In this paper, a linear microstrip array antenna design with End-fire characteristic has been presented for ultra wideband wireless communication. Our goal is to radiate the maximum energy in one desired direction without any secondary lobes in another regions, and to have a very wideband frequency operation that meets different implementation. The proposed array antenna consists of a two square radiating patch, and a partial ground plane etched onto a FR4 printed circuit board with an overall size of (42.5× 30 × 1.5 )mm3 and dielectric constant εr = 4.4. The microstrip feedline technique is used to feed the array antenna with 50 Ω impedance. Conception and simulated results show that the array antenna has a bandwidth of 4 GHz and a maximum radiation pattern in desired direction (End-fire) without any side lobes. Simulated results are presented to validate the usefulness of the proposed array antenna structure for ultra-wideband wireless communication like WiMAX and WLAN applications. Ansoft's High Frequency Structure Simulator (HFSS) and Computer Simulation Tool (CST) softwares are used to calculate and compare the various parameters mentioned after.


This study examines the extent in which Strategic Human Resources Management (SHRM) influences the organisational effectiveness of banks in Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG). The study attempts to identify some of the problems affecting Banks' effectiveness. A total of 93 questionnaires were distributed to one local private bank (Kurdistan Bank), one local public or state-owned bank (Zagros Bank) and one internationally owned bank (Abu Dhabi Bank). Of the above number, 74 questionnaires were successfully retrieved and the results were analysed using SPSS 22. The results from the study showed that most of the variations in organisational effectiveness that are attributed to changes in (SHRM) are observable in the public or state-owned banks. The results also showed that most SHRM practices are insignificant in the context of individual banks but more significant in the context of all banks. Furthermore, it was observed that performance systems have a negative effect on private and internationally owned banks. The conclusion drawn from the study is that the effects of SHRM on organisational effectiveness in the banking sector are the same between the banks. The study is significant as it contributes to the formulation of strategies that will help to attract and retain the right, qualified and skilled employees who can facilitate the performance and success of the banks employees' welfare. The study is one of the few types of research that looks at the implications of Strategic Human Resources on the organisational effectiveness of banks in the Middle East with regards to KRG. It will also form part and parcel of a foundation for establishing a base for conducting future studies


Tax competition and spillover models offer ambiguous predictions concerning the economic impact of tax havens on non-tax havens. The implications of tax havens for less developed countries (LDCs), in particular, are not well understood and are little studied. This paper investigates the impact of tax havens on non-tax haven countries in terms of foreign direct investment (FDI). We investigate the importance of agglomeration effects by accounting for the level of FDI inflows as well as the role of geography by measuring proximity to the nearest tax haven. Our analysis yields several interesting findings. First, using panel data for 142 countries, we find evidence of positive spillovers from tax havens to nearby LDCs, but not to nearby developed countries. Second, restricting our panel to LDCs, we find the positive effect of tax haven FDI on LDCs to be robust. Third, we find that geographic distance matters for financial flows: LDCs which are the closest to a nearby tax haven benefit the most in terms of FDI inflows. This result is robust to including a lag of the dependent variable and accounting for spatial interdependence of FDI. We conclude that tax haven activity has beneficial implications for FDI inflows of nearby LDCs.


To solve any nontrivial problem, it first needs to be conceptualized, taking into account the individual who has the problem. However, a problem is generally associated with more than one individual, as is usually the case in software development. Therefore, this process has to take into account different viewpoints about the problem and any discrepancies that could arise as a result. Traditionally, conceptualization in software engineering has omitted the different viewpoints that the individuals may have of the problem and has inherently enforced consistency in the event of any discrepancies, which are considered as something to be systematically rejected. The paper presents a methodological framework that explicitly drives the conceptualization of different viewpoints and manages the different types of discrepancies that arise between them, which become really important in the process. The definition of this framework is generic, and it is therefore independent of any particular software development paradigm. Its application to software engineering means that viewpoints and their possible discrepancies can be considered in the software process conceptual modeling phase. This application is illustrated by means of what is considered to be a standard problem: the IFIP case.


Objective: Signal detection is a technique in pharmacovigilance for the early detection of new, rare reactions (desired or undesired) of a drug. This study aims to compare and appraise the performance of data mining algorithms used in signal detection. Method: Most commonly used three data mining algorithms (DMAs) (Reporting Odds Ratio (ROR), Proportional Reporting Ratio (PRR) and Information Component (IC)) were selected and applied retrospectively in USFDA Adverse Event Reporting System database to detect five confirmed Drug Event Combinations. They were selected in such a way that the drug is withdrawn from the market or label change between 2006-2015. A value of ROR-1.96SE>1, PRR≥2, χ2>4 or IC- 2SD>0 were considered as the positive signal. The data mining algorithms were compared for their sensitivity and early detection. Result: Among the three data mining algorithms, Information Component was found to have a maximum sensitivity (100%) followed by Reporting Odds Ratio (60%) and Proportional Reporting Ratio (40%). Sensitivity associated with the number of reports per drug event combination and early signal detection suggested that information component needs comparatively fewer reports to show positive signal than the other two data mining algorithms. ROR and PRR showed comparable results. Conclusion: Early detection of a reaction is possible using signal detection technique. Information component was found to be sensitive method compared with other two data mining algorithms in FDA Adverse Event Reporting System database. As the number of reports of drug event combination increased, the sensitivity and comparability of data mining algorithm also increased. Key words: Signal Detection, Data mining algorithms, FDA AERS Database, Disproportionality Analysis, Pharmacovigilance.


A probabilistic approach for finite element analysis (FEA) for tunnel linings exposed to the nominal fire is presented. The probabilistic FEA accounted for the uncertainties distributions tied to the conductivity and specific heat as well as of the compressive strength, tensile strength, Young's modulus, and ultimate strain in compression. To get an understanding on the influence of different probability density functions on the distribution of maximum displacements of the tunnel lining, a sensitivity analysis was performed. Four sets of FEAs were carried out with different probability distributions of the conductivity, the specific heat, and the compressive strength of the concrete, respectively. An experimental design based on a Latin Hypercube Sampling algorithm was performed to define the input parameters which describe each analysis case. A reliability analysis was executed considering a limit state function based on the temperature-dependent ultimate strain. The results show that, depending on the distribution adopted, the standard deviation of the maximum displacements can vary up to 47,4% of the minimum standard deviation. The large standard deviation is associated with the possibility of a greater displacement and, hence, to a structure more vulnerable to fire.


Soft yet tough materials are ubiquitous in nature and everyday life. The ratio between fracture toughness and intrinsic fracture energy of a soft material defines its toughness enhancement. Soft materials' toughness enhancement has been long attributed to their bulk stress-stretch hysteresis induced by dissipation mechanisms such as Mullins effect and viscoelasticity. With a combination of experiments and theory, here we show that the bulk dissipation mechanisms significantly underestimate the toughness enhancement of soft tough materials. We propose a new mechanism and scaling law to account for extreme toughening of diverse soft materials. We show that the toughness enhancement of soft materials relies on both bulk hysteretic dissipation, and near-crack dissipation due to mechanisms such as polymer-chain entanglement. Unlike the bulk hysteretic dissipation, the near-crack dissipation does not necessarily induce large stress-stretch hysteresis of the bulk material. The extreme toughening mechanism can be potentially universally applied to various soft tough materials, ranging from double-network hydrogels, interpenetrating-network hydrogels, entangled-network hydrogels and slide-ring hydrogels, to unfilled and filled rubbers. to mechanisms such as polymer-chain entanglement and strain-induced crystallization. Using polyacrylamide (PAAm)-alginate hydrogels as an example, we show that the bulk dissipation model underestimates the toughness


Persons with more than one nationality ("multiple nationals") who flee persecution in their home country may have compelling reasons to seek asylum elsewhere rather than go to a second country of nationality where they have no ties or face serious hardships. The 1951 U.N. Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees, however, expressly makes them ineligible for refugee status unless they have a well-founded fear of being persecuted in all their countries of nationality. The U.S. Refugee Act omits this exclusionary language but nonetheless has been read by immigration agencies as if it incorporated the Convention's approach. This Article challenges the view that multiple nationals should not be considered refugees. It argues that asylum should be denied only when it would be reasonable, under all the circumstances, to expect the person to resettle in a second country of nationality after taking into account factors such as family ties, social and cultural constraints, and any hardships the person would face. The Refugee Act's text and historical context establish that Congress intended to allow multiple nationals to qualify as refugees if they face persecution in any one of their countries of nationality. Drawing on archival research as well as a close examination of legislative and administrative history, this Article shows that the Refugee Act's drafters meant to preserve a longstanding U.S. policy of accepting refugees with more than one nationality as long as they had not "firmly resettled" in another country of nationality before coming the U.S. — a policy especially salient to the Act's proponents because it allowed for the continued admission of Soviet Jews as refugees even though Israel welcomed them as citizens.This Article also argues that other refugee-receiving countries should reconsider their stance toward multiple national asylum-seekers. The Convention's approach to multiple nationality has become increasingly anomalous in light of the wide international acceptance of the principle that persons who could avoid persecution by going elsewhere — by relocating to a different part of their home country, or seeking asylum in some third country — should not be denied refugee status unless it is reasonable, under all the circumstances to expect them to do so. The Article concludes by discussing how the UNHCR and European Union are well-positioned to play a leading role in developing a new norm for the treatment of multiple nationals who seek refuge from persecution.


Introduction: The rising read in the prevalence of, non-communicable diseases makes assessment of its risk factors essential. Considering the importance of interventions targeting lifestyle modification for prevention of these diseases, the current study aimed to evaluate perceptions and experiences of Tehranian women regarding healthy nutrition. Materials and Methods: This is a qualitative study, conducted using the grounded theory approach. In total 8 semi-structured focus group discussions were conducted at the Tehran Lipid and Glucose Study (TLGS) unit, between 2008 and 2009. Participants were 102 women, aged 25-65 years, selected and recruited from the TLGS cohort. All interviews and focus group discussions were audio recorded and transcribed verbatim. Qualitative content analysis of the data was conducted manually according to the Strauss and Corbin analysis method and differences in in coding were resolved via discussions by at least three researchers. The conformability and credibility of the data were established. Results: Using content analysis, "inefficient education"," lack of access", and "individual tastes and preferences" were identified as the barriers to healthy nutrition. Conclusion: Study results demonstrated the three main personal and environmental barriers for healthy nutrition as perceived by women. Understanding these barriers might facilitate the designing of effective preventive strategies, and implementation appropriate of interventions among Tehranians.


Objective: To determine if (1) evoked potentials elicited by amplified speech sounds (/si/ and /∫i/) can be recorded reliably in individuals, (2) amplification alters neural response patterns, and (3) different amplified speech sounds evoke different neural patterns. Design: Cortical evoked potentials were recorded in sound field from seven normal-hearing young adults in response to naturally produced speech tokens /si/ and /∫i/ from the Nonsense Syllable Test. With the use of a repeated-measures design, subjects were tested and then retested within an 8-day period in both aided and unaided conditions. Results: (1) Speech-evoked cortical potentials can be recorded reliably in individuals in both aided and unaided conditions. (2) Hearing aids that provide a mild high-frequency gain only subtly enhance peak amplitudes relative to unaided cortical recordings. (3) If the consonant-vowel boundary is preserved by the hearing aid, it can also be detected neurally, resulting in different neural response patterns for /si/ and /∫i/. Conclusions: Speech-evoked cortical potentials can be recorded reliably in individuals during hearing aid use. A better understanding of how amplification (and device settings) affects neural response patterns is still needed.


▪ Abstract This chapter reviews what is presently known about the sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS) and examines the role that infant sleeping arrangements may play in reducing SIDS risks. Alongside sleep laboratory-based experimental evidence comparing bedsharing and solitary sleeping mother-infant pairs, an evolutionary and cross-cultural framework is used to argue that infant-parent cosleeping is biologically, psychologically, and socially the most appropriate context for the development of healthy infant sleep physiology. It is also the context within which potentially more optimal breastfeeding activities for both the mother and infant are most likely to emerge. A survey of cross-cultural data and laboratory findings suggest that where infant-parent cosleeping and breastfeeding are practiced in tandem in nonsmoking households, and are practiced by parents specifically to promote infant health, the chances of an infant dying from SIDS should be reduced.


Some nodule bacteria do not tolerate acid soils. A study was initiated to determine if Rhizobium japonicum could adapt to soil acidity and therefore become more effective N z-fixers in association with soybeans (Glycine max L. Merr.) grown in acidic soils. Nodules were obtained from soybeans grown in fields where the crop had been planted for at least 5 years in soil with pH near 5, 6 or 7. The nodular material was used for inoculation of soybeans in a factorial experiment grown in methyl bromide fumigated soil obtained from the same fields as the inoculum. Nitrogenase activity (C zH z C zH 4reduction) and plant weight were usedfor evaluating the treatment effects. The results seem to indicate that the nodular bacteria did not adapt to a given soil pH. Soybeans grown in soil at pH 6 grew best regardless of whether inoculum was from plants grown at pH 5, 6 or 7. In acid soil, inoculum from soils at pH 5 was no better than those from pH 6 or 7.


Foreign direct investment (FDI) and the new information and communications technology (ICT) have gained significant grounds in many parts of the world in somewhat parallel fashion. The objective of this paper is to assess the proposition that the level of technological achievement and diffusion is a determining factor in attracting FDI in high-income countries. A sample of technologically advanced countries was chosen on the basis of the technological achievement index (TAI). Crosscountry data for the period of 1994 to 1998 were used to estimate a fixed effects model. The empirical results obtained provide strong evidence that technology diffusion of new instruments of ICT, such as mobile phones and Internet hosts, are major pull factors of FDI. The results also provide evidence that robust economic environment, low unit cost, and high degree of openness are other essential determinants of FDI. We conclude that in order to retain and attract FDI, countries should create opportunities for useful innovations to be created and diffused, as well as maintain flexible, competitive and dynamic economic environments. The main policy implication for countries lagging in terms of attracting foreign investment is to build on reforms that emphasize creation and diffusion of ideas and products, as well as maintain a high degree of openness to new investors, especially in ICT.


In recent practices on ESP materials development the overt interrelation between applied linguistics and ESP has been simply neglected through the widespread ignorance of prior consultation with ELT veterans in the field. This trend has resulted in educational perplexity for both instructors and students who are the core consumers of the ambiguously designed ESP output. Although there has been strong emphasis on the significant application of prior needs analysis and on the goal-oriented personality of ESP materials (Robinson, 1991; Hutchinson & Waters, 1987), still insufficient attention has been drawn to these factors in Iranian ESP course book development. This ambiguity in ESP course materials has been partly due to the mismatch between the prerequisite General English course content practiced prior to ESP courses. Therefore, the present research project aimed at exploring the mentioned inconsistency for Persian Literature major in Islamic Azad University, Shahr-e Rey branch. To this end, the employed research design entailed mixed Method which included two phases namely; qualitative (interview, questionnaire survey and observations) and quantitative (frequency analysis and application of Pearson Chi Square).


the histological characteristics of the ribs of several sirenians from the middle Eocene of the Pyrenees ([he dugongid Prototherium montserratense from Catalon ia and two undetermined dugongid species from Navarre) reveal that the histogenetical mechanisms causing bone pachyosteosclerosis in the extant Sirenia, i.e. hyperplasy of periosteal and endosteal deposits, and inhibition of the chondroclastic and osteoclastic activities involved in bone remodelling, were already present by the middle of the Eocene, and have not greatly changed since then. However, in one of the two undetermined specimens examined, bone remodelling in the cortical and medullar regions remained fairly active, a characteristic that is reminiscent of the condition commonly encountered in mammals. These observations suggest that the mechanisms involved in the peculiar form of pachy-osteosclerosis displayed by the sirenians did not act with the same intensity, and with identical results, in all Eocene forms.


This paper looks at horizontal sex segregation in education as a factor contributing to gender segregation in the labor market. Economic theories fail to explain why women with the same years of schooling and educational attainment as men are under-represented in many technical degrees, which typically lead to better paid occupations. Following Akerlof and Kranton (2000), I research whether gender identity affects boys' and girls' educational choices and when the gendered pattern appears first. Further, I test the hypothesis that single-sex schools attenuate the influence of gender-stereotypes. I use the National Pupil Database, which is a register of all pupils enrolled in state maintained schools in England and I focus on students in lower and upper secondary education. Results from my analysis suggest that gender stereotyping affects educational choices from the age of 14 and this effect is larger for girls than for boys. I also find that attending a sixth-form-single-sex school leads students to a less stereotyped educational choice, after controlling for endogenous self-selection into single-sex schools. This suggests that gender preferences can be modified by the environment.


Abstract Over the past 30 years, psychologists have developed diverse approaches for studying women and gender. One approach, the study of gender differences, assesses the attributes and characteristics of men and women. A second approach conceptualizes gender not in terms of individual difference, but in contextual terms. It focuses attention on social relations, interactive processes, and linguistic practices which structure relations between men and women. Some workers have drawn on qualitative and discursive approaches to explore the processes and practices that produce gender. A third approach, which I call feminist skepticism, draws upon postmodern thought and critical psychology. It views psychology and cultural life as mutually constitutive, and examines psychology as a cultural artifact. Workers have also explored how the social relations and work conditions in the field have shaped knowledge. Feminist psychology has yielded a rich body of knowledge about gender, innovative modes of inquiry, and new understandings about psychology. Feminist psychology1 is a collection of efforts to understand gender. From its beginnings in the early 1970s, feminist psychology has continually expanded its scope of inquiry and its modes of studying gender. Over time, the lines that demarcate different approaches have become more visible. Feminist psychologists now have sufficient collective experience to step back and reflect on larger questions of what we do, how we do it, and why. When we pose these questions, we give a variety of answers. Some feminist psychologists aim to understand and improve the lives of women and girls. Others investigate gender as a meaning system and/or as a principle of social organization. Some are content to don the mantle of science and use the standard technologies of psychological research. Others have found conventional research technologies inadequate and have struck out in search of new modes of inquiry. Others have turned a skeptical eye toward the discipline itself, drawing inspiration from the critical psychology movement and postmodern thought. They ask how the pretheoretical assumptions of psychology, its history, and its social relations give shape to the field and influence the knowledge it produces. In a nutshell, their question is how the discipline disciplines its disciples. In what follows, I describe a number of approaches to studying gender. They invoke different meanings of gender and involve different methods of inquiry. They are not the only ways to study gender, nor do they exhaust the meanings of gender. No doubt other approaches are yet to be devised. I intend my typology to serve as an intellectual tool for purposes of discussion, not to indicate absolute demarcations or a rigid classification. Any description is also an interpretation. My typology reflects one interpretation of the field; others have also been offered (e.g., Crawford & Marecek, 1989; Crawford & Unger, 1994; Wilkinson, 1997). 1 emphasize points of divergence to highlight what is at stake in adopting one approach or another. In actual practice, the distinctions that I draw are blurred. Moreover, individual researchers do not assume fixed identities associated with one or another approach but rather take them as standpoints from which particular projects are launched. Before I begin, two disclaimers are in order. First, this is not the story of gender research, just my story. I am not a neutral and detached observer, but one with a set of intellectual commitments. I have engaged all three approaches to gender, but now find myself most comfortable with the second and third. I have come to give priority to studying human action embedded in its cultural, historical, and social contexts, not to discovering universal mental mechanisms. I have come to question if such universal mechanisms of social life exist. I have grown uncomfortable with research technologies such as mental measurement and contrived laboratory scenarios because they seem to deform that which they purport only to assess. …


Abstract. The presented database contains time-referenced sea ice draft values from upward looking sonar (ULS) measurements in the Weddell Sea, Antarctica. The sea ice draft data can be used to infer the thickness of the ice. They were collected during the period 1990–2008. In total, the database includes measurements from 13 locations in the Weddell Sea and was generated from more than 3.7 million measurements of sea ice draft. The files contain uncorrected raw drafts, corrected drafts and the basic parameters measured by the ULS. The measurement principle, the data processing procedure and the quality control are described in detail. To account for the unknown speed of sound in the water column above the ULS, two correction methods were applied to the draft data. The first method is based on defining a reference level from the identification of open water leads. The second method uses a model of sound speed in the oceanic mixed layer and is applied to ice draft in austral winter. Both methods are discussed and their accuracy is estimated. Finally, selected results of the processing are presented. The data can be downloaded from doi:10.1594/PANGAEA.785565 .


Heart murmur occurs frequently in children, but often it is an innocent murmur, functional, without pathological substrate, due to turbulent blood circulation in large vessels and heart chambers. Sometimes the heart murmur is the only clinical manifestation of an important heart disease requiring special monitoring and specific treatment. In this context, the evaluation of heart murmurs in a child involves a detailed medical history and a complete clinical examination, which allows the diagnositic of pathological cardiac murmur, organic, and specialized evaluation. The differential diagnosis between an innocent murmur and a pathological murmur is sometimes difficult to do in the family medicine practice. Cardiological consultation and echocardiography can establish the diagnosis of heart disease, but is not justified in innocent murmurs. The team family physician - pediatric cardiologist is responsible for the detection and differentiation of heart murmurs in children, setting the optimal evaluation strategy, and monitorization of children with cadiac murmurs.


Virtual try-on systems became popular for visualizing outfits, due to the importance of individual fashion in many communities. The objective of such a system is to transfer a piece of clothing to another person while preserving its detail and characteristics. To generate a realistic in-the-wild image, it needs visual optimization of the clothing, background and target person, making this task still very challenging. In this paper, we develop a method that generates realistic try-on images with unpaired images from in-the-wild datasets. Our proposed method starts with generating a mock-up paired image using geometric transfer. Then, the target's pose information is adjusted using a modified pose-attention module. We combine a reconstruction and a content loss to preserve the detail and style of the transferred clothing, background and the target person. We evaluate the approach on the Fashionpedia dataset and can show a promising performance over a baseline approach.


Sustainable innovation represents a current challenge for companies, as firms need to change the way they design, develop, produce and distribute products and services. Therefore, this paper proposes a new framework to be used as a reference guideline for organisations to define a roadmap, specific actions and projects to achieve sustainable innovation, integrating four key enablers. The first enabler is mass customisation (MC), which targets the identification and compliance with customers' specific needs and requirements in order to achieve customer‐driven design. At the same time, the sustainable development (SD) paradigm is taken into consideration, where for any new product or service, companies analyse the benefits, risks and impacts of not only economic factors, but also social and environmental implications. The third enabler is linked to the value network (VN), where innovations happen owing to the active collaboration and distributed knowledge of partners inside and outside the company. Finally, the fourth and last considers the complete product and service life cycle (PSLC), where the three sustainable elements are identified and analysed in each single business process. Two case studies, (footwear sector and water treatment plants) are described to show the validity and successful deployment of the proposed framework in real industrial scenarios.


Australian bushfires are renowned for their ferocity and destructive capability. Although much attention is paid to fires in the comparatively well-populated southern half of Australia, most fire activity occurs in the northern half of the continent (Russel–Smith and Yates et. al. 2007). Further, fires in this area are usually anthropogenic [man made] in origin (Russel–Smith and Yates et. al. 2007: 369). This paper calls attention to community discontent about landscape and fire in the Kimberley region in northern Western Australia and suggests that fire-related public authorities should pay more attention to community engagement and the views of long-term residents .Via the use of qualitative research, including in-depth interviews, this research reveals that many long-term residents of the Kimberley region are concerned about fire-management regimes and the effect these have on the landscape, cultural heritage and biodiversity of the area. Some feel that the prescribed burns in the area are not small-scale mosaic burns, and frequently get out of control, and that there is a lack of operational transparency and effective community engagement on the part of relevant authorities involved in the management of fire. It appears that a number of respondents construct 'fire' as something that is managed successfully (either for carbon farming or for the preservation of assets) while others represent 'fire' as something that needs to be managed more effectively (for the preservation of biodiversity and cultural value of the landscape). These issues underline other pressures and constructions around residents who live with the impacts of fire -based practices, and the expert authorities who make the relevant decisions in this highly-charged area of land/resource management. The qualitative fieldwork that informs this paper has been carried out with community members in the Kununurra area of Western Australia. The informants were interviewed about existing information and communication practices around fire, fire information, fire safety, fire suppression and fire mitigation. The interviews, carried out in 2012 and 2013, have been analysed using a 'communicative ecology' framework.


The Foundation of Student Science and Technology is pleased to announce another successful year for our Research Co-Op Program. Two student participants, Fatima Sheikh and Melanie Manning, share their insightful testimonials in this month's journal issue, noting their learning experiences about themselves and their future career choices in the sciences.


How and why are officers today bound to the Constitution? Article VI gives us a crystal-clear answer: they are bound "by oath or affirmation, to support this Constitution." But what is the content — the object — of that promise? American constitutional culture today describes its Constitution in ways that presuppose that the Article VI oath binds office-holders to an external, objective, common object: the same commitment for all oath-takers today, and the same commitment today as in the past. Justices on the Supreme Court took their constitutional oaths at different times, spread out over 27 years from 1991 to 2018, but they claim to fulfill those nine oaths by speaking collectively of "the Constitution." Americans regularly describe their Constitution as the oldest still-operational written national Constitution in the world. These sorts of contingent practices could of course change. But until they do, we should understand oath-takers to be swearing to obey the same entity which has been operative since the eighteenth century. If we have a living Constitution today, it must have been living from the very start. Our current constitutional culture correctly rejects post-Founding "constitutional abiogenesis" — a transition from a non-living to a living Constitution between the Founding and today. Change in constitutional requirements may be justified only if rooted in the rules for constitutional change operative at the Founding.


The DJI Phantom III drone has already been used for malicious activities (to drop bombs, remote surveillance and plane watching) in 2016 and 2017. At the time of writing, DJI was the drone manufacturer with the largest market share. Our work presents the primary thorough forensic analysis of the DJI Phantom III drone, and the primary account for proprietary file structures stored by the examined drone. It also presents the forensically sound open source tool DRone Open source Parser (DROP) that parses proprietary DAT files extracted from the drone's nonvolatile internal storage. These DAT files are encrypted and encoded. The work also shares preliminary findings on TXT files, which are also proprietary, encrypted, encoded, files found on the mobile device controlling the drone. These files provided a slew of data such as GPS locations, battery, flight time, etc. By extracting data from the controlling mobile device, and the drone, we were able to correlate data and link the user to a specific device based on extracted metadata. Furthermore, results showed that the best mechanism to forensically acquire data from the tested drone is to manually extract the SD card by disassembling the drone. Our findings illustrated that the drone should not be turned on as turning it on changes data on the drone by creating a new DAT file, but may also delete stored data if the drone's internal storage is full. © 2017 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier Ltd. on behalf of DFRWS. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).


Women's health in the Middle East is powerfully shaped by political imperatives and dominant ideologies of health. Here, Irene Maffi delineates the influence of colonialism, nation building in postcolonial states, and international development agencies. She examines the social, cultural and political institutions that manage childbirth in Jordan today, through interviews with key figures-midwives, physicians, pregnant women and mothers-and an exploration of the main institutional settings, from clinics to hospitals, doctor's offices, NGOs and government departments. With a thorough analysis of birth practices, the history of health governance under the colonial state and missionaries, and the institutionalization of health practice and practitioners in independent Jordan, this book will be indispensable for all those concerned with women, health, development, and the state in the Middle East.


This conceptual paper examines the state of the project, program and project portfolio management literature and highlights the divergent views of strategy that exist between project managers and top managers. Project management concepts are shown to be based on approaches to planning that top managers had rejected after thirty years of unsuccessful experience with strategic planning. Persistently high project failure rates and recent developments at the board level suggest that we might have reached the limits of our current approaches, and the question is asked whether project management is destined to follow the rise and fall of strategic planning. Alternatives to the traditional linear mechanistic approaches are explored and it is suggested that the project management field would need to embrace the delivery of strategy as the common ground to engage top managers. Approaches would need to be developed that are consistent with how strategy emerges in turbulent environments. Program and portfolio concepts are found to have the most potential to contribute to the emerging field of strategy implementation.


Abstract. Data from the Interagency Monitoring of Protected Visual Environments (IMPROVE) network are used to estimate organic mass to organic carbon (OM/OC) ratios across the United States by extending previously published multiple regression techniques. Our new methodology addresses common pitfalls of multiple regression including measurement uncertainty, colinearity of covariates, dataset selection, and model selection. As expected, summertime OM/OC ratios are larger than wintertime values across the US with all regional median OM/OC values tightly confined between 1.80 and 1.95. Further, we find that OM/OC ratios during the winter are distinctly larger in the eastern US than in the West (regional medians are 1.58, 1.64, and 1.85 in the great lakes, southeast, and northeast regions, versus 1.29 and 1.32 in the western and central states). We find less spatial variability in long-term averaged OM/OC ratios across the US (90% of our multiyear regressions estimate OM/OC ratios between 1.37 and 1.94) than previous studies (90% fell between 1.30 and 2.10). We attribute this difference largely to the inclusion of EC as a covariate in previous regression studies. Due to the colinearity of EC and OC, we find that up to one-quarter of the OM/OC estimates in a previous study are biased low. Assumptions about OC measurement artifacts add uncertainty to our estimates of OM/OC. In addition to estimating OM/OC ratios, our technique reveals trends that may be contrasted with conventional assumptions regarding nitrate, sulfate, and soil across the IMPROVE network. For example, our regressions show pronounced seasonal and spatial variability in both nitrate volatilization and sulfate neutralization and hydration.


This paper explores the consequences of extremely low equilibrium real interest rates in a world with integrated but heterogenous capital markets, and nominal rigidities. In this context, we establish five main results: (i) Economies experiencing liquidity traps pull others into a similar situation by running current account surpluses; (ii) Reserve currencies have a tendency to bear a disproportionate share of the global liquidity trap—a phenomenon we dub the "reserve currency paradox;" (iii) Beggar-thy-neighbor exchange rate devaluations stimulate the domestic domestic economy at the expense of other economies; (iv) While more price and wage flexibility exacerbates the risk of a deflationary global liquidity trap, it is the more rigid economies that bear the brunt of the recession; (v) (Safe) Public debt issuances and increases in government spending anywhere are expansionary everywhere, and more so when there is some degree of price or wage flexibility. We use our model to shed light on the evolution of global imbalances, interest rates, and exchange rates since the beginning of the global financial crisis.


The New Evil Demon Problem is meant to show that reliabilism about epistemic justification is incompatible with the intuitive idea that the external-world beliefs of a subject who is the victim of a Cartesian demon could be epistemically justified. Here, I present a new argument that such beliefs can be justified on reliabilism. Whereas others have argued for this conclusion by making some alterations in the formulation of reliabilism, I argue that, as far as the said problem is concerned, such alterations are redundant. No reliabilist should fear the demon.


Before the seventeenth century, interest in birds centred largely on folklore and their symbolic significance. Ray and Willughby's encyclopaedia, the Ornithology of Francis Willughby (1676 and 1678) marked a turning point in the study of birds by rejecting folklore and focussing especially on biology. Following Ray's Wisdom of God (1691), which addressed ultimate causes, the study of birds developed along two separate strands: (i) systematics, nomenclature and faunistics (inspired by Ornithology) and (ii) natural history (inspired by Wisdom). The first of these endeavours dominated ornithology for the next 250 years, and were the main focus of the ornithological Unions founded in the 1800s. The two strands were reunited in the 1920s (central Europe) and 1940s (the UK and the USA). After World War II not only the expansion of higher education resulted in a huge increase in both the number of professional ornithologists, but also our knowledge of avian natural history and evolution.

Key concepts

The study of birds began with Aristotle, but stagnated between the first century ad and the Renaissance.

Ornithology became scientific with the abandonment of emblematics in the 1670s.

John Ray initiated two strands of ornithology: systematics and natural history (field ornithology) in the late 1600s.

Systematic ornithology focussed on the naming and classification of birds, and later, their geographical distribution.

The natural history of birds (field ornithology) focussed on behaviour, ecology and ultimate causes.

Ornithological encyclopedias were a product of the Renaissance.

After the Renaissance ornithology became increasingly specialized.

Charles Darwin's concepts of natural and sexual selection in the mid-late 1800s were important in encouraging scientific interest in birds.

The two strands of ornithology, systematics and natural history, were re-united in the 1920s (Germany) and 1940s (the UK and the USA).

The modernization of ornithology during the twentieth century occurred largely as a result of the conceptual unification of evolutionary thinking in the 1940s and the focus on individual selection in the 1970s.

Keywords:

avian biology;
bird study;
ornithological knowledge;
history;
ornithology


Background: The Pragmatic Randomized Optimal Platelet and Plasma Ratios (PROPPR) study evaluated the effects of plasma and platelets on hemostasis and mortality after hemorrhage. The pulmonary consequences of resuscitation strategies that mimic whole blood, remain unknown. Methods: A secondary analysis of the PROPPR study was performed. Injured patients predicted to receive a massive transfusion were randomized to 1:1:1 versus 1:1:2 plasma-platelet-red blood cell ratios at 12 Level I North American trauma centers. Patients with survival >24 h, an intensive care unit (ICU) stay, and a recorded PaO2/FiO2 (P/F) ratio were included. Acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) was defined as a P/F ratio < 200, with bilateral pulmonary infiltrates, and adjudicated by investigators. Results: Four hundred fifty-four patients were reviewed (230 received 1:1:1, 224 1:1:2). Age, sex, injury mechanism, and regional abbreviated injury scale (AIS) scores did not differ between cohorts. Tidal volume, positive end-expiratory pressure, and lowest P/F ratio did not differ. No significant differences in ARDS rates (14.8% vs. 18.4%), ventilator-free (24 vs. 24) or ICU-free days (17.5 vs. 18), hospital length of stay (22 days vs. 18 days), or 30-day mortality were found (28% vs. 28%). ARDS was associated with blunt injury (OR 3.61 [1.53–8.81] P < 0.01) and increasing chest AIS (OR 1.40 [1.15–1.71] P < 0.01). Each 500 mL of crystalloid infused during hours 0 to 6 was associated with a 9% increase in the rate of ARDS (OR 1.09 [1.04–1.14] P < 0.01). Blood given at 0 to 6 or 7 to 24 h were not risk factors for lung injury. Conclusion: Acute crystalloid exposure, but not blood products, is a potentially modifiable risk factor for the prevention of ARDS following hemorrhage.


The Coleman Report For this History of Education Quarterly Policy Forum, we look at the historical significance of the 1966 Coleman Report from several different perspectives. The four main essays published here originated as presentations for a session on "Legacies of the Coleman Report in US Thought and Culture" at the History of Education Society annual meeting in Providence, Rhode Island, in November 2016. Presenters for that session— Zoë Burkholder, Victoria Cain, Leah Gordon, and Ethan Hutt—went on to participate in an HES-sponsored session entitled "Currents in Egalitarian Thought in the 1960s and 1970s: The Coleman Report in American Politics, Media, and Social Science" at the Organization of American Historians meeting in New Orleans in April 2017. Thinking that their reflections on the reception and influence of the Coleman Report in different contexts would be of broad interest to HEQ readers, we asked members of the panel to comment on each other's papers and revise them for this Forum. We then invited Harvey Kantor of the University of Utah and Robert Lowe of Marquette University to write an introduction summarizing the origins and findings of the Coleman Report, along with their own assessment of what the presenters' essays teach us about its long-term significance. What follows are Kantor and Lowe's Introduction, "What Difference Did the Coleman Report Make?," together with substantive essays by Zoë Burkholder of Montclair State University, Victoria Cain of Northeastern University, Leah Gordon of Amherst College, and Ethan Hutt of the University of Maryland.


By the time Harvey Cushing entered medical school, nerve reconstruction techniques had been developed, but peripheral nerve surgery was still in its infancy. As an assistant surgical resident influenced by Dr. William Halsted, Cushing wrote a series of reports on the use of cocaine for nerve blocks. Following his residency training and a hiatus to further his clinical interests and intellectual curiosity, he traveled to Europe and met with a variety of surgeons, physiologists, and scientists, who likely laid the groundwork for Cushing's increased interest in peripheral nerve surgery. Returning to The Johns Hopkins Hospital in 1901, he began documenting these surgeries. Patient records preserved at Yale's Cushing Brain Tumor Registry describe Cushing's repair of ulnar and radial nerves, as well as his exploration of the brachial plexus for nerve repair or reconstruction. The authors reviewed Harvey Cushing's cases and provide 3 case illustrations not previously reported by Cushing involving neurolysis, nerve repair, and neurotization. Additionally, Cushing's experience with facial nerve neurotization is reviewed. The history, physical examination, and operative notes shed light on Cushing's diagnosis, strategy, technique, and hence, his surgery on peripheral nerve injury. These contributions complement others he made to surgery of the peripheral nervous system dealing with nerve pain, entrapment, and tumor.


The main aim of this research project is to assess the potential of the modulated
louvered windows (ML W) to provide ventilation as a cooling source to achieve thermal
comfort inside buildings. It presents an intensive analysis of the characteristics of airflow as
function of the various MLW parameters in order to provide designers with practical
information about the performance of MLW in the control of natural ventilation inside the
room. Some initial studies suggested the significance of adjustable horizontal louvered
windows, or the MLW as they are referred to in this research, as an effective technique for the
control of natural ventilation beside the other Environmental issues.
In Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, the shelter adaptation to the hot-humid climate was achieved
by employing a number of passive solutions, one of which, the MLW constructed in the
Rowshan, was considered a main elevation treatment. The Rowshan, a projected window
bay, covered in this study is constructed with adjustable louvers in a number of sashes
arranged in rows and columns to control and alter breeze to the desired level inside the room.
The Rowshan is also credited with controlling other environmental factors and is supposed to
reflect social necessities.
This thesis has investigated the airflow characteristics of the MLW with reference to
the Rowshan of Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. After reviewing the previous efforts and prediction
techniques concerned, the research has conducted a series of experiments including laboratory
and computation fluid dynamics (CFD) appraisal stages. The laboratory stage included the
evaluation of the pressure drop (L1J') and the velocity drop (v/ve%) characteristics across the
MLW. The pressure drop was examined under various airflow rates (Q) using the
depressurising test chamber technique. The velocity drop (v/ve%) was examined under
various prevailing wind conditions using the test chamber technique. This appraisal stage
covered also the room configuration and its contribution to this effect. On the other hand, the
CFD measurement has examined the viability of CFD coding to simulate airflow around the
reviewed MLW. The predicted results obtained from CFD were compared against those
obtained from the laboratory. Consequently, an intensive evaluation of airflow patterns of the
common Rowshan configurations, including the plain and projected Rowshans, employed in
leddah in conjunction with various outlet types was conducted.
From the literature review, it has been concluded that the MLW played a major role
in the provision and the control of natural ventilation in the traditional architecture of leddah,
Saudi Arabia. The various appraisal stages showed that parameters such as louver inclination,
aperture between louver blades and the free area of the MLW were more significant variables
than the depth of louver blades. Nevertheless, the major pressure and velocity drops were not
due to individual variable but rather to the combination of variables that would
comprehensively describe M and v/ve% across the MLW.
Practically, the design of the modulated louvered windows must give consideration to
those variables that play an important role in altering airflow characteristics inside the room.
It should also have an element of flexibility as this enables designers to approach their
window treatments with a number of choices whilst retaining similar ventilation
performances. Airflow velocities in a room containing an MLW result from an interaction of
louver geometry, room geometry and prevailing wind conditions. As far as the Rowshan
configuration was concerned, the plain Rowshan was generally better than the projected
Rowshan. Yet the flow in the living zone could be enhanced by correctly sizing the projected
Rowshan. Finally, CFD analysis has been successfully used to predict air velocities in the
region close to the MLW side.


Wthe e propose a time-based binding network model for efficient binding in mobile IPv6. We try to reduce the waste of link bandwidth or the processing load of a correspondent node and a home agent by binding every periodic time unit, t. This mechanism can show various advantages in the case of high mobility. The results of performance analysis show that the network load concentrated on a correspondent node or a home agent is decreased in time-based binding update model, and also our model is better than a mobile IPv6 model with regard to processing delay.


INTRODUCTION
Development and behaviour in Cornelia de Lange Syndrome (CdLS), including autism characteristics, have been described infrequently stratified to genetic cause and only a few studies have considered behavioural characteristics in relation to developmental level. Here, we describe the behavioural phenotype in individuals with CdLS with SMC1A variants.

METHODS
We performed an international, interdisciplinary study on 51 individuals with SMC1A variants. Results of questionnaire studies are compared to those in individuals with Down Syndrome and with Autism Spectrum Disorder. Results on cognition and self-injurious behaviour (SIB) are compared to those in individuals with CdLS caused by NIPBL variants. For Dutch participants with SMC1A variants we performed direct in-person assessments of cognition, autism, and added an interview and questionnaire on adaptive behaviour and sensory processing.

RESULTS
Individuals with SMC1A variants show a higher cognitive level and less SIB than individuals with NIPBL variants. Individuals with SMC1A variants without classic CdLS phenotype but with a Rett-like phenotype show more severe intellectual disability and more SIB compared to those with a CdLS phenotype. Autism is less present if outcomes in direct in-person assessments are evaluated taking developmental level into account compared to results based on a questionnaire.

CONCLUSIONS
Behaviour in individuals with CdLS should be evaluated taking genetic cause into account. Detailed interdisciplinary approaches are of clinical importance to inform tailored care and may eventually improve quality of life of patients and families.


According to the U.S. Department of Labor, by the year 2000, only 15% of the work force will be white men; 64% will be women of mixed ethnic backgrounds. Clearly, statistics show that the future engineering and science work force will include more women. Yet they now comprise less than 7% of the U.S. engineering profession. How can your company function profitably in the current technical revolution given the predicted demographic changes and the shrinking global economy? The time has come to recruit—then develop—women engineers in order to remain competitive in the next century. This integration is a two-dimensional process requiring both a technical change (of recruitment and retention) and a human, or social change. Social changes call for the dismantling of outdated barriers and the eliminating of unfair stereotypes. These social changes do not happen overnight; they, instead, evolve over time. Your company's management can lead the way by initiating the technical aspects of integration—the long-term commitment to recruit, develop, advance and retain women. Once women have been recruited, they must be integrated into a workplace that encourages their participation. A specific company retention plan can help achieve that goal.


This paper argues that studying natural history helps make us more virtuous; that is, better and happier people. After sketching a broad conception of virtue, I discuss how naturalizing may improve our moral character and help develop our intellectual, aesthetic and physical abilities. I next assert essential connections between nonanthropocentrism and wisdom, and between natural history study and the achievement of a nonanthropocentric stance toward the world Finally, I argue that the great naturalists suggest a noble, inspiring alternative to the gross consumption and trivial pleasures offered by our destructive modern economy: the exploration, understanding and appreciation of nature. I conclude that a better understanding of our enlightened self-interest would do as much to further environmental protection as the acknowledgment of nature's intrinsic value.


The conservation biology of Euphydryas aurinia was investigated, analysing its metapopulation dynamics, interactions with parasitoids and the efficacy of habitat restoration.

Euphydryas aurinia has undergone a widespread national decline in recent years. This decline is quantified at a 10km scale. The distribution in 2020 was predicted for E. aurinia from the 1995-99 distribution, assuming that the current causes and pattern of decline continued. The
predicted distribution in 2020 represented a 48% loss in 10km grid square records, with only the core regions surviving. The distribution and persistence of the butterfly was quantified at a regional scale in one, intensively studied area (25km by 25km) in Dorset (England, UK). The metapopulation approach was useful in understanding the occupancy pattern and persistence of
E. aurinia within this landscape. The probability of patch occupancy increased with patch connectivity (isolated patches were less likely to be occupied), vegetation height and resource area (patch area multiplied by host plant cover). Such a pattern was consistent with the interpretation that the butterfly persists as a metapopulation. This supported the use of the Incidence Function Model, as a tool to explore the possible fate of E. aurinia in fragmented landscapes in Dorset and in five pairs of independent networks across the species' range in
England and Wales. The threshold network area was predicted to be 7 iha, to achieve a 95% probability of persistence for 100 years, for a network within a 4km by 4km area. However, this figure may actually be an underestimate of the area required, if extinction debt is a reality.

Parasitoid attack, principally by Cotesia bignellii, appears to have an effect on the population dynamics of E. aurinia and may help to explain the requirement of E. aurinia for large habitat patches. This preliminary work suggests that the parasitoid also has a metapopulation structure and that it is of equal conservation concern. At a local scale the results suggest that the parasitoid and host may have a shifling disiribution, with the butterfly 'escaping' parasitism in some areas.

Habitat restoration and re-creation will be necessary in many networks with insufficient habitat area. Experimental investigation into methods of habitat restoration showed that unsuitable but potential habitat may be restored through cutting twice a year in combination with grazing.
Habitat re-creation has been shown to be feasible for agriculturally improved sites, but may be more difficult to achieve due to the higher nutrient status and the competitive interaction of other species with the host plant Succisa pratensis.


Geographic routing is an attractive localized routing scheme for wireless sensor networks (WSNs) due to its desirable scalability and efficiency. Maintaining neighborhood information for packet forwarding can achieve a high efficiency in geographic routing, but may not be appropriate for WSNs in highly dynamic scenarios where network topology changes frequently due to nodes mobility and availability. We propose a novel online routing scheme, called Energy-efficient Beaconless Geographic Routing (EBGR), which can provide loop-free, fully stateless, energy-efficient sensor-to-sink routing at a low communication overhead without the help of prior neighborhood knowledge. In EBGR, each node first calculates its ideal next-hop relay position on the straight line toward the sink based on the energy-optimal forwarding distance, and each forwarder selects the neighbor closest to its ideal next-hop relay position as the next-hop relay using the Request-To-Send/Clear-To-Send (RTS/CTS) handshaking mechanism. We establish the lower and upper bounds on hop count and the upper bound on energy consumption under EBGR for sensor-to-sink routing, assuming no packet loss and no failures in greedy forwarding. Moreover, we demonstrate that the expected total energy consumption along a route toward the sink under EBGR approaches to the lower bound with the increase of node deployment density. We also extend EBGR to lossy sensor networks to provide energy-efficient routing in the presence of unreliable communication links. Simulation results show that our scheme significantly outperforms existing protocols in wireless sensor networks with highly dynamic network topologies.


Background: Phosphorylation of the connexin43 C-terminal (Cx43CT) domain regulates gap junction intercellular communication (GJIC). Results: Phosphorylation alters the α-helical propensity of the Cx43CT. Conclusion: Altering the conformational preference of the Cx43CT presents a novel mechanism for regulation of GJIC. Significance: Cx43CT residues susceptible to structural alterations are prime targets for chemical modulators of GJIC. Phosphorylation of the connexin43 C-terminal (Cx43CT) domain regulates gap junction intercellular communication. However, an understanding of the mechanisms by which phosphorylation exerts its effects is lacking. Here, we test the hypothesis that phosphorylation regulates Cx43 gap junction intercellular communication by mediating structural changes in the C-terminal domain. Circular dichroism and nuclear magnetic resonance were used to characterize the effects of phosphorylation on the secondary structure and backbone dynamics of soluble and membrane-tethered Cx43CT domains. Cx43CT phospho-mimetic isoforms, which have Asp substitutions at specific Ser/Tyr sites, revealed phosphorylation alters the α-helical content of the Cx43CT domain only when attached to the membrane. The changes in secondary structure are due to variations in the conformational preference and backbone flexibility of residues adjacent and distal to the site(s) of modification. In addition to the known direct effects of phosphorylation on molecular partner interactions, the data presented here suggest phosphorylation may also indirectly regulate binding affinity by altering the conformational preference of the Cx43CT domain.


ABSTRACT Nucleolar morphogenesis is a poorly defined process. Here we report that the Saccharomyces cerevisiae nucleolar trimethyl guanosine synthase I (Tgs1p), which specifically selects the m7G cap structure of snRNAs and snoRNAs for m2,2,7G conversion, is required not only for efficient pre-mRNA splicing but also for pre-rRNA processing and small ribosomal subunit synthesis. Mutational analysis indicates that the requirement for Tgs1p in pre-mRNA splicing, but not its involvement in ribosome synthesis, is dependent upon its function in cap trimethylation. In addition, we report that cells lacking Tgs1p showed a striking and unexpected loss of nucleolar structural organization. Tgs1p is not a core component of the snoRNP proteins; however, in vitro, the protein interacts with the KKD/E domain present at the carboxyl-terminal ends of several snoRNP proteins. Strains expressing versions of the snoRNPs lacking the KKD/E domain were also defective for nucleolar morphology and showed a loss of nucleolar compaction. We propose that the transient and functional interactions of Tgs1p with the abundant snoRNPs, through presumed interactions with the KKD/E domain of the snoRNP proteins, contribute substantially to the coalescence of nucleolar components. This conclusion is compatible with a model of self-organization for nucleolar assembly.


APOBEC3A/B cytidine deaminase is responsible for the majority of cancerous mutations in a large fraction of cancer samples. However, its role in heritable mutagenesis remains very poorly understood. Recent studies have demonstrated that both in yeast and in human cancerous cells, most of APOBEC3A/B-induced mutations occur on the lagging strand during replication. Here, we use data on rare human polymorphisms, interspecies divergence, and de novo mutations to study germline mutagenesis, and analyze mutations at nucleotide contexts prone to attack by APOBEC3A/B. We show that such mutations occur preferentially on the lagging strand. Moreover, we demonstrate that APOBEC3A/B-like mutations tend to produce strand-coordinated clusters, which are also biased towards the lagging strand. Finally, we show that the mutation rate is increased 3' of C→G mutations to a greater extent than 3' of C→T mutations, suggesting pervasive translesion bypass of the APOBEC3A/B-induced damage. Our study demonstrates that 20% of C→T and C→G mutations segregating as polymorphisms in human population are attributable to APOBEC3A/B activity.


Distinctiveness in higher education drives the development of university branding as well as informing curriculum development. The School of Law at JCU is presently involved in a 'curriculum refresh', based on developing its LLB in terms of JCU's own claim to distinctiveness as the University for the Tropics. The challenge of developing a 'tropical' identity for a professionally accredited degree has involved a two-stage process so far. First the project sought to establish the particular claims to distinctiveness of other LLB programs in Australia through a review of selected law school websites. The websites' presentations of the law school's focus were analysed according to the perceived nature of approaches to curriculum, thus linking the 'product' presentation on the web with philosophical approaches to curriculum design. This offered an insight into the diversity of approaches to teaching law in Australia. The second phase has involved analyzing the idea of the tropics to establish a means of conceptualizing the university's distinctiveness agenda in a way that would resonate with stakeholders. The focus on this aspect of the project has involved developing a 'thematic lens' that would lend itself to informing curriculum design in a sustainable way. Using the case study of the JCU LLB refresh, this paper explores the possibilities for invigorating curriculum through a focus on philosophical and thematic underpinnings.


The use of Indigenous languages has been declining over the period of non-Aboriginal settlement in Australia as a result of repressive policies, both explicit and implicit. The National Policy on Languages (Lo Bianco, 1987) was the high point of language policy in Australia, given its national scope and status and its attempt to encompass all aspects of language use. Indigenous languages received significant recognition as an important social and cultural resource in this policy, but subsequent national policy developments moved via a focus on economic utility to an almost exclusive emphasis on English, exacerbated by a focus on national literacy standards. This is exemplified in the Northern Territory's treatment of Indigenous bilingual education programs. Over recent years there have been hopeful signs in various states of policy developments supportive of Indigenous languages and in 2009 the Commonwealth Government introduced a new National Indigenous Languages Policy and a plan for a national curriculum in languages. Support for Indigenous languages remains fragmentary, however, and very much subservient to the dominant rhetoric about the need for English skills, while at the same time ignoring research that shows the importance of Indigenous and minority languages for social well-being and for developing English language skills.


Objective: Melanoma is one of the most aggressive cancers and is responsible for the majority of skin cancer deaths, with the presence of metastases prognostic for poor survival. At a time when most cancer incidences are falling, the annual incidence of melanoma has risen as rapidly as 4-6% in many European countries, with a substantial economic burden in advanced stages. The objective of this study is the investigation of treatment pathways and healthcare resource use related to advanced BRAF-mutated melanoma in Greece. Methods: This study is based on the information collected by an expert panel comprising of 3 oncologists of major public and private melanoma clinics around Greece. A 3-round survey was undertaken, according to a modified Delphi method. The treatment phases studied were: pre-progression; disease progression and terminal care. Oncology drug costs, medical visits, laboratory tests, imaging examinations, hospitalization and concomitant medications were the resources considered in the context of the Greek National Services Organization (EOPYY). Results: Τhe most common management scenario (80% of cases) in Greece for patients of stage IV BRAF V600 mutated melanoma was: targeted therapies as first line treatment at 95%, followed by immunotherapies at 100% as second line as well as third line treatment at 65% of cases. The weighted annual cost of treatment was 89.215,78 €, (90%CI:62,451.05; 115,980.51) for first line treatment at list price and around 41.584,50 (90%CI:29,109.15; 54,059.85) based on the negotiated price. At second line, the cost of treatment has been estimated between 15,704.272 (90%CI:10,992.990; 20,415.553) and 19,800.92€, (90%CI: 16,489; 30,622) for the two most common management scenarios for immunotherapies. For third line treatment the cost was 37,778.93 (90%CI 26,445.25; 49,112.61€) for the mostly used management scenario (50% ipilimumab). Conclusions: Μetastatic BRAF mutant melanoma requires prolonged and costly treatment with new therapies shown to substantially increase life expectancy. Identifying the appropriate treatment options in order to optimize health outcomes should be an important priority in healthcare system.


In this paper we present a project to provide fault tolerance in distributed Ada 95 applications by means of replication of partitions. Replication is intended to be largely transparent to an application. A group communication system is used for replica management. We examine some of the possibilities for implementing such a system and highlight some of the difficulties encountered in the context of the programming language Ada 95.


The periplasm (the space between the inner and outer membranes of bacteria) is the site of activation of the periplasmic stress response. Like the cytosolic stress response and the eukaryotic endoplasmic and cytosolic stress responses, unfolded proteins trigger a transcriptional activation profile that allows cells to produce more chaperones and protein-folding agents (see Young and Hartl). Although, the periplasmic stress response is fairly well characterized, the sensor that initiates the process has remained elusive. The response consists of activation of the protease DegS, which cleaves transmembrane protein RseA, which then releases the transcription factor σE to allow the activation of stress response genes. Walsh et al. show that DegS is inhibited by its PDZ domain and that binding of the PDZ domain toYQF motifs of outer membrane protein porins activates the protease. Bacteria expressing DegS lacking the PDZ domain showed increased σE activity. Using an oriented peptide library, a preferred binding sequence for the PDZ domain was identified (YXF/M-COOH), and examination of the sequences of outer membrane proteins showed that several proteins terminated in these sequences. Expression of an OmpC (an outer membrane porin) COOH-terminal fragment containing the YQF motif, stimulated σE activity, but only in cells expressing the wild-type DegS, not in cells expressing the PDZ-lacking DegS mutant. In vitro RseA was cleaved by DegS in the presence of YXF-COOH peptides. Thus, stress such as heat would promote unfolding of the porins exposing the YXF-COOH sequences that would interact with the PDZ domain of DegS and alleviate repression of the protease activity. Thus, DegS is both the sensor and the first executor of the periplasmic stress response. J. C. Young, F. U. Hartl, A stress sensor for the bacterial periplasm. Cell 113, 1-4 (2003) [Online Journal] N. P. Walsh, B. M. Alba, B. Bose, C. A. Gross, R. T. Sauer, OMP peptide signals initiate the envelope-stress response by activating DegS protease via relief of inhibition mediated by its PDZ domain. Cell 113, 61-71 (2003). [Online Journal]


Inter-basin water transfer projects have large tunnels and the cost of implementation is high. In order to cut costs, this system should be optimized. In inter-basin water transfer projects, hydraulics and water resources are equally important. For optimizing, both hydraulic and hydrologic modeling flow conditions must be considered together. In this study, four dams and three water transfer tunnels were used for transferring water from Yalan dam to Zayanderud dam (YPGZWT project) in Iran. Dynamic Programming (DP) and integrated solution of water resource and hydraulic models, developed by the authors, were used for optimizing the project. The objective of the study is the transferring of 95% of the water flow between both basins after supplying the agricultural consumption and environmental needs of their respective areas. The water level in the dam reservoirs and diameter of the tunnels were considered as the state variable and decision variable respectively in the DP model. The results showed that Yalan, Pashandegan and Gokan dams with a height of 135, 44 and 106 m, respectively, and Yalan–Pashandegan, Pashandegan–Gokan and Gokan-Zayanderud tunnel diameters, 2.812, 3.294 and 5.432 m, respectively, were the most economically optimal combination of water transferring in YPGZWT Project and the cost of this project is 350.70 million US dollars.


Tests on seventeen 3.5M long reinforced concrete beams with epoxy bonded external reinforcement subjected to 4-point bending are reported. The variables included different adhesives, plate geometries, a jointed plate, glue-line thickness, partial bonding and multi-layered plates. The beams were also tested as-cast (for reference), plated without the concrete being cracked (plated as-cast) and plated after cracking (plated precracked). In general, the addition of the plates increased the maximum sustained load by 40 per cent and the load required to produce the first visible crack by 80 percent. Stiffnesses were increased by 190 per cent for the plated as-cast condition and 250 per cent when the plate was added after the beam had been cracked to a width 0.1 mm in the constant moment span. The type of failure that can occur when plates are separated from the beam by horizontal shear failure in the concrete, did not occur when wide plates were used. A limited analysis of the beam section showed good agreement with the experimental results for various specified conditions. (Author/TRRL)


This thesis reviews some fundamental risk measurement and management concepts that insurance companies will face in the following years. The first chapter evaluates the theoretical and practical framework of the different approaches with respect to the determination of regulatory capital held by insurance companies. A critical assessment and substantial interpretation of these approaches is performed. Moreover, a number of new approaches is brought forward in order to add a more thorough and clear way of evaluating the level of the regulatory capital. Then, we provide evidence of the presence of the underwriting cycle in the UK. The underwriting cycle has been identified in a number of OECD and non-OECD countries and highlights the different stages and maturity of the insurance market. A number of reasons for the presence of this cycle is presented and evaluated in contrast with the reasons behind the underwriting cycle in other countries. The level of profitability of the insurance companies is used to determine the presence of the cycle. In the third chapter, profitability and cost of capital are connected with the credit rating assigned by credit agencies to insurance companies. The credit risk that insurance companies face is explained by the use of financial ratios that explicitly explain the particular credit rating. The credit rating is implicitly connected with the cost of capital, which in turn is explained by the level of the credit spread between the Treasury Yield and European bonds. Finally, securitisation as an alternative method of minimizing credit and market risk is analyzed. Different structures of securitised deals are presented and evaluated. The benefits of securitisation are presented in a systematic way.


Rhizobium meliloti strains mutant in the exoR gene overproduce an exopolysaccharide called succinoglycan or EPS I. Protein fusions to several different exo genes required for EPS I biosynthesis are expressed at a higher level in an exoR strain than in a wild-type strain, showing that the overproduction of EPS I in exoR strains results at least in part from increased gene expression. This regulation is important to nodulation, since exoR mutants fail to invade alfalfa nodules unless secondary suppressor mutations that cause a decrease in EPS I production occur. Here, we show that an exoR strain contains higher levels of mRNA for other exo genes than does the wild-type parental strain. ExoR therefore most probably exerts its regulatory effect at the level of transcription. In addition, we have localized, subcloned, and sequenced the exoR gene. A newly constructed insertion allele of exoR has the same phenotype as the original mutant. The deduced sequence of ExoR is 268 amino acids long but does not show homology to other sequenced genes.


OBJECTIVE
To characterize and compare measurements of the posterior cingulate glucose metabolism, the hippocampal glucose metabolism, and hippocampal volume so as to distinguish cognitively normal, late-middle-aged persons with 2, 1, or 0 copies of the apolipoprotein E (APOE) ε4 allele, reflecting 3 levels of risk for late-onset Alzheimer disease.

DESIGN
Cross-sectional comparison of measurements of cerebral glucose metabolism using 18F-fluorodeoxyglucose positron emission tomography and measurements of brain volume using magnetic resonance imaging in cognitively normal ε4 homozygotes, ε4 heterozygotes, and noncarriers.

SETTING
Academic medical center.

PARTICIPANTS
A total of 31 ε4 homozygotes, 42 ε4 heterozygotes, and 76 noncarriers, 49 to 67 years old, matched for sex, age, and educational level.

MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES
The measurements of posterior cingulate and hippocampal glucose metabolism were characterized using automated region-of-interest algorithms and normalized for whole-brain measurements. The hippocampal volume measurements were characterized using a semiautomated algorithm and normalized for total intracranial volume.

RESULTS
Although there were no significant differences among the 3 groups of participants in their clinical ratings, neuropsychological test scores, hippocampal volumes (P = .60), or hippocampal glucose metabolism measurements (P = .12), there were significant group differences in their posterior cingulate glucose metabolism measurements (P = .001). The APOE ε4 gene dose was significantly associated with posterior cingulate glucose metabolism (r = 0.29, P = .0003), and this association was significantly greater than those with hippocampal volume or hippocampal glucose metabolism (P < .05, determined by use of pairwise Fisher z tests).

CONCLUSIONS
Although our findings may depend in part on the analysis algorithms used, they suggest that a reduction in posterior cingulate glucose metabolism precedes a reduction in hippocampal volume or metabolism in cognitively normal persons at increased genetic risk for Alzheimer disease.


If sunlight is, in Justice Brandeis's words, "the best of disinfectants," then Brandon Garrett's latest book, Too Big to Jail: How Prosecutors Compromise with Corporations might best be conceptualized as a heroic attempt to apply judicious amounts of Lysol to the murky world of federal corporate prosecutions. "How Prosecutors Compromise with Corporations" is the book's neutral- sounding secondary title, but even casual readers will quickly realize that Garrett means that prosecutors compromise too much with corporations, in part because they fear the collateral consequences of a corporation's criminal indictment. Through an innovation known as the Deferred Prosecution Agreement, or DPA, prosecutors reach extrajudicial contractual agreements with corporations. Although prosecutors have long touted the transformative potential of these agreements, Garrett concludes that their benefits are often superficial and short-lived. Moreover, prosecutors negotiate these compromises with little oversight or accountability. Even worse, this overly soft approach toward entities has infected prosecutorial resolve to prosecute individual offenders, thereby enabling corporate managers to escape liability for their criminal wrongdoing. No wonder, then, that Garrett perceives a grievous accountability gap in the corporate crime landscape.


Inertial measurement units (IMUs) have emerged as an essential component in many of today's indoor navigation solutions due to their low cost and ease of use. However, despite many attempts for reducing the error growth of navigation systems based on commercial-grade inertial sensors, there is still no satisfactory solution that produces navigation estimates with long-time stability in widely differing conditions. This paper proposes to break the cycle of continuous integration used in traditional inertial algorithms, formulate it as an optimization problem, and explore the use of deep recurrent neural networks for estimating the displacement of a user over a specified time window. By training the deep neural network using inertial measurements and ground truth displacement data, it is possible to learn both motion characteristics and systematic error drift. As opposed to established context-aided inertial solutions, the proposed method is not dependent on either fixed sensor positions or periodic motion patterns. It can reconstruct accurate trajectories directly from raw inertial measurements, and predict the corresponding uncertainty to show model confidence. Extensive experimental evaluations demonstrate that the neural network produces position estimates with high accuracy for several different attachments, users, sensors, and motion types. As a particular demonstration of its flexibility, our deep inertial solutions can estimate trajectories for non-periodic motion, such as the shopping trolley tracking. Further more, it works in highly dynamic conditions, such as running, remaining extremely challenging for current techniques.


The geological nature of glacier beds plays a key role in ice sheet dynamics. Whereas little is known about Greenland's subglacial geology, the presence of basal sediments is a necessary condition for fast-flowing Antarctic ice streams. Such sediments sustain subglacial till layers, which if water saturated and under high pore-water pressure provide little resistance to ice flow. Using receiver function modeling of teleseismic P-waves, we report a thick (at least tens of meters) sediment layer beneath a site in Greenland's ablation zone, ∼15 km away from the western ice sheet margin. Although we do not discuss the origin or detailed nature of these subglacial sediments, we suggest that they are capable of sustaining a till layer. Due to the prevalence of an inefficient, pressurized subglacial drainage system, this till layer would typically be under high pore pressures and fail at the shear stresses transmitted from the overlaying ice. Ice flow resistance is thus focused on regions where till is consolidated or absent, or where form drag over obstacles takes place. In contrast to Antarctica, Greenland's surface melt now affects practically all latitudes, and efficient hydraulic connections between ice sheet surface and bed are pervasive throughout the ablation zone. This implies that rapid, melt-induced changes in subglacial water pressure are possible. The time required for basal till strength to react to these changes depends on the till's properties. We estimate that formation and destruction of flow resistance can occur on time scales of less than a few years. This could lead to changes in ice flow that are currently difficult to predict.


The introduction of the Master's in Teaching and Learning (MTL) was a significant milestone in the continuing professional development of teachers, signalling the intention that teaching could become a master's-level profession. This initiated a distinctive approach to school improvement requiring schools and higher education institutions (HEI) to work in partnership in order to offer this qualification to teachers. Within the south-west of England, Transform gained the contract to offer the MTL and subsequently developed an innovative collaborative approach to the design and implementation of this new qualification. Against a background of critical, and at times hostile, professional and media responses, the MTL was introduced in January 2010, and Transform began to deliver the MTL to eligible teachers from Easter 2010. An evaluation of Phase 1 of the MTL, commissioned by Transform in October 2010, focused on the three principal stakeholders in the MTL partnership (the HEI co-ordinators and tutors, school-based coaches and MTL participants in the scheme). This paper documents the process and findings of that evaluation and asks questions about what has been gained from an initiative that promised so much, was hindered throughout the process of development and was then stopped before it had any chance of making a significant impact on the nature of teachers' professional development. Was the MTL 'a revolution in teacher education or a bright light quickly extinguished?'. This paper argues that the latter was the case and concludes by identifying some 'sparks' that could inform future good practice in postgraduate professional development.


Recently, handprint-based recognition system has been widely applied for security and surveillance purposes. The success of this technology has also demonstrated that handprint is a good approach to perform forensic identification. However, existing identification systems are nearly based on the handprints that could be easily prevented. In contrast to earlier works, we exploit the thermal handprint and introduce a novel distance metric for thermal handprint dissimilarity measure, called Heat-Earth Mover's Distance (HEMD). The HEMD is designed to classify heat-based handprints that can be obtained even when the subject wears a glove. HEMD can effectively recognize the subjects by computing the distance between point distributions of target and training handprints. Through a comprehensive study, our identification system demonstrates the performance even with the handprints obtained by the subject wearing a glove. With 20 subjects, our proposed system achieves an accuracy of 94.13%for regular handprints and 92.00% for handprints produced with latex gloves.


Wnt/β-catenin Signaling Regulates Regeneration in Diverse Tissues of the Zebrafish Nicholas Stockton Strand Chair of the Supervisory Committee: Professor Randall T Moon Department of Pharmacology The ability to regenerate tissue after injury is limited by species, tissue type, and age of the organism. Understanding the mechanisms of endogenous regeneration provides greater insight into this remarkable biological process while also offering up potential therapeutic targets for promoting regeneration in humans. The Wnt/β-catenin signaling pathway has been implicated in zebrafish regeneration, including the fin and nervous system. The body of work presented here expands upon the role of Wnt/β-catenin signaling in regeneration, characterizing roles for Wnt/β-catenin signaling in multiple tissues. We show that cholinergic signaling is required for blastema formation and Wnt/β-catenin signaling initiation in the caudal fin, and that overexpression of Wnt/β-catenin ligand is sufficient to rescue blastema formation in fins lacking cholinergic activity. Next, we characterized the glial response to Wnt/β-catenin signaling after spinal cord injury, demonstrating that Wnt/β-catenin signaling is necessary for recovery of motor function and the formation of bipolar glia after spinal cord injury. Lastly, we defined a role for Wnt/β-catenin signaling in heart regeneration, showing that cardiomyocyte proliferation is regulated by Wnt/β-catenin signaling. These data demonstrate a conserved role for Wnt/β-catenin signaling in promoting regeneration across multiple tissue types in the zebrafish, and further show conservation of some of these functions in human tissue. Table of


ABSTRACT In this paper, we investigate the nexus between ethnicity and violent conflict in the Congo. We make three interlocking arguments. First, we argue that ethnicity is a defining political resource in the Congo's politics and violent conflicts, which we call 'ethnic capital'. Second, we argue that the high political value of this ethnic capital is sustained by engrained discourses and practices of ethnicity. These discourses and practices permeate the Congo's political order, shape people's understanding of politics, conflict and political identities, and have contributed to the formation of an unstable, centrifugal, and fragmentary political order. Third, we argue that conceptualising ethnicity as capital dismantles the artificial dualism between the symbolic realm of identities and the material realm of the economy and makes it possible to move beyond primordialist, instrumentalist and purely symbolic understandings of the nexus between conflict and ethnicity. Ultimately, what is at stake in this competition is the distribution of symbolic and material resources.


TOBACCO USE IN CALIFORNIA DETAILED FINDINGS SUMMARIZED BY CHAPTER Chapter 4. ASSESSING PROGRESS TOWARD PROGRAM GOALS 1. Between 1990 and 1993, the proportion of California children and nonsmoking workers who were protected from ETS exposure increased substantially. 2. Cigarette consumption in California declined by an estimated 13.7% following the passage of Proposition 99 and the mandated increase in excise tax on cigarette products. This accelerated decline in consumption lasted approximately 5 months after the imposition of the 25-cent tax. 3. The introduction of Tobacco Control Program interventions was associated with an increase in the rate of decline in cigarette consumption. 4. Between 1988 and 1993, we observed a 27% decrease in per capita tobacco consumption and a 28% decline in smoking prevalence. Based on mUltiple surveys, the best estimate of smoking prevalence in 1993 among California adults is 19.1 %. 5. Following the passage of Proposition 99, smoking prevalence declined at twice the rate observed before Proposition 99. However, this new rate of decline must be increased by a further 50% in order to achieve the Program goal of a 75% reduction in prevalence by 1999. 6. Smoking prevalence among 16- to 18-year-old Californians appeared to be increasing sharply following the introduction of the "Joe Camel" tobacco advertising campaign. We were unable to identify a decline in prevalence associated with the imposition of the excise tax. No further increases in adolescent smoking prevalence were observed following the introduction of the Tobacco Control Program. 7. The decline in tobacco consumption and smoking prevalence in California appears to result from increases in successful smoking cessation among adults. 8. Popular support for a further increase in the excise tax on tobacco has grown. In 1993, 60% of Californians indicated support for an additional increase in the excise tax of at least 50 cents, provided that the money would be used for antitobacco and other health programs. Under these conditions, two thirds of current smokers favored an increase of at least 25 cents in the tobacco tax. Chapter 5. THE IMPACT OF THE ANTITOBACCO MASS MEDIA CAMPAIGN IN CALIFORNIA 1. A period of accelerated decline in per capita cigarette consumption in California began in April 1990, coinciding with the start of the mass media campaign. During a 12-month period, consumption declined by 12%. At this time, the media campaign was the only major tobacco control intervention in the field. 2. The proportion of Californians who attempted to quit smoking for more than 1 day increased whenever the mass media campaign was in the field and decreased during the period when the campaign was withdrawn. 3. More than half of California adults and more than two thirds of adolescents recalled seeing the antitobacco mass media campaign. 4. Adults who saw the media campaign were more likely than adults who did not see the campaign to believe that ETS is harmful to nonsmokers, especially to children. 5. Adults who saw the media campaign were more likely than adults who did not see the campaign to ask someone not to smoke. Almost 60% of smokers reported that they had been asked not to smoke on at least one occasion. 6. Half of Californians had voluntarily made their homes smokefree by 1993. The number of smokers reporting a smokefree home increased substantially between 1992 and 1993. Smokers who had young children in the home were more likely than smokers living without children to report a smokefree home. 7. Smokefree home policies were more likely if adults believed in the danger ofETS to nonsmokers. The spread of smokefree homes in California may be an indirect effect of the media campaign. Chapter 6. TOBACCO MARKETING AND SMOKING IN SCHOOLS AS BARRIERS TOEFFECTIVE ADOLESCENT PREVENTION PROGRAMS 1. Adolescents appear to be the most receptive audience for tobacco advertising. Awareness and liking of cigarette advertisements is higher among adolescents than among adults in California. Liking and awareness of the "Joe Camel" cigarette campaign was highest in the youngest agegroup studied (12 to 14 years). 2. Two thirds of adolescents have a favorite cigarette ad, and one quarter are willing to use products promoting tobacco.


Background: To analyze the potential effect of social inequality on pancreatic cancer risk in Western Europe, by reassessing the association within the European Prospective Investigation into Cancer and Nutrition (EPIC) Study, including a larger number of cases and an extended follow-up. Methods: Data on highest education attained were gathered for 459,170 participants (70% women) from 10 European countries. A relative index of inequality (RII) based on adult education was calculated for comparability across countries and generations. Cox regression models were applied to estimate relative inequality in pancreatic cancer risk, stratifying by age, gender, and center, and adjusting for known pancreatic cancer risk factors. Results: A total of 1,223 incident pancreatic cancer cases were included after a mean follow-up of 13.9 (±4.0) years. An inverse social trend was found in models adjusted for age, sex, and center for both sexes [HR of RII, 1.27; 95% confidence interval (CI), 1.02–1.59], which was also significant among women (HR, 1.42; 95% CI, 1.05–1.92). Further adjusting by smoking intensity, alcohol consumption, body mass index, prevalent diabetes, and physical activity led to an attenuation of the RII risk and loss of statistical significance. Conclusions: The present reanalysis does not sustain the existence of an independent social inequality influence on pancreatic cancer risk in Western European women and men, using an index based on adult education, the most relevant social indicator linked to individual lifestyles, in a context of very low pancreatic cancer survival from (quasi) universal public health systems. Impact: The results do not support an association between education and risk of pancreatic cancer.


Patients with nodding syndrome have autoantibodies to leiomodin-1 that are neurotoxic and cross-react with proteins of the parasitic worm Onchocerca volvulus. Linking parasitic infection to autoimmune epilepsy Nodding syndrome is a unique seizure disorder affecting children in parts of East Africa. The cause of nodding syndrome has been an enigma, although an epidemiological association with the parasite Onchocerca volvulus has been established. Johnson et al. demonstrate that patients with nodding syndrome have autoantibodies to leiomodin-1 that are neurotoxic in vitro and that leiomodin-1 is expressed in regions of the brain affected during disease. Leiomodin-1 antibodies cross-react with O. volvulus proteins, linking the parasite to the autoantibody. Thus, nodding syndrome may be an autoimmune epilepsy initiated by a parasitic infection and may be preventable by treatment with antiparasitic strategies such as the drug ivermectin. Nodding syndrome is an epileptic disorder of unknown etiology that occurs in children in East Africa. There is an epidemiological association with Onchocerca volvulus, the parasitic worm that causes onchocerciasis (river blindness), but there is limited evidence that the parasite itself is neuroinvasive. We hypothesized that nodding syndrome may be an autoimmune-mediated disease. Using protein chip methodology, we detected autoantibodies to leiomodin-1 more abundantly in patients with nodding syndrome compared to unaffected controls from the same village. Leiomodin-1 autoantibodies were found in both the sera and cerebrospinal fluid of patients with nodding syndrome. Leiomodin-1 was found to be expressed in mature and developing human neurons in vitro and was localized in mouse brain to the CA3 region of the hippocampus, Purkinje cells in the cerebellum, and cortical neurons, structures that also appear to be affected in patients with nodding syndrome. Antibodies targeting leiomodin-1 were neurotoxic in vitro, and leiomodin-1 antibodies purified from patients with nodding syndrome were cross-reactive with O. volvulus antigens. This study provides initial evidence supporting the hypothesis that nodding syndrome is an autoimmune epileptic disorder caused by molecular mimicry with O. volvulus antigens and suggests that patients may benefit from immunomodulatory therapies.