These experiments compared the sensitivity of four different types of bioassay over time after five metals were added to a wide range of soils at the maximum concentrations in the European Union Sewage Sludge Directive. Three were chronic assays (most probable number of Rhizobium leguminosarum, soil microbial C and Biolog substrate utilization). The fourth bioassay, an acute biosensor, employed a lux‐marked luminescent bacterium (Escherichia coli) in the soil pore water. Five metals were added to 23 different soils as a mixture at Zn = 300, Cd = 3, Pb = 300, Cu = 135, and Ni = 75 mg/kg as nitrate salts and compared with unamended controls. Zinc and Cu were the metals most likely to be toxic at the concentrations used here. In the case of Rhizobium, the number of cells in soil was not affected after 11d; however, by 818 d the numbers had decreased by four orders of magnitude with increasing concentrations of Zn and Cu in soil solution. Microbial biomass also was not affected after 11d, but significantly decreased with increased Zn (p < 0.001) and Cu (p < 0.01) in soil solution after 818 d. Toxicity to the soil microbial biomass increased with time, whereas the toxicity to the biosensor remained the same. Biolog substrate utilization profiles were not responsive to the concentrations used here.


This article examines the figure of an undulating line, or "squiggle," printed initially in Laurence Sterne's Tristram Shandy and copied by two nineteenth-century writers: first, by the German E. T. A. Hoffmann, in a little-known fragment, and, second, more famously, by the French Honoré de Balzac as the epigraph to his novel La peau de chagrin. These three squiggles form a triangulated relationship of imitation across two centuries, three countries, and three languages. Through attention to William Hogarth's line of beauty and Johann Caspar Lavater's physiognomic contour lines, the article considers the history of the undulating line as a figure for reading. It suggests that, for Sterne, Hoffmann, and Balzac, the inclusion of a pictured line within text may be seen as a "reverse ekphrastic" maneuver, one that aims to reflect the movement of narrative in visual form. In this way, the "squiggle" is foregrounded as a new and concrete motif for comparative criticism on Hoffmann and Balzac, identifying a shared interest in Sterne, as well as in the relationship and entanglement of text and image.


Although the Administrative Procedure Act (APA) in theory regulates government policymaking, the agency that is both among the oldest and, as the financial crisis has revealed, one of the most important, does not play by its rules. The Treasury Department is rarely sued for its administrative procedure, makes fewer rules than do agencies that follow the APA more closely, and acts as if it is generally less bound by the nuances of process than do its peers. In the Article, I examine the alternative administrative procedure that applies to the Treasury Department and illustrate the ways in which it does things differently. In some ways, the department's absence from the usual suspects of administrative oversight, including the Office of Management and Budget, the D.C. Circuit, and the Federal Register, suggest that Treasury is essentially acting as an unsupervised agency; many observers have concluded that the Treasury Department's response to the financial crisis amounted to an abandonment of the usual safeguards we expect in the modern administrative state. But a closer examination indicates that Treasury simply operates under a different model, one informed by its form, its remit, and its tasks – but not, at least not much, by ordinary administrative procedure. Its constraints come more from Congress, from internal controls, and from the large, but understudied, private bar that interprets what it is doing, than from notice, comment, rulemaking, and litigation.


Group decision-making, in which a collective decision needs to be derived from individual agents' preferences has been an active area of research. In group decisionmaking, autonomous agents need some procedures or mechanisms that can collect preference information from them and make a decision; or some protocols that enable them to be involved in the decision process, to interact with each other and to jointly make a collective decision. Examples include preference aggregation mechanisms, negotiation protocols, voting procedures, and auctions. This thesis studies the problem of agent-based group decision-making in various problem settings, proposing several efficient approaches to support multiple agents in reaching efficient and fair collective decisions over multiple issues. The research work in this thesis can be divided into two parts, addressing the agent-based group decision-making problem in circumstances in which there is, respectively, complete and incomplete information available. The first part of this thesis focuses on preference aggregation in combinatorial domains, provided all agents' preferences. Structured preferences Conditional Preference Network (CP-nets) and its variant Trade-off enhanced CP-nets (TCP-nets) are used as formal models for representing the agents' preferences in group decision-making. Before going into the problem of making a group decision from a collection of CP-nets or TCP-nets, the problem of individual preference reasoning is studied and a computationally efficient heuristic algorithm for dominance testing in CP-nets, which forms the basis for many group decision-making mechanisms, is introduced. Subsequently, we consider the group decision-making problem with multiple agents' CP-nets and TCP-nets. As the space of possible outcomes in combinatorial domains has a size exponential in the number of variables, computational complexity in group decision-making will be one of the issues that need to be addressed. Two computationally efficient approaches are proposed in order to support agent-based group decisionmaking in combinatorial domains with different decision criteria: (i) an approach that converts the qualitative preferences derived from CP-nets or TCP-nets into numerical penalty scoring functions, and then searches for an optimal collective decision based on the individual penalty scores; and (ii) an approach that focuses on combinatorial vote and computes the winners (i.e., winning alternatives) from a collection of CP-nets according to Majority voting rule. The second part of this thesis is concerned with the disadvantage of disclosing preference information in group decision-making and considers the incomplete information setting. Two negotiation approaches are presented in order to support agent-based group decision-making in, respectively, combinatorial domains and in domains with multiple continuous issues. Firstly, a negotiation protocol in combinatorial domains is proposed, which enables agents to distributively make decisions and leads them to Pareto-optimal agreements under incomplete information setting. Then for the domains with multiple continuous issues, a cooperative mediated negotiation approach is proposed to support the agents searching for joint utility gains and reaching an efficient and fair agreement. For every approach introduced in this thesis, experiments are carried out and the results are presented and analysed in order to provide insights into the performance of these approaches. Thesis Supervisors: Quoc Bao Vo and Ryszard Kowalczyk


Autochthonous sedimentary rocks of the Antler overlap sequence indicate regional subsidence of north-central Nevada during Pennsylvanian and Early Permian time as an inland sea gradually transgressed over coarse alluvium eroded from remnants of the Antler orogenic highlands. Alluvial conglomerates and sandstones of the Lower Atokan (Middle Pennsylvanian) Battle Formation (up to 240 m thick) rest unconformably on folded and faulted lower Paleozoic strata that were deformed by emplacement of the Roberts Mountains allochthon during the Antler orogeny. Paleocurrents and stratigraphic relations suggest that the Battle Formation represents deposits of several paleotributaries of a single major paleovalley draining to the southwest. The Battle Formation and overlying limestones constitute a conformable transgressive sequence. In ascending order, the lithofacies and corresponding depositional environments of the Battle Formation are: 1) massive clast-supported conglomerate deposited in proximal portions of a braided-stream system, 2) very sandy conglomerate with rare foreset cross-stratification deposited in the middle reaches of a braided-stream system, 3) cross-stratified conglomeratic sandstone deposited in the distal part of a braided-stream system, 4) fine conglomerate and fine-grained, commonly muddy, sandstone deposited near the terminus of a braided-stream system, and 5) interbedded calcareous sandstone, calcareous conglomerate, and mudstone of tidal and deltaic origin. The Battle Formation is overlain by Pennsylvanian carbonates (Etchart Formation, Highway Limestone, and Antler Peak Limestone) deposited in shallow-marine and/or marginal-marine environments. Paleontologic evidence indicates roughly contemporaneous deposition of 1) open-marine carbonates within a shallow inland sea, 2) mixed terrigenous-carbonate sediments around the margins of the shallow sea, and 3) conglomerates and sandstones in alluvial environments farther inland.


Vanadium sesquioxide V2O3 is considered a textbook example of Mott-Hubbard physics. In this paper, we present an extended optical study of its whole temperature/doping phase diagram as obtained by doping the pure material with M = Cr or Ti atoms (V1-x M-x)(2)O-3. We reveal that its thermodynamically stable metallic and insulating phases, although macroscopically equivalent, show very different low-energy electrodynamics. The Cr and Ti doping drastically change both the antiferromagnetic gap and the paramagnetic metallic properties. A slight chromium content induces a mesoscopic electronic phase separation, while the pure compound is characterized by short-lived quasiparticles at high temperature. This study thus provides a new comprehensive scenario of the Mott-Hubbard physics in the prototype compound V2O3.


We are grateful to seminar participants at Boston University, Florida International University, the University of Maryland, Princeton University,and the University of Virginia, as well as Arnaud Costinot, some anonymous referees, the Working Group on International Trade and Organizations at the NBER and participants at the AEA meetings in 2008 and the Spring 2008 Midwest International Economics Meetings. Support from the Bankard Fund at the University of Virginia is gratefully acknowledged. The views expressed in this paper are those of the authors and are not necessarily reflective of views of the Central Bank of the Republic of Turkey. All errors are our own. The views expressed herein are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Bureau of Economic Research.


Some critics oppose ICANN's authorization of closed gTLDs, claiming they could be anticompetitive because closed domain registry operators would have monopoly control over generic TLDs of potentially broad appeal. But this misstates competition on the Internet. But closed gTLDs would provide the most innovative alternatives — and strongest competition — not only to incumbent TLDs like .com, but also today's most popular domain names. Today's market leaders won't be beat by simply copying them, no matter how much money is spent on ads. New entrants must offer consumers something new and different. Closing the TLD may sound nefarious, but it gives the registry operator the incentive to invest not only in marketing the TLD, but also in innovative new business models that may change the paradigm of how TLDs function. The operator of .hotels would no more "monopolize" the hotel booking market than the owner of hotels.com does today. But it could turn the domain name system into a more useful and accessible form of navigation, while offering new features like added security or thematic consistency across the TLD.The future of the domain space will inevitably be messy and unpredictable in the best sense. But it is precisely that messiness — that unpredictability, that constant shifting of basic paradigms — that will most benefit consumers. Forcing new gTLDs to replicate the paradigm of .com will not. There may end up being legitimate concerns about particular registries' abuse of market power, but such concerns should be handled by those best positioned to evaluate them: national competition authorities. There is no justification for ICANN to evaluate TLD applications on the basis of speculative competition concerns, as a practical matter conferring on ICANN the ability to enforce a per se rule against closed gTLDs; competition authorities are far more capable of making proper determinations ex post. ICANN should be a coordinator of the domain name space, not the global regulator of the Internet.


The aim of this paper is to perceive the sustainability of urban development around the world looking into the effect on urbanisation of unsustainable factors such as the spatial distribution of rents from natural resources and the spatial allocation of public investment. First, a principal component analysis on World Bank data is undertaken to understand the specific contexts where cities emerge. Second, a regression analysis is done to relate the level and rate of urbanisation not only with the GDPpc, as suggested by the literature, but also with the variables that differentiate the specific contexts of urbanisation. It is concluded that, beyond the importance of the GDPpc, the level of urbanisation can be explained by less sustainable factors such as the spatial allocation of property rights of natural resources and the spatial distribution of public investment. It is also shown that remittances from migrants and population aging have a crucial impact on the rate of urbanisation.


After the Three Mile Island accident, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission requested that nuclear power plants (NPPs) in the United States provide instruments to record reactor water levels. The instruments will improve reliability in diagnosing the approach of inadequate core cooling. The reactor vessel level indicating system (RVLIS) is a measuring system for determining the water level in the reactor vessel. RVLIS was installed at Maanshan NPP under this requirement. A station blackout (SBO) incident occurred in the Maanshan NPP on March 18, 2001. The SBO incident was simulated with the MELCOR 1.8.5 code. The important parameter, reactor vessel water level, was compared with plant data. The interesting phenomena about RVLIS responses included initial full water level above 100%, reactor pressure vessel (RPV) water shrinkage, and two peaks in upper range train A. The initial full water levels of the upper range were at ~112% because of calibration conditions. The two trains of the upper range dropped at ~1.2 h after SBO because of RPV water saturation. RVLIS upper range train A had two level rises after SBO because of two flows out of the pressurizer into the loop 2 hot leg. The results indicated that MELCOR could reproduce the RVLIS response very well.


To improve the performance of hydraulic press position control and eliminate the need to manually define control signals, this paper proposes a multi-input-multi-output (MIMO) Iterative Learning Control (ILC) algorithm. The MIMO ILC algorithm design is based on the inversion of the known low frequency dynamics of the hydraulic press, whereas the unknown and uncertain high frequency dynamics are discarded due to their low influence in the learning transient. Moreover, for the MIMO ILC convergence condition, a graphical method is proposed, in which the ILC learning filter eigenvalues are analyzed. This method allows studying the stability and convergence rate of the algorithm intuitively. Theoretical analysis and results prove that with the MIMO ILC algorithm the position control is automated and that high precision in the position tracking is gained. A comparison with other model inverse ILC approaches is carried out and it is shown that the proposed MIMO ILC algorithm outperforms the existing algorithms, reducing the number of iterations required to converge while guaranteeing system stability. Furthermore, experimental results in a hydraulic test rig are presented and compared to those obtained with a conventional PI controller.


Background: Pharmacy practice residency program (PPRG) is one of a major professional degree in Saudi Arabia. The residency is very high demand in the pharmacy market. The clinical pharmacist required to visit hospitals to improve the services and start the program. Objective: The goal of this study to explore the value of clinical pharmacist consultation visit with emphasis on clinical pharmacy services (CPS) and pharmacy education and training (PET) at Ministry of Health hospitals in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. Methods: It is a twelve months cohort study of a regular visit to three major hospitals included public, pediatrics with maternity and emergency specialties at Riyadh region. The assessment used based on Saudi hospital pharmacy standards, MOH pharmacy strategic plan, and the 6-points Likert assessment scale system before the study and by the end of the study. The total number of finished projects were eighteen projects divided between CPS (twelve projects) and PET (six projects). Results: The improvements range changes in CPS from 16.7% to 100% with average positive improvement 48%. In the PET the improvements range changes were 32.8% to 100% with average positive changes was 85%. The highest score of the projects of CPS was an assessment of pharmacy services, assessment of emergency pharmacy services, and assessment of critical pharmacy services. The maximum score of the projects of PET was doing an interview with hiring a new pharmacist, train drug Information for staff pharmacist, and apply on the job training for the new pharmacist. Conclusion: The pharmacist showed practical significance impact on the clinical pharmacy services and pharmacy education and training in Riyadh city, Saudi Arabia. The increasing number of consultation visit with regular evaluation is necessary to keep continues pharmacy improvement at all hospital pharmacies. Key words: Impact, Clinical Pharmacist, Hospital Pharmacy, Ministry of Health, Saudi Arabia.


Over the past eight years, an innovative portfolio of 20 degrees and diploma courses in complementary medicine has been developed in the UK at the University of Westminster. Most of the degrees were the first of their kind in Europe and the provision continues to grow so that currently it now provides the widest selection of courses in complementary medicine in Europe. The number of students studying on the programmes has steadily increased to an annual total of almost 600 students in 2004. The establishment of the unique, multidisciplinary Polyclinic in 1998 marked the beginning of a period of rapid acceleration in the development of clinical training and research. Within the Polyclinic students and staff from a wide range of therapies learn to work together and with other healthcare professionals thereby instilling the skills of collaborative work.

The context of this comprehensive, mainstream, higher education portfolio of courses in complementary medicine in the UK is explored. The criteria identified by external agencies, including those by professional bodies are discussed. The nature and development of the health sciences, practitioner development and research themes of the courses are described. The pivotal role of the Polyclinic in preparing students to work in the integrated healthcare provision of the future is also discussed.


Cognitive sex differences have consistently been found in adulthood, with males
excelling on visual-spatial tasks and females excelling on manual dexterity tasks.
Although these differences are found in adulthood, they rarely exist before adolescence.
The present study aims to document the emergence of cognitive sex differences in an
adolescent sample. The first year of the study began when the adolescent sample was in
the 7th grade. Cognitive measurements continued in the same sample once a year for five
consecutive years. Participants were administered a battery of sex-sensitive tasks known
to show sex differences in adulthood. In order to compare adult performance with
adolescent performance, college-aged males and females were also tested once on the
same battery of cognitive tasks.


Obsession with dessert is widely shared by the residents of Kolkata. Life9s passages and religious rituals are all celebrated with sugary creations. Bengali desserts are typically made with some sort of milk product. Among these are mishti doi a custard-like dessert made by adding yogurt cultures to sweetened evaporated milk. However, Bengal is best known for desserts based on chhana. This is a fresh cheese with a consistency similar to ricotta. Some chhana is made into fritters, which include pantua, a doughnut-brown ball about the size of a lime, and kalojam, a nearly jet black sphere of dough. Both of these are soaked in syrup. Rossogolla is made from a similar dough but is boiled rather than fried. When soaked in a milk-based syrup, it is called rossomalai. In a simpler preparation, the fresh cheese is cooked down with sugar and formed into many kinds of sweets called sandesh. One of the city9s best know sandesh shops is Girish Chandra Dey & Nakur Chandra Nandy, or Nakur, in the old Shyambazar district. At Nakur they begin with raw milk, process it into cheese, and then cook, form, and flavor it into many types of sandesh of often unorthodox flavors. This artisanal approach cannot be followed by smaller neighborhood confectioners, called moiras in Bengali. They often use ready-made chhana for their confections. Trying to keep up with the times, new confectioners have tried to expand their operations and offer new products some of which are artificially sweetened.


An emerging literature on the geography of bohemians argues that a region's lifestyle and cultural amenities explain, at least partly, the unequal distribution of highly qualified people across space, which in turn, explains geographic disparities in economic growth. However, to date, there has been little or no empirical attempt to identify a causal relation. To identify the causal impact of bohemians on economic growth, we apply an instrumental variable approach using as an exogenous instrument the geographic distribution of bohemians prior to the Industrial Revolution in Germany. This distribution was primary the result of competition for prestige between courts and not of economic prosperity. Accordingly, the instrument is independent of today's regional economic development. Focusing on the concentration of highly skilled people today that is explained by the proximity to exogenous concentrations of bohemians, the observed local average treatment effect supports the hypothesis of a positive impact of bohemians on regional economic development.


This case study investigates the challenges of adult learners as they seek a master's degree course. Adapting the conceptual framework of Cross (1981), Hillage & Aston, (2001) and Mackeracher, Suart & Potter (2006), three main challenges were discussed; physical and material / situational, structural and attitudinal. Two instruments; diaries and interviews were utilized to uncover the challenges of three adult learners. Twenty varieties of challenges emerged from the data collected. All three categories of challenges were found as well as academic challenges. Although not fully generalizable, this study presents some interesting and constructive information. The challenges are the lack of support, health, multiple-conflicting responsibilities, job commitments, the lack of time, financial constraint, guilt, distance to be travelled, being unmarried, the lack of concentration, the lack of confidence, the lack of motivation, the lack of appropriate provisions, inappropriate schedules, writing academic texts, understanding academic texts, assignment workload, problems with vocabulary and grammar, and unclear and unacceptable methods of evaluation. Coping strategies towards some of the physical and material / situational challenges were recommended. To overcome the challenges from the lack of time, bringing reading materials to read while out with loved ones and to double the use of activities at work for the use of the master's assignments were suggested. To overcome stress, taking unpaid leave was advised. To overcome financial constraint, delaying the purchase of expensive books and reducing entertainment allocation were offered. To overcome multiple-conflicting responsibilities, acknowledging the importance of the various responsibilities and accepting one's limitations were proposed. The implications of the study include the value of support and encouragement from those near at heart, the importance of time management, the need for endurance, the requirement for continued focus, the importance of obtaining consensus on class schedules and postgraduate adult learners do not necessarily possess essential academic skills. Suggestions for further research include a similar research which is conducted over a longer period of time, a study on the interactions between the different varieties of challenges and a comparative study to examine the differences between the challenges of local adult learners and those from foreign universities.


Philosophy of Experimental Biology explores some central philosophical issues concerning scientific research in experimental biology, including genetics, biochemistry, molecular biology, developmental biology, neurobiology, and microbiology. It seeks to make sense of the explanatory strategies, concepts, ways of reasoning, approaches to discovery and problem solving, tools, models and experimental systems deployed by scientific life science researchers and also integrates developments in historical scholarship, in particular the New Experimentalism. It concludes that historical explanations of scientific change that are based on local laboratory practice need to be supplemented with an account of the epistemic norms and standards that are operative in science. This book should be of interest to philosophers and historians of science as well as to scientists.


Establishing a diagnosis of concussion within the context of competitive sport is frequently difficult due to the heterogeneity of presentation. Over the years, many endogenous proteins, including the recent Food and Drug Administration approved for mild-to-moderate traumatic brain injury, glial fibrillary acid protein and ubiquitin carboxy-terminal hydrolase, have been studied as potential biomarkers for the diagnosis of mild traumatic brain injury. Recently, a new class of potential biomarkers, the microRNAs, has shown promise as indicators of traumatic brain injury. In this pilot study, we have analysed the ability of pre-validated serum microRNAs (mi-425-5p and miR-502) to diagnose concussion, in cases without structural pathology. Their performance has been assessed alongside a set of identified protein biomarkers for traumatic brain injury in cohort of 41 concussed athletes. Athletes with a confirmed concussion underwent blood sampling after 48 h from concussion along with magnetic resonance imaging. Serum mi-425-5p and miR-502 were analysed by quantitative reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction, and digital immunoassay was used to determine serum concentrations of ubiquitin carboxy-terminal hydrolase, glial fibrillary acid protein, neurofilament light and Tau. Results were matched with 15 healthy volunteers. No structural/haemorrhagic pathology was identified. Protein biomarkers demonstrated variability among groups reflecting previous performance in the literature. Neurofilament light was the only marker to positively correlate with symptoms reported and SCAT5 scores. Despite the sub optimal timing of sampling beyond the optimal window for many of the protein biomarkers measured, miR-502 was significantly downregulated at all time points within a week form concussion ictus, showing a diagnostic sensitivity in cases beyond 48 h and without structural pathology.


New York State County Law allows each county to designate a board of supervisors to supervise the county. However, if the county chooses, it may establish an elected county legislative body to take on the functions, powers, obligations and duties of the board of supervisors. In Erie County this elected legislative body is the Erie County Legislature. The Erie County Legislature serves all of the residents of Erie County. In order to equally represent all residents, the county is broken up into legislative districts that are determined by Census population numbers. Erie County currently consists of 15 legislative districts. In every district, one elected Erie County Legislator represents approximately 62,000 citizens. These legislators "each operate a staffed district office which offers residents a variety of services."


Context The Women and Infants Transmission Study is a prospective natural history study that has been enrolling HIV-1-infected pregnant women and their infants since 1989. Objective To evaluate the impact of different antiretroviral regimens on perinatal HIV-1 transmission at the population level. Design Prospective cohort study. Plasma HIV-1 RNA levels were serially measured in 1542 HIV-1-infected women with singleton live births between January 1990 and June 2000. Main outcome measure HIV-1 status of the infant. Results HIV-1 transmission was 20.0% (95% confidence interval [CI], 16.1%-23.9%) for 396 women who not receiving prenatal antiretroviral therapy; 10.4% (95% CI, 8.2%-12.6%) for 710 receiving zidovudine monotherapy; 3.8% (95% CI, 1.1%-6.5%) for 186 receiving dual antiretroviral therapy with no or one highly active drug (Multi-ART); and 1.2% (95% CI, 0-2.5%) for 250 receiving highly active antiretroviral therapy (HAART). Transmission also varied by maternal delivery HIV RNA level: 1.0% for 30,000 copies/mL (p =.0001 for trend). The odds of transmission increased 2.4-fold (95% CI, 1.7-3.5) for every log10 increase in delivery viral load. In multivariate analyses adjusting for maternal viral load, duration of therapy, and other factors, the odds ratio for transmission for women receiving Multi-ART and HAART compared with those receiving ZDV monotherapy was 0.30 (95% CI, 0.09-1.02) and 0.27 (95% CI, 0.08-0.94), respectively. Conclusion Levels of HIV-1 RNA at delivery and prenatal antiretroviral therapy were independently associated with transmission. The protective effect of therapy increased with the complexity and duration of the regimen. HAART was associated with the lowest rates of transmission.


A novel Fourier spectrometer based on a partly transparent thin-film detector in combination with a tunable silicon micromachined mirror was developed. The operation principle based on the detection of an intensity profile of a standing-wave by introducing a partly transparent detector in the standing-wave. Varying the position of the mirror results in a phase shift of the standing-wave and thus in a change of the optical intensity profile within the detector. The photoelectric active region of the sensor is thinner than the wavelength of the incoming light, so that the modulation of the intensity leads to the modulation of the photocurrent. The spectral information of the incoming light can be determined by the Fourier transform of the sensor signal. Based on the linear arrangement of the sensor and the mirror, the spectrometer facilitates the realization of one- and two-dimensional arrays of spectrometers combining spectral and spatial resolution. The operation principle of the spectrometer will be described and the influence of the detector design on the spectrometer performance will be discussed. A spectral resolution of down to 6 nm was achieved under real-time imaging conditions.


Adverse drug reactions (ADRs) are common and should be reported to the CSM, particularly for newly marketed drugs. There is under-reporting of ADRs by doctors. Involving the patient in self-reporting, particularly when initiated by pharmacists is feasible and could help to improve reporting rates. This study investigated a comprehensive checklist questionnaire listed symptoms in all body systems to facilitate patient self-reporting using both established and new 'black triangle' centrally-acting drugs. Symptoms reported were compared to their documentation in medical notes and for new drugs to reports from other sources. A novel classification system for ADRs was developed to take account of the minimal data available and used to evaluate the potential accuracy of symptom attribution by patients. An external comparison of a sample of symptom classifications by an ADR expert was also obtained. The questionnaire was sent to 464 patients prescribed carbamazepine, sodium valproate, trazodone, doxepin and co-proxamol from three participating medical practices in a pilot study. Subsequently, it was sent to all patients (n=2307) prescribed tramadol, fentanyl patch, venlafaxine, nefazodone, citalopram, moclobemide, gabapentin, lamotrigine and topiramate from 79 participating medical practices in Grampian during January-March 1997. The overall response rates were 44.6% (n=207) for the pilot study and 36.3% (n=837) for the main study. The most frequently reported symptoms were: drowsiness for carbamazepine, unusual tiredness for sodium valproate, constipation for co-proxamol, dry mouth for trazodone, doxepin, tramadol, venlafaxine, nefazodone, moclobemide and citalopram, weight gain for gabapentin, loss of memory for lamotrigine, weight loss for topiramate and constipation for fentanyl patch. Overall only 22.4% (522/2330) of symptoms reported by patients were recorded by GPs in the 310 medical notes accessed. In general, common symptoms were reported more frequently by patients than in CSM reports and PEM data. Patients tended to report minor and known ADRs which bothered them, while CSM and PEM reports received were of more severe ADRs. Respondents were more likely to report symptoms (6040/8630,70%) potentially caused by the study drugs than those not to be caused by the study drugs. Moderate agreement (Kappa = 0.4-0.5) was found between expert and researcher classifications of symptom causality. It is suggested that interpretation by pharmacists of patient self-reporting using the checklist questionnaire could result in much higher ADR reporting rates, in particular for new drugs.


In cities across Latin America, community-based harm reduction and drug policy activists are ushering in a new, broader understanding of harm reduction for drug use, which they place within a banner of a "right to the city." This new frame of understanding drug use transcends the traditional harm reduction focus on blood-borne infection and discrete medical interventions to one that better encompasses the complexities of their urban geographies, political economic drivers, and drug and health policies. Importantly, this emergent frame reflects their collective praxis to make and hold a claim to the neighborhoods in which they reside by building their own collective political and social power. The groups leading this approach ground themselves in strategies of resistance and social cohesion that try to address the consequences of the war on drugs and to contest the claims of the state to police and organize urban poor neighborhoods. In doing so, this approach calls forth a new harm reduction designed to meet the needs of those communities most impacted by the war on drugs in urban spaces and to safeguard and enhance their health, rights, power, and survival.


Introduction Technology-based interventions that can function within real-world practice and improve outcomes without increasing provider burden are needed, yet few successfully cross the research-to-practice divide. This paper describes the process of developing a clinically integrated smartphone-telemedicine program for adults with asthma and results from proof-of-concept testing. Methods We used a contextually grounded intervention development approach and May's implementation theory to design the intervention, with emphasis on systems capabilities and stakeholder needs. The intervention incorporated symptom monitoring by smartphone, smartphone telemedicine visits and self-management training with a nurse, and clinical decision-support software, which provided automated calculations of asthma severity, control and step-wise therapy. Seven adults (aged 18–40 y) engaged in a 3-month beta-test. Asthma outcomes (control, quality of life, FEV1) and healthcare utilisation patterns were measured at baseline and end-of-study. Results Each participant averaged four telemedicine visits (94% patient satisfaction). All participants had uncontrolled asthma at baseline; end-of-study 5/7 classified as well-controlled. Mean asthma control improved 1.55 points (CI = 0.59–2.51); quality of life improved 1.91 points (CI = 0.50–3.31), FEV1 percent predicted increased 14.86% (CI = −3.09–32.80): effect sizes of d = 1.16, 1.09, and 0.96, respectively. Preventive healthcare utilisation increased significantly (1.86 visits/year vs. 0.28/year prior, CI 0.67–2.47) as did prescriptions for controller medications (9.29 prescriptions/year vs. 1.57 prescriptions/year, CI 4.85–10.58). Discussion Smartphone telemedicine may be an effective means to improve outcomes and deliver asthma care remotely. However, careful attention to systems capabilities and stakeholder acceptability is needed to ensure successful integration with practice. Clinical Trials registration #: NCT03648203


My thesis is a multimodal project inspired by a/r/tography, a theoretical framework that involves thinking holistically about art educators as artists, researchers, and teachers who navigate these identities fluidly in their lives within and outside of school settings. The core of a/r/tography is a way of thinking about these three main (overlapping) arenas that art educators move in between and the unique and unpredictable possibilities that emerge from practicing in these ever-changing spaces. My aim was to use a/r/tography as a point of departure for crafting resources and spaces that new art educators can utilize to better understand and navigate their multiple identities. I believe that nurturing each of these identities has the potential to make us better teachers capable of thriving in the often-challenging world of public education. The spaces I hoped to cultivate encourage reflective practice, sustainable art making, and connecting with other art educators. This project involved several moving parts that support my goals, including: my own first-year teaching journal, a website, digital documentation of the first-year journal, and this written component that provides the theoretical frame for this project.


Purpose: To examine the effect of a follow-up visit with a primary care physician and/or pulmonologist within the first 30 days of hospital discharge on readmissions, emergency department (ED) visits, and mortality. Patients and methods: This was a retrospective cohort study of 7,102 unique patients discharged from a Mayo Clinic hospital in Rochester, MN, and residing in Olmsted County, MN, with any mention of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) from January 1, 2004 through November 30, 2011. The study included 839 patients who met study-entry criteria. Cox proportional hazards regression was performed to determine the risk of hospital readmission, ED visits, and death of patients, with or without a follow-up visit during the first 30 days postdischarge. Results: Our results showed 839 unique patients experienced 1,422 discharges with a primary diagnosis of COPD. Of the 1,422 discharges, 973 (68.4%) had a follow-up visit within 30 days. In a multivariate Cox proportional hazard-ratio (HR) model analysis, occurrence of a follow-up visit did not have a significant effect on the risk of the combined outcome of 30-day readmission and ED visit (HR 0.947, confidence interval 0.763–1.177; P = 0.63). However, a postdischarge follow-up visit had a significant effect on 30-day mortality (HR 0.279, confidence interval 0.149–0.523; P , 0.001). Conclusion: Postdischarge follow-up visits after hospitalization for COPD did not significantly reduce the risk of 30-day readmission or ED visit. However, patients who received postdischarge follow-up visits had significantly reduced 30-day mortality.


The law within each legal system is a function of the practices of some social group. In short, law is a kind of socially grounded norm. H.L.A Hart famously developed this view in his book, "The Concept of Law," by arguing that law derives from a social rule, the so-called rule of recognition. But the proposition that social facts play a foundational role in producing law is a point of consensus for all modern jurisprudents in the Anglo-American tradition: not just Hart and his followers in the positivist school, most prominently Joseph Raz and Jules Coleman, but also the anti-positivist Ronald Dworkin, who argues that law necessarily synthesizes moral considerations with social facts.But which group's practices ground each legal system? In particular, which group's practices undergird U.S. law? Positivists since Hart have universally pointed to either officials or judges as the recognitional community (my term): the group whose rules, conventions, cooperative activities, or practices in some other sense are the social facts from which the law of a given legal system derives. So Hart and all other positivists would identify either U.S. officials or U.S. judges as the recognitional community for U.S. law.This Article grapples with the tension between the positivist's official- or judge-centered account of the recognitional community and the popular constitutionalism now so widely defended by constitutional scholars such as Larry Kramer, Robert Post, Reva Siegel, Mark Tushnet, Jeremy Waldron, and many others. Surely the popular constitutionalist would want to claim that U.S. citizens, not judges or officials, are the recognitional community for U.S. law. I term this position deep popular constitutionalism.Indeed, it turns out that Dworkin's account of law, in its ambition to generate associative moral obligations for the citizenry as a whole, implies deep popular constitutionalism. Here there is a disagreement, hitherto unnoticed, between Dworkin and the positivists. My solution to this disagreement - to the debate between deep popular constitutionalists and deep official or judicial supremacists - is to dissolve it by providing a group-relative account of law. Social norms, such as norms of dress or eating, are clearly group-relative. A particular dressing or eating behavior may be socially appropriate relative to one group's norms, yet socially inappropriate relative to another's. This Article extends the group-relative view from social norms to law itself, with a particular focus on U.S. law and constitutionalism.Part I surveys the jurisprudential literature. It shows how Hart and successor positivists identify the rule of recognition as a social practice engaged in by officials or some subset of officials (judges), rather than citizens generally, and argues that Dworkin by contrast sees the citizenry as a whole as his-recognitional community. Parts II and III defend a group-relative account of law. Part II argues, with reference to the U.S. experience, that multiple groups can simultaneously instantiate the kind of social fact that undergirds law, be it a convention, a social norm, a shared cooperative activity (SCA), or something else. At many points in U.S. constitutional history, multiple official or citizen groups, defined along departmental, partisan, regional, state-federal, religious, or other lines, have accepted competing rules of recognition for U.S. law. Part III argues that law functions, primarily, as either an explanatory or a normative construct, and that insisting on a single recognitional community for each legal system would be arbitrary, both for explanatory purposes and for normative purposes. Part IV considers the many implications of the group-relative account for U.S. constitutional theory - in particular, for popular constitutionalism.


Objective To investigate the differences in treatment efficacy of patients with minimally conscious state (MCS) and persistent vegetative state (PVS). Methods Fifty-six continuous coma patients after heavy head injury and severe brain hemorrhage, admitted to our hospital from February 2004 to March 2011,were chosen in our study; 23 of them diagnosed as having MCS,and other 33 as having PVS by internal diagnostic criteria. All patients were treated with new integrative drug treatment and integrative systematical treatment. PVS standard scale was employed to assess the effectiveness before treatment,and 1,3 and 5 courses after treatment in the 2 groups; and the differences of efficacy in MCS patients of different ages were compared. Results The scores of PVS standard scale in the patients with MCS were significantly higher than those in the patients with PVS at 3 and 5 courses after treatment (P<0.05); the scores of PVS standard scale in the patients with MCS at 1,3 and 5 courses after treatment and patients with PVS 3 and 5 courses after treatment were obviously higher than those before treatment (P<0.05); significant difference on the efficacy was noted between the 2 groups (P<0.05); and mean rank test indicated that the treatment efficacy in patients with MCS was better than that in patients with PVS. The treatment efficacy in MCS patients of different ages was significantly different (P<0.05); patients aged 18-29 enjoyed the best treatment efficacy,while patients aged over 50 enjoyed the worst treatment efficacy. Conclusion The treatment efficacy of patients with MCS is significantly better than that of patients with PVS; integrative systematically therapy is very important for patients with MCS and it can make the majority of patients get recover.

Key words:
Minimally conscious state; Persistent vegetative state; Treatment; Curative effect


We conducted discrete numerical simulations to examine the effects of seamount collisions with forearcs along actively accreting subduction margins. Modeled seamount interactions leave behind distinctive structures in overriding forearcs that differ from those found at non-accreting margins. Whereas accretion above a planar decollement produces evenly spaced thrust faults with uniform displacements, seamounts activate one or more large-offset splay faults that accommodate substantial offset. Locally oversteepened slopes develop above the seamounts, but in contrast to non-accreting margins, the steep slopes are transient. Renewed accretion following seamount passage allows the equilibrium surface slopes to recover. Seamounts also protect incoming strata in their wake, delaying formation of new thrust faults and increasing fault spacing. Weak horizons within accreting strata allow the decollement to step up above the seamount, further protecting deeper strata and vertically partitioning wedge deformation. Notably, all modeled faults form in sequence, in contrast to out-of-sequence faults found at non-accreting margins. Similar structures found at many accretionary margins, including Nankai (offshore Japan), suggest that we may underestimate the role of seamount interactions in many locations, with implications for our assessment of subduction hazards in these settings.


This note explains reflective equilibrium, a process of moral reasoning whereby considered judgments about cases are reviewed and abstracted into principles. New cases either confirm the principles or lead to their revision. The note argues that reflective equilibrium is a good process for understanding how moral thinking ought to work.


Newsletter of the Rawls College of Business Administration at Texas Tech University, including announcements and information about events, activities, courses, and staff of the college.


Prior studies have suggested that specific characteristics of sexually abusive experiences, including the presence of force and penetration, have been proposed to account for much of the harm caused by childhood sexual abuse. Though many studies have documented gender differences in the prevalence and sequelae of childhood sexual abuse (CSA), few have examined gender differences related to the types of abusive incidents that victims have encountered, and all have been limited to clinical samples. Illuminating gender differences in the nature of sexually abusive experiences may help to account for gender disparities related to the sequelae of CSA. Extending this line of research to nonclinical samples will help to estimate the overall prevalence of CSA and assess the generalizability of previous study findings.  This study examined gender differences in the types of sexually abusive incidents self-reported by 155 victims of CSA who were students enrolled in an undergraduate psychology course at a large southeastern university. Although Chi square analyses failed to reveal any significant gender differences related to the involvement of force in CSA incidents, results did indicate that males were significantly more likely to report being victimized by incidents involving penetration (41.0% vs. 24.1%). Additional statistically significant gender differences included findings that a greater proportion of males (61.5%) than females (37.1%) reported touching the genitals of someone at least five years older before the age of 16, and that males were more likely to report having engaged in anal intercourse before the age of 16 with someone at least five years older (12.8% vs. 2.6%).


Motivation Protein structure predictions, that combine theoretical chemistry and bioinformatics, are an increasingly important technique in biotechnology and biomedical research, for example in the design of novel enzymes and drugs. Here, we present a new ensemble bi-layered machine learning architecture, that directly builds on ten existing pipelines providing rapid, high accuracy, 3-State secondary structure prediction of proteins. Results After training on 1348 solved protein structures, we evaluated the model with four independent datasets: JPRED4 - compiled by the authors of the successful predictor with the same name, and CASP11, CASP12 & CASP13 - assembled by the Critical Assessment of protein Structure Prediction consortium who run biannual experiments focused on objective testing of predictors. These rigorous, pre-established protocols included 7-fold cross-validation and blind testing. This led to a mean Hermes accuracy of 95.5%, significantly (p<0.05) better than the ten previously published models analysed in this paper. Furthermore, Hermes yielded a reduction in standard deviation, lower boundary outliers, and reduced dependency on solved structures of homologous proteins, as measured by NEFF score. This architecture provides advantages over other pipelines, while remaining accessible to users at any level of bioinformatics experience. Availability and Implementation The source code for Hermes is freely available at: https://github.com/HermesPrediction/Hermes. This page also includes the cross-validation with corresponding models, and all training/testing data presented in this study with predictions and accuracy.


Major industrial and government restructurings have dominated employment reports in the New York-New Jersey region, leading to widespread pessimism about the region's job prospects. Nevertheless, for the past several years, the two states have managed to achieve modest job gains. In 1997, employment growth in New York and New Jersey will accelerate slightly as the pace of restructurings slows.


Classification of personal text messages has many useful applications in surveillance, e-commerce, and mental health care, to name a few. Giving applications access to personal texts can easily lead to (un)intentional privacy violations. We propose the first privacy-preserving solution for text classification that is provably secure. Our method, which is based on Secure Multiparty Computation (SMC), encompasses both feature extraction from texts, and subsequent classification with logistic regression and tree ensembles. We prove that when using our secure text classification method, the application does not learn anything about the text, and the author of the text does not learn anything about the text classification model used by the application beyond what is given by the classification result itself. We perform end-to-end experiments with an application for detecting hate speech against women and immigrants, demonstrating excellent runtime results without loss of accuracy.


Wind energy is becoming a significant alternative solution for future energy production. Modern turbines now benefit from engineering expertise, and a large variety of different models exists, depending on the context and needs. However, classical wind turbines are designed to operate within a narrow zone centred around their optimal working point. This limitation prevents the use of sites with variable wind to harvest energy, involving significant energetic and economic losses. Here, we present a new type of bioinspired wind turbine using elastic blades, which passively deform through the air loading and centrifugal effects. This work is inspired from recent studies on insect flight and plant reconfiguration, which show the ability of elastic wings or leaves to adapt to the wind conditions and thereby to optimize performance. We show that in the context of energy production, the reconfiguration of the elastic blades significantly extends the range of operating regimes using only passive, non-consuming mechanisms. The versatility of the new turbine model leads to a large increase of the converted energy rate, up to 35%. The fluid/elasticity mechanisms involved for the reconfiguration capability of the new blades are analysed in detail, using experimental observations and modelling.


Prevailing theory suggests that many parasite species have evolved in tight congruence with their hosts, with the parasite phylogeny mirroring that of the host. This theory is based largely on studies of host-parasite interactions between species where strong links would be expected. For example, the highly congruent evolutionary trees of procellariform seabirds and their feather lice (Paterson et al., 1993) are expected as oceanic seabirds breed in large, often monospecific, colonies and lice do not survive long away from their host. Consequently, in this case, there are few opportunities for host switching. Our research employs molecular techniques to test the theory of tight host-parasite congruence in a host-parasite system where high host specificity is not necessarily expected; Trochoidea (topshell snails) and digenean trematodes (flatworms). Due to the fine-scale sympatry of the topshell hosts and the complex life cycle of digeneans, the parasites are likely to encounter a range of potential hosts, allowing ample opportunity for host-switching. Topshells belonging to the genera Melagraphia and Diloma are ubiquitous in the New Zealand intertidal zone, with seven species currently recognised. Six of these species are endemic, the exception being D. nigerrima, which also occurs in Chile. Related topshells are found in other parts of the Pacific, most notably along the southern coast of Australia, where seven species are classified as belonging to the genus Austrocochlea. Despite different topshell species having slightly different ecological requirements, species may exist in sympatry e.g. during a preliminary study at Purakaunui Inlet, near Dunedin, six species were found within a 20 m radius. Melagraphia, Diloma and Austrocochlea are all potential firstintermediate hosts of digenean trematodes, which infest the snail's digestive gland. During their life cycle digeneans usually parasitise three hosts. The second-intermediate and definitive hosts of these digeneans are unknown, but are likely to be a crustacean and a fish, respectively. Digenean eggs are shed into the water column in the faeces of the definitive host and so, due to the sympatric nature of topshell distribution, developing larvae are likely to encounter a number of potential host species and opportunities for host-switching are great. Topshell phylogeny is currently unresolved, with poorly defined generic boundaries and digenean phylogeny is even less well understood; digeneans which parasitise Melagraphia, Diloma and Austrocochlea consist of a single morphotype which has tentatively been placed in Opecoelidae (Clark, 1958; Miller and Poulin, 2001). Species assignments and phylogenies of both topshells and their digeneans trematodes are being resolved using DNA sequence data. Questions concerning the dispersal, biogeography and evolution of both host and parasite are being addressed by analysing this molecular data in conjunction with data on their geographic distributions. Ultimately the goal of this research is to answer questions about the co-evolution of topshells and their parasites, such as: are the two trees congruent? is there evidence of host-switching and hostaddition?


Existing literature regarding the selection of lunar base construction equipment and methods is heavily dependent upon qualitative measures for evaluation of equipment concepts. Selection of suitable concepts for further development based upon qualitative arguments is difficult. Without quantitative evidence, in the form of performance parameters, to support these decisions, important variables may be overlooked by qualitative selection procedures. The objective of this paper is to emphasize the need for quantitative, performance-based evaluation techniques and report the results of recent research where certain variables were identified as critical to the selection process. It is concluded that these important variables, at a minimum, should receive careful consideration in any evaluation of lunar base construction equipment and methods.


Cancer therapy should aim to prevent recurrent disease. Surgery and toxic treatments remove only symptoms associated with cancer without trying to intervene in the aetiology, therefore the disease may recur. The autologous cancer vaccine supplemented with bio-modulation might fulfil requirements for effective tumour therapy. The autologous tumour vaccine is formed in the same way as our bodily organs, via natural peptide bonding by a special technique, first devised at the Pasteur Institute in 1967. The curative effect of vaccine is improved if specific stimulation of the immunity is combined with metabolic supplementation to compensate a genetic default. Organ specific mitochondria appear to regulate oncogene transcription back into normal without apoptosis, mimicking spontaneous cures. This observation could lead to medical use of mitochondria as bio-technological cancer precision remedy. The importance of the biological control by lipids in the Central Nervous System (CNS) acting as the 'lipidome' in healing process is especially emphasised. This combination therapy has cured hundreds of cancer patients and experimental animals in randomised studies spanning over 40 years. Our findings indicate that combined immunological and biological modality called 'bio-immunotherapy' is an effective approach for treatment of cancer.


The aims of this review are: 1. to provide a bibliography of the publications that have used the corrosion casting technique; 2. to describe the advantages and limitations of the methodology; 3. to illustrate possible applications in the field of medicine, and 4. to highlight the significance of this method in the teaching of medical students. Thus, this paper is primarily focused on the scanning electron microscopical examination of vascular corrosion casts. The unsurpassed three-dimensionality of the corrosion casting technique compared to any other means stands out in particular. This can be especially useful when complex vascular-anatomical relationships are present. This applies not only to the portrayal of the modes of branching and varying vascular densities but also to regulatory arrangements, such as sphincters and arteriovenous anastomoses. Between 1966 and 1990, a total of 549 publications were found in the Medline literature data bank, containing the key words "corrosion casting", "microvascular cast", or "vascular cast" (as of August, 1990). Of those publications, most dealt with applications to experimental animals. By contrast, only 142 reports were mainly or partially concerned with human investigational material. The normal vascular system of nearly all organs, insofar as this is of direct medical relevance, has been largely resolved. In our opinion, one of the most important potential applications of the corrosion casting technique lies in the investigation of gastrointestinal, renal or hepatic ailments, which coincide with the reconstruction or rarefication of the vascular bed, e.g., in ulcers, ileitis terminalis, colitis ulcerosa, cirrhosis or glomerulonephritis.


Background We evaluated the effect of adenosine upon mechanisms sustaining persistent AF through analysis of contact electrograms and ECGI mapping. Methods Persistent AF patients undergoing catheter ablation were included. ECGI maps and cycle length (CL) measurements were recorded in the left and right atrial appendages and repeated following boluses of 18 mg of intravenous adenosine. Potential drivers (PDs) were defined as focal or rotational activations completing ≥ 1.5 revolutions. Distribution of PDs was assessed using an 18 segment biatrial model. Results 46 patients were enrolled. Mean age was 63.4 ± 9.8 years with 33 (72%) being male. There was no significant difference in the number of PDs recorded at baseline compared to adenosine (42.1 ± 15.2 vs 40.4 ± 13.0; p = 0.417), nor in the number of segments harbouring PDs, (13 (11–14) vs 12 (10–14); p = 0.169). There was a significantly higher percentage of PDs that were focal in the adenosine maps (36.2 ± 15.2 vs 32.2 ± 14.4; p < 0.001). There was a significant shortening of CL in the adenosine maps compared to baseline which was more marked in the right atrium than left atrium (176.7 ± 34.7 vs 149.9 ± 27.7 ms; p < 0.001 and 165.6 ± 31.7 vs 148.3 ± 28.4 ms; p = 0.003). Conclusion Adenosine led to a small but significant shortening of CL which was more marked in the right than left atrium and may relate to shortening of refractory periods rather than an increase in driver burden or distribution. Registered on Clinicaltrials.gov: NCT03394404.


The specific purpose of this paper is to describe a set of new software tools and some of their applications to the study of Euclid's Elements. More generally, it is intended as a case study to illustrate some of the ways in which recent developments in information technology can open up new perspectives for the study of source materials in the history of mathematics and science. I argue that the creative and judicious use of such technology can make important contributions to historical scholarship, both by making it possible to pursue old questions in new ways and by raising new questions that cannot easily be addressed using traditional means of investigation.1


The paper is aimed to trace and explain the relationship between foreign direct investment (FDI) and local natural environment changes in the Pearl River Delta (PRD). The purpose is threefold: to make a connection between the environmental problems and global economic forces; develop a model to identify if FDI is one of the major cause of the environmental changes in the PRD; and identify how FDI interacts with the local environmental policy-making process. The study reviews a wide range of literature on China's and international economic and environmental development. A tentative model is built based on existing theoretical frameworks to present the complex relationship between FDI and environment, followed by two case studies on Guangzhou and Dongguan, two cities in the PRD of different development patterns. Although FDI acts as the major economic catalyst in the region, my analysis does not show a linear relationship of FDI and environmental pollution. However, positive relationship among government regulations, FDI, and environment can be established to achieve sustainable development.


Sub-Antarctic South Georgia (54° 17′ S, 36° 30′ W, 3755 km2) is a large heavily glacierized island that is 170 km long, 39 km wide and rises to elevations of 2934 m. The island has extensive evidence of past glacial expansion with moraines preserved on land (Bentley et al. 2007), in the fjords (Hodgson et al. 2014) and in glacial troughs that extend 60–100 km to the edge of the continental shelf where some terminate in trough-mouth fans (Graham et al. 2008). A paucity of chronological control means that, at present, it is not possible to identify which of these sets of features mark the limit of a more extensive ice cap from the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM).

The glacial geomorphology of nine of the deep glacial fjords on South Georgia has been studied from ship-based geophysical surveys. Despite the different lengths, widths and orientations of the fjords, a relatively consistent pattern of large-scale (102–103 m) submarine geomorphological features is present (Hodgson et al. 2014).

Most of the fjords have shallow (30–150 m) inner basins characterized by a range of seafloor sedimentary features including sediment gravity flows, debris fans and slope failures, all of which are associated with high glacigenic sediment supply. The inner …


Background Hepatitis B virus (HBV) infection leads to hepatic and extrahepatic manifestations including chronic kidney disease (CKD). However, the association between HBV and CKD is not clear. This study investigated the association between chronic HBV infection and CKD in a nationwide multicenter study. Methods A total of 265,086 subjects who underwent health-check examinations in 33 hospitals from January 2015 to December 2015 were enrolled. HBV surface antigen (HBsAg) positive cases (n = 10,048), and age- and gender-matched HBsAg negative controls (n = 40,192) were identified. CKD was defined as a glomerular filtration rate (GFR) < 60 mL/min/1.73 m2 or proteinuria as at least grade 2+ of urine protein. Results HBsAg positive cases showed a significantly higher prevalence of GFR < 60 mL/min/1.73 m2 (3.3%), and proteinuria (18.9%) than that of the controls (2.6%, P < 0.001, and 14.1%, P < 0.001, respectively). In the multivariate analysis, HBsAg positivity was an independent factor associated with GFR < 60 mL/min/1.73 m2 along with age, blood levels of albumin, bilirubin, anemia, and hemoglobin A1c (HbA1c). Likewise, HBsAg positivity was an independent factor for proteinuria along with age, male, blood levels of bilirubin, protein, albumin, and HbA1c. A subgroup analysis showed that HBsAg positive men but not women had a significantly increased risk for GFR < 60 mL/min/1.73 m2. Conclusion Chronic HBV infection was significantly associated with a GFR < 60 mL/min/1.73 m2 and proteinuria (≥ 2+). Therefore, clinical concern about CKD in chronic HBV infected patients, especially in male, is warranted.


Abstract This article explores 'imaginings' around hepatitis B in Burkina Faso and their historical genealogies. Hepatitis B is a viral infection afflicting the liver, but asymptomatic carriers may fall ill decades after exposure to the virus. Drawing from ethnographic interviews, we analyse how people living with hepatitis B in Burkina Faso grapple with incertitude about the course of their infections, the possibilities for healing and their illness's influence on social relations by 'imagining': that is, diverging momentarily from narratives about their diagnostic and therapeutic pathways to imagine alternative pasts and future consequences of this illness. We investigate how those living with hepatitis B use these imaginings to grapple with absences – of a certain future, of knowledge and of care – the historical genealogies that give rise to these absences, and their longer-term consequences. These ephemeral imaginings emerge from an 'entanglement' of the virus, epidemiological incertitude about its course and absences within Burkina Faso's health system and global health policies, which are themselves the consequence of specific historical processes.


The objective of this paper is to present a comparative discussion of the results of theoretical analysis of transient pressures and of field tests performed on the Camp Far West Hydroelectric Project, located at the Camp Far West Dam and Reservoir on the Bear River in northern California. The hydropower project addition consists of a 6. 8 MW turbine/generator equipment including a gated, trashrack intake structure; a steel and concrete-lined power tunnel and a reinforced concrete powerhouse. Based on theoretical calculations and manufacturer's recommendations, a step-wise wicket gate operation was selected. On January 29, 1985, twelve load tests were performed on the turbine when the reservoir was full and the net head was approximately 155 feet The test results showed that the pressure rise and turbine speed increase were within the turbine manufacturer's specifications. The measured maximum waterhammer pressure of 101 psi was in close agreement with the theoretically calculated maximum, and was also within the maximum allowable pressure for the 8 ft. diameter, 3/8-in thick, open penstock connecting the tunnel portal and spiral case.


Potential US adversaries have integrated nuclear weapons into their concepts for fighting and winning a future regional conflict. To this end, they have organized, trained, and equipped nuclearcapable forces for theater war fighting. The United States, and its allies, must prepare for adversaries who integrate conventional and nuclear arms to shape the regional battlespace, counter theater defenses, and combat coalition forces. The challenge posed by this conventionalnuclear integration (CNI) cuts across strategic, operational, and tactical levels of warfare. While CNI is not a new phenomenon, its growth and evolution in recent years is placing increasing pressure on US regional deterrence and defense strategies. To effectively deter this threat requires an integrated, but not mirrorimaged, approach. The goal of US CNI is to convince potential adversaries that integrating conventional and nuclearcapable forces grants insufficient advantages within a future regional conflict to overcome either the latter's potential vulnerabilities or the risks attendant with attempting to leverage nuclear escalation. Potential adversaries are likely to retain some of these platforms and their associated nuclear weapons as a hedge against uncertainty. However, it is important for the Department of Defense to bolster US and allied deterrence postures in Europe and the AsiaPacific by taking steps—prior to any regional crisis—to influence their costbenefit calculus in contemplating the deployment or employment of nuclear weapons in theater. This article proposes a threepart framework using the Department of Defense's Deterrence Operations – Joint Operating Concept (deny benefits, impose costs, and encourage restraint) to plan and posture for accomplishing this goal.


Wet processing of textiles involves utilization of large amount of chemicals, which ultimately adds to effluent load. The colouration of textiles with various dyes makes the colour of the effluent dark and hence requires expensive treatments for the removal of dyes from the effluent. In the present work, a blend comprising of polyester and cotton components was dyed with disperse and reactive dyes respectively by a neutral dyeing approach. Normally polyester is dyed with disperse dyes in acidic medium, while cotton is dyed with reactive dyes in an alkaline medium for their respective fixation; the application involves either a two bath or one bath/ two-step dyeing procedure to be employed. In this approach, the blend was pretreated with a potential polymer, polyacrylic acid, in the presence of a suitable cross-linking agent and subsequently the pretreated fabric was dyed by pad-dry-cure dyeing technique using both disperse and reactive dyes in the same padding liquor in the absence of any chemical in the bath. Thus, one bath/onestep dyeing method was possible with such neutral dyeing method leading to considerable saving of energy, time, water, labour, etc. These dyeing were compared with the conventionally dyed samples in terms of colour strength (K/S) values, measured on spectrophotometer. The washing, light and rub fastness of the dyed samples were quite good and comparable with the conventionally dyed samples. Effluent characteristics show remarkable results for the new approach and since chemicals were not utilized during dyeing, the pH, BOD, COD, etc. were all in the permissible range, indicating no extra effluent treatment to be used, except removal of dyes/colour from the effluent by a suitable colour removable technique, Thus, the new approach may be considered as "Green processing of cellulosic textiles" without any pollution problem. Keywords— Reactive dye, polyacrylic acid, cross-linking, effluent characteristics, green processing


We examine Cluster observations of a so‐called magnetosphere " crater FTE, " employing data from five instruments (FGM, CIS, EDI, EFW, and WHISPER), some at the highest resolution. The aim of doing this is to deepen our understanding of the reconnection nature of these events by applying recent advances in the theory of collisionless reconnection and in detailed observational work. Our data support the hypothesis of a stratified structure with regions which we show to be spatial structures. We support the bulge‐like topology of the core region (R3) made up of plasma jetting transverse to reconnected field lines. We document encounters with a magnetic separatrix as a thin layer embedded in the region (R2) just outside the bulge, where the speed of the protons flowing approximately parallel to the field maximizes: (1) short (fraction of a sec) bursts of enhanced electric field strengths (up to ∼30 mV/m) and (2) electrons flowing against the field toward the X line at approximately the same time as the bursts of intense electric fields. R2 also contains a density decrease concomitant with an enhanced magnetic field strength. At its interface with the core region, R3, electric field activity ceases abruptly. The accelerated plasma flow profile has a catenary shape consisting of beams parallel to the field in R2 close to the R2/R3 boundary and slower jets moving across the magnetic field within the bulge region. We detail commonalities our observations of crater FTEs have with reconnection structures in other scenarios. We suggest that in view of these properties and their frequency of occurrence, crater FTEs are ideal places to study processes at the separatrices, key regions in magnetic reconnection. This is a good preparation for the MMS mission.


After almost three years of work, South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) delivered its final report to President Nelson Mandela on 29 October 1998. The delivery occurred amid considerable controversy as both former President F.W. de Klerk and South Africa's current ruling party, the African National Congress (ANC), launched last-minute legal proceedings in an attempt to block the publication of the report. The TRC agreed to temporarily excise a small section of the report, which implicated de Klerk in gross violations of human rights, pending final legal settlement of the matter in early 1999. The ANC's court application, in which it argued that the TRC had failed to properly consider its objections to the TRC's findings regarding the party's responsibility for human rights abuse, was rejected only hours before the report was scheduled for public release. The fact that both former and current rulers were distressed by aspects of the TRC's final report is perhaps the strongest evidence that the TRC fulfilled its mandate in a fair and impartial manner. It also demonstrates that any attempt to deal with past human rights abuse is likely to be both complex and contested. The TRC can be characterized as representing a "third way" in dealing with a legacy of human rights abuse and attempting to institutionalize justice. This is because it steered a middle path between an uncompromising insistence on prosecution on the one hand, and a defeatist acceptance of amnesty(1) and impunity on the other. This article will examine the structure and mandate of the TRC and assess its contribution to an evolving discussion about the nature of international justice and the institutional mechanisms best suited to achieving it. Drawing on the TRC experience, this article argues that new democracies emerging from periods of massive and/or systematic violations of human rights are unable, for a combination of practical and political reasons, to prosecute more than a tiny percentage of those responsible for human rights abuse. For this reason, strategies for dealing with the past must not become narrowly focused on attempts to prosecute. Rather, more expansive and creative strategies should be considered and employed in order to address the rights of victims and the needs of society as a whole. DEALING WITH THE PAST Why Amnesty? The manner in which a successor government chooses to deal with those who have committed gross violations of human rights, during the tenure of a previous repressive regime is profoundly influenced by the balance of power between the old and new orders at the time of transition. The Nuremberg trials were possible in postwar Germany only because the Allies had militarily defeated the Nazi regime and therefore possessed sufficient power to ensure the prosecution of the leaders of the Third Reich.(2) Conversely, when the transition to democracy occurred in Chile, the newly established government was unable to prosecute those who had committed gross violations of human rights during military rule(3) because the military still commanded considerable authority--so much so that former Chilean dictator General Augusto Pinochet was able to remain in office as head of the armed forces. The contrast between the postwar German and the Chilean approaches to those who have committed gross human rights violations indicates that a country's choice of policy has as much to do with power as it does with principle. The approach to amnesty adopted in South Africa confirms this fact: the transition from a nondemocratic to an elected government occurred in circumstances similar to those of the Chilean transition in which the former government maintained considerable power during the regime change. The South African liberation movements did not succeed in removing the apartheid government from office by military means. In fact, throughout the negotiation process, which resulted in South Africa's first democratic elections, the former government retained control over a formidable military and police force. …


ABSTRACT Many couples want to retire together even if spouses differ in age. Drawing on theories of leisure complementarity, gender roles and social status, this article uses comprehensive Swedish register data from 2002 to 2010 to explore synchronised retirement and its association with spousal age differences and other socio-demographic factors. Synchronisation rates in dual-earner couples (N = 83,986) were 10 per cent for retirement the same calendar year and 25 per cent for retirement the same or the following year. Contrary to theoretical expectations, synchronisation was more common in women-older couples than in men-older couples, although this was largely a consequence of the skewed distribution of age differences. Moreover, spouses' education, incomes, assets, employment and health were differently associated with synchronisation in same-age, men-older and women-older couples. In the total population, average retirement age differed very little between synchronising couples and other couples. Yet women who synchronised retired at an earlier age than other women, whereas men who synchronised retired later than other men. This was partly an effect of the predominance of men-older couples, but men in men-older couples were also more likely than women in women-older couples to delay retirement in order to synchronise.


This study looks at the dynamics of innovation: why innovation occurs, what
newness means in diverse areas of life, how social, cultural and individual attitudes
to novelty interact, and the wider impact of innovation. The historical focus is
ancient Athens, a society well known for its originality and creativity. Despite
Athens' well-known competitiveness and flair for innovation, classical historians
have tended to emphasise its traditionalism and respect for the past. However, the
comedies of Aristophanes testify to the deliberate pursuit of innovation and to the
effects of rapid and wide-ranging change in the late fifth and early fourth centuries
B.C. They are adduced, together with other sources for the period, as evidence for
the kinds of innovation that took place in politics, law, religion and warfare, as well
as in specialist skills (technai) such as rhetoric, the visual arts, music, and medicine.
The sources reveal diverse reactions, ranging from ambivalence and anxiety to
excitement and optimism, to the experience of newness in these culturally key areas
of Athenian life. Attitudes and behaviour differed between individuals and social
groups, depending on the area of innovation. A combination of factors served to
encourage the drive to innovate: material circumstances such as commercialism,
war, and imperial rule; social pressures such as competitiveness, democratic
openness, and the desire for acclaim; and technical imperatives such as the pursuit
of accuracy, efficacy, and originality. The proliferation of tools of verbal
communication (specifically rhetoric and writing) to express and record new ideas;
is a pervasive theme. In conclusion, a broad trend is discerned for the period,
showing Athenians towards the end of the fifth century to have been unusually
interested in the meaning and possibilities of innovation. Aristophanes'
characterisation in particular of the climate of newness suggests an intriguing
historical analogue to recent discourses of postmodernity.


In this paper, a framework for interactive sonification is introduced. It is argued that electroacoustic composition techniques can provide a methodology for structuring and presenting multivariable data through sound. Furthermore, an embodied music cognition driven interface is applied to provide an interactive exploration of the generated output. The motivation and theoretical foundation for this work are presented as well as the framework's implementation and an exploratory use case.


We report high output power and high-gain semiconductor optical amplifiers integrated on a heterogeneous silicon/III-V photonics platform. The devices produce 25 dB of unsaturated gain for the highest gain design, and 14 dBm of saturated output power for the highest output power design. The amplifier structure is also suitable for lasers, and can be readily integrated with a multitude of silicon photonic circuit components. These devices are useful for a wide range of photonic integrated circuits. We show a design method for optimizing the amplifier for the desired characteristics. The amplifier incorporates a low loss and low reflection transition between the heterogeneous active region and a silicon waveguide, and we report transition loss below 1 dB across the entire measurement range and parasitic reflection coefficient from the transition below 1 · 10-3.


Inspired by the recent trends in education towards learner autonomy with their emphasis on the interests and desires of the students, and borrowing ideas from philosophy (particularly ethics), the present study is an attempt to investigate the discrepancy in the findings of the studies addressing error correction in L2 writing instruction, and suggest the (oft-neglected) students' beliefs, interests and wants as what can point the way out of confusion. To this end, a questionnaire was developed and 56 advanced adult EFL learners were asked to complete the questionnaire. The opinions of 20 EFL teachers were also collected using another questionnaire. Twenty-three of the students and 13 of the teachers were then interviewed in an attempt to collect explanations for their answers in the questionnaires. The results indicated that all the learners wanted the errors in their writings to be corrected. About 90 percent of them believed that all the errors in their writings should be corrected and only less than 10 percent of them agreed that there is no need to correct all the errors and that only "important" errors should be rectified. On the contrary, of the teachers who participated in the study, only 20 percent believed that all the errors in the students' writings should be corrected. While most of the interviewed students attributed their preference of choice to feeling more confident and efficient in learning when they can recognize all the errors in their written assignments, most of the teachers believed that by correcting important errors (and not all errors), learners can get the most of their writings. Given the incongruity between teachers' and (advanced) students' beliefs over writing error correction, and considering advanced students as legitimate decision makers for their own learning, some suggestions are offered for EFL writing teachers.


This "Special Issue" has been prepared to coincide with the quadrennial meeting of the International Sociological Association in Montreal July 1998, which is the first time that body will hold its general meeting in Canada. The original inspiration for this issue came from Dr. Susan McDaniel, the previous editor of The Canadian Journal of Sociology who invited me to take on the task of editing it. I undertook to do so because I agreed with Dr. McDaniel that an occasion when several thousand sociologists from around the world were meeting in Canada was a good time for this journal to devote an issue to sociology's relationship to its various "publics." Moreover, as this was to be the last such ISA meeting before the start of the new millennium, it seemed to be a particularly appropriate time that such a Special Issue also consider the future role of sociology as we enter into what appears to be a very uncertain future for our discipline. This Special Issue itself has been three years in the making. The "Call for Papers" was issued in 1995. Appropriately, it was not only circulated to the subscribers of this journal but was one of the first general announcements circulated by the ISA using its newly created list of members' e-mail addresses. As a result, not only Canadian scholars but those from a wide range of countries submitted manuscripts for review, and much of the ensuring period has involved a time consuming process of evaluation, re-writing and re-submission. While the nine papers included here were the ones ultimately chosen by reviewers as most deserving of publication, and even though they collectively have resulted in an issue which is more than double the usual length for this journal, there were many other quality contributions which could not be included. Hence, I thank not only those whose articles appear here for their good humoured perseverance in response to both the comments of the anonymous reviewers and myself, but also the considerably larger group of persons worldwide who submitted papers not accepted for inclusion. Let me also take this opportunity to thank the sociologists worldwide, many known to me only through their published works, who so willingly gave their time and offered imaginative insights to those whose works they reviewed. At the time that I developed the "Call for Papers" for this "Special Issue," two books on the "policy" role of sociology had just appeared in the United States. They were Sociology and Its Publics (1992) edited by Halliday and Janowitz, and Sociology and the Pubic Agenda (1993) edited by William Julius Wilson. Both works contain papers examining sociology's relationship with a range of its "user groups" including students, employers and other professionals. As the Editor's introductory essay in each volume might be expected to convey the general sense of the issues underlying this area, they are worth summarizing here. As I read these, the underlying theme of both is that sociology has not developed the "voice" that it might have deserved in shaping the pubic agenda. In his introductory paper, Halliday seems particularly pessimistic about this, virtually lamenting that "sociology has no generally accepted authority or "knowledge mandate" over a particular set of problems that it can legitimately claim as its own" (1992: 12), and he discusses at length the problems which arise in maintaining a distinct "professionalism" while working either for the state or private "clients" (1992: 15). He concludes that "sociology's vulnerability to external influences might not be so vexing if its internal conditions were more resilient" (1992: 38) and suggests that the papers following in the volume indicate that "sociology is a fragile and uncertain discipline" (1992: 39). In contrast, Wilson's introductory essay adopts a more positive view. He argues that claims "... concerning the fall of sociology are overstated" (1993: 3) and supports this view with figures showing a slight increase in sociology department enrollments in the United States. …


Transmittance measurements at normal incidence were carried out over the visible spectral range for metallic thin films deposited by electron beam evaporation on thick glass substrates. The presence of an inhomogeneous thin layer of Cu2O covering the deposited Cu films is required for a satisfactory model of the measurements taken from various samples with increasing thickness. A spectral projected gradient method is used to invert the transmission spectra from which the wavelength dependence of the effective dielectric function of the oxidized coating layer is obtained. Then an effective medium model is used to estimate the volume fraction of internal voids randomly distributed through the surface layer.


In a recent work [Nature 425, 944 (2003)], quality factors in excess of 45,000 have been observed in photonic crystal nanocavities. Such high values have been achieved through a surprising »10-times Q enhancement induced by a fine shift (60 nm) of holes surrounding the cavity defect region. We explain why.


The primary objective of this study was to examine the turnover of different proteins using stable isotopes as metabolic tracers. Two different labelling methods were used during the course of this investigation; [2H]20 and [2H8] valine. Heavy water labelling resulted in the incorporation of deuterium into non-essential amino acids, and was primarily used to assess the turnover of mouse urinary proteins (MUPs). MUP's showed rapid deuterium incorporation, with equilibrium reached at day two, indicating high turnover. This result was anticipated as it had already been established that MUPs are made by the liver and rapidly excreted in the urine. Heavy valine was used to perform a more comprehensive study of turnover. Mice were provided with a diet in which 50% of the valine was in heavy. Heavy valine was incorporated into proteins via protein synthesis and labelling was monitored using mass spectrometry. As with the heavy water labelling, MUP's showed rapid labelling, with other proteins showing a range of different labelling rates. The most interesting observation in the heavy valine study was made when monitoring label incorporation in sperm and seminal vesicle secretion (SVS) proteins. SVS proteins showed rapid label incorporation from day two onwards, indicating high protein turnover. However the sperm proteins showed a distinct delay in labelling relative to the SVS proteins. It is hoped that this delay in the labelling of sperm proteins relative to SVS proteins could be exploited to selectively label specific proteins.


Objectives: As an initiative of the International Network of Agencies for Health Technology Assessment, an approach to assessment of telemedicine applications was prepared to assist decision makers who are considering introduction and use of this technology. Methods: Review and commentary drawing on published assessment frameworks and reports of primary evaluations of telemedicine, with particular reference to experience in Finland and Canada. Results: Elements of the approach included development of a business case (considering population and services, personnel and consumers, delivery arrangements, specifications and costs); subsequent evaluation of the telemedicine application; and follow-up (covering the domains of technical assessment, effectiveness, user assessment of the technology, costs of telemedicine, trials, economic evaluation methods, and sensitivity analysis). Conclusions: Decision makers should link introduction of new and often costly technology to appraisal of its feasibility, followed by evaluation of the application, including longer term consideration of its sustainability and impact on the healthcare system. As the effectiveness and efficiency of telemedicine applications will often be strongly influenced by local issues, results of assessments may not be generalizable.


Analytic results for the time dependences of the kinetic and magnetic energies of an incompressible magneto fluid threaded by a strong uniform magnetic field B0 are obtained. The governing equations are the linearised magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) ones, but with the conventional Laplacian dissipation replaced by ion parallel viscous effects. The behaviour is shown to depend on the relative sizes of the Alfvén frequency and the viscous and resistive dissipation rates. For many cases equipartition of the kinetic and magnetic energy holds at the (Fourier) modal level. An important exception to this behaviour occurs for two-dimensional fluctuations, that is when the wavevectors are perpendicular to B0.


Light-adapted purple membranes were modified with tetranitromethane by a new light-dependent procedure at pH 5.5 which results in a blue-shifted chromophore absorbing at 530nm. This modification affects two aromatic residues. The modified bacteriorhodopsin's ground state chromophore structure is probed by circular dichroism and resonance raman spectroscopy while its photocycle is studied by laser-flash photolysis in the picosecond, microsecond and millisecond time scale. After nitration, the main findings are 1) Interactions between neighboring chromophores are lost, 2) Modified bacteriorhodopsin contains a conformationally changed chromophore but retains a protonated Schiff's base as evidenced by a resonance raman band at 1652 cm-1, 3) A red-shifted intermediate is formed in less than 10 ps after laser excitation, 4) The decay of the M-intermediate is not significantly affected whereas the rise time of the intermediate is enhanced about two fold. These observations are relevant to the role of aromatic acid residues of the apoprotein in the determination of the chromophoric characteristics in bacteriorhodopsin.


Predicting attendance at events is important for efficient facility management and marketing to maximize crowds. Most work to date is conducted at the aggregate level; however, the large crowd size being predicted often means important individual decisions are masked. In many markets, increased nonattendance by season ticket holders (STHs) is being reported, which is troubling given they have prepaid and are expected to be highly loyal. To understand who attends, rather than just how many, the authors analyze the "no-show" behavior of over 5,900 individual STH of one professional team over a season. Results show that in addition to game viewing and quality conditions, age, tenure, expenditure, and prior game attendance are predictors of individual attendance decisions, with differences in how individuals are influenced by winning and uncertainty of outcome. The paper expands understanding of drivers of STH attendance decisions and provides guidance toward managerial strategies for STH management.


Neuroimaging measures have been used to forecast complex behaviors, including how individuals change decisions about their health in response to persuasive communications, but have rarely incorporated metrics of brain network dynamics. How do functional dynamics within and between brain networks relate to the processes of persuasion and behavior change? To address this question, we scanned 45 adult smokers by using functional magnetic resonance imaging while they viewed anti-smoking images. Participants reported their smoking behavior and intentions to quit smoking before the scan and 1 month later. We focused on regions within four atlas-defined networks and examined whether they formed consistent network communities during this task (measured as allegiance). Smokers who showed reduced allegiance among regions within the default mode and fronto-parietal networks also demonstrated larger increases in their intentions to quit smoking 1 month later. We further examined dynamics of the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC), as activation in this region has been frequently related to behavior change. The degree to which vmPFC changed its community assignment over time (measured as flexibility) was positively associated with smoking reduction. These data highlight the value in considering brain network dynamics for understanding message effectiveness and social processes more broadly. Author Summary How do functional dynamics within and between brain networks relate to the processes of persuasion and behavior change? In this report, we assess brain network dynamics by using fMRI while smokers view antismoking messages, and relate these metrics to smoking behavior and intentions to quit smoking 1 month following the scan. Smokers who showed reduced allegiance (less consistent network communities) among regions within the default mode and fronto-parietal networks also demonstrated larger increases in their intentions to quit smoking. Furthermore, the degree to which the ventromedial prefrontal cortex flexibly changed its community assignment over time was positively associated with later smoking reduction. These data show that metrics of functional network dynamics can provide new information about individual differences in responsiveness to anti-smoking messaging.