Terlinguacreekite, ideally Hg 2+ 3 O 2 Cl 2 , has a very pronounced subcell that is orthorhombic, space-group choices Imam , Imcm , Ima 2 and I 2 cm , with unit-cell parameters refined from powder data: a 6.737(3), b 25.528(10), c 5.533(2) A, V 951.6(6) A 3 , a:b:c 0.2639:1:0.2167, Z = 8. The true symmetry, supercell unit-cell parameters, and details regarding the crystal structure are unknown. The strongest nine lines of the X-ray powder-diffraction pattern [ d in A ( I )(subcell hkl )] are: 5.413(30)(011), 4.063(80)(121), 3.201(50)(080), 3.023(50)(161), 2.983(60)(240), 2.858(30)(211), 2.765(50)(002), 2.518(100b)(091, 251) and 2.026(30)(242). The mineral is found in an isolated area measuring approximately 1 × 0.5 m in the lower level of the Perry pit, Mariposa mine, Terlingua mining district, Brewster County, Texas (type locality), as mm-sized anhedral dark orange to reddish orange crusts of variable thickness on calcite, and rarely as 0.5 mm-sized aggregates of crystals of the same color. It has also been identified at the McDermitt mine, Humboldt County, Nevada, U.S.A., where it occurs with kleinite and calomel in silicified volcanic rocks and sediments. Terlinguacreekite is a secondary phase, most probably formed from the alteration of primary cinnabar or native mercury. At Terlingua, most crusts are thin, almost cryptocrystalline, with no discernable forms, and are resinous and translucent to opaque. Crystals are up to 0.2 mm in length, subhedral, acicular to prismatic, elongation [001], with a maximum length-to-width ratio of 4:1. They are vitreous, transparent, and some crystals have brightly reflecting faces, which may be {010} and {110}. The streak is yellow, and the mineral is brittle with an uneven fracture, no observable cleavage, and is soft, nonfluorescent under both long- and short-wave ultraviolet light. D (calc.) is 9.899 g/cm 3 (empirical formula). Material from the McDermitt mine is reversibly photosensitive, and turns from vivid orange to black in strong light. In reflected plane-polarized light, it is bluish grey, with very weak (in air) to distinct (in oil) bireflectance, nonpleochroic, and distinctly anisotropic, with colors masked by ubiquitous yellowish orange to orange internal reflections. Measured values of reflectance obtained in air and in oil are tabulated. Averaged results of electron-microprobe analysis give HgO 92.03, Cl 9.54, Br 1.22, sum 102.79, less O = Cl + Br 2.28, total 100.51 wt.%. The empirical formula is Hg 2+ 3.00 O 2.00 (Cl 1.90 Br 0.11 ) ∑2.01 , based on O + Cl + Br = 4 atoms per formula unit. The mineral name recalls the creek that flows through the Terlingua mining district and into the Rio Grande River.


Abstract We report the first surgical series of patients developing pleural empyema after severe bilateral interstitial lung disease in confirmed severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 infection. The empyema results in a complex medical challenge that requires combination of medical therapies, mechanical ventilation and surgery. The chest drainage approach was not successful to relieve the symptomatology and to drain the excess fluid. After multidisciplinary discussion, a surgical approach was recommended. Even though decortication and pleurectomy are high-risk procedures, they must be considered as an option for pleural effusion in Coronavirus disease-positive patients. This is a life-treating condition, which can worsen the coronavirus disease manifestation and should be treated immediately to improve patient's status and chance of recovery.


Introduction: Treatment of patients with acquired immunodefi- ciency syndrome should be complete and based on controlling the disease and the complications related to the use of antiret- roviral medications, such as lipodystrophy. This study aimed to evaluate the main complaints, epidemiological aspects, and surgical procedures performed for lipodystrophy correction among patients receiving long-term antiretroviral therapy. Method: In this retrospective study, data were collected from the medical records of 27 patients who underwent 36 surgical procedures associated with lipodystrophy correction, from March 2010 to June 2014, at the Plastic Surgery Service of the Hospital das Clinicas, Faculty of Medicine of Ribeirao Preto. Results: The average age of the patients was 47.2 years; 22.2% were men and 77.8% were women. The average duration of an- tiretroviral therapy (HAAR) was 12.1 years. The most frequent complaints were dorsal hump (44.4%), abdominal lipodystro- phy (44.4%), and gluteal lipoatrophy (37.04%). The majority of patients (70.4%) had undergone surgery. The most common type of surgery performed was hump liposuction (carried out in 48.1% of the patients), followed by abdominal, back, or flank liposuction (44.4%) and gluteoplasty (22.2%). Among all 36 proce- dures performed, only 2 resulted in complications. The average postoperative follow-up period was 11.2 months. In total, 70.4% of patients were satisfied with the results of their procedure. Conclusions: The success of surgical treatment of HAAR-in- duced lipodystrophy is based on proper preoperative selection as well as constant and prolonged follow-up. Improved self- esteem facilitates the adherence to antiretroviral drug treatment. ■ ABSTRACT


Many studies have tried to predict corporate performance and stock prices to enhance investment profitability using qualitative approaches such as the Delphi method. However, developments in data processing technology and machine-learning algorithms have resulted in efforts to develop quantitative prediction models in various managerial subject areas. We propose a quantitative corporate performance prediction model that applies the support vector regression (SVR) algorithm to solve the problem of the overfitting of training data and can be applied to regression problems. The proposed model optimizes the SVR training parameters based on the training data, using the genetic algorithm to achieve sustainable predictability in changeable markets and managerial environments. Technology-intensive companies represent an increasing share of the total economy. The performance and stock prices of these companies are affected by their financial standing and their technological capabilities. Therefore, we apply both financial indicators and technical indicators to establish the proposed prediction model. Here, we use time series data, including financial, patent, and corporate performance information of 44 electronic and IT companies. Then, we predict the performance of these companies as an empirical verification of the prediction performance of the proposed model.


Updated and revised to include theoretical and other developments, bibliographical additions, new photographs and illustrations, and expanded name and subject indexes, the fourth edition of All Possible Worlds: A History of Geographical Ideas is the most complete and comprehensive book of its kind. The text also features a layout and readability that make the material easy to navigate and understand. The book investigates the ways in which the subject of geography has been recognized, perceived, and evaluated, from its early acknowledgment in ancient Greece to its disciplined form in today's world of shared ideas and mass communication. Strong continuities knit the Classical Period to the Age of Exploration, then carry students on through Varenius to Humboldt and Ritter--revealing the emergence of "the new geography" of the Modern Period. The history of American geography--developed in seven of the twenty chapters--is strongly emphasized pursuant to the formal origins of geography in late nineteenth-century Germany, Darwin's theory of evolution, and the great surveys of the American west. This treatment is enhanced by chapters concerning parallel histories of geography in Germany, France, Great Britain, Russia (including the USSR and CIS), Canada, Sweden, and Japan-countries that at first contributed to and later borrowed from the body of US geographical thought. All Possible Worlds: A History of Geographical Ideas, Fourth Edition, is ideal for upper-level undergraduate or graduate courses in the history and philosophy of classical, medieval, and modern geographical thought.


Impacts of urbanisation on hydrological processes are different for snowmelt and rainfall events. Furthermore, snowmelt and runoff generation differ between rural and urban areas. Within an urban area, melt intensities are increased at some sites; hence, the volume of water early in thaw can be greater than in rural areas. However, shading can reduce melt in other areas so that the melt period is extended. Many surfaces are at least seasonally impervious and generate overland flow - there is an apparent increase in the area contributing to quickflow as normally permeable surfaces become saturated or frozen or both. Water infiltrating permeable soil causes saturation and groundwater recharge so that water can seep into sewers. Regardless of whether water enters via inlets or sewer infiltration, drainage networks ensure swift delivery of melt water to outlets. Snowmelt induced runoff reaching the Uddebo Waste Water Treatment Plant in Lulea, Sweden, is investigated and a model of urban snowmelt and meltwater routing is proposed. The role of surface type (permeable and impervious) and snow cover characteristics (snow-free, undisturbed, compacted and piled) upon model output is studied. Results are encouraging and provide a good platform for further research.


ABSTRACT Reducing GHG emissions and mitigating climate change would require significant investments in renewable energy technologies. Foreign direct investments (FDI) in renewable energy (RE) have increased over the last years, contributing to the diffusion of RE globally. In the field of climate policy, there are multiple policy instruments aimed at attracting investments in renewable energy. This article aims to map the FDI flows globally including source and destination countries. Furthermore, the article investigates which policy instruments attract more FDI in RE sectors such as solar, wind and biomass, based on an econometric analysis of 137 Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and non-OECD countries. The results show that Feed in Tariffs (FIT) followed by Fiscal Measures (FM), such as tax incentives and Renewable Portfolio Standards (RPS), are the most significant policy instrument that attract FDI in the RE sector globally. Regarding carbon pricing instruments, based on our analysis, carbon tax proved to be correlated with high attraction of FDI in OECD countries, whereas Emissions Trading Schemes (ETS) proved to be correlated with high attraction of FDI mainly in non-OECD countries. Key policy insights Feed in Tariffs is the most significant policy instrument that attracts FDI in the Renewable Energy sector globally. Fiscal Measures (FM), such as tax incentives, show a significant and positive impact on renewable energy projects by foreign investors, and particularly on solar energy. Carbon pricing instruments, such as carbon taxation and emissions trading, proved to attract FDI in OECD and non-OECD countries respectively. Public investments, such as government funds for renewable energy projects, proved not as attractive to foreign private investors, perhaps because public funds are not perceived as stable in the long run.


Human activity has resulted in the domestication of Saccharomyces cerevisiae yeasts specifically adapted to beer production. While there is evidence beer yeast domestication was accelerated by industrialization of beer, there also exists a home-brewing culture in western Norway which has passed down yeasts referred to as kveik for generations. This practice has resulted in ale yeasts which are typically highly flocculant, phenolic off flavour negative (POF-), and exhibit a high rate of fermentation, similar to previously characterized lineages of domesticated yeast. Additionally, kveik yeasts are highly temperature tolerant, likely due to the traditional practice of pitching yeast into warm (>30 °C) wort. Here, we characterize kveik yeasts from 9 different Norwegian sources via PCR fingerprinting, phenotypic screens, lab-scale fermentations, and flavour metabolite analysis using HS-SPME-GC-MS. Genetic fingerprinting via interdelta PCR suggests that kveik yeasts form a lineage distinct from other domesticated yeasts. Our analyses confirm that kveik yeasts display hallmarks of domestication such as loss of 4-vinylguaiacol production and high flocculation, and show superior thermotolerance, ethanol tolerance, fermentation rate, and unique flavour metabolite production profiles in comparison to other ale strains, suggesting a broad industrial potential for this group of yeasts.


In this paper, the performance of IEEE 802.11 MAC protocol is analysed in terms of efficiency and reliability in wireless networks. In the IEEE 802.11, an exponential backoff has been adopted, which means whenever a collision occurs, the contention window (CW) of the station is doubled until it reaches the maximum value. The purpose of increasing CW is to reduce the collision probability by distributing the traffic into a larger time space. In this paper, fixed contention window scheme is used and then correlate the CW size and network size. The interaction of TCP with the MAC protocol is also analysed. For static multi hop network that uses IEEE 802.11 protocol for access, TCP performance is mainly determined by hidden terminal effects ( and not by drop probabilities at buffers) which limits the number of packets that can be transmitted simultaneously in the network. TCP throughput is improved by decreasing the ACKs flows, using delayed ACK, with d=2. Simulation results shows when choosing large maximum window, the delayed ACK considerably outperform standard TCP.


Many theorists claim that justice is a question-begging concept that has no inherent substantive content. They point to disagreements among justice theorists themselves about basic aspects of the justice theory, such as the nature of corrective justice and the distinction between it and distributive justice, as even further reason to dismiss the concept of justice or to fill it with their preferred theoretical content. Yet most persons perceive that the concept of justice is not an empty shell. Since ancient times it has been thought to encompass not merely a formal equality (treating like cases alike), but also a substantive equality grounded in the equal dignity of each human being which requires giving each person his or her "due" - what is his or hers as a matter of right - a requirement that is usually understood to be in direct conflict with the basic principles of aggregate social welfare theories such as utilitarianism or its modern variant, economic efficiency. The elaboration of this substantive equality and its implications for morality, justice, and law form the core of the natural-law or natural-right theories of law. In this article I build upon a summary and critique of John Finnis's natural law theory (1) to delineate the basic assumptions and principles of the natural law theory regarding the foundations of and relationships among morality, justice, and law; (2) to demonstrate the agreement of major natural law theorists, from Aristotle through Aquinas and Kant to Finnis, on these basic assumptions and principles; (3) to distinguish these basic assumptions and principles from those of the competing theories of utilitarianism and economic efficiency; and (4) to clarify the nature of and distinctions between the two basic divisions of substantive justice: distributive justice and interactive justice. I use the term "interactive justice" instead of the usual term, "corrective justice," since the former term is much more informative and precise in conveying the distinct nature and domain of this type of justice, whereas the latter term almost always misleads people into one or both of two related misconceptions: (1) that "corrective" justice is concerned solely with the correction of wrongful injuries and has nothing to say about the nature of the underlying wrongs or the prevention of their occurrence, and (2) that it is merely a remedial corollary of distributive justice which corrects deviations from the distributively just distribution. Distributive justice and interactive justice separately address the two fundamental problems of human existence, and they employ quite different criteria of equality to resolve those problems. Together, they seek to assure the attainment of the common good (the full realization, to the extent practicable, of each person's humanity) by providing each person with her fair share of the social stock of instrumental goods (positive freedom via distributive justice) and by securing her person and her existing stock of instrumental goods from interactions with others that are inconsistent with her status as a rational being with equal, absolute moral worth (negative freedom via interactive justice).


The medical importance of hydatidosis may be gaged by the fact that a number of international meetings have been held on this parasitic disease—the latest in 1956—and others undoubtedly will be held in the future. Moreover, there is an international journal published in Montevideo, Uruguay—Archivos Internacionales de la Hidatidosis—devoted exclusively to hydatidosis. Finally, the vast literature that has accumulated practically the world over on Echinococcus, together with the confusion that still prevails regarding the speciation of the genus, attests to the wide interest that parasitologists and medical workers everywhere have shown in this parasite of man and animals.
North America, with the exception of Mexico, has until recently been considered almost free of this parasitic infection. In South America, on the other hand, hydatidosis is known to be of great importance in several countries, especially Argentina, Paraguay, and Uruguay.


Impolite planet ignores host's partner Many known exoplanets (planets outside our own solar system) are hosted by binary systems that contain two stars. These planets normally circle around both of their stars. Using microlensing data taken with a worldwide network of telescopes, Gould et al. found a planet twice the mass of Earth that circles just one of a pair of stars. The same approach has the potential to uncover other similar star systems and help to illuminate some of the mysteries of planet formation. Science, this issue p. 46 Microlensing observations reveal an exoplanet twice the mass of Earth circling just one member of a binary system. Using gravitational microlensing, we detected a cold terrestrial planet orbiting one member of a binary star system. The planet has low mass (twice Earth's) and lies projected at ~0.8 astronomical units (AU) from its host star, about the distance between Earth and the Sun. However, the planet's temperature is much lower, <60 Kelvin, because the host star is only 0.10 to 0.15 solar masses and therefore more than 400 times less luminous than the Sun. The host itself orbits a slightly more massive companion with projected separation of 10 to 15 AU. This detection is consistent with such systems being very common. Straightforward modification of current microlensing search strategies could increase sensitivity to planets in binary systems. With more detections, such binary-star planetary systems could constrain models of planet formation and evolution.


ABSTRACT Background: Despite recent therapeutic advances, outcomes in pediatric high-grade glioma (HGG) remain poor. A phase 1 study (Glade-Bender et al., J Clin Oncol. 2008) indicated that bevacizumab (BEV) is well tolerated in children with refractory solid tumors and yielded pharmacokinetic data that support further studies of BEV in childhood cancer. Trial design: A total of 120 eligible patients aged 3 to 18 years with newly diagnosed, localized supratentorial or infratentorial cerebellar or peduncular, histologically confirmed World Health Organization grade 3 or 4 HGG (central independent histologic confirmation) will be randomized to 6 weeks of concomitant temozolomide (TMZ) and local radiotherapy, followed by a 4-week TMZ treatment break and 48 weeks of adjuvant TMZ ± BEV every other week. Children aged 6 months to 3 years with recurrent disease are eligible in a young patient cohort; at relapse, these patients will receive TMZ + BEV without radiotherapy. All patients/parents must provide written informed consent per the local institutional review boards. The primary end point is event-free survival, defined as the time to earliest occurrence of tumor progression/recurrence (by central independent assessment per Response Assessment in Neuro-Oncology criteria), secondary malignancy, or death. Secondary end points include overall survival, response rate, safety, feasibility, and tolerability. The usefulness of multimodal MRI will be explored with respect to the diagnosis of pseudoprogression and prognostication of tumor evolution. All randomized patients will be followed for ≥3 years. A futility analysis will be performed after the first 60 randomized patients have been followed for 1 year. The primary analysis will be performed after all patients have been followed for 1 year. Updated analyses will be performed 3 years after the last patient has been randomized. HERBY is being conducted at 87 clinical sites in 15 countries. The first patient was randomized in October 2011. Among 118 patients screened to date, 79 have been randomized, and 1 has been enrolled in the young patient cohort. Completion of the study is expected in 2016. Some content has been presented at ASCO 2012 (abs TPS9596), SNO 2013 (abs PC-007), and ISPN 2013 (abs P109). Disclosure: D. Hargrave: Advisory board: Roche; P. Varlet: Advisory board: Roche Other substantive relationships: Roche; T. Jaspan: Corporate sponsored research: Roche; C. Jones: Advisory board: Genentech Paediatric Oncology Advisory Board Corporate-sponsored research: Roche/Genentech - HERBY trial M. Massimino: Advisory board: Roche, present study; A.A. Azizi: Advisory board: Roche F. Saran: Advisory board: Roche; P. Morgan: Advisory board: Trial Steering Group for F Hoffmann‐La Roche sponsored HERBY study (BO25041) Corporate-sponsored research: Employing institution receives support for its role in the F Hoffmann‐La Roche sponsored HERBY study (BO25041); G. Zahlmann: Stock ownership: Roche employee program Corporate-sponsored research: Roche employee; M. Zheng: Stock ownership: Genentech/Roche; S. Fuerst-Recktenwald: Other substantive relationships: Roche employee C. Berger: Corporate sponsored research: Roche; E. Bouffet: Advisory board: Boehringer Ingelheim. All other authors have declared no conflicts of interest.


Monitoring and troubleshooting distributed systems is notoriously difficult; potential problems are complex, varied, and unpredictable. The monitoring and diagnosis tools commonly used today—logs, counters, and metrics—have two important limitations: what gets recorded is defined a priori, and the information is recorded in a component- or machine-centric way, making it extremely hard to correlate events that cross these boundaries. This article presents Pivot Tracing, a monitoring framework for distributed systems that addresses both limitations by combining dynamic instrumentation with a novel relational operator: the happened-before join. Pivot Tracing gives users, at runtime, the ability to define arbitrary metrics at one point of the system, while being able to select, filter, and group by events meaningful at other parts of the system, even when crossing component or machine boundaries. We have implemented a prototype of Pivot Tracing for Java-based systems and evaluate it on a heterogeneous Hadoop cluster comprising HDFS, HBase, MapReduce, and YARN. We show that Pivot Tracing can effectively identify a diverse range of root causes such as software bugs, misconfiguration, and limping hardware. We show that Pivot Tracing is dynamic, extensible, and enables cross-tier analysis between inter-operating applications, with low execution overhead.


Although manipulation capabilities of aerial robots greatly improved in the last decade, only few works addressed the problem of aerial physical interaction with dynamic environments, proposing strongly model-based approaches. However, in real scenarios, modeling the environment with high accuracy is often impossible. In this work, we aim at developing a control framework for Omnidirectional Micro Aerial Vehicles (OMAVs) for reliable physical interaction tasks with articulated and movable objects in the presence of possibly unforeseen disturbances, and without relying on an accurate model of the environment. Inspired by previous applications of energy-based controllers for physical interaction, we propose a passivity-based impedance and wrench tracking controller in combination with a momentum-based wrench estimator. This is combined with an energytank framework to guarantee the stability of the system, while energy and power flow-based adaptation policies are deployed to enable safe interaction with any type of passive environment. The control framework provides formal guarantees of stability, which is validated in practice considering the challenging task of pushing a cart of unknown mass, moving on a surface of unknown friction, as well as subjected to unknown disturbances. For this scenario, we present, evaluate and discuss three different policies.


The focus of rapid diagnosis of infectious disease of horses in the last decade has shifted from the conventional laboratory techniques of antigen detection, microscopy, and culture to molecular diagnosis of infectious agents. Equine practitioners must be able to interpret the use, limitations, and results of molecular diagnostic techniques, as they are increasingly integrated into routine microbiology laboratory protocols. Polymerase chain reaction (PCR) is the best-known and most successfully implemented diagnostic molecular technology to date. It can detect slow-growing, difficult-to-cultivate, or uncultivatable microorganisms and can be used in situations in which clinical microbiology diagnostic procedures are inadequate, time-consuming, difficult, expensive, or hazardous to laboratory staff. Inherent technical limitations of PCR are present, but they are reduced in laboratories that use standardized protocols, conduct rigid validation protocols, and adhere to appropriate quality-control procedures. Improvements in PCR, especially probe-based real-time PCR, have broadened its diagnostic capabilities in clinical infectious diseases to complement and even surpass traditional methods in some situations. Furthermore, real-time PCR is capable of quantitation, allowing discrimination of clinically relevant infections characterized by pathogen replication and high pathogen loads from chronic latent infections. Automation of all components of PCR is now possible, which will decrease the risk of generating false-positive results due to contamination. The novel real-time PCR strategy and clinical applications in equine infectious diseases will be the subject of this review.


Aims. In order to discover new X-ray transients, the data taken by XMM-Newton as it slews between targets are being processed and cross-correlated with other X-ray observations. Methods. A bright source, XMMSL1 J060636.2-694933, was detected on 18 July 2006 at a position where no previous X-ray source had been seen. The XMM-Newton slew data, plus follow-up dedicated XMM-Newton and Swift observations, plus optical data acquired with the Magellan Clay telescope, and archival All-Sky Automated Survey (ASAS) data were used to classify the new object, and to investigate its properties. Results. No XMM-Newton slew X-ray counts are detected above 1 keV and the source is seen to be over five hundred times brighter than the ROSAT All-Sky Survey upper limit at that position. The line-rich optical spectrum acquired with the Magellan telescope allows the object to be classified as an A0 auroral phase nova, and the soft X-ray spectrum indicates that the nova was in a super-soft source state in the X-ray decline seen in the follow-up X-ray observations. The archival ASAS data suggests that the nova at onset (Oct 2005) was a "very fast" nova, and an estimate of its distance is consistent with the nova being situated within the LMC. Conclusions. With the discovery presented here of a new classical nova in the LMC, it is clear that XMM-Newton slew data are continuing to offer a powerful opportunity to find new X-ray transient objects.


Both genetic and environmental factors are involved in the etiology of obesity and the associated lipid disturbances. We determined whether acquired obesity is associated with changes in global serum lipid profiles independent of genetic factors in young adult monozygotic (MZ) twins. 14 healthy MZ pairs discordant for obesity (10 to 25 kg weight difference) and ten weight concordant control pairs aged 24–27 years were identified from a large population-based study. Insulin sensitivity was assessed by the euglycemic clamp technique, and body composition by DEXA (% body fat) and by MRI (subcutaneous and intra-abdominal fat). Global characterization of lipid molecular species in serum was performed by a lipidomics strategy using liquid chromatography coupled to mass spectrometry. Obesity, independent of genetic influences, was primarily related to increases in lysophosphatidylcholines, lipids found in proinflammatory and proatherogenic conditions and to decreases in ether phospholipids, which are known to have antioxidant properties. These lipid changes were associated with insulin resistance, a pathogonomic characteristic of acquired obesity in these young adult twins. Our results show that obesity, already in its early stages and independent of genetic influences, is associated with deleterious alterations in the lipid metabolism known to facilitate atherogenesis, inflammation and insulin resistance.


Study Objectives
The importance of sleep for health necessitates investigation of disparities in multiple aspects of sleep. Given the potential disruption to sleep posed by the well-documented discrimination experienced by sexual minorities, disparities related to sexual minority status warrant such attention. This study sought to (1) measure differences in same- and different-sex couples in sleep duration and perceived restedness, (2) examine how the link between sleep duration and restedness varied among same- and different-sex couples, and (3) assess variation in restedness across state-level sexual minority indicators.

Methods
Participants in the Wellbeing Module of the American Time Use Survey, assessed in 2010, 2012, and 2013 (n = 17378), completed time diaries assessing sleep duration and evaluated their own restedness.

Results
Multinomial and ordinal regression analyses showed no links between partner sex and sleep among men. Women with same-sex partners reported lower restedness than women with different-sex partners, and perceptions of restedness were more strongly linked to sleep duration for the former than the latter. Finally, women with the same-sex partners living in states more supportive of sexual minorities reported better restedness than those in less supportive states.

Conclusions
Women with same-sex partners were vulnerable to lower restedness, especially when they reported lower sleep duration or were in less supportive environments. Such disparities could underlie related disparities in health, as sleep health is predictive of health outcomes. Future research is needed to explore the role of sleep in explaining variation in health outcomes among sexual minority women.


Background and Aim: Long-term immune alterations have been proposed to play a mechanistic role in posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) as well as in its associated increase in medical morbidity and mortality. Better characterization of altered immune function may help identify diagnostic and prognostic biomarkers and potentially targets for preventive intervention. Methods: As part of an ongoing study, we conducted a preliminary case-control comparison of resting immune inflammatory profiles between terror victims treated in childhood at the emergency department over the previous decade, who developed chronic PTSD upon long-term follow-up, and healthy controls. Results: Our preliminary results in a subsample of this ongoing study support and extend elevated resting levels of granulocyte colony-stimulating factor, interleukin-4, and regulated on activation, normal T cell expressed and secreted in childhood onset chronic PTSD. Conclusion: Chronic immune alterations may participate in inflammatory activation and signal to the CNS through the neurovascular unit, as well as modulate the neuroendocrine axis. Better characterization and understanding of these preliminary findings may point to diagnostic and prognostic biomarkers and potentially elucidate mechanistic involvement of immune activation in PTSD.


Extracts of the genus Morus were obtained by extraction of the fruit of Morus alba and Morus nigra using methanol as the extractant. The content of macro- and microelements in the fruit extracts and leaves that are used as plant material was determined using ICP-OES method. The chemical composition of the extracts was determined using UHPLC-DAD-MS method. It was identified 18 compounds which belongs to: phenolic acids, anthocyanins and flavonoids. The composition of the essential oils of leaves of M. alba and M. nigra, fresh and after a month of drying, was determined by GC-MS analysis. Identified 131 constituent of essential oils presents 95,1 – 96,4% of the total area of GC peaks. Among them, a substance which wasn't present in fresh plant material, bovolid, was identified and it can be used for the evaluation of the freshness of plant material. The antioxidant activity of methanol extracts of Morus species fruit has been proven using the DPPH method. By applying the method of microdilution MIC and MBC were determinated in the context of the series of 12 double dilution extracts. Antimicrobial activity of extracts was tested against 19 bacterial strains (9 Gram (+) and 10 Gram (-) of which 7 of them causes the acne, and other strains causes other skin disseases. Used bacterial strains were from ATCC sui collection and isolates of wound swabs. Also, the antimicrobial activity of the aglycones of extracts was tested. New formulations of phytopreparations for application on skin in form of hydrogels and emulsions type O/W, which as an active component contain tested herbal extract in concentration of 2% were developed. Results of safety profile studies showed that phytopreparation for topical application on the skin in the form of hydrogels and the O/W emulsions with the extract of the M. alba and M. nigra are not expected to cause irritation of the skin. Also, in vivo studies with aim to investigate the effects of the O/W emulsions containing the extract of mulberry after a seven-day application on experimentaly irritated skin have been done. Sodium lauryl sulfate was used as an irritant.
Effects in both studies were expressed as the change of appropriate biophysical parameter measured in the skin of healthy human volunteers (erythema index, transepidermal water loss, pH, electrical capacitance as a measure of the hydratation). All tests were performed in line with the Helsinki Declaration and the approval from the Ethics Committee of the Medical Faculty in Nis. Emulsions showed good organoleptical, rheological and physical properties. The results of a seven-day efficacy studies showed that formulated emulsions after application on irritated skin, reduce irritation, restore the protective barrier of the skin, and have more positive effect on skin hydration level compared with the emulsion carrier itself.


There have been growing concerns about the danger of a surveillance society that is facilitated by social media, in which individuals voluntarily surrender their data to service providers. Amongst the major social media services, Facebook stands out not only because of its market share but also because of its insistence on a strong real name policy. Subscribers must sign up with their real name as their username on the platform. Due to this policy, Facebook users have more reasons to worry about government and corporate surveillance. Facebook's subscribers have protested against its real name policy. Yet Facebook's position on demanding real names remains firm. The track record of Facebook's privacy practice is problematic, although they repeatedly assert that users have control of their data, including how much Facebook uses the users' data they collected for targeted advertising. This paper argues that users lose much of their control so long as Facebook continues to insist on its real name policy, because there is already so much information about us in our names. This paper addresses why Facebook should reconsider their position and allow pseudonymous usernames, and discusses the potential legal grounds to challenge Facebook's real name policy under EU GDPR's new regulatory regime.


Corporate information privacy policies are receiving increased attention in the information privacy debate. Prior studies used Web surveys to analyze the content of online information privacy policies and to assess whether or not the policies comply with a standard known as the Fair Information Practices. One assumption of these studies is that the main role of a privacy policy is to protect the consumer by communicating a firm's information practices. This paper employs Habermas's Theory of Communicative Action to uncover the much more complex and multifaceted roles that privacy policies actually play in a social context. Overall, the study's findings offer insights into the reflective nature of information privacy policies, specifically their role in social interactions among companies, consumers and government regulators. The theoretical and managerial implications of the results are discussed and directions for future research provided.


Native to Asia, Harmonia axyridis (Pallas) (Coleoptera: Coccinellidae) is an invasive non-native ladybird in Europe. The objective of the study was to investigate the habitat use and phenology of H. axyridis in Great Britain in the first five years since establishment, using data collected in a web-based public survey (www.harlequin-survey.org) and association with a national land cover dataset. Over 10000 verified records of H. axyridis between 2004 and 2008 were analysed.

Evidence of bi-voltinism was found, with a spring peak in larval records in weeks 22-25 (i.e. late May – late June) and an autumn peak most frequently in weeks 42-43 (i.e. mid-late October). Harmonia axyridis had a mean activity period of 30.75 (range 26 to 34) weeks per year (based on the difference between the start and end of overwintering in buildings). There was a very strong positive relationship (R2 = 0.977) between the length of activity period per year and the mean annual temperature in Britain.

Mean occurrence on arable/horticultural land was 18.8%. Occurrence in built-up areas and gardens decreased each year, from 70.2% in 2005 to 53.4% in 2008. Conversely, occurrence in grassland increased, from 6.0% in 2005 to 20.4% in 2008. Occurrence in woodland was greater in later years (2006-8 mean = 5.6%) than in earlier years (2004-5 mean = 2.5%). Thus although H. axyridis was very common in urban habitats, it increasingly used semi-natural habitats.

Mean occurrence of H. axyridis on plants was: deciduous trees/shrubs 55.9%; herbaceous plants 29.1%; evergreen trees/shrubs 11.2%; grass/rush/sedge/fern 3.7%. The species was increasingly found on herbaceous plants. Harmonia axyridis was recorded from 75 families of flowering plant and three families of coniferous plant. 53.5% of records were reported from the six most represented plant families (Aceraceae, Rosaceae, Malvaceae, Urticaceae, Asteraceae and Fabaceae). Harmonia axyridis larvae were recorded from 50 plant families (with 50.2% of all larval records reported from Aceraceae, Malvaceae and Rosaceae).

These data show that H. axyridis has a broad habitat range in Britain and has the capacity to dominate coccinellid assemblages in semi-natural, as well as urban, habitats.


Characteristics of other photochemical processes are cited, which might also pertain to those of the retina. By assuming such relationships for retinal receptors, hypothetical formulas are derived for conversion of tristimulus (CIE) values to physiological terms presumed to represent color perception. Substantial agreement between these physiological functions and actual observer response (ideal Munsell system) indicates a close degree of correlation. This approach is suggested as a basis for studying the problem of balanced perceptual color spacing.


Abstract. On 11 March 2011 the Tohoku tsunami devastated the east coast of Japan, claiming thousands of casualties and destroying coastal settlements and infrastructure. In this paper tsunami generation, propagation, and inundation are modeled to hindcast the event. Earthquake source models with heterogeneous slips are developed in order to match tsunami observations, including a best fit initial sea surface elevation with water levels up to 8 m. Tsunami simulations were compared to buoys in the Pacific, showing good agreement. In the far field the frequency dispersion provided a significant reduction even for the leading wave. Furthermore, inundation simulations were performed for ten different study areas. The results compared well with run-up measurements available and trim lines derived from satellite images, but with some overestimation of the modeled surface elevation in the northern part of the Sanriku coast. For inundation modeling this work aimed at using freely available, medium-resolution data for topography, bottom friction, and bathymetry, which are easily accessible in the framework of a rapid assessment. Although these data come along with some inaccuracies, the results of the tsunami simulations suggest that their use is feasible for application in rapid tsunami hazard assessments. A heterogeneous source model is essential to simulate the observed distribution of the run-up correctly, though.


We predict the existence of optical domain walls and quasi-rectangular localized modes in waveguide arrays with quadratic nonlinearity. An analytical criterion for the stability of these localized modes is derived and confirmed by direct numerical calculations. The instability gain near the respective boundaries is calculated. The instability predicted is controllable by input power and therefore has a potential for use in new all-optical switching schemes. Parameters of the waveguide arrays made from titanium-indiffused lithium niobate as well as the required power levels are estimated.


Since Jung and Film was first published in 2001, Jungian writing on the moving image in film and television has accelerated. Jung and Film II: The Return provides new contributions from authors across the globe willing to tackle the broader issues of film production and consumption, the audience and the place of film culture in our lives.

As well as chapters dealing with particular film makers such as Maya Derren and films such as Birth, The Piano, The Wrestler and Breaking the Wave, there is also a unique chapter co-written by documentary film-maker Tom Hurvitz and New York Jungian analyst Margaret Klenck. Other areas of discussion include:

•the way in which psychological issues come under scrutiny in many movies
•the various themes that concern Jungian writers on film
•how Jungian ideas on psychological personality types can be applied in fresh ways to analyse a variety of characters.

The book also includes a glossary to help readers with Jungian words and concepts. Jung and Film II is not only a welcome companion to the first volume, it is an important stand- alone work essential for all academics and students of analytical psychology as well as film, media and cultural studies.


Exploring the history and importance of corn worldwide, Arturo Warman traces its development from a New World food of poor and despised peoples into a commodity that plays a major role in the modern global economy. The book, first published in Mexico in 1988, combines approaches from anthropology, social history, and political economy to tell the story of corn, a "botanical bastard" of unclear origins that cannot reseed itself and is instead dependent on agriculture for propagation. Beginning in the Americas, Warman depicts corn as colonizer. Disparaged by the conquistadors, this Native American staple was embraced by the destitute of the Old World. In time, corn spread across the globe as a prodigious food source for both humans and livestock. Warman also reveals corn's role in nourishing the African slave trade. Through the history of one plant with enormous economic importance, Warman investigates large-scale social and economic processes, looking at the role of foodstuffs in the competition between nations and the perpetuation of inequalities between rich and poor states in the world market. Praising corn's almost unlimited potential for future use as an intensified source of starch, sugar, and alcohol, Warman also comments on some of the problems he foresees for large-scale, technology-dependent monocrop agriculture.


Cluster randomised trials, where groups of patients rather than individuals are randomised, are increasingly being used in health services research. Randomisation by individual is inappropriate for evaluating some interventions, such as organisational changes, where it may not be feasible to randomise at the patient level. In such cases cluster randomisation at the level of the health professional or organisation is necessary. Such randomisation can also minimise the potential for contamination between treatments when trial patients are managed within the same setting.

The main consequence of adopting a cluster design is that the outcome for each patient can no longer be assumed to be independent of that for any other patient (which is the case in an individually randomised trial). Patients within any one cluster are more likely to have similar outcomes. For example, the management of patients within a single general practice is more likely to be consistent …


The Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) Superconducting Technology Program is conducted as part of a national effort by the US Department of Energy`s Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy to develop the science and technology base needed by US industry for commercial development of electric power applications of high temperature superconductivity. The two major elements of this program are wire development and applications development. This document describes the major research and development activities for this program together with related accomplishments. The technical progress reported was summarized from recent open literature publications, presentations, and information prepared for the FY 1996 Annual Program Review held July 31 and August 1, 1996. This ORNL program is highly leveraged by the staff and other resources of US industry and universities. In fact, nearly three-fourths of the ORNL effort is devoted to cooperative projects with private companies. Interlaboratory teams are also in place on a number of industry-driven projects. Patent disclosures, working group meetings, staff exchanges, and joint publications and presentations ensure that there is technology transfer with US industry. Working together, the collaborative teams are making rapid progress in solving the scientific and technical issues necessary for the commercialization of long lengths of practical high temperature superconductor wire and wire-using systems.


This article reflects on how language can be a hegemonic practice, as illustrated by the term linguicism. This linguistic discrimination is used to legitimate an unequal division of power and needs to be tackled through decolonial approaches. Switzerland has an offcial tradition of multilingualism, yet people in Switzerland experience discrimination depending on the languages they speak. Pupils in Switzerland are increasingly multilingual but, given their transnational family backgrounds, not always in an offcial Swiss language. Pupils and teachers perceive and value languages differently, often at a subconscious level. Where pupils speak a prestigious language, their language skills are more highly valued. If multilingualism is coupled with a language of migration, a negative connotation occurs and students experience linguicism.


Despite operational improvements over the last 10-15 years, water utilities still are losing a significant amount of potable water from their networks through leakage. The leakage is managed on the one hand by reactive and proactive maintenance and on the other hand by pressure control to reduce background leakage from connection and joints. This paper is based on experience from the Process Control – Water Software Systems group which was involved in many pressure control projects and the current Neptune project (www.neptune.ac.uk). A fast and efficient method to calculate time schedules and flow modulation curves is presented. Both time and flow modulation can be applied to a single inlet DMA. Time modulation can be applied to a multi-inlet district metering area (DMA) but this is not always possible for flow modulation due to the risk of hunting. It is convenient to distinguish between boundary and internal pressure reducing valves (PRVs), the decision variable for a boundary valve is a PRV set-point whereas for the internal valves it is a valve resistance. The resistance is then automatically translated into a set-point for field implementation. The time modulation methodology is based on solving a nonlinear programming problem with equality constraints represented by a hydraulic model with a pressure dependent leakage term and inequality constraints representing operational requirements (e.g. pressure at critical nodes). The cost of boundary flows which include leakage flows is minimized. An extended content model with pressure dependent leakage is simulated to provide a starting point for quick convergence. Optimal time schedules are converted into flow modulation curves by plotting scatter plots of flows against heads. The algorithm has been implemented as a module in the FINESSE package and allows complete pressure control tasks to be solved. A user needs to provide an hydraulic model, leakage information and leakage characteristic – leakage area and the exponent in the pressure power law. The program calculates time schedules and also flow modulation curves for single and multi-inlet PRVs. Evaluation of optimal control strategies and benefit analysis in terms of leakage reduction for two case studies provided by Yorkshire Water Services is included.


PURPOSE
To examine the effect of stress ulcer prophylaxis on gastrointestinal bleeding, pneumonia, and mortality.

METHODS
Computerized search of published and unpublished research, bibliographies, pharmaceutical and personal files and abstract reports. Independent review of 257 articles identified 71 relevant randomized trials for inclusion. We made independent, duplicate assessment of the methodologic quality, population, intervention and outcomes of each trial.

RESULTS
This overview demonstrates that prophylaxis with histamine-2-receptor antagonists decreases the incidence of overt gastrointestinal bleeding (odds ratio 0.29 [95% CI 0.17-0.45]) and clinically important bleeding (odds ratio 0.35 [95% CI 0.15-0.76]). There is a trend to decreased overt bleeding when antacids are compared with no therapy (odds ratio 0.35 [95% CI 0.08-1.33]). Although sucralfate, antacids, and histamine-2-receptor antagonists are equivalent in reducing clinically important bleeding, sucralfate decreases the incidence of nosocomial pneumonia compared with antacids and/or histamine-2-receptor antagonists (odds ratio 0.50 [95% CI 0.21-0.79]). Sucralfate is associated with lower mortality relative to antacids (odds ratio 0.70 [95% CI 0.52-0.94]), and relative to histamine-2-receptor antagonists (odds ratio 0.71 [95% CI 0.49-1.04]).

CONCLUSIONS
All stress ulcer prophylactic agents appear to be effective in decreasing bleeding. Prophylaxis with sucralfate is associated with a lower rate of nosocomial pneumonia and mortality, providing strong evidence for use of this agent in clinical practice.


This memo expands and clarifies the behavior of Real-time Transport
Protocol (RTP) endpoints that use multiple synchronization sources
(SSRCs). This occurs, for example, when an endpoint sends multiple RTP
streams in a single RTP session. This memo updates RFC 3550 with
regard to handling multiple SSRCs per endpoint in RTP sessions, with a
particular focus on RTP Control Protocol (RTCP) behavior. It also
updates RFC 4585 to change and clarify the calculation of the timeout
of SSRCs and the inclusion of feedback messages.


Abstract HIV/AIDS prevention/education has been taught in classrooms for several years, yet exposure to infection remains to be a worldwide concern as behaviors have been slow to change in many cultures. It's important to be able to reach K-12 teachers and their students on a global scale. This article addresses how one model attempts to achieve such access through implementation of a worldwide online teacher-education platform. Introduction Although many Americans could believe that the Human Immunodeficiency Virus / Acquired Immune-Deficiency Syndrome (HIV/AIDS) crisis may be over because recent data demonstrate that with proper intervention, a decrease in high-risk behavior among adolescents occurs (CDC, 2000a), (Bryan, Rocheleau, Robbins and Hutchison, 2005), it is still an ever present danger to our society and the world at large (CDC,2000b). Dr. Peter Plot, the Executive Director of UNAIDS, has stated, "On current trends, AIDS will kill tens of millions of people over the next 20 years. But this need not happen. We know prevention works." (Clifton, 2006). Likewise, Piot, Bartos, Ghys, Walker and Schwartlander (2001) determined that ... the scale of the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV)/AIDS epidemic has exceeded all expectations ... an estimated 36 million people are currently living with HIV, and some 20 million people have already died, with the worst of the epidemic centered on sub-Saharan Africa ... as the spread of HIV has been greater than predicted, so too has been its impact on social capital, population structure and economic growth. Responding to AIDS on a scale commensurate with the epidemic is a global imperative, and the tools for an effective response are known. American teenagers continue to practice unsafe behaviors related to HIV/AIDS, specifically as related to alcohol and tobacco use, while teenagers in other Western cultures feel that it's a "crisis of the 1980's". Likewise, educators in sub-Saharan Africa are perplexed to witness an explosion of the infection among students from all socioeconomic levels. Hence, a worldwide educational plan is needed to promote awareness and safer behaviors among students from all walks of life. Online teaching and learning represents an opportunity to achieve such worldwide social change. In Western cultures the real crisis is a crisis of arrogance that is reflected in the idea that the spread of the disease is a "past crisis" and that we can "move on". In fact, although there has been a decrease in the practice of high-risk behaviors, many adolescents are still not getting the message. According to the Center for Disease Control (2006): ... many students still engage in (risk)-related ... behaviors ... During 1991--2005, the prevalence of sexual experience decreased 13% from 54.1% to 46.8% among high school students. Logistic regression analyses indicated a significant linear decrease overall and among female, male, 9th-grade, 10th-grade, 11th-grade, 12th-grade, black, and white students. A significant quadratic trend also was detected among black students and 11th-grade students. Among black students, this trend indicated that the prevalence of sexual experience declined during 1991-2001 and then leveled off through 2005. Among 11th-grade students, the prevalence of sexual experience declined during 1991--1997 and then leveled off through 2005. Prevalence of sexual experience did not decrease significantly among Hispanic students." Likewise, in sub-Saharan Africa, the impact of the disease has reached catastrophic proportions. A charity based in the United Kingdom, with a large focus of its work in Africa, cites: Many countries in sub-Saharan Africa have failed to bring the epidemic under control ... There is a significant risk that some countries will be locked in a vicious cycle, as the number of people falling ill and subsequently dying from AIDS has a tremendous impact on many parts of African society, including demographic, household, health sector, educational, workplace and economic aspects. …


The article is concerned with an approach to model based test development for large software systems. The approach presented is a part of UniTesK test development technology, which is developed on the background of 10-year experience of ISP RAS in verification and test development for complex industrial software [1]. The article states that the well-known software engineering principles underlying the approach and aimed at coping with complexity makes possible its application in software projects of real-life size and complexity.


[1] We present measurements of the whole scattering matrix as a function of the scattering angle at a wavelength of 632.8 nm in the scattering angle range 3°–174° of randomly oriented particles taken from seven samples of volcanic ashes corresponding to four different volcanic eruptions: the 18 May 1980 Mount St. Helens eruption, the 1989–1990 Redoubt eruption, and the 18 August and 17 September 1992 Mount Spurr eruptions. The samples were collected at different distances from the vent. The samples studied contain large mass fractions of fine particles and were chosen to represent ash that could remain in the atmosphere for at least hours or days. They include fine ashfall samples that fell at a variety of distances from the volcano and pyroclastic flows that retained their fine fractions. Together, they represent a range of ashes likely to remain in the atmosphere in volcanic clouds following eruptions from convergent plate boundary volcanoes, Earth's most important group of explosive sources of ash. All measured scattering matrix elements are confined to rather limited domains when plotted as functions of the scattering angle following the general trends presented by irregular mineral particles. This similarity in the scattering behavior justifies the construction of an average scattering matrix for volcanic ash particles as a function of the scattering angle. To facilitate the use of the average scattering matrix for multiple-scattering calculations with polarization included, we present a synthetic scattering matrix based on the average scattering matrix for volcanic ashes and the assumption that the diffraction forward scattering peak is the same for randomly oriented nonspherical particles and projected-surface-area-equivalent spheres. This synthetic scattering matrix is normalized so that the average of its 1-1 element over all directions equals unity. It is available in the full range from 0° to 180° and can be used, for example, for interpretation of remote-sensing data after a volcanic eruption when the actual properties of the volcanic ash are not known. The measured results for the Mount St. Helens sample have been compared with results of Lorenz-Mie calculations for projected-surface-area-equivalent spheres with the refractive index of the Mount St. Helens particles. We find strong differences between measured and calculated values.


In the Adelaide whole milk supply area, licensed dairymen are encouraged by higher bonus payments to maintain production during the summer and autumn months. High bonus payments in the late 1950s encouraged dairymen to increase output, but by 1960-61 the Adelaide whole-milk market was substantially oversupplied, principally as a result of marked increases in productivity on dairy holdings. Excess supplies have resulted in declining butterfat prices, but productivity gains have been sufficient to maintain rising farm incomes for the more specialised producers remaining in the whole-milk industry.


Ribosomal Rotaxane? The ribosome is an extraordinarily sophisticated molecular machine, assembling amino acids into proteins based on the precise sequence dictated by messenger RNA. Lewandowski et al. (p. 189) have now taken a step toward the preparation of a stripped-down synthetic ribosome analog. Their machine comprises a rotaxane—a ring threaded on a rod—in which the ring bears a pendant thiol that can pluck amino acids off the rod; the terminal nitrogen then wraps around to form a peptide bond and liberate the thiol for further reaction. The system was able to link three amino acids in order from the preassembled rod. A macrocycle threaded on a rod can catalytically insert several amino acids placed along its path into a peptide chain. The ribosome builds proteins by joining together amino acids in an order determined by messenger RNA. Here, we report on the design, synthesis, and operation of an artificial small-molecule machine that travels along a molecular strand, picking up amino acids that block its path, to synthesize a peptide in a sequence-specific manner. The chemical structure is based on a rotaxane, a molecular ring threaded onto a molecular axle. The ring carries a thiolate group that iteratively removes amino acids in order from the strand and transfers them to a peptide-elongation site through native chemical ligation. The synthesis is demonstrated with ~1018 molecular machines acting in parallel; this process generates milligram quantities of a peptide with a single sequence confirmed by tandem mass spectrometry.


Along the lower-middle Sao Francisco River, in the semi-arid region of northeast Brazil, irrigated agriculture contributes to reduce rural poverty. In the framework of the Itaparica Reservoir construction, three irrigation schemes were implemented in the Pernambuco state to compensate the local population for flooded land. Despite favourable production conditions for irrigated agriculture, many smallholders in the irrigation schemes are facing poverty. To identify socio-economic key indicators on farm income, expert interviews (n=16) and a household survey (n=120) were conducted. The effect of socio-economic factors and crop choice on farm income was investigated by analysis of variance. Insufficient infrastructure, limited market access and low market power, volatility of producer prices, lack of credit availability, unequal distribution of irrigable land, and insufficient social capital and knowledge about irrigated fruit production threatened the smallholders' livelihoods. Crop choice and availability of irrigable areas were the main characteristics of prosperous smallholders, whereas knowledge intensive and capital intensive perennials as well as high value annual cash crops with high risks of yield losses were the most profitable crops. Thus, wealthier farmers were more likely to generate high farm income. Agricultural extension, investments in infrastructure, especially in improved market access and value-adding facilities, and off-farm income alternatives are recommended to provide adequate income to the local population and prevent rural exodus.


Wood production and biodiversity conservation are two key objectives of sustainable forest management policy. These goals are rival and, therefore, hard to achieve at the same time and space. The aim of the thesis is to contribute to the understanding of barriers and bridges for intensified wood production and biodiversity conservation in NW Russia's boreal forests. It was implemented by case study approach on both ecological and social systems of forest landscapes with different forest use histories in the European boreal biome.

I first studied the forest use history in a forest management unit in NW Russia (paper I). Second, I analysed how production and biodiversity goals are actually balanced on the ground by comparing indicators for wood production and biodiversity conservation in NW Russia, Belarus, Latvia and Sweden (paper II). Next, in order to test the hypothesis that there are no biophysical obstacles to intensified wood production in NW Russia, I compared tree growth rates at 4 latitudes in NW Russia and Sweden (paper III). Finally, I reviewed the history of forest zoning policy, which is an influential mechanism to conserve biodiversity in Russian forests, and assessed if zoning policy change towards intensification negatively affected riparian forests, e.g. biodiversity conservation (paper IV).

Results from this research shows that barriers for intensified wood production in NW Russia include limited silviculture, poor road development and conservative mind-set of decision-makers (paper I). Bridges for intensified wood production involve existing infrastructure of forest villages and available middle-aged forests (paper I) as well as equal biophysical conditions for tree growths (paper III). Biodiversity conservation goal is achieved better than wood production in NW Russia in comparison to countries with longer forest use histories (paper II). More relaxed zoning policy is considered as barrier to biodiversity conservation (paper IV). Developed zoning system (paper IV), landscape approach initiatives and remaining intact forests (paper I) provide opportunities for biodiversity conservation.

This thesis suggests that balanced sustained-yield wood production together with biodiversity conservation is possible when a segregative zoning model is employed. To conclude, there is a need to engage in transdisciplinary research on the role of landscape stewardship for satisfying both wood production and biodiversity conservation objectives.


Epilepsy is a disease caused by abnormal brain activity due to disturbed nerve cell activity. It is the fourth most common neurological disorder. Only about 7 out of 10 individuals with epilepsy are successfully treated using anti-epileptic drugs. In the pharmaceutical industry, there has been a growing demand for cannabinoids from Cannabis sativa, commonly known as marijuana, for therapeutic, clinical, and nutraceutical supplements. More recently, the legalization of marijuana for clinical research has allowed to further explore the efficacy in the treatment of several neurological disorders like epilepsy. Unlike opioids, cannabinoids are not psychoactive, making it a potentially more favorable therapeutic drug. Most studies showing the efficacy of Cannabis as a treatment strategy point to the pain management associated with the binding of endocannabinoid G coupled protein receptors CB1 and CB2. Though there are cannabinoid therapeutic drugs like Epidiolex approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), plant-based natural compounds are safer, and effective with no side effects.


Simulation modelling is an effective approach for analysing construction operations that is not widely used by construction practitioners. Visualization in general, and particularly in construction projects, is a convenient and intuitive way of conveying project information among various project parties. Recently, construction management researchers have been investigating adding a visualization component to construction simulation models in order to make these models more intuitive and appealing to decision makers. These researchers argue that enhancing visualization and spatial representation of construction operations in a simulation environment can improve the adoption of simulation techniques by the industry. Among different industries that make use of advanced visualization technologies, the gaming industry is one of the leaders in utilizing and advancing these technologies. This paper explains the utilization of video game technologies in the development of a framework for construction operations simulation visualization. The framework is based on High Level Architecture (HLA) standards for distributed simulation and allows for hooking different visualization components to the simulation environment with great deal of flexibility. The paper presents the different elements of the framework and discusses the benefits and challenges experienced while using two different gaming engines as visualization portals in the framework.


Ecological interactions affect species evolution and, acting in combination with environmental factors, determine the composition of an ecosystem. In the case of coral reefs, the interactions of species with the corals (Anthozoa) is essential in shaping the ecosystem. Competition is particularly intense in coral reef communities because of the limited availability of space where conditions are appropriate (e.g. depth, substrate, currents) for settlement and growth. Space limitation makes the interaction between corals an essential element determining coral assemblages. Competitive interactions are difficult to analyses due to the number and diversity of factors (e.g. environment, life history, genotype) affecting outcomes. In the case of corals, research on competitive interactions has mostly focused on visible signs of aggression, such as measuring the damaged tissue next to a competitor or reporting visual competitive behaviours (e.g. mesenteric filaments). However, competition (particularly non-contact competition) does not always lead to visible symptoms, which has led in some cases to the underestimation of the extent of competitive interactions. For example, many soft corals (Octocorallia) produce secondary metabolites that may be used to compete for space; the production of secondary metabolites is unlikely to be visually obvious, and their impact on competitors may be subtle or cryptic. The outcomes of competitive interactions between individual corals will also be affected by the health and history of those individuals. For example, individuals that are already immune-compromised are unlikely to be able to compete as efficiently as healthier individuals. The immune system is assumed to be a critical component of competitive mechanisms. Research on coral immunity has focused, with few exceptions, on hard corals (Scleractinia), very little information being available on soft corals immune systems. The lack of basic research on soft corals extends to many aspects of their biology, despite the importance and abundance of these organisms in reef ecosystems. More research on soft corals immunity is important in order to better understand how these organisms respond to environmental factors or competition and to better predict the future composition of coral reefs. In this thesis, I have attempted to advance the knowledge of soft coral biology and non-contact competition between soft and hard corals. I analysed, at a transcriptomic level, the response of the soft coral Lobophytum pauciflorum to challenge with the defined immunogen MDP and the effects on both L. pauciflorum and the hard coral Porites cylindrica (hard corals) when these were in noncontact competition. The response of the soft coral to MDP was variable and unexpectedly dominated by genes likely to have functions in the nervous system. Non-contact competition triggered general stress and immune responses in soft corals, as well as differential expression of genes likely to function in secondary metabolite production and others genes that may be involved in tissue remodelling. The transcriptomic response of the hard coral, Porites, on the other hand, suggested cellular stress combined with resistance and aggressive responses. This research also highlights the role of the coral nervous system and behaviour in the stress response, suggesting that neuro-related pathways are closely linked to the immune system. Similarities between the transcriptomic responses to non-contact competition identified here and previously reported responses to environmental stressors (e.g. ubiquitination, antioxidant production), is consistent with the recruitment of common gene repertoires; therefore climate change is likely to effects competitive interactions in complex ways. Finally, the research presented in this thesis demonstrates the extent of variation in the responses of individual corals to stress (immune challenge and competition) and the challenges that this poses particularly for the investigation of the molecular bases of competition. In the future, individual variation needs to be better accommodated for molecular investigations into coral research, which means increasing biological replication and stopping the practice of discarding outliers.


Thermo-mechanical energy storage deployment in future energy grids presumes economic profitability is achieved through their operation. However, suitable technology design should not be pursued regardless of a technical evaluation of storage performance. In this paper, a combined economic and thermodynamic analysis is used to point out what are the guidelines for optimal size of a Liquid Air Energy Storage (LAES) system. Results show payback time around 25 years. They also suggest that, while financially a smaller liquefier should be preferable, this on the other hand implies higher thermodynamic inefficiencies.


The research purpose is to know the effect of interaction of Growth Regulator Substance (ZPT) BAP and Indole Butyric Acid (IBA) toward viability cutting vanilla. This research was conducted since July and finished on September 2006. Whereas implementation place of this research in seeding house CV. CAKRA BUANA. This research was conducted use complete random planning )RAL), consist of 2 factors, whereas first factor was concentrate treatment of Growth Regulator Substance BAP and second factor was concentrate treatment of IBA. The first factor (C) there are 4 treatment and 1 control, whereas the second factor (A) there were 3 treatment and 1 control by 3 repeatedly each other, so that in this research there are 60 units experiment, and from each of it there are 4 sample, so that whole crops there are 240 crops, whereas concentration experiment treatment as follows C0: 0 ppm. C1: 0,2 ppm, C2: 0,4 ppm, C3: 0,6 ppm and C4: 0,8 ppm. Whereas for the second factor are A0: 0 ppm, A1: 0, 2 ppm, A2: 0, 4 ppm and A3: 0, 6 ppm. Parameter involved: Begin arise bud, growth fast of root, begin arise of bud, amount of leaf, content of leaf chlorophyll and diameter of stem. Happening real interaction between addition of growth regulator substance BAP 0,2 to 0,8 ppm and IBA 0,2 to 0,6 ppm, at observation variable of begin arise root, long of root, begin arise bud and able to increase long of bud at medium G90. Addition concentration BAP 0,2 to 0,8 ppm separately hasn't able to increase growth of vanilla at medium G90, whereas addition of growth regulator substance Indole Butyric Acid (IBA) 0,2 to 0,6 ppm able to increase amount of leaf, increasing content of chlorophyll at bud leaf and at stem diameter of vanilla bud.


The authors adopt a person-centered approach to the investigation of the dimensionality of the union commitment construct by capitalizing on a 10-year longitudinal study (from 1992 to 2002) of 637 union members in their first year of employment measured again 1 and 10 years later. Results reveal four distinct profiles of union commitment, presenting a stable structure over time. These profiles demonstrate consistency in commitment level across the three most common union commitment dimensions, thus questioning the necessity of adopting a multidimensional approach. Results show that union members became more similar to other members of their profiles over time, and that their union commitment became slightly less extreme as union tenure increased. Finally, results show that union commitment profiles predict union participation, in accordance with our expectations, and suggest that endorsing positive attitudes toward unions and their instrumentality was a stronger predictor of profile membership than was satisfaction with the actions of one's own union.


Few cities have played a more prominent role in Britain's history than Oxford. It was already an important centre for religion and trade by the 13th century, and the foundation then of the first colleges established it as one of Europe's most venerated seats of learning. This encyclopaedia provides a portrait of the city, past and present, recording aspects of the city and its university. Also included are the people who brought Oxford to life: artists and scientists, statesmen, churchmen, scholars, businessmen, criminals and eccentrics. There are more than 1000 indexed entries. Christopher Hibbert is a winner of the Heinemann Award for Literature. He is the author (with Ben Weinreb) of this book's companion volume, "The London Encyclopaedia". Edward Hibbert is a Fellow of the Royal Philatelic Society, London and has written "St Helena Postal History and Stamps".


THE KINDS OF FILE structures required if we are to use the computer for personal files and as an adjunct to creativity are wholly different in character from those customary in business and scientific data processing. They need to provide the capacity for intricate and idiosyncratic arrangements, total modifiability, undecided alternatives, and thorough internal documentation.
 I want to explain how some ideas developed and what they are. The original problem was to specify a computer system for personal information retrieval and documentation, able to do some rather complicated things in clear and simple ways.
 In this paper I will explain the original problem. Then I will explain why the problem is not simple, and why the solution (a file structure) must yet be very simple. The file structure suggested here is the Evolutionary List File, to be built of zippered lists. A number of uses will be suggested for such a file, to show the breadth of its potential usefulness. Finally, I want to explain the philosophical implications of this approach for information retrieval and data structure in a changing world.


Genetic analysis of TP63 indicates that ΔNp63 isoforms are required for preservation of regenerative stasis within diverse epithelial tissues. In squamous carcinomas, TP63 is commonly amplified, and ΔNp63α confers a potent survival advantage. Genome-wide occupancy studies show that ΔNp63 promotes bidirectional target gene regulation by binding more than 5,000 sites throughout the genome; however, the subset of targets mediating discreet activities of TP63 remains unclear. We report that ΔNp63α activates bone morphogenic proteins (BMP) signaling by inducing the expression of BMP7. Immunohistochemical analysis indicates that hyperactivation of BMP signaling is common in human breast cancers, most notably in the basal molecular subtype, as well as in several mouse models of breast cancer. Suppression of BMP signaling in vitro with LDN193189, a small-molecule inhibitor of BMP type I receptor kinases, represses clonogenicity and diminishes the cancer stem cell-enriched ALDH1(+) population. Importantly, LDN193189 blocks reconstitution of mixed ALDH1(+)/ALDH1(-) cultures indicating that BMP signaling may govern aspects of cellular plasticity within tumor hierarchies. These results show that BMP signaling enables reversion of committed populations to a stem-like state, potentially supporting progression and maintenance of tumorigenesis. Treatment of a mouse model of breast cancer with LDN193189 caused reduced expression of markers associated with epithelial-to-mesenchymal transition (EMT). Furthermore, in vivo limiting dilution analysis assays revealed that LDN193189 treatment suppressed tumor-initiating capacity and increased tumor latency. These studies support a model in which ΔNp63α-mediated activation of BMP signaling governs epithelial cell plasticity, EMT, and tumorigenicity during breast cancer initiation and progression.


This paper describes new algorithms for mobile backbone network optimization. In this hierarchical communication framework, mobile backbone nodes (MBNs) are deployed to provide communication support for regular nodes (RNs). While previous work has assumed that MBNs are unconstrained in position, this work models constraints in MBN location. This paper develops an exact technique for maximizing the number of RNs that achieve a threshold throughput level, as well as a polynomial-time approximation algorithm for this problem. The approximation algorithm carries a performance guarantee of 1 over 2 and we demonstrate that this guarantee is tight in some problem instances.


As examples of unusual optical phenomena, some observations of multiple suns and moons are described. They are corroborated by photography; older observations now appear to be genuine. A number of examples are further quoted: shadows, reflections, green flash, halo phenomena, rainbows, iridescent clouds, colors in thin sheets of ice, accidental double refraction. Then some observations are made about physiological optics, relating to contrast and to the perception of flicker and colors.Of these phenomena, many have not previously been described and several explanations are still controversial.


Clostridium difficile (C. difficile) bacteria are the leading cause of nosocomial diarrhoea in the UK. The problem with the removal of C. difficile from hospitals is that it can sporulate and therefore be difficult to remove/kill using conventional methods. The spores enter the body via the faecal-oral route and in the presence of germinants (taurocholate), germinate into vegetative cells in the intestine, cause infection and produce symptoms via the release of two main toxins. The project's aim was to produce polymeric steroid-based antimicrobial materials which will be able to germinate spores and then destroy the resulting vegetative cells. Deoxycholic acid, lithocholic acid and cholic acid were chemically manipulated to do this. Various methods were tried to attach di-amines with varying tertiary amine-based groups to the parent bile acids, with success found using ethyl chloroformate to activate the carboxylic acid group via an anhydride group, with yields up to 90 %. Once synthesised, the bile amides were screened for germinatory activity. The variables included the chain length and the nature of the groups on the tertiary amine. Once germination had been achieved the tertiary amine group was quaternized using various alkyl halides to introduce potential antimicrobial functionality. From the manipulation of the tertiary amine, several compounds were found to be germinants. Several quaternized materials also displayed antimicrobial activity. Work was undertaken to attach acryloyl groups to the 3-OH group of chemically modified lithocholic acid, with success of then polymerising the monomer. Co-germinants are amino acids, such as glycine and alanine which assist taurocholate in the germination of C. difficile spores. It was therefore attempted to produce a polymerizable glycine analogue which could be incorporated into the steroidal polymer to produce a germinatory surface. Boc-Lys-OH was converted to its acrylamide derivative with a view to the incorporation of a tethered glycine equivalent into a steroid polymer.


Frequency spectrum is considered to be scarce and valuable resource. Techniques, which help in its utilization, are welcome. Among these techniques is the beamforming in which a set of weight vector is obtained for optimum error solution. Many algorithms are used in the optimization process. The least mean square error is often used because of its simplicity and reasonable performance. In tight specifications environments (low SINR, close angular separation between the desired signal and the interference) the authors noticed degradation in the LMS performance. Therefore, a higher order error function is proposed in this paper, a technique named generalized minimum mean error (GMME). Simulation tests showed that increasing the order of the error function leads to better performance with no significant increase in the computational costs.


Child labor is a relevant problem in developing countries because it may have a negative impact on economic growth. Policy makers and government agencies need information to correctly allocate their scarce resources to deal with this problem. Although there is research attempting to predict the causes of child labor, previous studies have used only linear statistical models. Non-linear models may improve predictive capacity and thus optimize resource allocation. However, the use of these techniques in this field remains unexplored. Using data from Peru, our study compares the prediction capability of the traditional logit model with artificial neural networks. Our results show that neural networks could provide better predictions than the logit model. Findings suggest that geographical indicators, income levels, gender, family composition and educational levels significantly predict child labor. Moreover, the neural network suggests the relevance of each factor which could be useful to prioritize strategies. As a whole, the neural network could help government agencies to tailor their strategies and allocate resources more efficiently.


Improving the health of people and animals, and improving the health, integrity or sustainability of ecosystems are laudable and important objectives. Can we do both? There are no ecosystems untouched by human activity, and there are worrying signs that the world's ecosystems are reaching the limits of their ability to adapt to human impacts. Drawing on fields as diverse as epidemiology and participatory action research, philosophy and environmental sciences, ecology and systems sciences, this book is about searching for solutions to complex problems to produce a new science for sustainability.


Nanotechnology has shown many advantages in different fields. As the uses of nanotechnology have progressed, it has been found to be a promising technology for the food packaging industry in the global market. It has proven capabilities that are valuable in packaging foods, including improved barriers; mechanical, thermal, and biodegradable properties; and applications in active and intelligent food packaging. Examples of the latter are anti-microbial agents and nanosensors, respectively. However, the use of nanocomposites in food packaging might be challenging due to the reduced particle size of nanomaterials and the fact that the chemical and physical characteristics of such tiny materials may be quite different from those of their macro-scale counterparts. In order to discuss the potential risks of nanoparticles for consumers, in addition to the quantification of data, a thorough investigation of their characteristics is required. Migration studies must be conducted to determine the amounts of nanomaterials released into the food matrices. In this article, different applications of nanocomposites in food packaging, migration issues, analyzing techniques, and the main concerns about their usage are discussed briefly.


We review our current understanding of multiwavelength light curves of classical and recurrent novae and show how to determine the WD masses and other binary properties. We pick up PW Vul, U Sco, V745 Sco, RS Oph, and V407 Cyg as representatives of different types of light curves, examine their light curves in detail, discuss physical properties, and clarify the reason of these differences. In the rising phase, the hydrogen-rich envelope expands beyond the size of a close binary in which the companion is embedded deep inside of the photosphere. After the optical maximum, the pseud-photosphere begins to shrink and an optically thin region develops outside of the photosphere. The free-free emission dominates the flux at relatively longer wavelengths (optical and NIR), of which light curves decay along the universal decline law of $F_\nu \propto t^{-1.75}$ (or $t^{-1.55}$). The physical mechanism of super-Eddington phase is presented. In the presence of shock interaction between ejecta and circumstellar matter, it slows down the decay of optical flux as $F_\nu \propto t^{-1.0}$ as seen in the early phase of V407 Cyg. In final stages of outbursts, the wind mass-loss rate sharply drops so the slope of free-free emission decays like $F_\nu \propto t^{-3.5}$. Supersoft X-ray phase begins and continues until hydrogen nuclear burning ends, and after that the nova enters a cooling phase. Hard X-rays may originate from internal shocks between ejecta (or a bow shock between ejecta and the companion). The behaviors of optical-dominant, UV-dominant, and supersoft X-ray source phase have different dependences on the WD mass and envelope chemical composition, so multiwavelength observations are useful to determine the parameters such as the WD mass. Finally, we should note that the very early phase of nova outbursts remains unexplored. An X-ray flash phase is theoretically identified, but not yet successfully detected. Detections of early X-ray flashes give direct information on thermonuclear runaway.


We describe a new algorithm to retrieve SO2 from satellite‐measured hyperspectral radiances. We employ the principal component analysis technique in regions with no significant SO2 to capture radiance variability caused by both physical processes (e.g., Rayleigh and Raman scattering and ozone absorption) and measurement artifacts. We use the resulting principal components and SO2 Jacobians calculated with a radiative transfer model to directly estimate SO2 vertical column density in one step. Application to the Ozone Monitoring Instrument (OMI) radiance spectra in 310.5–340 nm demonstrates that this approach can greatly reduce biases in the operational OMI product and decrease the noise by a factor of 2, providing greater sensitivity to anthropogenic emissions. The new algorithm is fast, eliminates the need for instrument‐specific radiance correction schemes, and can be easily adapted to other sensors. These attributes make it a promising technique for producing long‐term, consistent SO2 records for air quality and climate research.


The large-scale adoption of the Web 2.0 paradigm has revolutionized the way we interact with the Web today. End-users, so far mainly passive consumers of information are now becoming active information producers, creating, uploading, and commenting on all types of digital content. As a consequence, the Web has evolved from a collection of static HTML pages to a highly interactive system, where information is being published and consumed at high rates. This has tremendously increased the amount of data available on the Web today, which brings about new challenges in terms of information management. At the same time, the increased user participation represents a new and extremely valuable source of data. While interacting with different Web 2.0 portals, users freely provide all types of information, such as annotations describing the shared resources, friendship links connecting similar users, etc., which can be exploited in order to improve the methods designed to manage online content. A particularly interesting example of user-generated data are the so-called social annotations, that users attach to resources in the context of collaborative tagging systems. This kind of meta-information opens up new opportunities for improved content search, new means to organize personal data, and ways of mining user profiles based on their annotations. Virtual friendship connections between users, as we can observe in social networks, are another rich source of information as they often group users with similar interests together, give means to study information diffusion and open ground to enhanced expert finding tasks. In this thesis, we leverage information extracted from user-generated data, in order to solve current information management problems, such as data retrieval, mining and integration. We explore different scenarios, where online content is enriched with user-defined meta-information and we identify specific problems, which we solve by leveraging this information. We start by addressing the problem of context-based information discovery in collaborative tagging systems, where we take advantage of user-defined entity graphs – such as a citation graph of publications or a friendship graph of users. In this setting, effective search solutions require a certain amount of annotations, however, content is often poorly annotated. We therefore propose a method that exploits the context-related information embedded in the graph structure, in order to automatically infer new annotations. Our approach propagates tags along the edges of the graph, based on the assumption that the neighborhood of a resource holds additional information about the resource itself. We see a similar graph structure in social communities, where users are connected via friendship links and where the neighborhood of a user reflects her community of interest. We adopt the hypothesis that users mainly annotate resources of interest to them and interpret the annotations (i.e., tags) as an interest profile. Hence, we propose a novel framework for tag-based community detection in collaborative tagging systems, that considers both the tagging behavior of users, as well as their friendship graph. Based on a set of tags, our method returns a closely connected community of users, whose tags jointly cover the initial set. In order to further investigate the issue of generating user profiles based on their annotations, we switch our attention from the open Web to an enterprise setting. Social software, such as collaborative tagging systems, has also been included in the enterprise space, where it opens up new opportunities to address the problem of expert search. We take advantage of the data extracted from two enterprise-internal portals and explore correlations between the users' tagging behavior and their corresponding areas of expertise. Based on these correlations, we devise a method that derives expertise profiles for users. Finally, we investigate how user-generated meta-information can be exploited in the domain of structured data on the Web, i.e., data that is organized according to the relational model and complies to application-specific schemas. In order to enable transparent search solutions on such data, schema heterogeneity needs to be overcome by means of data integration techniques. We explore how such techniques can benefit from the user-generated meta-information in the form of links between similar entries in different databases. Based on these links, we devise a method to create mappings between the elements of different schemas from a real-world collection of online bioinformatic databases.


Campylobacter jejuni and Campylobacter coli are recognised as the principal causative agents of bacterial gastroenteritis in the developed world. However, despite the identification of factors integral to infection, characterisation of the virulence strategies employed by Campylobacter remains a significant challenge. Bacterial autotransporter proteins comprise the largest and most diverse class of secretory proteins in Gram-negative bacteria; notably almost all previously characterised autotransporter proteins contribute to bacterial virulence to some extent. The aim of this study was to characterise CapC, a newly identified, strain-specific gene predicted to encode an autotransporter protein, and to examine the contribution of this factor to the virulence of Campylobacter jejuni.
The capC gene was initially confirmed as being encoded by approximately 60% of C. jejuni and C. coli human clinical and poultry associated isolates. Moreover, CapC was confirmed as a member of the autotransporter family through the use of bioinformatic prediction tools and the localisation site of this protein was determined as the outer membrane of C. jejuni. Targeted mutagenesis of the capC gene in C. jejuni 81116 and C. jejuni M1 and subsequent comparison of wild-type and isogenic mutant strains demonstrated that CapC contributes directly to virulence in the Galleria mellonella invertebrate model (p=0.00017; p=0.002323). Furthermore, tissue culture assays using non-polarised, partially differentiated Caco-2 and T84 intestinal epithelial cells indicate that deletion of CapC resulted in significantly decreased adhesion and invasion efficiency. Additional analyses indicated that CapC primarily contributes to adhesion to intestinal epithelial cells. Additional assays showed that deletion of the capC gene has no significant phenotypic effect on cytotoxicity in a Caco-2 cell model.
A secondary aim of this study was to examine the distribution of capC amongst campylobacters and to establish any potential genetic associations of this virulence determinant. Using publically
vi
available genome sequences, capC was established to be highly prevalent in C. jejuni (67.9%) and C. coli (84%). Campylobacter autotransporter proteins were also shown to be present in truncated and full length forms. Interestingly, full length CapC was shown to be primarily associated with the ST-45, ST-283 and ST-573 clonal complexes in C. jejuni and the ST-828 clonal complex in C. coli. Furthermore, this study detailed the identification of a novel autotransporter in Campylobacter species, tentatively designated as CapD. This autotransporter was found to be genetically distinct from CapC and is the most prevalent autotransporter identified in Campylobacter species.
The studies presented in this thesis indicate that CapC is a strain-specific virulence determinant in Campylobacter species that is associated with select lineages of C. jejuni and C. coli. CapC contributes to the integral infection process of adhesion however further studies are required to fully elucidate the exact nature of this interaction. Additionally, it can be concluded that possession of Campylobacter autotransporter proteins is dependent on genetic background.