Alternative investment funds (AIFs) in Europe operate without regulatory leverage limits. Competent authorities within the EU have the legal power to impose macroprudential leverage limits on AIFs, but no authority has implemented this tool so far. This joint European Central Bank-De Nederlandsche Bank (DNB) special feature (i) presents a macroprudential case for limiting the use of leverage by investment funds, (ii) develops a framework to inform the design and calibration of macroprudential leverage limits to contain the build-up of leverage-related systemic risks by AIFs, and (iii) discusses different design and calibration options. By way of example, it uses supervisory information on AIFs managed by asset managers based in the Netherlands. The article concludes by recommending a way forward to develop an EU-level framework for a harmonised implementation of macroprudential leverage limits for AIFs, which forms a key part of the agenda of the European Systemic Risk Board (ESRB) to develop macroprudential policy beyond banking. JEL Classification: G00


The debate may be over on whether resveratrol and other small molecules directly activate an enzyme implicated in longevity. [Also see Report by Hubbard et al.] Sirtuin proteins were once only of interest to yeast geneticists studying transcriptional regulation. That changed when their conserved effects on extending life span in yeast, worms, and flies were reported (1–3). Attention widened even more at the possibility of small-molecule activators of sirtuins increasing human health span and perhaps also life span (see the figure). Then came resveratrol, a natural compound found in red wine that could reportedly activate SIRT1, a human member of the sirtuin family. But just as quickly as red wine became the toast of the town, the biochemical assays used to identify resveratrol and other sirtuin-activating compounds (STACs) were called into question. Speculation that the cellular effects of STACs are achieved not through direct SIRT1 binding, but instead through other proteins, gave pause to wine enthusiasts, among others. Glasses may be lifted once again, however. On page 1216 of this issue, Hubbard et al. (4) demonstrate that SIRT1 can indeed be activated by resveratrol and other STACs in vitro, but only under certain conditions.


Agreement in Ket involves multiple techniques of verb-internal subject-object marking with intransitive subject (S) markers aligning in various ways with the transitive subject (A) or transitive object (P) markers. This article examines verbs where the S appears in slots normally reserved for P marking, while the slot normally reserved for A marking contains the invariant prefix da -. Many impersonal verbs with this da - prefix turn out to be versions of regular transitives that allow for substitution of da - by other personal subject markers. Interestingly, some intransitive verbs previously recorded as lacking da - in fact allow this prefix optionally. This suggests that the range of da- intransitives was originally broader, and that more, if not all, verbs in this class derive historically from regular transitives, Accordingly, this Ket pattern is analyzable as a 'transimpersonal construction', whereby a transitive verb takes an indefinite subject and experiencer object, although the transimpersonal in ket has not spread consistently across the lexicon.
Keywords: subject-object marking; transimpersonal construction


Purpose
Flexibility is a fundamental performance objective for manufacturing operations, allowing them to respond to changing requirements in uncertain and competitive global markets. Additive manufacturing machines are often described as "flexible," but there is no detailed understanding of such flexibility in an operations management context. The purpose of this paper is to examine flexibility from a manufacturing systems perspective, demonstrating the different competencies that can be achieved and the factors that can inhibit these in commercial practice.

Design/methodology/approach
This study extends existing flexibility theory in the context of an industrial additive manufacturing system through an investigation of 12 case studies, covering a range of sectors, product volumes, and technologies. Drawing upon multiple sources, this research takes a manufacturing systems perspective that recognizes the multitude of different resources that, together with individual industrial additive manufacturing machines, contribute to the satisfaction of demand.

Findings
The results show that the manufacturing system can achieve seven distinct internal flexibility competencies. This ability was shown to enable six out of seven external flexibility capabilities identified in the literature. Through a categorical assessment the extent to which each competency can be achieved is identified, supported by a detailed explanation of the enablers and inhibitors of flexibility for industrial additive manufacturing systems.

Originality/value
Additive manufacturing is widely expected to make an important contribution to future manufacturing, yet relevant management research is scant and the flexibility term is often ambiguously used. This research contributes the first detailed examination of flexibility for industrial additive manufacturing systems.


The paper presents the development of a manually operated hydraulic press which encompasses the design, fabrication and performance evaluation of the press. The components parts of the machine were designed using various design equations. The design results were used to select materials for various components. The detailed drawing of the developed machine was done using Pro E software. In fabricating the machine, mild steel was used as the locally sourced material. The use of mild steel is due to the fact that its strength, rigidity and machinability falls within the design specifications. Some components of the machine developed include; the frame, cylinder mounting table, press pin, working table/bed, hydraulic tank, and hand lever. Some of the bought out parts include: ram assembly, pressure hose, pressure indicator and hydraulic pump. In evaluating the performance of the machine developed, mild steel plate of length 220 mm, breadth 70 mm and thickness 20 mm was put on the machine working table. This piece of material was bent after pressing the hand lever. The pressure at which bending took place was read to be 50 bar as indicated on the pressure gauge. The machine developed was also used to press a sleeve of internal diameter of 85 mm and external diameter of 89 mm into the cylinder of an engine block at a pressure of 15 bar. The cost of the machine as at the time of fabrication is N398,440.


KARADJOVA, O., Z. ILIEVA, E. PETROVA and V. KRUMOV. Heterodera zeae Koshy, Swarup and Sethi, 1971 (Heteroderidae): probability of introduction on cereals in Bulgaria. Bulg. J. Agric. Sci., 21: 969–981 The present paper assesses the probability of entry and establishment of the corn cyst nematode Heterodera zeae in Bulgaria. The species is currently distributed in ten countries in Asia, Africa, Europe and North America and is one of the most economically important pests on corn and other cereal crops in India and Pakistan. In 2009, H. zeae was established in close proximity to the Bulgarian border with Greece (Kavala). Three main pathways of entry of H. zeae in the country have been considered. The highest risk is associated with the import of bulbs, rhizomes, tubers and other underground plant parts with attached soil, intended for direct consumption and processing from countries where the pest is distributed. For this pathway, the probability of entry has been assessed as moderate. A climatic model has been developed to assess the probability of establishment of the pest. It shows that the species can establish on the whole territory of Bulgaria, excluding the mountains Rila, Rhodope and Pirin, the mountains to the west and the north of Struma valley and the Central Balkans where the conditions are unfavourable for its development. The number of generations per year varies from 1.03 in the area of Kyustendil to 1.81 in the southernmost parts of the country. The overall risk of entry and establishment of H. zeae in Bulgaria is low under the current climatic conditions. The potential spread of H. zeae after introduction has been considered briefly to show that the process would be slow due to the expected low reproduction rate of the populations in Bulgaria and the limited natural spread of the species. The risk of economically important losses is low. More significant losses could be expected from corn in warm, dry years, in areas with light, sandy soils.


Most animals fight by repeating complex stereotypic behaviors, yet the internal structure of these behaviors has rarely been dissected in detail. We characterized the internal structure of fighting behaviors by developing a machine learning pipeline that measures and classifies the behavior of individual unmarked animals on a sub-second timescale. This allowed us to quantify several previously hidden features of zebrafish fighting strategies. We found strong correlations between the velocity of the attacker and the defender indicating a dynamic matching of approach and avoidance efforts consistent with the cumulative assessment model of aggression. While velocity matching was ubiquitous, the spatial dynamics of attacks showed phase-specific differences. Contest phase attacks were characterized by a paradoxical side-ways attraction of the retreating animal towards the attacker suggesting that the defender combines avoidance maneuvers with display maneuvers. Post-resolution attacks lacked display-like features and the the defender was avoidance-focused. From the perspective of the winner, game theory modeling further suggested that highly energetically costly post resolution attacks occurred because the winner was trying to increase its relative dominance over the loser. Overall, the rich structure of zebrafish motor coordination during fighting indicates a greater complexity and layering of strategies than has previously been recognized.


Theoretical research suggests that health expenditure risk can have an ambiguous influence on the annuitization decisions of the elderly. I provide empirical evidence on this linkage, by estimating the impact of supplemental Medicare insurance (Medigap) coverage on the annuity demand of older Americans. I use local variation in prices as an instrumental variable to address the possible endogeneity of Medigap coverage, an identification strategy motivated by the fact that Medigap policies are not medically underwritten, and Medigap insurance is required by law to be standardized, so prices reflect neither individual characteristics nor product quality. Medigap coverage has a strong impact on annuitization: the extensive margin elasticity is 0.39, the overall elasticity of private annuity income with respect to Medigap coverage is 0.56. These results are robust to controls for health, wealth, and preferences, as well as other robustness tests. They imply that medical expenditure risk has a large impact on underannuitization. Daniel W. Sacks The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania firstname.lastname@example.com


We report on key studies on the dynamics of black holes (BHs) in gas-rich galaxy mergers that underscore the vital role played by gas dissipation in promoting BH inspirals down to the smallest scales ever probed with the use of high-resolution numerical simulations. In major mergers, the BHs sink rapidly under the action of gas-dynamical friction while orbiting inside the massive nuclear disc resulting from the merger. The BHs then bind and form a Keplerian binary on a scale of pc. In minor mergers, BH pairing proceeds down to the minimum scale explored of 10–100 pc only when the gas fraction in the less massive galaxy is comparatively large to avoid its tidal and/or ram pressure disruption and the wandering of the light BH in the periphery of the main halo. Binary BHs enter the gravitational wave dominated inspiral only when their relative distance is typically of ∼10−3 pc. If the gas preserves the degree of dissipation expected in a star-burst environment, binary decay continues down to 0.1 pc, the smallest length scale ever attained. Stalling versus hardening below pc is still matter of deep investigations, and there is no unique answer depending on the yet unexplored dynamics of gas in the vicinity of the binary.


Patent pledges — public commitments to limit the enforcement or other exploitation of one's patent rights — are increasing in popularity in a range of market sectors, from telecommunications and software to biopharma and green technology. Following initial work that sought to classify and understand patent pledges as a distinct category of firm behaviour, this paper — following a workshop held in September 2017 — identifies a range of recent developments in the evolution of patent pledges. These include increasing structural complexity and sophistication of patent pledges, a richer set of motivations leading firms to pledge patents, increased attention to the role that patent pledges play in innovation and on the governance of collective pledges, and a trend toward democratization and internationalization of pledge behaviour.


The IEEE 1588 Precision Time Protocol Version 2 (PTP v2) standard was developed to establish precise synchronization protocols for distributed nodes, and thus facilitate the development of distributed time-based systems. As an example of an applied system, we developed a distributed wireless network emulator that permits precise and stable synchronized time-based wireless link scheduling. In our system, each agent node simply emulates schedule-based wireless links without exchanging control messages with any other nodes. This emulator is designed to test IP-based protocols for high scalability and high-speed mobility while maintaining high accuracy levels over extended periods of time. In our previous work, we showed the existence of a relationship between packet handling size and accuracy in a developed emulator system. In this study, we evaluate the performance of agent node loads, and their relationship to processing time accuracy, by obtaining time information from PTP v2. These factors are important when deciding future extension policy. From our experimental results, we determined that performance has two kind of influence. Specifically, processing time increases as loading increases, and some processing elements become excessively long under high load conditions. These factors have a significant influence on time-based distributed systems, such as our distributed mobile network emulator, which is designed to handle processes at microsecond speeds.


We prove that the log-Brunn-Minkowski inequality (log-BMI) for the Lebesque measure in dimension $n$ would imply the log-BMI and, therefore, the B-conjecture for any log-concave density in dimension $n$. As a consequence, we prove the log-BMI and the B-conjecture for any log-concave density, in the plane. Moreover, we prove that the log-BMI reduces to the following: For each dimension $n$, there is a density $f_n$, which satisfies an integrability assumption, so that the log-BMI holds for parallelepipeds with parallel facets, for the density $f_n$. As byproduct of our methods, we study possible log-concavity of the function $t\mapsto |(K+_p\cdot e^tL)^{\circ}|$, where $p\geq 1$ and $K$, $L$ are symmetric convex bodies, which we are able to prove in some instances and as a further application, we confirm the variance conjecture in a special class of convex bodies. Finally, we establish a non-trivial dual form of the log-BMI.


This study investigated the effectiveness of recreation therapy intervention in the reduction of festive stress among some selected civil servants, teachers inclusive in Oyo State, Nigeria. The study adopted pre-post experimental design. The participants of the study were 150 subjects pre-selected using Festive Mood Stress Scale (FMSS). The age range of participants was between 55 and 62 years. The data analysis utilized for processing of the raw score was Analysis of Co-Variance (ANCOVA). The results of the study indicated that recreation therapy intervention on was effective in the reduction of festive stress. Other strategies for reducing stress during festive season were also suggested.


In an effort to improve financial reporting and increase harmony between U.S. GAAP and international accounting standards, FASB introduced a controversial proposal that would require companies to reveal more of the costs associated with their mergers and acquisitions (M&A). However, some in the investment banking and academic communities argue that it may disrupt the M&A world and seriously weaken FASB's status as the primary accounting standards setter. On September 7, FASB issued a two-part exposure draft, Business Combinations and Intangible Assets, which proposed eliminating the pooling-of-interests method of accounting for business combinations. The first part, which addresses the method of accounting for business combinations, is an amendment of APB Opinion no. 16, Business Combinations. The second, which supersedes APB Opinion no. 17, Intangible Assets, addresses accounting for intangible assets (including goodwill), whether acquired singly, in a group or as part of a business combination. In place of pooling, the FASB recommended mandatory use of the purchase method, which, unlike pooling, requires companies to account for goodwill when they report on acquisitions. Agreeing to disagree In a press release announcing the issuance of the ED, FASB Chairman Edmund L. Jenkins said, "We believe that the purchase method of accounting gives investors better information about the initial costs of the transaction and the acquisition's performance over time than does the pooling-of-interests method." After a comment period, which ends December 7, the FASB will take into account all comment letters and testimony as it discusses each issue during public hearings to be held early in 2000. "We estimate that our process will be complete and a final statement issued by the end of 2000," Jenkins said. If adopted as final, the statement would be effective for business combinations initiated after its publication. But some observers think that relying on the purchase method will needlessly and significantly hinder the U.S. economy's current robust growth. The strength of that expansion, they say, is made possible largely by strategically sound business combinations for which the pooling method is an essential tactic. A study of the pooling-vs.-purchase controversy, Valuing the New Economy: How New Accounting Standards Will Inhibit Economically Sound Mergers and Hinder the Efficiency and Innovation of U.S. Business, published by Merrill Lynch last June, said "the [purchase] accounting method itself would prove an obstacle to a merger that both parties are eager to consummate. As a result, the wave of consolidations that has enhanced productivity, encouraged innovation, and stimulated dynamism in the U.S. economy may notably decline." Former FASB Chairman Dennis R. Beresford, now executive professor of accounting at the University of Georgia's Terry College of Business, told the JofA that, while he understands the reasoning behind such arguments, he cannot accept them. "The FASB believes that it should be neutral in its standard setting" he said. Beresford added that FASB doesn't consider "economic consequences" arguments during its deliberations, which do not focus on the achievement of economic goals. Disclosure vs. earnings Those critical of the FASB proposal point out that mandatory use of the purchase method can saddle a business with goodwill charges for intangible assets, such as intellectual property. In deals involving significant amounts of such assets, goodwill charges can erode earnings significantly, making a prudent deal look like a strategic error. In completed deals that opponents of the proposed plan use to illustrate their point, goodwill charges would have given investors a negative view of the transactions' consequences. Ultimately, however, the deals proved economically and strategically sound, those critics say, because the assets they combined were properly valued, despite any premium over book value (i. …


The history of Pakistan's nuclear program is the history of Pakistan. Fascinated with the new nuclear science, the young nation's leaders launched a nuclear energy program in 1956 and consciously interwove nuclear developments into the broader narrative of Pakistani nationalism. Then, impelled first by the 1965 and 1971 India-Pakistan Wars, and more urgently by India's first nuclear weapon test in 1974, Pakistani senior officials tapped into the country's pool of young nuclear scientists and engineers and molded them into a motivated cadre committed to building the 'ultimate weapon.' The tenacity of this group and the central place of its mission in Pakistan's national identity allowed the program to outlast the perennial political crises of the next 20 years, culminating in the test of a nuclear device in 1998. Written by a 30-year professional in the Pakistani Army who played a senior role formulating and advocating Pakistan's security policy on nuclear and conventional arms control, this book tells the compelling story of how and why Pakistan's government, scientists, and military, persevered in the face of a wide array of obstacles to acquire nuclear weapons. It lays out the conditions that sparked the shift from a peaceful quest to acquire nuclear energy into a full-fledged weapons program, details how the nuclear program was organized, reveals the role played by outside powers in nuclear decisions, and explains how Pakistani scientists overcome the many technical hurdles they encountered. Thanks to General Khan's unique insider perspective, it unveils and unravels the fascinating and turbulent interplay of personalities and organizations that took place and reveals how international opposition to the program only made it an even more significant issue of national resolve. Listen to a podcast of a related presentation by Feroz Khan at the Stanford Center for International Security and Cooperation.


In problems involving the relative sliding to two bodies, the frictional force is taken to oppose the direction of the local relative slip velocity. For a rigid flat punch sliding over a half-plane at any speed, it is shown that the velocities of the half-plane particles near the edges of the punch seem to grow without limit in the same direction as the punch motion. Thus the local relative slip velocity changes sign. This phenomenon leads to a paradox in friction, in the sense that the assumed direction of sliding used for Coulomb friction is opposite that of the resulting slip velocity in the region sufficiently close to each of the edges of the punch. This paradox is not restricted to the case of a rigid punch, as it is due to the deformations in the half-plane over which the pressure is moving. It would therefore occur for any punch shape and elastic constants (including an elastic wedge) for which the applied pressure, moving along the free surface of the half-plane, is singular. The paradox is resolved by using a finite strain analysis of the kinematics for the rigid punch problem and it is expected that finite strain theory would resolve the paradox for a more general contact problem.


Justinian's Digest is one and a half times the length of the Bible and just as controversial. There is so much obscurity, so much difficulty and so much disagreement among scholars that it is difficult to know where to start to study the way in which it was compiled.
In 1995 I suggested, in the context of Bluhme's Tables, that we should ask simple questions, often using the question : "Why?" For example : the compilers' instructions were to follow the order of the Edict - so why did one committee start by reading the commentaries on Sabinus, which do not follow that order? I asked five simple questions about Bluhme's Tables.
The same technique can usefully be applied to the prefaces to Justinian's codification, or more widely to the whole process of compilation of the Institutes, Digest and Code. To understand what happened we need to keep on asking : "Why?"
Here are some of the questions. The questions are simple, but the answers may not be. I cannot answer them all.


Multi-kilojoule petawatt lasers using chirped-pulse amplification need large-scale compression gratings. Tiled-grating approach has been adopted in several systems to meet the size requirements, grating tiles need to be precisely phased to ensure a transform-limited focal spot when focusing high-energy laser pulses in the target. Piston error of segmented gratings induced the focal spot to split when it arrived at multiple of the half wavelength. Alignment method using ultra-short pulse capable of controlling the absolute piston phase error within one half wavelength is proposed.


We present a theory and experiments on active mode locking in the presence of negative group-velocity dispersion (GVD) and self-phase modulation (SPM). It is shown that beyond a critical value of GVD a solitonlike pulse can be stabilized by the mode locker. The width of the soliton can be shorter than the width of the Gaussian pulse produced by the mode locker in the absence of soliton shaping. We establish analytically that the pulse shortening possible by addition of SPM and GVD is limited only by the requirement that the phase shift of the soliton per round trip be limited. Parameter ranges allowing for stable solitary-pulse formation and shortening are derived and discussed for different gain media and compared with numerical simulations and experimental results.


The thyroid gland pathology during pregnancy is one of the most common disease which involves serious complications upon the pregnant women`s body and fetus. Thyroid hormones play a critical role in fetal development. During pregnancy, increased levels of thyroid hormone synthesis are required to meet fetal needs. Nowadays, in our country there are no clinical guides about monitoring of thyroid function in pregnancy, so in consequence we will discuss about the clinical involvement of thyroid pathology, which includes hyperthyroidism, hypothyroidism, nodules (benign or malignant) and autoimmune pathology. At the same time, we will discuss about the consequences of high-levels of hCG on thyroid hormones and the comparison between a pregnant healthy woman and another one with thyroid pathology will be revealed. In this article we will explain the physiology and physiopathology of thyroid gland during pregnancy and we will also discuss about the clinical manifestations that appear on pregnant women. We will present normal and pathological values of thyroid hormones and their specific reference ranges. The effects of thyroid pathology on fetus growth, which also includes fetus malformations that may appear, represent another interesting fact that will be debated in this article. In the end of the article it will be presented the screening importance in thyroid pathology starting with the first trimester of pregnancy and the importance of immediate initiation of specific drugs administration.


Two contrasting phases of work are described that help inform the development and requirements of a soil monitoring system: firstly, the development and application of a multi‐criterion analysis of soil quality indicators grounded in the basic natural sciences; and secondly, scrutiny of the outcome of that process by a wide range of non‐specialist but key stakeholders at a workshop. This process ensures that the final monitoring design meets both the scientific rigour expected from a monitoring system and as far as possible meets the aspirations of policy and regulatory stakeholders. Individual indicators of soil quality were evaluated in terms of their applicability against a number of important environmental and logistical parameters and therefore their overall fitness for purpose. These included relevance to different soil types, functions, habitats and threats to soil, the inherent variability of soil, and a range of technical aspects such as analytical complexity, precision and reproducibility of analytical results and whether a standard operating procedure (SOP) existed for the technique. A tiered approach to soil monitoring was supported by workshop delegates. This will require indicators that are suitable and effective at national, site‐specific and process‐level scales. In addition, the opportunities for synchronizing soil monitoring with air and water quality monitoring should be considered and the potential for integrating on‐site measurements with remote methods should be researched further. It was considered by workshop attendees that soil monitoring should be rooted in pedological principles (i.e. recognizing defined soil horizons) to ensure that results can be extrapolated from individual sites and to retain flexibility.


In the present thesis, the tools of modern density functional theory are applied to study reactivities and NMR chemical shifts of organotitanium und -iron complexes.
In the first part it is shown for a model system that cationic titanium complexes of the type L2TiR+ (R=growing alkyl chain) can be viable intermediates in the homogeneous olefin polymerisation catalysed by titanium beta-diketonato complexes.
Olefin insertion in beta- and alpha-agostic intermediates is a facile process on the potential energy surface, but a substantial barrier for the chain propagation is computed on the free energy surface, 15.8 kcal/mol at 298 K.
Chain termination via beta-H transfer requires significantly higher activation, consistent with the observation of polymerisation, rather than oligomerisation.
Electron-withdrawing substituents at the diketonato ligand are predicted to lower the barrier for chain propagation, e.g. by 4.5 kcal/mol for L=F3CC(O)CHC(O)CF3 (hfac).
Thus, hfac complexes should produce highly active catalysts.
Theoretical methods for the calculation of 49Ti chemical shifts are assessed for a set of inorganic and organometallic titanium compounds, and the exchange-correlation functional best suited for this purpose is identified.
In the second part, catalytic conversion of MeOH and SiH4 to MeSiOH3 and H2 at a [Fe(Cp)(CO)(PR3)]+ center is studied.
Intermediates and transition states for R'=H and Ph are characterized along the catalytic cycle, the rate-determining step of which is indicated to be H2 dissociation from [Fe(Cp)(CO)(PR3)(H2)]+, in accord with a mechanistic study for higher substituted substrates from the literature.
For the model catalyst (R=H), introduction of SiMe3, NMe2, COMe, NO2, CN or Cl subtituents at the Cp ring decreases the rate-determining barrier (up to 6 kcal/mol for NMe2).
In the transient, free [Fe(C5H4X)(CO)(PR3)]+ complex, there can be competition between the substituent X and the phenyl group of the PPh_3 ligand for a hemilabile intramolecular coordination to iron.
Modification of the phosphine is thus expected to open further possibilities for tuning the catalyst properties and activities.
In the third part, thermal and solvent effects on 57Fe chemical shift of [Fe(CN)5(NO)]2- and [Fe(CN)6]4- are simulated with a molecular-dynamics (MD)-based approach.
Born-Oppenheimer MD simulations were performed employing a QM/MM scheme, in which the solvent, water, is described by a classical force field with electrostatic embedding into the quantum-mechanical part.
Magnetic shieldings are computed for snapshots along the trajectories.
Very large thermal and solvent effects on 57Fe chemical shift are obtained, and the final simulated values are in good accord with experiment.
The simulations offer detailed insights into the hydration spheres around the complexes, as assessed by the average number of hydrogen-bonded water molecules and by suitable pair correlation functions.


OBJECTIVE
To compare in a generalizable sample/setting objective outcomes in patients receiving first-generation antipsychotic long-acting injectables (FGA-LAIs) or risperidone-LAI (RIS-LAI).

METHODS
Nationwide, retrospective inception cohort study of adults with International Classification of Diseases-10 schizophrenia using Danish registers from 1995 to 2009 comparing outcomes between clinician's/patient's choice treatment with FGA-LAIs or RIS-LAI. Primary outcome was time to psychiatric hospitalization using Cox-regression adjusting for relevant covariates. Secondary outcomes included time to all-cause discontinuation and psychiatric hospitalization in patients without LAI possession gap >28 days, and number of bed-days after psychiatric hospitalization.

RESULTS
Among 4532 patients followed for 2700 patient-years, 2078 received RIS-LAI and 2454 received FGA-LAIs (zuclopenthixol decanoate = 52.2%, perphenazine decanoate = 37.2%, haloperidol decanoate = 5.0%, flupenthixol decanoate = 4.4%, fluphenazine decanoate = 1.3%). RIS-LAI was similar to FGA-LAIs regarding time to hospitalization (RIS-LAI = 246.2±323.7 days vs FGA-LAIs = 276.6±383.3 days; HR = 0.95, 95% confidence interval (CI) = 0.87-1.03, P = 0.199) and time to all-cause discontinuation (RIS-LAI = 245.8±324.0 days vs FGA-LAIs = 287.0±390.9 days; HR = 0.93, 95% CI = 0.86-1.02, P = 0.116). Similarly, in patients without LAI discontinuation, RIS-LAI and FGA-LAIs did not differ regarding time to hospitalization (RIS-LAI = 175.0±268.1 days vs FGA-LAIs = 210.7±325.3 days; HR = 0.95, 95% CI = 0.86-1.04, P = 0.254). Finally, duration of hospitalization was also similar (incidence rate ratio = 0.97, 95% CI = 0.78-1.19, P = 0.744). Results were unchanged when analyzing only patients treated after introduction of RIS-LAI.

CONCLUSIONS
In this nationwide cohort study, RIS-LAI was not superior to FGA-LAIs regarding time to psychiatric hospitalization, all-cause discontinuation, and duration of hospitalization. Given the cost of hospitalization and second-generation antipsychotic (SGA)-LAIs, these findings require consideration when making treatment choices, but also need to be balanced with the individual relevance of adverse effects/patient centered outcomes. In future, head-to-head trials and additional nationwide database studies including other SGA-LAIs is needed.


At its core, this essay contains a substantiated plea for bringing about conceptual clarity to the notion of "Muslim intellectual", which the frequent and highly ideologically charged public usage of this term seems to distort. In search for a sound analytical concept of "intellectual" first, relevant sociological and philosophical deliberations are highlighted, indicating that both of their notions differ to such an extent that their applicability to academic pursuit must be doubted. Yet, by discussing some considerations by a Study of Islam open to the approaches of the Social Sciences a possible framework for an analytically meaningful concept of "Muslim intellectual" is presented. At the same time, however, arguments are presented for why those contemporary Muslim thinkers who are usually credited with being "Muslim intellectuals" would hardly fit the analytical criteria for such label.


Remote sensing with its advantages of spatial, spectral and temporal availability of data covering large and inaccessible areas within short time has become a very handy tool in assessing, monitoring and conserving groundwater resources. Satellite data provides quick and useful baseline information on the parameters like geology, geomorphology, land use/land cover, lineaments etc. controlling the occurrence and movement of groundwater (Saraf and Choudhuray, 1998). Remote sensing and GIS technology have opened new paths in groundwater studies. The concept of integrated remote sensing and GIS has proved to be an efficient tool in integrating urban planning and ground water studies. Hydrogeomorphological studies coupled with hydrogeological and structural/lineament have proved to be very effective tool to discern ground water potential zones. In the present study, an attempt has been made to identify the Ground Water Prospect sites in the Lower Sanjai Watershed of Kolhan Division of Jharkhand based on remote sensing and GIS techniques. The groundwater prospect map is a systematic effort and has been prepared considering major controlling factors, which influence the water yield and quality of ground water. The map depicts hydrogeomorphological aspects, which are essential as basis for planning and execution of groundwater exploration. The present information, depicted in the form of a prospect map would provide firsthand information to local authorities and planners about the areas suitable for searching ground water followed by its suitable exploration based on information given for type of well, well depth, water quality and success rate of wells.


Background Environmental pollutants such as polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), lead, and mercury are released by combustion of coal and other fossil fuels. Objectives In the present study we evaluated the association between prenatal exposure to these pollutants and child development measured by the Gesell Developmental Schedules at 2 years of age. Methods The study was conducted in Tongliang, Chongqing, China, where a seasonally operated coal-fired power plant was the major source of ambient PAHs and also contributed lead and mercury to the air. In a cohort of nonsmoking women and their newborns enrolled between March 2002 and June 2002, we measured levels of PAH–DNA adducts, lead, and mercury in umbilical cord blood. PAH–DNA adducts (specifically benzo[a]pyrene adducts) provided a biologically relevant measure of PAH exposure. We also obtained developmental quotients (DQs) in motor, adaptive, language, and social areas. Results Decrements in one or more DQs were significantly associated with cord blood levels of PAH–DNA adducts and lead, but not mercury. Increased adduct levels were associated with decreased motor area DQ (p = 0.043), language area DQ (p = 0.059), and average DQ (p = 0.047) after adjusting for cord lead level, environmental tobacco smoke, sex, gestational age, and maternal education. In the same model, high cord blood lead level was significantly associated with decreased social area DQ (p = 0.009) and average DQ (p = 0.038). Conclusion The findings indicate that exposure to pollutants from the power plant adversely affected the development of children living in Tongliang; these findings have implications for environmental health policy.


This paper introduces a theory-based approach to design for mood regulation. The main proposition is that design can best influence mood by enabling and stimulating people to engage in a broad range of mood-regulating activities. The first part of the manuscript reviews state-of-the art mood-focused design research initiatives, grouped into four basic intentions, exploring how technology can measure, express, adapt to, or influence mood. The second part provides a functional explanation of the mood phenomenon, addressing how mood can be described, the function of mood, manifestations of mood, and how mood differs from emotion. The third and final part of the manuscript introduces an overview of novel mood-regulation strategies, and explores how these strategies can inspire design interventions. Twenty activity-based opportunities to design for mood regulation are grouped into three main focal categories: seeking relief, restoring balance, and building resilience.


Diabetes mellitus is a chronic disease associated with development of microvascular and macrovascular complications. Optimal glycemic control, usually measured by HbA1c is the cornerstone for prevention of complications.
In this thesis glycemic variability (which resembles actual glucose levels, glucose peaks and nadirs) and advanced glycation end products (AGEs) (a more long-term reflection of hyperglycemia and tissue glycation) are investigated as alternative assessment of glycemic control.
In this thesis we suggest the parameter to measure glycemic variability to be standard deviation of blood glucose (SD), because we showed strong correlations with the other parameters of glycemic control.
Glycemic variability is higher in type 1 diabetes compared to type 2 diabetes, probably caused by different progression rates of these diseases. In patients with type 2 diabetes glycemic variability increased to levels comparable with type 1 diabetes after approximately 20 years of insulin therapy. This emphasizes that large glycemic variability is not only present in type 1 diabetes, but also an important feature of (longstanding) type 2 diabetes on insulin therapy.
Glycemic variability was associated with more diabetes distress, measured by the disease-specific Problem Areas in Diabetes Scale (PAID), especially in the domains of the PAID questionnaire concerned with diabetes-related emotional problems and treatment-related problems. This emphasize glycemic variability as a clinical treatment target.
Two theoretical possibilities to reduce glycemic variability are intervention in the incretin pathway and real-time glucose monitoring, which enables patients to react to glucose excursions immediately and thereby reduce glucose excursions. The ability of this device was shown in our review.
We investigated intervention in the incretin system in our small randomized study with addition of vildagliptin to start of once-daily insulin therapy. However, due to a small sample size, we could not prove that vildalgiptin reduced glycemic variability by glucose dependent improved beta cell function and alpha cell function.
Measurement of accumulation of AGEs can provide information about hyperglycemia for a much longer period of time than HbA1c. AGEs are modified (i.e. glycated) long-lived tissue proteins that accumulate in body tissue during aging and accelerated accumulation is seen in patients with diabetes. AGE-accumulation can easily be assessed non-invasively by the AGE-reader (measured as skin autofluorescence (SAF)).
We showed associations of AGE accumulation with all different diabetes complications and with increasing number of these complications. SAF was associated not only with neuropathy and nephropathy, but also linearly with the severity of these complications. SAF was also associated with retinopathy, albeit dependent on the stage of retinopathy (the association was only found for proliferative retinopathy).
The use of the AGE-reader was never investigated in gestational diabetes mellitus. We found no difference in SAF in patients diagnosed with gestational diabetes compared to normal pregnancy, therefore the AGE-reader cannot be used to detect gestational diabetes.
In contrast we did show that SAF was higher in pregnant patients with pre-existent diabetes. Moreover, it was unexpectedly found in this study that SAF slightly decreased in normal pregnancy in contrast to pregnancy complicated by diabetes.


Sets of beach ridge plains located as far as ten kilometres inland at the Chumphon estuary area, southern peninsular Thailand, provide evidence of an ancient sea-level change. Relict coastal landforms including former beach ridge plains, old lagoons, swales, and former tidal flats between beach ridges are found inland at elevations of 1-5 m above the present sea level. Ancient beach ridges here comprise three sets and all are inferred to have been deposited during the Holocene. The orientation of the inner beach ridge plains confirms their deposition by south to north longshore currents, whereas the middle and outer ridges were probably formed by north-to-south currents. Grain size analysis shows that all ancient beach ridge deposits are similar and are composed of fine- to medium-grained sand with high sphericity. Likewise, the compositions are similar, with quartz as a major component and feldspar and ferromagnesian minerals as minor components, reflecting the same sediment provenance. Marine fossils found in the former tidal deposit indicate intertidal and mangrove environments. Optical stimulating luminescence dating of three sets of beach ridge plains indicate that deposition occurred 8900-5600, 5900-2700, and 3800-1600 years ago for inner, middle, and outer beach ridge plains, respectively.


This chapter analyzes the discourse of two English-language discussion forums with different themes – weight management and dogs – in order to demonstrate how pragmatic functions (e.g., greeting, providing encouragement, requesting information, scolding) can be expressed by a range of linguistic structures. The analysis is theoretically grounded in Lave and Wenger's (1991) view that learning should ideally be socioculturally situated within a Community of Practice (CoP). As such, the concept of the traditional (i.e., offline) CoP is contrasted with the hierarchy, norms, rules, and structures that exist in online communities. This type of contrast is vital to an understanding of online vs. offline social and cultural practices since some of the constructs (e.g., gatekeeping, explicit vs. implicit socialization) are fundamentally different. This chapter thus draws attention to the importance of considering participation and socialization of L2 learners in authentic contexts consistent within recent broad-based theoretical and empirical discussions in SLA (Hall, Cheng, a Carlson, 2006; Kasper, 2001; Kramsch, a Whiteside, 2007; Lafford, 2007; Swain a Deters, 2007). Findings show that CoPs can indeed be created online. Moreover, message boards are effective tools for language teachers and language learners.


Isosphaera pallida (ex Woronichin 1927) Giovannoni et al. 1995 is the type species of the genus Isosphaera. The species is of interest because it was the first heterotrophic bacterium known to be phototactic, and it occupies an isolated phylogenetic position within the Planctomycetaceae. Here we describe the features of this organism, together with the complete genome sequence and annotation. This is the first complete genome sequence of a member of the genus Isosphaera and the third of a member of the family Planctomycetaceae. The 5,472,964 bp long chromosome and the 56,340 bp long plasmid with a total of 3,763 protein-coding and 60 RNA genes are part of the GenomicEncyclopedia ofBacteria andArchaea project.


Plants attacked by herbivorous insect pests can bring out their own chemical defenses but also can call in "bodyguards," predators that prey on the first round of pests. Volatile compounds are important in this signaling triangle. Kappers et al. have now engineered Arabidopsis to produce the volatile compounds necessary to call in such bodyguards by targeting terpenoid metabolism. I. F. Kappers, A. Aharoni, T. W. J. M. van Herpen, L. L. P. Luckerhoff, M. Dicke, H. J. Bouwmeester, Genetic engineering of terpenoid metabolism attracts bodyguards to Arabidopsis. Science 309, 2070-2072 (2005). [Abstract] [Full Text]


Higher requirements for improved quality of products and services have led to three important changes in international business over the last decade: (i) the growing recognition of the strategic importance of Total Quality Management (TQM) philosophy and methods; (ii) a major push by organisations worldwide to seek certification to the ISO 9000 quality standards; (iii) the growing recognition and application of the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award (MBNQA); the Australian Quality Award (AQA), and the European Quality Award (EQA). Despite the above developments, there is still considerable confusion and frustration surrounding the applied role and business value of quality management practices in Australian industry. A review of the literature revealed a major gap in research in this area of operations/quality management. The purpose of the paper is to evaluate the results of three empirical studies conducted in 1991, 1993 and 1996 on the adoption of quality management practices in Australian manufacturing organisations. Quantitative studies were conducted primarily on large random populations of approximately 1,000 manufacturing companies in Australia. The average response rate for the three studies was 30 per cent. The data was analysed using techniques available on SPSS for Windows. Our findings show that there has been a shift in popularity in quality management practices in the Australian manufacturing industry over the last five years. The popularity of TQM and its related practices such as statistical process control (SPC), quality circles (QC), benchmarking, business process reengineering (BPR), had decreased, while the popularity of ISO 9000 certification has increased significantly. A paradox has emerged from this fmding. On one hand, business performance was found to be enhanced by the implementation of all TQM related practices. On the other hand, ISO 9000 certified firms did not perform significantly better than fums that were not certified, and yet there has been a shift away from TQM practice to ISO 9000 certification. This raises the question: why are managers so keen on ISO 9000 certification? The study concludes that managers are impatient with the rate of improvement of organisational performance from the implementation of quality management practices. This has led to the belief that gaining a certificate to ISO 9000 is synonymous to becoming a quality organisation. This is a clear indication that managers lack understanding of the concepts and principles of quality management and are frustrated with the slow bottom-line payback from the implementation of quality management practices. Based on these fmdings, the paper recommends that managers should improve their understanding of quality management practices and the sources of their organisation's quality performance. This will lead to quality management being perceived as a philosophy rather than tools and techniques for problem solving at the shop-floor level.


This thesis explores constructions of the Arctic as a literal and symbolic white space through an investigation of two films: John Akomfrah's The Nine Muses (2010) and Isaac Julien's True North (2004). Framed within the context of Euro-American constructions of the territory through 19th and 20th century imperial masculine exploration narratives, my aim is to challenge dominant representations of the territory as a 'blank', 'silent' and 'stainless' racialised landscape by examining the political and aesthetic strategies at play in the respective films. This research argues that these artworks simultaneously reclaim the Arctic from an exclusively white history and renegotiate the territory's position within postcolonial discourse. Taking into consideration fresh global focus on the region in line with political ecologies and neocolonial collusions for ownership, this thesis is anchored by my aim to scrutinise how the Arctic territories are visualised, positing that this ultimately dictates how the space is navigated and interacted with on an international scale.

If we understand the Arctic to have been constructed as a white history about white men in a white space, then the non-white figure is an anomaly, eradicated and obscured from visual, literal and political representations. This research discusses the significance of Akomfrah and Julien's films for the development of critical whiteness studies and is driven by the following key questions: what do the films reveal for ideas of northernness, remote landscapes of exclusion and constructed hierarchies of racial whiteness through the colonial encounter; is the placement of the black body within what Jen Hill terms the 'heart of whiteness' (2008: 1) playing with the notion of what appears incongruous in a landscape? Does the visual and conceptual black-white binary – a prominent feature in both films – function as Marc Black terms 'multilateral double consciousness' (2007: 393) wherein, in place of one side dominating the other in the traditional sense of the postcolonial understanding of binarism, each side operates to reveal something for the other, blackness revealing whiteness and whiteness revealing blackness? Drawing all of these seemingly disparate threads together, this thesis presents an exploration of the interrelation of whiteness, aesthetics, futurism and the emergent field of critical Arctic studies.


Book synopsis: A focus on memory has come to prominence across a wide range of disciplines. History, literature, philosophy, anthropology, and cultural studies have placed memory at the heart of their interrogations of subjectivity, narrative, time and imagination. At the same time, memory has emerged as a central theme and preoccupation in popular literature, film and television, and the emergence of memory as an academic theme cannot be separated from its prominence in the wider culture. This volume represents, explores and interrogates the current developments, engaging directly with the place of memory in culture, and with memory's meaning's and history.


ABSTRACT This study evaluated the psychometric properties of two possible measures of depression and anxiety among pregnant women in Pakistan for use in the Global Network for Women's and Children's Health Research project, a collaborative, international multi-site research network investigating methods for improving pregnancy and birth outcomes in developing countries. The first measure, the Aga Khan University Anxiety and Depression Scale (AKUADS), is an Urdu language scale originally developed for the general Pakistani population, whereas the second measure, the How I Feel scale, was designed for pregnant women in the United States. In an earlier pilot study, we found that the two scales demonstrated similar levels of diagnostic validity. Because neither scale was designed for the specific population of interest, item response theory analyses were conducted to evaluate the psychometric properties of the scales at three levels of measurement: scale, item, and response option. The study results provide insights that may be useful to researchers or clinicians developing or using scales in this population. In particular, our findings suggest that scales designed for populations with lower literacy, such as our target population, may improve data quality by including no more than three response options (e.g., almost always, sometimes, and never) and keeping the direction of item wording consistent throughout the scale. Based on the results from the current study, we recommend a short form of the AKUADS which removes poorly functioning items and reduces respondent burden while retaining the reliability and validity of the longer form.


There is an urgent need to make cisplatin (cDDP) more effective and less toxic in the treatment of ovarian cancer for its systemic side effects and high resistance rate. In this study, we investigated the effect of quercetin (Qu) pretreatment on the potentiation of cDDP in ovarian cancer. We found that Qu pretreatment significantly enhanced cDDP cytotoxicity in an ovarian cancer cell line and primary cancer cells. In addition, we demonstrated that Qu elicited obvious endoplasmic reticulum stress (ERS) and activated all three branches of ERS in ovarian cancer. Specific inhibitors of each ERS pathway, as well as the general ERS stabilizer tauroursodeoxycholic acid, notably diminished such enhancing effects. Furthermore, Qu notably suppressed STAT3 phosphorylation, leading to downregulation of the BCL‐2 gene downstream of STAT3. Moreover, blocking ERS restored the protein levels of phosphorylated STAT3 as well as BCL‐2 expression, thus abolishing the chemosensitization potency of Qu; these results revealed that Qu affected the STAT3 pathway to enhance cDDP cytotoxicity, and this effect involved ERS signaling. In a xenograft mouse model of ovarian cancer, Qu enhanced the antitumor effect of cDDP. Tumors from mice treated with cDDP in combination with Qu pretreatment had repressed STAT3 phosphorylation, lower BCL‐2 and higher apoptosis levels compared with those from the other groups. Meanwhile, Qu markedly reduced the elevation of blood creatinine during cDDP intervention. These data indicate that Qu pretreatment potentiates the antitumor effects of cDDP in ovarian cancer while protecting the kidneys against damage. Therefore the strategy of Qu pretreatment may be beneficial in enhancing the therapeutic efficacy of cDDP against ovarian cancer.


The Cairo Geniza is the largest and richest store of documentary evidence for the medieval Islamic world. This book seeks to revolutionize the way scholars use that treasure trove. Phillip I. Ackerman-Lieberman draws on legal documents from the Geniza to reconceive of life in the medieval Islamic marketplace. In place of the shared practices broadly understood by scholars to have transcended confessional boundaries, he reveals how Jewish merchants in Egypt employed distinctive trading practices. Highly influenced by Jewish law, these commercial practices served to manifest their Jewish identity in the medieval Islamic context. In light of this distinctiveness, Ackerman-Lieberman proposes an alternative model for using the Geniza documents as a tool for understanding daily life in the medieval Islamic world as a whole.


Within the last decade, much has been written on the impending impact of the Human Genome Project on human health. A typical perspective was offered in 1995 as part of the submission of the Royal College of Physicians to the Science and Technology Committee of the U.K. House of Commons. In describing the future contribution of genetics to medical practice it was stated that, 'The process has scarcely begun and may not have a major clinical impact for many years; however it represents the change from empirical to rational management of disease and hence its significance can hardly be exaggerated'. Clearly, any body of knowledge that could effect such a change would be of global importance, and if this and similar predictions prove to be correct, they would match in significance the revolution in medical practice provoked by the anatomical discoveries of the Renaissance period.

The Human Genome Project was initiated in 1991, and by 2001, the first consensus sequence of the human genome was simultaneously published by publicly supported researchers (International Human Genome Sequencing Consortium 2001) and the privately financed Celera Genomics (Venter et al. 2001). Access to the growing database on genome structure and function made available through the Human Genome Project has greatly assisted medical researchers, and as a result, by March 2003 over 14,000 single gene disorders affecting both the human nuclear and mitochondrial genomes had been identified (OMIM 2003).

 Of itself, the recognition of specific and often very rare mutations is unlikely to change medical practice or to impinge on the everyday lives of the vast majority of the world's population. Data on the contribution of predisposing genes to common diseases is still rudimentary, and there is limited information on non-biological factors that influence the genetic structure of human populations and thereby govern the distribution and transmission of disease mutations. An appreciation of the importance of these topics has, however, gradually been emerging, accompanied by the establishment of two new academic disciplines, Community Genetics and Public Health Genetics. The aim of this article is to briefly review the potential influence and effects of these changes on the future profile of genetic disease in industrialized and developing countries.


Cyber-physical systems pose unique deliberation challenges, where complex strategies must be autonomously derived and executed in the physical world, relying on continuous state representations and subject to safety and security constraints. Robots are a typical example of cyber-physical systems where high-level decisions must be reconciled with motion-level decisions in order to provide guarantees on the validity and efficiency of the plan.In this work we propose techniques to refine a high-level plan into a continuous state trajectory. The refinement is done by translating a high-level plan into a nonlinear optimization problem with constraints that can encode the intrinsic limitations and dynamics of the system as well as the rules for its continuous control. The refinement process either succeeds or yields an explanation that we exploit to refine the search space of a domain-independent task planner. We evaluate our approach on existing PDDL+ benchmarks and on a more realistic and challenging rover navigation problem.


Abstract
In the UK, up to six million tonnes of potatoes are produced annually and more than half of this production is stored for the fresh market and food processing. To maintain potato quality from sprouting, chlorpropham (CIPC) is currently used as the main sprout suppressant in commercial potato stores. Questions have been raised about the safety of application of this compound in potato stores due to increasing concern about the toxicity of its residue and degradation products mainly 3-chloroaniline (3-CA) on the potato tubers. To date, there is no realistic replacement of CIPC for inhibiting sprouting of potatoes destined for processing. Searching for alternatives is crucial particularly as most supermarkets demand foods free of chemicals. The sprout inhibitor 1,4-dimethylnaphthalene (1,4-DMN) can be a suitable replacement for CIPC as it is naturally occurring in the potato and currently used in many countries in the world. To introduce this compound to the UK for commercial use, many investigations must be conducted to ensure its safety for human health and the environment. This study intended to focus on the determination of the residue level of 1,4-DMN, CIPC and its metabolite 3-CA in potato and water samples, hence developing analytical methods was required as a preliminary step.
In this study, three HPLC systems were used for validating a separation method for the analysis of 1,4-dimethylnaphthalene and its internal standard 2-methylnaphthalene (2-MeN). Under the same chromatographic conditions, all these systems achieved excellent separation on a Jones-ODS column (Hypersil ODS 5 µm, 250 mm x 4.6 mm) at ambient temperature isocratically using 70% acetonitrile as mobile phase at a flow rate of 1.5 mL/min, 20 µL injection volume, a run time of 10 minutes and a detection wavelength of 228 nm. All three systems showed high precision (RSD% < 1%), good linearity of the calibration curves at two concentration ranges (0.02 – 0.1 and 0.2 – 1.0 µg/mL) of each 1,4-DMN and 2-MeN with coefficient of determination (R2) of the regression line of 0.990 or more. The best system SpectraSERIES UV100-autosampler system was selected for the remainder of this research as it offered lower values for both the limit of detection (LOD) (0.001 – 0.004 µg/mL) and the limit of quantification (LOQ) (0.002 – 0.013 µg/mL) for both compounds.
A second isocratic reversed phase HPLC-UV method was developed and validated for analysis of 1,4-DMN and 2-MeN using methanol as a substitute solvent for standards and mobile phase preparations to overcome the problem of a global shortage of acetonitrile during 2008 – 2009. The best separation was achieved on the Phenomenex® (ODS-2 250 mm x 4.60 mm 5 µm Sphereclone) column using 90% methanol as mobile phase at a flow rate of 1.5 mL/min and a 6 minute run time. The method was validated producing good precision, linearity and low values of LOQ (~ 0.001 µg/mL).
A straightforward and rapid isocratic HPLC-UV method was developed and validated for the simultaneous analysis of both CIPC and its degradation product 3-CA using methanol as a solvent and propham (IPC) as an internal standard. To achieve high resolution of the three compounds, the chromatographic conditions selected were: Phenomenex® column (ODS-2 250 mm x 4.60 mm 5 µm Sphereclone), 62% methanol at a flow rate of 1.5 mL/min, detection wavelength of 210 nm and a 15 minute run time. Method validation confirmed good precision, acceptable linearity and low values of LOD (~ 0.01 µg/mL) and LOQ (~ 0.04 µg/mL) for CIPC and 3-CA. These proposed HPLC methods are suitable to apply for the determination of the studied compounds in both potatoes and water samples.
Quantitative laboratory analysis of 1,4-DMN, 2-MeN , CIPC and 3-CA in water solutions showed acceptable standard preparations in water with good precision and linearity and lower values of LOD and LOQ close to those obtained in organic solvent preparations. An adsorption study of 1,4-DMN and 2-MeN on laboratory ware showed that glass materials were acceptable to use whereas there was a considerable adsorption to plastic containers and filters. In contrast, 3-CA showed no adsorption onto any of the laboratory ware tested. CIPC also showed good recoveries with most of the materials tested.
In reviewing the literature, no suitable published method for the simultaneous determination of CIPC and its metabolite 3-CA in potato peel was found. A simple analytical method was developed based on methanol-soaking overnight extraction coupled with HPLC-UV for analysis of CIPC and 3-CA in potato samples using IPC as internal standard. The method was validated and the calculated limit of quantification was 0.01, 0.05 and 0.02 µg/g in whole tuber for CIPC, IPC and 3-CA respectively. The efficiency of the method reported recovery values of up to 90% for both CIPC and IPC through spiking organic potato peel at three spiking levels of 0.8, 8.0 and 80 µg/g. By contrast, 3-CA recoveries offered very low values of 10 and 23% at concentration levels of 8.0 and 80 µg/g respectively and no peak was detected at the lower level of 0.8 µg/g. This method was compared with the routine Soxhlet-GC method used for the analysis of the residues of CIPC in potato samples at the University of Glasgow laboratory and gave results approximately 23% higher residues of CIPC. This new method at this stage was suitable to extract CIPC in 20 potato samples daily. Nevertheless, an interesting finding was that despite the low recovery of 3-CA it was identified in treated potato samples. This unanticipated low recovery is noteworthy and indicates that the actual residue may be much higher.
A comprehensive study was made to improve the extractability of 3-CA from potato samples investigating parameters including potato variety, extracting solvent, extraction method, spiking procedure and different treatments for potato samples. All these experimental trials showed no recovery improvements, thus four possible mechanisms were suggested for poor recovery of 3-CA including volatilisation, reaction with potato components, enzymatic activity and ion exchange related to pH.
Under the laboratory work experimental conditions, no measurable loss of 3-CA by volatilisation was found. No reaction of 3-CA was found to occur with other potato components under the experimental conditions used. However, the Schiff base reaction and/or hydrogen bonding may link the amino group of 3-CA and some functional groups abundant in potatoes (e.g. carbonyl, quinone). This study also showed a potential role for enzymatic activity in the poor recovery of 3-CA. Using antioxidants or acidity to inhibit this enzymatic activity was shown to enhance the extractability of 3-CA. Binding of 3-CA to potato peel substrates by ion exchange is unlikely as the pKa value of 3-CA is lower than the pH of the potato. However, using sulphuric acid combined with methanol as an extracting solution improved the recovery. Optimising the extraction process showed that using a mixture of 1 M H2SO4 in 50% methanol as an extracting solution for 24 hours at 50 oC improved the extraction recovery of 3-CA up to 85%. This final extraction method was applied for the determination of the residues of both CIPC and 3-CA in commercial potato samples which had received many applications of CIPC, thus reporting high residue values. Additionally, potato samples were taken from different UK stores for the storage season 2010 – 2011 which had received CIPC application at high and low temperature (450 oC and 270 oC respectively) fogging. Analysis of these potato samples showed no significant difference between high and low temperature for the first application of CIPC for both residues of 3-CA and CIPC. A significant increase in both compounds was found between the first and second application at 270 oC indicating a possible build up with time during storage.


Lablab purpureus (L.) Sweet is a common bean in Asia. High protein content and similar amino acid composition with soybean makes good substitutes against dependency on imported products in Asian countries. One example of a bean product is vegetable milk. Fortification is executed to create a product, which compels our diet. Many people experience low protein and mineral intake from food. Fortification of plant origin products utilizing food waste by-products, namely eggshell waste by-product, may give an opportunity on this field. Milk created using beans is processed immediately. However, physiological process (germination) is capable of increasing its nutrition quality. This research focuses on variation of germination time: 0, 12, 24, 36, and 48 h. Protein digestibility is selected as the main parameter to consider the time. Protein, and mineral content, pH, and total soluble solid content of the milk are analyzed. Germination time of 36 h establishes sprout with digestible protein of 13.36 ± 0.59 g/100 g, milk protein content of 7.21 ± 0.06 g/100 g, pH of 6.74 ± 0.17, and total soluble solid content of 19.0 brix. The addition of eggshell extracted calcium as calcium fortification is 2% w/v, which resulted in mineral content of 276 ± 0.13 mg/100 g.


This case study presents a cocurricular initiative at the Margery Somers Foster Center at Rutgers University Libraries in New Brunswick, NJ. The initiative resulted in an interview workshop for the course Knowledge and Power, a "mission course" of the Douglass Residential College. This discussion-based workshop uses visual and multimedia resources to teach useful skills for conducting meaningful interviews, develops deeper understanding of an interview as a two-way social interaction composed of listening and talking, cultivates ethnographic and cultural sensitivity, and empowers students to critically engage with visual forms of communication and the meanings of media. The workshop familiarizes students with concepts of visual literacy and prepares them for their main assignment—an interview of a woman leader. It is one example of the active role librarians and libraries can play in student learning and knowledge production


This paper extends our previous work on Asia, adding a separate analysis of Chinese domestic stocks. We looked across 2,300 stocks in China (a subset of our prior universe of 13,000 stocks across Asia) over 10 years and randomly selected stocks for inclusion in equally weighted portfolios that were held for one year and then were reselected based on the new year's investable universe. In China we found that 10 stocks removed 67% of unsystematic risk. Moreover in China, adding additional stocks put heavier downward pressure on returns than in Asia. Hence we argue that to diversify risk and still maintain a good chance of outperforming the market, 8 stocks were enough in China, slightly lower than our prior finding of 10 stocks in Asia.


Background and Hypothesis: Childhood obesity rates in the United States are at historic highs. In Lake County, Indiana, the obesity rates of WIC children ages 2-5 years old is 12.1%. Obesity management is left in the hands of practitioners' clinical judgment; yet, a survey found that the average medical school devotes less than 20 hours to nutrition education. Since 62% of patients believe that their physicians can help them lose weight, having physicians who are not educated on nutrition leaves patients without the help they need. Surveys were developed to assess the level of nutrition counseling provided by physicians and how patients/guardians prefer to be educated. Our hypothesis is that pediatricians will benefit from further nutrition education and that guardians will desire an accessible online source.
Methods: A physician survey was composed to determine how much nutrition education pediatricians received in medical school/residency and how they currently educate their patients. The goal of the guardian survey was to determine who in the household feeds the children and how they would prefer to receive education.
Results: The surveys will be utilized for future research, and the results will help determine the approach for educating physicians and guardians. A booklet of healthy recipes was also developed to educate on healthy eating and as a participation benefit. The goal of the booklet was to choose easy, child friendly recipes that the family could cook together. To gain background on nutrition education, we observed the different education methods of local pediatricians and reviewed the literature.
Potential Impact: Intervention at both the clinical and community levels will be important for improving long-term health outcomes in pediatric patients. The knowledge gained from these surveys will aide in the development of programs needed to provide physicians, guardians, and patients with proper nutrition education.


This paper, which is based on a corpus of contemporary Australian English, investigates the structural and communicative properties of extraposed clause constructions. Such constructions will often be superficially similar to right-dislocated constructions, but are generally distinguishable from these on structural, communicative and prosodie grounds. If there are no grammatical factors impeding extraposition (such as a matrix predicate containing a subordinate clause or an identified complement), then finite and infinitival clauses may be freely extraposed. Present-participials, which are more highly nominalised, extrapose less freely. The matrix predicate, which typically expresses an 'objectified epistemic or moral judgement, exhibits a variety of structural patterns. Dominant among these is the 'Subject~Predicator~Predicative Complement' pattern, with the complement most commonly realised as an adjectival phrase.Three communicative factors which influence extraposition may be identified: 'weight*, information, and theme. The data suggest that there is strong pressure in English to avoid sentences with a clause as subject in initial position and a comparatively light matrix predicate in final position. Non-extraposed sentences with a clausal subject in fact require special rhetorical and/or cohesive motivation, their infrequent occurrence reflecting the preferred 'given - before -new' ordering found in English. Just as important as the end-positioning of material in extraposition is the initialisation of an expression of the speaker's angle, enabling it to serve as the theme.


Linear sketching is a powerful tool for the problem of sparse signal recovery, having numerous applications such as compressive sensing, data stream computing, graph sketching, and routing. Motivated by applications where the positions of the non-zero entries in a sparse vector are of primary interest, we consider the problem of support recovery from a linear sketch taking the form $\Yv = \Xv\beta + \Zv$. We focus on a widely-used expander-based construction in the columns of the measurement matrix $\Xv \in \RR^{n \times p}$ are random permutations of a sparse binary vector containing $d \ll n$ ones and $n-d$ zeros. We provide a sharp characterization of the number of measurements required for an information-theoretically optimal decoder, thus permitting a precise comparison to the i.i.d. Gaussian construction. Our findings reveal both positive and negative results, showing that the performance nearly matches the Gaussian construction at moderate-to-high noise levels, while being worse by an arbitrarily large factor at low noise levels.


A novel porous and spherical hydroxyapatite (HA) microcomposite with an average diameter of 50–100 μm was produced by suspension polymerization for the adsorption of human immunoglobulin G (IgG). The specific surface area of the pure HA and HA microcomposite were found to be 80.25 and 182.53 m2/g, respectively. Characterizations were performed with X-ray diffraction, Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy, thermogravimetric analysis, and scanning electron microscopy analysis. The swelling ratio of the spherical HA microcomposites was 170%. The maximum adsorption of IgG from aqueous solution was observed at pH 7.0 (5 mM phosphate buffer) and at 45°C in a batch system in which parallel separate experiments were performed independently. An IgG adsorption capacity value of up to 140 mg/g was obtained for the HA microcomposite. The IgG molecules could be repeatedly adsorbed and desorbed through the use of spherical microcomposites without a noticeable loss in the IgG adsorption capacity. © 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J. Appl. Polym. Sci. 130: 2764–2771, 2013


This paper describes how any theory which assigns propositions to conditional sentences can be lifted to the setting of inquisitive semantics, where antecedents and consequents may be associated with multiple propositions. We show that the lifted account improves on the original account in two ways: first, it leads to a better analysis of disjunctive antecedents, which are treated as introducing multiple assumptions; second, it extends the original account to cover two further classes of conditional constructions, namely, unconditionals and conditional questions.


BACKGROUND
Intra Operative Nerve Monitoring (IONM) has been used in head and neck surgery since the 1970s. Its utilization for monitoring and protecting the recurrent laryngeal nerve, however, is a controversial subject. This paper details the use, value, and cost of this technology within a single institution.

METHODS
We conducted a retrospective chart review, analysis of surgery time with and without IONM, analysis of postoperative vocal cord function, and review of the literature

RESULTS
IONM did not reduce the operative time during total thyroidectomies in our experience. Use of IONM increased the cost of each surgery by € 450. IONM did not decrease the number of injured nerves (postoperative paresis).

CONCLUSIONS
IONM has proven to be highly useful in certain circumstances but has not been definitively proven to protect the nerve any more effectively than the gold standard of nerve visualization. In our study, the use of IONM did not reduce the time of thyroid surgery and did increase the cost. While IONM may, in special clinical circumstances such as revision and malignant thyroid surgery, increase the value of the operation, its use for every thyroid surgery does not appear to be cost effective or valuable to the patient.


Over the last 10 years much has been written about the role of the private sector as part of a more widely-conceived notion of agricultural sector capacity for innovation and development. This paper discusses the emergence of a new class of private enterprise in East Africa that would seem to have an important role in efforts to tackle poverty reduction and food security. These organisations appear to occupy a niche that sits between mainstream for-profit enterprises and the developmental activities of government programmes, NGOs and development projects. This type of enterprise activity is not corporate social responsibility, but an altogether new type of business model that is blending entrepreneurial skills and perspectives with mission statements that seek to both serve the needs of poor customers and address their welfare. The ethos is both "bottom-up" and "bottom-line". This paper classifies these organisations as Development-Relevant Enterprises (DevREs).The experience of the Research into Use (RIU) programme discussed in this paper suggests that supporting these types of entrepreneurial activity may form the basis of a new mode of development assistance aimed at using innovation for both social and economic purposes.


The gun lobby has succeeded in focusing the gun debate on a narrow, oversimplified question: "If a criminal attacked you, wouldn't you prefer to have a gun to protect yourself?" The easy answer for most people would be an emphatic "Yes!" A prominent example of what is called in this article the "Wouldn't you want a gun if attacked?" argument was the gun lobby's response to the Sandy Hook Elementary School mass shooting in Newtown, Connecticut in 2012. The National Rifle Association (NRA) held a press conference shortly after the attack in which it called on the federal government to put armed guards in every school, with Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre stating, "The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun." The argument is a red herring, a diversion that leads us off track and blinds us to the need for comprehensive strategies to address the complex, polycentric issues of gun violence in America. Even setting aside the crucial distinction between "having a gun" and being able to access and use it effectively in response to an imminent attack, whether one would prefer to have a gun if attacked by a criminal is not the real question, any more than would be, "If a criminal shot you with a gun stolen from your neighbor's car, would you prefer your neighbor didn't store an unsecured gun in his car?" Put differently, these are but two of many questions relevant to rationally weighing the risks and utilities of guns and formulating gun policy in America. In his article, Firearms Policy and the Black Community: An Assessment of the Modern Orthodoxy, Professor Nicholas Johnson pursues a version of the "Wouldn't you want a gun if attacked?" argument particularized to black communities. Johnson uses the article as a platform for opposing black leaders who support gun regulation while essentially advocating for a "more guns" approach to violence in black communities. The "more guns" argument has two distinct strands: the deterrence argument that more guns result in less crime because criminals wish to avoid confronting armed citizens and the immediate self-defense argument. Johnson discusses and endorses the deterrence strand, but focuses on the argument that residents of black communities would benefit from owning and carrying guns to protect themselves against imminent threats. This reply article highlight structural and rhetorical issues in Johnson's arguments, but focuses on the reasoning fallacy inherent in concentrating the gun debate on a single, exaggerated utility of guns (i.e., the "Wouldn't you want a gun if attacked?" argument) without fairly considering the offsetting risks or costs. It also asserts we should act quickly as a nation to invest in more research and data-collection pertaining to the causes and prevention of firearms deaths and injuries, including the efficacy of guns for self-defense. Only with current, accurate information — which does not exist due in large part to efforts by the gun lobby to stifle gun research — can governments and individuals make rational firearms choices. The article concludes with a detour from the academic, theoretical world of gun debating to Memphis, Tennessee, one of America's most violent cities.


Tourism is often advocated as a means of poverty reduction in the developing world, despite limited evidence about its effectiveness. There is even less research on tourism's wider effects on standards of living and general inequality in developing countries. This study explores the views of different people involved in tourism development about tourism's contribution to quality of livelihoods and standards of living, and about associated equality and inequality, as a consequence of tourism development in rural Mongolia. Use is made of a critical realist stance and three theoretical approaches: a political ecology, an actor-perspective and a capability approach. Taken in combination, these approaches focus on the macro-level structural aspects of tourism and standards of living, the associated micro-level actor relations, and the relations within and among them. The study explores two case study rural areas with substantial tourism elements: the Lake Hovsgol region and the Gobi Desert region, in northern and southern Mongolia respectively. Qualitative methods were used, including 52 semi-structured, face-to-face and focus group interviews with 61 respondents, participant observation, and analysis of government and agency reports. Analysis of the sources was undertaken using a framework approach. The study findings suggest that tourism's contribution to grassroots people's standards of living was substantial and often accounted for more than half of household incomes, despite the short tourist season. Households with below average standards of living appeared to benefit the least from tourism in comparison to households with average and above average standards of living. It is argued that this relates to the lack of capability of many among the less-well-off to become involved in tourism. It was also shown that people held differing notions of tourism's contribution to inequalities. Tourism had varied environmental, economic and sociocultural burdens and benefits, resulting, for example, in water pollution, deforestation, soil degradation and the alteration of traditional patterns of nomadic culture. Tourism also competed with other economic sectors for natural resources. Tourism's burdens and benefits were influenced by the political economy of state governance, taxation policies, party politics and corruption. Many local actors considered that tourism development led by the private sector had only limited benefits for the host population, while private sector respondents considered it had led to substantial economic benefits. Community-based tourism programmes led by International Development Organisations were sometimes considered less efficient and destabilising in the long run as they created relatively low quality and low expenditure tourism.It was found that individual actors exerted agency and found some room for manoeuvre in order to achieve their goals within the structural constraints. Yet modest grassroots people seem to have been bearing a disproportionately large proportion of the problems or costs of the structural forces. They suffered most from low wages and commodity price inflation, limited access to natural resources due to conservation policies, and a lack of information and opportunities. Yet some of these grassroots people exerted much agency, such as through the use of their informal social networks to make the most of the tourism-related opportunities.


BACKGROUND
 Public health surveillance experts are leveraging user-generated content on social media to track the spread and effects of COVID-19. However, racial and ethnic digital divides, which are disparities among people who have internet access and post on social media, can bias inferences. This bias is particularly problematic in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic because due to structural inequalities, members of racial and ethnic minority groups are disproportionately vulnerable to contracting the virus and to the deleterious economic and social effects from mitigation efforts. Further, important demographic intersections with race and ethnicity, such as gender and age, are rarely investigated in work characterizing social media users; however, they reflect additional axes of inequality shaping differential exposure to COVID-19 and its effects.

 OBJECTIVE
 The aim of this study was to characterize how the race and ethnicity of US adults are associated with their odds of posting COVID-19 content on social media and how gender and age modify these odds.

 METHODS
 We performed a secondary analysis of a survey conducted by the Pew Research Center from March 19 to 24, 2020, using a national probability sample (N=10,510). Respondents were recruited from an online panel, where panelists without an internet-enabled device were given one to keep at no cost. The binary dependent variable was responses to an item asking whether respondents "used social media to share or post information about the coronavirus." We used survey-weighted logistic regressions to estimate the odds of responding in the affirmative based on the race and ethnicity of respondents (white, black, Latino, other race/ethnicity), adjusted for covariates measuring sociodemographic background and COVID-19 experiences. We examined how gender (female, male) and age (18 to 30 years, 31 to 50 years, 51 to 64 years, and 65 years and older) intersected with race and ethnicity by estimating interactions.

 RESULTS
 Respondents who identified as black (odds ratio [OR] 1.29, 95% CI 1.02-1.64; P=.03), Latino (OR 1.66, 95% CI 1.36-2.04; P<.001), or other races/ethnicities (OR 1.33, 95% CI 1.02-1.72; P=.03) had higher odds than respondents who identified as white of reporting that they posted COVID-19 content on social media. Women had higher odds of posting than men regardless of race and ethnicity (OR 1.58, 95% CI 1.39-1.80; P<.001). Among men, respondents who identified as black, Latino, or members of other races/ethnicities were significantly more likely to post than respondents who identified as white. Older adults (65 years or older) had significantly lower odds (OR 0.73, 95% CI 0.57-0.94; P=.01) of posting compared to younger adults (18-29 years), particularly among those identifying as other races/ethnicities. Latino respondents were the most likely to report posting across all age groups.

 CONCLUSIONS
 In the United States, members of racial and ethnic minority groups are most likely to contribute to COVID-19 content on social media, particularly among groups traditionally less likely to use social media (older adults and men). The next step is to ensure that data collection procedures capture this diversity by encompassing a breadth of search criteria and social media platforms.


ABSTRACT The expression of two Enterococcus faecalis extracellular virulence-related proteins, gelatinase (GelE) and serine protease (SprE), has been shown to be positively regulated by the fsr quorum-sensing system. We recently developed a novel system for studying E. faecalis pathogenicity that involves killing of the nematode worm Caenorhabditis elegans and showed that an E. faecalis fsrB mutant (strain TX5266) exhibited attenuated killing. We explore here the role of the fsr/gelE-sprE locus in pathogenicity by comparing results obtained in the nematode system with a mouse peritonitis model of E. faecalis infection. Insertion mutants of fsrA (TX5240) and fsrC (TX5242), like fsrB (TX5266), were attenuated in their ability to kill C. elegans. A deletion mutant of gelE (TX5264) and an insertion mutant of sprE (TX5243) were also attenuated in C. elegans killing, although to a lesser extent than the fsr mutants. Complementation of fsrB (TX5266) with a 6-kb fragment containing the entire fsr locus restored virulence in both the nematode and the mouse peritonitis models. The fsr mutants were not impaired in their ability to colonize the nematode intestine. These data show that extracellular proteases and the quorum-sensing fsr system are important for E. faecalis virulence in two highly divergent hosts: nematodes and mice.


Rolling contact fatigue (RCF) is a very common and costly damage mechanism for rails and wheels. This thesis investigates the influence of combined thermal and mechanical loading on RCF of railway wheels on the basis of numerical predictions. The established computational framework includes heat flux analyses, (two- and three-dimensional) elastoplastic finite element simulations and subsequent RCF life analyses.

The computational framework is employed to quantify the influence of various operational parameters and modelling presumptions such as applied heat and tangential stress characteristics, load application schemes, mesh densities etc. Examples of results include quantifications of how partial slip conditions result in higher plastic strain magnitudes in a thin layer at the wheel tread surface, and differences in material responses between accelerating and braking wheels.

The numerical model was extended to incorporate surface initiated cracks. With the extended model it is shown that 1 mm deep cracks have a substantial influence on the state of stress and strain in the bulk material between surface cracks. Further, comparisons between radial (thermal) and inclined (RCF) surface cracks show that the deformation of significantly inclined cracks (30 degrees) is more severe than that of radial cracks. Further, acceleration is found to give larger crack face displacements. However braking tends to induce tensile residual stresses that open the crack mouth, thus allowing fluid penetration that can promote crack growth. Also thermal loading is found to cause a significant crack mouth opening that is decreased by subsequent rolling contact.

In a final study numerical RCF predictions are compared to full-scale experimental studies carried out at the Railway Technical Research Institute in Japan. Thermal loading tuned towards measurements by thermocameras and thermocouples are introduced in a truncated loading scheme corresponding to the test configuration. Estimated crack initiation life is found to be in good agreement with test results. The investigation also shows the significant influence of the employed material model.

In addition to thermomechanical fatigue analyses, the case of purely thermal fracture has been investigated. This study quantified how the risk of fracture and resulting crack sizes depend on braking conditions and initial surface cracks.

The results of this thesis are believed to be of importance in defining and enforcing sustainable operational conditions and maintenance actions. Further, this thesis provides tools to establish root causes and pertinent mitigating actions when thermomechanical wheel cracking nevertheless occurs.


In real-world decision-making tasks, learning an optimal policy without a trialand-error process is an appealing challenge. When expert demonstrations are available, imitation learning that mimics expert actions can learn a good policy efficiently. Learning in simulators is another commonly adopted approach to avoid real-world trials-and-errors. However, neither sufficient expert demonstrations nor high-fidelity simulators are easy to obtain. In this work, we investigate policy learning in the condition of a few expert demonstrations and a simulator with misspecified dynamics. Under a mild assumption that local states shall still be partially aligned under a dynamics mismatch, we propose imitation learning with horizon-adaptive inverse dynamics (HIDIL) that matches the simulator states with expert states in a H-step horizon and accurately recovers actions based on inverse dynamics policies. In the real environment, HIDIL can effectively derive adapted actions from the matched states. Experiments are conducted in four MuJoCo locomotion environments with modified friction, gravity, and density configurations. Experiment results show that HIDIL achieves significant improvement in terms of performance and stability in all of the real environments, compared with imitation learning methods and transferring methods in reinforcement learning.


This essay takes up questions regarding whether initiative proponents and legislators can defend a law in federal court when the government declines to defend. Looking first at intervention under the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, I argue that neither has the cognizable interest needed to enter an ongoing lawsuit as a party. Yet even if they are allowed to intervene, these would-be defenders of state or federal law cannot take on the government's mantle to satisfy Article III because the government's standing derives from the risk to its enforcement powers, which is an interest that cannot be delegated to others. Nor can they make out any more than a desire to have the law enforced consistent with their views, which is the sort of generalized grievance the Supreme Court has long rejected as a basis for standing. Yet numerous courts have permitted intervention and accorded standing to these types of intervenors, including in the marriage cases before the Supreme Court in the 2012 term. We can understand this unduly generous approach as a part of a larger phenomenon at the crossroads of procedure and judicial legitimacy. In these high-vulnerability contexts, where courts are asked to decide the constitutionality of popular measures, legitimacy concerns, including what I term countermajoritarian anxiety and guilt, permeate procedural decisionmaking and, at times, override otherwise operative procedural constraints.


It was one of the less glorious incidents of a long-ago war. It led to the destruction of two suns and the billions of lives they supported. Now, eight hundred years later, the light from the first of those ancient mistakes has reached the Culture Orbital, Masaq'. The light from the second may not. 'Confirms Banks as the standard by which the rest of SF is judged' GUARDIAN 'In terms of sheer storytelling prowess and verve, Look to Windward is a work of genius' SFX 'A great book' NEW SCIENTIST


Mentoring dates back to Greek mythology with reference to the sharing of wisdom of knowledge and experience. In Hong Kong, mentorship has been a hallmark of the professional development of the teacher-librarians. Following a literature review on mentoring in librarianship, this paper provides an overview highlighting the mentorship development among teacher-librarians in Hong Kong. A discussion on how mentorship shaped the preparation of teacher-librarians leads to an analysis of four issues: (1) a formalized mentoring framework; (2) a systematical approach to observe and assess the impact; (3) training to enhance the competency of teacher-librarians; and (4) re-thinking the commitment to evidence-based practice. While there are complex issues facing the teacher-librarian profession, the author invites the teacher-training institutes to explore their role and participation in facilitating the advancement of teacher-librarianship in Hong Kong which is a pivotal component to nurture information-literate learners for the purpose of knowledge building.