The US Multi-Society Task Force on Colorectal Cancer, with invited experts, developed a consensus statement and recommendations to assist health care providers with appropriate management of patients with biallelic mismatch repair deficiency (BMMRD) syndrome, also called constitutional mismatch repair deficiency syndrome. This position paper outlines what is known about BMMRD, the unique genetic and clinical aspects of the disease, and reviews the current management approaches to this disorder. This article represents a starting point from which diagnostic and management decisions can undergo rigorous testing for efficacy. There is a lack of strong evidence and a requirement for further research. Nevertheless, providers need direction on how to recognize and care for BMMRD patients today. In addition to identifying areas of research, this article provides guidance for surveillance and management. The major challenge is that BMMRD is rare, limiting the ability to accumulate unbiased data and develop controlled prospective trials. The formation of effective international consortia that collaborate and share data is proposed to accelerate our understanding of this disease.


Phenol degradation with a UV/Ag+/K2S2O8 advanced oxidation process (AOP) was studied in a batch photolytic reactor. The UV irradiation source was a low-pressure mercury vapor lamp that was axially centered and was immersed in the phenol solution. In the UV/ K2S2O8 and Ag+/K2S2O8 system, the degradation of phenol was inefficient with an low concentration K2S2O8 at ambient temperature, and only around 26% and 23%of the phenol was degraded in 3 h , respectively. In the UV/Ag+/K2S2O8 oxidation process, persulfate (S2O82-) was activated by UV irradiation and Ag+ catalysis to produce powerful oxidants, SO4– •.The effects of K2S2O8 concentration, UV irradiation time and Ag+ concentration on the oxidation had been investigated. The experimental results indicated that optimum K2S2O8 concentration was 0.37mmol/L, and Ag+ concentration was 0.185 mmol/L. Phenol and chemical oxygen demand (COD) reduction was analyzed to determine the efficiency of the UV/Ag+/K2S2O8 process in mineralization, where we obtained 77% phenol reduction, and 65% COD reduction, respectively . The efficient mineralization of phenol is based on the in situ formation of the strong oxidant sulfate anion radical.


This article examines whether UK portfolio returns are time varying so that expected returns follow an AR(1) process as proposed by Conrad and Kaul for the USA. It explores this hypothesis for four portfolios that have been formed on the basis of market capitalization. The portfolio returns are modelled using a kalman filter signal extraction model in which the unobservable expected return is the state variable and is allowed to evolve as a stationary first order autoregressive process. It finds that this model is a good representation of returns and can account for most of the autocorrelation present in observed portfolio returns. This study concludes that UK portfolio returns are time varying and the nature of the time variation appears to introduce a substantial amount of autocorrelation to portfolio returns. Like Conrad and Kaul if finds a link between the extent to which portfolio returns are time varying and the size of firms within a portfolio but not the monotonic one found for the USA.


The dire consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic have influenced development of COVID-19 software i.e., software used for analysis and mitigation of COVID-19. Bugs in COVID-19 software can be consequential, as COVID-19 software projects can impact public health policy and user data privacy. The goal of this paper is to help practitioners and researchers improve the quality of COVID-19 software through an empirical study of open source software projects related to COVID-19. We use 129 open source COVID-19 software projects hosted on GitHub to conduct our empirical study. Next, we apply qualitative analysis on 550 bug reports from the collected projects to identify bug categories.  We identify 8 bug categories, which include data bugs i.e., bugs that occur during mining and storage of COVID-19 data. The identified bug categories appear for 7 categories of software projects including (i) projects that use statistical modeling to perform predictions related to COVID-19, and (ii) medical equipment software that are used to design and implement medical equipment, such as ventilators. Based on our findings, we advocate for robust statistical model construction through better synergies between data science practitioners and public health experts. Existence of security bugs in user tracking software necessitates development of tools that will detect data privacy violations and security weaknesses.


Abstract It stands to reason that mythographic sources should have played a role in the composition of Ovid's works, and recent work suggests more and more that this must be the case. But the complex motives behind Ovid's engagement with this tradition have proven difficult to comprehend and to integrate with Ovidian criticism as a whole. There are some fairly clear reasons why this is so. One is the under-standable tendency of critics to emphasize Ovid's use of poetic sources organized along mythographic lines, such as Nicander's Heteroeumena and, more recently, the Hesiodic Catalogue of Women, rather than of conventional prose mythographies. But a greater appreciation of what Ovid may owe to his fellow poets, while obviously a good thing in itself, should not be allowed to obscure his debt to mythographic treatises and encyclopedias. Another factor is that many of Ovid's works flaunt their relationships to various prose genres other than mythography. This the Ars amatoria does by imitating earlier didactic poetry of the metaphrastic tradition, while the Heroides and the exile poetry, in their different ways, thematize their relationship to prose letters. In the case of the Fasti, the obvious importance of the calendar itself as the primary structural model for the poem and the specific verbal parallels that can be found in a few specific calendars, especially the Fasti Praenestini, have tended to distract attention away from the potential influence of other prose genres. As for the Metamorphoses, it now seems clear that the genre of universal history contributed in significant ways to the architecture of that poem. But it is still obviously worth investigating the extent to which the concerns of prose mythographers in particular influenced Ovid's treatment not only of individual myths but especially of the relationships among them. Some important preliminary work has been done, and as an example of how any number of more focused studies might fit into a larger picture, I adduce a selection of examples from the Heroides, the Metamorphoses, and the Fasti to suggest how the characteristic concerns of prose mythographers inform all three poems and of how Ovid transforms what he borrows. In the process, I identify two


This article proposes a large system approximation of the ergodic sum-rate (SR) for cellular multi-user multiple-input multiple-output uplink systems. The considered system has various degrees of freedom, such as clusters of base stations (BSs) performing cooperative multi-point processing, randomly distributed user terminals (UTs), and supports arbitrarily configurable antenna gain patterns at the BSs. The approximation is provably tight in the limiting case of a large number of single antenna UTs and antennas at the BSs. Simulation results suggest that the asymptotic analysis is accurate for small system dimensions. Our deterministic SR approximation result is applied to numerically study and optimize the effects of antenna tilting in an exemplary sectorized 3D small cell network topology. Significant SR gains are observed with optimal tilt angles and we provide new insights on the optimal parameterization of cellular networks, along with a discussion of several non-trivial effects.


Connexin43 is a member of the highly homologous connexin family of gap junction proteins. We have studied how connexin monomers are assembled into functional gap junction plaques by examining the biosynthesis of connexin43 in cell types that differ greatly in their ability to form functional gap junctions. Using a combination of metabolic radiolabeling and immunoprecipitation, we have shown that connexin43 is synthesized in gap junctional communication-competent cells as a 42-kD protein that is efficiently converted to a approximately 46-kD species (connexin43-P2) by the posttranslational addition of phosphate. Surprisingly, certain cell lines severely deficient in gap junctional communication and known cell-cell adhesion molecules (S180 and L929 cells) also expressed 42-kD connexin43. Connexin43 in these communication-deficient cell lines was not, however, phosphorylated to the P2 form. Conversion of S180 cells to a communication-competent phenotype by transfection with a cDNA encoding the cell-cell adhesion molecule L-CAM induced phosphorylation of connexin43 to the P2 form; conversely, blocking junctional communication in ordinarily communication-competent cells inhibited connexin43-P2 formation. Immunohistochemical localization studies indicated that only communication-competent cells accumulated connexin43 in visible gap junction plaques. Together, these results establish a strong correlation between the ability of cells to process connexin43 to the P2 form and to produce functional gap junctions. Connexin43 phosphorylation may therefore play a functional role in gap junction assembly and/or activity.


Risk is seen as the chance of something happening that will have an impact on the achievement of the objectives of an organization or a project. Risk management is a key project management knowledge area and a tool applicable in management of project uncertainties. Project professional acquire knowledge through education or experience through practice. In their daily decision making process, practitioners rely on their expert judgment, past experience, intuition, acquired and accumulated knowledge and gut feelings to make decisions, the absence of risk management which possess a great level of uncertainty. The paper discusses some theories related to risk management, the risk management process and unveils the extent of application of risk management techniques by professionals in the infrastructural and development industry to achieve project success. The research is based on the mixed method: qualitative and quantitative approach. Analysis of structured questionnaire distributed to professionals in the built environment indicates that some 71% of built environment professionals have no knowledge about risk management theories and techniques with only 6.2% of respondents have applied a risk management tool before in their professional practice. The paper concludes by recommending that some key project management knowledge areas be included in curricula of built environment programmes to enhance professional responsibility through rather than relying on experience alone. Thus if the deficit in infrastructural development is to be closed, the key agents of infrastructural development must be abreast with effective technological knowhow through varying risk techniques.


The recent sequencing of the human and other genomes has created the potential to explore and exploit genetic information in ways previously unimaginable--an advancement that will have an impact on virtually every aspect of medicine. Yet few regions in the developing world, which carries the largest burden of disease, have the training or the necessary scientific infrastructure to apply advances in genetics to their specific public health needs. While health research investments to address global diseases such as HIV/AIDS, malaria, and tuberculosis have increased in recent years, many health problems in the developing world remain "neglected." In particular, growing inequalities between the "North" and the "South" in health research capacity, without concerted efforts to address this inequality, do not bode well for the future. Nowhere is the gap in research capacity more evident or growing faster than in the genetic sciences. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] The countries in the South cannot depend on the more scientifically advanced countries of the North, or on multinational pharmaceutical companies, to produce the drugs, vaccines, and diagnostics needed to address all their public health problems. Of the US$73 billion spent globally every year on health research, only about 10 percent is actually allocated for research particular to 90 percent of the world's health problems. Rather, the countries of the South must now assess how they can most effectively build the expertise they will need to have in place ten years from now in order to take advantage of advances in the genetic sciences and the enabling technologies of genomics and bioinformatics. Though many areas will be impacted by these new advances, including genetic clinical services, economics, education, and policy, we focus this discussion on enabling genetics research. While the solutions adopted by each country may vary widely depending on human and financial resources, scientific infrastructure, and competing health priorities, each state can begin to build genetic research capability at some level. We discuss three approaches that have been implemented to initiate that process. Advantages of Genetic Study in Developing Countries Genetics is the study of the individual genes that encode all the heritable information for the development and traits of any organism. Malfunctioning or variant genes can lead to disease. In many instances, populations of developing countries have specific advantages in carrying out genetics research, particularly for common disorders--including cardiovascular disease, cancer, and mental illness--that are leading causes of morbidity and even mortality worldwide. It is likely that small variations in several unidentified genes make significant contributions to the onset and expression of these common disorders, which are further influenced by environmental and behavioral risk factors. Large cohorts of related individuals who manifest these diseases at high frequencies are required to tease out these effects. In many developing countries, families are large, and multiple generations and relations stay close together and share a common environment. Some developing countries even have "population isolates," genetically homogeneous populations that may have originated from a small number of individuals, or founders, which are especially informative for these studies. In other populations, such as those in the Middle East, marriages between close relatives is relatively common, leading to a high rate of genetically-influenced diseases that may be rare in other regions. Armed with the new tools of genomic analysis, geneticists hope to gain footholds against many of these diseases by careful analysis of these special populations. It should be of significant interest to health authorities in these countries to know the causes of these diseases: in the short term, to be able to offer genetic counseling and pre-natal diagnosis to families, and in the longer term to find ways to ameliorate, cure, or eliminate these diseases. …


A key puzzle for contemporary scholars is how capoeira originated but more importantly the way in which it has been transformed. Along these lines, this study focuses on what is most commonly referred to as the mother or the traditional form of capoeira, that is capoeira angola. This research will examine the africanisms of Capoeira Angola and the way in which they have been maintained throughout centuries of its existence. Accordingly, this study places great emphasis on reclaiming the roots and traditions of this art form that has been appropriated and incorporated into Brazilian commercial and mainstream culture. I conducted my field work in Salvador, BA with Grupo de Capoeira Angola Zimba led by Mestre Boca do Rio. The research findings reveal that the Africanisms of capoeira angola—orality, call and response, religiosity, spirituality, reverence to ancestors and the past—are evident in its movements, its structure, its music, instruments and songs. This research underscores the significance of the rituals and traditions of Capoeira Angola and highlights and exalts the African culture and influence that tend to otherwise be left in the shadows.


The commercial pressure frying has been limited to frying huge amount of products due to its dependence on the amount of moisture released from the food for generating the desired pressure. This study investigated the feasibility of using nitrogen gas as a substitute for steam in the pressure frying system. The effects of various process conditions (source of pressure, frying temperature and pressure) on fried product and frying oil qualities were evaluated. Frying experiments were performed on breaded/battered poultry products including chicken nuggets (homogenous) and chicken fillets (marinated, intact muscle). Efforts were also made to develop rapid methods to determine frying oil quality and discriminate among fresh, marginal and discarded oils using a chemosensory (also known as electronic nose) or Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR-ATR). Frying temperature and pressure affected fried food quality. An increase in frying pressure resulted in tender, juicier products with less oil uptake due to high moisture retention. An increase in frying oil temperature resulted in an increased moisture loss, oil uptake resulting in less tender and juicier products. Compared with frying using steam released from food, using nitrogen provided similar or better quality fried products in terms of moisture retention, juiciness and texture. The reused oils from the fryer using nitrogen gas was better in quality than the system using steam as evidenced from the physical, chemical and chemosensory measurements.


Bathymetry for the Savannah River was derived from nine surveys containing34,353 soundings. Two older, overlapping, less accurate surveys wereomitted before tinning the data. The average separation between soundingswas 59 meters. Seven of the nine surveys used dated from 1934. Theremaining two surveys, located in the southeast, dated from 1971 and 1974.The total range of sounding data was 1.2 meters to -15.9 meters at mean lowwater. Mean high water values between 1.9 and 2.5 meters were assigned to theshoreline. Three points were found that were not consistent with the surroundingdata. These were removed prior to tinning. DEM grid values outside theshoreline (on land) were assigned null values (-32676).The Savannah River has seven 7.5 minute DEMs and two one degree DEMs.The 1 degree DEMs were generated from the higher resolution 7.5minute DEMs which covered the estuary. A Digital Elevation Model(DEM) contains a series of elevations ordered from south to northwith the order of the columns from west to east. The DEM isformatted as one ASCII header record (A- record), followed by aseries of profile records (B- records) each of which include a shortB-record header followed by a series of ASCII integer elevations(typically in units of 1 centimeter) per each profile. The lastphysical record of the DEM is an accuracy record (C-record).The 7.5-minute DEM (30- by 30-m data spacing) is cast on theUniversal Transverse Mercator (UTM) projection. It provides coveragein 7.5- by 7.5-minute blocks. Each product provides the samecoverage as a standard USGS 7.5-minute quadrangle but the DEMcontains over edge data. Coverage is available for many estuaries ofthe contiguous United States but is not complete.


The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service works with partners to carryout management activities and events on national wildlife refuges. Partnerships provide financial and conservation management assistance for refuges and allow the Service to expand its breadth of influence to different agencies and organizations nationwide. As partnerships become a more valuable tool utilized by refuges, the Service should consider establishing partnership-based refuges, in which the refuge is owned by multiple organizations and not solely by the Service. This Master of Regional Planning Project evaluates one of the first partnership refuges, Mashpee National Wildlife Refuge, located on Cape Cod, Massachusetts. Through the Service's partnership with eight state, local, and private entities, Mashpee NWR is the only known wildlife refuge in the National Wildlife Refuge System whose land is co-owned and managed by nine different organizations. This project follows the Mashpee Partnership through the beginning stages of the refuge's comprehensive conservation planning process and during revisions made to the refuge's original establishing document, a Memorandum of Understanding, which will be agreed to and signed by all nine organizations. The Mashpee Partnership represents an important step towards the acceptance of partnership-based refuges within the Service. This project highlights the partners and the development of the Mashpee Partnership, and how they have collaboratively planned for the refuge's future. Through case studies, interviews, and an examination of partners' land uses, this project examines the Mashpee Partnership and the influence it has had on the Service and partners. A collaboration toolkit and other recommendations are provided, with the goal that the Service will use Mashpee NWR as a model for establishing new wildlife refuges through partnerships.


institutional repository or funder's repository and make it publicly available immediately. Abstract Over the past decade process mining has emerged as a new analytical discipline able to answer a variety of questions based on event data. Event logs have a very particular structure; events have timestamps, refer to activities and resources, and need to be correlated to form process instances. Process mining results tend to be very different from classical data mining results, e.g., process discovery may yield end-to-end process models capturing different perspectives rather than decision trees or frequent patterns. A process-mining tool like ProM provides hundreds of different process mining techniques ranging from discovery and conformance checking to filtering and prediction. Typically, a combination of techniques is needed and, for every step, there are different techniques that may be very sensitive to parameter settings. Moreover, event logs may be huge and may need to be decomposed and distributed for analysis. These aspects make it very cumbersome to analyze event logs manually. Process mining should be repeatable and automated. Therefore, we propose a framework to support the analysis of process mining workflows. Existing scientific workflow systems and data mining tools are not tailored towards process mining and the artifacts used for analysis (process models and event logs). This paper structures the basic building blocks needed for process mining and describes various analysis scenarios. Based on these requirements we implemented RapidProM, a tool supporting scientific workflows for process mining. Examples illustrating the different scenarios are provided to show the feasibility of the approach.


This essay considers an ordinary differential equation on the phage λ regulatory network model, which has one and only one steady internal equilibrium by simplifying the calculation. Meanwhile, we use Ensemble Kalman Filter (EnKF) approach to compute the ratio of chemical reaction rate constant in the phage gene regulation network and combine the regulatory mechanism of the network to infer the amount of protein or DNA to avoid the high cost of protein-DNA detection. By changing the size of the initial ensemble of parameters, we get estimates with different precision. Numerical results clarify that the Ensemble Kalman Filter have an effect on parameter estimation of the phage regulatory network compared with the least square method. It perhaps is a relatively effective method to calculate unknown parameters in the biochemical network model by parameter estimation to lower the cost of biological experiments.


As one of the most influential work stress models to date, the effort–reward imbalance (ERI) model has attracted, and still attracts, a lot of attention from occupational health researchers. The current volume intends to give an overview of the various ways this model has been applied in research so far. The book is divided in five parts and comprises 16 chapters, written by more than 20 international specialists (eg, Brisson, Dollard, Kivimaki, Siegrist, Theorell, and Tsutsumi). The first part mainly focuses on the ERI model and the measurement of its core constructs. The second addresses research on the link between ERI and (physical and psychological) health. The various chapters in part three are mostly devoted to research on the ERI model that has been conducted in non-Western countries. Part four focuses on extensions of the model beyond paid work (such as in household and family work), and part five closes with a discussion on interventions and policy implications. With this structure, in general, the book indeed provides a broad overview of relevant research themes related to the ERI model.
On a more specific note, I think the book includes both strong and relatively weaker features. In my opinion, these latter primarily manifest themselves in the first part of the book. That is, the first two chapters addressing, respectively, the ERI model and the measurement of its constructs, lack the profundity that one would hope for from chapters illustrating the (measurement of the) core theory of a book, and leave some – relevant – questions still unanswered. For example, in Chapter 1, the theoretical position of the personality trait overcommitment is addressed only rather superficially. Furthermore, Chapter 2 (which focuses on the measurement of the core constructs of the model) lacks the items of the questionnaire(s), which are used to measure the various components of the ERI model, and pays only limited attention to how imbalance is operationalized and computed in empirical research (although Chapter 9 does offer some insight regarding this latter aspect). This is unfortunate, as this information would have equipped the reader with a stronger background to interpret the findings that are discussed in the following sections of the book.
These limitations notwithstanding, I believe that the various authors generally provide an interesting and complete overview of research that has so far been conducted based on the ERI model. In my opinion, a notable contribution of the book is that it moves beyond the "traditional" focus of research on workers in Western countries and pays explicit attention to research that has been conducted in the non-Western world and outside paid work. Specifically, the book includes chapters focusing on ERI in Japan (Chapter 8), China (Chapter 10) and Latin America (Chapter 11), and addresses ERI experienced with respect to socially productive activities (such as caregiving activities, informal help, and voluntary work), close social relationships and school work (Chapter 12) and household and family work (Chapter 13).
Another asset is that the book addresses (inter)national policies that may affect the experience of ERI at work. By doing so, it acknowledges that ERI is not only affected by the specific work context of the worker, but also by processes that operate on a higher ecological level. For example, Chapter 16 shows that integrative policies on a national level (such as the amount of public expenditures devoted to promote reintegration into work, and lifelong learning) may protect against the higher ERI generally associated with lower educational levels. Together with a high quality chapter focusing on interventions (Chapter 15), this provides starting points for improving working life.


This thesis examines macroeconomic policy and business cycles in Nigeria over the period 1970 to 2004. The study is set to fill gaps in three important areas: in-depth study of business cycles in Nigeria; application of dynamic stochastic general equilibrium (DSGE) model using Bayesian technique of solution, this complements the existing system-of-equations and the computable general equilibrium (CGE) models; and the investigation of the role of productivity, money supply, and external trade play in business cycle. Thus, three objectives are associated with this work namely establish and characterize the existence of business cycle in Nigeria, analyze the sources of business cycle fluctuations, and measure the impact of shocks. The literature review carried out in this study is divided into three parts: the theoretical; methodological; and the empirical literature using experiences of industrial economies, the Latin American countries, the Asian economies and Africa.Two approaches are used: atheoretical and the DSGE model which is based on the New Keynesian analysis. The first establishes the stylized facts in relation to the existence of business cycles in Nigeria establishing varying periodicity and volatility. The second method adopts the works of Nason and Cogley (1994) and Scorfheide (2000), but goes beyond these works by incorporating an optimizing export sector.
The DSGE model developed in this study to capture business cycle facts is perturbed by three exogenous shocks namely technology, monetary and export supply in line with the New-Keynesian analysis. The Bayesian method of estimation is applied on the hybrid DSGE-VAR model and the results are presented and discussed and its empirical performance evaluated. The impulse response functions and the variance decomposition are also discussed. The solution of the model is facilitated by the use if DYNARE v3 (Matlab version): a software package designed to solve DSGE models. From the atheoretical statistical method it is found that business cycle fluctuations exist in Nigeria and the observed stylized facts are comparable to those recorded elsewhere. The results suggest the existence of about two complete cycles from one trough to another, which is 1970-1989 (20 years) and 1990-2004 (15 years). These two cycles do not exhibit the same resemblance nor do they happen at constant or predictable internals. From the DSGE-VAR approach, the results show that productivity shock, money supply growth shock and export supply growth shock contributed in the statistical sense in explaining that the Nigerian business cycle is driven by both real and nominal shocks. Finally, a major finding of the study is the fact that the export sector which is supposed to be the engine of growth of the economy is exhibiting weak linkages with the rest of the economy. This suggests a major challenge of policy. In spite of the initial suspicion that business cycles do not exist in the Nigerian economy, this study has shown that they occur and quite at irregular intervals as predicted in the literature. The study also shows the degree of pro-cyclicality or counter-cyclicality between the gross domestic product and a number of its main components. The application of a DSGE model helps in affirming the fact that the Nigerian economy is buffeted by productivity, money supply and terms of trade shocks. Above all, the study shows that this family of models can be applied for policy analysis in Nigeria. In particular they could be used for monetary policy analysis and prescriptions as well as designing value addition export policies. It could also be used to understand some phenomena that may be influencing the course of the economy such as the Dutch-Disease syndrome. This study recommends that documenting business cycles, their dating and turning points, as well as analysis of the periods of booms and bursts should become major research efforts in the immediate future in the economy. It is suggested that the study's approach could become a candidate model for understanding the Nigerian economy. Based on the limitations of the study, a certain number of areas for future research are highlighted. This study has contributed to knowledge in the following ways: First, there have been few studies to unravel the existence and characteristics of business cycle fluctuations in Nigeria. This study has shown that there is business cycle in Nigeria. Second, this study has contributed to quantitative macroeconomic assessment of the Nigerian economy based on the characterization and analyses of business cycles in a Dynamic Stochastic General Equilibrium (DSGE) framework. Third, econometric models provide tools for forecasting, understanding an economy and policy analysis. In this respect, this study has made attempt at providing an alternative and useful contribution to existing short-run macro-economic models particularly in the area of policy analysis. Finally, this study adopts the Bayesian method in the estimation of the DSGE model constructed for the Nigerian economy.


Many problems in NLP require solving a cascade of subtasks. Traditional pipeline approaches yield to error propagation and prohibit joint training/ decoding between subtasks. Existing solutions to this problem do not guarantee nonviolation of hard-constraints imposed by subtasks and thus give rise to inconsistent results, especially in cases where segmentation task precedes labeling task. We present a method that performs joint decoding of separately trained Conditional Random Field (CRF) models, while guarding against violations of hard-constraints. Evaluated on Chinese word segmentation and part-of-speech (POS) tagging tasks, our proposed method achieved state-of-the-art performance on both the Penn Chinese Treebank and First SIGHAN Bakeoff datasets. On both segmentation and POS tagging tasks, the proposed method consistently improves over baseline methods that do not perform joint decoding.


Technological developments in securities markets, most notably high frequency trading, have fundamentally changed the structure and nature of trading over the past fifty years. Policymakers, both domestically and abroad, now face many new challenges influencing the secondary market's effectiveness as a generator of economic growth and stability. Faced with these rapid structural changes, many are quick to denounce high frequency trading as opportunistic and parasitic. This article, however, instead argues that while high frequency trading presents certain general risks to secondary market efficiency, liquidity, stability, and integrity, the practice encompasses a wide variety of strategies, many of which can enhance, not inhibit, the secondary trading market's core goals.

This article proposes a regulatory model aimed at maximizing high frequency trading's beneficial effects on secondary market functions. The model's foundation, however, requires information. By analyzing more data on how high frequency traders interact with markets, regulators can assess the viability and scope of other potentially worthwhile measures targeting more general market threats. Likewise, regulators can determine who is in the best position to bear supervisory responsibility for particular trading activities: agencies, exchanges, traders, or some combination thereof. Crucially, the model also calls on regulators to share information on a global scale: trading no longer only affects a single exchange, a single asset class, or even a single country. By sharing information, regulators can enact more informed regulations, stabilize secondary markets, and minimize regulatory arbitrage. In short, high frequency trading can be a force for good, but a principled and coordinated effort is needed to ensure it fulfills that potential.


To explore whether abstracts and tables of contents impact the scholarly influence of academic work in the field of legal studies we analyze the impact of these document elements on citation to articles published in top 100 law reviews. We observe that on average both abstracts and tables of contents associate with large increases in scholarly influence. Compared to articles that use neither document element, articles that include just an abstract are cited on average roughly 50% more, and articles that include just a table of contents roughly 30% more. Including both document elements corresponds to the largest increase in citation, over 70%. The Article discusses the title question, and in view of the magnitude and persistence of document element effects and evidence indicating that document elements offer an independent explanation of scholarly influence, answers it in the affirmative. It concludes by offering a hypothesis capable of explaining the effects of abstracts and tables of contents. Specifically, that both of these document elements work by reducing cognitive burdens researchers experience when performing research tasks, although sometimes in different ways.


We present a method for conditional time series forecasting based on an adaptation of the recent deep convolutional WaveNet architecture. The proposed network contains stacks of dilated convolutions that allow it to access a broad range of historical data when forecasting. It also uses a rectified linear unit (ReLU) activation function, and conditioning is performed by applying multiple convolutional filters in parallel to separate time series, which allows for the fast processing of data and the exploitation of the correlation structure between the multivariate time series. We test and analyze the performance of the convolutional network both unconditionally and conditionally for financial time series forecasting using the Standard & Poor's 500 index, the volatility index, the Chicago Board Options Exchange interest rate and several exchange rates, and we extensively compare its performance with those of the well-known autoregressive model and a long short-term memory network. We show that a convolutional network is well suited to regression-type problems and is able to effectively learn dependencies in and between the series without the need for long historical time series, that it is a time-efficient and easy-to-implement alternative to recurrent-type networks, and that it tends to outperform linear and recurrent models.


Plant functional traits research has revealed many interesting and important patterns among morphological, physiological, and life-history traits and the environment. These are exemplified in trade-offs between groups of traits such as those embodied in the leaf and wood economics spectra. Inferences from empirical studies are often constrained by the correlative nature of the analyses, availability of trait data, and a focus on easily measured traits. However, empirical studies have been fundamental to modeling endeavors aiming to enhance our understanding of how functional traits scale up to affect, for example, community dynamics and ecosystem productivity. Here, we take a complementary approach utilizing an individual-based model of tree growth and mortality (the allometrically constrained growth and carbon allocation [ACGCA] model) to investigate the theoretical trait space (TTS) of North American trees. The model includes 32 parameters representing allometric, physiological, and anatomical traits, some overlapping leaf and wood economics spectra traits. Using a Bayesian approach, we fit the ACGCA model to individual tree heights and diameters from the USFS Forest Inventory and Analysis (FIA) dataset, with further constraints by literature-based priors. Fitting the model to 1.3 million FIA records—aggregated across individuals, species, and sites—produced a posterior distribution of traits leading to realistic growth. We explored this multidimensional posterior distribution (the TTS) to evaluate trait–trait relationships emerging from the ACGCA model, and compare these against empirical patterns reported in the literature. Only three notable bivariate correlations, among 496 possible trait pairs, were contained in the TTS. However, stepwise regressions uncovered a complicated structure; only a subset of traits—related to photosynthesis (e.g., radiation-use efficiency and maintenance respiration)—exhibited strong multivariate trade-offs with each other, while half of the traits—mostly related to allometries and construction costs—varied independently of other traits. Interestingly, specific leaf area was related to several rarely measured root traits. The trade-offs contained in the TTS generally reflect mass-balance (related to carbon allocation) and engineering (mostly related to allometries) trade-offs represented in the ACGCA model and point to potentially important traits that are under-explored in field studies (e.g., root traits and branch senescence rates).


The Global Compact on Refugees (GCR), adopted in December 2018 by the United Nations (UN) General
Assembly, expresses the political will of UN member states and relevant stakeholders to foster responsibility
sharing for refugees and their host countries. Among GCR key objectives is that of expanding mobility and
admission channels for people in search of international protection through resettlement and
'complementary' pathways of admission. The GCR provides a reference framework to critically assess
European Union (EU) policies in relation to two main issues: first, the role and contribution of the EU and its
Member States towards the implementation of the GCR in ways that are loyal to the Compact and EU Treaties
guiding principles; second, and more specifically, the main gaps and contested issues of existing resettlement
and complementary admission instruments for refugees and would-be refugees implemented at the EU and
Member State levels.
This paper argues that EU policies in the field of asylum and migration have been driven by a 'contained
mobility' approach, which has been recently operationalised in the scope of EU third country arrangements
like the 2016 EU-Turkey Statement. Under this approach, restrictive and selective mobility/admission
arrangements for refugees have been progressively consolidated and used in exchange of, or as incentives
for, third country commitments to EU readmission and expulsions policy. The paper concludes by
recommending that the EU moves from an approach focused on 'contained mobility' towards one that places
refugee's rights and agency at the centre through facilitated resettlement and other complementary
pathways driven by a fundamental rights and international protection rationale.


Few developments have had broader consequences for the public sector than the introduction of the Internet and digital technology. In this book, Darrell West discusses how new technology is altering governmental performance, the political process, and democracy itself by improving government responsiveness and increasing information available to citizens.Using multiple methods--case studies, content analysis of over 17,000 government Web sites, public and bureaucrat opinion survey data, an e-mail responsiveness test, budget data, and aggregate analysis--the author presents the most comprehensive study of electronic government ever undertaken. Among other topics, he looks at how much change has taken place in the public sector, what determines the speed and breadth of e-government adoption, and what the consequences of digital technology are for the public sector.Written in a clear and analytical manner, this book outlines the variety of factors that have restricted the ability of policy makers to make effective use of new technology. Although digital government offers the potential for revolutionary change, social, political, and economic forces constrain the scope of transformation and prevent government officials from realizing the full benefits of interactive technology.


Despite the remarkable progress in person re-identification (Re-ID), such approaches still suffer from the failure cases where the discriminative body parts are missing. To mitigate this type of failure, we propose a simple yet effective Horizontal Pyramid Matching (HPM) approach to fully exploit various partial information of a given person, so that correct person candidates can be identified even if some key parts are missing. With HPM, we make the following contributions to produce more robust feature representations for the Re-ID task: 1) we learn to classify using partial feature representations at different horizontal pyramid scales, which successfully enhance the discriminative capabilities of various person parts; 2) we exploit average and max pooling strategies to account for person-specific discriminative information in a global-local manner. To validate the effectiveness of our proposed HPM method, extensive experiments are conducted on three popular datasets including Market-1501, DukeMTMCReID and CUHK03. Respectively, we achieve mAP scores of 83.1%, 74.5% and 59.7% on these challenging benchmarks, which are the new state-of-the-arts.


Grossular-andradite garnet from three localities of skarn deposits in Thailand were studied by FTIR spectroscopy to investigate the occurrence of hydrous components. Characteristic OH absorption bands were present in the spectra of all samples, with intensities corresponding to OH concentrations in the range 0.01–0.34 wt% H 2 O. The distribution of absorption bands vary relatively strongly among samples, partly correlated with sample composition. Fourteen samples were chosen for step-wise heating experiments at 700–900 °C in air or H 2 atmosphere, with subsequent acquisition of IR spectra. Diffusion coefficients for the dehydration and rehydration reactions were obtained by fitting the changing OH concentrations calculated from the absorbance of the individual OH bands. The results indicate that the rehydration reaction is normally faster than the dehydration reaction. As previously reported, individual bands show a somewhat different behaviour during the experimental heat treatments, which indicates that several different types of OH defects occur in these grossular-andradite solid-solutions. Mossbauer spectra acquired before and after heat treatments show that hydrogen exchange occurs without charge compensation by the Fe redox state.


Amoco Corp. is negotiating to sell a wholly-owned subsidiary, MW Petroleum, to Apache Corp. MW owns large reserves of oil and gas comprising many properties at different stages of engineering, development, and production. The proposed acquisition is a large one for Apache and poses several important financing and valuation problems. This case focuses primarily on valuation.


The objective of this work was to evaluate the effect of genotype and amino acid levels on swine performance, economic returns, and carcass and meat quality. The evaluated genotypes were: MS115 x F1; Duroc x F1 (DCxF1); MS115 x Moura (MS115xMO); Duroc x 25% Duroc, 50% Large White, 25% Moura (DCxMO3). Diet amino acids contents were those recommended for high or medium performance of barrows with high genetic potential. Marbling score was higher in animals fed the lowest level of amino acids. The genotypes DCxF1 and DCxMO3 had higher daily weight gains than MS115xF1 and MS115xMO. The lowest weight gain, adjusted by feed intake, occurred in the genotype MS115xMO. The highest backfat thickness were observed in MS115xMO animals and DCxMO3 males. The highest marbling score occurred in MS115xMO animals and the lowest in MS115xF1 ones. In comparison to the genotypes selected for meat production, Moura breed affected the performance and carcass quality negatively, and affected the meat quality positively, depending on this breed proportion in the genotypes. Duroc breed affected meat quality positively in the genotypes. Diet-reduced amino acid contents increased marbling, regardless of the genotype.


The Yersinia Gram-negative bacteria are pathogenic to humans causing such diseases as bubonic plague. Through the action of a type III protein secretion system, Yersinia injects bacterial proteins necessary to subvert the host cell's normal processes and to promote bacterial survival and replication. Navarro et al. report that, in addition to the previously known inhibitory activity toward guanosine triphosphatases (GTPases) Rac1 and RhoA, Yersinia protein kinase A (YpkA) also inhibits G protein (heterotrimeric guanine nucleotide-binding protein) signaling by phosphorylation of the Gα subunit. The actin cytoskeleton disruption in cells expressing either the full-length YpkA or a C-terminal fragment was prevented if the cells also expressed a constitutively active form of RhoA, suggesting that YpkA acted upstream of this GTPase. G protein-coupled receptors can stimulate reorganization of the actin cytoskeleton through the activation of RhoA. Exposure of cells transfected with the muscarinic receptor to carbachol stimulated Gαq signaling and promoted the formation of stress fibers. Transfection of YpkA, but not a catalytically inactive version, inhibited this Gαq-induced reorganization of the cytoskeleton. YpkA coimmunoprecipitated with Gαq (both GDP-bound and GTP-bound forms) and Gαq was phosphorylated when immunoprecipitated from cells expressing catalytically active YpkA. The phosphorylation site was mapped to a serine within the consensus guanine nucleotide-binding loop by liquid chromatography tandem mass spectrometry. Phosphorylation of this residue appeared to disrupt activation of the G protein as substitution of the serine with aspartate (to mimic phosphorylation) prevented GTP loading. Not only was signaling from the muscarinic receptor to the cytoskeleton blocked by expression of YpkA, so was nuclear translocation of tubby, a transcriptional regulator released from the plasma membrane in response to Gαq-mediated stimulation of phospholipase C. In cells infected with Yersinia, both wild-type and catalytically inactive YpkA disrupted the actin cytoskeleton, presumably because the protein contains two functional domains that can inhibit the actin cytoskeleton: the C-terminal guanine nucleotide dissociation inhibitor region that directly targets RhoA and the serine-threonine kinase activity of the N-terminal region that inhibits G protein signaling to the cytoskeleton. L. Navarro, A. Koller, R. Nordfelth, H. Wolf-Watz, S. Taylor, J. E. Dixon, Identification of a molecular target for the Yersinia protein kinase A. Mol. Cell 26, 465-477 (2007). [PubMed]


Background and objectives The superior cluneal nerves originate from the dorsal rami of primarily the upper lumbar spinal nerves. The nerves cross the iliac spine to innervate the skin and subcutaneous tissue over the gluteal region. The nerves extend as far as the greater trochanter and the area of innervation may overlap anterolaterally with the iliohypogastric and the lateral femoral cutaneous (LFC) nerves. A selective ultrasound-guided nerve block technique of the superior cluneal nerves does not exist. A reliable nerve block technique may have application in the management of postoperative pain after hip surgery as well as other clinical conditions, for example, chronic lower back pain. In the present study, the primary aim was to describe a novel ultrasound-guided superior cluneal nerve block technique and to map the area of cutaneous anesthesia and its coverage of the hip surgery incisions. Methods The study was carried out as two separate investigations. First, dissection of 12 cadaver sides was conducted in order to test a novel superior cluneal nerve block technique. Second, this nerve block technique was applied in a randomized trial of 20 healthy volunteers. Initially, the LFC, the subcostal and the iliohypogastric nerves were blocked bilaterally. A transversalis fascia plane (TFP) block technique was used to block the iliohypogastric nerve. Subsequently, randomized, blinded superior cluneal nerve blocks were conducted with active block on one side and placebo block contralaterally. Results Successful anesthesia after the superior cluneal nerve block was achieved in 18 of 20 active sides (90%). The area of anesthesia after all successful superior cluneal nerve blocks was adjacent and posterior to the area anesthetized by the combined TFP and subcostal nerve blocks. The addition of the superior cluneal nerve block significantly increased the anesthetic coverage of the various types of hip surgery incisions. Conclusion The novel ultrasound-guided nerve block technique reliably anesthetizes the superior cluneal nerves. It anesthetizes the skin posterior to the area innervated by the iliohypogastric and subcostal nerves. It improves the anesthetic coverage of incisions used for hip surgery. Among potential indications, this new nerve block may improve postoperative analgesia after hip surgery and may be useful as a diagnostic block for various chronic pain conditions. Clinical trials are mandated. Trial registration number EudraCT, 2016-004541-82.


We propose and demonstrate a simple leaky structure for terahertz (THz) waveguiding. Different from previously reported air-core THz waveguides, in which a high-reflection-coated cladding layer is designed, the proposed structure here is a simple pipe with a large air core and a thin dielectric layer with uniform but low index. Using commercially available Teflon air pipes, we experimentally confirm that THz waves can be successfully guided in the central air core of 3-m-long pipes with excellent mode qualities, high coupling efficiencies, low attenuation constants, and controllable passband width.


Speaker anonymization aims to suppress speaker individuality to protect privacy in speech while preserving the other aspects, such as speech content. One effective solution for anonymization is to modify the McAdams coefficient. In this work, we propose a method to improve the security for speaker anonymization based on the McAdams coefficient by using a speech watermarking approach. The proposed method consists of two main processes: one for embedding and one for detection. In embedding process, two different McAdams coefficients represent binary bits "0" and "1". The watermarked speech is then obtained by frame-by-frame bit inverse switching. Subsequently, the detection process is carried out by a power spectrum comparison. We conducted objective evaluations with reference to the VoicePrivacy 2020 Challenge (VP2020) and of the speech watermarking with reference to the Information Hiding Challenge (IHC) and found that our method could satisfy the blind detection, inaudibility, and robustness requirements in watermarking. It also significantly improved the anonymization performance in comparison to the secondary baseline system in VP2020.


The contemporary world is witnessing certain critical changes in the domain of grain utilization. With the ongoing efforts to substitute fossil fuels with bio-fuels, there has been a rise in the importance of fuel-use of cereals. This adds a new dimension to the food-feed competition that emerged in the 20th century. Revisiting Yotopoulos food-feed competition model in the context of the large scale corn-ethanol production in the US, this paper attempts to draw out the new theoretical tenets of grain-use dynamics that have emerged with the new food-feed-fuel competition. The crude oil prices appear to play a more important role in the competition for grains between the various end-uses. Along with this, the equilibrating role that animal-feed has played in the grain-use dynamics in developed countries, with large middle-classes, is jeopardized with the advent of grain-based bio-fuels like corn-ethanol. The examination of the issue reveals that the US bio-fuels targets can have more serious implications for food security in the future that what meets the eye.


A 17000 yr fire history from Yellowstone National Park demonstrates a strong link between changes in climate and variations in fire frequency on millennial time scales. The fire history reconstruction is based on a detailed charcoal stratigraphy from Cygnet Lake in the rhyolite plateau region. Macroscopic charcoal particles were tallied from contiguous 1 cm samples of a 6.69-m-long core, and the data were converted to charcoal-accumulation rates at evenly spaced time intervals. Intervals of high charcoal-accumulation rates were interpreted as local fire events on the basis of information obtained from modern charcoal-calibration studies in the Yellowstone region. The record indicates that fire frequency was moderate (4 fires/1000 yr) during the late glacial period, reached highest values in the early Holocene (>10 fires/1000 yr), and decreased after 7000 calendar yr B.P. The present fire regime (2–3 fires/1000 yr) was established in the past 2000 yr. The charcoal stratigraphy correlates well with variations in July insolation through time, which suggests that regional climate changes are responsible for the long-term variations in fire frequency. In the early Holocene, summer insolation was near its maximum, which resulted in warmer, effectively drier conditions throughout the northwestern United States. At this time, the fire frequency near Cygnet Lake was at its highest. After 7000 calendar yr B.P., summer insolation decreased to present values, the regional climate became cooler and wetter, and fires were less frequent. The Cygnet Lake record suggests that long-term fire frequencies have varied continuously with climate change, even when the vegetation has remained constant.


The cephalic and pectoral girdle structures of the cetopsid Cetopsis coecutiens (Cetopsinae) are described and compared with those of another species of the subfamily Cetopsinae, Hemicetopsis candiru, and of one species of the single genus of the subfamily Helogeninae, Helogenes marmoratus, as well as of several other catfishes. Our observations and comparisons support Mo's 1991 and de Pinna's 1998 phylogenetic hypothesis, according to which the cetopsids occupy a rather basal position within the Siluriformes. In addition, our observations and comparisons pointed out three new, additional characters to diagnose the family Cetopsidae, namely: 1) presence of a muscle 6 of the mandibular barbels; 2) medial branchiostegal rays long and stout; 3) mandibular barbels originate on the posteroventral surface of their irregularly shaped basal cartilages.


We report on the discovery of strong tidal features around a dwarf spheroidal galaxy in the Hydra I galaxy cluster, indicating its ongoing tidal disruption. This very low surface brightness object, HCC-087, was originally classified as an early-type dwarf in the Hydra Cluster Catalogue (HCC), but our re-analysis of the ESO-VLT/FORS images of the HCC unearthed a clear indication of an S-shaped morphology and a large spatial extent. Its shape, luminosity (MV = −11.6 mag), and physical size (at a half-light radius of 3.1 kpc and a full length of ∼5.9 kpc) are comparable to the recently discovered NGC 4449B and the Sagittarius dwarf spheroidal, all of which are undergoing clear tidal disruption. Aided by N-body simulations we argue that HCC-087 is currently at its first apocenter, at 150 kpc, around the cluster center and that it is being tidally disrupted by the galaxy cluster's potential itself. An interaction with the nearby (50 kpc) S0 cluster galaxy HCC-005, at M* ∼ 3 × 1010 M☉ is rather unlikely, as this constellation requires a significant amount of dynamical friction and thus low relative velocities. The S-shaped morphology and large spatial extent of the satellite would, however, also appear if HCC-087 would orbit the cluster center. These features appear to be characteristic properties of satellites that are seen in the process of being tidally disrupted, independent of the environment of the destruction. An important finding of our simulations is an orientation of the tidal tails perpendicular to the orbit.


The energy demand of the world is increasing and the depletion of its reserves of fossil fuels are
making energy production more expensive. The challenge therefore falls on researchers to develop novel
ways of meeting this increased energy demand which are both cost-effective and environmentally
friendly. Utilisation of biomass will be vital in achieving this goal because of its abundance and availability.
In particular, levulinic acid has been identified as a valuable chemical feedstock. It can be easily converted
into γ-valerolactone, which has vast potential applications in both the fuel and chemicals industries. The
work presented in this thesis primarily focusses on the hydrogenation of levulinic acid into γ-
valerolactone.
Hydrogenation of levulinic acid is well known, but catalysts that facilitate it usually incorporate
expensive precious metals. In order for a process to become truly sustainable, the catalysts should also
be sustainable. This requirement makes research into the use of cheap and abundant materials as catalysts
desirable. The work presented in this thesis investigated the use of critical, precious metal catalysts
compared with the cheaper, abundant, and non-critical base metals as potential replacements.
An investigation into lactic acid hydrogenation to 1,2-propanediol as a model reaction for
levulinic acid hydrogenation was also carried out. Chapter 3 provides comparative data of a 5 wt.% Ru/C
catalyst prepared by the sol immobilisation method and a commercial 5 wt.% Ru/C catalyst.
In Chapter 4, a variety of preparation parameters for the synthesis of 1 wt.% Ru/C catalysts were
investigated, including the choice of Ru precursor, carbon support, and preparation method. 1 wt.%
Ru/C from this chapter was set as the benchmark for base metals.
The second half of this thesis describes an investigation into the use of base metals as potential
catalysts for levulinic acid hydrogenation. Chapter 5 shows that Cu-ZrO2 catalysts were active for
levulinic acid hydrogenation under much harsher reaction conditions compared with the benchmark (1
wt.% Ru/C). The synthesis of Cu-ZrO2 was optimised through variation of the various preparation
parameters and a detailed investigation was performed.
Chapter 6 shows that the incorporation of Ni into Cu-ZrO2 improved the activity of Cu-ZrO2,
with a product yield of 100 % obtained after 90 minutes. This was attributed to an increased surface area
and the formation of a Ni-Cu alloy. Modifying the preparation method further by adding a ball-milling
step further increased the surface area of the catalyst and resulted in a product yield of 100 % after 30
minutes of reaction. It was found that there was more metal that required present in these catalysts,
indicating a requirement of further work in order to produce catalysts with comparable catalytic activity.


A viscoelastic material stores energy and dissipates it in the thermal domain when subjected to dynamic loading and most interestingly the storage and loss of energy depend upon the frequency of excitation. To find a time domain model to represent the behaviour viscoelastic solids found interest of many researchers. Bagley and Torvik (1983, 1985) represented frequency dependent behaviour of viscoelastic solids by using four-model parameters and differential operators of fractional order. The time-domain model with ordinary integer differential operators was developed by Golla and Hughes (1985), who incorporated the hereditary integral form of the viscoelastic constitutive law in a finite element model. The finite-element equations are derived in the Laplace domain through the Ritz technique. McTavish and Hughes (1992, 1993) extended the Golla-Hughes model and formulated the GHM (Golla-Hughes-McTavish) model for linear viscoelastic structures


Background/Context This concluding article identifies the policy implications of education informatics and explores impacts of current copyright laws, legislative structures, publishing practices, and education organizations. Synthesizing the discussions in the preceding articles, this article highlights the importance of designing information systems to promote open access to information in order to support scholarly communications and provide for the application of scholarship to practice within the field of education. Specific steps are proposed to further advance education informatics and to anchor it within constantly changing technologies in order to address pedagogical, curricular, and policy issues within education. Purpose This article is designed to propose future directions for the development of the field of education informatics and promote additional research. Research Design Information in this article is based on a brief literature review and an analysis of the interrelated implications of the articles in this issue for policy development in education informatics. Conclusions Although education informatics as a term has been used since at least 1980, there is limited literature about this term. This lack of discussion about the integration of education informatics principles and content in copyright and other legislation, in formal education, and in information dissemination practices indicates that education informatics has had little impact as a field of study within the discipline of education. Policy changes at the federal and state government levels and within educational organizations and associations will be needed to promote the development of education informatics as a core part of the discipline of education. Full development of the field of education informatics will require diverse policy changes by multiple audiences. One specific policy change that will be needed is strengthening collaborative copyright as part of the Copyright Commons. This and other changes should focus on improving access to current and historical education literature from both formal and informal channels for scholarly, practitioner, community, and policy audiences. Additionally, schools and colleges of education should create programs of study in education informatics. Consideration of user needs and mobile access to information should drive policy changes in the organization of classrooms, learning, and teacher educator programs. Most of all, policy changes need leadership that is guided by a commitment to the alignment of federal, state, regional, and local data distribution and to the creation of partnerships to align policy with practice and a vision of the role of education informatics in the discipline and practice of education.


The article presents main results of the first in Latvia study addressing the issues of the development of Latvia's sustainable food
production. For detailed research two main themes for Latvia's agri-food sector's sustainability were chosen: 1) the issues related to
further development of the organic farming and processing; where the special attention has been paid to organic milk processing; and
obtaining of organic pigmeat and beef in different Latvia's regions; 2) quality and environment management systems enforcement -
mandatory and voluntary and the trends of implementation of the international management standards (ISO 9001, ISO 22000;
HACCP DS 3027:2002; ISO 14001). The publications, legal documents and databases of Latvia's governmental and nongovernmental
institutions were used as materials and the qualitative and quantitative research methods were applied for this empirical
research. The assessment of present situation and the proposals for further development has been given.


The impact of employment in individuals with mental health problems is multi-faceted especially for those who manage their mental health problems in the community. Research suggests that supported employment may have a positive impact on some aspects of recovery. Nevertheless, little research has been carried out on the lived experiences of service users in mental health employment services. The current study examined this within a supported employment service, who offer opportunities for learning and development, and work experience to individuals with mental health problems. A total of 11 participants took part in semi-structured interviews, which were analysed using interpretative phenomenological analysis, IPA. Three superordinate themes were identified which together captured the way in which participants felt they belonged. It was found that participants felt a sense of acceptance in the service, whilst being given the opportunity to be themselves and rediscover an identity that may have been lost because of their mental health problem. However, participants also suggested that, although the service improved their self-value and gave them somewhere they felt they belonged, they feared the 'real world' outside of the service. Leaving the service was inevitable, and participants were unsure whether they would be met with the same level of support as they had become accustomed to. The current thesis recommends that other services in relevant areas, may wish to consider the approaches used in the current service, whilst taking some consideration of the need for transgression in such services.


Mobile communication markets are known for frequent innovations with potentially high network effects. The conceptual work in economics and innovation studies show how the growth pattern for innovations in such markets could vary depending on the competition and market characteristics. However, the empirical research within this field is limited. This thesis introduces a computer simulation model for analyzing the development, adoption and diffusion of innovations in a mobile market. The model is based on Agent-Based Computational Economics (ACE), and makes use of behavioral theory of firms, economics, and sociology, to leverage the theoretical understating of the diffusion of innovations. The results of the simulation runs on the developed simulation software show that the topologies of social networks have strong effects on diffusion. However, it is also found that in situations where several competing companies launch their innovations sequentially, a winner-takes-all outcome is the most likely when the actors are completely rational. Further, when the information in the market is imperfect, the topology of social networks can create equilibria where the market is shared between several providers. Finally, the variance in consumer characteristics affects both the rate and the outcome of innovation diffusion. The thesis reaffirms that computer simulation is an effective way to combine the sociological and economic theories of innovation diffusion. The results show that there is still a need for more research on the field to better understand why some innovations fail, while other succeed and becomes accepted in the market. The outcome of an innovation launch is shown to be affected by several factors, including timing, network structure, market noise, and consumer characteristics. By using the simulation model to study the influence of such factors in a specific market, service providers may improve their competitive power.


Current investigation has been carried out to evaluate antimicrobial potential of an indigenous medicinal herb Rubus fruticosus fruit, leaves, root and stem. Crude methanolic extracts were screened against eight bacterial strains for example Escherichia coli , Salmonella typhi , Streptococcus aureus , Proteus mirabilis , Micrococcus luteus , Citrobacter , Bacillus subtilis and Pseudomonas aeruginosa by Kirby-Bauer method. Leaves showed zone of inhibition at minimum dose level, root extract has comparable results to the standard Ampicillin applied. Minimum inhibitory concentration (MIC) values against bacteria were determined, the stem extract has 20 µg against all strains tested, the rest has different MIC values against different strains. The order of potency on MIC basis is stem> root> leaves> fruit. The antifungal activity were monitored against nine pathogenic fungal strains, Aspergilus parasiticus , Aspergilus niger , Yersinia aldovae , Candida albicans, Aspergillus effusus , Fusarium solani , Macrophomina phaseolina , Saccharomyces cerevisiae and Trichophyton rubrum , but there is no significant antifungal activity.


Whistler‐mode chorus waves are regarded as an important acceleration mechanism contributing to the formation of relativistic and ultra‐relativistic electrons in the Jovian radiation belts. Quantitative determination of the chorus wave driven electron scattering effect in the Jovian magnetosphere requires detailed information of both ambient magnetic field and plasma density and wave spectral property, which however cannot be always readily acquired from observations of existed missions to Jupiter. We therefore perform a comprehensive analysis of the sensitivity of chorus induced electron scattering rates to ambient magnetospheric and wave parameters in the Jovian radiation belts to elaborate to which extent the diffusion coefficients depend on a number of key input parameters. It is found that quasi‐linear electron scattering rates by chorus can be strongly affected by the ambient magnetic field intensity, the wave latitudinal coverage, and the peak frequency and bandwidth of the wave spectral distribution in the Jovian magnetosphere, while they only rely slightly on the background plasma density profile and the peak wave normal angle, especially when the wave emissions are confined at lower latitudes. Given the chorus wave amplitude, chorus induced electron scattering rates strongly depend on Jovian L‐shell to exhibit a tendency approximately proportional to LJ3. Our comprehensive analysis explicitly demonstrates the importance of reliable information of both the ambient magnetospheric state and wave distribution property to understanding the dynamic electron evolution in the Jovian radiation belts and therefore has implications for future mission planning to explore the extreme particle radiation environment of Jupiter and its satellites.


Since the atomic bomb made its first appearance on the world stage in 1945, it has been clear that we possess the power to destroy our own planet. What nuclear weapons made possible, global environmental crisis, marked especially by global warming, has now made inevitableif business as usual continues.The roots of the present ecological crisis, John Bellamy Foster argues in The Ecological Revolution, lie in capital s rapacious expansion, which has now achieved unprecedented heights of irrationality across the globe. Foster compellingly demonstrates that the only possible answer for humanity is an ecological revolution: a struggle to make peace with the planet. Foster details the beginnings of such a revolution in human relations with the environment which can now be found throughout the globe, especially in the periphery of the world system, where the most ambitious experiments are taking place.This bold new work addresses the central issues of the present crisis: global warming, peak oil, species extinction, world water shortages, global hunger, alternative energy sources, sustainable development, and environmental justice. Foster draws on a unique range of thinkers, including Karl Marx, Thomas Malthus, William Morris, Albert Einstein, Hannah Arendt, Rachel Carson, Vandana Shiva, and Istvan Meszaros. The result is a startlingly radical synthesis, which offers new hope for grappling with the greatest challenge of our age: what must be done to save the earth for humanity and all living species."


COMSOL Multiphysics software, when properly configured, can readily solve modeling problems in the laminar flow regime using the standard Navier-Stokes equations or in the fully turbulent flow regime using the kappa-epsilon model. Failure to solve a particular model is typically manifested by instability in the calculation and a failure of the model to converge. This paper presents a new approach to achieving a convergent model solution through the reconfiguration of the shape of the modeled geometry. This shape-oriented approach stabilizes the convective flow and allows use of the standard Navier-Stokes equations.


OBJECTIVE: To compare perinatal health indicators in a referral hospital in Belo Horizonte, Brazil. METHODS: Perinatal results and indicators of single live births in Hospital das Clinicas of Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais (UFMG), Belo Horizonte, Brazil, were compared for two periods, 1995-1998 and 2003-2006. The chi-square test and Student's t test were applied with 5% significance level and 95% confidence interval. Data were obtained from the Perinatal Information System (Sistema Informatico Perinatal, SIP), Latin American Center for Perinatology (Centro Latinoamericano de Perinatologia, CLAP), Pan American Health Organization (PAHO), Hospital das Clinicas, and from medical records. RESULTS: Mothers were approximately 26 years old on average. The number of prenatal appointments had an average increase of one appointment, regardless of birth weight, and there was a significant decrease in the number of caesarean deliveries in the second period. The average gestational age was 38 weeks in both periods, with a high rate of premature births (17.0 and 16.7%, respectively). The rate of newborns < 2,500 g was high in both periods (17.6 and 16.6%, respectively) with a decrease in the rate of newborns considered small for their gestational age. When congenital malformations were excluded, early neonatal mortality risk decreased from 12.4 per 1,000 live births in the first period to 8.0 per 1,000 live births in the second period, with considerable decrease for newborns with gestational age < 34 weeks. CONCLUSIONS: Important differences were verified concerning health care assistance procedures and perinatal results, and they are compatible with the global improvement in neonatal health observed in the 2003-2006 period. However, the persistence of unfortunate neonatal incidents that can be reduced with the use of available perinatal technologies reveals the need for constant monitoring of perinatal hospital care for all groups of newborns.


2-((Naphthalen-1-or-2-yl)methylene)cyclohexanone (1a,b) were synthesized through condensation of 1- and/or 2-naphthaldehyde with cyclohexanone. The cyclization of 1a,b with substituted hydrazines gave the corresponding hexahydroindazole derivatives 2a,b-6a,b. While on condensation with hydroxylamine hydrochloride and/or thiourea gave benzoisoxazole derivative 7a,b and quinazoline-2-thione derivative 8a,b. Also condensation of 1a,b with guanidine sulphate followed by chloroacetylation gave 10a,b which were condensed with ortho substituted aniline gave quinazoline derivatives 11a,b, 12a,b. Condensation of 1a,b with various active methylene compounds afforded the corresponding chromene derivatives 13a,b-15a,b. The antimicrobial activity of the newly synthesized compounds was done against different gram positive, gram negative bacteria and fungi species. Also the antioxidant activity of these compounds was evaluated.


In 2016, the INSPIRE Conference hosted the first INSPIRE hackathon on volunteered geographic information and citizen observatories, also known as the INSPIRE Hackathon. The organisers, mostly representatives of European research and innovation projects, continued this activity with the next INSPIRE Conference in 2017. The INSPIRE Hackathon is a collaborative event for developers, researchers, designers and others interested in open data, volunteered geographic information and citizen observatories. The main driving force for the INSPIRE Hackathon is provided by experts from existing EU projects, and its primary objective is to share knowledge and experience between the participants and demonstrate to wider audiences the power of data and information supported by modern technologies and common standards, originating from INSPIRE, Copernicus, GEOSS and other initiatives. This paper describes the history and background of the INSPIRE Hackathon, the various INSPIRE-related hackathons already organised, supporting projects, the results of INSPIRE Hackathon 2017 and the authors' vision of future activities.


Low-lying valence excited states of four open-shell triatomic molecules, CNC, C2N, N3, and NCO, are investigated using the electron-attached (EA) and ionized (IP) symmetry-adapted-cluster configuration-interaction (SAC-CI) general-R as well as the full and active-space EA and IP equation-of-motion coupled-cluster (EOMCC) methods. A comparison is made with experiment and with the results of the completely renormalized (CR) CC calculations with singles, doubles, and non-iterative triples defining the CR-CC(2,3) approach. Adiabatic excitation energies of the calculated states are in reasonable agreement with the experimental values, provided that the 3-particle–2-hole (3p-2h) components in the electron attaching operator, as in the EA SAC-CI SDT-R and EA EOMCCSD(3p-2h) approaches, are included in the calculations for the excited states of C2N and CNC which have a predominantly two-electron character. The results also reveal that the active-space EA/IP EOMCC schemes with up to 3p-2h/3h-2p excitations are able to accurately reproduce the results of their much more expensive parent methods while requiring significantly less computational effort. Furthermore, the more 'black-box' CR-CC(2,3) approach calculates the lowest state of each symmetry with the same accuracy as that obtained with the EA/IP SAC-CI SDT-R and EA/IP EOMCCSD(3p-2h/3h-2p) methods, confirming the significance of higher-order correlation effects in obtaining an accurate description of excited states of radicals, particularly the valence excited states of the CNC and C2N species dominated by two-electron processes.


The case for Competitive Intelligence (CI) as an instrument that can enhance the competitiveness of South African companies and South Africa as a country is strong. Various global competitive rankings measurements have indicated over a number of years the areas in which competitiveness is lacking. Moreover, these rankings have indicated that South Africa has failed to improve its position year on year. The fact that the world is becoming increasingly competitive for South African entities is undisputed. Coupled with a fluctuating exchange rate and the country's geographical proximity, this poses unique challenges facing South African managers who have to deal with various regulations and legislative matters. In order to create and sustain an effective knowledge economy and to enhance global competitiveness, South Africa however has to put appropriate strategies/measures in place to stimulate, encourage and grow knowledge practices. Competitive Intelligence (CI) as a means of making more sense of the competitive business environment and to identify opportunities and risks in time to act upon can be effectively used as a means to enhance competitiveness. V aluable lessons from successful CI practices in the business sector and government can be learnt from elsewhere in the world. CI should be investigated and adapted for South Africa 's business environment. It is therefore the aim of this article to first attempt to describe the role of CI in enhancing competitiveness, specifically in South Africa and secondly, to stimulate thought on how to secure momentum in enhancing CI as an academic field by developing relevant CI courses as well as demonstrating the value of CI to companies in South Africa through research and collaboration between academics and the private and public sectors.


Wittgenstein's remarks about music have motivated philosophers to build a comprehensive picture of his philosophy of music, concentrating on the central issues of musical meaning. It is often claimed that, according to Wittgenstein, understanding music consist in grasping the internal relationships between musical events. Musical practice, however, is naturally saturated with what philosophers often call extra-musical meanings. The present study, by considering a musical issue in Haydn's instrumental music, attempts to show that musical language games in the Wittgensteinian sense involve explanations of music that enhance the listener's ability to understand music by broadening his musical competence. Nevertheless, constituting understanding of music, these explanations might use professional musical terms as well as non-musical terms, comparisons, gestures and so on. Thus, though music does not goes beyond itself in the sense of being understood through correlations between purely musical "concepts" and extra-musical contents, it does go beyond itself in musical practice, which involves understanding music through explanations and descriptions of music using various kinds of terms and images.


In this paper we report on an experiment conducted in an attempt to improve further the learning environment in a basic campus course on Object-Oriented Programming and Design given to first-year engineering students studying Computer Science and Engineering. This course has for years had the same traditional set-up that is common also in other engineering schools around the world including lectures, mandatory programming assignments, and a final written exam. What we did was to substitute the lectures for in-class sessions based on a variant of the teaching method known as "flipping the classroom" combined with certain elements of Peer Discussion and Just-in-time teaching. To make all this work, we introduced a web-based MOOC tool into the course. To be able to investigate the quantitative effects of our experiment, we had an experiment class consisting of 70 students taking the course in this new way and a control class of 57 students taking the course in the traditional way. On the final written exam, which was identical for the two classes and marked the same way, 81% of the students in the experiment class passed compared to 60% in the control class. Moreover, the share of students passing with good grades was 58% in the experiment class compared to 32% in the control class. So, not only did the share of students passing the course increase by a third, but also the share of students passing with good grades almost doubled.


Detection of prokaryotic mRNA by the host distinguishes between live and dead microorganisms and enhances the immune response. Vaccines that contain live microorganisms elicit more effective immune responses than do those containing killed microorganisms. This is thought to be due to the replication of the live microorganisms and the presence of virulence factors; however, vaccines containing live bacteria that do not produce virulence factors can also induce effective immunity. This led Sander et al. to hypothesize that factors that are associated with live, but not dead, microorganisms [rather than the pathogen-associated molecular patterns (PAMPs) that are associated with both] might be particularly efficient at inducing innate immune responses. Viable and heat-killed forms of a nonreplicating, nonvirulent strain of Escherichia coli induced activation of nuclear factor κB (NF-κB) and mitogen-activated protein kinase signaling to similar extents in infected mouse macrophages; however, live bacteria induced the production of more interferon-β (IFN-β) than did killed bacteria, and only viable bacteria led to production of the proinflammatory cytokine IL-1β, which requires activation of the NLRP3 inflammasome. The enhanced effects of viable bacteria required the Toll-like receptor adaptor protein TRIF, but not MyD88, and the transcription factor IRF3. In vivo studies with inoculated mice showed that viable, but not killed, bacteria induced IL-1β production and that this required TRIF and components of the inflammasome pathway. In mice, bacteria killed with paraformaldehyde, which in contrast to heat, UV irradiation, or ethanol preserves total RNA, induced IL-1β production to a similar extent to that induced by viable bacteria. Finally, addition of total bacterial RNA to heat-killed bacteria restored their ability to induce IL-1β production in macrophages. Thus, the authors suggest that the detection of viability-associated PAMPs ("vita-PAMPS") by the immune system indicates the heightened threat associated with live, but not dead, bacteria, and that this response might be exploited for the generation of more effective vaccines. L. E. Sander, M. J. Davis, M. V. Boekschoten, D. Amsen, C. C. Dascher, B. Ryffel, J. A. Swanson, M. Müller, J. M. Blander, Detection of prokaryotic mRNA signifies microbial viability and promotes immunity. Nature 474, 385–389 (2011). [PubMed]


We characterize cost function market makers designed to elicit traders' beliefs about the expectations of an infinite set of random variables or the full distribution of a continuous random variable. This characterization is derived from a duality perspective that associates the market maker's liabilities with market beliefs, generalizing the framework of [11,13], but relies on a new subdifferential analysis. It differs from prior approaches in that it allows arbitrary market beliefs, not just those that admit density functions. This allows us to overcome the impossibility results of [10] and design the first automated market maker for betting on the realization of a continuous random variable taking values in {0,1} that has bounded loss without resorting to discretization. Additionally, we show that scoring rules are derived from the same duality and share a close connection with cost functions for eliciting beliefs.


The Asian financial crisis (1997–1998) and the global financial crisis (2007–2009) highlighted the potential value of financial regionalism, i.e., regional-level cooperation in financial policy. This paper argues that there is a mediating role for regional-level institutions of financial regulation between national regulators in Asia and global-level institutions such as the International Monetary Fund and the Financial Stability Board. This potential role includes : (i) monitoring financial markets and capital flows to identify regional systemic risks such as capital flows; (ii) coordinating financial sector surveillance and regulation to promote regional financial stability; and (iii) cooperating with global-level institutions in rule formulation, surveillance and crisis management. This is particularly important in an environment of increasing financial integration and harmonization in the region. The paper considers experiences of the European Union (EU) and Asia in regional financial cooperation and regulation and draws lessons for Asia. The EU represents the most advanced stage of regional financial integration and regulation in the world today, and can provide valuable lessons for Asia. Asia's greater diversity of financial development and openness requires a more nuanced approach to integration. Despite its shortcomings and slow pace, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Economic Community process probably provides the most feasible and relevant model for regulatory cooperation on a voluntary basis. It would be desirable to extend this framework further in Asia, say to the ASEAN+3 countries for a start. Asian economies can also strengthen existing surveillance processes; enhance and diversify the resources, functions and membership of the Chiang Mai Initiative Multilateralization and the Macroeconomic Research Office for surveillance and provision of a financial safety net; and create an Asian financial stability dialogue to monitor regional financial markets, facilitate policy dialogue and cooperation, and secure regional financial stability.


Considering the ever increasing population and industrialization leading to developmental trend of humankind's life, we are hardly able to detect the toxins produced in food products using traditional techniques. In this technique, the production of molecular framework and polymer is done using meta acrylic acid monomers, which are formed via covalence connection between meta acrylic acid monomers (MAA) of white polymer. Here also hydrogenised connection between exotoxin amino acid and meta acrylic acid is made that would function as the selective absorption for that. Then in the second stage, based on the bacterial antibody connection to nanoparticle, a sensor was used. In this part of the research, as the basis for absorption for the recognition of bacterial toxin, medium sized silica nanoparticles of 10 nanometer in the form of solid powder were utilized with Notrino brand. Then the suspension produced from agent-linked nanosilica which was connected to bacterial antibody was positioned near the samples of distilled water, that were contaminated with Staphylococcus aureus bacterial toxin with the density of 10 -3 , so that in case any toxin exists in the sample, a connection between toxin antigen and antibody would be formed. Finally, the light absorption related to the connection of antigen to the particle attached antibody was measured using spectrophotometers. The results indicate that the molecular framework polymer sensor is capable of detecting up to the density of 10 -3 , but not lower than that, whereas using the second sensor, up to 10 -4 of density is detectable. Additionally, the sensitivity of the sensors were examined after 60 days and the first sensor by the day of 28 and the second sensor by the 56 day had confirmatory results and started to decrease after those time periods.


Chromosome instability (CIN) describes an increased rate of chromosome missegregation in mitosis resulting in a failure to maintain the correct chromosomal complement (euploidy). The aberrant chromosomal state of a cell can be classified based on the changes in ploidy, gain or loss of whole chromosomes (aneuploidy) or gross chromosomal rearrangements (GCR), all of which are hallmarks of solid cancers. CIN can be caused by multiple mechanisms involved in chromosome segregation, including a weakened or overactivated mitotic spindle assembly checkpoint, sister chromatid cohesion defects, increased merotelic kinetochore-microtubule attachments or the presence of extra centrosomes. CIN occurs early in cancer development, and is associated with poor prognosis. CIN has long been proposed to contribute to tumour progression. However, recent studies suggest that CIN can either promote or suppress tumour progression, depending on the contexts. Targeting characteristics specific to tumour cells, such as CIN, is an attractive therapeutic avenue.

Key Concepts:

Stable aneuploidy can occur without CIN (e.g. Down syndrome patients with trisomy chromosome 21), but aneuploidy observed in cancer is often caused by CIN.

CIN is a hallmark of solid cancers, occurring early in tumorigenesis, and is associated with poor prognosis.

CIN can arise from defects that affect different steps of chromosome segregation, including the spindle checkpoint, kinetochore-microtubule attachments, sister chromatid cohesion, centrosome duplication and bipolar spindle assembly.

Mutations and misregulation of genes functioning at the spindle checkpoint, at the kinetochore, sister chromatid cohesion and centrosomes are associated with various cancer types.

Germline biallelic mutations in spindle checkpoint gene BUB1B are associated with mosaic variegated aneuploidy (MVA) and predispositions to various types of cancer, strongly supporting a causal link between CIN and cancer development. However, only low frequency of somatic mutations in spindle checkpoint components has been found in spontaneous cancers.

Either a weakened spindle checkpoint or a prolonged activated checkpoint can cause chromosome missegregation, presumably due to premature sister chromatid separation or increased frequency of uncorrected merotelic attachments, respectively.

Extra centrosomes usually cluster to form bipolar spindles, but they undergo a transient multipolar stage, increasing the frequency of merotelic attachments and lagging chromosomes.

Animal models with CIN can either promote or suppress cancers, depending on the genetic background and contexts.

Stable aneuploidy per se does not cause CIN, and is antiproliferative.

CIN can be exploited as a cancer-specific target for selective killing of tumours.

Keywords:

chromosome instability;
aneuploidy;
mitosis;
chromosome segregation;
mitotic spindle checkpoint;
kinetochore-microtubule attachment;
sister chromatid cohesion;
centrosomes;
tumour heterogeneity;
tumour prognosis


Si nanowire (NW) stacks are fabricated by utilizing the scalloping effect of inductively coupled plasma deep reactive ion etching. When two etch windows are brought close enough, scallops from both sides will ideally meet along the dividing centerline of the windows turning the separating material column into an array of vertically stacked strings. Upon further thinning of these NW precursors by oxidation followed by oxide etching, Si NWs with diameters ranging from 50 nm to above 100 nm are obtained. The pattern of NWs is determined solely by photolithography. Various geometries ranging from T-junctions to circular coils are demonstrated in addition to straight NWs along specific crystallographic orientations. The number of NWs in a stack is determined by the number of etch cycles utilized. Due to the precise lithographic definition of NW location and orientation, the technique provides a convenient batch-compatible tool for the integration of NWs with MEMS. This aspect is demonstrated with a microgripper, where an electrostatic actuation mechanism is simultaneously fabricated with the accompanying NW end-effectors. Mechanical integrity of the NW-MEMS bond and the manipulation capability of the gripper are demonstrated. Overall, the proposed technique exhibits a batch-compatible approach to the issue of micronanointegration.