Efficient light management in monolithic perovskite/silicon tandem solar cells is one of the prerequisites for achieving high power conversion efficiencies (PCEs). Textured silicon wafers can be utilized for light management, however, this is typically not compatible with perovskite solution processing. Here, we instead employ a textured light management (LM) foil on the front-side of a tandem solar cell processed on a wafer with a planar front-side and textured back-side. This way the PCE of monolithic, 2-terminal perovskite/silicon-heterojunction tandem solar cells is significantly improved from 23.4% to 25.5%. Furthermore, we validate an advanced numerical model for our fabricated device and use it to optically optimize a number of device designs with textures at different interfaces with respect to the PCE and energy yield. These simulations predict a slightly lower optimal bandgap of the perovskite top cell in a textured device as compared to a flat one and demonstrate strong interdependency between the bandgap and the texture position in the monolithic stack. We estimate the PCE potential for the best performing both-side textured device to be 32.5% for a perovskite bandgap of 1.66 eV. Furthermore, the results show that under perpendicular illumination conditions, for optimized designs, the LM foil on top of the cell performs only slightly better than a flat anti-reflective coating. However, under diffuse illumination, the benefits of the LM foil are much greater. Finally, we calculate the energy yield for the different device designs, based on true weather data for three different locations throughout the year, taking direct as well as diffuse illumination fully into account. The results further confirm the benefits of front-side texture, even more for BIPV applications. Overall, devices built on a both-side textured silicon wafer perform best. However, we show that devices with textured LM foils on the cell's front-side are a highly efficient alternative.


William H. Meyers comments on a paper by Belongia and Gilbert presented at the 1986 annual meetings of the Allied Social Science Association. Belongia and Gilbert analyzed the scope of farm income and debt problems in the Plains States and discussed the causes of those problems. Meyers accepts Belongia and Gilbert's evidence of a deterioration in farm financial conditions since 1980, but rejects their test of the effects of macroeconomic fluctuations on economies dependent on agricultural income. The bases of his objections are Belongia and Gilbert's use of national GNP only as an explanatory macroeconomic variable and their use of farm or personal income as measures for agricultural sector performance, although it may verify the effectiveness of government programs in insulating farm income from the effects of macroeconomic policies. Meyers recommends a reevaluation of current agricultural policies to address the financial problems of farmers and agricultural lenders, which he sees as a more serious problem than that of general farm income.


Wolfram syndrome consists of the association of diabetes mellitus with optic atrophy. Other common findings are deafness, urinary tract and neurological disorders. It is an autossomic recessive disease, with incomplete penetrance and variable expressivity. The aim of this case report is to describe a patient who presents all the characteristics of Wolfram syndrome (DIDMOAD syndrome). JFP, African - American, 23 years old, presents with diabetes mellitus and insipidus, optic atrophy, deafness, peripheral polyneuropathy, autonomic neuropathy, neurogenic bladder, urinary tract dilation with recurrent infections, and azoospermia. Clinical examination, retinography, fluorescein angiogram, eletroretinography (ERG) and visual evocated potencial (VEP) revealed no retinal disorders and bilateral optic atrophy. Wolfram syndrome must be remembered in cases of optic atrophy in association with diabetes, urinary disorders, or any of the described alterations.


A monoclinic analogue of the mineral hydroxylapatite was found in altered leucogabbro making up one of the intrusive units in the Mesoproterozoic Seagull pluton in northwestern Ontario, Canada. The mineral is part of a replacement assemblage developed metasomatically after igneous plagioclase. It occurs as masses of coalescent spherulites < 30 μm in diameter, and is paragenetically associated with prehnite, hibschite, titanite, rutile and an unidentified Ca silicate. The new mineral is white and chalky in appearance, has a Mohs hardness of 5 and a measured density of 3.07(2) g/cm3 ( D calc 3.13 g/cm3), and shows little deviation from a uniaxial optical behavior (α 1.632, γ 1.649). Compositionally, it is an intermediate member of the ternary system Ca5(PO4)3(OH) - Ca5(PO4)3Cl - Na3Ca2(SO4)3(OH). The average content of the latter two end-members is ca. 20 mol. % each. The combination of high Na and S contents (up to 0.63 and 0.71 apfu, respectively) is unparalleled by any previously reported natural composition, and indicates significant solubility of these elements in natural apatites even at low crystallization temperatures (< 400 °C). The monoclinic symmetry of this mineral, determined from microbeam X-ray diffraction patterns, distinguishes it from hydroxylapatite. By analogy with synthetic Ca5(PO4)3OH, its space group is P 21/ b [ a 9.445(2) A, b 18.853(4) A, c 6.8783(6) A, γ 120.00(2)°], and the deviation of symmetry from the archetypal (space group P 63/ m , a ∼9.4 A, c ∼6.9 A) probably results from ordering of (OH) anions in [00z] anionic columns and consequent doubling of periodicity along [010]. In keeping with the nomenclature of apatites, this new mineral was named clinohydroxylapatite.


Bankruptcy is imminent for General Motors Corporation (GM). If GM does not restructure and prove it can run a viable business by June 1, 2009, the federal government will force GM into "surgical" bankruptcy proceedings. When analyzing why GM has not yet proved it can restructure to the extent necessary to avoid bankruptcy, many have recognized the United Auto Workers and the bondholders as the significant impediments. One major group, however, has been largely overlooked: the auto dealers. In a recent interview with Automotive News, Fritz Henderson, GM's new CEO, acknowledged that GM must consolidate brands to remain viable, but was resigned to the fact that consolidation would be very difficult due to the numerous state dealer franchise laws that protect auto dealers in every state. These laws exist because the auto dealers have considerable political clout at the state level, which they have used to get such laws passed in their favor. Not only have these very laws contributed to the demise of the domestic auto manufacturers, but they also are now severely hindering the auto manufacturers' ability to navigate through the economic crisis. What is worse is that the auto dealers have continued to lobby for even more onerous state franchise laws in 2009, as the auto manufacturers struggle to remain viable. The proposed legislation sitting before roughly two-thirds of the state legislatures, if enacted, will favor the dealers to an even greater extent, therefore effectively preventing the manufacturers from streamlining their business operations, and potentially involving billions of taxpayer money going straight into the hands of the dealers. This paper discusses the history of the relationship between the auto manufacturers and their dealers and the reason why franchise laws now exist in every state. After examining a few of the state franchise laws and their impact on the auto industry, this paper focuses on current state legislation that is particularly overreaching and questions whether it is irresponsible for the dealers to continue to push for these laws - and for state legislatures to continue to pass these laws - in light of the economic crisis and failing auto industry. Finally, this paper concludes that state regulation is necessary to the extent it neutralizes the disparity in bargaining power between the automakers and the dealers, but that current legislation no longer achieves this and only benefits the auto dealers. Based upon these conclusions, this paper proposes that the dealers focus their resources and efforts on lobbying for laws that will benefit the entire auto industry, not just a select few.


A novel protein kinase related to the C. elegans serine/threonine kinase UNC-51 was cloned from mouse. The UNC-51-Like Kinase (ULK)1 is encoded by a cDNA of 1051 amino acids with calculated MW of 113 kDa. Comparison of the ULK1 and UNC-51 shows the highest conservation in the amino-terminal kinase domain, which is followed by a proline/serine-rich (PS) domain and a conserved carboxyl-terminal (C) domain. ULK1 mRNA is expressed in various tissues, and is mapped to mouse chromosome 5F and rat chromosome 12q16.3, by fluorescent in situ hybridization. HA-tagged ULK1 is expressed as a protein of approximately 150 kDa in COS7 cells and is auto-phosphorylated in vitro in its PS domain. We propose that ULK1, UNC-51 and a yeast protein kinase Apg1p comprise a novel subfamily of protein kinase, which is structurally conserved among eukaryotes.


This manuscript represents the proceedings of a symposium at the 2001 RSA Meeting in Montreal, Canada. The organizers/chairs were Gyongyi Szabo and Geoffrey M. Thiele. The presentations were (1) Introduction, by Gyongyi Szabo; (2) Chemokine dysregulation after acute ethanol exposure, by Elizabeth J. Kovacs; (3) Chemokine production and innate immunity in the livers of simian immunodeficiency virus-infected Macaca mulatta following chronic alcohol administration, by Abraham P. Bautista; (4) Influence of ethanol consumption on the severity and progression of hepatitis associated with cytomegalovirus infection, by Laura Sosa and Thomas R. Jerrells; (5) Scavenger receptor involvement in the immune response to the metabolites of chronic ethanol ingestion, by Geoffrey M. Thiele; and (6) Mechanisms of impaired accessory cell functions due to alcohol exposure and hepatitis C infection, by Gyongyi Szabo.


Designing theranostic nanocarriers with high protein payload and multimodality tracking without cross interferences between the different imaging probes and the delicate protein cargo is challenging. Here, chemical modifications of poly(lactic-co-glycolic acid) (PLGA) to produce nanocapsules (NCs) that incorporate several imaging moieties are reported. The biocompatible and biodegradable PLGA-NCs can be endowed with a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) reporter, two fluorescence imaging probes (blue/NIR) and a positron emission tomography (PET) reporter. The modular integration of these imaging moieties into the shell of the NCs is successfully achieved without affecting the morphochemical properties of the nanocarrier or the protein loading capacity. In vivo biodistribution of the NCs is monitored by MRI, PET and NIRF and the results from different techniques are analyzed comparatively. The viabilities of two different human endothelial cells in vitro show no toxicity for NC concentration up to 100 μg mL-1. The morbidity of mice for 2 weeks after systemic administration and the hepatic/pancreatic enzymes at the plasma level indicate their in vivo biosafety. In summary, the new theranostic PLGA nanoplatform presented here shows versatile in vitro/in vivo multimodal imaging capabilities, excellent biosafety and over 1 wt% protein loading.


Context: Bitter sensitivity varies among individuals and ethnic groups partly due to polymorphisms in taste receptor genes (TAS2Rs). Although previous psychophysical studies suggest that taste status plays a role in nicotine dependence (ND), genetic evidence is lacking. Objectives: To determine whether single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) in TAS2R16 and TAS2R38 are associated with ND and if the effects differ by sex and ethnicity. Design, setting, and participants: 2037 individuals from 602 nuclear families of African American (AA) or European American (EA) origin were recruited from the US mid-south states during 1999–2004. Main outcome measures: ND was assessed by three measures: indexed Smoking Quantity (SQ), Heaviness of Smoking Index (HSI), and the Fagerström Test for Nicotine Dependence (FTND). Peripheral blood samples were obtained for DNA extraction and genotyping. Results: The TAS2R38 taster haplotype PAV was inversely associated (p = 0.0165), and the non-taster haplotype AVI was positively associated (p = 0.0120), with SQ in AA smokers. The non-taster haplotype was positively associated with all ND measures in AA female smokers (p = 0.01∼0.003). No significant associations were observed in the EA sample. Conclusions: TAS2R38 polymorphisms are an important factor in determining ND in AAs. Heightened oral sensitivity confers protection against ND. Conversely, decreased sensitivity represents a risk factor for ND, especially in AA females. Together, our findings suggest that taster status plays a role in governing the development of ND and may represent a way to identify individuals at risk for developing ND, particularly in AA smokers.


B lymphocytes are central players in the immune response; canonically, they have been recognized as precursors of antibody-producing cells: plasma cells. Recent findings have shown that the role of B lymphocytes goes far beyond the production of antibodies. There are different subtypes of B lymphocytes with different participations in innate and adap tive responses that include the recognition of the antigen, its processing, and its presenta- tion to T lymphocytes, as well as the production of cytokines that impact and modulate the response toward the pathogen. Traditionally, it has been considered that B lympho- cytes do not have phagocytic abilities that allow them to internalize, to process, or even to be infected by bacterial pathogens. The new information has shown that B lympho- cytes can be readily infected by bacterial pathogens like Salmonella , Francisella , Moraxella , and Mycobacterium , among others, and respond to those infections. Some of the recent advances on these topics will be presented in this chapter.


Nigeria has one of the highest maternal mortality ratios in the world: 1100 maternal deaths for every 100000 live births. Although patterns vary by region high-risk births persist in Nigeria. In both 1990 and 2003 two-thirds of all births were high risk because of the mother's age parity or spacing of births. More than 40% of women giving birth do not receive prenatal care from a trained health care provider. This proportion did not improve during the 13-year period. It is above average in the North East and North West regions. The proportion of women receiving health care from a trained provider at delivery has increased somewhat -- from 30% in 1990 to 37% in 2003. Even so it is still low and less than that in some other West African countries. Increasing urbanization and education coupled with a drop in the proportion of women who are married have led to declines in fertility desires and childbearing. However the desire for a smaller family appears to be outpacing reductions in fertility. This is evident in the increasing proportion of births that are unplanned which largely reflects a low level of contraceptive use in Nigeria. The Nigerian government has adopted several policies aimed at reducing maternal mortality by 75% by 2015. However they lack effective implementation largely because of the very low level of government spending on health care. Most programming on safe motherhood has been initiated by nongovernmental organizations working with funding from international donors. Some recent programs and policies have the potential to improve the quality of maternal health care in Nigeria. To achieve this goal the Nigerian government must make a commitment to provide adequate resources -- trained providers up-to-date equipment and most importantly sufficient funding -- to end the many needless deaths associated with childbearing among Nigerian women.


Abstract. Recently in The Netherlands, there are many examples of changes in the functionalities of buildings over time. Tracking these changes could be challenging when the building geometry will change as well; for example a change from administrative to residential use of the space, or merging two spaces in the building without updating the functionality. To record the changes, a common practice is to use 2D plans for subdivisions and to assign new rights, restrictions and responsibilities for the changes in a building. In the meantime, with the advances of 3D data collection techniques, the benefits of 3D models in various forms are increasingly being researched. The current work explores the opportunities of using the point clouds to establish a link between spatial changes and 3D Cadastre in indoor environments. We investigate the changes over time in the geometry of the building that can be automatically detected from point clouds to update the 3D indoor cadastre. The permanent changes (e.g., walls, rooms) are automatically distinguished by dynamic changes (e.g., human, furniture) and will be associated with the space subdivisions. Finally, the results will be linked to the spatial units in a Land Administration Domain Model (LADM).


BACKGROUND
Mild to moderate osteoarthritis of the knee in people over 55 years of age is one of the diseases whose management is covered by the explicit guaranties in health system (GES) in Chile. All beneficiaries with the disease should be informed about their rights to receive free treatment.

AIM
To assess the degree of awareness about their rights among patients with knee osteoarthritis, admitted to GES.

MATERIAL AND METHODS
Two hundred forty one patients aged 55 to 93 years (180 women) with knee osteoarthritis admitted to GES, answered at their homes a survey about their rights to receive health care, included in the GES system and about their disease.

RESULTS
Fifty percent of patients did not know what GES system was, 26% admitted to have a limited knowledge and 24%, a full knowledge. Sixty two percent were not informed about the nature of their disease and 42% perceived their health as less than optimal. There was a significant association between the level of knowledge about GES and osteoarthritis and their self-perception of health.

CONCLUSIONS
Half of the patients with knee osteoarthritis surveyed, were not aware of their health care rights included in GES and received scanty information about their disease.


This paper uses a dynamic Structural Equation Model to investigate the determinants of NEET (Not in Education, Employment or Training) status in adolescents. We model: the cumulative formation of cognitive ability over multiple periods through the life of the young person, up to completion of compulsory education; and the impact that cognitive ability has on NEET status at one and two years after compulsory education. Within this framework we address the issue of latent heterogeneity across individuals. The analysis finds that cognitive ability remains the key predictor of NEET status, and explains the persistence in NEET status. We also find evidence of significant indirect effects (of magnitudes similar to direct effects of ability) of aspirations of the young person and their parents in the prevention of NEET status. Health (general and mental) plays an important role in ability formation and in explaining NEET status; however, its impact differs between the sexes.


The question about possible remedies, including military intervention, to avoid or to put an end to massive violations of human rights committed by a state towards its own citizens or in situations where state authorities critically lack effectiveness has been extensively debated since the issuance in 2001 of the report of the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty (ICISS) on the responsibility to protect. After a succinct and critical review of the ICISS' report and the subsequent international instruments dealing with the responsibility to protect, this contribution focuses on the positions adopted by states, especially over the last three years at the General Assembly and at the Security Council of the United Nations on humanitarian intervention as a 'corollary' of the responsibility to protect doctrine. It appears that humanitarian intervention aimed at implementing the responsibility to protect is not only feared as imperialistic by several weak states, but it also significantly fails to find an unconditioned support even amongst the most powerful states. Given its extreme and multifaceted ambiguity, which is discussed in the last section of this contribution, the innovative content of the purported 'emerging norm' on the responsibility to protect, as well as its prospect to emerge in the future, remain rather unclear.


We describe a sensor system based on 3D 'reference structures' which implements a mapping from a 3D source volume onto a 2D sensor plane. We consider examples of few reference structures and how they spatially segment a 3D source volume and present some results.


The dynamics of hourly electricity prices in day-ahead markets is an important element of competitive power markets that were only established in the last decade. In electricity markets, the market micro-structure does not allow for continuous trading, since operators require advance notice in order to verify that the schedule is feasible and lies within transmission constraints. Instead agents have to submit their bids and offers for delivery of electricity for all hours of the next day before a specified market closing time. We suggest the use of dynamic semi-parametric factor models (DSFM) for the behavior of hourly electricity prices. We find that a model with three factors is able to explain already a high proportion of the variation in hourly electricity prices. Our analysis also provides insights into the characteristics of the market, in particular with respect to the driving factors of hourly prices and their dynamic behavior through time.


The subject of this article is the role of spirituality in diaconal work. This raises two questions: first, what do we mean by spirituality, and second, what characterises the field of diaconia and diaconal practice? To begin with, a few conceptual clarifications are necessary. C. Otto Scharmer's Theory U (TU) provides the conceptual and methodological framework for operationalising spirituality in diaconal work. It is argued that the concept of "presencing" is an adequate way to express "spirituality", and that, overall TU is an appropriate model to describe and develop the essential features of diaconal social work and diaconal leadership. I shall use the Danish Blue Cross as an example of an organisation that can be interpreted as working on the basis of TU.


In this article, I describe the IMF and the World Bank's coercive use of the conditionality arrangement in determining the fiscal and monetary policies, and shaping the development decisions of debtor countries as constituting not an expansion but, in fact, a transfer of "public decision making" power from debtor states to these non-state actors. I argue that the exercise of such public decision making power by these institutions has a significant coercive impact on the lives of the people within developing countries. When such coercion results in severe deprivation of basic human rights, the need for accountability of such institutions to the people becomes imperative. I examine the prevalence of horizontal application of rights in liberal democratic constitutional orders and argue for its extension to the international level in order to curb the state-like power of non-state actors such as the World Bank and the IMF. My argument involves five steps. First, I describe the evolving role of the IMF and the World Bank from institutions entrusted with the role of "monetary cooperation" and "assisting/facilitating 'development'", respectively, to institutions engaging substantively in the "development process" as 'global policy makers' for the debtor states. I argue that the changing role of these institutions and the criticisms made against them with respect to the exercise of their roles provides the basis for the demand for human rights accountability of these two institutions.Second, I examine existing institutional accountability mechanisms for the World Bank and the IMF. I discuss both self regulatory measures and quasi independent accountability mechanisms set up by these institutions, for instance, the World Bank Inspection Panel and the IMF's Independent Evaluation Office. I demonstrate the inadequacies of these accountability mechanisms to justify the need for non-institutional mechanisms of accountability.Third, I examine non-institutional mechanisms of accountability at the municipal and international levels. Based on this analysis, I argue in favour of international human rights accountability of these institutions and describe the attempts that have been made so far to develop such a theory of accountability. The incompleteness of the existing theory of international accountability leads me to look to the horizontality thesis to articulate a comprehensive theory of international human rights accountability.Fourth, I make a normative argument in favour of the application of international human rights law to non-state actors like the World Bank and the IMF based on the doctrine of horizontal application of rights in constitutional law. I justify the need for transplanting a constitutional rights doctrine of accountability to international human rights law by means of an argument about the 'nature' of rights as protection against power. I demonstrate the prevalence and growing popularity of the horizontality doctrine via a comparative constitutional law analysis of this doctrine in various constitutional systems, including Ireland, India, South Africa, United Kingdom, Germany and Canada, thereby concluding that horizontal application of rights is an accepted doctrine of comparative constitutional law.Finally, I argue for the normative extension of horizontal application of rights on the international plane to ensure that international human rights law binds the World Bank and the IMF in their activities and operations. I give some preliminary ideas about how rights would be horizontally applied to constrain the actions of the World Bank and the IMF. I conclude by raising certain questions that must be addressed in order to make this model of accountability more meaningful. These questions investigate the possible fora where these rights might be enforced and explore the possibility of extending this doctrine to other intergovernmental organisations and non-state actors.


This study examined the use of zoned ventilation systems using a coupled CONTAM/EnergyPlus model for new California dwellings. Several smart control strategies were developed with a target of halving ventilation-related energy use, largely through reducing dwelling ventilation rates based on zone occupancy. The controls were evaluated based on the annual energy consumption relative to continuously operating non-zoned, code-compliant mechanical ventilation systems. The systems were also evaluated from an indoor air quality perspective using the equivalency approach, where the annual personal concentration of a contaminant for a control strategy is compared to the personal concentration that would have occurred using a continuously operating, non-zoned system. Individual occupant personal concentrations were calculated for the following contaminants of concern: moisture, CO 2 , particles, and a generic contaminant. Zonal controls that saved energy by reducing outside airflow achieved typical reductions in ventilation-related energy of 10% to 30%, compared to the 7% savings from the unzoned control. However, this was at the expense of increased personal concentrations for some contaminants in most cases. In addition, care is required in the design and evaluation of zonal controls, because control strategies may reduce exposure to some contaminants, while increasing exposure to others.


In the UK, stroke is the third most common cause of death after heart disease and cancer. Importantly, most strokes are not fatal meaning stroke is the leading cause of adult disability, with one third of survivors still functionally dependent after one year.
Post stroke hyperglycaemia (PSH) predicts poor outcome independent of age, stroke type or severity and occurs in over 60% of patients without a diagnosis of diabetes and in more than 90% of diabetic patients. Around 56% of hyperglycaemic acute stroke patients are subsequently diagnosed with insulin resistance, manifesting as impaired glucose tolerance, impaired fasting glucose or the "metabolic syndrome." Clinical guidelines recommend routine blood glucose monitoring, and intervention with insulin for hyperglycaemia. However, there is currently no clinical evidence of benefit from insulin use, and recent findings raise concerns about the safety of insulin use in predominantly non-diabetic acute stroke populations. Hyperglycaemia in animal models of cerebral ischaemia is associated with increased infarct size. However, a recent systematic review highlighted uncertainties about the relevance of many previously published preclinical studies to the typical clinical picture of PSH with respect to whether clinically relevant elevations in blood glucose exacerbate ischaemic brain damage in models other than those of type I diabetes, or whether responses are different in animals with and without features of metabolic syndrome.
The aim of this thesis was to investigate the differential effects of clinically relevant hyperglycaemia on the acute evolution of damage in animals with and without features of the metabolic syndrome and to investigate the potential mechanistic role of oxidative stress in glucose mediated ischaemic damage. I hypothesised that hyperglycaemia would exacerbate acute lesion evolution and final infarct volume in animals with and without features of the metabolic syndrome and that oxidative stress mechanisms would be involved.

Developing suitable animal models for investigating post stroke hyperglycaemia and metabolic syndrome
The first aim of this thesis was to develop a series of animal models for the investigation of clinically relevant PSH, metabolic syndrome in the presence and absence of PSH, and an appropriate focal cerebral ischaemia model. A previously described model of metabolic syndrome using the spontaneously hypertensive stroke-prone rat (SHRSP) fed on a 60% fructose diet for two weeks was set up in the laboratory and glucose tolerance, adiposity, plasma insulin, plasma triglycerides, cholesterol were measured and compared to the SHRSP reference strain, the Wistar-Kyoto (WKY). Fructose fed-SHRSP rats exhibited glucose intolerance, hypertriglyceridaemia, hyperinsulinaemia, increase adiposity and reduced HDL cholesterol compared to the WKY controls. This suitably modelled the features of the metabolic syndrome. Clinically relevant levels of PSH were achieved using a bolus intraperitoneal injection of 15% glucose (10ml/kg) 10 minutes prior to permanent middle cerebral artery occlusion (MCAO). Two methods of MCAO were compared; intraluminal filament (ILF) model and a distal diathermy MCAO model. The ILF method produced expansive lesions incorporating the majority of the ipsilateral hemisphere whereas the distal diathermy occlusion produced smaller cortical infarcts which were shown to produce a large volume of penumbra. The diathermy model was selected for all future experiments.
Investigating the effects of hyperglycaemia on acute lesion growth after focal cerebral ischaemia in rats with and without components of the metabolic syndrome
 The second aim of this thesis was to determine the effects of hyperglycaemia on acute ischaemic lesion evolution and infarct volume in rats with and without features of the metabolic syndrome. Hyperglycaemia was induced in WKY or fructose-fed SHRSP rats 10 minutes prior to permanent MCAO. Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) was used to quantify the expansion of the lesion using ADC maps calculated from diffusion weighted imaging (DWI) carried out over the first 4 hours after MCAO. Acute hyperglycaemia, at clinically relevant levels, exacerbated early ischaemic damage in both normal and metabolic syndrome rats. Hyperglycaemia worsened infarct volume at 24h in normal but not metabolic syndrome rats. These data suggest that management of hyperglycaemia may be most beneficial in the absence of an underlying dysglycaemia. Using a marker of oxidative stress to probe the tissue sections suggested that perhaps hyperglycaemic effects were mediated through oxidative stress mechanisms.
Investigation of oxidative stress mechanisms in hyperglycaemia-dependant ischaemic damage.
Based on the potential involvement of oxidative stress mechanisms in hyperglycaemia-associated ischaemic damage this was investigated in a proof of concept study using pre-treatment with a SOD/catalase mimetic, EUK-134. The rationale for this study was based on the involvement of increased superoxide production in chronic hyperglycaemia and diabetic complications. Sprague-Dawley rats received the same dose of glucose previously used 10 minutes prior to MCAO by distal diathermy. EUK-134 (2.5mg/kg) or vehicle (saline) was administered 20 minutes prior to MCAO. Infarct volume, calculated from RARE T2-weighted MR images and neurological scoring was measured 24 hours post MCAO. Arterial superoxide levels were measured along with the lipid peroxidation marker malondialdehyde in cerebral tissue. Hyperglycaemia increased infarct volume although no effect of high blood glucose on tissue lipid peroxidation was observed. EUK-134 failed to reduce infarct volume. EUK-134 reduced lipid peroxidation in ipsilateral cortex of normoglycaemic rats but not in hyperglycaemic rats. Thus, hyperglycaemia associated damage was not reduced by attenuating oxidative stress.
Generating a threshold for quantitative T2 maps
Using the data generated in the previous Chapter a study was carried out to determine if improvements could be made in the analysis of MRI data in pre-clinical rat studies. RARE T2-weighted images, where T2 relaxation time denotes contrast, have been used for infarct quantification 24 hours post MCAO. Generating a lesion volume from these images requires manual tracing of the visually defined infarct from the images. A degree of error is associated with this methodology either as inter-investigator reproducibility or in repeats conducted by the same investigator. The RARE T2 images are not quantifiable as arbitrary values denote contrast and this prevents direct comparison of T2 relaxation times for a particular structure between subjects. Using a MSME T2 sequence, quantitative T2 maps can be generated which calculate absolute T2 relaxation times for each voxel.
Using quantitative maps an attempt was made to establish a threshold to discriminate between normal and ischaemically damaged tissue in animals that had undergone MCAO using the distal diathermy model. This threshold aimed to minimise inter- or intra-investigator error. A T2 threshold of abnormality for the quantitative T2 maps was established from the RARE T2 weighted images. Tissue that had a T2 relaxation time of 76 ms or more was deemed to be infarct according to the derived threshold. The suitability of the threshold was then assessed in a separate cohort and was found to produce similar infarct volumes to the manual delineation of RARE T2-weighted images. The 76ms threshold was also applied to animals that had undergone MCAO using the intraluminal filament model. However, the calculated threshold was not suitable for the intraluminal filament model due to interferences from cerebrospinal fluid signal. A more selective method for determining infarct volume in animals subjected to intraluminal filament MCAO needs to be established.
Conclusions
The studies presented in this thesis highlight that acute hyperglycaemia increases the rate of ischaemic lesion growth and final infarct volume in rats lacking insulin resistance and associated cardiovascular co-morbidities. The mechanism by which hyperglycaemia exacerbates ischaemic damage remains elusive. Oxidative stress may be involved, although from the investigations conducted in this thesis, it is not a primary mechanism of hyperglycaemia associated ischaemic damage following permanent MCAO.


Wetting phenomena are ubiquitous in nature and technology. A solid substrate exposed to the environment is almost invariably covered by a layer of fluid material. In this review, the surface forces that lead to wetting are considered, and the equilibrium surface coverage of a substrate in contact with a drop of liquid. Depending on the nature of the surface forces involved, different scenarios for wetting phase transitions are possible; recent progress allows us to relate the critical exponents directly to the nature of the surface forces which lead to the different wetting scenarios. Thermal fluctuation effects, which can be greatly enhanced for wetting of geometrically or chemically structured substrates, and are much stronger in colloidal suspensions, modify the adsorption singularities. Macroscopic descriptions and microscopic theories have been developed to understand and predict wetting behavior relevant to microfluidics and nanofluidics applications. Then the dynamics of wetting is examined. A drop, placed on a substrate which it wets, spreads out to form a film. Conversely, a nonwetted substrate previously covered by a film dewets upon an appropriate change of system parameters. The hydrodynamics of both wetting and dewetting is influenced by the presence of the three-phase contact line separating "wet" regions from those that are either dry or covered by a microscopic film only. Recent theoretical, experimental, and numerical progress in the description of moving contact line dynamics are reviewed, and its relation to the thermodynamics of wetting is explored. In addition, recent progress on rough surfaces is surveyed. The anchoring of contact lines and contact angle hysteresis are explored resulting from surface inhomogeneities. Further, new ways to mold wetting characteristics according to technological constraints are discussed, for example, the use of patterned surfaces, surfactants, or complex fluids.


One of the common mysteries of art, and a barrier to our understanding of Coleridge's claim that natural form lies at the heart of knowledge, is the problem of how it is that art can embody meaning in its sensuous forms—for instance, in visual, tactile or auditory "images." To our common way of thinking, this seems mysterious, for we usually think of thinking as something which is propositional and linguistic, or (though less popular these days) as being in some sense "pure" and above both the senses and language. But while propositional thinking is certainly a dimension of our mental experience, we should not let it blind us to the more fundamental ways in which we perceive and understand the world through the senses. Thus we should not think of syllogistic argument as the paradigm for thought, as the Anglo-American philosophical world has tended to, nor should we think of thought as paradigmatically linguistic in the way the literary theory of the last thirty years has suggested. Rather, we should find that paradigm in those moments when we are looking at the world (looking out of the window at a tree, for instance). Concrete sensuous form, or image, I shall argue, provides a more fundamental paradigm for thought—a paradigm which art brings to the fore, and which is also fundamentally Coleridgean.


The SensorScope project is a collaboration between environmental scientists and hardware/software engineers at EPFL. It will consist of two large-scale outdoor sensor networking deployments, the first on the EPFL campus, and the second on an alpine glacier. The aim of these deployments is to measure key environmental quantities at high spatial resolution, for the purpose of modeling and understanding energy exchanges and balances at the earth/atmosphere boundary. The goal of this demo is to show SWeaS (the SensorScope Weather Station), a complete weather sensing unit that we have developed in the scope of this project. SWeaS is the core component of SensorScope and will be installed at over one hundred locations in each of the two deployments. In comparison to previous weather boards designed for mote-class nodes, the design of SWeaS considers the entire chain of requirements for a scientific atmospheric measurement campaign, including packaging, energy autonomy, sensor placement and a diverse set of sensors.


The 30 species that comprise the group of Strobilanthes species centred on the genus recognised by Bremekamp under the name Sympagis are discussed. It is shown that the defining character of the pollen is inconsistent andthe characteristic globose, ribbed pollen intergrades with the ellipsoidal, ribbed pollen predominant in Strobilanthes, as well as with the less common globose, echinulate pollen. Other morphological characters are equally unsatisfactory in defining the group and lend no support to Bremekamp's division of Strobilanthes into numerous small genera. The 30 species are listed systematically together with taxonomic notes, geographical distributions and diagnostic features. Six new species are described (Strobilanthes asymmetrica, S. calcicola, S. kachinensis, S. pendula, S. rivularis, S. teraoi), one new name (S. bremekampiana) is proposed and three new combinations (S. affinis, S. renschiae and S. orthostachya) are made. Strobilanthes imbricata is lectotypified to clarify its disputed identity. Line drawings and pollen photographs illustrate many of the species and maps are provided to show the unusual distribution of certain species.


This thesis is concerned with semi-active damping control for vibration isolation of base disturbances. The aim is to investigate the effectiveness and suitability of semi-active damping control strategies for improving steady-state vibration isolation. A single-degree-of-freedom (SDOF) system, comprising a semi-active damper with a linear passive spring in parallel, is used to study the vibration isolation of base excitation.
The semi-active control strategies investigated include on-off skyhook control, continuous skyhook control, on-off balance control and continuous balance control. Chatter and jerk problems are investigated, which can arise in numerical simulations and possibly in practice when using semi-active control strategies. Anti-chatter and anti-jerk control strategies are proposed. These control strategies are implemented numerically in Matlab/Simulink. Harmonic, periodic and random disturbances are considered in this thesis. The vibration isolation performance is evaluated in terms of Root-Mean-Square (RMS) acceleration transmissibility.
The performance of these control strategies for the isolation of harmonic disturbances is firstly studied. The performance is compared with those of an adaptive-passive control strategy, a conventional and a skyhook passive damper. Results show that the semi-active control strategies can provide a better isolation than a conventional passive system with an equivalent damping level. The semi-active damper can
provide isolation over the whole frequency range if the on-state damping of the semi-active damper is big enough. The fraction of time when the damper is turned on or off is found to be frequency dependent.
The effects of secondary frequency, which is a harmonic or subharmonic of the fundamental frequency on switching time of the semi-active damper for isolation of the primary harmonic are examined. Upper bounds are derived for fraction of time when the switching time for the fundamental frequency may be affected by the presence of a secondary frequency. The performance of the semi-active isolation system for periodic and random disturbances, where there is more than one harmonic in the disturbance spectrum is investigated. The results for square wave and triangular wave disturbances suggest that semi-active control strategies are promising for periodic disturbance. Three special cases are considered for random disturbances when the acceleration, velocity and displacement inputs have flat spectra. The semi-active control strategies can provide some advantage in performance for random velocity and displacement disturbances with medium to high damping ratios. Only continuous skyhook control strategy can provide some benefit in isolation performance for random acceleration disturbances.
Following on from the numerical simulations, experimental work is carried out to validate the simulation results. The experimental set-up incorporates an electromagnetic device as a semi-active damper. The on-off skyhook control algorithm is chosen to be implemented using an analogue circuit. The damping of the electromagnetic semi-active damper is achieved by opening and closing the magnet-coil circuit. Numerical predictions are confirmed by experimental observation. The performance of the electromagnetic damper is limited by the achievable damping level.


Sweet clover is a high yielding, nutritious forage. It is one that North Dakota cattlemen have used in considerable quantities for years. However, too much of this good thing has produced poisoning in herds costing an estimated 200 herds per year since the 1920s in North Dakota. Though this effect has been known for decades, little was known about what level/accumulation which produces toxicity. In order to gain this needed information, two researchers were hired by the North Dakota Beef Commission to discover ways of reducing poisoning via sweet clover. The ingredient that produces this toxicity is dicumarol, which is a product of the clover molding. There are other varieties of clover, which yield less and for which seed may not be readily available. Sweet clover is one of the best legumes to plow down green manure. It is drought resistant. It is used to manage variation in forage production. It is widespread throughout North Dakota.One method of controlling this toxicity effect is to treat if for molding. One can feed sweet clover in rotation with other feeds, which are being evaluated. Researchers at the North Dakota State University were providing some answers to help ranchers with this problem by new information on this issue.


The protracted war and the centrality of security in Israel raises the Lasswellian question, can parliamentary democracy and political pluralism prevail under such conditions, without turning Israel into a Garrison State?
The prevailing understanding of political-military relations in Israel is that the IDF is an instrumentalist army, that it serves as the executive tool of the legitimate political authorities and is not involved with state politics. Furthermore, it is accepted that the greatest achievement of David Ben Gurion, Israel's first Prime Minister and Defence Minister, and the architect of the defence establishment,
was the de-politicization of the IDF and its disconnection from party politics.
Both assumptions are challenged in this study. New evidence, and an analysis of existing material reveals the existence of a nominal control pattern, which has the formal appearance of an instrumentalist model, whereas the reality is otherwise. The IDF was not subordinate only to a state channel of political control, like other instrumentalist armies. In Israel there existed a unique pattern of political-military relations, a dual-control pattern. The political authorities exerted control through two channels, not only the state but also the party channel, that is of
the dominant Labour Party.
The state control was in fact weak and there was a lack of effective mediatory mechanisms between the military on the one hand and the Cabinet, Parliament and Defence Ministry on the other. As a result a pattern of civil-military partnership emerged in place of civil control. The boundaries between the military and the Labour Party were permeable. This allowed the rivalry between that party's two "sub-elites" to affect the military which enhanced the partnership between the military and political elites. The emergence of the military as one of the main mobility channels to the national leadership, evidenced by the increased influence of the generals-turned-politicians, has resulted in a developmental construct of Military Democracy.


We analyze a newsboy problem with resalable returns. A single order is placed before the selling season starts. Purchased products may be returned by the customer for a full refund within a certain time interval. Returned products are resalable, provided they arrive back before the end of the season and are undamaged. Products remaining at the end of the season are salvaged. All demands not met directly are lost. We derive a simple closed-form equation that determines the optimal order quantity given the demand distribution, the probability that a sold product is returned, and all relevant revenues and costs. We illustrate its use with real data from a large catalogue/internet mail order retailer.


The current research project examines the intervening role of values towards gun possession and gun use in predicting involvement of high school-aged males in general delinquency and gun-related delinquency. As the first step of the project, we examine the factors that influence the values that the youth have towards gun possession and gun use. The most important factors producing positive values towards guns are a need for protection, having friends who carry guns, being a gang member, and being a victim of a gun crime. In contrast, frequency of church attendance reduces such values. As the next step, we examined social control, victimization, and gun-related factors that influenced participation in general delinquency and whether gun values served as an intervening mechanism in this process. We found that social bonds to parents and school, having witnessed a killing, owning a handgun, and carrying a gun out of a need for protection all increased the likelihood of delinquency, and values towards gun possession and use did not mediate these relationships. Finally, we narrowed our focus to gunrelated delinquency. We found that Hispanic ethnicity, having men in one's family that carry guns, and owning a handgun all increased gun-related delinquency, and these relationships were not mediated by values towards guns. Our findings suggest that attempts to alter youth's values towards gun possession and gun use will have little impact on gun-related crime or delinquency in general. Instead, we should target our efforts on keeping handguns out of their possession.


The study investigates Vendor Managed Inventory (VMI) for the supply of medicines between distributors and hospitals to identify factors that may affect VMI adoption. Multiple case studies are conducted involving five organizations (three hospitals, one distributor, and one manufacturer/ supplier). Four dyadic relationships are identified. Triangulation techniques are used in data collection, including interviews, site visits and document analysis to enhance reliability and validity. Case studies have been analyzed individually and comparatively. Two types of VMI initiatives – public and private sector - are identified in the supplier/hospital context. The public sector supplier focuses on improving service level while the private sector supplier seeks to strengthen relationships with key customers. Hospital characteristics, including the type of hospital, top management perspectives, and the hospital's willingness to share information, are critical in decisions on VMI initiation or termination. Relatively stable demand products are preferred for a VMI approach. Hospitals may perceive risks in VMI adoption for medicines as it involves relinquishing control of critical supplies and may result in 'lock-in' with a particular supplier. The paper provides supply side and demand side perspectives on VMI adoption in an important sector. It highlights the need for greater understanding of the perceived and actual risks in VMI from the perspective of both the hospital and the supplier and for much clearer advice on which pharmaceutical products are appropriate for VMI control in a hospital context. VMI is advocated as being beneficial in many supply contexts. However, it may be challenging to implement. This study identifies a range of factors that affect the adoption of VMI in hospital pharmaceutical supply chains. The cases have been conducted in one country, which may affect the generalization of the findings. Wider empirical evidence from other countries in both developed and less developed regions will be beneficial.


This inter-disciplinary volume focuses on the economic and legal challenges confronting globalisation and the evolution of the global system. The Law and Economics of Globalisation discusses the hotly debated topic of globalisation from a wide set of perspectives of law, economics and international political economy.


Optical switching fabrics (OSFs) are receiving increasing attention in the design of high-speed packet switches, due to their excellent properties in terms of available bandwidth and reduced power consumption. However, for most optical devices, the latency needed to reconfigure input/output switch port connections may not be negligible with respect to the packet transmission time and can adversely affect switch performance, creating high delays and reduced throughput. We consider OSFs, and we propose a multihop approach to schedule packet transfers; i.e., packets are sent to the final destination port by exploiting transmission through intermediate ports. We show that the multihop approach is a promising technique to control the trade-off between delay and throughput, and it permits us to partly decouple the switch reconfiguration rate from the packet duration. We propose a general framework to solve the issue of multihop transmission in input-queued packet switches. Furthermore, we examine the multihop approach when the direct exchange of packets among ports is based on multidimensional regular topologies. We discuss which sequence of intermediate ports should be traversed to reach the final output port (i.e., the internal routing) and the switch time-scheduling problem (i.e., when a pair of ports can exchange packets). Performance is analyzed both analytically and by simulation.


Digital subtraction angiography (DSA) is an x-ray-based imaging method widely used for diagnosis and treatment of patients with vascular disease. This technique uses subtraction of images acquired before and after injection of an iodinated contrast agent to generate iodine-speci c images. While it is extremely successful at imaging structures that are near-stationary over a period of several seconds, motion artifacts can result in poor image quality with uncooperative patients and DSA is rarely used for coronary applications. Alternative methods of generating iodine-speci c images with reduced motion artifacts might exploit the energy-dependence of x-ray attenuation in a patient. This could be performed either by aquiring two or more post-injection images at di erent x-ray energies or from an analysis of the spectral shape of the transmitted spectrum. The rst method, which we call energy-subtraction angiography (ESA), was introduced as a dual-energy alternative to DSA over two decades ago but technological limitations of the time resulted in poor image quality. The second potential method, energy-resolved angiography (ERA), requires energy-resolving photon-counting (EPC) xray detectors that are under development in a number of laboratories. The goals of this thesis were to: 1) develop a method of comparing image quality in terms of signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) obtained using ESA and ERA with DSA assuming ideal instrumentation for each; 2) develop a method of describing performance and image quality that can be obtained in practice with photon-counting detectors, and; 3) assess the potential of ESA and ERA by comparing the available iodine SNR with that of DSA including the e ects of non-ideal detector performance. It is shown that using ideal instrumentation both ESA and ERA can provide iodine-speci c images with SNR equal to that of DSA. However, stochastic x-ray interaction and detection processes will degrade SNR obtained with ERA and ESA to a larger extent than DSA. Energy-resolved angiography will achieve near-ideal performance only with low detector electronic noise levels, high collection e ciency of secondary quanta liberated in the detector, and low Compton cross sections. It is concluded that, when these conditions are satsi ed, ESA and ERA can provide iodine SNR within 25% of that of DSA for the same patient entrance exposure, and therefore may provide alternatives to DSA in situations where motion artifacts are expected to result in compromised DSA procedures, such as in coronary applications. This could have important applications for subtraction imaging of the coronary arteries in the near future.


At its core, education is about learning. Every educator, legal or otherwise, must at the same time be both a teacher and a student in the learning enterprise. Luckily, there is a wide literature to help us in these roles and it is growing every day. It should be a goal of every legal educator to appreciate this area of scholarship, understand its breadth and importance, and engage with it in our teaching and writing. This research overview aims to aid the legal educator seeking to learn about learning and access tools for self-improvement. It also provides some preliminary assistance to those researchers beginning to traverse the field on the subject of "learning" and legal education, and it equally serves as a warning of the daunting task that awaits the researcher on that multifaceted subject. This overview and selected bibliography compiles selected sources collected through various searches on legal databases, library collections, and other available sources. The text serves as a guide along the way with some explanatory material to describe the fields. The compilation of these sources will serve independently as a valuable survey, bibliographic collection, and research tool for others (including educators, academic scholars, librarians, students, and lawyers).The Institute for Law Teaching and Learning selected this paper as their "Article of the Month" in June 2011.


"Those with access to these resources — students, librarians, scientists —
you have been given a privilege. You get to feed at this banquet of knowledge
while the rest of the world is locked out. But you need not — indeed, morally,
you cannot — keep this privilege for yourselves. You have a duty to share it
with the world."
   - Aaron Swartz1 (who killed himself at the age of 26,
facing a felony conviction and prison sentence
for downloading millions of academic journal articles)

The Philippine Journal of Otolaryngology Head and Neck Surgery was accepted into the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) on October 9, 2019. The DOAJ is "a community-curated online directory that indexes and provides access to high quality, open access, peer-reviewed journals"2 and is often cited as a source of quality open access journals in research and scholarly publishing circles that has been considered a sort of "whitelist" as opposed to the now-defunct Beall's (black) Lists.3
As of this writing, the DOAJ includes 13,912 journals with 10,983 searchable at article level, from 130 countries with a total of 4,410,788 articles.2 Our article metadata is automatically supplied to, and all our articles are searchable on DOAJ. Because it is OpenURL compliant, once an article is on DOAJ, it is automatically harvestable. This is important for increasing the visibility of our journal, as there are more than 900,000 page views and 300,000 unique visitors a month to DOAJ from all over the world.2 Moreover, many aggregators, databases, libraries, publishers and search portals (e.g. Scopus, Serial Solutions and EBSCO) collect DOAJ free metadata and include it in their products. The DOAJ is also Open Archives Initiative (OAI) compliant, and once an article is in DOAJ, it is automatically linkable.4
Being indexed in DOAJ affirms that we are a legitimate open access journal, and enhances our compliance with Plan S.5 The Plan S initiative for Open Access publishing launched in September 2018 requires that from 2021, "all scholarly publications on the results from research funded by public or private grants provided by national, regional, and international research councils and funding bodies, must be published in Open Access Journals, on Open Access Platforms, or made immediately available through Open Access Repositories without embargo."5 Such open access journals must be listed in DOAJ and identified as Plan S compliant.
There are mixed reactions to Plan S. A recent editorial observes that subscription and hybrid journals (including such major highly-reputable journals as the New England Journal of Medicine, JAMA, Science and Nature) will be excluded,6 quoting the COAlition S argument that "there is no valid reason to maintain any kind of subscription-based business model for scientific publishing in the digital world."5 As Gee and Talley put it, "will the rise of open access journals spell the end of the subscription model?"6
If full open access will be unsustainable for such a leading hybrid medical journal as the Medical Journal of Australia,6 what will happen to the many smaller, low- and middle-income country (southern) journals that cannot sustain a fully open-access model? For instance, challenges facing Philippine journals have been previously described.7
According to Tecson-Mendoza, "these challenges relate to (1) the proliferation of journals and related problems, such as competition for papers and sub-par journals; (2) journal funding and operation; (3) getting listed or accredited in major citation databases; (4) competition for papers; (5) reaching a wider and bigger readership and paper contribution from outside the country; and (6) meeting international standards for academic journal publications."7  Her 2015 study listed 777 Philippine scholarly journals, of which eight were listed in both the (then) Thomson Reuters (TR) and Scopus master lists, while an additional eight were listed in TR alone and a further twelve were listed in Scopus alone.7 To date, there are 11,207 confirmed Philippine periodicals listed on the International Standard Serial Number (ISSN) Portal,8 but these include non-scientific and non-scholarly publications like magazines, newsletters, song hits, and annual reports. What does the future have in store for small scientific publications from the global south?
I previously shared my insights from the Asia Pacific Association of Medical Journal Editors (APAME) 2019 Convention (http://apame2019.whocc.org.cn) on the World Association of Medical Editors (WAME) Newsletter, a private Listserve for WAME members only.9 These reflections on transformation pressures journals are experiencing were the subject of long and meaningful conversations with the editor of the Philippine Journal of Pathology, Dr. Amado Tandoc III during the APAME 2019 Convention in Xi'an China from September 3-5, 2019. Here are three main points:

the real need for and possibility of joining forces- for instance, the Journal of the ASEAN Federation of Endocrinology Societies (JAFES) currently based in the Philippines has fully absorbed previous national endocrinology journals of Malaysia and the Philippines, which have ceased to exist.  While this merger has resulted in a much stronger regional journal, it would be worthwhile to consider featuring the logos and linking the archives of the discontinued journals on the JAFES website. Should the Philippine Journal of Otolaryngology Head and Neck Surgery consider exploring a similar model for the ASEAN Otorhinolaryngological – Head and Neck Federation? Or should individual specialty journals in the Philippines merge under a unified Philippine Medical Association Journal or the National Health Science Journal Acta Medica Philippina? Such mergers would dramatically increase the pool of authors, reviewers and editors and provide a sufficient number of higher-quality articles to publish monthly (or even fortnightly) and ensure indexing in MEDLINE (PubMed).
the migration from cover-to-cover traditional journals (contents, editorial, sections, etc.) to publishing platforms (e.g. should learned Philippine societies and institutions consider establishing a single platform instead of trying to sustain their individual journals)? Although many scholarly Philippine journals have a long and respectable history, a majority were established after 2000,7 possibly reflecting compliance with requirements of the Commission on Higher Education (CHED) for increased research publications. Many universities, constituent colleges, hospitals, and even academic and clinical departments strove to start their own journals. The resulting journal population explosion could hardly be sustained by the same pool of contributors and reviewers.

In our field for example, faculty members of departments of otorhinolaryngology who submitted papers to their departmental journals were unaware that simultaneously submitting these manuscripts to their hospital and/or university journals was a form of misconduct. Moreover, they were not happy when our specialty journal refused to publish their papers as this would constitute duplicate publication. The problem stemmed from their being required to submit papers for publication in department, hospital and/or university journals instead of crediting their submissions to our pre-existing specialty journal. This escalated the tension on all sides, to the detriment of the new journals (some department journals ceased publication after one or two issues) and authors (whose articles in these defunct journals are effectively lost).
The older specialty journals are also suffering from the increased number of players with many failing to publish their usual number of issues or to publish them on time. But how many (if any at all) of these journals (especially specialty journals) would agree to yield to a merger with others (necessitating the end of their individual journal)? Would a common platform (rather than a common journal) provide a solution?
   3. more radically, the individual journal as we know it today (including the big northern journals) will   cease to exist- as individual OA articles (including preprints) and open (including post-publication) review   become freely available and accessible to all. However proud editors may be of the journals they design  and develop from cover to cover, with all the special sections and touches that make their "babies" unique,   readers access and download individual articles rather than entire journals. A similar fate befell the music   industry a decade ago. From the heyday of vinyl (33 and 78 rpm long-playing albums and 45 rpm singles)  and 8-tracks, to cassettes, then compact disks (CD's) and videos, the US recorded music industry was down  63% in 2009 from its peak in the late 70's, and down 45% from where it was in 1973.10 In 2011, DeGusta   observed that "somewhat unsurprisingly, the recording industry makes almost all their money from full-   length albums" but "equally unsurprising, no one is buying full albums anymore," concluding that "digital   really does appear to have brought about the era of the single.10 As McDowell opines, "In the end, the  digital transforms not only the ability to disrupt standard publishing practices but instead it has already  disrupted and continues to break these practices open for consideration and transformation."11
Where to then, scientific journals? Without endorsing either, will Sci-Hub (https://sci-hub.se) be to scholarly publishing what Spotify (https://www.spotify.com) is to the music industry? A sobering thought that behooves action.


NATO Science for Peace and Security Series  Sub-Series C. Environmental Security   Volumes in the Environmental Security Sub-Series deal with scientific and technological aspects of innovative and promising projects related to environmental security, including regional environmental problems and natural and man-made disasters. Floods, droughts, landslides, desertification, earthquakes and industrial accidents are examples of topics covered, as are regional environmental problems related to transboundary water resources or transfrontier air pollution. Other areas covered relate to climate change, environmental chemistry, disaster prevention and forecast, remote sensing and detection, and decision support systems/risk assessment.  Special offer: For all clients with a print standing order we offer free access to the electronic volumes of the Series published in the current year.


Active Learning (AL) exploits a learning algorithm to selectively sample examples which are expected to be highly useful for model learning. The resulting sample is governed by a sampling selection bias. While a bias towards useful examples is desirable, there is also a bias towards the learner applied during AL selection. This paper addresses sample reusability, i.e., the question whether and under which conditions samples selected by AL using one learning algorithm are well-suited as training data for another learning algorithm. Our empirical investigation on general classication problems as well as the natural language processing subtask of Named Entity Recognition shows that many intuitive assumptions on reusability characteristics do not hold. For example, using the same algorithm during AL selection (called selector) and for inducing the nal model (called consumer) is not always the optimal choice. We investigate several putatively explanatory factors for sample reusability. One nding is that the suitability of certain selector-consumer pairings cannot be estimated independently of the actual learning problem.


Anti-GM1 ganglioside autoantibodies are used as diagnostic markers for motor axonal peripheral neuropathies and are believed to be the primary mediators of such diseases. However, their ability to bind and exert pathogenic effects at neuronal membranes is highly inconsistent. Using human and mouse monoclonal anti-GM1 antibodies to probe the GM1-rich motor nerve terminal membrane in mice, we here show that the antigenic oligosaccharide of GM1 in the live plasma membrane is cryptic, hidden on surface domains that become buried for a proportion of anti-GM1 antibodies due to a masking effect of neighboring gangliosides. The cryptic GM1 binding domain was exposed by sialidase treatment that liberated sialic acid from masking gangliosides including GD1a or by disruption of the live membrane by freezing or fixation. This cryptic behavior was also recapitulated in solid-phase immunoassays. These data show that certain anti-GM1 antibodies exert potent complement activation-mediated neuropathogenic effects, including morphological damage at living terminal motor axons, leading to a block of synaptic transmission. This occurred only when GM1 was topologically available for antibody binding, but not when GM1 was cryptic. This revised understanding of the complexities in ganglioside membrane topology provides a mechanistic account for wide variations in the neuropathic potential of anti-GM1 antibodies.


INTRODUCTION AND OBJECTIVES: Mayer Rokitansky Kuster Hauser syndrome (MRKH) is a congenital malformation characterized by a failure of the Mullerian duct to develop resulting in variable degrees of vaginal hypoplasia. Many techniques have been described to reconstruct a vagina with satisfactory sexual function and appearance in this setting. The Davydov technique; includes liberation of peritoneum from the pelvic side walls and the Pouch of Douglas. Neovagina is then created by suturing a vaginal inner lining and roof of peritoneum. A combined laparoscopic and perineal approach suits well for this procedure. Herein, we aim to demonstrate the technique, advantages and outcome after robot-assisted laparoscopic vaginoplasty with the Davydov technique in patient diagnosed with MRKH syndrome. METHODS: An 18-year-old, genotypically and phenotypically female patient presented to the clinic due to primary amenorrhea and inability to have vaginal intercourse. Her past medical and surgical history were unremarkable. Physical examination findings were consistent with vaginal aplasia. Basic urine and blood work-up revealed normal findings. Abdominopelvic MRI confirmed the deficiency of Mullerian duct structures. The available options for vaginal reconstruction were discussed. Final decision was to proceed with robotic vaginoplasty with the Davydov technique. RESULTS: The procedure was conducted under general anesthesia with the patient in lithotomy position. A total of 5 transperitoneal ports were inserted. A limited space was created perineally with sharp and blunt dissection carried along the tract between urethral meatus and perianal ring. Peritoneal flaps were harvested from pelvic side walls via laparoscopic access. Anterior and posterior peritoneal flaps were transposed and suture-fixated to the neo-introitus. Peritoneal defects and vaginal apex was closed by running sutures. Intraoperative vaginal depth was 10cm. Neo-vagina was filled with a spacer. Operative duration was 216min. Estimated blood loss amount was 50ml. Vaginal spacer and foley catheter was removed on postoperative day 3. She was discharged home on postoperative day 4 after an uneventful course. CONCLUSIONS: Davydov technique is a safe and effective way of vaginal construction in patients diagnosed with MRKH syndrome. Robot-assisted laparoscopic access provides technical ease regarding the harvest and perineal transposition of sufficient peritoneal tissue. Avoiding the use of bowel segments accelerates the recovery process and minimizes the risk of postoperative complications. Source of Funding: None


The aim of the research are 1) to identify local wisdom Rumbio forest communities to the forest protection and forest management, 2) to determine Rumbio communitites strategies on the management of sustainable forest at protected ban forest. This research was conducted at Rumbio village, Kampar regency, Riau Province. The local communities of forest Rumbio subject is to certain characteristics. Major characteristics subject is local communities Rumbio, Kampar. This research was carried out using method survey. Data were taken by using Snowball sampling technique which is nine informant as samples. Data were analyzed using Descriptive Analysis. Result showed that 1) a. local wisdom has been applied in the communities at ban forest and there are some regulation that should follow by communities such as like not to cut trees at ban forest or held and activity that may harm the forest it self, b. local wisdom for asking communities to plant the trees and build houses at appropriate places, 2) Forest protection strategies in ban Rumbio forest are: a) build security posts, established of the Rural Forestry Extension Centers (RFEC), greening, monitoring and sanctions for people who break the rules, b) kind of effort to keep ban forest and sustain the forest is choosing at the forest and communities garden, c) form of socialization customs regulations Rumbio is notification to young children as the next generation of indigenous communities through involvement in the traditional procession, announcements in indigenous associations. Key Words: local wisdom, local communities Rumbio, forest protection


Originally delivered as the Dunwody Lecture at the University of Florida, this paper argues that "qualified immunity needs a course correction." The Supreme Court's attempt to strike a balance between the "importance of a damages remedy to protect the rights of citizens" and the "public interest in encouraging the vigorous exercise of official authority" (Harlow v. Fitzgerald) may have seemed sensible in the abstract, but has broken down in administration. Today, the law of qualified immunity is complicated, unstable, and overprotective of government officers. This paper documents those defects and proposes reforms designed to "get constitutional tort law back on track."


This paper analyses the e ect of a pay-as-you-go pension system on the evolution of capital and pollution, and on the e ciency of an environmental versus health policy. In an overlapping generations model (OLG), we introduce endogenous longevity that depends on pollution and health expenditures. Global dynamics may display multiple balanced growth paths (BGP). We show that by discouraging savings, a policy that promotes the pension system enlarges the environmental poverty trap. More surprisingly, the environmental policy has contrasted e ects according to the signi cance of the pension system. If it has a low size, a raise of the environmental policy enlarges the environmental poverty trap and leads to a rise in capital over pollution at the highest stationary equilibrium. In contrast, in economies where intergenerational solidarity is well developed, capital over pollution decreases at the highest BGP. In such a case, the environmental policy does not necessarily lead to a better longevity and growth.


The residential sector accounts for approximately 17% of electricity use in South Africa, but as much as 35% during peak periods. Within households the electric water heater (WH), commonly referred to as a geyser in South Africa, is responsible for between 40-50% of total consumption and contributes substantially to morning and evening peaks. Although there is an existing Minimum Energy Performance Standard (MEPS) regulated by the standing heat loss test (SANS151) it was formulated many years ago and has not been improved since its introduction. In the current context it is considered low and ineffective. Numerous attempts to improve the MEPS have proved futile primarily due to strong resistance from the industry. The Super-Efficient Equipment and Appliance Deployment (SEAD) is supporting the South African Government in implementing its Standards & Labeling (S&L) programme for residential appliances, which includes WH. In an attempt to break this 'deadlock' a cost efficiency technical study on WH was commissioned by SEAD. The research would use global and local industry experts using to conduct the research so as to provide credible empirical data to clarify cost-effectiveness issues and allow for informed decision making.


Nigeria operates a multidimensional and complex system in which ethnicity and religion have found expression in a competitive environment to exclude other groups. This study aims to examine how ethnicity and religion underlie the hostility and violence in the economic relations between Hausa-Fulani and Igbo people in northern Nigeria. Using documented evidence, the study argues that economic relations between Igbo people and Hausa-Fulani ethnic group have remained unpalatable since the 1960s, and it is associated with the gregarious, assertive and domineering nature of Igbo people in the informal economic sector of northern Nigeria. Democratic revival in 1999 generated new dynamics of ethnic and religious intolerance against Igbo people, especially with the violent transformation of Boko Haram since 2009. Boko Haram violence not only scuttled businesses, but also led to the destruction of lives and properties in which Igbo people incidentally have been victims in most parts of northern Nigeria. Despite the security challenges Igbo people have remained to continue with their businesses in northern Nigeria.


Objective. To describe and compare quality of life in men and women who had in vitro fertilization (IVF) within the Swedish public health system 4–5.5 years previously, either unsuccessfully and were subsequently living without children, or successfully, having children aged 4–5.5 years. These groups were compared to a control group of men and women with children born at the same time as in the successful group. Design. Cross‐sectional study. Setting. Reproductive Unit, Sahlgrenska University Hospital, Gothenburg, Sweden. Sample. Twenty‐six men and 37 women in the unsuccessful group, 135 men and 154 women in the successful group and 93 men and 118 women in the control group. Methods. Questionnaire study. The respective gender differences were studied in the control and study groups. Main outcome measures. Psychological general well‐being (PGWB), sense of coherence (SOC), experience of infertility, demographic‐socio‐economic, and health characteristics. Results. Men in the unsuccessful IVF group scored lower in total PGWB and SOC indices than the successful group men. They reported more depression, lower PGWB and lower SOC than the control group men. Women in the unsuccessful IVF group reported more anxiety, depression, and lower SOC than the successful group women and more depression and lower SOC indices than control group women. Men and women in the unsuccessful IVF group did not differ in any of the parameters. Men in the successful IVF group had higher PGWB, less signs of depression and more self‐confidence than women in that group. Conclusion. Quality of life in men seems more negatively affected by involuntary infertility than reported in earlier studies.


Abstract: The present article explores Paul's use and meaning of the διαθήκη (diathēkē, "covenant" or "testament") in Galatians 3–4, as well as the relation between the covenants mentioned or presupposed in these chapters: the Abrahamic promise covenant, the Mosaic law covenant, and the Davidic and eschatological ("new") covenants. The article first highlights elements that suggest that "covenant" is an important aspect of Paul's biblical-theological argument in Galatians. Two sections develop the content of these covenants. In the final section, the relation between the covenants is brought to bear upon the covenant and Mosaic law in Reformed theology. A historical-redemptive approach is considered necessary for understanding Paul's statements on the Mosaic Torah and covenant in Galatians 3–4, as well as in Reformed theology generally.


The 84TH OHIO VOLUNTEER INFANTRY REGIMENT, organized at Camp Chase in Columbus, OH, in May and June 1862, contained 2 companies from Cleveland during its 3 months of service in the CIVIL WAR. Companies D and E were recruited by the CLEVELAND GRAYS. The regiment was ordered to Cumberland, MD, on 11 June 1862, where it became part of the Railroad District Dept. of the Mountains until July 1862. Its operations and actions there included provost duty, after which it was assigned to the 8th Army Corps, Middle Dept., until Sept. The regiment was then sent to Columbus and mustered out at Camp Chase on 14 Oct. Losses were listed as 14 men killed by disease. Henry L. Burnham Diary, WRHS.


The unprecedented growth of the Internet over the last years, and the expectation of an even faster increase in the numbers of users and networked systems, resulted in the Internet assuming its position as a mass communication medium. At the same time, the emergence of an increasingly large number of application areas and the evolution of the networking technology suggest that in the near future the Internet may become the single integrated communication infrastructure. However, as the dependence on the networking infrastructure grows, its security becomes a major concern, in light of the increased attempt to compromise the infrastructure. In particular, the routing operation is a highly visible target that must be shielded against a wide range of attacks. The injection of false routing information can easily degrade network performance, or even cause denial of service for a large number of hosts and networks over a long period of time. Different approaches have been proposed to secure the routing protocols, with a variety of countermeasures, which, nonetheless, have not eradicated the vulnerability of the routing infrastructure. In this article, we survey the up-to-date secure routing schemes. that appeared over the last few years. Our critical point of view and thorough review of the literature are an attempt to identify directions for future research on an indeed difficult and still largely open problem.


We apply both cellular automaton (CA) and kinematic wave (KW) models to simulating vehicle traffic. We investigate three different CA models and show how each choice affects the fundamental diagram, which is a plot of the traffic flux versus density. Based on these CA simulations as well as empirical observations in the literature, we propose that the fundamental diagram can be approximated by a piecewise linear function having a discontinuity at a single point. We then construct a KW model that consists of a hyperbolic conservation law for the traffic density with this discontinuous, non-convex function as the traffic flux function. We then derive the exact solution of the corresponding Riemann problem analytically for general piecewise constant initial data, which requires use of a mollifier to smooth out the discontinuity in the flux function. Another necessary component of the analytical solution is the construction of a convex hull for the mollified problem, which is then considered in the limit as the support of the mollifier goes to zero. Finally, the Riemann solution is used to construct a high resolution finite volume scheme for the KW model, which we use to simulate various traffic scenarios and draw comparisons with not only the CA model but also the analytical solution of the KW problem.


According to some definitions, an energy transition refers to the time that elapses between the introduction of a new primary energy source, or prime mover, and its rise to claiming a substantial share of the overall market. According to one academic view, energy transitions take an incredibly long time to occur. Another view argues the opposite. It suggests that there have been many transitions at varying scales that have occurred quite quickly.that is, between a few years and a decade or so, or within a single generation. This paper holds that both sides are partly right, and partly wrong. After presenting evidence in support of either thesis, it elucidates four lessons for energy analysts and policy makers. Keywords: energy transitions, energy pathways, transition pathways, energy security


The efficient repair of DNA double-strand breaks (DSBs) is clearly decisive in determining the 'fate' of damaged cells, but the spatiotemporal organisation of repair events that might explain the formation of chromosomal misrejoining and genome instability is not yet clear. Following generation of DSBs the histone variant H2AX is phosphorylated (gH2AX) comprising megabase-pair regions of the chromatin around the DSB (Rogakou et al. 1998; Rogakou et al. 1999) that can be visualized by immunostaining. Irradiation of cell nuclei with charged particles leads to the spatially defined production of DSBs along the particle trajectory, thus facilitating studies on the dynamics of ionizing radiation-induced foci (IRIF) associated with lesion processing. Microscopic imaging of ion-induced IRIF patterns in fixed and living cells revealed that lesion density has only a minor impact on the pattern and number of gH2AX IRIF (Chapter Four) and showed a general positional stability of DNA lesions (Chapter Five), respectively. The former finding demonstrates that the number of visualized IRIF following ion irradiation is below the amount expected for the applied doses and it was suggested that single IRIF might contain several damage sites corresponding to the high lesion density induced by ions (Jakob et al. 2003; Costes et al. 2007). We addressed this question using repair-related proteins forming smaller (micro-)foci compared to gH2AX, but despite some gH2AX IRIF containing multiple micro-foci its number was still lower than expected. Therefore, high-resolution 4Pi microscopy was applied (AG Hell, DKFZ Heidelberg) to resolve a potential substructure of micro-foci. However, a substructure was only observed for gH2AX and 53BP1 signals, but not for the micro-foci forming repair-proteins RPA and hMre11 (Chapter Six). Nevertheless, despite the restricted dynamic range of foci numbers following ion irradiation of different LETs the application of micro-foci marker allowed a rough estimation of the dose deposited by UVA laser microirradiation. For this laser-induced RPA IRIF patterns were compared with patterns induced by low angle ion irradiation (Jakob et al. 2003) of different LETs (Chapter Six). The laser dose was estimated to be in the range of hundreds of Gray. As a further aspect of IRIF patterns an influence of chromatin structure on the foci positions was recently discussed by Costes et al. (2007) reporting a preferential localization of gH2AX signals at the interface between regions of low and high intensive DNA staining. In agreement with the here described slow and confined damage motion (Chapter Five), these authors hypothesized that a potential small range damage translocation might occur. To elucidate such a dynamic process we used low angle and targeted single ion irradiation to induce DSBs spatially confined inside heterochromatic compartments in mammalian cells and analyzed the 3D geometry of induced gH2AX and XRCC1 signals at different time point post-irradiation (Chapter Seven). We demonstrate that, contrary to the current notion, phosphorylation of H2AX is indeed possible within heterochromatin and that damage sites induced in the interior of heterochromatic compartments are expelled to the periphery within 20 min. We further show that this relocation is independent of ATM, a protein previously reported to be involved in the repair of heterochromatin-associated damages (Goodarzi et al. 2008). Taken together, the here described results suggest that chromatin structure and not an repair-related directional mobility of damage sites is responsible for the preferentially localization of IRIF at the border of intensively stained chromatin regions and for the characteristic gap structure of ion-induced IRIF patterns.


ObjectiveTo determine the prevalence of HIV-1 infection and to identify the most important risk factors for infection. DesignA cross-sectional population survey carried out in 1990 and 1991 in Mwanza Region, Tanzania. MethodsAdults aged 15–54 years were selected from the region (population, 2 million) by stratified random cluster sampling: 2434 from 20 rural villages, 1157 from 20 roadside settlements and 1554 from 20 urban wards. Risk factor information was obtained from interviews. All sera were tested for HIV-1 antibodies using enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA); sera non-negative on ELISA were also tested by Western blot. ResultsThe response rate was 81%. HIV-1 infection was 1.5 times more common in women than in men; 2.5% of the adult population in rural villages, 7.3% in roadside settlements and 11.8% in town were infected. HIV-1 infection occurred mostly in women aged 15–34 years and men aged 25–44 years. It was associated with being separated or widowed, multiple sex partners, presence of syphilis antibodies, history of genital discharge or genital ulcer, travel to Mwanza town, and receiving injections during the previous 12 months, but not with male circumcision. ConclusionThis study confirms that HIV-1 infection in this region in East Africa is more common in women than in men. The results are consistent with the spread of HIV-1 infection along the main roads. There is no evidence that lack of circumcision is a risk factor in this population.


{W}e compare four local feature extraction techniques for the task of face verification, namely (ordered in terms of complexity): raw pixels, raw pixels with mean removal, 2D Discrete Cosine Transform (DCT) and local Principal Component Analysis (PCA). The comparison is performed in terms of discrimination ability and robustness to illumination changes. We also evaluate the effectiveness of several approaches to modifying standard feature extraction methods in order to increase performance and robustness to illumination changes. Results on the XM2VTS database suggest that when using a Gaussian Mixture Model (GMM) based classifier, the raw pixel technique provides poor discrimination and is easily affected by illumination changes; the mean removed raw pixel technique provides performance that is fairly close to 2D DCT and local PCA, but is considerably affected by illumination changes. The performance of 2D DCT and local PCA techniques is quite similar, suggesting that the 2D DCT technique is to be preferred over the local PCA technique, due to the lower complexity of the 2D DCT. Both 2D DCT and local PCA techniques are considerably more robust to illumination changes compared to the raw pixel techniques. Modifying the 2D DCT and local PCA techniques by removing the first coefficient, which is deemed to be the most affected by illumination changes, clearly enhances robustness; removing more than the first coefficient causes a noticeable reduction in performance on clean images and provides no further gains in robustness. Compared to just throwing out the first coefficient, the use of deltas can achieve a small increase in performance and robustness. Lastly, we suggest that it is more appropriate to use analysis blocks of size 8x8 (as opposed to 16x16) with 2D DCT decomposition; out of the 64 resulting coefficients, the second through to 21-st (resulting in 20 dimensional feature vectors) are the most robust to illumination changes while providing good discriminatory information.


INTRODUCTIONFamily, as an institute, together with religion and politics, has always been a building block of Iranian society. Even considering the institutional development in Iran since the beginning of the 20th century, the three mentioned institutions have always shaped Iranian society structure and social relationships. Throughout the past two centuries, Iranian families have undergone significant changes due to the cultural, social, and political regeneration processes. These changes in the family have not only been reflected on day-by -day lives but have also been quite effective in relationship strategies among various institutions. Family has neither only changed its extensive form nor found a nuclear shape but it has also included emotional relationships. However, such families are facing major challenges such as increase in divorce rate, delayed age of marriage, distress of marriage and intergenerational challenges. Thus, this present essay focuses on the following issues: Research methods for studying families; the history of families and historical changes that have taken place through different periods; characteristics of Iranian families; changes in families; generation and family; marriage and changes associated with it; challenges and problems that families may encounter including divorce, destruction and the future of the family in Iran.STUDY ON FAMILYA social study on family is of a substantially high significance compared to other social issues and institutions, both due to the status of this institution among humanistic and Iranian societies and also because of the role it plays in modernizing individuals in Iran. Identification of history, changes and all problems in a complexity are associated with family. Thus various approaches have been introduced in studies on Iranian Family.1. The first approach is more cultural and ethical. It results from a vulnerable atmosphere prevailing over the society has forced many people to defend the Islamic Iranian family against various critical conditions. Thus numerous text books on families in Iran cover subjects such as "Family and secrets of happiness" "Islamic view on family", "Youth and family formation", "Women and men's problems", "Youth and family", "Problems of marriage", which have been prepared and published since 1951. These books adopt an advisory and ethical approach in reflecting positive aspects of family relationships and its harms (BAHAR, 2005);2 The second approach may be referred according to Salon Sociology. In Salon Sociology or market Sociology, issues cover wide topics and all participants are regarded as experts and authorities. However, in professional sociology only individuals with necessary skills and who are expertises on related fields have authority and opportunity to offer their opinion on families. In this approach, most obvious matters are taken for granted and there is no need for research and inspection. Taking for granted - issues such as family crisis, perversion from women and girls, disobedience from girls and boys against their families, increase in divorce rate... on one hand and family health, mutual respect between parents and children and (?)... On the other hand, it comprises two differing judgments about Salon Sociology point of view related to family, those with bitter and unsuccessful experiences, talking about problems associated with family and those with pleasant experiences on marriage and family regarding it as healthy. In the year 2002, public media and newspapers reflected that society is facing a new phenomenon called street women and girls and it was so reflected that all women and girls living in cities were seen as perverted;3. The third is a professional and scientific approach. Systematic and scientific researches on Iranian family started since 1958 with the establishment of social research and studies center of Tehran University, college of Social Studies, and they have continued throughout more than four decades. …