common mechanism, which involves binding to the lipid bilayer of biological membranes, forming pores, and ultimately followed by cell lysis. Several AP from mammals, amphibians, insects, plants and their synthetic derivatives demonstrate promising in vitro activity against various pathogenic fungi including azole‐resistant Candida albicans strains. In addition to their antimicrobial activity, some AP such as lactoferrin, interact with a variety of host cells and can increase the activity of natural killer and lymphokine activated killer cells. Pretreatment of polymorphonuclear neutrophil leukocytes (PMN) or monocytes with these AP also may upregulate superoxide release. AP as potential new antifungal agents offer some advantages, such as rapid killing of pathogenic fungi and the difficulty to raise mutants resistant to these peptides. AP are limited by their nonselective toxicity, stability, immunogenicity and their costs of production. Potential clinical applications of AP in the future have to be further explored in preclinical and clinical studies to assess their impact as a new class of antifungals.


This paper is a review of the ecology of two caribou populations inhabiting predator-free northern islands, Coats and Southampton Island. Findings are analyzed in light of the hypothesis that in absence of predation or high human harvest, food competition results in delayed puberty, reduced calf production, increased winter starvation of caribou and regulates populations at high densities (>2 km-2). Caribou were hunted to extinction on Southampton Island (Northwest Territories, Canada) by mid-century. In 1967, 48 caribou were captured on neighbouring Coats Island and released on Southampton Island. Southampton Island is characterized by a high per capita winter food availability in summer and in winter. The population on Southampton Island has been increasing at a rapid rate of growth since re-introduction (Lamba=1.27). Fast population growth was possible because females invested early in reproduction and over winter survival rate was high. The population on Coats Island is also characterized by high per capita food availability in summer but low food availability in winter. The population size has undergone some marked fluctuations, abrupt declines followed by relatively rapid recovery and, contrary to predictions, densities were always less than 1 km-2. Low population densities on Coats Island result primarily from low food availability. This review suggests that in the absence of predation or high human harvest competition for food regulates caribou population abundance. However, caribou numbers can fluctuate markedly among years because inter-annual variation of weather conditions affects forage accessibility in winter. This review also emphasizes the importance of distinguishing between factors that determine absolute population density and variation in density among years (in our case probably plant production and winter weather conditions which influence forage accessibility) from the regulatory factors, processes that stop population increase (competition for winter food leading primarily to density dependent changes in mortality from starvation) when examining population dynamics.


In this administrative framework, a security model defines the
mechanisms used to achieve an administratively-defined level of
security for protocol interactions. Although many such security models
might be defined, it is the purpose of this document, User-based
Security Model for SNMPv2, to define the first, and, as of this
writing, only, security model for this administrative framework. This
memo defines an Experimental Protocol for the Internet community.


During the years 1856–1902 the Baltic German nobleman Eduard von Oettingen wrote regularly to his wife Julie. Comparing three different time phases (letters written at the age of 27–30, 45–49 and 66–69), I will discuss potential age-dependent changes in syntactic complexity, lexical frequency as well as in readability scores and carry out a lexical-semantic analysis using LIWC2007. My case study shows that the majority of alterations lie within von Oettingen's middle adulthood, when he was at the height of his career and experiencing a substantial workload. Linguistic changes in his late adulthood however may be due to a 'tired hand', i.e. to the increased amount of energy needed to fulfil the task of writing by hand.


This paper presents the position based visual servoing (PBVS) control system which govern the motion of the manipulator with an eye in hand configuration. The main core of the PBVS control scheme is the pose estimation process in which the relative pose (position and orientation) of the object with respect to the camera mounted on endeffector was estimated by two techniques (Classic POSIT and Kalman filter). CRS Catalyst-5t robot system has been selected for setting up the PBVS control system. The simulation software program has been built to evaluate the success of the simulated robot vision system in performing the required visual servoing tasks using the designed position based control scheme.


The relative prices of different categories of consumption goods have been trending over time. Assuming they are exogenous with respect to monetary policy, these trends imply that monetary policy cannot stabilize the prices of all consumption categories. If prices are sticky, monetary policy then must trade off relative price distortions within different categories of consumption. Optimally, more weight should be placed on stabilizing goods and services prices that are less flexible. Calibrating a simple sticky price model to U.S. data, we find that slight deflation is optimal, even absent transactions frictions leading to a demand for money. Optimality of deflation derives from the fact that relative prices have been trending up for services, whose nominal prices seem to be less flexible.


Participation in secondary physics has been shown to be limited for underrepresented students in urban school districts. This study explores an alternative means for providing physics access for city youth through the use of a university-based Saturday enrichment program for eighth grade Latino students. During a three-week unit on Newton's laws, students engaged in inquiry-based lessons that featured hands-on tasks, probeware with handheld sensing devices, computer simulations, iPod Touch applications, and multiple representations of mechanics concepts. Students were tested pre- and post- with a modified Force Concept Inventory. Results indicated significant gains in student understanding of Newton's laws. Implications for physics teaching and learning in urban middle schools and informal science settings are discussed.


Adverse behavioral risk factors contribute to a large share of deaths. We examine the effects on life expectancy (LE) and quality-adjusted life expectancy (QALE) of changes in six major behavioral risk factors over the 1960-2010 period: smoking, obesity, heavy alcohol use, and unsafe use of motor vehicles, firearms, and poisonous substances. These risk factors have moved in opposite directions. Reduced smoking, safer driving and cars, and reduced heavy alcohol use have led to health improvements, which we estimate at 1.82 years of quality-adjusted life. However, these were roughly offset by increased obesity, greater firearm deaths, and increased deaths from poisonous substances, which together reduced quality-adjusted life expectancy by 1.77 years. We model the hypothetical effects of a 50% decline in morbid obesity and in poisoning deaths, and a 10% decline in firearm fatalities, roughly matching favorable trends in smoking and increased seat belt use. These changes would lead to a 0.92 year improvement in LE and a 1.09 year improvement in QALE. Thus, substantial improvements in health by way of behavioral improvements and public health are possible.


Glen Williford lends new insight to the reasons for America's relatively quick comeback from the attack on Pearl Harbor. For the first time, he tells the complete story of American efforts to build and reinforce its Pacific garrisons in the Philippines and Hawaii during the six months prior to the war and to supply Bataan and Corregidor in early 1942. One effort involved a carefully organized convoy and air ferry routes that were reaching their heights in December 1941. The author fully describes the reinforcement efforts in the context of both the existing military strategies and the realities and physical limits of America's defense capabilities at the time. It concludes with an examination of the transition from the desperate defensive efforts to protect lines of communication to Australia and build a major base there to using these assets to resume the offensive.


Homophobic hatred: these words summarise online commentary made by people in support of a school that banned gay students from taking their same sex partners to a school formal. With the growing popularity of online news sites, it seems appropriate to critically examine how these sites are becoming a new arena in which people can express personal opinions about controversial topics. While commentators equally expressed two dominant viewpoints about the school ban (homophobic hatred and human rights), this paper focuses on homophobic hatred as a discursive position and how the comments work to confirm the legitimacy of the schools' decision. Drawing on the work of Foucault and others, the paper examines how the comments constitute certain types of subjectivity drawing on dominant ideas about what it means to be homophobic. The analysis demonstrates the complex and competing skein of strategies that constitute queering school social spaces as a social problem.


F. W. Shotton, FRS, Professor of Geology at the University of Sheffield 1945–1949, and at Birmingham 1949–1974, is best known for his research on Pleistocene geology of the English Midlands. However, during the Second World War he became a distinguished military geologist. From May 1941 to September 1943, based in Egypt, he used hydrogeology to guide development of potable water supplies for British forces operational in the Middle East and northern Africa. Recalled to the UK after campaign victory, from October 1943 he helped plan for the Allied liberation of Normandy by providing terrain evaluation (primarily through preparation of specialist maps and contribution of technical advice) relating to beach conditions, suitability of ground for the rapid construction of temporary airfields, and water supply. Following D-Day, 6 June 1944, he was based in northern France and later Belgium, and was involved with further water supply tasks, discussions on quarrying of aggregate, and assessment of soil conditions likely to influence off-road vehicle mobility or the siting of airfields and military depots, thus contributing to Allied victory in Europe in May 1945. Preparing to go into Germany, he was granted early demobilization to resume his academic career. Wartime achievements generated few of his hundred significant publications, but postwar influenced his inspirational teaching and academic leadership.


Random peptide libraries (RFL) displayed on phage are being increasingly used to identify mimics of epitopes (mimotopes) in antigens (1). These RPL's typically provide over 109 peptide at a fraction of the cost of chemically synthesized RPL's. The RFL are constructed by inserting 21 to 36 random nudeotides into the gene for an appropriate coat protein in a phage which is propagated in Ecoll. Particularly dear mimotopes have been obtained with monoclonal antibodies and with a few polyclonal antibodies against viruses. Now that good quality RPL are available commercially they will be used in attempts to identify novel autoantigens which react with antibodies present in patients with autoimmune diseases. Once the peptide mimic of the autoantigen is obtained, it can be used to affinity to purify the autoantibody, which can then be used to locate the real autoantigen in a cDNA library from the target organ. It is particularly difficult with human sera to obtain mimotopes which are specific for a disease. Strategies are necessary to increase the chance of selecting a specific peptide where the level of autoantibody in serum could be low and it is likely to be only one of thousands of antibodies with no relevance to the disease. Despite these difficulties interesting results are emerging in rheumatoid arthritis (2), immune thrombocy topenic purpura (3) and multiole sclerosis (4).


Historical sources indicate that the concept of "Fourth Amendment reasonableness" is only a modern judicial invention, not the intended meaning of the text. Common-law sources show there was no broad "reasonableness" standard in framing-era search and arrest law. In addition, historical sources show that the Framers were concerned almost exclusively with searches of houses under general writs or warrants. Although the Framers abhorred the exercise of discretionary authority by ordinary officers, they were not threatened by warrantless intrusions because the ex officio authority of peace officers was very limited, especially when a house was involved. Thus, because the Framers perceived that warrant authority was the potent form of arrest and search authority, and because they were primarily concerned with the protection of the house and the sphere of domestic privacy associated with the house, they believed that prohibiting legislative authorization of general warrants would suffice to preserve the right to be secure. Moreover, in framing-era law, unlawful conduct by officers was regarded only as a private trespass, not as a form of government illegality. Thus the Framers had no basis for addressing the conduct of warrantless officers in a constitutional provision (and also had no basis for considering exclusion as a consequence of an unlawful search). The reference to "unreasonable searches and seizures" in the text did not refer to a relativistic standard; rather that phrasing reflected Coke's earlier use of "against reason" as a label for a violation of a basic legal principle. James Otis invoked Coke's "against reason" during the Writs of Assistance Case and his protege John Adams (who recorded Otis's speech) introduced "unreasonable" into the lexicon of American search and seizure texts when he authored the 1780 Massachusetts Declaration of Rights. Modern reasonableness doctrine is best understood as a judicial adjustment to the post-framing conferral of discretionary arrest and search authority on peace officers, a development which created a novel threat to the security of person and house. The 1914 decision in Weeks v. United States drew upon the late nineteenth century reconception of officer misconduct "under color of " office as a form of government illegality to extend the Fourth Amendment to warrantless officers. It also constitutionalized the common-law warrant requirement for house searches. The 1925 decision in Carroll v. United States changed direction, however, and facilitated enforcement of Prohibition by reinterpreting "unreasonable" as a relativistic standard for warrantless searches. Thus, the history of the Fourth Amendment is one of drastic doctrinal and contextual change. The authentic meaning cannot be recovered from the words of the text alone; rather, the intended meaning of the words can only be ascertained by examing the doctrinal and institutional context that shaped the Framers' concern. The differences between the historical and modern contexts are so pronounced that the original meaning cannot provide answers to modern issues. The value of recovering the authentic original meaning lies largely in the larger perspective it provides: we now accord the ordinary officer much more authority than the Framers either intended or expected.


Two important components that consume the majority of IT power in data centers are the servers and the Data Center Network (DCN). Existing works fail to fully utilize power management techniques on the servers and in the DCN at the same time. In this paper, we jointly consider VM placement on servers with scalable frequencies and flow scheduling in the DCN, to minimize the overall system's power consumption. Due to the convex relation between a server's power consumption and its operating frequency, we prove that, given the number of servers to be used, computation workloads should be allocated to severs in a balanced way, to minimize the power consumption on servers. To reduce the power consumption of the DCN, we further consider the flow requirements among the VMs during VM allocation and assignment. Also, after VM placement, flow consolidation is conducted to reduce the number of active switches and ports. We notice that, choosing the minimum number of servers to accommodate the VMs may result in high power consumption on servers, due to servers' increased operating frequencies. Choosing the optimal number of servers purely based on servers' power consumption leads to reduced power consumption on servers, but may increase power consumption of the DCN. We propose to choose the optimal number of servers to be used, based on the overall system's power consumption. Simulations show that, our joint power optimization method helps to reduce the overall power consumption significantly, and outperforms various existing state-of-the-art methods in terms of reducing the overall system's power consumption.


South African reports to the World Health Organization (WHO) indicate that its tuberculosis (TB) notifications have increased fivefold over the last 20 years; in 2008, South Africa (SA) had the third-highest TB burden, after India and China. SA and Swaziland now have the highest TB notification rates in the world, with about 1% of their populations developing TB annually. South Africa also has the greatest number of HIV-infected individuals in any country in the world, estimated at 5.5 million. South Africa was responsible for approximately 25% of the global burden of HIV-associated TB cases in 2007.


On 17 July 1998, an earthquake of magnitude 6.2 (M(subscript L)) occurred near Chiayi, southwestern Taiwan. Two days after the occurrence of the mainshock, a temporary digital seismic network was deployed near its epicenter for 24 days to monitor the aftershock activity. The events within and near the network were first located using a traditional single-event location and then relocated using a joint hypocentral determination (JHD) technique to determine the significance of lateral velocity variations and to improve earthquake locations. The station corrections obtained from the JHD analysis vary from 0.30 to -0.18 sec for the P-waves and from 0.51 to -0.58 sec for the S-waves. The patterns of station corrections suggest that upper crustal velocities on the eastern side of the study area are relatively higher than those on the western side. The depth cross-section of the relocated aftershocks shows a clear pattern of southeast-dipping distribution of the hypocenters. The focal mechanisms and hypocentral distribution of the relocated aftershocks reveal a close relationship between seismicity and the known faults in the study area.


We develop a model that reproduces the average return and volatility spread between sin and non-sin stocks. Our investors do not necessarily boycott sin companies. Rather, they are open to invest in any company while trading off dividends against ethicalness. We show that when dividends and ethicalness are complementary goods and investors are sufficiently risk averse, the model predicts that the dividend share of sin companies exhibits a positive relation with the future return and volatility spreads. Our empirical analysis supports the model's predictions.


Scientific evidence has proven that kindness changes the brain, impacts the heart and immune system, and may even be an antidote to depression. We're actually genetically wired to be kind. In this book, inspirational ex-scientist David Hamilton shows that kindness has evolved in us and thus its effects are felt daily throughout our nervous systems. When we're kind, our bodies are healthiest. This groundbreaking book is filled with fascinating new discoveries, including: how kindness developed in our genes; that love and kindness can make a damaged heart regenerate faster; how kindness and compassion alter the neural structures of our brains; and that gratitude can make you at least 25 per cent happier. This unique book fuses scientific research around being kind with inspirational real life examples of kindness from ordinary people. Reading these stories will nourish your soul and leave you with renewed optimism for the future, and this book will help you see the many levels on which taking the time to make a difference could transform your health - and your whole world.


Knowledge management (KM) is the creation, sharing and utilisation of organisations' intangible assets in order to generate value for their stakeholders. Current literature focuses on KM within larger organisations and also at managerial levels. However, far too little attention has been paid to KM at the operational level within SMEs, especially in New Zealand. It is important to address this gap in research because SMEs are huge contributors to the New Zealand economy. More so, operational personnel are fundamental aspects of SMEs as they deal with their daily operations and customers. Operational personnel are central to SMEs' functional operations and hence, the management of their knowledge. The objectives of this research are to determine themes from KM literature and use these to support the analysis of KM among SMEs' operational staff. In addition, this study seeks to gain better understanding of factors that influence KM at the operational level within SMEs in New Zealand. To address these research objectives, a systematic literature review was conducted. This existing literature was then analysed thematically to identify factors that affect the use of KM practices among operational personnel within SMEs. Focus was placed particularly on SMEs within New Zealand. The thematic analysis method is one of the more practical ways of sifting through large volumes of data (in this study, literature), while offering a flexible method that allows for meaning to be captured through the researcher's interpretation of the qualitative data. Through analysis, this research generated nineteen elements that are then grouped into five factors. These factors include: managerial commitment, employee participation, organisational make-up, technology, and organisational resources. The factors are categorised along the lines of how they influence KM practice within SMEs, whether internally and/or externally. The five factors identified provide insight into what impacts KM processes and KM as a whole. A model was developed to show the relationship between the categorised factors and KM processes. The results of this study indicate a collective influence that the five factors have on KM processes. By developing a model that shows the relationship between factors and KM processes, this research has contributed to bridging the gap and integrating views across these areas: knowledge management, operational personnel, SMEs, in the New Zealand context. It is believed that the themes drawn from this analysis will help those within New Zealand SMEs to better understand KM at their operational level.


One of the major fungal disease of rice that farmers are facing today were rice blast and sheath blight. These diseases cause drastic decrease in the productivity and become a problem in related to the consumption. The main objective of this study is to determine the antifungal activity of Datura metel, Jatropha carcus and Ruellia tuberosa ethanolic leaf extract against the isolated pathogen causing sheath blight and rice blast disease of rice. This study employed experimental research method with completely randomized design wherein sheath blight isolates were tested into three different concentrations (25%, 50% and 100%) of the three plant extracts while rice blast isolates were tested in 100% concentration of the three plant extracts. The food poisoned technique assay was used to access the antifungal activity of different three ethanolic extract and was done with three replications. The results showed that the ethanolic leaf extract of D. metel and J. carcus has the highest antifungal activity at 100% concentration against isolated pathogen causing sheath blight having98.611 ± 1.589% and 98.588 ± 1.589 of mycelial inhibition, respectively. Whereas, J.carcus and R.tuberosa has highest antifungal property against rice blast having 97.436 ± 0.555% and 97.115 ± 0.96% respectively. The three plant extracts exhibited high percentage of mycelial inhibition compared to mancozeb. Therefore, the extracts from these three plants have an active potential to inhibit the growth of fungus and can be used as bio fungicide to control infection of rice blast and sheath blight in rice. Since these bio fungicides came from plants, the negative effect for the environment and other organisms will be inhibited and can also support the goal of the government in finding on how to delimit the use of chemical fungicides. To assert the effectiveness on the actual field management of plant health, in vivo trials are recommended.


Apoptotic cells were shown to induce dendritic cell immune tolerance. We applied a proteomic approach to identify molecules that are secreted from apoptotic monocytes, and thus may mediate engulfment and immune suppression. Supernatants of monocytes undergoing apoptosis were collected and compared using sodium dodecyl sulfate-polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis (SDS-PAGE), and differentially expressed proteins were identified using tandem mass spectrometry. Thrombospondin-1 (TSP-1) and its cleaved 26-kDa heparin-binding domain (HBD) were identified. We show that TSP-1 is expressed upon induction of monocyte apoptosis in a caspase-dependent pattern and the HBD is cleaved by chymotrypsin-like serine protease. We further show that CD29, CD36, CD47, CD51, and CD91 simultaneously participate in engulfment induction and generation of an immature dendritic cell (iDC) tolerogenic and phagocytic state. We conclude that apoptotic cell TSP-1, and notably its HBD, creates a signalosome in iDCs to improve engulfment and to tolerate engulfed material prior to the interaction with apoptotic cells.


Our work aims at building probabilistic tools for constructing and maintaining large-scale knowledge bases containing entity-relationship-entity triples (statements) extracted from the Web. In order to mitigate the uncertainty inherent in information extraction and integration we propose leveraging the "wisdom of the crowds" by aggregating truth assessments that users provide about statements. The suggested method, CoBayes, operates on a collection of statements, a set of deduction rules (e.g. transitivity), a set of users, and a set of truth assessments of users about statements. We propose a joint probabilistic model of the truth values of statements and the expertise of users for assessing statements. The truth values of statements are interconnected through derivations based on the deduction rules. The correctness of a user's assessment for a given statement is modeled by linear mappings from user descriptions and statement descriptions into a common latent knowledge space where the inner product between user and statement vectors determines the probability that the user assessment for that statement will be correct. Bayesian inference in this complex graphical model is performed using mixed variational and expectation propagation message passing. We demonstrate the viability of CoBayes in comparison to other approaches, on realworld datasets and user feedback collected from Amazon Mechanical Turk.


Pashtu, the language of more than 40 million inhabitants of Afghanistan, Pakistan and India, is, next to Persian, the most prevalent of Arian languages in the world. Not only the quality of the written Pashtu literary works, but particularly its dynamic folkloric oral poetry attests to its viability. The oldest literary evidence relating to Pashtu goes back to the eighth century. Pashtu's literary renaissance, however, which began in the 16th century and continued until 18th century, took place under the influence of Persian literature. Pashtu pioneers of this renaissance were steeped both in religious ideas and Persian literary traditions. Some of their poems were written in Persian. Indeed, the influence of Persian has been quite evident in the extensive presence of not only Persian poetic literary modes and expression but also Persian words in Pashtu writings.
Given the state of literacy in the Pashtu communities, the significance and prevalence of oral poetry is more pronounced than the written one. The most prevalent, and perhaps the most beautiful, in the latter genre is the Landi poetry. The etymological origin of the word Landi is not known but the word may be from root "land" in Pashtu meaning short since there are usually no more than a few lines in each poem. The authors of these poems are never known, for each poem is in a constant state of revision and adaptation commensurate with the changing social and political circumstances.
Some of Landi poems have lasted for long periods of time and some others that refer to a particular event are forgotten once the event is swept from public consciousness. In recent years, a number of cultural institutions in Afghanistan and Pakistan have published collections of Landi poems numbering over 50000 quatrains. It is estimated, however, that the number of these poems still in common usage exceed a hundred thousand.


The Makista (Macau Creole Portuguese) verb paradigm contains two types of verbs derived from the indicative mood of the superstrate: those which do not represent superstrate functions and those which bear functional superstrate inflectional morphology of the simple present, the past perfective and the past imperfective. The distribution of inflection with superstrate functions, however, is inconsistent throughout the three existent corpora of Makista. Such inflectional morphology is not found in Makista's immediate predecessor - Kristang, or Malacca Creole Portuguese. However it is found among the Indo-Portuguese creoles of Diu, Daman and Korlai. The chapter argues that diachronic differences in the Makista verb paradigm indicate the incorporation of inflectional morphology through a late-stage second language acquisition process occurring during decreolization. This view contrasts with the account proposed by Luis (2008) to explain the presence of inflectional morphology in the Indo-Portuguese Creoles via an early stage second language acquisition process based on a Post-basic Variety.


Objective: To evaluate whether clinical pharmacist's interventions have any impact on medication adherence of patients having inflammatory bowel disease and to assess the awareness of patients about their disease and the significance of medications they use. Materials and Methods: A prospective, interventional follow up study was conducted in the outpatients visiting Gastroenterology and Hepatology department of Amrita Institute of Medical Sciences, Kochi. To assess the level of medication adherence and patient's awareness, MMAS-8 and CCKNOW has been utilized. Once this baseline information's were collected, counselling was given to patients and they were supplemented with pill cards and patient information leaflets as educational material. During the follow up visit, all the above parameters were reassessed and compared with the baseline visit. Result: About 110 IBD patients have participated in this study. In baseline visit, 6.36% patients had low adherence, 62.73% patients had medium adherence, 30.91% patients had high adherence. During follow up visit, after intervention by clinical pharamcist, 3.64% patients had low adherence, 18.18% patients had medium adherence and 78.18 % patients had high adherence. From this study, it was notified that the average score of CCKNOW was only 8.15 in the beginning. Later on, it was escalated to 11.65 during the revisit periods. Conclusion: Knowledge of patients about their disease and medications were insufficient during baseline visit. Adherence to medication was found to be poor among IBD patients. Counselling provided by clinical pharmacist about the importance of medication adherence and provision of information leaflets and pill cards lead to an improvement in medication adherence and knowledge of IBD patients. Key words: IBD - Inflammatory Bowel Disease, MMAS-8 - Modified Morisky Adherence Scale-8, CCKNOW - Crohn's and Colitis Knowledge assessment questionnaire, OPD – Outpatient Department.


To the Editor: New Delhi metallo-β-lactamase (NDM) is an example of a successful antimicrobial drug resistance determinant and has become one of the most clinically significant carbapenemases. The gene blaNDM was first described in India in 2009. Its dispersion is epidemiologically linked to the Indian subcontinent, from which increased international transmission has been detected in nosocomial, community, and environmental isolates (1). Currently, the main acquired carbapenemases around the world are Klebsiella pneumoniae carbapenemase (KPC), oxacillinase-48 (OXA-48), and NDM. KPC is broadly detected and endemic to some areas; OXA-48 has been widely disseminated throughout European countries and has been reported in other regions. NDM is reported almost worldwide but did not successfully spread in most countries of Europe except the United Kingdom and recently, France, as has been found in Enterobacteriaceae (2) and in nonfermenting gram-negative bacilli, with progression toward rapid global prevalence.

NDM producers were detected most recently in South America (3). However, an increase in cases of NDM-producing bacteria has been noted. Carvalho-Assef et al. (4) described characterization of NDM in Brazil, in Providencia rettgeri isolated from a tissue sample excised from a patient in a hospital in Rio Grande do Sul state in southern Brazil, in 2013. Reports by Carvalho-Assef et al. (5) and Rozales et al. (6) have highlighted that P. rettgeri and isolates from the Enterobacter cloacae complex, clonally and nonclonally related, have been increasingly detected in the southern region of Brazil. In addition, retrospective studies have shown that NDM-1–producing Enterobacter have been present in Brazil since 2012 and have also been detected in Rio Grande do Sul (5). NDM-1–producing Morganella morganii (6), Escherichia coli, Klebsiella pneumoniae (7), Acinetobacter baumannii (8), and Citrobacter freundii (J. Campos, et al., https://www.escmid.org/escmid_library/online_lecture_library/?search=1&current_page=1&search_term=Citrobacter+freundii+NDM) have also been reported. Initial reports from Brazil also indicate that NDM producers have displayed characteristics such as co-resistance (5,9,10) and heteroresistance (11), but to date, occurrence in the community has not been reported. NDM producers were originally detected in the southern and southeastern regions of Brazil and have since moved into the northern states.

Brazil is a country of extremes that has industrialized and nonindustrialized regions, and this situation converges with social, economic, and infrastructure problems (e.g., sanitation and health care public services). This scenario is similar to the initial conditions that contributed to worldwide dissemination of NDM from the Indian subcontinent. Successful and widespread international high-risk clones and epidemic plasmids have been detected in Brazil and could have a critical role in rapid national expansion of NDM-encoding genes and NDM producers. Brazil is under imminent threat of national spread and prevalence of NDM.

Lessons learned from management of KPC-production bacteria will help infection prevention and control teams, clinicians, and microbiology laboratories in Brazil more effectively manage patients with infections caused by NDM producers. Moreover, because of knowledge gained associated with global KPC dissemination, including in Brazil, this country is better prepared to face the other β-lactamases emerging worldwide. Initiatives of regional agencies and the Brazilian Health Surveillance Agency include dissemination of risk alerts to health professionals and guidelines for technical standardization and management of multidrug-resistant bacterial infection. These alerts focus on NDM producers and specific prevention and control measures; therapeutic orientation; and interpretive criteria for the assessment of bacterial antimicrobial drug susceptibility. These efforts are aimed at rapid microbiology detection and clinical and epidemiologic measures to control infections caused by NDM producers and blaNDM dissemination (e.g., using simple tests to detect carbapenemases, searching for colonized patients, and evaluating/monitoring hospital discharge of patients after NDM infection).

Another type of mobilization was promoted during the 27th Brazilian Congress of Microbiology, 29 September–3 October, 2013 in Natal, Brazil, in which a special symposium was dedicated to discussing and improving NDM counterattacks ( http://www.sigeventos.com.br/sbmicrobiologia/admin/pro_lista_programa.asp?eveId=5&tipId=22 [in Portugese]). This symposium gathered a team of experts, including government representatives, to try to minimize the spread and effect of the entry of NDM into Brazil, as well as the future complications and consequences of national dissemination

These efforts are crucial and have strategic significance that affect major events in Brazil, such as the 2014 FIFA World Cup, which brought people from all around the world to all regions of Brazil, and the upcoming Games of the XXXI Olympiad, which will occur in Rio de Janeiro in August 2016. Also of importance to this issue are the geopolitical and economic characteristics of Brazil. Because of Brazil's global influence related to national and international movement of people and products, broad prevalence of NDM producers in Brazil could contribute to acceleration of the global spread of blaNDM. Microbiologists, clinicians, and their respective organizations, as well as the government of Brazil, through its health and disease control agencies, should continue to strive to contain NDM dispersion and limit the possible global impact of the spread and prevalence of NDM producers in Brazil.