Myasthenia gravis is an autoimmune disorder of peripheral nervous system, leading to fluctuating muscle weakness. It is caused by circulating antibodies that block acetylcholine nicotinic postsynaptic receptors at the postsynaptic neuromuscular junction. Myasthenic crisis is a life-threatening complication, which is defined as weakness from acquired myasthenia gravis. In this paper we described a 15-year-old boy who was admitted to the Paediatric Intensive Care Unit due to myasthenic crisis. He had suffered not only from myasthenia gravis but also hypothyroidism, cerebral palsy and epilepsy. The patient required mechanical ventilation and was successfully treated with both plasmapheresis and intravenous immunoglobulins. He recovered from the crisis and then thymectomy was performed. Perioperative period and anaesthesia passed uncomplicated. Discharged home from the hospital after 2.5 month-treatment, for the last 4 years, he has only come on scheduled outpatient medical appointments. This case reveals that myasthenic crisis, albeit rare, may occur in male adolescents. In such cases multidisciplinary care followed by surgery becomes a procedure of choice. Concomitant medical problems, if well controlled, do not affect the results of outcome of the underlying disease.


Michael Moore is America's favourite thorn in the side. With his patented blend of comic provocation and serious advocacy, Moore issues his own Sorry State of the Nation address. In STUPID WHITE MEN, he provides a much-needed alternative to the steady, "let's-line-up-behind-the-President" drumbeat of today's commentators. Few have been willing to speak out with a different point of view lately - until now. Michael Moore is proud to be an American and believes that the strength of a democracy is seen by how well it insures the fullest possible discussion of the issues of the day. Starting with the farcical shenanigans surrounding the November 2000 coup - er, election - in Florida, he reviews the collection of corporate-friendly career politicians George W Bush has chosen to prop up his administration, and confronts Bush in a comic, yet thought-provoking open letter. He takes on issues as diverse as global warming, commercialism in schools, and even the continuing spectre of racism in US society. He challenges Yasser Arafat to mount a campaign of non-violent civil disobedience, challenges employers to hire only black people, even challenges the male gender to clean up its act if men are going to avoid extinction. From the hapless presidency of George W to the sloppy explosion of the tech-stock bubble to the consumer debt epidemic - from the spread of mad-cow disease to Bush's scorched-earth environmental policy - America is collapsing into a political, ethical, fianancial and physical slag heap and Moore leaves no radioactive stone unturned along the way. Entertaining and astonishing in equal measure, STUPID WHITE MEN is the latest and most powerful in Michael Moore's series of acts of satirical subversion, sure to cause controversy.


Abstract The Neogene paleoisland from the area of Gargano, Italy, has yielded numerous fossil vertebrates, some of them showing extraordinary morphological peculiarities due to island evolution. Among them, Microtia (Freudenthal 1976) is the dominant rodent genus in the Gargano palaeofauna and is represented by at least three evolutionary lineages. The incisors are used to describe the size evolution in these lineages, and we come to the conclusion that these lineages did not follow the same evolutionary trend: two of them evolve toward larger size, while the third one shows a slight decrease in size. In addition, we describe the evolution of the curvature of the lower incisor, compared with that of body-size. The evolution of Microtia is characterized by a specialization for burrowing, which may be accompanied by either an increase or a decrease in size. Finally, we propose that the evolutionary change among these three sympatric lineages allowed Microtia to minimize competition between species, by avoiding size overlaps.


Abstract The WURM project is a database of computed Raman and infrared spectra and other physical properties for minerals. The calculations are performed within the framework of the density-functional theory and the density-functional perturbation theory. The database is freely available for teaching and research purposes and is presented in a web-based format, hosted on the http://www.wurm.info web site. It provides the crystal structure, the parameters of the calculations, the dielectric properties, the Raman spectra with both peak positions and intensities and the infrared spectra with peak positions for minerals. It shows the atomic displacement patterns for all the zone-center vibrational modes and the associated Raman tensors. The web presentation is user friendly and highly oriented toward the end user, with a strong educational component in mind. A set of visualization tools ensures the observation of the crystal structure, the vibrational pattern, and the different spectra. Further developments include elastic and optical properties of minerals


Dynamic power management is one of the most popular and successful low power design techniques in commercial integrated circuits, especially microprocessors. However, despite its significance, relatively little has been published about it. The purpose of this paper is to provide an open discussion of the application of dynamic power management for a real microprocessor. TORCH, a statically scheduled superscalar microprocessor, is chosen for this purpose. We describe several techniques that we classify as dynamic power management-techniques aimed at reducing the power wasted in unnecessary circuit activity in the design. Some of the techniques have been used before for low power designs. Some others are new and it is demonstrated that significant power savings are achieved with these as well. We provide design details to illustrate the application of instances of all dynamic power management techniques for TORCH. Using a combination of techniques, the power consumption is reduced by about 23%. We hope that this study would lead to a wider recognition of dynamic power management as a very effective and practical power reduction technique.


In the 1980s and early 1990s, wheat imports accounted for about four-fifths of China's import of cereals, and imported wheat accounts for about 30 percent of wheat supply. As a result of the many recent developments in Chinese government's policy on wheat production and marketing as well as China's WTO accession negotiations, how the Chinese wheat market will evolve presents an interesting and important area for policy makers and major wheat trading companies both within and outside China. In this paper, we highlight recent changes in China's wheat production and consumption patterns and marketing arrangements. We then, by taking into account of likely government policy scenarios, analyse implications of such changes on wheat market development in China and on wheat trade in the international market.


ObjectiveThe objective of this research is to develop the model for calculating the forecast of the Lyme disease dynamics what will help to take effective preventive and control measures using the intelligent multi-agent approach.IntroductionClimate warming, globalization, social and economic crises lead to the activation of natural foci of vector-borne infections, among which a special place belongs to Lyme disease (Ixodic tick borreliosis – ITB), the vectors of which are the Ixodes ticks. More than 5,000 cases are registered in the United States every year [1]. In European countries, the number of cases may reach up to 8,000-10,000 per year. Incidence rate for ITB in France is 39.4 per 100,000 population, in Bulgaria – 36.6 [2]. In Ukraine, among all ticks, 10-70% are infected with Borrelia; from 10% to 42.2% of Ukrainian population had contact with the causative agent of ITB.Mathematical modeling as an element of monitoring of natural focal infections makes it possible to assess the epidemiological potential of foci in the region and in individual territories, to forecast the trends of the epidemic process and to determine the main priorities and directions in the prevention of ITB. The most modern and effective method of simulation is multi-agent simulation, which is associated with the concept of an intelligent agent, as some robot, purposefully interacting with other similar elements and the external environment under given conditions. An intelligent agent is an imitation model of an active element, the state and behavior of which in various situations of achieving the goal vary depending on the state and behavior of other agents and the environment, in analogy with the intellectual behavior of a live organism (including a human) under similar conditions.As the epidemic process of Lyme disease is characterized by vector transmission, heterogeneous tick population, variable pathogen infectivity, heterogeneous environment, and seasonal changes in tick activity, the use of classical statistical methods for predicting the dynamics of morbidity cannot show high accuracy. The multiagent approach to simulation of the epidemic process of Lyme disease allows considering all of the above features, and since the dynamics of the modeled system is formed from the behavior of local objects (humans and ticks), we expect that a model constructed using a multiagent approach will yield a higher accuracy of prognosis morbidity. The multiagent model will allow not only to calculate the forecast, but also to reveal the factors influencing increase of the incidence of Lyme disease the most.MethodsThe research is based on official reports of new Lyme disease cases registered during 2006-2017. The data were collected by the State Institution Kharkiv Laboratory Center of the Ministry of Health of Ukraine from the healthcare facilities of Kharkiv Oblast of Ukraine as a part of passive routine disease surveillance. In total, 1016 cases of Lyme disease registered during the study period were included in this research.The multi-agent approach to simulation of epidemic process has been used for the model development.The epidemiological model of Lyme disease is based on the Gromashevsky's concept of the epidemic process, according to which the epidemic process exists with the continuous interaction of the three main components - source of infection, mechanism of transmission and susceptible organism.The most profitable type of agent in the study of epidemic process is an emotionally-motivated intellectual agent for the most complete and accurate model of human behavior. Let's consider the agent as a set of properties:a=, a∈A, s∈S, c∈C, ta∈Ta, (1)where st is time in state s,A is set of all agents,S is set of different agent's states,C is set of working area's cells,Ta is set of possible agent's types,l is length of life.The set of agent states is predefined and is constant. Depending on the process being studied, the set can be supplemented by different states, the initial set is:S={Susceptible, Exposed, Infected, Dead}. (2)The composition of the workspace leads to the appearance of a set of cells, as conditional abstract objects. It is assumed that one cell can simultaneously include a number of agents as well as one object-vector of infection (tick). It is assumed that depending on the type of working area where the agent is located the specific nature of the epidemic process is changed.The vector transmission of the disease from tick to agent is realized as follows. To begin with, the possibility of contact with tick is checked. It is believed that this is possible if other agents are also processed in the same cell along with the tick processed as well. Each pair agent-tick is compared. If tick is infected, it is believed that with a certain probability healthy agent can become infected.To automate the prediction of the incidence of Lyme disease, a software package has been developed using C# programing language that allows to calculate prognosis morbidity based on existing statistical data in real time. In the developed model, the configuration of the software package includes data for the period 2006-2017. This data include incidence rate of ITB per 100,000 population, the population's seeking healthcare providers for tick bites, the results of studies of ticks removed from humans for the presence of Borrelia, the number and proportion of ticks infected by Borrelia collected by the flagging method.ResultsThe calculated prognosis shows the expected increase in the number of cases with a certain three-year cycle: an increase in the number of cases of Ixodic tick borreliosis within 2 years with a slight decrease for the next year.A comparative analysis of the accuracy of forecasting by moving average method to 3 years [3] and multiagent simulation showed that the latter describes the existing data better, therefore, the forecast will be more accurate. The accuracy rates using the moving average method is 85.4%, with the use of multiagent simulation 96.6%.ConclusionsA comparative assessment of the accuracy of predicting the dynamics of the epidemic process using the moving average method [3] and the multiagent approach was carried out. A higher accuracy is noted with the use of multi-agent simulation (96.6% against 85.4% using moving average method), based on which a software package has been developed, which makes it possible to calculate the expected morbidity rate of Lyme disease. That means that the hypothesis made of the research was confirmed. The adequacy of the tested prognosis was verified on the real statistical data collected by the State Institution Kharkiv Laboratory Center of the Ministry of Health of Ukraine on the incidence of Lyme disease in Kharkiv Oblast (Ukraine) from 2006 to 2017. The obtained forecast revealed the expected persistence of the unstable epidemic situation with respect to Lyme disease, which dictates the need to develop a set of preventive measures aimed at reducing the morbidity of people by ITB. Virtual verification of the effectiveness of such events will be the next step in our study.ReferencesGulia-Nuss M. Genomic insights into the Ixodes scapularis tick vector of Lyme disease [Text] / M. Gulia-Nuss, A.B. Nuss et al. // Nature Communications, Vol. 7, Iss. 10507. – 2016.Lindgren E., Jaenson T.G.T. Lyme borreliosis in Europe: influences of climate and climate change, epidemiology, ecology and adaptation measures // World Health Organization, 2016. – 35 p.Chumachenko T., Chumachenko D., Sukhorukova M. Simulation of the epidemic process of Ixodes tick borreliosis // CBEP Ukraine Regional One Health Research Symposium and Peer Review Session. – Kyiv: Cooperative Biological Engagement Program (CBEP), 2017. – pp. 168.


Abstract The current extinction and climate change crises pressure us to predict population dynamics with ever‐greater accuracy. Although predictions rest on the well‐advanced theory of age‐structured populations, two key issues remain poorly explored. Specifically, how the age‐dependency in demographic rates and the year‐to‐year interactions between survival and fecundity affect stochastic population growth rates. We use inference, simulations and mathematical derivations to explore how environmental perturbations determine population growth rates for populations with different age‐specific demographic rates and when ages are reduced to stages. We find that stage‐ vs. age‐based models can produce markedly divergent stochastic population growth rates. The differences are most pronounced when there are survival‐fecundity‐trade‐offs, which reduce the variance in the population growth rate. Finally, the expected value and variance of the stochastic growth rates of populations with different age‐specific demographic rates can diverge to the extent that, while some populations may thrive, others will inevitably go extinct.


The concept of Intra-SADC debt (Southern Africa Development Community) is defined in this policy brief as any bilateral or multilateral financial lending and borrowing between or among SADC member countries and their development banks. The loans discussed in this policy brief have not been contracted in a transparent and inclusive way. The media in member countries did play a critical role in exposing the secrecy around loan negotiations and agreements between member countries concerned. Official public disclosure of information on the lending and borrowing processes in the region is absent. Moreover official information on the use of borrowed funds and loan contracts is not easily accessible. Information on loan agreements among SADC member countries should be accessible and available to the regional citizens in order for them to play an important


- Sherlock Holmes in America? Mark Twain a character in his own stories? Can it be true? True indeed, dear reader, as Mark Twain makes his mark on the mystery genre with this collection of short stories by the grand master himself! Including "A Double Barreled Detective Story," "Tom Sawyer, Detective," "A Murder, a Mystery, and a Marriage," and "The Stolen White Elephant," delight as Twain breaks convention and bends cherished characters to tell stories that are wholly his own. Illustrations provided by Menton3 (The Lovecraft Library, Classics Multilated, Monocyte).


The main research objective for the VIHO project (Efficient Computer Support in Care for the Elderly) was to investigate how a home care and help service organization can be developed in order to be better prepared for future challenges, and how new technical systems could support the development process. We have studied the home help personnel's need for support and investigated how the new organization could be formed in order to provide a healthy and sustainable work. Initial focus has been on the essential parts of the work and how the work could be improved in the future, and not on design of the technical support systems. Our basic point of view has been that correctly used, new technology can contribute, so that work and organisation develops in a positive way, patients are feeling secure and the personnel's work enviromnent is improved. This means that the organisation better can flilfil expectations and requirements. The professions can be strengthened and the organisation will be able to meet fliture challenges. In this report we briefly describe the results and the methods used in the project.


The major result of this thesis is the development of a framework for the application of pair-mixtures of copulas to model asymmetric dependencies in bivariate data. The main motivation is the inadequacy of mixtures of bivariate Gaussian models which are commonly fitted to data. Mixtures of rotated single parameter Archimedean and Gaussian copulas are fitted to real data sets. The method of maximum likelihood is used for parameter estimation. Goodness-of-fit tests performed on the models giving the highest log-likelihood values show that the models fit the data well. We use mixtures of univariate Gaussian models and mixtures of regression models to investigate the existence of bimodality in the distribution of the widths of autocorrelation functions in a sample of 119 gamma-ray bursts. Contrary to previous findings, our results do not reveal any evidence of bimodality. We extend a study by Genest et al. (2012) of the power and significance levels of tests of copula symmetry, to two copula models which have not been considered previously. Our results confirm that for small sample sizes, these tests fail to maintain their 5% significance level and that the Cramér−von Mises-type statistics are the most powerful.


We use new near-infrared spectroscopic observations to investigate the nature and evolution of the most luminous H\alpha (Ha) emitters at z~0.8-2.23, which evolve strongly in number density over this period, and compare them to more typical Ha emitters. We study 59 luminous Ha emitters with $L_{H\alpha}>L_{H\alpha}^*$, roughly equally split per redshift slice at z~0.8, 1.47 and 2.23 from the HiZELS and CF-HiZELS surveys. We find that, overall, 30$\pm$8% are AGN (80$\pm$30% of these AGN are broad-line AGN, BL-AGN), and we find little to no evolution in the AGN fraction with redshift, within the errors. However, the AGN fraction increases strongly with Ha luminosity and correlates best with $L_{H\alpha}/L_{H\alpha}^*(z)$. While $L_{H\alpha} 80%), the most luminous Ha emitters ($L_{H\alpha}>10L_{H\alpha}^*(z)$) at any cosmic time are essentially all BL-AGN. Using our AGN-decontaminated sample of luminous star-forming galaxies, and integrating down to a fixed Ha luminosity, we find a factor of ~1300x evolution in the star formation rate density from z=0 to z=2.23. This is much stronger than the evolution from typical Ha star-forming galaxies and in line with the evolution seen for constant luminosity cuts used to select "Ultra-Luminous" Infrared Galaxies and/or sub-millimetre galaxies. By taking into account the evolution in the typical Ha luminosity, we show that the most strongly star-forming Ha-selected galaxies at any epoch ($L_{H\alpha}>L^*_{H\alpha}(z)$) contribute the same fractional amount of ~15% to the total star-formation rate density, at least up to z=2.23.


The growing use of adjunct faculty in higher education has drawn its share of criticism. However, it is not necessarily bad to make use of the Adjunct Faculty Model (AFM) to support institutional mission and goals. This research uses content analysis to explore issues regarding how to precisely define the AFM as well as implementation and implications for faculty job satisfaction linked to student learning, which academic leadership (college deans, department chairs, directors) want to know.


Fluctuating asymmetry (FA) is thought to be the outcome of developmental instability, the impressive expression of design due to perturbations during development. Early interest in FA has been centered on its potential as an indicator of environmental stress . The aim of this study is to determine the effect of socioeconomic status on the level of FA in Turkish young males. The study examined 350 young males (mean age = 8.65±0.58) who live under different socioeconomic conditions in Ankara. Family size, mother's education, father's education, mother's job, father's job, number of siblings and number of rooms were assessed. The hand length, hand width, elbow width, wrist width, knee width, ankle width, foot length, foot width, ear height and ear width of the subjects were measured with a Vernier digital caliper of 0.01 mm sensitivity. According to multiple regression analysis, relationship between composite fluctuating asymmetry and family size, mother's education, father's education, mother's job, father's job, number of siblings, number of rooms were statistically significant (R 2 = 0.41, F = 17.95, P We conclude that, fluctuating asymmetry was found to increase with the improving living standards. However, when the effects of the SES variables were considered separately, mother's education and then father's job were found to have greater effects on developmental stability.


This survey gives a brief overview of the literature on the difference-in-difference (DiD) estimation strategy and discusses major issues using a treatment effect perspective. In this sense, this survey gives a somewhat different view on DiD than the standard textbook discussion of the difference-in-difference model, but it will also not be as complete as the latter. This survey contains also a couple of extensions to the literature, for example, a discussion of and suggestions for non-linear DiD as well as DiD based on propensity-score type matching methods.


This second edition of Ethnic Conflict in World Politics is an introduction to a new era in which civil society, states, and international actors attempt to channel ethnic challenges to world order and security into conventional politics. From Africa's post-colonial rebellions in the 1960s and 1970s to anti-immigrant violence in the 1990s the authors survey the historical, geographic, and cultural diversity of ethnopolitical conflict. Using an analytical model to elucidate four well-chosen case studies--the Kurds, the Miskitos, the Chinese in Malaysia, and the Turks in Germany--the authors give students tools for analyzing emerging conflicts based on the demands of nationalists, indigenous peoples, and immigrant minorities throughout the world. The international community has begun to respond more quickly and constructively to these conflicts than it did to civil wars in divided Yugoslavia and genocide in Rwanda by using the emerging doctrines of proactive peacemaking and peace enforcement that are detailed in this book. Concludes by identifying five principles of international doctrine for managing conflict in ethnically diverse societies. The text is illustrated with maps, tables, and figures.


This book presents recent applications and approaches as well as challenges in digital forensic science. One of the evolving challenges that is covered in the book is the cloud forensic analysis which applies the digital forensic science over the cloud computing paradigm for conducting either live or static investigations within the cloud environment. The book also covers the theme of multimedia forensics and watermarking in the area of information security. That includes highlights on intelligence techniques designed for detecting significant changes in image and video sequences. Moreover, the theme proposes recent robust and computationally efficient digital watermarking techniques. The last part of the book provides several digital forensics related applications, including areas such as evidence acquisition enhancement, evidence evaluation, cryptography, and finally, live investigation through the importance of reconstructing the botnet attack scenario to show the malicious activities and files as evidences to be presented in a court.


A two-region economy consists of a given but di®erent number of immobile workers in each region, and a given number of mobile  ̄rms. Firms create jobs where they locate, but there is frictional unemployment. Two sorts of agglomeration e®ects arise: those from economies of scale in matching, and those from production economies external to the  ̄rm. Regions may either be part of a unitary state in which case all regional policies are decided by the central government, or they may be part of a federal state in which case some policies are determined by the regional governments. We characterize the resource allocations in both a unitary and a federal state, and identify the set of instruments that are required to replicate the social optimum in each state.


The Matérn kernel is one of the most widely used covariance kernels in Gaussian process modeling; however, large-scale computations have long been limited by the expensive dense covariance matrix calculations. As a sequel of our recent paper [Chen et al. 2012] that designed a tree code algorithm for efficiently performing the matrix-vector multiplications with the Matérn kernel, this paper documents the parallel design and the software implementation of the algorithm. The parallelization focuses on data and work load balancing and uses MPI passive one-sided protocols for communications. The software, implemented in C++, provides a flexible interface with rich functionality, together with examples to demonstrate the extraction of performance diagnostics. The code is intended to be used as building blocks for statistical calculations where the matrix-vector multiplication is among the most expensive computational components.


The last two decades have witnessed substantial amount of research on time variation in asset returns. It has been found that macroeconomic variables contain useful information about asset returns. This dissertation consists of three essays that study the link between the macroeconomy and financial markets. A central idea behind the link is that households adjust their consumption spending in anticipation of variations in the return on household assets. The first essay proposes a latent-variables approach to estimate expected returns on total household assets and expected growth rate of excess consumption (consumption in excess of labor income) within a present-value model of consumption. The present-value model of consumption implies that the ratio of consumption- aggregate wealth reflects information about future asset returns and consumption growth. Since expected returns and expected excess consumption growth are unobserved variables, the current literature uses lagged excess consumption-assets ratio or other proxies for estimation. This essay goes beyond the existing literature by using an unobserved component approach to filter these unobserved variables from the observed history of realized returns and realized excess consumption growth. Results suggest that both filtered returns and filtered excess consumption growth rate are significant and better predictors of realized returns and realized excess consumption growth rate than the one obtained by lagged excess consumption-assets ratio. The second essay focuses on estimating expected return on housing by exploiting the information from the movements in consumption, income, and observable assets. To do so, a present-value model of consumption is combined with an unobserved component model. Kalman filter is then applied to extract expected housing returns from the observed history of realized returns and realized excess consumption growth. Results suggest that the filtered housing returns does a significantly better job in predicting realized housing returns than other popular predictors like mortgage rate and price-rent ratio. The third essay uses an unobserved components model with heteroskedastic disturbances to measure the time-varying importance of permanent and transitory components in the U.S. and U.K. house prices. Estimation results suggest that the movement in house prices in the two economies is mainly transitory in nature from its trend path.


The challenges and threats posed by out-groups have major effects on human social behavior and how individuals interact with one another. We briefly review evidence here that out-group threat similarly affects nonhuman animal behavior. Actual and potential threats posed by out-group individuals (unfamiliar and genetically nonrelated individuals of the same species) affect social behavior promoting "out-group" avoidance and "in-group" bias and enhancing in-group (familiar and/or genetically related individuals) affiliation and interactions. Individuals from out-groups present risks of pathogen exposure as well as being threats to resources, territory, and offspring. All of these threats function to promote in-group bias in humans and nonhumans. There are also striking similarities in the underlying neurobiological mechanisms mediating the responses to out-group threat and the expression of in-group bias. In particular, the evolutionarily conserved, hormone-regulated nonapeptide systems (oxytocin, arginine-vasopressin, and homologous neuropeptides and their receptors) are involved in the mediation of the detection and avoidance of out-groups and response to in-groups and facilitation of in-group responses across multiple vertebrate species. Consequently, comparative investigations of both the behavioral expression of and the mechanism underlying out-group avoidance and in-group bias are necessary for a full understanding of the evolution of social behavior and responses to in- and out-groups.


In much the same way that the automobile disrupted horse and cart transportation in the 20th century, automated vehicles (AVs) hold the potential to disrupt our current system of transportation and the fabric of our built environment in the 21st century. Experts predict that vehicles could be fully automated by as early as 2025 or as late as 2035. The public sector is just beginning to understand AV technology and to grapple with how to accommodate it in our current transportation system. Research on AVs is extremely important because AVs may significantly disrupt our transportation system with potentially profound effects, both positive and negative, on our society and our environment. However, this research is very hard to do because fully AVs have yet to travel on our roads. As a result, AV research is largely conducted by extrapolating effects from current observed behavior and drawing on theory and models. Both the magnitude of the mechanism of change and secondary effects are often uncertain. Moreover, the potential for improved safety in AVs drive the mechanisms by which vehicle miles traveled (VMT), energy, and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions may change. We really don't know whether AVs will achieve the level of safety that will allow for completely driverless cars, very short headways, smaller vehicles, lower fuel use, and/or reduce insurance cost. We don't know whether AV fleets will be harmonized to reduce energy and GHG emissions. In this white paper, the available evidence on the travel and environmental effects of AVs is critically reviewed to understand the potential magnitude and likelihood of estimated effects. The author outlines the mechanisms by which AVs may change travel demand and review the available evidence on their significance and size. These mechanisms include increased roadway capacity, reduced travel time burden, change in monetary costs, parking and relocation travel, induced travel demand, new traveler groups, and energy effects. They then describe the results of scenario modeling studies. Scenarios commonly include fleets of personal AVs and automated taxis with and without sharing. Travel and/or land use models are used to simulate the cumulative effects of scenarios. These models typically use travel activity data and detailed transportation networks to replicate current and predict future land use, traffic behavior, and/or vehicle activity in a real or hypothetical city or region. View the NCST Project Webpage


The emerging interdisciplinary field of disability studies takes as its subject matter the historical, social, and cultural construction of disability. After a brief introduction to disability studies, this article explores the interconnected histories of disability and music as they are manifested in three theoretical approaches to late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century Western art music (the musical Formenlehre and the tonal theories of Schoenberg and Schenker) and in three works by Beethoven and Schubert. Around the turn of the nineteenth century in Western Europe, disability began to be understood not as something natural and permanent but rather as a deviation from a normative standard, and thus subject to possible remediation. In the same time and place, art music also underwent a significant shift (reflected in the more recent theoretical traditions that have grown up around it), one that involved an increasing interest in rhetorically marked deviations from diatonic and formal normativity, and the possibility of their narrative recuperation. The article describes ways in which language about music and music itself may be understood both to represent and construct disability. More generally, it suggests that disability should take its place alongside nationality, ethnicity, class, gender, and sexual orientation as a significant category for cultural analysis, including the analysis of music.


Article history: Received December 2, 2016 Received in revised format December 10, 2016 Accepted February 17 2017 Available online February 17 2017 In this study, an integrated approach is presented for analyzing the impact of resilience engineering and ergonomics factors in aerospace supply chain using data envelopment analysis (DEA). The proposed approach selects the preferred supplier by considering traditional supply chain factors as well as resilience engineering and ergonomics factors. Also, the relevant performance efficiency of each decision making unit is calculated. The case study of this paper is the supply chain of real commercial airlines. Thus, the aerospace standards as well as resilience and ergonomics factors are considered to be modeled by the mathematical programming approach. 22 suppliers are evaluated by analyzing inputs and outputs through data envelopment analysis, and each supplier is considered as a decision making unit (DMU). In this study, the most effective factors are identified as "reliability", "Human resource management", "supplier's delay" and "availability". Also, "lead time" shows the highest potential for improvement. This study helps decision makers identify the weaknesses of their supply chain management to establish a performance improvement plan in aerospace industry. Growing Science Ltd. All rights reserved. 7 © 201


In the developing rat pancreas from about day 15 until birth there is a marked increase in the concentration of insulin. The present experiments were designed to determine whether enhanced insulin biosynthesis is accompanied by a coordinate increment in proinsulin mRNA. Using a sensitive RNA filter hybridization technique and a cloned rat proinsulin 32P-cDNA as a hybridizing probe, the concentration of proinsulin mRNA was measured. A greater than 900-fold accumulation of proinsulin mRNA was found, which closely paralleled that of immunoreactive insulin. Proinsulin mRNA and immunoreactive insulin were highest 1–2 days after birth, more than eightfold higher than that in adult pancreas. The patterns of digestion by a number of restriction endonucleases of the two nonallelic insulin genes were identical in adult and fetal DNA and in DNA from an insulinoma. We found no evidence of major gene rearrangement during embryogenesis as a prerequisite to insulin gene expression. Glucose stimulated insulin biosynthesis at the earliest time examined (day 15 of gestation). Insulin biosynthesis was enhanced almost fourfold while proinsulin mRNA differed by less than 20% during a 2-h incubation. This suggested that the short-term effect of glucose on insulin biosynthesis in the developing rat pancreas occurs at the level of translation of existing mRNA, similar to that noted in adult pancreatic islets. These data taken together suggest that the same controls for insulin biosynthesis in the adult exist at these early times in pancreatic development and that the controls for insulin biosynthesis appear coordinately with the appearance of increased insulin during endocrine pancreatic differentiation.


The ability to see the world in color is one most people take for granted. But our earliest primate ancestors lacked this ability. When and how did we gain the ability to see the world the way we do? Neil Shubin pays a visit to vision expert Jay Neitz to learn where our color vision comes from.


Explicit and tractable characterizations of the dynamical behavior of virus particles are pivotal for a thorough understanding of the infection mechanisms of viruses. This thesis deals with the problem of extracting symbolic representations of the dynamical behavior of fluorescent particles from fluorescence microscopy image sequences. The focus is on the behavior of virus particles such as fusion with the cell membrane. A numerical representation is obtained by tracking the particles in the image sequences. We have investigated probabilistic tracking approaches, including approaches based on the Kalman filter as well as based on particle filters. For reasons of efficiency and robustness, we developed a tracking approach based on
the probabilistic data association (PDA) algorithm in combination with an ellipsoidal sampling scheme that exploits effectively the image data via parametric appearance models. To track objects in close proximity, we compute the support that each image position provides to
each tracked object relative to the support provided to the object's neighbors. After tracking, the problem of mapping the trajectory information computed by the tracking approaches to symbolic representations of the behavior arises. To compute symbolic representations of behaviors related to the fusion of single virus particles with the cell membrane based on their intensity over time,
we developed a layered probabilistic approach based on stochastic hybrid systems as well as hidden Markov models (HMMs). We use a maxbelief strategy to efficiently combine both representations. The layered approach describes the intensity, intensity models, and behaviors of single virus particles. We introduce models for the evolution of the intensity and the behavior. To compute estimates for
the intensity, intensity models, and behaviors we use a hybrid particle filter and the Viterbi algorithm. The developed approaches have been applied to synthetic images as well as to real microscopy image sequences displaying human immunodeficiency virus (HIV-1) particles. We have performed an extensive quantitative evaluation of the performance and a comparison with several existing approaches. It turned out that our approaches outperform previous ones, thus yielding more accurate and more reliable information about the behavior of virus particles. Moreover, we have successfully applied our tracking approaches to 3D image sequences displaying herpes simplex virus (HSV)
replication compartments. We also applied the tracking approaches to image data displaying microtubule tips and analyzed their motion. In addition, our tracking approaches were successfully applied to the 2D and 3D image data of a Particle Tracking Challenge.


Abstract The global free market has become the complex venue where all living beings in the web of life have been turned into commodities. Globalization is the accelerated global integration of capital, production and markets, and has become a code name for the transnational "corporatization" of the world. Globalization is incompatible with justice, peace and security, diverse cultural identities, socio-psychological sustainability, and ecological environmental sustainability. Globalization is a process that brings about disintegration between economy and ecology, history and nature, lifestyle and spirituality, and the local and global The impact of globalization has brought the web of life to near-total chaos, and to the point of a critical breakdown of sustainability. Put another way, globalization has led both to the impoverishment of many peoples' total life experience, and to the detrimental effects that are taking place upon the ecosystems of the "earth household" The equity and balance of the web of life based on the principle of interdependency are being totally disordered and destroyed. Therefore, the fundamental sustainability of the whole living system that makes up life on earth is now at a critical stage. Behind the path of globalization is an anthropocentric worldview. This holds a dualistic view of humanity and nature; it believes that unlimited material progress is to be achieved through economic and technological growth at the expense of nature. An alternative to anthropocentric thinking is life-centric systemic thinking, which shifts our view of the world from the mechanistic worldview of Descartes and Newton to a holistic, ecological view. This requires us to integrate history with nature, and economy with ecology, and to do so from the perspectives of inseparable relationships, interconnectedness and contexts. Life-centric systemic thinking can only provide the in-depth foundational perception, strategy and praxis for a "deep" healing and reconciliation of the wounded and broken web of the 'earth household'. Today, what sustainability really means should be extended to the entire web of life, on which our long-term survival depends. We need to understand the principles of organization that ecosystems have developed to sustain the web of life. We need particularly to reflect on the interdependency between humans and the earth, because the paradigms of human relationships have been intrinsically and intuitively shaped by the relationship between humans and the earth. To realize and socialize principles of sustainability, principles of ecology, principles of community, or even the basic facts of life will be the most important parts of being an ecologically conscientious human society. Healing and reconciliation is a process of restoring and empowering the ecological nature of human relationships, and, by doing so, of strengthening the sustainability of the whole living web of relationships. Only through an ecologically conscientious human society can the proper relationship be re-established between economy and ecology, between history and nature, between life style and spirituality, and between the global and local in which all truly participate in the manifestation of God's life-creating love that desires the fullness of life for all. A life-centric systemic perception of history with nature As the new century moves with apocalyptic uncertainty down the path of globalization, the concerns for the sustainability of the 'earth household' itself have become of paramount importance. We are heed with a whole series of global-local problems that are harming both the biosphere and human life in alarming ways. This process may soon become irreversible. We may be the last generation of humanity to have the opportunity to avert ecological collapse and irreparable damage to the systems that sustain complex life on earth. "We are sawing off the branch that we are sitting on" (Paul Ehrlich), and, "It is as if the brain were to decide that it is the most important organ in the body and started mining the liver. …


Bilingualism and its effect on individuals have been studied within different disciplines. Although the first psychological study of bilingualism was couducted by Cattell as early as 1887, only a few studies have exclusively investigated the effect of bilingualism on memory systems' functioning. In the field of cognitive psychology of bilingualism, there is some evidence for the positive influence of bilingualism on children's cognitive ability across various domains but there is little knowledge about the relationship between bilingualism and memory in a lifespan perspective. This thesis's main aim was to investigate memory systems' functioning and development in bilingual individuals. To this end, two studies were performed: a cross-sectional study of bilingual children (Study I) and a longitudinal study of young and older adults (Study II). The purpose of Studies I and II was to determine whether there are differences between monolinguals and bilinguals regarding various memory systems' functioning. Study I compared monolingual and bilingual children's performance on episodic and semantic memory, and Study II investigated performance on episodic and semantic memory in bilingual younger and older adults. Specifically, these studies aimed to examine a) which memory systems will be affected more as a function of language, and b) to what extent the differences would manifest themselves during a subject's lifespan. The purpose of Study III was to explain the relation among word representations, lexical access and lexical selection in a bilingual word production paradigm. In this study, a model of bilingual production was developed to explain the results and clarify the role of automatic and controlled processes in using two languages. The results of Studies I and II showed a superiority of bilinguals over monolinguals as well as a variation of association between memory performance and bilingualism across different periods of adulthood. It appears that the lifelong experience of managing two languages enhances control processes, which in turn play an important role in enhancing memory performance. Using a "dual mechanism model", Study III explains the efficiency of inhibitory processing when having two languages activated.


Robustness to capitalization errors is a highly desirable characteristic of named entity recognizers, yet we find standard models for the task are surprisingly brittle to such noise.Existing methods to improve robustness to the noise completely discard given orthographic information, which significantly degrades their performance on well-formed text. We propose a simple alternative approach based on data augmentation, which allows the model to learn to utilize or ignore orthographic information depending on its usefulness in the context. It achieves competitive robustness to capitalization errors while making negligible compromise to its performance on well-formed text and significantly improving generalization power on noisy user-generated text. Our experiments clearly and consistently validate our claim across different types of machine learning models, languages, and dataset sizes.


In the winter of 1998, the Washington State Department of Transportation (WSDOT) proposed legislation to amend the Revised Code of Washington with respect to studded tires. In April 1999, legislation was passed that changed Washington's laws regarding studded tire use. These legislative changes were intended to reduce pavement wear on Washington state's highway system caused by studded tires without losing any of the safety benefits that tire studs provide. From the time that studded tires were first introduced, the advantages, disadvantages, and effects of studded tires on vehicles, drivers, and pavement systems have been the object of research and controversy. Some states have chosen to ban the use of studded tires altogether, while others, such as Oregon and now Washington, have passed legislation that is intended to reduce the road wear impacts of studs. This report presents a brief history of the studded tire. The report also explores the relationship between pavement wear and developments in studded tires that have taken place over the past 40 years. This information should provide a background that helps to support and explain the amendments to the Revised Code of Washington regarding studded tires.


This study critically examines the ways in which technological modernization and religion co-exist and mutually reinforce one another within the Singaporean context. Interviews with religious leaders of a diverse set of faiths in Singapore about how they understand the role of information technology in religious practice reveal a broad-based acceptance of the Internet and other information technologies and little sense of a danger to religious faith. Contrary to the proposals of secularization theory, these findings suggest that various religious communities have adopted and in some cases embrace the Internet as part of their contemporary religious mission and strategy for growth. The findings further contribute to historical research on the social construction of technology and lend support to emergent research on the spiritual shaping of Internet technology by religious communities seeking to integrate the Internet into their everyday social and religious practices in wired contexts such as Singapore.


Despite extensive studies focus mainly on sexual reproductive characteristics in tropical scleractinian species, there is limited knowledge on temperate regions. The Mediterranean is a biodiversity hotspot under intense pressure from anthropogenic impacts. Climatic models further predict that the Mediterranean basin will be one of the most impacted regions by the ongoing warming trend. This makes it a potential model of more global patterns to occur in the world's marine biota, and a natural focus of interest for research on climate. The present research contributed to increase data on reproductive modes and sexuality of temperate scleractinian corals, highlighting their developmental plasticity, showing different forms of propagation and different responses to environmental change. For the first time, sexuality and reproductive mode in Caryophyllia inornata were determined. An unusual embryogenesis without a clear seasonal pattern was observed, suggesting the possibility of an asexual origin. Sexual reproduction of Astroides calycularis was governed by annual changes in seawater temperature, as observed for other Mediterranean dendrophylliids. Defining the reproductive biology of these species is the starting point for studying their potential response to variations of environmental parameters, on a global climate change context. The results on the influence of temperature on reproductive output of the zooxanthellate (symbiosis with unicellular algae) Balanophyllia europaea and the non-zooxanthellate Leptopsammia pruvoti suggest that the latter may be quite tolerant to temperature increase, since the zooxanthellate species resulted less efficient at warm temperatures. A possible explanation could be related to their different trophic system. In B. europaea thermal tolerance is primarily governed by the symbiotic algae, making it more sensitive to temperature changes. On the contrary, the absence of symbionts in L. pruvoti might make it more resistant to temperature. In a progressively warming Mediterranean, the efficiency on scleractinian reproduction could be influenced in different ways, reflecting their extraordinary adaptability.


In this thesis we have addressed the problem of the dynamical modeling of dwarf spheroidal galaxies (dSphs) through the use of distribution functions (DFs) that depend on the action integrals. dSphs are low luminosity, pressure supported, dwarf galaxies that are thought to be extremely dark-matter dominated. In the first part of this thesis, we have introduced a new family of Dfs showing that these DFs are optimal in modeling dSphs. With the aim to constrain their dark-matter distribution and intrinsic stellar velocity distribution, we have presented models of two dSphs: Fornax and Sculptor, comparing the models with state-of-the-art spectroscopic and photometric data sets of these galaxies. We argued that Fornax and Sculptor are dominated by massive dark-matter halos. The dark-matter halo of Fornax has a density distribution with a large core in its central parts, while we were not able to put constraints of the shape on the Sculptor dark-matter density distribution. In the second part of this thesis we have addressed the problem of extending action-based DFs to deal with flattening in a physical way. Since previous flattened models generated via action-based DFs show unphysical behaviors, we have motivated how and shy, in order to make physical and acceptable models, one has to limit the possible functional forms that a DF can assume. We have shown how the models behave when these restrictions are implemented and we have presented the very first flattened, axisymmetric DF-based models with general DFs depending of three independent integrals of motion. We conclude studying the integrability of a few classes of flattened potentials: the complexified Plummer model and flattened potentials generated through flattened DFs depending on actions. We have shown that, in the presented experiments, all the orbits integrated in the flattened DF-based potential remain regular and very few become trapped by resonance.


ABSTRACT The Guiana Shield has large pristine tracts of tropical forest with high biological diversity and is an area of endemism within the Amazon Basin. However, the conservation status of primates in eastern Amazonian Brazil is still poorly known. Here, we report information on relative abundance, group size, density estimates, plus the effects of environmental variables and seasonality of primates in a sustainable-use reserve in the eastern Brazilian Amazon. From a 603 km transect-based census conducted in October–December 2013 and March–June 2014 we obtained 122 sighting records of six primate species. The most common were Ateles paniscus (45 detections) and Saguinus midas (40 detections). The high calculated density estimates for Sg. midas (2.01 groups/km2 or 12.05 individuals/km2) and for At. paniscus (3.44 groups/km2 or 10.31 individuals/km2) underscore the conservation importance of the study area for the vulnerable At. paniscus. We found no effect of environmental variables on the number of detections of primates, except for At. paniscus and Cebus olivaceus, with the former showing a higher number of detections in more open canopy forest during the rainy season, and the later having a higher number of detections in areas with higher density of palms in the dry season.


The increasing use of stakeholder analysis in natural resource management reflects a growing recognition that stakeholders can and should influence environmental decision making. Stakeholder analysis can be used to avoid inflaming conflicts, ensure that the marginalization of certain groups is not reinforced, and fairly represent diverse interests. We present a case study from the Peak District National Park in the United Kingdom, where we used social network analysis to inform stakeholder analysis. This information helped us identify which individuals and categories of stakeholder played more central roles in the network and which were more peripheral. This information guided our next steps for stakeholder selection. The article ends with a discussion on the strengths and limitations of combining social network analysis with stakeholder analysis.


We design and synthesize an amino-functionalized conjugated polymer (PPDI-F3N) based on perylene diimide and use it as a multifunctional interfacial layer of TiO2/perovskite in conventional planar perovskite solar cells. The work function of TiO2 is modulated by PPDI-F3N to better align with the conduction band of the perovskite, leading to efficient charge extraction. PPDI-F3N can passivate the TiO2 surface to reduce the severe recombination loss and rapid degradation caused by oxygen vacancies on the UV-sensitive TiO2 surface. Moreover, modulated polarity of PPDI-F3N is beneficial to optimal perovskite crystallization and morphology. All these features contribute to a higher efficiency (18.3%) of the PSCs with the PPDI-F3N interlayer relative to the control devices without the interlayer (16.7%) as well as improved stability and a reduced hysteresis effect.


Natural Language Inference (NLI) is an active research area, where numerous approaches based on recurrent neural networks (RNNs), convolutional neural networks (CNNs), and self-attention networks (SANs) has been proposed. Although obtaining impressive performance, previous recurrent approaches are hard to train in parallel; convolutional models tend to cost more parameters, while self-attention networks are not good at capturing local dependency of texts. To address this problem, we introduce a Gaussian prior to selfattention mechanism, for better modeling the local structure of sentences. Then we propose an efficient RNN/CNN-free architecture named Gaussian Transformer for NLI, which consists of encoding blocks modeling both local and global dependency, high-order interaction blocks collecting the evidence of multi-step inference, and a lightweight comparison block saving lots of parameters. Experiments show that our model achieves new state-of-the-art performance on both SNLI and MultiNLI benchmarks with significantly fewer parameters and considerably less training time. Besides, evaluation using the Hard NLI datasets demonstrates that our approach is less affected by the undesirable annotation artifacts.


Neurotransmission relies critically on the exocytotic release of neurotransmitters from small synaptic vesicles (SVs) at the active zone. Therefore, it is essential for neurons to maintain an adequate pool of SVs clustered at synapses in order to sustain efficient neurotransmission. It is well established that the phosphoprotein synapsin 1 regulates SV clustering at synapses. Here, we demonstrate that synuclein, another SV-associated protein and synapsin binding partner, also modulates SV clustering at a vertebrate synapse. When acutely introduced to unstimulated lamprey reticulospinal synapses, a pan-synuclein antibody raised against the N-terminal domain of α-synuclein induced a significant loss of SVs at the synapse. Both docked SVs and the distal reserve pool of SVs were depleted, resulting in a loss of total membrane at synapses. In contrast, antibodies against two other abundant SV-associated proteins, synaptic vesicle glycoprotein 2 (SV2) and vesicle-associated membrane protein (VAMP/synaptobrevin), had no effect on the size or distribution of SV clusters. Synuclein perturbation caused a dose-dependent reduction in the number of SVs at synapses. Interestingly, the large SV clusters appeared to disperse into smaller SV clusters, as well as individual SVs. Thus, synuclein regulates clustering of SVs at resting synapses, as well as docking of SVs at the active zone. These findings reveal new roles for synuclein at the synapse and provide critical insights into diseases associated with α-synuclein dysfunction, such as Parkinson's disease.


Privatization of public enterprises or state-owned business entities has been greatly acclaimed as one of free market ideas and a sort of democratic rule on equitable distribution of wealth. However, ill-designed modes of privatization, particularly, Article 5 of the Proclamation No.146/1998 transfers the public enterprises to share companies in Ethiopia, goes out of the purpose and creates legal and practical problems on the operation of share companies. The crux of this paper focuses on the formation and operation of state-owned share companies which are evolved by the process of privatization in Ethiopia. It advocates that the new advent of formation of company is out of the Commercial Code of the State and legal jurisprudence ever experienced. Hence, the status of such companies is carefully discussed from the legal point of view. These companies situate in different place than company law perspective, the purpose of privatization sought in these companies and the economic policy which the country follows. To this effect, the legal doctrines of the area, the practice of privatization from Privatization and Public Enterprises Supervising Agency (PPESA) are explored.


The European Union (EU) has been specially damaged internally due to some disinformation campaigns, which have challenged its legislation and its very values. The different operations of disinformation alongside the communicative incapacity of the European Union's institutions have generated a feeling of alarm in Brussels. Just a year before the celebration of the elections to the European Parliament, Europe has concentrated a lot of his efforts in challenge the issue of disinformation, generating new strategies, challenges, objectives and workshops such as the Stratcom Task Force or the group of experts of the European Commission.


When rendering virtual objects in a mixed reality application, it is helpful to have access to an environment map that captures the appearance of the scene from the perspective of the virtual object. It is straightforward to render virtual objects into such maps, but capturing and correctly rendering the real components of the scene into the map is much more challenging. This information is often recovered from physical light probes, such as reflective spheres or fisheye cameras, placed at the location of the virtual object in the scene. For many application areas, however, real light probes would be intrusive or impractical. Ideally, all of the information necessary to produce detailed environment maps could be captured using a single device. We introduce a method using an RGBD camera and a small fisheye camera, contained in a single unit, to create environment maps at any location in an indoor scene. The method combines the output from both cameras to correct for their limited field of view and the displacement from the virtual object, producing complete environment maps suitable for rendering the virtual content in real time. Our method improves on previous probeless approaches by its ability to recover high-frequency environment maps. We demonstrate how this can be used to render virtual objects which shadow, reflect and refract their environment convincingly.


This paper outlines a coordinated public response to bullying, including cyber bullying, in the nation's public schools. Pediatric professionals have long recognized bullying as a form of child abuse, perpetrated by other children rather than by adults. With recent national surveys confirming that bullying in school has reached epidemic proportions, the American Medical Association and the National Institutes of Health now identify it as a public health crisis. An effective response to bullying summons all components of the pediatric safety system, the public network charged with protecting children from physical and emotional harm. The network extends primarily to the schools, the juvenile and criminal courts, the child protective agency and perhaps the mental health agency, and law enforcement. The new frontier is cyber bullying, which pediatric professionals now identify as a risk factor contributing to childhood and adolescent suicide. News headlines reporting suicides show that a few keystrokes can inflict hurt even more severe than fists or playground confrontations because Internet postings can hound the victim around the clock and off the campus. After measuring the devastating immediate and lasting damage that school bullying can inflict on its participants (the bullied, the bystanders and the bullies themselves), this paper stresses the need for effective bullying prevention programs in the schools. The paper describes the reported effectiveness of rigorously evaluated programs, and analyzes the shortcomings in state legislation that requires schools to maintain anti-bullying policies. Finally, the paper explores the central roles that the various members of the pediatric safety system play, consistent with First Amendment constraints, in the effort to prevent bullying and react firmly to incidents that occur. The paper presents public strategies that comply with constitutional guidelines.


Abstract Five palygorskite samples with different chemical compositions and specific surface areas (SSA) were used for this study. Batch experiments in dilute salt solutions under neutral conditions were conducted to study the kinetics of clay hydrolysis. The rates of release of Mg and Si differ significantly among the palygorskite samples. It was found that differences in release rate of Mg among the palygorskite samples are due to differences in both surface area and chemical composition. The rate of release of Mg was greater in palygorskites with high SSA and high Mg and Fe contents than that in palygorskites with low SSA and high Al content. The rate of release of Si depends on the SSA of the mineral and is not related to chemical composition. The initial amount of Si released increases with SSA, while the Si rate of release decreases with increasing SSA. These data suggest that the decomposition of palygorskite in soils and sediments also takes place under neutral conditions.


In this commentary I consider how the bioethical construct of informed consent maps onto an Islamic moral universe. I will describe how homeomorphic equivalents of informed consent theory can be found within the Islamic tradition in order to argue that Islamic morality demands structures similar to those of informed consent. After this theoretical exposition, I will identify several features of Muslim culture that need to be accounted for when adapting "western" consent procedures for use in Muslim contexts. Such a "translation" would result in informed consent procedures that may look and feel different than those in European and American contexts, but nonetheless are ethically robust and achieve similar ends.


ABSTRACT Aim: To study remote results and the role of intraarterial chemotherapy with local hyperthermia in the treatment of nasal and paranasal sinus cancer patients. Methods: 209 patients were treated over the period 2000 - 2008. T3 stage was diagnosed in 106 patients (51.4%) and T4 stage in 103 (48.6%) patients. Squamous cell carcinoma was found in 71.3% patients. Patients were divided into 4 groups: 1) intraarterial chemotherapy with local hyperthermia and radiotherapy (58 patients; 2) intraarterial chemotherapy and radiotherapy (48 patients;, 3) systemic chemotherapy and radiotherapy (58 patients); 4) radiotherapy followed by surgery (45 patients). We used the following regimen: cisplatin 100 mg, fluorouracil 3000 mg and doxorubicin 60 mg. In 1st group 58 patients received local UHF–hyperthermia with the frequency of 40 MHz increasing the temperature up to 41-43°C in the tumour. Patients of the 1st and 2nd groups, received intraarterial chemotherapy with ligation and catheterization of external carotid artery. All patients received telegammatherapy, dose 40-60 Gy. For appreciating of the remote results SPSS-16 statistical methods were used. Results: Continuous regional intraarterial chemical induction in the background of local hyperthermia significantly increased the results of treatment. Surgical treatment was made to 128 (61.2%) patients at second grade of complex therapy. In the 1st group of patients 3-year survival rate was 83.4%, and 5-year survival rate was 73.0%. In the 2nd group those rates were 80.4% and 66.7%, respectively. In the 3rd group those rates were 68.2% and 60.6%, respectively. In the 4th group those rates were 68.1% and 54.1%, respectively. In the study of long-term treatment outcomes of patients receiving integrated and combined treatment it was found that the recurrence rate in the 1st and 2nd groups compared with the 3rd and 4th groups of patients differed significantly. So in the 1st group these figures were 32.4% in the 2nd group 38.1%, and in the third group recurrence was seen in 45.4% of patients. In the 4th group this figure increased further and was observed in 51.3% of patients. Conclusions: Thus, neoadjuvant continuous intraarterial chemotherapy with local UHF-hyperthermia and radiotherapy in the 1st group of patients allowed us to increase significantly the remote results compared with those in the 3rd group who received systemic chemotherapy. Disclosure: All authors have declared no conflicts of interest.


This report evaluates the 2006/7 Malawi Government Agricultural Input Subsidy Programme (AISP). The main objective of the evaluation is to assess the impact and implementation of the AISP in order to provide lessons for future interventions in growth and social protection. The evaluation combined qualitative and quantitative methods of data collection and analysis. Quantitative data were collected through a national survey in 2007 of 2,491 households who were previously interviewed in the 2004/05 Integrated Household Survey, a survey of retail shops selling inputs in six districts and data on stocks and sales from manufacturers, large-scale importers and dealers of fertilizers and seeds. The quantitative data was triangulated by qualitative data from focus group discussions with smallholder farmers in 12 districts, and key informant interviews with government staff, input distributors and beneficiary and non-beneficiary households. The analysis is based on descriptive statistics, econometric modelling and livelihood and rural economy modelling. An Interim Report in March 2007 provides fuller details of the implementation of the programme.


This is the first in what is intended as a series of comments on current developments in the law concerning freedom of religion that will appear regularly in this Journal. This first survey deals with religious liberty challenges brought in the UK courts in 2007 and 2008. A subsequent survey will examine similar developments in international human rights law and especially before the European Court of Human Rights.


Human societies are formed by different socio-economical classes which are characterized by their contribution to, and their share of, the common wealth available. Cheaters, defined as those individuals that do not contribute to the common wealth but benefit from it, have always existed, and are likely to be present in all societies in the foreseeable future. Their existence brings about serious problems since they act as sinks for the community wealth and deplete resources which are always limited and often scarce. To fight cheaters, a society can invest additional resources to pursue one or several aims. For instance, an improvement in social solidarity (e.g. by fostering education) may be sought. Alternatively, deterrence (e.g. by increasing police budget) may be enhanced. Then the following questions naturally arise: (i) how much to spend and (ii) how to allocate the expenditure between both strategies above. This paper addresses this general issue in a simplified setting, which however we believe of some interest. More precisely, we consider a society constituted by two productive classes and an unproductive one, the cheaters, and proposes a dynamical system that describes their evolution in time. We find it convenient to formulate our model as a three-dimensional ordinary differential equation (ODE) system whose variables are the cheater population, the total wealth and one of the productive social classes. The stationary values of the cheater population and the total wealth are studied in terms of the two parameters: φ (how much to invest) and s (how to distribute such expenditure). We show that it is not possible to simultaneously minimize the cheater population and maximize the total wealth with respect to φ and s. We then discuss the possibility of defining a compromise function to find suitable values of φ and s that optimize the response to cheating. In our opinion, this qualitative approach may be of some help to plan and implement social strategies against cheating.


A combination of light-induced [4+4] cycloaddition polymerization and activated ester substitution reaction is demonstrated as a new method to obtain novel polymeric structures. Bis-anthracene functionalized compound involving perfluorophenyl ester moiety namely, bisanthracenyl-PFPE, is prepared by an esterification reaction, then polymerized under UV light irradiated at 365 nm. The resulting polymer is reacted with a variety of amine compounds namely allylamine, benzylamine, furfurylamine, and propargylamine, under mild conditions. Quantitative conversions of perfluorophenyl ester groups into the respective amide groups as well as the thermal behaviors of all polymers are revealed by using various spectroscopic measurements such as Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FT-IR), gel permeation chromatography, NMR, and differential scanning calorimetry.


Neural activity is diverse, and varies depending on brain regions and sleep/wakefulness states. However, whether astrocyte activity differs between sleep/wakefulness states, and whether there are differences in astrocyte activity among brain regions remain poorly understood. Therefore, in this study, we recorded astrocyte intracellular calcium (Ca2+) concentrations of mice during sleep/wakefulness states in the cortex, hippocampus, hypothalamus, cerebellum, and pons using fiber photometry. For this purpose, male transgenic mice expressing the genetically encoded ratiometric Ca2+ sensor YCnano50 specifically in their astrocytes were used. We demonstrated that Ca2+ levels in astrocytes substantially decrease during rapid eye movement (REM) sleep, and increase after the onset of wakefulness. In contrast, differences in Ca2+ levels during non-REM (NREM) sleep were observed among the different brain regions, and no significant decrease was observed in the hypothalamus and pons. Further analyses focusing on the transition between sleep/wakefulness states and correlation analysis with the duration of REM sleep showed that Ca2+ dynamics differs among brain regions, suggesting the existence of several clusters, i.e., the first comprising the cortex and hippocampus, the second comprising the hypothalamus and pons, and the third comprising the cerebellum. Our study thus demonstrated that astrocyte Ca2+ levels change substantially according to sleep/wakefulness states. These changes were consistent in general unlike neural activity. However, we also clarified that Ca2+ dynamics varies depending on the brain region, implying that astrocytes may play various physiological roles in sleep. SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENT Sleep is an instinctive behavior of many organisms. In the previous five decades, the mechanism of the neural circuits controlling sleep/wakefulness states and the neural activities associated with sleep/wakefulness states in various brain regions have been elucidated. However, whether astrocytes, which are a type of glial cell, change their activity during different sleep/wakefulness states was poorly understood. Here, we demonstrated that dynamic changes in astrocyte Ca2+ concentrations occur in the cortex, hippocampus, hypothalamus, cerebellum, and pons of mice during natural sleep. Further analyses demonstrated that Ca2+ dynamics slightly differ among different brain regions, implying that the physiological roles of astrocytes in sleep/wakefulness might vary depending on the brain region.


Background: Childhood obesity is an emerging global public health challenge. Evidence for the transition in nutrition in Indo-Asian developing countries is lacking. We conducted these analyses to determine the trends in nutritional status of school-aged children in urban Pakistan. Methods: Data on the nutritional status of children aged 5 to 14 years from two independent population-based representative surveys, the urban component of the National Health Survey of Pakistan (NHSP; 1990–1994) and the Karachi survey (2004–2005), were analysed. Using normative data from children in the United States as the reference, trends for age- and gender-standardised prevalence (95% CI) of underweight (more than 2 SD below the weight-for-age reference), stunted (more than 2 SD below the height-for-age reference) and overweight and obese (body mass index (BMI) 85th percentile or greater) children were compared for the two surveys. The association between physical activity and being overweight or obese was analysed in the Karachi survey using logistical regression analysis. Results: 2074 children were included in the urban NHSP and 1675 in the Karachi survey. The prevalence of underweight children was 29.7% versus 27.3% (p = 0.12), stunting was 16.7% versus 14.3% (p = 0.05), and prevalence of overweight and obese children was 3.0 versus 5.7 (p<0.001) in the NHSP and Karachi surveys, respectively. Physical activity was inversely correlated with being overweight or obese (odds ratio, 95% CI, 0.51, 0.32–0.80 for those who engaged in more than 30 minutes of physical activity versus those engaged in less than 30 minutes' activity). Conclusions: Our study highlights the challenge faced by Pakistani school-aged children. There has been a rapid rise in the number of overweight and obsese children despite a persistently high burden of undernutrition. Focus on prevention of obesity in children must include strategies for promoting physical activity.


This study examined the experiences of teachers who teach 4- to 8-year-old children with special needs in Ghanaian public school classrooms. Also examined were the management strategies put in place to assist the children in dealing with their unique situations. A team of five researchers interviewed 68 teachers who teach children with special needs. Results indicate that a majority of the teachers support inclusion of children with special needs in their classrooms but were concerned about the lack of appropriate resources for proper instruction. In addition, participants indicated that about 60% of children with special needs did not want to participate in group work. The most challenging issues for the teachers involve difficulty getting some of the children to follow basic instructions and also getting parents to participate in the education of their children with special needs. This study recommends parent-teacher associations advocating for the participation of parents in schools in Ghana. The study additionally recommends employing special education teachers, nurses, and social workers to assist teachers in Ghanaian classrooms.


Recent changes to the Common Rule, which govern Institutional Review Boards (IRB), require implementing new policies to strengthen research protocols involving human subjects. A major challenge in implementing such policies is an inability to automatically and consistently meet these ethical rules while securing sensitive information collected during the study. In this paper, we propose a novel framework, based on blockchain technology, to enforce IRB regulations on data collection. We demonstrate how to design smart contracts and a ledger to meet the requirements of an IRB protocol, including subject recruitment, informed consent management, secondary data sharing, monitoring risks, and generating automated assessments for continuous review. Furthermore, we show how we can employ the immutable transaction log in the blockchain to embed security in research activities by detecting malicious activities and robustly tracking subject involvement. We evaluate our approach by assessing its ability to enforce IRB guidelines in different types of human subjects studies, including a genomic study, a drug trial, and a wearable sensor monitoring study.
Keywords: Blockchain, Data Sharing, Data Exchange, EHR, electronic health record, Ethereum, interplanetary filesystem, IPFS


Given the importance of understanding single-neuron activity, much development has been directed towards improving the performance and automation of spike sorting. These developments, however, introduce new challenges, such as file format incompatibility and reduced interoperability, that hinder benchmarking and preclude reproducible analysis. To address these limitations, we developed SpikeInterface, a Python framework designed to unify preexisting spike sorting technologies into a single codebase and to standardize extracellular data file operations. With a few lines of code and regardless of the underlying data format, researchers can: run, compare, and benchmark most modern spike sorting algorithms; pre-process, post-process, and visualize extracellular datasets; validate, curate, and export sorting outputs; and more. In this paper, we provide an overview of SpikeInterface and, with applications to both real and simulated extracellular datasets, demonstrate how it can improve the accessibility, reliability, and reproducibility of spike sorting in preparation for the widespread use of large-scale electrophysiology.


Abstract The genus Fossombronia Raddi in the Russian Far East is reviewed based on herbarium specimens mostly of recent collections. Three species are recognized (F. alaskana Steere & Inoue, F. pusilla (L.) Nees and F. japonica Schiffn.). The descriptions and illustrations based on studied specimens are provided along with the identification key of Fossombronia in the Russian Far East. F. japonica is recorded for the first time in Russia and F. pusilla is the only recent confirmed record of the species in Russia.


Information Extraction is the automatic extraction of facts from text, which includes detection of named entities, entity relations and events. Conventional approaches to Information Extraction try to find syntactic patterns based on deep processing of text, such as partial or full parsing. The problem these solutions have to face is that as deeper analysis is used, the accuracy of the result decreases, and one cannot recover from the induced errors. On the other hand, lower level processing is more accurate and it can also provide useful information. However, within the framework of conventional approaches, this kind of information can not be efficiently incorporated.
This thesis describes a novel supervised approach based on kernel methods to address these issues. In this approach customized kernels are used to match syntactic structures produced from different preprocessing phases. Using properties of a kernel, individual kernels are combined into a composite kernel to integrate and extend all the information. The composite kernels can be used with various classifiers, such as Nearest Neighbor or Support Vector Machines (SVM). The main classifier we propose to use is SVM due to its ability to generalize in large dimensional feature spaces. We will show that each level of syntactic information can contribute to IE tasks, and low level information can help to recover from errors in deep processing.
The new approach has demonstrated state-of-the-art performance on two benchmark tasks. The first task is detecting slot fillers for management succession events (MUC-6). For this task two types of kernels were designed, a surface kernel based on word n-grams and a kernel built on sentence dependency trees; the second task is the ACE RDR evaluation, which is to recognize relations between entities in text from newswire and broadcast news transcript. For this task, five kernels were built to represent information from sentence tokenization, syntactic parsing and dependency parsing. Experimental results for the two tasks will be shown and discussed.


This qualitative study uses narrative inquiry to investigate the lived experiences of Afro-Latina women immigrants to the southern United States. Through Critical Race Theory and Black Transnational Feminist Theory the researcher explores how Afro-Latina women negotiate the dynamics of race, class, and gender in their home countries and in the United States. The researcher collected the counternarratives of eight Afro-Latina women from the Dominican Republic, Guatemala, and Panama. The researcher conducted individual and group interviews as well as field observations. Using the words of the participants, the results of this study reveal five significant negotiations of race, class, and gender: Negotiations of Immigration and Class: "I did it for my family; Negotiations of Racism: "[T]here is a lot of racism here."; Negotiations of Race and Identity: Nationality First: "I am not Mexican or African-American!"; Negotiations of Gender: `Women are now in all spheres.'; and Negotiations of Beauty: `Pretty is having long straight hair.'


As the design of software architectures emerges as a discipline within software engineering, it will become increasingly important to support architectural description and analysis with tools and environments. In this paper we describe a system for developing architectural design environments that exploit architectural styles to guide software architects in producing specific systems. The primary contributions of this research are: (a) a generic object model for representing architectural designs; (b) the characterization of architectural styles as specializations of this object model; and (c) a toolkit for creating an open architectural design environment from a description of a specific architectural style. We use our experience in implementing these concepts to illustrate how style-oriented architectural design raises new challenges for software support environments.


Adolescent disruptive behaviours have been the focus of scientific study for decades. However, this work has often ignored the experiences that provide the setting for those behaviours and the states of mind that precede them. These have largely remained the concern of novelists and philosophers. Here I discuss the various reasons why boredom and its associated features should be at the forefront of future research in psychopathology.


Voltage-gated Na(+) (Na(v)) channels are composed of a pore-forming α-subunit and one or more auxiliary β-subunits. The present study investigated the regulation by the β-subunit of two Na(+) channels (Na(v)1.6 and Na(v)1.8) expressed in dorsal root ganglion (DRG) neurons. Single cell RT-PCR was used to show that Na(v)1.8, Na(v)1.6, and β(1)-β(3) subunits were widely expressed in individually harvested small-diameter DRG neurons. Coexpression experiments were used to assess the regulation of Na(v)1.6 and Na(v)1.8 by β-subunits. The β(1)-subunit induced a 2.3-fold increase in Na(+) current density and hyperpolarizing shifts in the activation (-4 mV) and steady-state inactivation (-4.7 mV) of heterologously expressed Na(v)1.8 channels. The β(4)-subunit caused more pronounced shifts in activation (-16.7 mV) and inactivation (-9.3 mV) but did not alter the current density of cells expressing Na(v)1.8 channels. The β(3)-subunit did not alter Na(v)1.8 gating but significantly reduced the current density by 31%. This contrasted with Na(v)1.6, where the β-subunits were relatively weak regulators of channel function. One notable exception was the β(4)-subunit, which induced a hyperpolarizing shift in activation (-7.6 mV) but no change in the inactivation or current density of Na(v)1.6. The β-subunits differentially regulated the expression and gating of Na(v)1.8 and Na(v)1.6. To further investigate the underlying regulatory mechanism, β-subunit chimeras containing portions of the strongly regulating β(1)-subunit and the weakly regulating β(2)-subunit were generated. Chimeras retaining the COOH-terminal domain of the β(1)-subunit produced hyperpolarizing shifts in gating and increased the current density of Na(v)1.8, similar to that observed for wild-type β(1)-subunits. The intracellular COOH-terminal domain of the β(1)-subunit appeared to play an essential role in the regulation of Na(v)1.8 expression and gating.


Early intervention for vulnerable children is acknowledged as a critical factor in ensuring the best outcomes for children and their families. This paper outlines policies and processes in the United Kingdom which facilitate appropriate early intervention, including inter-agency working and communication. It explores how theory is translated into practice through a short case study exemplifying how intervention works in reality. This case study is set in a context of the early 21st century in the UK when the then labour government invested in a policy which set to address the needs of every child through inter- and trans- agency working. This was located in a policy white paper entitled 'Every Child Matters (DfES 2004). However, a recent general election leading to a change of government in May 2010, has created an unpredictable future for existing policies and practices which has been compounded by a worsening economic situation in the UK. Thus, the paper discusses both existing policy and practices but also hypothesizes on what the future might hold in terms of the early identification of vulnerable children and the provision of appropriate services and strategies to meet effectively these needs of both children and their families.


We present the first comprehensive late Quaternary record of North American Great Plains temperature by assessing the behavior of the stable isotopic composition (δ 13 C) of buried soils. After examining the relationship between the δ 13 C of topsoil organic matter and July temperature from 61 native prairies within a latitudinal range of 46°–38°N, we applied the resulting regression equation to 64 published δ 13 C values from buried soils of the same region to construct a temperature curve for the past 12 k.y. Estimated temperatures from 12 to 10 ka (1 k.y. = 1000 14 C yr B.P.) fluctuated with a periodicity of ∼1 k.y. with two cool excursions between −4.5 and −3.5 °C and two warmer excursions between −1 and 0 °C, relative to modern. Early Holocene temperatures from ca. 10–7.5 ka were −1.0 to −2.0 °C before rising to +1.0 °C in the middle Holocene between 6.0 and 4.5 ka. After a cool interlude from 4.2 to 2.6 ka, when temperatures dropped to slightly below modern, another warm interval ensued from 2.6 to 1 ka as temperatures increased to ∼+0.5 °C. A final decline in temperature to below modern occurred beginning ca. 0.5 ka. Cooler than present temperatures in the Great Plains indicate telecommunications with cool-water episodes in the Gulf of Mexico and North Atlantic potentially governed by a combination of glacial meltwater pulses and low solar irradiance.


Private property is central to American character, culture and democracy. The founding fathers understood it as key to the liberties America was designed to foster. However, over the last 200 years what one owns has evolved; ownership is different now than for an owner 200, 100, even 50 years ago. Harvey Jacobs has brought together an interdisciplinary, politically divergent group of contributors to speculate on private property's future.


Despite being a sparsely-populated country with less than 2% of its land arable, Mongolia has developed a rich and complex food culture, notably for its meat and dairy products, which could soon be at an historic high thanks to the tens of millions of animals on Mongolian pastureland. Many Mongolians and non-Mongolians view the countryside as a sea of milk that is currently being underutilized for economic exploitation. Various projects, whether funded and organized by international NGOs, the Mongolian government, or private companies, have tried to use Mongolian's dairy resources to fill Mongolian demand, with more recent private ventures also pursuing exporting Mongolian dairy products to other countries. European-style cheese is a new but popularizing food item mostly produced by three artisanal Mongolian cheese companies. This paper analyzes the history, present, and planned futures of the artisanal Mongolian cheese company business models to ask how globalization is altering the Mongolian food sector, and the challenges Mongolian cheesemakers face trying to join the global market using their vast dairy resources and network. The main barrier for Mongolian cheesemakers is currently the inability to access the international market due to a lack of export licensing, stemming from health and standardization concerns. The Mongolian cheese industry has been partially globalized at every step of the cheese production and consumption process, with global standards covering everything from starter cultures to demand for luxury wines and cheeses. A globalized cheese industry is shown to be very helpful to cheesemakers from an economic and social standpoint, but has underlying risks of erasing the complex tradition of Mongolian dairy products, both culturally and nutritionally.


This paper examines the role of public and private R&D spillovers and other determinants on the propensity to patent (whether firms engage in patenting activity) and patenting output (the number of patent applications). Knowledge spillovers are constructed based on the research profiles of businesses and public research institutions, respectively. We find that both private and public spillovers have an impact on patenting behaviour, though in opposite directions. Spillovers from business R&D have a negative impact, potentially reflecting adverse effects of rival firms' R&D on expected returns of own patenting activity. In contrast, public spillovers are found to have a positive effect on patenting activity, possibly reflecting the value to firms' patenting activity of basic and applied research conducted by public research institutes.


In this dissertation, I develop and study a dynamic general equilibrium (DSGE) model with housing and banking. The framework is used to explore several sets of issues related to housing and financial markets. In Chapter 2, I investigate the extent to which a disruption in banks' balance sheets affects the behavior of the housing market and the macroeconomy in an experiment that mimics the Great Recession. The model can qualitatively capture key features of the phenomenon of the Great Recession in response to a financial shock. In Chapter 3, I investigate the model's ability to more generally account for important features of the business cycle observed in the data. In particular, the model with estimated shocks replicates well several key features of housing and financial markets and the macroeconomy observed in the data. It can quantitatively account for the volatility and procyclicality of consumption, investment, house prices and some financial variables. It can also reproduce the co-movements among the quantities of interest. Moreover, I find that technology shocks are the main driving forces of fluctuations in the housing market and the macroeconomy, explaining more than 95 percent of the volatility in housing investment and house prices, and more than 85 percent of the volatility in consumption and GDP. Financial shocks and housing technology shocks are the primary driving forces of fluctuations in the financial market at business cycle frequencies, explaining more than 90 percent of the volatility in loans and net worth. In Chapter 4, I evaluate various macroprudential policies that might help to mitigate the volatility of house prices and household debts, both of which are perceived to be reliable indicators of financial distress historically. My simulation results show that countercyclical policies specifically designed to react to credit and house price growth are useful in stabilizing the financial and housing markets. Moreover, an asymmetric tax schedule that favours impatient households can reduce the volatility of both house prices and household debts without causing excess volatility in other macroeconomic variables. In this regard, this macroprudential policy can be viewed as an effective tool that can successfully contain both financial imbalances and housing market instability in a booming economy exhibiting rapid house price appreciation and credit expansion.


This paper discusses how fast-response distributed battery energy storage could be used to implement post-contingency corrective control actions. Immediately after a contingency, the injections of distributed batteries could be adjusted to alleviate overloads and reduce flows below their short-term emergency rating. This ensures that the post-contingency system remains stable until the operator has redispatched the generation. Implementing this form of corrective control would allow operators to take advantage of the difference between the short- and long-term ratings of the lines and would therefore increase the available transmission capacity. This problem is formulated as a two-stage, enhanced security-constrained OPF problem, in which the first-stage optimizes the pre-contingency generation dispatch, while the second-stage minimizes the corrective actions for each contingency. Case studies based on a six-bus test system and on the RTS 96 demonstrate that the proposed method provides effective corrective actions and can guarantee operational reliability and economy.