Arguably the causative agent of Alzheimer's disease (AD), amyloid beta (Aβ)- peptides, are generated by sequential proteolysis of the amyloid precursor protein (APP) by β- and γ-secretase activities. Alternatively, APP can be processed nonamyloidogenically by an α-secretase activity that cleaves within the Aβ-domain, precluding the formation of intact Aβ-peptides and liberating a neuroprotective fragment, sAPPα. This latter proteolytic event is catalysed by a disintegrin and metalloproteinase (ADAM) 10. Recent research has suggested that glucagon-like peptide-1 (GLP-1) analogues; Lixisenatide, Dulaglutide, Liraglutide, and Exenatide (Exendin-4), currently used to treat diabetes, may also be beneficial in the treatment of neurodegenerative conditions such as AD, as they have been shown to exert neuroprotective properties. Research has also suggested that one of these compounds, exendin-4, can enhance the amount of membrane-associated ADAM10. The current study, therefore, aims to determine firstly; whether GLP-1 analogues can protect neuroblastoma, SH-SY5Y cells, against chemical stressors of relevance to AD and, secondly, whether these compounds alter ADAM10 maturation/activity and the proteolysis of the enzyme's substrates, APP, prion protein (PrP) and neuroligin1 (NLGN-1). Cells treated with hydrogen peroxide (as an oxidative stressor), cobalt chloride (as a hypoxic mimic), methylglyoxal (MG) or thapsigargin (TG) (as Endoplasmic Reticulum stressors) were co-treated with or without GLP-1 analogues and cell viability was subsequently monitored along with the expression and proteolysis of ADAM10 and its substrates. The results of the study showed that the GLP-1 analogue, liraglutide, had no major effect in terms of protecting SH-SY5Y cells against any of the afore-mentioned chemical stressors. However, a second compound, exendin-4, was protective against TG-induced cytotoxicity. Thapsigargin impaired the proteolytic maturation of ADAM10 suggesting a decrease in the activity of the enzyme but exendin-4 was unable to reverse this effect. Nonetheless, exendin-4 was able to partly reverse the inhibitory effect of TG on the expression of endogenous APP, and shedding of over-expressed NLGN1, and sAPPα in cells over-expressing APP695. Interestingly, TG caused an increase in expression of APP695, and an intracellular accumulation of PrP and, subsequently, did not alter the cell surface ADAM-mediated shedding of this protein. Collectively, these data indicate that liraglutide was ineffective in the protection of SH-SY5Y cells against the chemical stressors employed. However, exendin-4, is mildly protective against thapsigargin-mediated oxidative stress and is able to partly restore the TG-induced decrease in expression of endogenous APP, and shedding of APP695 and NLGN1. Unusually though, this latter effect was not associated with restored proteolytic maturation of ADAM10.


The Handbook of New Zealand Mammals is the only definitive reference on all the land-breeding mammals recorded in the New Zealand region (including the New Zealand sector of Antarctica). It lists 65 species, including native and exotic, wild and feral, living and extinct, residents, vagrants and failed introductions. It describes their history, biology and ecology, and brings together comprehensive and detailed information gathered from widely scattered or previously unpublished sources.
The description of each species is arranged under standardised headings for easy reference. Because the only native land-breeding mammals in New Zealand are bats and seals, the great majority of the modern mammal fauna comprises introduced species, whose arrival has had profound effects both for themselves and for the native fauna and flora. The book details changes in numbers and distribution for the native species, and for the arrivals it summarises changes in habitat, diet, numbers and size in comparison with their ancestral stocks, and some of the problems they present to resource managers.
For this third edition, the text and references have been completely updated and reorganised into Family chapters. The colour section includes 14 pages of artwork showing all the species described and their main variations, plus two pages of maps.


The present research endeavours to shed light on the role that gender plays in the language classroom in the Greek context. As no systematic investigation has considered special aspects of gender and interaction in primary school classrooms, this study seeks to investigate how teachers and students position themselves within different discourses in EFL classroom interaction. The issues discussed include turn-taking and interruptions, praise and reprimand, class dominance, teacher attention and class participation in classroom interaction. Drawing on language and gender research, it was hypothesized that gender of the learner affects the learner's language use and behaviour during EFL interaction. This study advances our understanding of gendered classroom interaction and highlights important ways in which students' gender influences teacher-student, as well as student-student interaction. Moreover, this study sheds light on gender bias which occurs in the classroom and thus impedes teachers' abilities to work successfully with all students. The Greek data revealed great similarity with findings of previous studies by supporting the assumption that: (a) teachers are biased in favour of boys, especially with respect to giving them more attention; (b) male students demand more teacher attention and more instructions from the teacher than their female peers; (c) female students are more likely to receive praise and positive comments, whereas male students are reprimanded by the teacher; (d) male students are more active in class participation, by taking more turns, volunteering and calling out.

This article is published under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.


Valuation standards have a significant role to play in helping to regulate professional practice at national, regional and global levels, promote professional ethics, integrity, impartiality and trust in valuer activities. Many governments and professional bodies are responding to international pressure to regulate the valuation profession by reviewing the regulatory environment, valuer training and compliance with standards. At a global level the International Valuation Standards Council (IVSC) have become the recognised body that produce the International Valuation Standards (IVS). However, despite the existence of the IVSC's International Valuation Standards there is considerable variation in how local standards engage and comply with the accepted principles laid out in the IVS. This is further compounded by diverging bases of value and methodologies that are being adopted to value property across the world. The different interpretation of concepts such as market value, differing valuation approaches adopted as well as the lack of qualified valuers continue to represent major challenges across both mature and emerging markets.


Body lengths and widths were measured and body volumes were calculated for 1556 Arctic nema-todes sampled from depths of 8003000 m. The samples were filtered through standard sieves with mesh sizesof 500, 250, 125, 63, and 32 µm. Due to the random orientation of the animal bodies with respect to the sieveplane and the presence of detrital and sediment particles, one can only assess the probabilities of the animalretention over the sieves. The distributions of the logarithms of the body volume and length values of nematodeswere close to the normal distribution on the three finer sieves. A simple mathematical filtration model describ-ing size distribution of nematodes on the sieves is proposed. The limitations for the appli-cation of this relation are discussed.


Introduction The co-operative health information network (CHIN) was developed during the last three years in eight regions of six European countries: Finland, Germany, Greece, Spain, Sweden and UK (Scotland). In Greece, the CHIN project is managed by the National Center for Scientific Research 'Demokritos'. The main objective of the CHIN project was to establish a network of regional Co-operative Health Information Networks (CHINs) to support comprehensive and integrated sets of health care telematic services for a broad range of users. Methods CHIN provides on-line services for professional and public access. Services for professional access support various working scenarios between hospital staff and doctors in practices outside the hospitals such as remote access to multimedia patient records, quality control for screening results, referrals and resource planning. Services for public access include web-based regional healthcare resource directories (a presentation platform for regional healthcare service providers) on-line consultation and information for health education. Technically, CHIN favourites standardised, simple, open and scaleable solutions for computer and networking technologies (ISDN based Intranets, HTTP) and for the medical applications (DICOM, HL7). Users access the patient records via a standard Web interface. Results The Greek resource directory provides bilingual (Greek/English) information that includes: a pilot presentation of a disease (diabetes) focusing on education of children, the largest on-line presentation on the Greek National health system (in Greek only), exclusive lists of all hospitals in Greece, and information on medicine and telemedicine in Greece. Furthermore, two applications have been developed for professionals. The first is an application that runs on a network interconnecting a hospital with a healthcare center and allows the electronic exchange of medical results. The second is the installation and pilot used of a PACS system (DxMM by Medasys) and a Web-based system to access virtual patient records (WebMed by GMD). Discussion The Greek CHIN server is one of the largest health-related Web sites in Greece. The ultimate goal is to establish this site as the entry point for Internet users looking for health-related information about Greece. For this purpose, a number of activities have been initiated. For example, collaborations with other health-care related sites, such as the one developed by the ministry of Health and Welfare, are pursued. Also, Web sites are developed and included in the CHIN server free of charge for any Greek hospital and health care center that wishes to participate in this effort. In terms of professional services, the goal in to establish a slide-less hospital, meaning that images of patients from various modalities along with diagnostic reports would be electronically available in all department within a hospital.


Recent studies of azo-dye-doped liquid crystal elastomers show a strong photomechanical response. We report on models that predict experimental results that suggest photothermal heating is the dominant mechanism in a planar constrained geometry. We compare our models with experiments to determine key material parameters, which are used to predict the dynamical response as a function of intensity. We show that a local strain from photothermal heating and a nonlocal strain from thermal diffusion is responsible for the observed length changes over time. This work both elucidates the fundamental mechanisms and provides input for the design of photomechanical optical devices, which have been shown to have the appropriate properties for making smart materials. © 2011 Optical Society of America OCIS codes: 350.5340, 160.3710, 230.3720.


Summary The sequence of instabilizations leading to the formation of shallow nappes may be illustrated by the kinematics of the embryonic Jura Nappe. On the first order arc, due to regional boundary conditions, are superposed second and third order arcs that developed around more local irregularities in the distribution of strength. Successive instabilization of the Rheintal part of the Jura Décollement Nappe generally proceeds from S to N. Location of ramps where décollement climbs to the surface is largely influenced by pre-existing Rhinegraben structures. These also convey a certain anisotropy to the sedimentary cover which seems to be responsible, at least partly, for a different aspect of sinistral and dextral shear zones. Whereas sinistral shears are usually along discrete faults, mostly reactivated Rhinegraben faults, the dextral shears commonly are diffuse zones. Arcuate elements, convex to the N, connect the sinistral and dextral shear zones frontally. Regionally, the shear zones accommodate the divergence of movement, with lateral elongation, within the overall Jura Arc. More locally, they bound arcuate segments of ever smaller dimensions, and also seem to ease diverging movements in these smaller arcs.


Adobe Systems Inc. is a dominant company in the software and creative industry. To provide a strategic recommendation for continued growth in the number of Creative Cloud subscribers, a strategic analysis was performed. This analysis comprised of looking at Adobe's current market segments and market offerings, performing a SWOT analysis, performing a PEST analysis, examining Porter's Five Forces regarding Adobe, and clarifying Adobe's core competencies and competitive advantages. After this analysis, the strategic recommendation was made for Adobe to expand is Creative Cloud subscription options and increase its efforts in the education market. This plan if successful puts Adobe on track to reach the projected 20 million subscribers by 2024. If it fails, it is recommended Adobe refocus efforts on its digital experience market.


One of the critical issues for ITER is access to an H-mode regime with good confinement, H98 = 1. The most basic scaling laws for power threshold for the L–H transition, Pth, take the variation with plasma density, magnetic field and plasma size into account. However, the large variations in the Pth data from the values estimated with such simple scaling laws indicate other underlying dependencies. Another important consideration for ITER is that H-modes with higher values of energy confinement factors are often obtained with input power values much greater than Pth. This paper presents results from recent studies on JET to assess possible hidden variables for H-mode access over a wide range of plasma conditions. Experimental results demonstrate that sensitivity to the magnetic shaping and divertor geometry could account for some of the scatter in the international power threshold database. Hysteresis in the L–H transition Pth has been studied in detail for the first time on JET by comparing values of Pth at the forward and back H-mode transitions over a range of densities. The impact of the edge plasma rotation on H-mode access has also been considered on JET with a toroidal field ripple scan across the L–H and H–L transitions. Finally, the total input power required relative to the measured value of Pth for access to a steady-state H-mode with H98 = 1 has been examined for a highly shaped magnetic configuration. The implications of these results for the attainment of H-mode with good confinement on ITER are discussed.


In a number of subduction zones, earthquakes at 50–200 km depth define two dipping planes, separated by 20–40 km, that appear to merge downdip. Upper plane earthquakes are inferred to occur within the subducting oceanic crust, whereas lower plane earthquakes occur in the subducting oceanic mantle. Beneath northeast Japan, the results of a new finite-element heat-transfer model suggest that the lower seismic plane cuts across isotherms at a shallow angle. Lower plane earthquakes occur at ∼550–800 °C at 100 km depth and at ∼350–600 °C at 160 km depth. These conditions coincide with the dehydration reaction antigorite (serpentine) → forsterite + enstatite + H 2 O, which suggests that lower plane earthquakes may be triggered by dehydration embrittlement, which in turn suggests that the subducting oceanic mantle is partially hydrated. Serpentinization may occur in the trench–outer rise region, where faulting may promote infiltration of seawater several tens of kilometers into the oceanic lithosphere. If this hypothesis is correct, current subduction-zone H 2 O budgets may significantly underestimate the amount of bound H 2 O entering the "subduction factory."


In America, certain attributes and behaviors become more publicly acceptable and more prominent in personalities as an individual matures in their chosen career path. The elite position in society of medical practitioners has been threatened during the 20 Century by new and increasing market pressures. The main hypotheses addressed in this project is the determination of the directional change of the attitudes that represent professionalism as a physician gains experience in the current medical environment and whether these attitudes change as a result of rural setting or specialization in medical practice. This project will also try to determine the reliability of a Likert scale survey instrument, designed and refined through principals of organization behavior theory in the late 1960s by Richard H. Hall. Using this tool, professional attitudes were measured in an original sample of randomly selected physicians drawn from the membership of a rural medical organization and differences were examined using bivariate analyses. The additional influences of medical tenure, organizational size and discipline specialization were also analyzed using bivariate analysis to determine if life experience (tenure, location and specialty choice) positively affects core attitudes of professionalism in medical practice. Results reflect the changing market environment and population demographic changes in rural medical practice, while also demonstrating a significant difference between physicians practicing solo without the support of a group structure.


Provides selected research resources in the area of Korean Studies, with a particular focus on social sciences and humanities resources.


Abstract. Batholith emplacements within a continental margin may bear witness of a magmatic input lasting for several million years. Consequently, the geochemical signatures of such sections are complex, and their understanding in terms of petrological processes, is crucial. The Arequipa section of the Coastal Batholith of Southern Peru was discontinuously constructed during several periods of magmatic activity, from the Jurassic to the Paleocene (200–175 Ma, and 90–60 Ma). Thermobarometric data on amphiboles indicates two main levels of emplacement at the batholith scale, the deepest between 5 and 7 km in depth and the second around 3.5 km. The present day outcropping of these different units at the same elevation argue for a large vertical movement along the Lluclla Fault System between 76 and 68 Ma. Both major/trace element contents and Nd-Sr isotopes show a large variability that is not random. The data dispersion is consistent with a two-staged evolutionary model of the magmatic arc, inspired by the MASH model: (i) an early stage dominated by hybridization and fractional crystallization processes, (ii) a late stage in which magmas were homogenized and mainly evolved by fractional crystallization. The change from one stage to another is controlled by the thermal state of the crustal arc section, especially the Deep Crustal Hot Zone.


ABSTRACT This paper provides both lawyers and cinema experts with some insights about the depiction of law and criminal justice in films in Japan. In recent years, there has been an increasing interest of the Japanese movie industry towards 'courtrooms drama', i.e., films set in tribunals and having lawyers, judges, and prosecutors as main characters: a small 'Golden Age' of law as depicted in Japanese cinema. This paper (co-written by a comparative lawyer and a film studies specialist) will address this phenomenon from two perspectives: one from a legal studies and popular culture framework, analyzing how such movies reflect – and at the same time shape – the 'legal imagination' in Japan. The other, from film studies, focuses on technical, directorial aspects, to emphasize how authors intend to depict the law and its actors.


The discussion paper is concerned with the interplay between demography and macroeconomics on one hand and macroeconomics and income inequality on the other hand. For this purpose, several estimation equations are derived by econometric methods (on the empirical basis of the 1984-2010 German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP) waves). In concrete terms, the macroeconomic variables inflation, economic growth, and unemployment are at first connected with the German demographic ageing; afterwards, these connections are used to produce a nexus between German income inequality and the stated macroeconomic variables (additionally to the exogenous effects of ageing). For the empirical periods examined (1983-2009), there have been a) a (slightly) negative influence of demographic ageing on the inflation rate, b) a (weak) positive effect of ageing on the level – not on the increases (reductions) – of economic growth rates, and c) a somewhat stronger positive impact of demographic ageing on unemployment rates. While the measured income inequality is upwards directly (exogenously) driven by demographic ageing, the mechanisms through the different macroeconomic channels are more difficile: Inflation is positively and unemployment negatively correlated with income inequality, and regarding economic growth a (slightly) concave effect upon income inequality has been observed. All these findings imply that demographic ageing, ceteris paribus and by tendency, diminishes income inequality via inflation and unemployment rate, which is also valid for economic growth (within the empirically relevant value range for the German demographic ageing). But on balance, there is an overcompensating direct, exogenous impact of demographic ageing on inequality in the model used in this paper, and this causes tendencies towards a remarkable increase of German income inequality until 2060. These tendencies are more pronounced in the forecast variant in which a strongly ageing population is assumed.


The authors investigated the influence of TG5 and LEP gene polymorphism on quantitative and qualitative meat composition of 20 month old bull calves of the Hereford (n=38) and Limousine (n=26) breeds, which were bred in the climate of Cis-Ural steppe zone from 2013 to 2015. The Hereford calves were the offspring of the cattle from the southeastern states of Australia and Tasmania (3rd descent of the main lines: Baz-Gol-Sol 2U 6827, Domino 325676, Ardmors-Domino 56, Silverlend 31432); the Limousine calves were the descendants of the offspring resulting from the accumulation cross breeding of Simmental cattle with the French Reproductive Recognized bulls (4th descent of the Reper 433 and other lines). The analysis of TG5 genotype frequency in the examined populations reveals that the animals have significant (P<0.01 or P<0.05) potential for increased taste and nutritional qualities of beef associated with a high proportion of desirable TT genotype, probably related to the foreign origin of the cattle. There were no carriers of the BB genotype of LEP genes in the examined populations. Significant (P<0.01 or P<0.05) dependence between the studied SNP in TG5 and the rates of total body fat, the proportion of adipose tissue in the morphological carcass composition (or meat composition), and the content of intramuscular fat in the longissimus, as well as the correlation between the studied SNP in LEP and the rates of raw visceral fat, and fat outcome, were established. LEP polymorphism was significantly (P<0.01 or P<0.05) associated with the proportion of adipose tissue in the morphological carcass composition in Hereford calves, and with the content of intramuscular fat in the longissimus in Limousine calves. The results of our study of TG5 and LEP polymorphism demonstrate considerable genetic potential of the given populations of the Hereford and Limousine breeds in relation to the quantitative and qualitative composition of their meat; they are to be used in improvement of genetic potential of meat cattle in the Cis-Ural steppe zone.


This research was conducted with the aim of explaining the effect of variable price (the price) and perceived quality (perceived quality) of the perceived value (perception niali), as well as the role of perceived quality (perceived quality) in mediating the effects of price (the price) of the perceived value (perceived value). The method used to determine the sample is non-probability sampling form of purposive random sampling with a sample size of 77 respondents. The data collection is done by distributing questionnaires directly in Denpasar and Badung. Data analysis techniques used adalan Partial Least Square (PLS). The results showed that the price (the price) significant and positive impact on the perceived quality (perceived quality) and berepengaruh significantly and positively to the perceived value (perceived value), as well as the perceived quality (perceived quality) significant and positive impact on the perceived value (perception niali) and positive and significant effect on the price (the price). Perceived quality (perceived quality) play a significant role in mediating the relationship between price (the price) and perceived value (perceived value).


Ultrastructural descriptions of spermatozoa are a useful tool to reveal bivalve phylogeny. Several Donax species living off Latin America show strong morphological variability that often generates discussion on the validity of the species identity. This study is the first attempt to describe the structure of spermatozoa of Donacidae from the southwestern Atlantic Ocean. Donax hanleyanus (Philippi, 1842) is a free-spawning marine bivalve inhabiting exposed intertidal sandy beaches and has a geographic distribution along the Atlantic coast of South America, from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil (22°51S) to Mar del Plata, Argentina (38°20S). Transmission electronic microscope (TEM) and scanning electron microscopy (SEM) confirmed that euspermatozoa of D. hanleyanus can be classified as aquasperm type common for many bivalves. The head is composed of an spheroidal nucleus capped by a conical acrosome vesicle showing an anterior extension (total length 2 µm). The mid-piece region consists of an axoneme with a short basal fossa containing the centriolar complex and an initial portion of a 9+2 axoneme, sheathed by 4-5 spherical mitochondria. The single flagellum shows the typical 9+2 microtubule structure. Specifications useful for taxonomy are highlighted.


In publications which have compared the health expenditure in the component parts of the United Kingdom by applying the Resource Allocation Working Party (RAWP) formula to the health budget of England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland it has been previously concluded that Scotland's hospital and community health services expenditure is more than 19% above what would be a fair distribution. It has also been implied that Scotland's allocation should be cut substantially to improve services in England. On the assumption that the purpose of examining the distribution of the health and community health service budget is to ensure "equal opportunity of access to health care for people at equal risk" it is concluded that simple RAWPing of the United Kingdom budget is flawed and a conclusion based on this is therefore untenable.


We demonstrate highly tunable one-dimensional photonic band structures under normal incidence. The system consists of a multilayer film that alternates two anisotropic layers. The band-structure characteristics of this multilayer stack, such as location and width of stop bands, can be tailored by altering the relative orientation of the optical axes of the adjacent layers. This structure can be realized by employing liquid crystals and transparent electrodes. In some cases, we observe the ability of this structure to distinguish between different linear polarizations. We propose a depolarizing and filtering device based on this multilayer medium.


Multimode optical fibers potentially allow the transmission of larger amounts of information than their single mode counterparts because of their high number of supported modes. However, propagation of a light pulse through a multimode fiber suffers from spatial distortions due to the superposition of the various exited modes and from time broadening due to modal dispersion. We present a method based on digital phase conjugation to selectively excite in a multimode fiber specific optical fiber modes that follow similar optical paths as they travel through the fiber. The excited modes interfere constructively at the fiber output generating an ultrashort spatially focused pulse. The excitation of a limited number of modes following similar optical paths limits modal dispersion, allowing the transmission of the ultrashort pulse. We have experimentally demonstrated the delivery of a focused spot of pulse width equal to 500 fs through a 30 cm, 200 micrometer core step-index multimode fiber. The results of this study show that two-photon imaging capability can be added to ultra-thin lensless endoscopy using commercial multimode fibers.


We have designed and fabricated an efficient grating coupler for silicon-on-insulator waveguides. The coupler consists of 88nm wide slits, under an angle of 58° to the surface normal. They are defined by direct etching with a focused ion beam, using iodine gas and an alumina hard mask. The measured


Measurements are reported of the normalized differential cross sections for top quark pair production with respect to four kinematic event variables: the missing transverse energy; the scalar sum of the jet transverse momentum (pT); the scalar sum of the pT of all objects in the event; and the pT of leptonically decaying W bosons from top quark decays. The data sample, collected using the CMS detector at the LHC, consists of 5.0 inverse-femtobarns of proton-proton collisions at sqrt(s) = 7 TeV and 19.7 inverse-femtobarns at sqrt(s) = 8 TeV. Top quark pair events containing one electron or muon are selected. The results are presented after correcting for detector effects to allow direct comparison with theoretical predictions. No significant deviations from the predictions of several standard model event simulation generators are observed.


Drosophila suzukii (Matsumura, 1931) (Diptera: Drosophilidae) is native to East Asia and invasive on the European and American continents. The first records in both Europe and the United States were in 2008. Since that year, it has widely moved across these continents. As D. Suzukii females lay eggs in healthy ripening fruits of several species, particularly in small soft fruits and berries, the species causes agricultural damage. The soft thin-skinned fruit pest, identified as D. Suzukii, has been found in Erzurum, Turkey, where damaged strawberry crops were observed and cultured in the middle of August and September 2014. Initially, 2 adults, 3 pupae, and several larvae were observed. Emergence of male and female adults continued for 10 more days. Here we report the first finding of D. Suzukii in Turkey.


Transcriptional regulation of gene expression is one of the main processes that affect cell diversification from a single set of genes. Regulatory proteins often interact with DNA regions located distally from the transcription start sites (TSS) of the genes. We developed a computational method that combines open chromatin and gene expression information for a large number of cell types to identify these distal regulatory elements. Our method builds correlation graphs for publicly available DNase-seq and exon array datasets with matching samples and uses graph-based methods to filter findings supported by multiple datasets and remove indirect interactions. The resulting set of interactions was validated with both anecdotal information of known long-range interactions and unbiased experimental data deduced from Hi-C and CAGE experiments. Our results provide a novel set of high-confidence candidate open chromatin regions involved in gene regulation, often located several Mb away from the TSS of their target gene.


The T cell surface receptor CTLA-4 helps dampen immune responses, and deficiency in the protein can lead to uncontrolled immune activation and autoimmunity. This effect has been attributed to the loss of negative signals that down-regulate T cell activation. Schneider et al. (see the Perspective by Mustelin) tracked T cells as they interacted with activating dendritic cells in culture and in vivo. CTLA-4 appeared to stimulate roaming of T cells away from dendritic cells, which lessened the likelihood that the T cells would remain activated. This finding makes CTLA-4 a potentially important clinical target. H. Schneider, J. Downey, A. Smith, B. H. Zinselmeyer, C. Rush, J. M. Brewer, B. Wei, N. Hogg, P. Garside, C. E. Rudd, Reversal of the TCR stop signal by CTLA-4. Science 313, 1972-1975 (2006). [Abstract] [Full Text] T. Mustelin, Restless T cells sniff and go. Science 313, 1902-1903 (2006). [Summary] [Full Text]


Through their policies on pricing, entry, exit, service quality, and the obligation to supply unbundled network access to competitors, public utilities commissions or other sector-specific regulatory authorities influence the ability of an investor-owned regulated firm to recover its fixed and common costs. A major regulatory transition involving any one of those policy instruments can materially impair the regulated firm's ability to recover its sunk costs and thus give rise to the problem of stranded costs. Consequently, a legal battle will inevitably erupt between the regulated firm and its regulator over whether the perpetuation of an unchanged regime of price or cost-of-service regulation in the newly changed regulatory environment of impaired cost recovery is confiscatory and, therefore, contrary to statute or even the U.S. Constitution.

This scenario unfolded time and again with a predictability that might have led one to wonder whether regulation was the sole activity in the American economy impervious to innovation. Then, remarkably, a brilliant idea emerged in the 1990s: authorize the regulated firm to securitize its stranded costs and issue "transition bonds" to be serviced by a competitively neutral surcharge that end users would be unable to bypass. In the United States, a number of electric utilities successfully used transition bonds to recover the stranded capital costs of infrastructure whose value had fallen as a result of a change (or the expectation of a change) in the government's policies or regulations that would impede the electric utility's ability to recover the cost of its sunk investment. As of August 2019, utilities in the United States had issued nearly $55 billion of transition bonds. Yet, despite the success of transition bonds in the electric power industry over more than two decades, scholars on regulation have evidently shown no interest in studying the use of this innovative financial instrument. It is also puzzling why both regulators and regulated firms in the telecommunications industry ignored this public-policy success story unfolding in the electric power industry.

In this article, I explain how regulators have used transition bonds to defuse incumbent opposition to major regulatory transitions that threaten to impair the ability of the incumbent regulated firm to recover the costs of its sunk investments prudently made in expectation of providing regulated service to the public. Transition bonds elicit a credible commitment from the government to allow the incumbent utility to recover its stranded costs in its network. Specifically, the capital market quantifies the expectation of regulatory opportunism through the price and rating of the transition bonds, much as risk premiums quantify political risk in a country with an unstable political regime. In effect, the regulated firm's issuance of transition bonds to recover stranded costs enables the capital market to regulate the regulators.


Gender equity in the United States has received considerable attention since the passage of Title IX in 1972. This synthesis seeks to explore the impact on the officiating industry for both male and female referees. Based on a critical mass of research conclusions were drawn to infer how Title IX has helped the officiating industry grow by increasing the job opportunities for officials seeking a career in sports. Conclusions drawn from the critical mass include that there are similarities and differences of female officials to male officials in general. However, the intent of Title IX was to create gender equity. The findings from the current research and conceptual writing on the topic demonstrate that the American sport industry has farther to go in creating equal opportunity for both males and females to benefit from the increased sport participation that has occurred as a result of Title IX. Further, a major finding in this synthesis is that there is inadequate research on Title IX and its impact on the makeup of officials who cover the games that both males and females play. With the female athlete participation rate almost five times that of the pre 1972 rate, why has that not translated over into the officiating realms, this is not clearly understood. In some instances, findings support that female participation in officiating has decreased since the enactment of Title IX. Although not a tenant of gender equity legislation specifically, only a small number of females officiate in the male dominated professional sports. More research is needed on opportunity as well as potential differences in males and females in decision making to determine if this exclusion from male professional sport is warranted or simply an avenue for discrimination that Title IX has not impacted.


This study focuses on the development of a robust Petri-fuzzy-neural-network (PFNN) control strategy to a linear induction motor (LIM) drive for periodic motion. Based on the concept of the nonlinear state feedback theory, a feedback linearization control (FLC) system is first adopted in order to decouple the thrust force and the flux amplitude of the LIM. However, particular system information is required in the FLC system so that the corresponding control performance is influenced seriously by the uncertainties of the plant. Hence, to increase the robustness of the LIM drive for high-performance applications, a robust PFNN control system is investigated based on the model-free control design to retain the decoupled control characteristic of the FLC system. The adaptive tuning algorithms for network parameters are derived in the sense of the Lyapunov stability theorem, such that the stability of the control system can be guaranteed under the occurrence of system uncertainties. The effectiveness of the proposed control scheme is verified by numerical simulations, and the salient merits are indicated in comparison with the FLC system.


This thesis examines the ways in which ethnobotany continues to serve Appalachia by bringing the literature on Appalachian ethnobotany into conversation with literatures on bioregionalism and folkways to examine mutually-reinforcing strategies for the preservation for local economies, ecosystems, and cultures in southern Appalachia. This thesis reviews the merits of ethnobotanical approaches to environmental and socio-economic sustainability. As well as Appalachian ethnobotany and bioregionalism, including comparisons to other biogeographic regions which provide inspiration for similar ethnobotanical initiatives and programs which have diverse functions from cultural preservation to interdisciplinary learning opportunities. Next, it examines the folkways revival in Appalachia and the ways in which it has been and can still be used for bioregional sustainability and economic opportunity. Synthesizing these insights, this thesis provides a short inventory of key plant,shrub and tree species and their ethnobotanical uses in Appalachia. The thesis concludes by discussing untapped ethnobotanical opportunities in Appalachia from entrepreneurial craft to sustainable botanical product creation utilizing common southern Appalachian flora.


Increasingly, university education in Uganda is becoming very popular. Before 1992, discussing university education in Uganda and for most of Sub Saharan Africa was not very difficult because there were few universities. The liberalization and introduction of the private sponsoring scheme in public universities, emergence of the denominational, for-profit and community private universities have all made discussing university education problematic. Though the Uganda government white paper on education 1992, gives the basic principles which must guide all levels of education in Uganda, the lack of a clear and uniform philosophy informing and guiding the different universities creates a plethora of challenges to the debate of the philosophy of education behind the different universities in Uganda. This paper using a descriptive case study research design tries to identify the underlying philosophical underpinning behind the different universities in Uganda. These include: public, religious or denominational, the for-profit and cultural oriented universities. The paper concludes that different universities in Uganda draw their philosophy of education from their founding body's rationale for providing university education. It is also concludes that there seem to be no unifying philosophical underpinning for the entire university system in Uganda. It can also be concluded that, unlike public, for-profit and cultural or community universities, denominational universities seem have a more refined and specific philosophy of education.


Background
Colistin resistance in Klebsiella pneumoniae typically involves inactivation or mutations of chromosomal genes mgrB, pmrAB or phoPQ, but data regarding consequent modifications of LPS are limited.

Objectives
To examine the sequences of chromosomal loci implicated in colistin resistance and the respective LPS-derived lipid A profiles using 11 pairs of colistin-susceptible and -resistant KPC-producing K. pneumoniae clinical strains.

Methods
The strains were subjected to high-throughput sequencing with Illumina HiSeq. The mgrB gene was amplified by PCR and sequenced. Lipid profiles were determined using MALDI-TOF MS.

Results
All patients were treated with colistimethate prior to the isolation of colistin-resistant strains (MIC >2 mg/L). Seven of 11 colistin-resistant strains had deletion or insertional inactivation of mgrB. Three strains, including one with an mgrB deletion, had non-synonymous pmrB mutations associated with colistin resistance. When analysed by MALDI-TOF MS, all colistin-resistant strains generated mass spectra containing ions at m/z 1955 and 1971, consistent with addition of 4-amino-4-deoxy-l-arabinose (Ara4N) to lipid A, whereas only one of the susceptible strains displayed this lipid A phenotype.

Conclusions
The pathway to colistin resistance in K. pneumoniae primarily involves lipid A modification with Ara4N in clinical settings.


Tobacco is the biggest cause of death and disease in England. In July 2007 legislation came into effect which required enclosed public spaces, including workplaces, to go smokefree. Internationally important research from members of the Tobacco Control Research Group at the University of Bath (part of the UK Centre for Tobacco Control Studies, UK CTCS) has examined the effects of the smokefree legislation on exposure to, and knowledge about, secondhand smoke. The research shows that legislation has had a significant effect on decreasing adults' exposure to secondhand smoke, with accompanying health benefits, and that, while smoking was not displaced from public places into the home, more still needs to be done to protect children most at risk. Mass media campaigns have an important role to play in strengthening public knowledge about the risks of secondhand smoke.


This paper sets forth a way to understand, how technology has enabled Anglophone legality to employ, both the structure of the state and the structure of the corporation in its project of globalization. The paper does so by comparing the origins, development, and fundamental differences between the two Western legal forms, Civil and Common. It describes Civil law as a philosophical system, and Common law as a collegial system. This comparative approach is used to explain how Civil law is assimilated to the state, and how its Anglophone counterpart holds a position of equal and independent predominance toward both state and corporation. It shows how pragmatic adaptability is an advantage for the English method in constructing a global legal culture.


The parameters of a digital control design need to be rounded if the controller is implemented with finite precision arithmetic. This often results in degradation of the closed loop performance and reduced stability margins. This paper presents a multiobjective genetic algorithm based approach to designing the structure of a finite-precision PID controller implementation to minimize both the performance degradation and the memory requirements of the implementation. The approach provides a set of solutions that are near Pareto-optimal, and so allows the designer to trade-off the performance degradation against the memory requirements. The method is applied to the PID controller structure for the IFAC93 benchmark problem.


At the heart of many power system computations lies the solution of a large sparse set of linear equations. These equations arise from the modelling of the network and are the cause of a computational bottleneck in power system analysis applications. Efficient sequential techniques have been developed to solve these equations but the solution is still too slow for applications such as real-time dynamic simulation and on-line security analysis. Parallel computing techniques have been explored in the attempt to find faster solutions but the methods developed to date have not efficiently exploited the full power of parallel processing. This thesis considers the solution of the linear network equations encountered in power system computations. Based on the insight provided by the elimination tree, it is proposed that a novel matrix structure is adopted to allow the exploitation of parallelism which exists within the cutset of a typical parallel solution. Using this matrix structure it is possible to reduce the size of the sequential part of the problem and to increase the speed and efficiency of typical LU-based parallel solution. A method for transforming the admittance matrix into the required form is presented along with network partitioning and load balancing techniques. Sequential solution techniques are considered and existing parallel methods are surveyed to determine their strengths and weaknesses. Combining the benefits of existing solutions with the new matrix structure allows an improved LU-based parallel solution to be derived. A simulation of the improved LU solution is used to show the improvements in performance over a standard LU-based solution that result from the adoption of the new techniques. The results of a multiprocessor implementation of the method are presented and the new method is shown to have a better performance than existing methods for distributed memory multiprocessors.


This paper examines the implications of labour migration models that rely on employer sponsorship. According to UK government proposals, long-term migration into high-skilled jobs after Brexit will require workers to be sponsored by employers, while workers in low-skilled and low-wage jobs will receive short-term work permits that do not require an employer sponsor. The paper argues that choosing employer sponsorship over worker-driven routes has three key effects: it gives the government greater ability to regulate which jobs migrants fill; it gives employers more power over their workforce; and it increases the administrative burden associated with hiring workers from overseas. This implies that in high-skilled jobs, employer sponsorship is likely to improve the skill composition of labour migrants but reduce the total number of skilled workers admitted; and that in low-skilled positions the government faces a trade-off between the ability to channel workers to specific jobs (including those where employers struggle to attract workers) and the risk of increasing underpayment or exploitation.


This study examined the sex role orientations endorsed by 188 male and female students majoring in computer science, a male-dominated college degree program. The relations among sex role orientation and academic achievement and social cognitive factors influential in career decision-making self-efficacy were explored. Findings revealed that androgynous- and feminine-oriented students scored significantly higher on career decision-making self-efficacy as compared with undifferentiated students. No significant sex role orientation differences were found for academic achievement and general and career locus of control. Sex role typing is perpetuated by the male/female socialization process and is believed to occur in all human societies. Accordingly, men and women may be expected to conduct different tasks, assigned different rights and privileges, assumed to possess different temperamental characteristics and abilities, and may also be subjected to different rules of conduct in their interactions with each other (Spence & Helmreich, 1978). The existence of these so-called distinctive sets of attributes (which may or may not have factual validity) have been used to justify the perpetuation of society's role structure and, furthermore, are regarded as critical to members of each sex fulfilling their assigned roles (Spence & Helmreich, 1978). Similarly, Eckert and McConnell-Ginet (2003) stated that gendered performances are available to everyone; however, there are constraints on who gets to perform which gender-related behaviors. They further noted that the intersection between sex and gender occurs as society attempts to match up ways of behaving with biological sex. Consequently, sex role typing and its accompanying stereotypes/beliefs constitute different expectations about appropriate behaviors for the two sexes, and thus we believe is an important factor to consider when investigating traditional and nontraditional career choices. In their early work, Spence and Helmreich (1978) pointed out that the meaning of the term sex role has not been clearly understood due to various disciplines (e.g., psychology, anthropology, sociology) emphasizing different components. However, among psychologists, she contended that sex role is used to refer to "the distinguishing characteristics of women and men themselves-to differences in behavior, personality, abilities, preferences, and the like" (Spence & Helmreich, 1978, p. 13). For the purposes of this study, we use the definition of sex role recognized by the psychology discipline. In addition, the use of the terms sex role typing (i.e., classification of types) and sex role orientation (i.e., one's expressed type) are used throughout the article to refer to either the classification or expression of one's sex role. Prior to the 1970s, a single bipolar conception of sex role existed in which the psychological traits stereotypically associated with men and women preclude each other and thereby yield a unidimensional construct, representing either a masculine or a feminine orientation (Spence & Helmreich, 1978). Spence and Helmreich (1978) noted that scholars began to question this notion of a single dimension with masculinity (including most men) at one extreme and femininity (including most women) at the other extreme. Instead of a single dimension model, writers have suggested a dualistic formulation in which masculinity and femininity are essentially independent and separate dimensions. Spence (1984) proffered that sex role is a multifactorial construct and that sex role traits constitute but one factor (i.e., masculinity or femininity). Therefore, she further asserted that sex role orientation is predictive only in situations where the sex role traits are salient and or influential. Conversely, Bern's (1981) theory of gender schema posited that persons display attitudes and behaviors that are consistent with their sex role orientation. Despite the fact that some studies have failed to find significant relationships when conceptualizing sex role as multifactorial, the sex role construct is thought to provide helpful insights into human behavior (Palan, 2001). …


This short essay engages the argument that it would violate the First Amendment's Establishment Clause to exempt an ordinary, nonreligious, profit-seeking business – such as Hobby Lobby – from the Affordable Care Act's contraceptive-coverage rules. In response to this argument, it is emphasized that the First Amendment not only permits but invites generous, religion-specific accommodations and exemptions and that the Court's Smith decision does not teach otherwise. In addition, this essay proposes that laws and policies that promote and protect religious freedom should be seen as having a "secular purpose" and that because religious freedom, like clean air, is an aspect of the public good, it is both appropriate and unremarkable that, sometimes, maintaining the conditions for religious freedom is not cost-free.


With the development of Internet technology, individuals have become increasingly more dependent on the network. Personal information is collected by many firms when people surf online, but information collected is often misused by collectors, which may seriously violated the privacy of consumer. For this reason, a lot of government agencies and international organizations put great emphases on the development of privacy protection regulations. Companies from different parts of the globe have begun to issue privacy policies or statements on their websites, some detailed some simple. It is thus a vital task to evaluate these privacy policies and identify the degree of privacy protection. On the basis of previous studies, this article explores the dimensions of Internet privacy policy from the perspectives of personal information protection. Five dimensions of privacy policies including notice, choice, access, security and enforcement are identified and scale items for each dimensions are also proposed.


The increasing desire of ubiquitous Internet access has recently promoted the deployment of wireless multi-hop networks in several application domains. Wireless Mesh Networks (WMNs) provide significant benefits over existing
wirelessmulti-hop networking paradigms, offering a suitable
solution for a wide range of application scenarios, spanning
frompublic safety communications to community-based networks
and metro scale municipal networks. Routing design is crucial to guarantee robust communication through the mesh backbone. Traditional unicast routing has shown to be ineffective when dealing with highly variable wireless channels. One of the most critical aspects is the wire-
less diversity, intended as the reception of a packet at multiple forwarders, causing collisions and interference due to the broadcast nature of the wireless medium. A set of innovative routing approaches has recently been proposed as a valuable alternative to classical routing, thanks to their ability to deal with the wireless diversity as an opportunity rather than a shortcoming. The primary goal of this thesis is to deeply investigate wireless diversity-based routing inWMNs, proposing novel solutions
able to significantly improve WMN performance. We extensively describe the main features of this strategy and
provide a classification of themost representative solutions in literature, discussing their most relevant characteristics, advantages and disadvantages. Then, we focus on one of the most promising categories: Opportunistic Routing (OR). It exploits the multiple packet recipients offered by the wireless transmission to incrementally build a path, selecting the best next hop only after packet reception. Then, we propose a novel opportunistic routing algorithm, able to select at each hop the forwarders that maximize the throughput gain. In contrast to the common opportunistic approach, the proposed
algorithm avoids any form of a priori constraint on route selection, fully leveraging all the transmission opportunities encountered during path construction. To improve its efficiency in multi-flow environments, we extend its routing strategy with an opportunistic packet scheduling algorithm and a prioritized channel access scheme, so as to facilitate the transmission of the packets that are traversing the paths providing higher performance gains. To ensure high performance in all the typical WMN application scenarios, we need to consider that in these environments channel quality may significantly vary in time and space, requiring a high degree of flexibility in the path construction process. Most of the existing solutions performlocal decisions (i.e. hop-by-hop) based on end-to-end principles. In contrast, we propose a novel routing algorithm that combines end-to-end with localized data, so as to adapt routing decisions to channel conditions at the time of packet transmission. This ensures higher reliability even in the most challenging application scenarios. The key factors determining opportunistic improvements are not clear yet, making hard to identify the conditions under which this paradigm outperforms classical unicast routing. Hence, we propose a novel routing architecture that relies on a configurable machine learning-based agent to properly select, at each node, the most suitable routing algorithm within a set of available solutions, according to network conditions and traffic characteristics. This solution represents a further
step towards the definition of a wireless diversity-based routing paradigm able to ensure high performance in all WMN
application scenarios.


PURPOSE. A marked cellular infiltrate has been observed when endotoxin (lipopolysaccharide [LPS]) is injected into the mouse eye, but systemically injected LPS does not produce a comparable effect. Several hypotheses were tested to reconcile this discordance. METHODS. BALB/c mice were injected intravitreally (ivt) or intraperitoneally (ip) with Escherichia coli LPS. Uveitis was assessed by traditional and intravital microscopy. Cytokine levels in the eye, plasma, or spleen were measured by single or multiplex ELISA assays. RESULTS. The eye's higher sensitivity was confirmed to local LPS exposure, as 250 ng ivt LPS produced a brisk leukocytic infiltrate whereas ip injection of 100 μg LPS did not. The hypothesis was tested that the lack of a cellular infiltrate after ip LPS is explained by less induction of cytokines in the eye, but surprisingly, ip LPS resulted in comparable cytokine levels to ivt LPS. The hypothesis was disproved that the eye's sensitivity to local LPS is due to lack of expression of intracellular inhibitors of LPS such as A20, IRAK-M, or SARM. Finally, the hypothesis that systemic LPS inhibits diapedesis was tested by injection of LPS ip and ivt simultaneously, a strategy that did not significantly reduce leukocyte rolling or sticking in iris vessels but blocked the cellular infiltrate normally seen with ivt LPS. CONCLUSIONS. Systemic and local LPS exposures produce discordant effects within the murine eye. The hypothesis that systemic LPS desensitizes leukocytes to the stimuli responsible for transmigration offers a plausible explanation for this discordance.


We recently introduced the concept of ``k-essence'' as a dynamical solution for explaining naturally why the universe has entered an epoch of accelerated expansion at a late stage of its evolution. The solution avoids fine-tuning of parameters and anthropic arguments. Instead, k-essence is based on the idea of a dynamical attractor solution which causes it to act as a cosmological constant only at the onset of matter domination. Consequently, k-essence overtakes the matter density and induces cosmic acceleration at about the present epoch. In this paper, we present the basic theory of k-essence and dynamical attractors based on evolving scalar fields with nonlinear kinetic energy terms in the action. We present guidelines for constructing concrete examples and show that there are two classes of solutions, one in which cosmic acceleration continues forever and one in which the acceleration has finite duration.


Triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) is a clinically aggressive form of breast cancer that is unresponsive to endocrine agents or trastuzumab. TNBC accounts for ~10-20% of all breast cancer cases and represents the form with the poorest prognosis. Patients with TNBC are at higher risk of early recurrence, mainly in the lungs, brain and soft tissue, therefore, there is an urgent need for new therapies. The present study was carried out in MDA-MB-231 cells, where we assessed the role of caspase-8 (casp-8), a critical effector of death receptors, also involved in non‑apoptotic functions. Analysis of casp-8 mRNA and protein levels indicated that they were up-regulated with respect to the normal human mammalian epithelial cells. We demonstrated that silencing of casp-8 by small interfering-RNA, strongly decreased MDA-MB-231 cell growth by delaying G0/G1- to S-phase transition and increasing p21, p27 and hypo-phosphorylated/active form of pRb levels. Surprisingly, casp-8-knockdown, also potently increased both the migratory and metastatic capacity of MDA-MB‑231 cells, as shown by both wound healing and Matrigel assay, and by the expression of a number of related-genes and/or proteins such as VEGFA, C-MYC, CTNNB1, HMGA2, CXCR4, KLF4, VERSICAN V1 and MMP2. Among these, KLF4, a transcriptional factor with a dual role (activator and repressor), seemed to play critical roles. We suggest that in MDA-MB‑231 cells, the endogenous expression of casp-8 might keep the cells perpetually cycling through downregulation of KLF4, the subsequent lowering of p21 and p27, and the inactivation by hyperphosphorylation of pRb. Simultaneously, by lowering the expression of some migratory and invasive genes, casp-8 might restrain the metastatic ability of the cells. Overall, our findings showed that, in MDA-MB-231 cells, casp-8 might play some unusual roles which should be better explored, in order to understand whether it might be identified as a molecular therapeutic target.


BACKGROUND
Moral distress is a pervasive reality of palliative care practice. An existing framework for understanding it has been proposed as a way to begin to address moral distress's detrimental effects on clinicians.

OBJECTIVE
The objective was to illustrate the application of this adapted conceptual framework to a clinical case and to offer recommendations for enlarging the professional repertoire for responding to challenging cases involving moral distress.

ANALYSIS
In the clinical case, clinicians are expected to respond to the patient's suffering based on four factors: empathy (emotional attunement), perspective taking (cognitive attunement), memory (personal experience), and moral sensitivity (ethical attunement). Each of these interrelated and iterative factors may become activated as clinicians care for patients with life-limiting conditions. This creates the foundations for clinicians' responses. When responses risk becoming aversive in the face of moral dilemmas, strategies are needed to foster principled compassion instead of unregulated moral outrage. A number of cognitive, attentional, affective, and somatic approaches derived from contemplative traditions are consistent with the framework. Combined with a systems-focused approach that incorporates organizational factors, they offer a means of improving professional repertoires for responding to difficult situations.

CONCLUSION
Application of the proposed framework to a clinical case provides opportunities for understanding mechanisms of response that may be amenable to intervention and for suggesting appropriate alternative strategies and practices. A full understanding of the process can help to mitigate or to avoid the progression of distress and concurrently to appraise the situation that leads to moral distress or moral outrage.


Article II of the U.S. Constitution states that a person must be a "natural born Citizen" to be eligible to be President. This Article surveys relevant evidence and explains what the phrase likely meant when the Constitution was adopted between 1787 and 1789. The phrase at the time encompassed three categories of persons: (1) persons born within the United States; (2) persons born outside of the United States to U.S. citizens in government service; and (3) persons born outside of the United States to U.S. citizen fathers who had resided in the United States but went abroad temporarily for a private purpose, like merchants who traveled on business. This definition corresponded with contemporaneous English law understandings of "natural born subjects," the natural law birthright principles ofjus soli (the law of soil) andjus sanguinis (the law of blood or parentage), and the law of nations-the key jurisprudential sources consulted by Americans on matters of citizenship in the late eighteenth-century world order. This novel interpretation of the original meaning of "natural born Citizen" departs from the conventional wisdom that the phrase refers to a person who is a citizen under the U.S. naturalization statutes in effect at the person's birth, a view recently espoused by two former Solicitors General of the United States, Paul Clement and Neal Katyal. My interpretation also differs from the leading alternative view of the original meaning of the phrase, namely that it refers to persons born in the United States or outside of the United States to U.S. officials only. A brief conclusion explores the implications of the recovered original meaning of "natural born Citizen" for presidential eligibility today.


Representing the culmination of more than a decade of empirical research in post-Mao China, this collection of essays explores changes in the nature of work in relation to changes in households, migration patterns, and gender roles during an era of economic reform. The contributors are respected scholars in fields that range from history and anthropology to demography and sociology. They use a variety of data and diverse approaches to gauge the impact of new economic opportunities on Chinese households and to show how the rise of the private sector, the industrialization of the countryside, and increased migration have affected Chinese workers and workplaces. The collection also asks us to consider how gender roles have been redefined by the economic and institutional changes that arose from post-Mao market reform.


This article provides a critical assessment of the contemporary threat of maritime terrorism in the Asia-Pacific region. It addresses the operational dimensions of the threat to ships and port infrastructure, and considers the effectiveness of the international and regional measures that have been introduced in recent years to deal with this threat. Based on a proposition that that there has been rather too much emphasis on highly remote and speculative "doomsday" scenarios, the article supports the need for balance and equity in addressing the risks of maritime terrorism. It identifies types of terrorist attack that might be assessed as more credible, as well as some that might be considered less credible.


Practice for the CCNP BSCI exam with hands-on, networking lab scenarios Ramp up your routing know-how with more than 40 practical lab scenarios Reinforce your CCNP exam preparation with step-by-step, hands-on router configuration Get up to speed with advanced OSPF and IS-IS configuration, summarization, and redistribution Gain proficiency in an advanced BGP environment with synchronization, communities and peer groups, and static and policy-based routing Perfect your EIGRP configuration and summarization skills Apply proficiency gained throughout the book with RIP to OSPF migration Use VLSMs to extend the use of IP addresses Test routing connectivity using accepted troubleshooting techniques Take your preparation to the next level with a bonus CCIE lab, written by a prominent member of the CCIE team at Cisco SystemsIndispensable as both a router configuration guide and a preparation tool for the CCNP BSCI exam, CCNP Practical Studies: Routing will prepare you for the exam and give you the hands-on experience to apply your knowledge on the job. CCNP Practical Studies: Routing provides you with routing and configuration information from IP basics to advanced routing concepts and protocols, such as BGP and IS-IS, which is the newest addition to the BSCI exam. Each chapter focuses on a specific routing technology or protocol with a battery of scenarios and practical exercises that you can either configure using your home, work, or remote-access lab equipment or follow along by reviewing the book's example tasks. The five lab scenarios in each chapter serve to challenge your understanding of the chapter topics and measure your aptitude as a CCNP candidate, while providing concrete examples of the challenges faced in real-world configuration.CCNP Practical Studies: Routing provides you with practical information on all of the important concepts central to the CCNP Routing exam, including basic and advanced BGP and OSPF, EIGRP, route reflectors, IP routing principles, and IS-IS. Begin with basic lab scenarios that cover displaying and analyzing IP routing tables and using show and debug commands. Then graduate to more advanced lab scenarios, such as routing between a classful and a classless network; configuring VLSM; and working with multihomed BGP and connections to ISPs. Lab scenarios at the end of the book take you step-by-step through route optimization and redistribution. This book also contains a bonus CCIE®-level lab, which takes you beyond the professional level labs and onto the next step in becoming a hands-on routing expert.Whether you are seeking practical knowledge to enhance your preparation for the CCNP BSCI exam or you are a newly minted CCNP looking for hands-on experience to hone your on-the-job skills, CCNP Practical Studies: Routing has what you need to take your practical routing skills to the next level.158720054610092003


Models, such as fertility projection models, are usually based on the record of countries that have earlier experienced fertility decline and on assumptions about what is reasonable in the future. There is sometimes a trade-off between a good statistical fit and factors substantively related to fertility change. The most authoritative and influential fertility projections are those by the United Nations Population Division, which in the last decade has changed their fertility projection assumptions three times. Before 2004, the UN Population Division had long projected TFR to asymptotically reach replacement level, TFR=2.07. This assumed that all countries would eventually have low mortality, low fertility stationary populations. In the 1990s, many countries had sustained below replacement fertility (TFR<2.07), sometimes falling to lowest-low fertility (TFR<=1.3). There were various theories about why sustained very low fertility occurred, the most influential being Second Demographic Transition Theory. After extensive consultation, fertility projection assumptions were changed in 2004, and all countries were then projected to asymptotically approach TFR=1.86, which implies long term population decline. This was a major departure from the earlier eventual stationary population assumption. In the 2000s, TFR increased across at least three five-year periods (such as 1995-2000 to 2000-2005 and 2000-2005 to 2005-2010) in twenty-one below replacement fertility countries. Based on fertility increases in those countries, in 2010 assumptions were again changed, so that in the new model TFR in below replacement fertility countries increased toward replacement, with the pace of increase more rapid the farther TFR was below replacement. For countries with above replacement fertility in 20052010 such as Algeria, TFR was projected to fall below replacement and then increase toward replacement. This marked a return to the eventual stationary population assumption. Analyses found that in some below replacement fertility countries, such as Sweden, the dip in period TFR was the consequence of a shift in fertility to older ages, resulting in little change in cohort TFR. Low incompatibility between women having children and working for pay and relatively high gender equity were positively related to TFR in low fertility countries. In some low fertility countries, such as Singapore and the Republic of Korea, there was no indication of TFR increase by 2005-2010 and no indication of an increase in fertility at older ages. Some found the projected rapid increase in TFR in such countries implausible. In 2012, TFR projection assumptions were again changed. By 2012, TFR had increased across at least three five-year periods in 25 low fertility countries. The new low fertility projection model for many individual countries was based both on the experience of these 25 countries and on the TFR record of the individual country. The 2012 projections resulted in less extreme departures from earlier projected TFRs than occurred between the 2004 and 2010 projections. In some countries, such as Sweden, the 2010 and 2012 projections differ little and are consistent with earlier empirical trends. It would be prudent: 1) To make clearer the substantive reasoning behind changes in fertility assumptions in addition to the degree of fit to recent empirical patterns in some countries. 2) To consider whether conditions and relationships in countries that have experienced very low fertility are likely to be the same in all other countries in the future. 3) To have a longer observation period of new empirical patterns before major fertility projection assumptions are changed. Projecting Low Fertility: Plausibility and Implications of Assumptions 3


Herein we describe a simple method for the synthesis of Baylis-Hillman adducts and their acetates by utilizing inexpensively available cashew nut shell liquid (CNSL) natural resources. Furthermore, by using a molecular hybridization approach, a series of novel pyrimidine scaffolds ( 15a-15t ) were synthesized via utilizing Baylis-Hillman acetates derived from cashew nut shell liquid (CNSL). All the newly synthesized compounds were screened for their in vitro antitumor activity. Baylis-Hillman compounds 5b and 5h showed promising anticancer activity against MCF-7. Among pyrimidine derivatives, compounds 15i , 15j and 15l showed promising activity against HEP-G2, whereas compounds 15j , 15k , 15l and 15m showed promising activity against MCF-7. In addition, compound 15m showed significant activity against K562 when compared with the standard. The structure-activity relationship (SAR) analysis suggests that the length of the carbon chain of phenyl ring played an important role in the potency of activity.


Bilateral investment treaties (BITs) have proved to be effective instruments in providing protection for foreign investors, but their role in contributing to economic growth and inclusive development in host states remains unclear. If BITs are to have a more pronounced impact on host states' economic development, their underlying conceptualization could be reassessed and their provisions adapted to help tackle emerging economic, social and environmental concerns and more directly impact foreign direct investment (FDI) inflows. Despite the advent of what may be considered a new generation of treaties, BITs continue to fall short of proactively helping states achieve these objectives. First, their scope is narrow and their provisions are broad, covering investment protection without addressing the broader agenda of development policy necessary to a more inclusive economic growth model. Second, the nature of BIT provisions may deter host states from taking any actions or measures in the public interest that could be harmful to foreign investors. This can make it more challenging for states to implement new policies or reform existing ones in pursuit of economic growth and inclusive development. Third, BITs were traditionally designed not so much to increase FDI inflows into host countries, but rather to provide a stable and predictable legal framework for foreign investors. The absence of proactive investment promotion and facilitation provisions may have undermined their potential to increase FDI flows. In addition to these conceptual challenges, a number of more technical policy choices need to be addressed. For example, the definition of investment is all-encompassing and does not reflect any strategic investment policy priorities of the host state; the fair equitable treatment standard remains elusive despite recent attempts to clarify its meaning; "indirect" expropriation is open to broad and diverse interpretations; and the investor-state dispute settlement mechanism fails to provide sufficient consistency and predictability in arbitral awards. This paper proposes a selection of policy options to address some of the conceptual and substantive challenges of BITs with a view to making them more conducive to economic growth and more reflective of inclusive development policies.


Agents that act as user assistants will become invaluable as the number of information sources continue to proliferate. Such agents can support the work of users by learning to automate time-consuming tasks and filter information to manageable levels. Although considerable advances have been made in this area, it remains a fertile area for further development. One application of agents under careful scrutiny is the automated negotiation of conflicts between different user's needs and desires. Many techniques require explicit user models in order to function. This dissertation explores a technique for dynamically constructing user models and the impact of using them to anticipate the need for negotiation. Negotiation is reduced by including an advising aspect to the agent that can use this anticipation of conflict to adjust user behavior.


Scarce spectrum has been the impeding force for satisfying users' exploding appetite for anywhere, anytime connectivity. Efficient utilization of the scarce resource while providing high quality of service thus is the main challenge for protocol design over wireless networks. Unfortunately, traditional wireline designs, by assuming constant quality channels, often fail in satisfying these objectives when facing lossy and time varying wireless channels.
This thesis develops a class of intelligent media access control algorithms that exploits the adaptation capability of underlying physical layer. Particularly, we design opportunistic schedulers to enable the potential gain on channel diversity among multiple users while satisfying provable weighted fairness. Our key technique in designing these schedulers is to jointly exploit the temporal variations in the resource consumption of multiple users to opportunistically select those with greater throughput potential, while also ensuring that fairness constraints are satisfied.
First, we design and analyze Wireless Credit-based Fair Queueing (WCFQ), an opportunistic wireless scheduler targeting at multiple access schemes that are based on single-user-at-a-time. We show that WCFQ satisfies provable long- and short-term probabilistic fairness guarantee while significantly improving system throughput.
Second, we extend our system model to exploit concurrent scheduling where multiple users can access the system simultaneously. We design MFS-D and MFS-P, a Multichannel Fair Scheduler with Deterministic and Probabilistic fairness constraints respectively.
Finally, we perform a comparison between single and multiple channel scheduling. Particularly, we investigate the fundamental capacity of the system given fairness constraints and limitations from underlying physical layer. Through theoretical and numerical investigations we show that multiple channel scheduling may have significant gain over single channel scheduling in certain scenarios.


Due to the unattended nature of wireless sensor networks, an adversary can capture and compromise sensor nodes, make replicas of them, and then mount a variety of attacks with these replicas. These replica node attacks are dangerous because they allow the attacker to leverage the compromise of a few nodes to exert control over much of the network. Several replica node detection schemes have been proposed in the literature to defend against such attacks in static sensor networks. However, these schemes rely on fixed sensor locations and hence do not work in mobile sensor networks, where sensors are expected to move. In this work, we propose a fast and effective mobile replica node detection scheme using the Sequential Probability Ratio Test. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first work to tackle the problem of replica node attacks in mobile sensor networks. We show analytically and through simulation experiments that our scheme detects mobile replicas in an efficient and robust manner at the cost of reasonable overheads.


This book outlines and critiques international strategies and programs designed to address difficulties in literacy development. The high-profile team of contributors consider teaching programs which operate at family, school, pupil and teacher levels. They argue that school is not the only legitimate location for literacy education, and show how difficulties in literacy can be addressed sequentially, both in and out of the school context. This book will be of interest to postgraduate students, teachers, researchers, educational professionals and policy makers who are looking for practical strategies to address difficulties in literacy development.
Part 1
1. Dilemmas in the Choice of Responses to Students' Difficulties in Literacy Development
Part 2: Family and Community
2. Parents and Teachers
3. Collaboration Between Teachers and Parents in Assisting Children's Reading
4. Pause Prompt Praise: Reading Tutoring Procedures for Home and School Partnership
5. Dyslexia: Parents in Need
6. Rhetoric and Research in Family Literacy
7. Developing Literacy in Families with Histories of Reading Problems: Preliminary Results from a Longitudinal Study of Young Children of Dyslexic Parents
8. Partnership Approaches - New Futures for Travellers
Part 3: School and Classroom
9. Using Soft Systems Methodology to Re-think Special Needs
10. Case Studies of Individual Classrooms
11. Contradictory Models: The Dilemma of Specific Learning Difficulties
12. The National Literacy Strategy and Dyslexia: A Comparison of Teaching Methods and Materials Part 4: Individual Pupil
13. Examinations Assessment and Special Arrangements
14. Learning to Understand Written Language
15. Specific Development Dyslexia (SDD) 'Basics to Back' in 2000 and Beyond?
16. Multisensory Teaching of Reading in Mainstream Settings
17. Researching the Social and Emotional Consequences of Dyslexia
18. An Examination of the Relationship Between Labelling and Stigmatisation with Special Reference to Dyslexia
19. The Long-Term Effects of Two Interventions for Children with Reading Difficulties
20. Teaching Spelling: Some Questions Answered
21. Spelling


Background: The neurotoxic effects of methylmercury (MeHg) have been demonstrated in both human and animal studies. Both adult and fetal brains are susceptible to the effects of MeHg toxicity. However, the specific effects of adult exposures have been less well-documented than those of children with prenatal exposures. This is largely because few studies of MeHg exposures in adults have used sensitive neurological endpoints. The present study reports on the results of neuropsychological testing and hair mercury concentrations in adults (>17 yrs) living in fishing communities of Baixada Cuiabana (Mato Grosso) in the Pantanal region of Brazil. Methods: A cross-sectional study was conducted in six villages on the Cuiaba River. Participants included 129 men and women older than 17 years of age. They were randomly selected in proportion to the age range and number of inhabitants in each village. Questionnaire information was collected on demographic variables, including education, occupation, and residence history. Mercury exposure was determined by analysis of hair using flameless atomic absorption spectrophotometry. The neurocognitive screening battery included tests from the Wechsler Memory Scale and the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale, Concentrated Attention Test of the Toulouse-Pierron Factorial Battery, the Manual Ability Subtests of the Tests of Mechanical Ability, and the Profile of Mood States. Results: Mercury exposures in this population were associated with fish consumption. The hair mercury concentration in the 129 subjects ranged from 0.56 to 13.6 µg/g; the mean concentration was 4.2 ± 2.4 micrograms/g and the median was 3.7 µg/g. Hair mercury levels were associated with detectable alterations in performance on tests of fine motor speed and dexterity, and concentration. Some aspects of verbal learning and memory were also disrupted by mercury exposure. The magnitude of the effects increased with hair mercury concentration, consistent with a dose-dependent effect. Conclusions: This study suggests that adults exposed to MeHg may be at risk for deficits in neurocognitive function. The functions disrupted in adults, namely attention, fine-motor function


Biodiesel is a renewable, environmentally friendly fuel. Commercially most biodiesel is produced from the esterification reaction of vegetable oil with methanol in the presence of a homogeneous catalyst 1. Heterogeneous catalysis however lowers the cost of production by reducing the number of downstream processes. There have been some experimental studies on hydrotalcite as a heterogeneous catalyst2, but little work has been done on the modelling of the process. To evaluate the industrial applicability of the heterogeneous catalyzed process, we have developed a multiscale model for hydrotalcite catalyzed transesterification using a hybrid Monte Carlo/mean field approach. The spatial distribution of species on the catalyst surface is an important factor in determining the reaction rate and this can be taken into account by the application of Kinetic Monte Carlo3. An Eley-Rideal type mechanism is used to model the reactions on the catalyst surface. The overall reaction rate expressions have been derived based on the assumption of quasi steady state conditions for the surface species. We have used a novel hybrid model based on elementary reaction steps to increase the accuracy and robustness of the overall reaction kinetic expression and hence the design of the reactor. This model can be further extended to determine optimum catalyst properties and bulk conditions.


Porphyromonas gingivalis, an asaccharolytic Gram-negative oral anaerobe, is a major pathogen associated with adult periodontitis, a chronic infective disease that a significant percentage of the human population suffers from. It preferentially utilizes dipeptides as its carbon source, suggesting the importance of dipeptidyl peptidase (DPP) types of enzyme for its growth. Until now DPP IV, DPP5, 7 and 11 have been extensively investigated. Here, we report the characterization of DPP III using molecular biology, biochemical, biophysical and computational chemistry methods. In addition to the expected evolutionarily conserved regions of all DPP III family members, PgDPP III possesses a C-terminal extension containing an Armadillo (ARM) type fold similar to the AlkD family of bacterial DNA glycosylases, implicating it in alkylation repair functions. However, complementation assays in a DNA repair-deficient Escherichia coli strain indicated the absence of alkylation repair function for PgDPP III. Biochemical analyses of recombinant PgDPP III revealed activity similar to that of DPP III from Bacteroides thetaiotaomicron, and in the range between activities of human and yeast counterparts. However, the catalytic efficiency of the separately expressed DPP III domain is ~1000-fold weaker. The structure and dynamics of the ligand-free enzyme and its complex with two different diarginyl arylamide substrates was investigated using small angle X-ray scattering, homology modeling, MD simulations and hydrogen/deuterium exchange (HDX). The correlation between the experimental HDX and MD data improved with simulation time, suggesting that the DPP III domain adopts a semi-closed or closed form in solution, similar to that reported for human DPP III. The obtained results reveal an atypical DPP III with increased structural complexity: its superhelical C-terminal domain contributes to peptidase activity and influences DPP III interdomain dynamics. Overall, this research reveals multifunctionality of PgDPP III and opens direction for future research of DPP III family proteins.


This thesis proposes Gaussian Mixtures as a flexible semiparametric tool for density estimation and addresses the problem of model selection for this class of density estimators. First, a brief introduction to various techniques for model selection proposed in literature is given. The most commonly used techniques are cross validation nad methods based on data reuse and they all are either computationally very intensive or extremely demanding in terms of training set size. Another class of methods known as information criteria allows model selection at a much lower computational cost and for any sample size. The main objective of this study is to develop a technique for model selection that is not too computationally demanding, while capable of delivering an acceptable performance on a range of problems of various dimensionality. Another important issue addressed is the effect of the sample size. Large data sets are often difficult and costly to obtain, hence keeping the sample size within reasonable limits is also very important. Nevertheless sample size is central to the problem of density estimation and one cannot expect good results with extremely limited samples. Information Criteria are the most suitable candidates for a model selection procedure fulfilling these requirements. The well-known criterion Schwarz's Bayesian Information Criterion (BIC) has been analysed and its deficiencies when used with data of large dimensionality data are noted. A modification that improves on BIC criterion is proposed and named Maximum Penalised Likelihood (MPL) criterion. This criterion has the advantage that it can adapted to the data and its satisfactory performance is demonstrated experimentally. Unfortunately all information criteria, including the proposed MPL, suffer from a major drawback: a strong assumption of simplicity of the density to be estimated. This can lead to badly underfitted estimates, especially for small sample size problems. As a solution to such deficiencies, a procedure for validating the different models, based on an assessment of the model predictive performance, is proposed. The optimality criterion for model selection can be formulated as follow; if a model is able to predict the observed data frequencies within the statistical error, it is an acceptable model, otherwise it is rejected. An attractive feature of such a measure of goodness is the fact that it is an absolute measure, rather than a relative one, which would only provide a ranking between candidated models.


My proposal will discuss the scope of neutrality and objectivity in the context of non-confessional integrative RE in the Swedish pluralistic classroom-practice. In the classrooms, individuals who identify with diverse religious and non-religious outlooks of life, with different understanding of what religion and being religious might mean, meet. How does this influence the construction of RE in the classroom-practice? What discourses of religion becomes hegemonic in the classrooms? The proposal is based on findings from participant observation of RE-lessons at three upper secondary schools. Discourse analyses (Howarth, 2000; Laclau & Mouffe, 2001) is used as theoretical and analytical approach. The findings indicates a hegemonic western secular discourse in the classrooms, which influenced the classroom-practice and the talk of religion, specific religious traditions and believers of different faiths. Simultaneously there were a spiritual and a nationalistic discourse of religion that in some respect challenged the hegemonic discourse, but also enforced it.Howarth, D. (2000). Discourse. Buckingham: Open University Press.Laclau, E., & Mouffe, C. (2001). Hegemony and socialist strategy : towards a radical democratic politics. London: Verso.


To improve the employment rates and earnings of Americans workers, we need to create more-coherent and more-effective education and workforce development systems, focusing primarily (though not exclusively) on disadvantaged youth and adults, and with education and training more clearly targeted towards firms and sectors that provide good-paying jobs. This paper proposes a new set of competitive grants from the federal government to states that would fund training partnerships between employers in key industries, education providers, workforce agencies, and intermediaries at the state level, plus a range of other supports and services. The grants would especially reward the expansion of programs that appear successful when evaluated with randomized controlled trial (RCT) techniques. The evidence suggests that these grants could generate benefits that are several times larger than their costs, including higher earnings and lower unemployment rates among the disadvantaged.


Ever since Marshall (1890) agglomeration externalities have been viewed as the key factor explaining the existence of cities and their size. However, while the various micro foundations of agglomeration externalities stress the importance of Total Factor Productivity (TFP), the empirical evidence on agglomeration externalities rests on measures obtained using firm revenue or value-added as a measure of firm output: revenue-based TFP (TFP-R). This paper uses data on French manufacturing firms' revenue, quantity and prices to estimate TFP and TFP-R and decompose the latter into various elements. Our analysis suggests that the revenue productivity advantage of denser areas is mainly driven by higher prices charged rather than differences in TFP. At the same time, firms in denser areas are able to sell higher quantities, and generate higher revenues, despite higher prices. These and other results we document suggest that firms in denser areas are able to charge higher prices because they sell higher demand/quality products. Finally, while the correlation between firm revenue TFP and firm size is positive in each location, it is also systematically related to density: firms with higher (lower) TFP-R account for a larger (smaller) share of total revenue in denser areas. These patterns thus amplify in aggregate regional-level figures any firm-level differences in productivity across space.


This paper investigates distributional and semantic properties of two kinds of indefinite NPs in Bulgarian: bare nouns vs. NPs headed by edin 'one'. The central question, which constitutes a subject of intense debate in the literature, is whether there is a semantic (and pragmatic) difference between these two kinds of indefinites. It will be argued in favour of such a distinction. This claim is supported by different properties which these two kinds of Bulgarian indefinites display concerning their scope behaviour in opaque contexts, the choice of discourse anaphora, the use of wh- words, and the possibility of clitic doubling. Additional evidence for the claimed distinction is provided by the intensifying function of edin 'one' used in predicative NPs in Bulgarian. The paper discusses how the difference claimed can be accounted for. Showing that the distinction specific vs. non-specific is not sufficient to explain the data, it will be proposed to draw the line of distinction between the two kinds of indefinite NPs in terms of type vs. token reference.


Introduction: The superficial location of the scrotal contents makes them ideally suited for sonographic examination. The development of high-frequency, real-time scanners along with color Doppler have enhanced the diagnostic accuracy of scrotal sonographic examinations. Sonography played a vital role in the evaluation of testes obscured from palpation by large hydrocele and accurately separated intra testicular from extra testicular masses, even when the location is equivocal on physical examination. Materials & Methods: A prospective study of 108 patients who presented with complaints of scrotal pathology. Gray scale sonography and color Doppler examination was carried out with linear array high frequency (6-7-9 MHz) for evaluation of patients. During ultrasound scan, on a routine basis patient history, clinical examination were evaluated. Observations were collected in a prescribed Performa for analysis. Results: Out of 108 cases, 19 had pathologies bilaterally and 89 had unilateral involvement. Inflammatory /infective pathologies were noted in largest number of cases – 56 cases (51.8%), followed by Inguino scrotal hernias – 13 cases (12%), congenital and infertility related pathologies in – 09 cases (8.3%) each, neoplastic lesions in – 07 cases (6.4%). Miscellaneous conditions like trauma, torsion and epididymal cyst were noted in 14 cases (12.9%). Conclusions: High frequency ultrasonography with color Doppler is highly accurate and sensitive primary imaging modality for investigation of scrotal pathology in appropriate clinical setting, with adequate history and physical examination.