Abstract Syndepositional faults and fractures are known to affect early fluid flow in carbonate platforms. Less clear is whether they are active fluid conduits throughout the entire history of the platform strata. Syndeformational fractures in Permian (late Guadalupian) carbonates exposed in Dark Canyon, Guadalupe Mountains, New Mexico, U.S.A., address this question. Transmitted-light and cathodoluminescent petrography, stable-isotope and fluid-inclusion analyses, and clumped-isotope thermometry show that there were multiple episodes of fracturing, dissolution, cementation, and replacement in the fractures. Dolomite cement or dolomitized marine cements line the walls of some fractures and indicate the syndepositional reflux of evaporated Permian seawaters through the fractures. Fine- to medium-crystalline, luminescently zoned calcite may overlie the dolomite and marine cements, line fracture walls where those phases are absent, or cement karst breccia on fracture walls. The δ18O values of this calcite (−8.8 to −14.0‰ VPDB) and clumped-isotope temperatures (16° to 32°C) indicate precipitation from meteoric fluids (δ18OSMOW of −6.2 to −10.5‰) associated with episodic sea-level lowstands during the development of high-frequency depositional sequences. The early calcites can themselves be fractured, rotated, and recemented, indicating recurrent deformation and meteoric influx. Evaporite cements were once the dominant pore-filling phase in the fractures, forming both before and after the early meteoric cements. The earliest evaporites formed during deposition of Tansill limestone, probably from the same brines that formed dolomites. Evaporites that postdate the early calcite probably did not form until Permo-Triassic burial, when geomechanical analysis indicates that the syndepositional fractures were likely reactivated and brines could have been sourced from overlying bedded evaporite. All evaporite cements subsequently were calcitized, mainly by coarse-crystalline, inclusion-rich calcites that formed from warm (59° to 96°C) fluids. Calculated fluid isotopic compositions (δ18OSMOW of −0.5 to −4.7‰) imply mixing of meteoric and oil-field brines. Carbon isotope values (+2 to −17‰) indicate microbial degradation of hydrocarbons in some of those fluids, but not all. Geomechanical analysis indicates the potential for syndepositional fractures to have failed (reactivated) during Basin and Range extension, and the warm basinal fluids are interpreted to have migrated upward through the fractures during that event. Platform-margin fractures (unassociated with faults) witnessed cooler fluids (59° to 65°C) than outer-shelf fractures (70° to 96°C) because outer-shelf faults tapped waters from greater depths. The most recent fluid flow through the fractures generated dissolution features and laminated speleogenetic calcites, which are interpreted to result from intrastratal karsting associated with exhumation and weathering. Diagenetic features in the syndepositional fractures are equivalent to those observed in the adjacent limestones, suggesting active fluid communication between matrix and fractures throughout the diagenetic history of the rocks. The complex fracture paragenesis also indicates that syndepositional fractures are not only conduits for early fluid-flow networks, but they can also impact a rock's entire diagenetic history if reactivated by changing stress fields.


Iodine deficiency is the most common cause of hypothyroidism worldwide but in areas of Iodine sufficiency, other causes including autoimmunity and iatrogenic factors are more common. During pregnancy, autoimmune thyroid disease, characterized by presence of specific thyroid auto antibodies, is mostly responsible for hypothyroidism. Such females, who often had previous history of repeated abortions, have infants with transient mild elevation of serum TSH above normal reference value for age in initial months of life. This type of transient congenital hypothyroidism, caused by maternal-fetal transfer of TSH-R blocking antibodies, is a rare condition. Here we present a case of newborn with known hypothyroid mother, whose TSH level was found to be raised at age of 1 day and goes back to within the normal range at the age of 17 days without taking treatment.


Although genetic epidemiological studies have suggested that several genetic variants increase the risk for hypertension, the genes that underlie genetic susceptibility to this condition remain to be identified definitively. Large-scale association studies that examine many gene polymorphisms simultaneously are required to predict genetic risk for hypertension. The population of the present study comprised 1940 unrelated Japanese individuals, including 1067 subjects with hypertension (574 men, 493 women) and 873 controls (533 men, 340 women). The genotypes for 33 single nucleotide polymorphisms of 27 candidate genes were determined with a fluorescence- or colorimetry-based allele-specific DNA primer-probe assay system. Multivariate logistic regression analysis with adjustment for age, body mass index, and the prevalence of smoking, diabetes mellitus, hypercholesterolemia, and hyperuricemia revealed that 2 polymorphisms (825C-->T in the G protein beta3 subunit gene and 190G-->A in the CC chemokine receptor 2 gene) were significantly associated with hypertension in men and that one polymorphism (-238G-->A in the tumor necrosis factor alpha gene) was significantly associated with hypertension in women. These results suggest that 2 and 1 genes may be susceptibility loci for hypertension in Japanese men and women, respectively, and that genotyping of these polymorphisms may prove informative for prediction of the genetic risk for hypertension.


This book, developed by the Istituto di Ricerche sulla Pubblica Amministrazione (IRPA) in Rome in conjunction with the IILJ at NYU, seeks to analyze global administrative law through the elaboration and examination of a number of different cases and case studies. The architecture of its contents mirrors the characteristics of this new field, with sections on the emergence of global standards; on the new, complex forms of governance; on global principles for national administrative procedures; on due process; on judicial globalization; on the enforcement of global decisions; on overlapping and conflicting jurisdiction; and on the key field of global security.While the structure appears similar to that followed in the first edition, published in 2006, this new edition makes some important changes. Three sections have been removed, while nine new ones have been added. Most importantly, however, each of the forty-one sections has been considerably extended, and now they all follow the same basic schema: each has a section on the relevant background; a list of materials and sources (with hyperlinks wherever possible); an analysis of the example in question; and a discussion of the various issues to which it gives rise, enabling each author to flag some basic theoretical problems, and to highlight the relations between the different topics examined in the book. Each section concludes with list of recommended further reading, relating specifically to the topic with which it dealt. Lastly, a general bibliography provides an overview of the most relevant works on global legal issues, and particularly global administrative law, divided into twelve different categories.


From the "War on Terror" initiated during the Bush administration to the European conflict over the right to wear Islamic headscarves, the return of religion is a central challenge to inter-national law and policy in the post-Cold War. The legitimacy of international law is based on the claim that the normative foundations of modern sovereignty are agnostic to transcendental truth and political agendas. A sensibility of disenchantment, in other words, sustains the promise of international law's emancipatory character. This article challenges the disenchantment thesis within international law through a historical and discursive analysis that draws upon diverse literature from legal theory, socio-political history, and theology. First, the article provides a revisionist history to the mainstream characterization that international law is a liberal cosmopolitan scheme of governance born through the slow divorce from a natural law and/or Christian orientation (e.g., the secularization thesis). Second, the article analyzes how the disenchantment thesis structures the options within international legal argument today, and in doing so, seeks to demonstrate that these options represent a set of false distinctions that hide the distinctly Christian core of modern international law. In conclusion, the article raises and considers the possibilities and limits of emancipation through international law in relation to its Christian orientation.


In this article Michel Foucault's method of writing a "history of the present" is explained, together with its critical objectives and its difference from conventional historiography. Foucault's shift from a style of historical research and analysis conceived as "archaeology" to one understood as "genealogy" is also discussed, showing how the history of the present deploys genealogical inquiry and the uncovering of hidden conflicts and contexts as a means of re-valuing the value of contemporary phenomena. The article highlights the critical observations of present-day phenomena from which a history of the present begins, paying particular attention to Foucault's concept of "dispositif" and his method of problematization. Foucault's analyses of Bentham's Panopticon, of the disciplinary sources of the modern prison, and of the technology of confession are discussed by way of illustration.


TABLE OF CONTENTS I. INTRODUCTION II. ANTITRUST COURTS' AVOIDANCE OF EXAMINING PATENTS III. REVERSING PRESUMPTIONS A. The Presumption of Validity Is Misplaced in Antitrust Cases B. Changes in Patent Law Suggest That Less Deference Should Be Given to the Incontestability of Patent Rights C. Courts Should Examine a Patent's Validity When an Antitrust Plaintiff Raises the Issue IV. CONCLUSION I. INTRODUCTION "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts," the U.S. Constitution authorizes Congress to grant inventors the right to exclusive use and control of their inventions. (1) However, inventors only have the right to exclude others from using a patented invention--and then only when the patent is valid. unfortunately, many recently challenged patents were found to be enforced beyond their bounds by eager patentees, and a significant number did not hold up under close scrutiny and were declared invalid. (2) While defendants faced with an infringement action can contest the scope and validity of the asserted patent, third parties lack standing to challenge the patent's validity, even though in many cases third parties bear some costs if the litigation settles. (3) one example is reverse settlements in pharmaceutical patent litigation, (4) where third parties, such as insurance companies and state medical programs, have a strong interest in preventing coordination between drug companies. (5) Without standing to challenge the patent directly, affected third parties often must resort to the antitrust laws to prevent collusion between settling parties. When third parties bring antitrust suits challenging competitors' patent agreements, courts grapple with the fact that antitrust and patent laws often conflict. U.S antitrust laws promote competition by declaring illegal " [e]very contract, combination ... or conspiracy, in restraint of trade" and by expressly prohibiting unlawful monopolies. (6) At the same time, Congress grants inventors exclusive use and control of their inventions pursuant to its constitutional authority. (7) The competitive costs of granting temporary exclusive use and control to patent holders are outweighed in the long run by the cumulative innovation incentive that results from granting patents; the incentives created by the reward of patents to inventors spur the invention of technology that might not exist otherwise. Nevertheless, the grant of exclusive use and control does not render patent holders completely immune from the antitrust laws. (8) While in early cases patents provided a complete shield from the antitrust laws, (9) now "[t]he patent laws ... are in pari materia with the antitrust laws and modify them pro tanto." (10) Thus, when the government issues a patent, the resulting monopoly over the technology does not violate the antitrust laws--nor does any related anti-competitive activity--so long as the patentee's activity falls within the confines of the patent. (11) Determining the confines of a patent--its scope--is therefore an important inquiry in an antitrust case that centers on the use of that patent. But recently, courts have refused to even consider the issue, instead relying on a patent's presumption of validity to avoid this central question. (12) Relying upon this historic presumption, several circuit courts--including the Federal Circuit--have held that an antitrust case is not an appropriate venue for contesting a patent's validity. (13) However, some plaintiffs that would have standing in an antitrust case do not have standing in an action challenging patent validity, thus putting these antitrust plaintiffs in the impossible situation of having potential harm without any prospect of relief. This Note asserts that such an application of the presumption of patent validity is erroneous and contrary to the intent underlying the presumption. This incorrect application in antitrust cases can lead courts to uphold agreements that are likely anticompetitive, barring legitimate antitrust victims from seeking the relief to which they are entitled. …


The present chapter deals with the problem of the construction of meaning of figuratively used personal names in the basic constructional schema Det + Xpersonal name + of Y . After a brief overview of two currently dominant philosophical approaches to problems of reference that are at odds with cognitive linguistic views, we proceed to outline a path along which their meaning is developed in several successive steps. The starting point is the enlistment of our total encyclopedic knowledge about the bearers of proper names organized in complex matrixes of domains. We outline how figurative meanings arise in a step by step fashion, involving tiers of metonymic mappings interspersed with metaphoric mappings. In doing so we also demonstrate that the paragon model can be elaborated in such a way that specific mappings become well motivated.The process of the construction of figurative meaning is shown to be complex, dynamic and flexible. Its output can be revised at every step, further enriched with information, or subsequently depleted of it, depending on the cognitive operations employed.


Accurate estimate of the ice-sheet mass balance in Antarctic is very difficult due to complex ice sheet condition and sparse in situ measurements. In this paper, the low-degree gravity field coefficients of up to degree and order 5 derived from Satellite Laser Ranging (SLR) measurements are used to determine the ice mass variations in Antarctica for the period 1993–2011. Results show that the ice mass is losing with -36±13 Gt/y in Antarctica, -42±11 Gt/y in the West Antarctica and 6±10 Gt/y in the East Antarctica from 1993 to 2011. The ice mass variations from the SLR 5×5 have a good agreement with the GRACE 5×5, GRACE 5×5 (1&2) and GRACE (60×60) for the entire continent since 2003, but degree 5 from SLR is not sufficient to quantify ice losses in West and East Antarctica, respectively. The rate of ice loss in Antarctica is -28±17 Gt/y for 1993-2002 and -55±17 Gt/y for 2003-2011, indicating significant accelerated ice mass losses since 2003. Furthermore, the results from SLR are comparable with GRACE measurements.


Aims: Psychiatric symptoms, sleeping problems and stress are increasing in Swedish adolescents. The aim of this study was to test the hypothesis that a combination of two potential stressors (i.e., high academic proficiency and high urbanicity) in a school setting would be related to increased stress levels and stress-related symptoms among pupils. Our second aim was to evaluate correlations between perceived stress and psychiatric symptoms, sleep quality and personality traits. Methods: 202 Swedish high-school students from two schools, one with high academic proficiency in the Metropolitan Malmo area and one of average academic proficiency in a medium-sized town, participated. We used Internet-based versions of the following questionnaires: Symptoms Checklist 90 (SCL-90) for general psychiatric symptoms, Perceived Stress Scale (PSS-14) for stress, Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index (PSQI) for sleep quality and Eysenck Personality Index (EPI) for personality traits. Results: There was no significant difference between the schools in any of the measured scales. Significant correlations between perceived stress and GSI score, PSQI score and the personality trait Neuroticism were observed. Conclusions: This study suggests no difference between the high academic proficiency/metropolitan school and the average academic proficiency/medium-sized town school in perceived stress levels or stress-related psychiatric symptoms.


We address the problem of blind second-order equalization of scalar-valued polynomial channels. When an almost periodic deterministic function modulates the initial symbol sequence, the observation exhibits second-order cyclostationarity. This property is shown to give rise to a structured spectral factorization problem. The identification of the unknown channel is then always possible via a structured version of the subspace method. No assumption on the channel is required, except the knowledge of a lower bound of the order. The estimate is consistent, and this property remains unchanged in the presence of stationary noise and when the symbols are colored.


Problem statement: We have examined the prevalence and association of cardiovascular diseases with respect to obesity and metabolic risk factors clustering among urban and rural Punjabi males aged 20-55 years. Obesity has been defined by increased Waist Circumference (WC), Body Mass Index (BMI) and Waist Hip Ratio (WHR). Metabolic traits such as increased total cholesterol, triglycerides and lipoproteins have also detrimental effect on the development of cardiovascular disease. Approach: This cross-sectional study was carried out on a total of 400 urban and rural origin Punjabi males (200 each from urban and rural). The anthropometric, physiometric and metabolic assessments were through standard procedures. Statistical analysis includes descriptive statistics, correlation, multivariate regression analysis and odds ratios. Results: It observed that males of rural population were at a higher risk to develop cardiovascular diseases compared to their urban counterparts. Rural males had significantly (p<0.001) higher mean values of cardiovascular risk factors with respect to BMI, weight, waist circumference, WHR, fasting glucose, total cholesterol, triglyceride, HDL and CHO-HDL ratio. SBP and DBP have positive association with waist-to-hip ratio, body mass index; waist circumference, skinfolds, pulse pressure, alcohol consumptions, food habit, HDL and triglyceride. Conclusion: Cardiovascular disease risk is found more in rural male Punjabi population due to consumption of more dietary products and leading of more sedentary lifestyle due to the overuse of mechanized substances for agriculture and personal use.


A daily tag return model was developed to estimate shing and natural mortality,
tag reporting rate and catchability with application to lobster sheries. Tag return
data is usually collected with knowledge of the exact date of recapture. By modelling
tags individually, each tag contributes information on shing and natural mortality,
catchability and tag reporting rate to the likelihood. Providing sucient tags are
maintained in the shery to enable recaptures to occur during the shing season,
ner resolution of parameters is possible.
Model performance was tested by simulation of dierent times of release and recapture
as well as a range of dierent seasonal shing patterns typically found in
lobster sheries. Precision and accuracy of estimates were improved when there was
a contrast in shing eort throughout the season or a seasonal closure within the
year. The timing of tag release was not found to aect model performance.
Evaluation of the model was undertaken by comparison of estimates from a previous
study using an identical dataset. Total mortality estimates were equivalent between
models although separation of shing and natural mortality diered between models.
Small improvements in the precision of estimates were obtained for the model that
incorporated exact times of tag release and recapture.
The daily model enabled ner time scale estimates of parameters and this was
explored in the estimate of within season catchability. Penalised spline smoothing
was applied to estimate catchability, resulting in a curve that captured the timing
of biological events such as moulting and mating.
Higher shing mortality estimates were obtained when the shing
eet was separated
into groups based on their reliability at returning tags. This suggests that
shing mortality estimates could be compromised when reporting rate is considered
cosmopolitan across the entire
eet. However, the small number of reliable shers
and their shing patterns, make interpretation of results problematic.
A cost-benet analysis of the use of PIT tags compared to T-bar tags, the standard
tag used in lobster sheries, was undertaken. For a given cost the higher expenses
associated with PIT tags and scanners resulted in fewer lobster being tagged compared
to T-bar tags. The improved tag reporting rate from PIT tags resulted in
improved precision and accuracy of mortality estimates using this technology unless
the tag reporting rate for T-bar tags was substantially increased.


We analyze Neural Ordinary Differential Equations (NODEs) from a control theoretical perspective to address some of the main properties and paradigms of Deep Learning (DL), in particular, data classification and universal approximation. These objectives are tackled and achieved from the perspective of the simultaneous control of systems of NODEs. For instance, in the context of classification, each item to be classified corresponds to a different initial datum for the control problem of the NODE, to be classified, all of them by the same common control, to the location (a subdomain of the euclidean space) associated to each label. Our proofs are genuinely nonlinear and constructive, allowing us to estimate the complexity of the control strategies we develop. The nonlinear nature of the activation functions governing the dynamics of NODEs under consideration plays a key role in our proofs, since it allows deforming half of the phase space while the other half remains invariant, a property that classical models in mechanics do not fulfill. This very property allows to build elementary controls inducing specific dynamics and transformations whose concatenation, along with properly chosen hyperplanes, allows achieving our goals in finitely many steps. The nonlinearity of the dynamics is assumed to be Lipschitz. Therefore, our results apply also in the particular case of the ReLU activation function. We also present the counterparts in the context of the control of neural transport equations, establishing a link between optimal transport and deep neural networks.


Musical enculturation is a complex, multifaceted process that includes the development of perceptual processing specialized for the pitch and rhythmic structures of the musical system in the culture, understanding of esthetic and expressive norms, and learning the pragmatic uses of music in different social situations. Here, we summarize the results of a study in which 6‐month‐old Western infants were randomly assigned to 6 months of either an active participatory music class or a class in which they experienced music passively while playing. Active music participation resulted in earlier enculturation to Western tonal pitch structure, larger and/or earlier brain responses to musical tones, and a more positive social trajectory. Furthermore, the data suggest that early exposure to cultural norms of musical expression leads to early preferences for those norms. We conclude that musical enculturation begins in infancy and that active participatory music making in a positive social setting accelerates enculturation.


An abnormally low concentration of zinc in mother's milk has been associated with clinical nutritional zinc deficiency in premature and term newborns. Defective mammary gland secretion of zinc was suggested as the causative factor. We investigated whether low milk zinc concentration might be reflected in an abnormality of the distribution of zinc between casein, whey, and fat components of the milk, in a reduction in the levels of milk citrate, a zinc-binding ligand, or in abnormal levels of copper and iron. Milk from mothers of four low-birth-weight infants was identified as being deficient in zinc content for the lactational stage. One infant had clinical signs of nutritional zinc deficiency. For two of the three infants with subclinical deficiencies in whom balance study data were available, the apparent zinc balance was negative (-5.7 and -6.0 mumol/kg per day). These milks were examined for content and distribution of zinc, copper, and iron, and citrate concentration. Although total zinc concentration (4.5 to 17.2 mumol/L) was below the 95% prediction interval (15.2 to 59.7 mumol/L) for the lactational stage, the distribution of zinc was normal between milk components. Levels of citrate (1.46 to 5.13 mmol/L) were also within normal limits, as were levels of copper (0.27 to 0.85 mumol/L and iron (0.41 to 1.13 mumol/L). We concluded that there was no indirect evidence of a secretory abnormality in milk zinc deficiency, but speculated that there might instead be an abnormality of zinc uptake by the mammary gland from the plasma.


Redirecting a patient's T-cells against cancer shows tremendous clinical responses in certain tumor types, but potent therapies for ovarian cancer remain limited. Here we describe the preclinical development of three novel cancer immunotherapy platforms. We first isolated an ErbB2(369-377)-specific T-cell receptor (TCR) from a patient who was previously vaccinated against ErbB2, a protein ubiquitously overexpressed in ovarian cancer. We hypothesized that an ErbB2(369-377)-specific TCR can recognize endogenously processed ErbB2 protein in human cancer. This strategy re-directed human T-cells against ErbB2(369-377), conferring recognition of ErbB2(+) HLA-A2(+) tumor cell lines in vitro and in vivo. Together, our results provide a potential therapeutic for adoptive immunotherapy of ErbB2-expressing malignancies. We next targeted B7-H4, a protein highly expressed in cancer with low expression in healthy human tissues. We engineered T-cells with novel B7-H4-specific chimeric antigen receptors (CAR) that recognized both human and murine B7-H4 to test the hypothesis that B7-H4 CAR T-cell therapy can be applied safely in preclinical models. B7-H4 CAR T-cells displayed anti-tumor reactivity against B7-H4(+) human ovarian tumor xenografts followed by delayed, lethal toxicity. Comprehensive study of murine B7-H4 protein distribution uncovered expression in multiple tissues that correlated with widespread histologic lesions. We concluded that long-term engraftment of B7-H4 CAR T-cells mediates lethal, off-tumor toxicity that is likely due to wide expression of B7-H4 in healthy mouse organs. While preclinical murine models of CAR T-cell therapy are widely applied, they are limited by their inability to model the complex human tumor microenvironment and adequately predict safety and efficacy in patients. Therefore, we established a large, outbred canine model of CAR therapy to test the hypothesis that functional tumor-specific CAR T-cells can be generated and applied in patient dogs with spontaneous cancer. Anticanine CD20 (cCD20) mRNA CAR electroporated T-cells exhibited antigen-specific recognition and lysis of cCD20(+) targets. In a first-in-canine study, autologous transfer of cCD20-Zeta CAR T-cells was well tolerated in a dog with relapsed B cell lymphoma. However, anti-tumor activity was transient, suggesting that product optimization is needed. Our study demonstrates feasibility for the use of CAR therapy in companion dogs to evaluate safety and efficacy prior to application in humans. Degree Type Dissertation Degree Name Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) Graduate Group Cell & Molecular Biology First Advisor Daniel J. Powell This dissertation is available at ScholarlyCommons: http://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations/2026 Second Advisor Nicola J. Mason


Copy number variants (CNVs) are an important type of genetic variation and play a causal role in many diseases. However, they are also notoriously difficult to identify accurately from next-generation sequencing (NGS) data. For larger CNVs, genotyping arrays provide reasonable benchmark data, but NGS allows us to assay a far larger number of small (< 10kbp) CNVs that are poorly captured by array-based methods. The lack of high quality benchmark callsets of small-scale CNVs has limited our ability to assess and improve CNV calling algorithms for NGS data. To address this issue we developed a crowdsourcing framework, called CrowdVariant, that leverages Google's high-throughput crowdsourcing platform to create a high confidence set of copy number variants for NA24385 (NIST HG002/RM 8391), an Ashkenazim reference sample developed in partnership with the Genome In A Bottle Consortium. In a pilot study we show that crowdsourced classifications, even from non-experts, can be used to accurately assign copy number status to putative CNV calls and thereby identify a high-quality subset of these calls. We then scale our framework genome-wide to identify 1,781 high confidence CNVs, which multiple lines of evidence suggest are a substantial improvement over existing CNV callsets, and are likely to prove useful in benchmarking and improving CNV calling algorithms. Our crowdsourcing methodology may be a useful guide for other genomics applications.


Environmental protectionism and sustainable development has been gaining increased attention among governments, investors and consumers alike. As a result, firms are facing growing pressure from the various stakeholders to improve their environmental performance. This study is focusing on the food industry, which in recent years has been a subject of increased scrutiny due to their role in resource consumption, waste generation and unsustainable production practices. Our research is aiming to examine how the financial community evaluates the environmental stewardship of food industry companies as proxied by market reactions in response to environmental news. Are all company related environmental news items evaluated equally, and which financial and non-financial firm-specific attributes can influence market responses? Have there been changes in reactions on the stock exchange in the past two decades?


SUMMARY: 1. Introduction - 2. The Vertical and Horizontal Influences - 3. Atheism, laicite and Church - 4. Atheism, laicite and Islam - 5. Today's Popular Sources of Atheism - 6. Conclusion. ABSTRACT: With this article, the Author outlines the legal issues involving the atheism in France, analysing them in the light of the principle of laicite. France has a long history of criticism of religion. Many philosophes of the Enlightenment, for example, have provided the classical writings in this field. In this sense, they were able to aliment two major streams of thought of the magmatic French atheism: one is based on the horizontal influences arising from the effect of increasing worldwide travel with the discovery that people do not necessary share the same views and beliefs about the nature of human being; the other is centred on vertical arguments bubbling up from the past in a very form of scepticism and realism. With its multi-faceted and articulated view, the French atheism has also been promoted by a number of movements devoted to arguing the case for non-belief and for its political expression in laicite. In this manner, the Author tries to demonstrate that, since the Great Revolution and during the long history of the French constitutional system, laicite de combat and atheism has been influencing each other in a constantly shifting process of mutual adaptation.


Chemotaxonomy, also known as chemosystematics, can be regarded as a hybrid science which can classify plants based on their unique extractives (secondary metabolites). In this work, we investigated the chemotaxonomic marks of Paulownia species by studying the extractives of Paulownia tomentosa (Thunb.) Steud. var. tomentosa, a hardwood species widely used in Chinese medicine and pulping industries. Nine phenolic extractives, including two flavonoids (naringenin (1), and quercetin (2)), two phenolic acids (cinnamic acid (3), and gallic acid (4)), and five phenylpropanoid glycosides (cistanoside F (5), acteoside (6), isoacteoside (7), campneoside II (8), and isocampneoside II (9)), were isolated from the n-BuOH soluble fraction of P. tomentosa var. tomentosa bark, by repeated sephadex LH-20 open column chromatography coupled by Thin Layer Chromatography detection. The structures of the phenolic extractives were elucidated and characterized on the basis of their spectroscopical data and physiochemical properties. This was the first time to report the nine extractives from P. tomentosa var. tomentosa bark. Our chemotaxonomic analysis demonstrated that phenylpropanoid glycosides in P. tomentosa var. tomentosa were interesting and phenylpropanoid glycosides may possibly be considered as a useful chemotaxonomic marker within the species of Paulownia.


High Frequency Pound-Drever-Hall Ring Resonator Optical Sensing. (December 2007) James Paul Chambers, B.S., Colorado School of Mines Chair of Advisory Committee: Dr. Christi K. Madsen A procedure is introduced for increasing the sensitivity of measurements in integrated ring resonators beyond what has been previously accomplished. This is demonstrated by a high-frequency, phase sensitive lock to the ring resonators. A prototyped fiber Fabry-Perot cavity is used for comparison of the method to a similar cavity. The Pound-Drever-Hall (PDH) method is used as a proven, ultra-sensitive method with the exploration of a much higher frequency modulation than has been previously discussed to overcome comparatively low finesse of the ring resonator cavities. The high frequency facilitates the use of the same modulation signal to separately probe the phase information of different integrated ring resonators with quality factors of 8.2 x10^5 and 2.4 x10^5. The large free spectral range of small cavities and low finesse provides a challenge to sensing and locking the long-term stability of diode lasers due to small dynamic range and signal-to-noise ratios. These can be accommodated for by a calculated increase in modulation frequency using the PDH approach. Further, cavity design parameters will be shown to have a significant affect on the resolution of the phase-sensing approach. A distributed feedback laser is locked to a ring resonator to demonstrate the present sensitivity which can then be discussed in comparison to other fiber and integrated sensors. The relationship of the signal-to-noise ratio (S/N) and frequency range to the cavity error signal will be explored with an algorithm to optimize this relationship. The free spectral range and the cavity transfer function coefficients provide input parameters to this relationship to determine the optimum S/N and frequency range of the respective cavities used for locking and sensing. The purpose is to show how future contributions to


Despite the successful launch of a new round of multilateral trade negotiations at Doha, the World Trade Organization faces a legitimacy crisis. Protests continue to rock major international economic meetings, and the WTO's role in globalization is being questioned by many observers. This paper examines the contours of this crisis and explores the possibility that the WTO's indirect ties to popular sovereignty – through national governments – provide an insufficient foundation for the trade regime's authority and central role in the emerging structure of global governance. Arguing that the WTO needs to re-establish its legitimacy based on wider links to the public around the world in whose name freer trade is pursued, the paper suggests that the WTO must also re-build its reputation for efficacy in a context where success is no longer measured exclusively in narrow economic terms. To be seen as serving the interests of the world community broadly, the trade regime needs to pursue its economic goals in a fashion that shows sensitivity to other important goals and values, such as poverty alleviation, environmental protection, and the promotion of public health. Long-term success further depends on the trade regime becoming embedded within a broader structure of global governance that provides 'checks and balances' and reinforces the legitimacy of international trade policy making.


Publishing in English represents a major challenge for non-native speakers (NNS) of English since they face the dual requirements of producing good quality research and presenting it in good quality English. Many NNS researchers learn how to write scientific English in a haphazard way, and few receive specific formal training in this field. This leads to misunderstandings on their part about how to write scientific English and what actually constitutes a reliable model to be imitated. Guidance exists in the form of style manuals and published writing courses, but these may prove unwieldy and too time-consuming to consult. We therefore sought to develop a dragand droppable form of online assistance in which NNS researchers' initial drafts are processed didactically as models.


ABSTRACT: Reports of widespread misconduct in organizations have become sadly commonplace. Sexual abuse in the Catholic Church, accounting fraud in large corporations, and physical and sexual harassment in the military implicate not only the individuals involved, but the organizations and fields in which they happened. In this paper we describe such situations as instances of "moral collapse" and develop a multi-level theory of moral collapse that draws on institutional theory as its central orienting lens. We draw on institutional theory because of its explicit concern with the relationships among individual beliefs and actions, the organizations within which they occur, and the collective social structures in which norms, rules and beliefs are anchored. Our theory of moral collapse has two main elements. First, we argue that morality in organizations is embedded in nested systems of individuals, organizations and moral communities in which ideology and regulation flow "down" from moral communities through organizations to individuals, and moral ideas and influence flow "upward" from individuals through organizations to moral communities. Second, we argue that moral collapse is associated with breakdowns in these flows, and explore conditions under which such breakdowns are likely to occur.


Cybersecurity, including the security of information technology (IT), is a critical requirement in ensuring society trusts, and therefore can benefit from, modern technology. Problematically, though, rarely a day goes by without a news story related to how critical data has been exposed, exfiltrated, or otherwise inappropriately used or accessed as a result of supply chain vulnerabilities. From the Russian government's campaign to influence the 2016 U.S. presidential election to the September 2017 Equifax breach of more than 140-million Americans' credit reports, mitigating cyber risk has become a topic of conversation in boardrooms and the White House, on Wall Street and Main Street. But oftentimes these discussions miss the problems replete in the often-expansive supply chains on which many of these products and services we depend on are built; this is particularly true in the medical device context. The problem recently made national news with the FDA-mandated recall of more than 400,000 pacemakers that were found to be vulnerable to hackers necessitating a firmware update. This Article explores the myriad vulnerabilities in the supply chain for medical devices, investigates existing FDA cybersecurity and privacy regulations to identify any potential governance gaps, and suggests a path forward to boost cybersecurity due diligence for manufacturers by making use of new approaches and technologies, including blockchain.


We study radially symmetric solutions of a nonlinear elliptic partial differential equation in R2 with critical Sobolev growth, i. e. the nonlinearity is of exponential type. This problem arises from a wide variety of important areas in theoretical physics including superconductivity and cosmology. Our results lead to many interesting implications for the physical problems considered. For example, for the self-dual Chern–Simons theory, we are able to conclude that the electric charge, magnetic flux, or energy of a non-topological N-vortex solution may assume any prescribed value above an explicit lower bound. For the Einstein-matter-gauge equations, we find a necessary and sufficient condition for the existence of a self-dual cosmic string solution. Such a condition imposes an obstruction for the winding number of a string in terms of the universal gravitational constant.


This thesis has three strands: an investigation into policy and practice in community education, with particular reference to Derbyshire; an exploration of a rationale for setting debate about the concept of community/education within a discourse of spirituality;
an autobiographical/ reflective narrative which seeks to explain how professional and personal interests underpinning the first two strands became interwoven in their present
form, and with what consequences for the content and structure of the thesis. Its core comprises the empirical work in chapters three to six. Based on information derived from questionnaires, interviews, participant observation,
minutes and reports, this describes and analyzes the development and implementation of Derbyshire's community education policy. The role of the Community Tutor is highlighted, together with the perceptions of Tutors and
lay members of Community Education Councils of the work
in which they were engaged. The latter appear as a SWOT analysis, intended to inform continuing practice. Chapter two contextualizes the empirical section by providing an historical overview of ideas and issues that have influenced the development of education, and especially of community schooling, in England. It discusses a number of typologies of community education. Chapters one and seven articulate a personal understanding of `spirit', its place
in contemporary thought, and its possible relationship with `community'. Chapter eight focuses on community itself. It suggests that an `abstract quality'is often sensed in community activities. This influences the use of the term but is not encapsulated in existing definitions. It may be understood in terms of spirituality. Chapter nine draws the strands together. It illustrates how a spiritual dimension might be added to one particular typology, and explores a possible relationship
between existing discourses in community education and concepts of spirituality. Implications for practice are noted. Parallels are drawn between the content of the thesis and the process of writing it. Finally, chapter ten provides an update on recent developments in Derbyshire and locates them within the broader
context of human development.


Corn is the second of carbohydrate sources after rice that holding the most important role as a food source. Sweet corn is the one kind of corn that most people liked. This corn lifespan is early-ripening, have a high price and contain a high sugar that resulting as a business with a good prospects. The one ways that we can do to get a good productivity is with fertilizing. Fertilizing with organic compound such as compost can reduce the toxicity, plant nutrient buffer, repairing soil structure, increasing the efficiency of fertilizer, reducing the risk of erosion and helping on increasing supplied of macro and micro nutrient. This research aim is to get the best richer substance for corn manure compost that can support sweet corn (Zea mays saccharata Sturt) growth and productions. This research implementing experimentally used Complete Random Design, contain 5 treatments with 4 replications. The observing parameter is plant high, weight of dry plant, appearing of male flower, appearing of female flower, corn stem diameter, corn stem length, corn stem weight without husk per plot (g), analysis of C-organic, N, P and K contained on compost. The gained data analyzing used random analyzes and continued with Duncan test leveled 5 %. This research result showed that giving a corn manure as richer substance can increasing N, P and K of corn manure compost and give a same response at growth but it can increasing the sweet corn (Zea mays saccharata Sturt) productions. Keywords : Sweet corn, compost, richer substance


Within the next few years, high-performance chips containing as many as 0.5 billion transistors on a single chip will be produced, containing up to 10,000 meters of on-chip wiring. However, such increased device and wiring densities cannot be achieved with currently used materials. The search is now on for materials that can replace silicon dioxide as the insulator in these future devices. But despite a bewildering number of candidate materials under investigation, a clear winner has yet to emerge.


Abstract Could there be a better instance of ethical conflict at the scene of the modern Western university than the case of Martin Heidegger, who in 1933 became a Nazi, arguably to elevate his own standing and career? In this article I examine the opposing ethical forces that animated Heidegger's brief foray into Nazism, to ask whether the same forces continue to be found in the technocratized university described by Bill Readings. I address Heidegger's own philosophy as a context in which these conflicting ethical forces are confronted, using metaphorical references to Pollyanna and Cujo. This absorption of literary allusions within a contribution to educational philosophy seeks deliberately to break the stranglehold that empiricism has on the discipline of education. It regards the hegemony of empiricism as an ideological fetishism. I am using the work of Jacques Derrida to deconstruct the idea of the university, with Heidegger's political opportunism as symptomatic of current patterns of self-marketing, self-promotion, and entrepreneurialism amongst academics.


Our laboratory has previously demonstrated that treatment of mouse L929 cells with 1 microM neplanocin A results in the metabolic formation of S-neplanocylmethionine (Keller, B.T., and R.T. Borchardt, Biochem. Biophys. Res. Commun. 120:131-137 (1984]. The present study describes an efficient procedure for the purification of this analog from L cells based on its inherent chemical stability in alkaline conditions. Several metabolic effects of S-neplanocylmethionine are also reported. In L cells, S-neplanocylmethionine was determined to have an apparent half-life of 13 hr compared to 1 hr for S-adenosylmethionine during the initial 2 hr of a cycloleucine block. Analysis of polyamine levels in neplanocin A-treated cells showed a 3.8-fold decrease in putrescine and a 1.7-fold decrease in spermidine by 24 hr, reflecting a decrease in the cell growth rate in response to neplanocin A rather than a direct effect of S-neplanocylmethionine on the cellular S-adenosylmethionine decarboxylase. Consistent with these results are our findings that S-neplanocylmethionine does not significantly inhibit purified rat prostate or Escherichia coli S-adenosylmethionine decarboxylase and that [carboxy-14C]S-neplanocylmethionine exhibits no substrate activity with either enzyme. Purified S-neplanocylmethionine was observed to be a weak inhibitor of both S-adenosylmethionine-dependent protein carboxymethyltransferase and lipid methyltransferase in L cell extracts, having an IC50 value of 205 microM (S-adenosylmethionine = 10 microM). Similar studies with [methyl-3H]S-neplanocylmethionine indicate that the analog has little substrate activity in these two L cell methylation reactions and thus appears to act as a poor competitive inhibitor.


Conventional end-tidal CO2 (Pe'CO2) monitoring is difficult and impractical in nonintubated patients who are either sedated or anesthetized while spontaneous respiration is maintained. An alternative technique using nasopharyngeal end-tidal carbon dioxide tension (PNe,CO2) has been developed. The present study evaluates the feasibility and validity of PNe,CO2 as a reliable respiratory monitoring method. Sixty patients in ASA class status I or II and scheduled for elective surgery were divided into two groups. In group 1 (n = 30), conventional Pe'CO2 was used in intubated patients under general anesthesia. In group 2 (n = 30), PNe,CO2 monitoring was used in patients under regional anesthesia with spontaneous respiration maintained. A 12 FG suction catheter, connected to the sampling tube of a CO2 analyzer, was inserted via the nasal airway to within 1 cm of the nasopharyngeal orifice. Arterial blood gas (PaCO2) was sampled 25 minutes after the operation began, Pe'CO2 (group 1) and PNe,CO2 (group 2) were recorded simultaneously. In both groups, PaCO2 was highly correlated with Pe'CO2 (r = 0.6938) and PNe,CO2 (r = 0.8613). The difference between the two values, (a-e')PCO2 = 0.35 +/- 0.33kPa and (a-Ne')PCO2 = -0.1 +/- 0.51kPa, indicates that PNe,CO2 is more closely correlated to PaCO2 than conventional Pe'CO2. The reduced (a-Ne')PCO2 in group 2 may be explained by CO2 rebreathing and a reduced respiratory deadspace during anesthesia and spontaneous breathing. Interestingly, 60% of the (a-Ne')PCO2 measurements were negative values, suggesting that PNe,CO2 and a spatial V/Q mismatch is caused by sedation; higher CO2 production and CO2 rebreathing may explain the results.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)


In areas of cumulative research such as biotechnology, broad patents on fundamental research tools have the potential to create impediments to follow-on research and development. Impediments to R&D may also be created by possible thickets of upstream rights. Whether such impediments actually arise in any given case is of course an empirical question. From an empirical standpoint, the net impact of recent increases in upstream biotechnology rights is far from clear. It is fair to say, however, that one standard market solution to rights thickets - the reduction of transaction costs through collective institutions that pool and exchange rights - has not emerged. Rather, in the commercial arena, significant transaction costs and licensing fees have simply become part of the cost of doing business. Although these costs may have reduced profits, foreseeable sales revenues have been sufficiently high that the profit incentive has not been eliminated. In contrast, when follow-on research is conducted in the university context, or by non-profit institutions that target the developing world, foreseeable payoffs are either highly uncertain or are clearly small. In these contexts, large transaction and licensing costs may pose a more pressing problem. However, at least in the context of low-margin research that targets the developing world, there is reason to be optimistic that the standard solution of collective rights management will actually work. When the follow-on research in question is of demonstrably low commercial value, there is no reason for upstream rightsholders to fear that they are foregoing large downstream rents. Thus, even though conditions in the biotechnology sector may, as a general matter, work against collective action, low-margin research should be an exception. Non-profit institutions such as universities that are highly sensitive to reputational pressures should be the easiest players to enlist. Fortunately, in both agricultural and health-related biotechnology, non-profit institutions own a significant percentage of upstream patents.


This paper develops a novel methodology to measure the quantity of jobs and value of wages embodied in exports for a large number of countries and sectors for intermittent years between 1995 and 2011. The resulting Labor Content of Exports database allows the examination of the direct contribution of labor to exports as well as the indirect contribution via other sectors of the economy for skilled and unskilled labor. The analysis of the new data sets documents several new findings. First, the global share of labor value added in exports has been declining globally since 1995, but it has increased in low-income countries. Second, in line with the standard Hecksher-Ohlin trade model, the composition of labor directly contained in exports is skewed toward skilled labor in high-income countries relative to developing countries. However, that is not the case for the indirect labor content of exports. Third, manufacturing exports are a key source of labor demand in other sectors, especially in middle- and low-income countries. And the majority of the indirect demand for labor spurred by exports is in services sectors, whose workers are the largest beneficiaries of exporting activities globally. Fourth, differences in the labor value added in exports share across developing countries appears to be driven more by differences in the composition of exports rather than in sector labor intensities. Finally, average wages typically increase rapidly enough with the process of economic development to more than compensate the loss in jobs per unit of exports. The paper also includes the necessary information to build the Labor Content of Exports database from the original raw data, including stata do-files and matlab files, as well as descriptions of the variables in the data set.


In Empowered Sarah Banet-Weiser examines the deeply entwined relationship between popular feminism and popular misogyny as it plays out in advertising, online and multi-media platforms, and nonprofit and commercial campaigns. Examining feminist discourses that emphasize self-confidence, body positivity, and individual achievement alongside violent misogynist phenomena such as revenge porn, toxic geek masculinity, and men's rights movements, Banet-Weiser traces how popular feminism and popular misogyny are co-constituted. From Black Girls Code and the Always #LikeAGirl campaign to GamerGate and the 2016 Presidential election, Banet-Weiser shows how popular feminism is met with a misogynistic backlash of mass harassment, assault, and institutional neglect. In so doing, she contends that popular feminism's problematic commitment to visibility limits its potential and collective power.


Decomposition by such an important category as gender helps us understand the economy at the macro level, and design macroeconomic policy, better. It also provides the foundation for advocating equal gender rights and outcomes. But, where gendered policy issues arise in mainstream macroeconomics (income maldistribution, labour market composition, etc.) the subject matter is narrowed by its microfoundations, by focusing on GDP growth and on suboptimal outcomes being explained by market imperfections. An approach which takes gender seriously requires the different epistemology which arises from feminism: it does not rely on dualistic categorisations, but builds on the idea of situated knowledge, which in turn requires a pluralist methodology and an acceptance of fundamental uncertainty. Such a methodology allows for emergent identity, for the cognitive roles of emotion and social convention, and for attention to power other than market power. Reflecting on how limited is the scope for mainstream macroeconomics to address gender, and what is required of a useful alternative approach, provides a clear focus for a more general discussion of the future of macroeconomics. Division of Economics Stirling Management School University of Stirling Stirling FK9 4LA, UK e-mail: firstname.lastname@example.com


textabstractThis thesis deals with the entrepreneurial process from an international perspective. The first part explores which people decide to enter entrepreneurship. A distinction is made between two modes of entrepreneurial entry: taking over an existing firm and starting a new firm. The second part focuses on the exit side and examines the determinants of exit before and exit after business start-up. In addition, the decision to re-enter entrepreneurship after having experienced an entrepreneurial exit is analyzed in this second part.

This thesis is of particular interest to policymakers, partly due to its dynamic approach. That is, this thesis distinguishes between several stages that make up the decision to become an entrepreneur. The stages range from no entrepreneurial activity to intentional, nascent, young, and established entrepreneurship (the "entrepreneurial ladder"). The conclusions of this thesis may help governments to intervene at positions on the entrepreneurial ladder where certain characteristics, such as perceptions about the entrepreneurial environment, hinder entrepreneurial progress or where regions lag behind.

We find that people with pessimistic views about the administrative start-up environment are discouraged in having intentions or undertaking attempts to set up their own businesses (particularly in Europe). Policies should be aimed at tackling inflated perceptions of administrative barriers (in case of misperceptions of the environment) or directly lowering these barriers. Exit before start-up and exit after business start-up have different determinants. For example, urbanization is negatively related to exit before start-up and positively related to exit after start-up. This finding points at the presence of overoptimistic entrepreneurs and strong selection mechanisms in these areas. Furthermore, individuals are inclined to enter the entrepreneurial process again after having experienced an exit. This finding holds true for positive as well as negative exit experiences.


Senior level/graduate level text/reference presenting state-of-the- art numerical techniques to solve the wave equation in heterogeneous fluid-solid media. Numerical models have become standard research tools in acoustic laboratories, and thus computational acoustics is becoming an increasingly important branch of ocean acoustic science. The first edition of this successful book, written by the recognized leaders of the field, was the first to present a comprehensive and modern introduction to computational ocean acoustics accessible to students. This revision, with 100 additional pages, completely updates the material in the first edition and includes new models based on current research. It includes problems and solutions in every chapter, making the book more useful in teaching (the first edition had a separate solutions manual). The book is intended for graduate and advanced undergraduate students of acoustics, geology and geophysics, applied mathematics, ocean engineering or as a reference in computational methods courses, as well as professionals in these fields, particularly those working in government (especially Navy) and industry labs engaged in the development or use of propagating models.


Abstract Study of the materials in the American Museum of Natural History that pertain to the taxon Cormohipparion occidentale Skinner and MacFadden (1977) reveals that at least six species are represented. This is based on data from the cranium, upper dentition, lower dentition, and mandible. The taxa embrace a period of time from about 12.5 Ma to 10 Ma. Major sites or faunas include the Dove Spring Formation (medial Clarendonian, California; Burge Local Fauna (early Clarendonian, Nebraska); Minnechaduza Fauna, Nebraska; MacAdams Quarry, Texas (early medial Clarendonian); Gidley Horse Quarry (late medial Clarendonian, Texas); XMas-Kat, Hans Johnson, and Machaerodus quarries (late medial Clarendonian, Nebraska); and Ash Hollow Formation (late medial Clarendonian, South Dakota). The name Cormohipparion occidentale is restricted to the larger of two species that occur contemporaneously in medial Clarendonian sites in Nebraska and, alone, at the Ed Ross Ranch Quarry, South Dakota. The second species in the XMas-Kat and related quarries is assigned to Cormohipparion matthewi, n.sp. A taxon from the Burge Local Fauna is assigned to Cormohipparion merriami, n.sp. Another taxon from the Burge Local Fauna is assigned to Cormohipparion johnsoni, n.sp. Materials from the Texas sites are allocated as Cormohipparion fricki, n.sp., and Cormohipparion skinneri, n.sp., from the MacAdams Quarry and Gidley Horse Quarry, respectively. Cormohipparion fricki, n.sp., also is represented in the Minnechaduza Fauna, Nebraska. Cormohipparion is restricted geographically to North America. Based on this review, Cormohipparion johnsoni, n.sp., is the most plesiomorphic species of the C. occidentale group of taxa. Cormohipparion quinni is a plausible ancestor (sister-taxon) for the C. occidentale group, but also persisted with it until about 12 Ma. During their radiation, elements of the C. occidentale group demonstrate an increase in upper cheek tooth crown height and complexity of the enamel pattern, as well as an increase in overall cranial size, with each species showing its own mosaic of parameters. The interval of 12.5–10 m.y. witnessed the initiation of a period of climatic cooling and an eventual expansion of vegetation communities toward more open associations, in part showing an increase in grassy areas. Apparently, the C. occidentale group developed and maintained a mixed-feeding adaptation to these conditions, even though it had evolved very hypsodont cheek teeth by about 10 Ma (C. occidentale, s.s.; C. skinneri, n.sp.). Cormohipparion johnsoni, n.sp., and C. merriami, n.sp., are followed by C. fricki, n.sp., at about 12–11.5 Ma, which demonstrates an increased crown height and complexity of the upper cheek teeth along with the persistence of a functional dP1 into the adult condition. At least in C. fricki, n.sp., and likely also C. merriami, n.sp., the pre- and postfossettes of P2 commonly were confluent. All of these features are to be found in early Pannonian C members of Hippotherium of the Old World, and it is likely that a taxon such as C. fricki, n.sp., was associated with the Old World dispersal event that resulted in the presence of H. primigenium. A specimen of Cormohipparion sp. from deposits about 12 Ma old in California shows the proper morphology (enhanced by a significant increase in fossette complexity) to be a possible member of the dispersal population prior to its exit to the Old World at about 11 Ma. Subsequent North American species of the Cormohipparion occidentale group lived from about 11 Ma to 10 Ma and convergently approach (but do not equal) the enamel pattern complexity found in Hippotherium primigenium but surpass it in upper cheek tooth crown height, in the almost complete loss of dP1, and in a diminished frequency of confluence of the pre- and postfossetttes in P2. Two of these species, C. occidentale, s.s., and C. skinneri, n.sp., apparently populated a more northern (Great Plains) versus a southern (Texan) district, with C. occidentale, s.s., being sympatric with the (?secondarily) smaller C. matthewi, n.sp. The sample of C. occidentale, s.s., from the XMas-Kat quarries of Nebraska differs somewhat in a few cranial and dental parameters from samples from the Machaerodus and Hans Johnson quarries. Whereas the material from the XMas-Kat and Machaerodus quarries seems contemporaneous on geological grounds, the age of the sample from the Hans Johnson Quarry is not as securely dated. It is possible that the cranial differences (mainly the size of the preorbital fossa) and dental parameters (the persistence of a small and apparently functionally insignificant dP1 in adult female, but not male, crania) are variations in a contemporaneous but somewhat polymorphic population. Alternatively, it is possible that the Hans Johnson sample, at least, may be chronologically somewhat older than that from the XMas-Kat quarries and that the morphological differences represent in part a more plesiomorphic condition for its specimens.


INTRODUCTION
Mitomycin C is gaining widespread popularity as an adjunctive with trabeculectomy, as it significantly increases the success rate of the procedure. But it is associated with serious sight-threatening complications.

MATERIALS AND METHODS
Twenty eyes planned for trabeculectomy from the glaucoma clinic were enrolled for the study after obtaining an informed consent. The baseline impression cytology was taken. Ten eyes underwent trabeculectomy with mitomycin C (Group A) and the rest underwent trabeculectomy without any antimetabolites (Group B). Impression cytology samples were taken on months 1, 3, 6, 9 and 12.

RESULTS
In Group A, the difference between goblet cell density preoperatively and 12 month postoperatively was statistically significant (p less than 0.0001). In Group B, the difference was not statistically significant. (p = 0.27).

CONCLUSION
Mitomycin C, though used to augment the success rate of trabeculectomy, has deleterious effect on the conjunctival goblet cell population as is evident from the conjunctival impression cytology.


Giant cell arteritis (GCA) is a common form of primary systemic vasculitis in adults, with no reliable indicators of prognosis or treatment responses. We used single cell technologies to comprehensively map immune cell populations in the blood of patients with GCA and identified the CD66b+CD15+CD10lo/–CD64– band neutrophils and CD66bhiCD15+CD10lo/–CD64+/bright myelocytes/metamyelocytes to be unequivocally associated with both the clinical phenotype and response to treatment. Immature neutrophils were resistant to apoptosis, remained in the vasculature for a prolonged period of time, interacted with platelets, and extravasated into the tissue surrounding the temporal arteries of patients with GCA. We discovered that immature neutrophils generated high levels of extracellular reactive oxygen species, leading to enhanced protein oxidation and permeability of endothelial barrier in an in vitro coculture system. The same populations were also detected in other systemic vasculitides. These findings link functions of immature neutrophils to disease pathogenesis, establishing a clinical cellular signature of GCA and suggesting different therapeutic approaches in systemic vascular inflammation.


IFN-α has been applied in medical treatment of various neuroendocrine (NE) tumors, either alone or combination with somatostatin analogues. They can improve clinical symptoms in 50-70% of patients but a significant tumor reduction is only observed in 5-15% patients. Vasostatin (vaso) is believed to be an angiogenic inhibitor. The aim of this study is to evaluate the feasibility to use IFN-α and vasostatin gene therapy in NE tumors. We constructed plasmid vectors carrying human IFN-α2 (hIFN-α2) gene and human vasostatin gene, which were transfected into BON I cell to obtain stable gene-expressing cell lines. We found that in animal tumor model and cell experiments gene transfer of vasostatin caused a faster cell growth and tumor development via down-regulation of the tumor suppressor gene and p27. Cell adhesion, spreading, migration and invasion ability were increased in vaso-expressing BON I cells. Transfecting chicken vinculin could reverse the malignant behavior and restored expression of tumor suppressor genes. Moreover, vinculin knockdown could result in a faster cell growth and an increased colony formation. Condition medium taken from hIFN-α2-expressing BON I cells showed significant antiproliferative effects both on the NE tumor cells, BON I and LCC18, and the endothelial cells, PAE. It also suppressed cell adhesion and cell invasion and inhibited angiogenesis on CAM assay. Mice implanted with a mixture of WT BON cells and hIFN-α2-expressing BON cells (1:1) demonstrated significantly lower tumor incidence and longer tumor doubling time. Furthermore, long-acting IFN-α2b (PEGIntron®) demonstrated a better anti-tumor effect in contrast with IFN-α2b (IntronA®). Intratumoral injection of hIFN-α2 plasmids significantly inhibited NE tumor growth and caused tumor regression. We concluded that gene transfer of vasostatin into BON I cells might cause an enhanced malignant tumor behavior. Therefore, vasostatin therapy can not be recommended for patients with NE tumors. Vinculin might play an important role in NE tumor development and growth regulation. Gene therapy by using plasmid DNA carrying hIFN-α2 gene is feasible and promising in NE tumors.


PURPOSE
The goal of this study is to demonstrate the feasibility of transurethral radical prostatectomy in the canine model. We describe the surgical procedure for natural orifice translumenal endoscopic surgery-radical prostatectomy (NOTES-RP).

MATERIALS AND METHODS
NOTES-RP was performed on six nonsurvival male canines. The 100 watt holmium:yttrium-aluminum-garne laser, 550 μm end-firing fiber, 28F laser resectoscope, 7F stabilizing catheter, and continuous irrigation were used to radically resect the prostate. A Vest vesicourethral anastomosis was performed using a laparoscopic suture device that was delivered through the nephroscope. In the initial cases, the prostate was removed manually; for the last two cases, the prostate was removed endoscopically with a tissue morcellator.

RESULTS
NOTES-RP was successfully executed in all canines. Visualization was not obscured by bleeding. Dissection times ranged from 40 to 120 minutes. Fluid absorption was problematic in cases lasting more than 1 hour, because of the intraperitoneal location of the canine prostate and bladder.

CONCLUSIONS
The feasibility and technique of NOTES-RP was successfully demonstrated in the living canine model.


Stimulus-specific adaptation (SSA) is a phenomenon observed in neural systems which occurs when the spike count elicited in a single neuron decreases with repetitions of the same stimulus, and recovers when a different stimulus is presented. SSA therefore effectively highlights rare events in stimulus sequences, and suppresses responses to repetitive ones. In this paper we present a model of SSA based on synaptic depression and describe its implementation in neuromorphic analog very-large-scale integration (VLSI). The hardware system is evaluated using biologically realistic spike trains with parameters chosen to reflect those of the stimuli used in physiological experiments. We examine the effect of input parameters and stimulus history upon SSA and show that the trends apparent in the results obtained in silico compare favorably with those observed in biological neurons.


Background and purpose: This study aimed at estimating the relationship between air pollution and mortality rate due to cardiovascular diseases (CVD) in Mashhad, Iran 2011, using negative binomial regression. Materials and methods: The dataset of mortality rates due to CVD and different types of these diseases in Mashhad were coded according to ICD 10. The dependent variable was the logaritm of the daily cardiovascular mortality. Independent variables and air pollutants were also determined. The effect of different factors and the estimation of the incidence rate ratio was done with one day lag time. Data analysis was performed in Stata software. Results: Negative binomial regression analysis showed a significant association between the increase in air pollutants and the cardiovascular mortality. By increase in air pollutant variables including CO, SO2 , NOX, NO2, and NO the incidence rate ratio had increased by 1.23 CI:(1.10,1.37), 1.03 CI:(1.01,1.05), 1.001 CI:(1.001,1.003), 1.01 CI:( 1.006,1.014), and 1.002 CI:(1.001,1.003), respectively. No significant relationship was found between the PM10 and PM2.5 and the incidence rate of cardiovascular death. Increase in O3 had an inverse impact on the increase of mortality incidence rate 0.98 CI:(0.97,0.99). Conclusion: Among the air pollutants, CO had the highest effect on CVD death and O3 had a significant inverse impact on CVD mortality rate.


The first objective of this article is to explain what surface plasmons and surface plasmon polaritons are. The term surface plasmons (SPs) was first coined in the middle of the 20th century to study the response of thin metal foils at petahertz frequencies when subjected to fast electron bombardment. SPs are coherent electron oscillations that exist at the interface between two materials where the real part of the permittivity changes sign across the interface. When an SP couples with a photon, the resulting hybrid excitation is called a surface plasmon polariton (SPP). SP refers to the charge oscillations alone, while SPP refers to the entire excitation of the charge oscillations and the electromagnetic (EM) wave. Under the right conditions, the photon can excite a longitudinal wave of electrons in the metal. The second objective is to describe the evolution of these concepts over the years and illustrate their relation to a surface wave and not to a Zenneck wave. Both Zenneck and surface waves are transverse magnetic (TM) waves. The surface waves thus cannot be excited by transverse EM (TEM) waves but rather by an electron beam that can be effectively generated by a source of electrons or a quasiparticle such as an evanescent wave, which can tunnel through the medium and thus excite the electrons. This electron wave produces its own EM wave, and this plasmonic wave is confined to a very small region near the interface. Hence, SPP is a surface wave with a longitudinal field component that propagates at the interface between a metal and a dielectric at petahertz when the conditions are right and can propagate along the metal-dielectric interface at a wavelength that is shorter than that of incident light until its energy is lost either via absorption in the conductivity of the metal or through radiation in free space. The longitudinal surface wave of an SPP is sometimes wrongly associated with a Zenneck wave. A Zenneck wave is produced at the zero of the reflection coefficient of a plane incident TM wave (at the Brewster angle of incidence) on an air-dielectric interface, whereas surface waves are produced when the TM reflection coefficient is infinite. Both the Zenneck wave and the surface wave are TM waves and are nonradiating, as they have, in general, exponentially decaying fields with distance. For the Zenneck wave, the evanescent transverse field components do not change appreciably with frequency (because the phenomenon of Brewster angle is independent of frequency), whereas for a surface wave, with an increase of the frequency the wave is more closely coupled to the surface. This property makes it possible to distinguish between these two evanescent waves. SPP is generally coupled with Raman scattering and not with Rayleigh scattering. These points are illustrated in the remainder of the article. Hence, surface plasmons/polaritrons are surface waves that are the solution of Maxwell's equations unless perhaps there is a resonant Raman scattering, which is equivalent to exciting the structure with an incident frequency corresponding to the electronic absorption bands, as illustrated in "A Survey of the Various Natures of Light Scattering."


The subcellular localisation of proteins in living cells is an important step to determine their function. A common method is the evaluation of fluorescence images. The position of marked proteins, visible as bright spots, enables conclusions concerning their function. In order to determine the subcellular localisation, it is crucial to know the exact positions of the considered cells within an image. These are provided by the segmentation of a corresponding brightfield microscope image. As the resulting segments do not exclusively comprise cells, they have to be classified. Therefore, we propose an approach for the classification of the resulting segments in 'cells' and 'non-cells', which is an essential step of the automatic recognition of cells and thus of the automatic subcellular localisation of proteins in living cells


abstract The Playa Azul earthquake broke the central part of the Michoacan gap along the Mexican subduction zone. The aftershock area estimated from field data for a 6-day period beginning 19 hr after the main shock is 40 km × 20 km. Preliminary focal mechanism of the main shock is consistent with a shallow-dipping thrust fault. Although there is some evidence of seismic quiescence for 5 1 2 yr followed by a foreshock about 3 months before the main shock and an above average microseismic activity in the western part of the epicentral region during the last 4 1 2 months or more, the data is not sufficient quality to assert this conclusion. The Michoacan gap was previously assigned category 3 (Singh et al. , 1981) based on the classification of McCann et al. (1979). The seismic potential of the unbroken segments of this gap (∼45 km to NW and ∼35 km to the SE of the Playa Azul aftershock area) remains uncertain. Corresponding to a rupture length of 40 km, each segment could generate an earthquake of similar magnitude to the Playa Azul earthquake. Unfortunately, the recurrence period of large earthquakes in the region is not known and great/major earthquakes cannot be ruled out.


Risk/return management has not only evolved as one of the key success factors for enterprises especially in the financial services industry, but is in the times of the financial crisis crucial for the survival of a company. It demands powerful and at the same time flexible computational resources making it an almost ideal application for service-oriented computing concepts. An essential characteristic of service-oriented infrastructures is that computational resources can be accessed on demand and paid per use. Taking the estimation of covariances for a portfolio of risky investment objects as an example, we propose quantification for the economic value of fast risk/return management calculations. Our model analyzes the influence factors on the optimal computing capacity dedicated to these calculations and reveals interesting insights in how far the optimal computing capacity depends on market parameters. Our main result is that more volatile markets require a lower computing capacity as the optimal computing capacity depends positively on changes of the market risk but negatively on the risk itself.


A growing number of global organisations are using the Customer Experience Management (CEM) Maturity Model to benchmark their customer experience development and identify where improvements need to be made. And the architects of the framework are now sharing the Model and the accompanying staff questionnaire to support your efforts to measure and improve your organisation's customer experience management. Developed by DHL Freight in conjunction with Strathclyde University Business School, Ovum and Gallup, the CEM Maturity Model is a proven framework to aid all organisations, no matter if they are just embarking on their CEM journey or are already well underway.


in this monograph, the authors report the current advancement in high frequency piezoelectric crystal micromachined ultrasound transducers and arrays and their biomedical applications. piezoelectric ultrasound transducers operating at high frequencies (>20 mhz) are of increasing demand in recent years for medical imaging and biological particle manipulation involved therapy. The performances of transducers greatly rely on the properties of the piezoelectric materials and transduction structures, including piezoelectric coefficient (d), electromechanical coupling coefficient (k), dielectric permittivity (e) and acoustic impedance (Z). piezo-composite structures are preferred because of their relatively high electromechanical coupling coefficient and low acoustic impedance. a number of piezo-composite techniques have been developed, namely "dice and fill", "tape-casting", "stack and bond", "interdigital phase bonding", "laser micromachining" and "micro-molding". however, these techniques are either difficult to achieve fine features or not suitable for manufacturing of high frequency ultrasound transducers (>20 mhz). The piezo-composite micromachined ultrasound transducers (pc-mUT) technique discovered over the last 10 years or so has demonstrated high performance high frequency piezo-composite ultrasound transducers. in this monograph, piezoelectric materials used for high frequency transducers is introduced first. Next, the benefits and theory of piezo composites is presented, followed by the design criteria and fabrication methods. Biomedical applications using pc-mUT and arrays will also be reported, in comparison with other ultrasound transducer techniques. The final part of this monograph describes challenges and future perspectives of this technique for biomedical applications. ASME_Bionano Monograph Jiang_FM.indd vi Manila Typesetting Company 08/29/2017 09:58PM ASME_Bionano Monograph Jiang_FM.indd vii Manila Typesetting Company 08/29/2017 09:58PM Downloaded From: http://asmedigitalcollection.asme.org on 10/21/2018 Terms of Use: http://www.asme.org/about-asme/terms-of-use Downloaded From: http://asmedigitalcollection.asme.org on 10/21/2018 Terms of Use: http://www.asme.org/about-asme/terms-of-use


In the regime of Fresnel diffraction, a novel algorithm is proposed for aperture design for getting expected diffraction patterns. Experiments have verified the feasibility of this method. It may be used in beam transition, optics communication, information encryption, and other related fields.


- In despite of the geographical location, internet connection is provided always and everywhere with the implications of designing of Mobile ad hoc network (MANET). Different types of applications of MANETs are included environment monitoring, military and disaster recovery. The resource-constrained environment of MANET is not allowed to perform the communication processes easily. For the network nodes, the limited batteries are utilized as an equipment. Throughout this process, the major challenging issue is replacing and recharging of these batteries. Within the MANET, the nodes are added without considering the circumstances. To process the communication among nodes, the trustworthy and reliable techniques should be inculcated. The definition of trustworthiness is about the opinion of a node on the other node with the numerical representation. The trust is computed based on the previous communication among current nodes. To address the limitations, a technique of modified multipath routing is needed. By using the network layer, efficiency is achieved in terms of energy utilization as the MANET is an infrastructure-less network and a peer-to-peer network. The routing path is chosen according to the network nodes' current residual condition with the improved modified multipath routing protocol. The proposed technique is performed efficiently in terms of network stability and network's lifetime than the existing methods like MRPC and E-AODV. To determine the proposed method's effectiveness, NS2 software is utilized to assess the simulation results.


This paper argues that contractual savings (assets of pension funds and life insurance companies) contribute to stock market development. And it provides international time-series evidence supporting a causal relationship between contractual savings and stock market development in many countries, particularly in those where capital markets were initially not deeply developed. Catalan, Impavido, and Musalem study the relationship between the development of contractual savings (assets of pension funds and life insurance companies) and non-life insurance and the development of stock markets (market capitalization and value traded). Their contribution lies in providing time-series evidence on a hypothesis that is very popular-but had not been substantiated-among supporters of fully funded pension systems in which funds invest large shares of their portfolios in tradable securities (equities, bonds). The literature is not clear on its assumption regarding causality between contractual savings and capital market development. A one-way or two-way relationship is assumed, usually interchangeably; the authors address the question of which leads empirically. They present the evidence, including descriptive statistics and the results of Granger causality tests, for OECD countries and such countries as Chile, Malaysia, Singapore, South Africa, and Thailand. They do not present a theoretical framework but do explain how the growth of the contractual savings sector is thought to promote financial development. The authors find evidence in the data that causality between institutions and markets either does not exist or, if it exists, runs predominantly from institutions to markets. To a lesser extent, there is simultaneous causality between institutions and markets. Furthermore, there is limited evidence that causality runs only from markets to institutions (the only exception seems to be for non-life insurance in developing countries). Results seem to support the idea that the development of institutional investors is likely to promote the growth of market capitalization more than that of value traded. In developing countries, there seems to be no causality from pension funds to growth in value traded, while there is causality from life and non-life insurance. This paper - a product of the Financial Sector Development Department - is part of a larger effort in the department to study the effects of contractual savings on financial markets. The authors may be contacted at firstname.lastname@example.com, email@example.com, or email@example.com.


Contents: Michael Grenfell/Michael Kelly: Introduction: Bourdieu: Language, Culture and Education - Theory into Practice - Michael Grenfell: Language: Construction of an Object of Research - Trevor Jones: Language Change and Social Change: Temptations of the Populist Fallacy - Ines Brulard/Michel Francard: To What Extent is the Linguistic Habitus of Francophone Belgian Speakers Reflected in their Linguistic Evaluations and Practices? - Fernand Fehlen: Pre-Eminent Role of Linguistic Capital in the Reproduction of the Social Space in Luxembourg - Robert Vann: An Empirical Perspective on Practice: Operationalising Bourdieu's Notions of Linguistic Habitus - David Eick: Discourses on Language and Symbolic Power: Foucault and Bourdieu - J. Daniel Schubert: Anti-Habitus: Schizophrenia and Symbolic Violence - Bridget Fowler: Some Critical Issues in Bourdieu's Sociology of Culture - Caterina Pizanias: Considering the Prospects of On-line Fields of (Techno)Cultural Production - Henry Barnard: Regimes of Value, Cultural Goodwill and the Social Life of Books - Dominique Perron: Societal Crisis and Social Representation in Colette's Work - Rachael Langford: Writing and Resistance: Jules Valles and the Language of Education - Sarah King: Refractions through a National Prism: Bourdieu, Canadian Literature and the University English Curriculum - Michael Kelly: Field and Habitus in Intercultural Communication - Christian Vermehren: Bourdieu and Media Studies - Karl Maton: Extra Curricular Activity Required: Pierre Bourdieu and the Sociology of Educational Knowledge - Rajani Naidoo: Doors of Learning, Gates of Power: Struggle in the South African University Field - Kenneth Ehrensal: Establishing Pedagogic Authority: Accreditation and Staffing of (US) University Business Schools - David James: Making the Graduate: Assessment Events as Social Practices - Phil Hodkinson: Use of Habitus, Capital and Field in Understanding Young People's Career Decision Making - Diane Reay: Making Contact with Teachers: Habitus, Cultural Capital and Mothers' Involvement in their Children's Primary Schooling - Carmel Desmarchelier: Altered Habitus of Mature Aged Students - Roger Cook: Towards a Sociosomatics of Art: Bourdieu's Reflexive Sociology, Contemporary Art and Education - Alex Moore: Unmixing Messages: A Bourdieusian Approach to Tensions and Helping-Strategies in Initial Teacher Education - Derek Robbins: Bourdieu on Language and Education: Conjunction or Parallel Development?


IN4387. The purpose of this course is to learn how to specify the behavior of embedded systems and to experience the design of a provably correct system. In this course you will learn how to formally specify requirements and to prove (or disprove) them on the behaviour. With a practical assignment you will experience how to apply the techniques in practice.


Stratigraphy of the London Clay Formation (Early Eocene) in the Hampshire Basin
Lithological logging and micropalaeontological analysis of selected exposures and boreholes in the London Clay Formation of the Hampshire Basin has enabled detailed correlation and subdivision of the Formation. The sediments are classified into nine main lithofacies, deposited in marine shelf and marginal-marine environments.
The recognition and correlation of numerous minor stratigraphic discontinuities within the Formation enables its subdivision into 22 depositional sequences. Within each sequence, an initial marine-flooding transgressive episode characterised by glauconitic sediments is followed by progradation of shallow marine and marginal marine facies from the basin margin. Cross-stratified sands with basal erosional contacts at the top of some sequences record rapid sea-level falls, with channelling of the shelf. The depositional sequences within the London Clay Formation are mainly fourth order parasequences, and are interpreted as induced by eustatic sealevel fluctuations. The detailed stratigraphic record is used to produce a coastal on1ap curve for the time-interval covered by the London Clay Formation.
85 species of benthonic foraminiferids and 79 species of ostracods are recorded from the London Clay Formation. Their taxonomy is summarised. Other microfossil groups including calcareous 'microproblematica', planktonic foraminiferids, diatoms, serpulids and bryozoa have also been studied. The biostratigraphic significance of all these groups is assessed, and selected biostratigraphic events are utilised for correlation within the Hampshire Basin.
Correlation with other areas in North West Europe is discussed. The biostratigraphic and magnetostratigraphic data is summarised in order to attempt placement of the London Clay Formation within the standard geochronological scale. The palaeogeographical context of the Hampshire Basin during the Early Eocene is assessed.


Fungus-growing ants have interacted and partly coevolved with specialised microfungal parasites of the genus Escovopsis since the origin of ant fungiculture about 50 million years ago. Here, we review the recent progress in understanding the patterns of specificity of this ant-parasite association, covering both the colony/population level and comparisons between phylogenetic clades. We use a modified version of Tinbergen's four categories of evolutionary questions to structure our review in complementary approaches addressing both proximate questions of development and mechanism, and ultimate questions of (co)adaptation and evolutionary history. Using the same scheme, we identify future research questions that are likely to be particularly illuminating for understanding the ecology and evolution of Escovopsis parasitism of the cultivar maintained by fungus-growing ants.


Classical sections, such as the Maidiping and Daqiao Mine sections of South Sichuan (China), expose early Cambrian deposits that are crucial for understanding the biological and environmental evolution of Yangtze Craton. These sequences are rich in Terreneuvian small shelly fossils, which can be assigned to assemblages I and III from South China. The Anabarites trisulcatus–Protohertzina anabarica Assemblage Zone (Assemblage I) is recognized at the lower Maidiping Formation. The second assemblage (Paragloborilus subglobosus–Purella squamulosa Assemblage Zone) cannot be verified in South Sichuan, although previous reports claimed its existence based on the occurrence of Paragloborilus subglobosus. The third assemblage (Watsonella crosbyi Assemblage Zone) is confirmed in the upper Maidiping Formation. The abundant bioclasts in this interval indicate abrasions and bioerosions by winnowing or starved sedimentation. Carbon isotope values from the Maidiping section present no negative excursion at the presumed Ediacaran–Cambrian transition. A positive carbon isotope excursion is observed in the Upper Maidiping Formation (Assemblage III) which is correlated to the ZHUCE excursion in the Dahai Member of eastern Yunnan. The shallow-water deposits of South Sichuan can be correlated with the South China, western Mongolia and Siberia successions based on biozonations and carbon isotope trends. Supplementary material: Isotope data are available at https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.c.5326834 Thematic collection: This article is part of the Advances in the Cambrian Explosion collection available at: https://www.lyellcollection.org/cc/advances-cambrian-explosion


This paper investigates the nexus between consumption and social integration of Chinese migrant workers using survey data with 869 samples from four Chinese provinces. The study suggests the following results: (1) Migrant workers are less integrated in terms of psychological integration and cultural integration, but they are strongly motivated to integrate into host societies; (2) An increase in consumption is associated with an increase in the social integration of migrant workers. This effect is stronger for new-generation migrant workers and weaker for high-income migrant workers; (3) Entertainment consumption plays the most important role in the social integration of migrant workers, whereas the effect of housing consumption on social integration is found to be negative; (4) Among all types of consumption behaviors, rational consumption is beneficial to the social integration of migrant workers, whereas impulsive consumption is harmful. The effects of economic consumption and conspicuous consumption are not significant.


Introduction: Customer Quality (CQ) refers to customer's characteristics and is related to the consumer knowledge, skills and self confidence in active participating in care process and life style improvement. This study was aimed to assess customer quality among people with Rheumatoid Arthritis (RA) according to the patients' perspective. Materials and Methods:This cross-sectional study was carried out on 170 patients who received care from specialist clinics of Isfahan University of Medical Sciences in 2013. Customer Quality was assessed using Comprehensive Quality Measurement in Health care questionnaire (CQMH_CQ). Questionnaire content validity was reviewed and confirmed by 10 experts and its reliability was confirmed based on Chronbach's alpha index (α=0.803). SPSS-17 statistical software was used to analyze the data. Independent Samples T test and ANOVA were conducted to compare CQ score between categorical variables. Results: The average CQ score was 70.25 (13.20). According to self-reported customer quality score, all participants achieved the scores at the level of stage one. Some (9.2%) of participants didn't reach the action stage (stag three), then 90.8% took action in facing with health related problem and finally only 19.8% of participant achieved highest level of Self-management. Customer Quality score of employed patients (P=0.026) and patient who had active disease (P =0.030) were significantly. Customer quality scores of illiterate participants were lower than that of the educated (P= 0.001). Conclusion: According to overall score of customer quality, findings indicate the necessity of patients' involvement in care process and self-thought behavior-change skills for ongoing self-management and enhancing their self care abilities in daily life.


Number of substituted 1, 5-benzodiazepines are known for their biological importance like anti-bacterial, antifungal, anticancer, and anti-inflammatory activity. The present investigation is carried for the synthesis of certain substituted 1, 5-benzodiazepines and carried out their sedative activity. The title compounds have been synthesized from OPD reacts with substituted aryl aldehydes to give substituted 1, 5-benzodiazepines. The newly synthesized compounds have been characterized by IR, 1H NMR and CHN analysis. Selected compounds are screened for sedative activity in vivo using spontaneous locomotor activity model. Few of them exhibited promising activity.


A mathematical model of New Haven Harbor, a shallow embayment with approximately 8 square nautical miles of water surface within boundaries established by Long Island Sound and the mouths of the Quinnipiac, West and Mill Rivers, has been developed. The Harbor has extensive tidal flats and dredged channels which help to produce large lateral variations of velocity and mixing over a tidal cycle. In order to adequately consider these lateral variations, a two-dimensional model of mixing, dispersion, pollutant reactions, and reaeration is made by linking together 28 segments of the Harbor, using a series of mass-balance equations. Mixing, or dispersion, is a complex function of reversing tidal currents, salinity-induced circulation patterns, fresh-water inflow, and the physical boundaries of the Harbor. Field measurements of salinity, dissolved oxygen, BOD, and tidal and hydraulic factors are used, in conjunction with laboratory studies, to evaluate coefficients and rate constants for the model. The linked system of equations is solved by matrix inversion procedures on a large computer. After verification, the model was used to predict the effect of treatment levels, outfall locations, and hydrologic parameters on oxygen levels and water quality m the Harbor. An important aspect of the work is that it presents a rational evaluation of estuarine water quality as a function of tidal mixing, outfall location, and the degree of BOD removal by proposed treatment plants, rather than the acceptance of arbitrary treatment standards,