he relative contributions that species assemblages, abiotic variables, and their interactions with one another, make to ecosystem properties are recognised but are seldom considered simultaneously, within context, and at the appropriate spatio-temporal scales. Here, we combine fluorescent time-lapse sediment profile imaging (f-SPI) and diffusion gradient thin gels (DGT) to examine, in situ, the link between an important benthic ecosystem process (bioturbation) and ecosystem functioning (trace metal cycling). We show that the mechanistic basis of how the infaunal community mediate Fe and Mn cycles is difficult to reconcile because of the spatio-temporal differences between particle and porewater mixing. This mismatch means that the consideration of these mechanistic processes in isolation is likely to limit our interpretative capacity of how infaunal communities mediate various biogeochemical processes in the natural environment. Moreover, the combination of multiple technologies, process based simulation modelling and generalised additive statistical modelling achieved here, emphasises the importance of simultaneously considering additional factors that influence benthic chemistry, in particular bioirrigation and tidal flushing of the sediment profile. Our findings highlight a pressing need to determine how the relative importance of multiple abiotic and biotic factors act in concert to alter major biogeochemical pathways across a variety of contexts and habitats.


Every day a huge amount of excreta is being produced by human society and it is also considered one of the most unwanted waste/refuse of the society because of its nuisance and diseases causing characteristics. However, it is also utilised as a fertiliser and soil conditioner in several countries such as India and China. Presently most common sanitation concept is centralised treatment of human excreta containing wastewater, in which a small volume of excreta is being mixed with large volume of water, and transport the mixture to the centralised treatment site employing a costly and complicated sewer network. Disadvantage associated with this process are loss of valuable resource in terms of plant nutrient, energy and water. Therefore, a holistic approach is warranted for human excreta management, which could lead to pollution control, resource recovery and water conservation. Eco-sanitation (separate collection of faeces and urine employing urine diverting toilet) is good option at least for rural setting. In urban areas, flush toilet with recycling facilities of grey water for flushing purpose and subsequently separate decentralise anaerobic digestion of resulting black water would be an optimal compromise for sustainable development.


It has been suggested that the great Italian painter Giorgio de Chirico (1888–1978), who developed the unique style of 'metaphysical art', suffered from migraine and used some of his morbid manifestations as a source of inspiration for his paintings. Yet, whereas many of the symptoms that de Chirico described are rare in migraine, they are frequently encountered in patients with temporal lobe epilepsy. Here we rediscuss de Chirico's symptoms critically and suggest that, if his symptoms were of neurological origin, they rather relate to temporal lobe epilepsy than migraine.


Background: The gliomas represent the most common primary malignant brain tumors; however, little is known about the molecular pathogenesis of these tumors. Recent research reveals that the oncogenesis and development of gliomas have a close relation to the overexpression of several oncogenes and the inactivation of tumor suppressor genes. Whether the RING finger protein, RNF138, a newly discovered protein, plays a role in glioma oncogenesis is unknown. The present study investigates the expression levels of RNF138 mRNA in glioma samples and noncancerous brain samples and its function in the human glioma cell line U251. Methods: RT-PCR was used to ascertain the expression of RNF138 mRNA in the glioma cell lines U251, SHG44, U87, A172, and U373. The RNF138 mRNA expression levels of 35 pathological confirmed glioma samples (Grade I – 4 cases, Grade II – 13 cases, Grade III – 11 cases, and Grade IV – 7 cases) and five noncancerous brain tissue samples were analyzed by real-time quantitative PCR. By RNA interference (RNAi) with the lentivirus vector system, the expression of RNF138 was inhibited in the human astrocytomas-glioblastoma multiforme cell line U251. The effects of RNF138-knockdown on cell proliferation were assessed by Cellomics, and cell cycle and cell apoptosis were assessed by FACS. Results: The RNF138 mRNA is expressed in the five glioma cell lines, and its expression level is significantly higher in glioma tissue than in noncancerous brain tissue. By down-regulation of RNF138 expression, U251 cell proliferation was inhibited and cell apoptosis increased. At the same time, S stage cells lessened and G2 stage cells increased. Conclusion: The RNF138 gene is highly expressed in glioma tissue and glioma cell lines. It plays an important role in glioma cell proliferation, apoptosis, and cell cycle.


Summary
A strain of high virulence of Toxoplasma grows rapidly in HeLa cells and destroys them within a few days. Parasites very often form rosettes or disperse in the cytoplasm of the host cell, which soon bursts and liberates them. The limiting membrane of the vacuole in which the parasites are situated is rather obscure when examined with the light microscope. When observed with the electron microscope the limiting membrane of the vacuole is conspicuous but very thin. Granular, or sometimes filamentous, precipitates are scattered throughout the interior of the vacuole. Cysts are not produced in this type of infection in HeLa cells.
A strain of low virulence of Toxoplasma grows rather slowly in HeLa cells and the cultures survive for a long period (3 weeks or more). Parasites do not form rosettes but make relatively compact clusters, each of which is surrounded by a thick membrane and can be regarded as a cyst. In electron-micrographs the limiting membrane of the vacuole in which the parasites are situated is fairly thick even at the earliest stage of the development of the parasite. There are granular precipitates scattered throughout the interior of the vacuole. They are deposited on the inner surface of the limiting membrane and fuse together to produce an electron-dense cyst wall which is almost homogeneous in structure.
In the mature cyst, the cystic cavity is packed with organisms and the small spaces and interstices between organisms are filled with the same kind of material as that in the cystic membrane. This material between organisms is continuous with the cyst wall and must have been secreted from the body of the parasites as granular or filamentous precipitates that later fuse together to form a homogeneous structure.
The production of the Toxoplasma cyst is largely dependent upon the rate of the reproduction of the parasites. When they grow rapidly, as is the case of the RH strain in HeLa cells or mice, the vacuole in which the parasites are located may soon burst and cysts cannot be produced. When the reproduction is slow, as in the case of the Beverley-strain, the vacuole expands slowly and the precipitates have time enough to be deposited on the inner surface of the vacuole in a thick layer which probably protects the vacuole from rupture. This layer constitutes the cystic wall, and the cyst is thus formed. Immunity, treatment with antitoxoplasmic substances, and natural resistance of the host can all stimulate cyst-production by retarding the rate of reproduction of the parasite.


The aim of this survey was to study the socio-demographic determinants of drug use in sporting activities at an amateur level in Italy. In 2000 a cross-sectional study was carried out in two Italian regions (Latium and Campania). The participants were 1056 athletes (age range: 16-35 years; 660 males and 396 females). The results show that 28.3% thought "doping" was creatine, 14.7% said racemed amino-acids, 5.8% said proteins, 24.7% did not know and finally 35.7% correctly recognised it as growth hormone. When asked if using drugs was acceptable in order to improve sporting performance, significant results were associated with age (OR = 1.64 for 18-24 years old and OR = 2.22 for 25-30 years old); gender (males were more prone to consider them acceptable); type of sport undertaken (OR = 1.34 for athletes who practice team sport); educational level (athletes with an elementary level education are at higher risk), and knowledge of the effects of anabolic agents (OR = 0.6 for athletes with poor knowledge). The findings of our study confirm the need to implement preventive interventions, with a special focus on healthier behaviour, for reducing factors that encourage the use and the willingness to use licit and illicit drugs.


Despite the EU policy and lawmakers' emphasis on the need for Member States to have in place effective reception and integration measures for migrant workers, including support arrangements for those who come to the UK from the Accession States (the 'A8'), in practice it is clear that many new arrivals and their family members experience significant employment and welfare problems after their arrival. This is a problem that is not helped by their inability to access the State support that is generally available to UK and other eligible EEA nationals - for example income replacement when short-term employment ends, and before new employment starts. As the article considers, such difficulties, as well as being rooted in long-standing concerns about 'welfare tourism' are often, in legal terms, status-related. Access to such rights, and a range of other social rights, including social housing, benefits, community care and so forth, require the acquisition and retention of a number of types of 'residence' status based on either EU or UK law. The UK's 'right to reside' regime, restructured after May 2004 and now in the Immigration (EEA) Regulations 2006, and the re-enacted 'habitual residence' test (in the Persons from Abroad Regulations 2006)are controversial, and can act as particularly problematic barriers to support. As the commentary considers, some support schemes have their own specific, and complex, 'residence' tests, including the somewhat bizarre 'ordinary residence' test for tax credits that can treat a person from an Accession state who is living here, but who does not have the 'right to reside', as 'not in the UK'. Such approaches and restrictions are not helped by judicial attitudes when interpreting and applying this developing area of immigration law. This has helped to create what the Swedish government warned about in 2004, namely differential treatment leading to a labour market divided into 'first team' and 'second team' players. In the UK the effects of the reception regime's restrictions are clear from research showing the difficulties such workers can experience when jobseeking, and even later when they have gained employment. For workers who do not have the requisite residence status some significant limitations on access to even the most basic employment rights are erected. The article assesses the post-2004 employment and welfare regimes, making comparisons with approaches taken by other major host states receiving A8 workers, notably Ireland and Sweden. Consideration is then also given to recent developments in international norms relating to migration for work, including the International Labour Organisation's Multilateral Framework on Labour Migration (2006), and its promotion of a 'rights-based approach'; and the UN Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and their Families (1990, in force from 2003).


The maximum normalized beta achieved in long-pulse tokamak discharges at low collisionality falls significantly below both that observed in short pulse discharges and that predicted by the ideal MHD theory. Recent long-pulse experiments, in particular those simulating the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) [M. Rosenbluth et al., Plasma Physics and Controlled Nuclear Fusion (International Atomic Energy Agency, Vienna, 1995), Vol. 2, p. 517] scenarios with low collisionality nu(e)*, are often limited by low-m/n nonideal magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) modes. The effect of saturated MHD modes is a reduction of the confinement time by 10%-20%, depending on the island size and location, and can lead to a disruption. Recent theories on neoclassical destabilization of tearing modes, including the effects of a perturbed helical bootstrap current, are successful in explaining the qualitative behavior of the resistive modes and recent results are consistent with the size of the saturated islands. Also, a strong correlation is observed between the onset of these low-m/n modes with sawteeth, edge localized modes (ELM), or fishbone events. consistent with the seed island required by the theory. We will focus on a quantitative comparison between both the conventional resistive and neoclassical theories, and the experimental results of several machines, which have all observed these low-min nonideal modes. This enables us to single out the key issues in projecting the long-pulse beta limits of ITER-size tokamaks and also to discuss possible plasma control methods that can increase the soft beta limit, decrease the seed perturbations, and/or diminish the effects on confinement. (C) 1997 American Institute of Physics.


'If you love music, hear it; go to operas, concerts and pay fiddlers to play to you; but I insist upon your neither piping nor fiddling yourself. It puts a gentleman in a very frivolous, contemptible light . . . Few things would mortify me more, than to see you bearing a part in a concert, with a fiddle under your chin, or a pipe in your mouth.'

The Earl of Chesterfield's precept signals the disjuncture between the concepts of music and musical performance as perceived by a British aristocrat in the mid-eighteenth century: listening to music is something a nobleman might do and enjoy without compromise to his station in life, but to participate in its performance is to invite social stigma. And Adam Smith could observe that to work as a professional performer was a 'sort of public prostitution', and the 'exorbitant rewards' paid to the most admired players and opera singers both reflected the rarity and beauty of their talents, and compensated them for the social 'discredit of employing them in this manner'. But Smith's prediction that any lessening in society's prejudice against performers would lead to a corresponding diminution of their earning potential was to prove very wide of the mark; it stands now as an indication of just how much the routine disparagement of performers and an accompanying ambivalence towards music's cultural standing was to change. For not only was nineteenth-century Britain to prove one of the most lucrative earning grounds for superstar performers, but as a nation it also became serious about encouraging and training its own native performing talent, so as to be the better able to satisfy its appetite for music of all kinds.


This paper reviewed Copenhagen challenge paper on hunger and malnutrition in 2004 alongside opponents' perspectives. The original challenge paper identified direct cost of malnutrition on health such as low birth weight and macronutrients deficiencies among children between ages 0-5 year. Indirect cost on economy such as low productivity due to poor cognitive development among children and absence of adult workers from work due to illness from poor nutrition were also identified. However, the original challenge paper significantly failed to address factors that could have led to the prevalence of malnutrition and hunger while proffering solution to these challenges. Hence, this paper empirically examine the relationship between undernutrition and these factors which include level of economic development, household income, access to improved water and level of calories intake. A cross section dataset of 52 developing countries for the year 2011 were analysed, the correlation matrix table and scattered graph plot results show that there are fairly strong negative correlation between malnutrition proxy by prevalence of undernutrition and (i) household income (poverty) proxy by GNI per capita; (ii) economic development proxy by GDP per capita and (iii) Access to improved water. However, the correlation between undernutrition and depth of calories deficit proved very strong and was positive. Thus, more attention need to be given to macroeconomic policies that will improve the life of the people in the economy and alleviate poverty. Basic amenities such improved and portable water should also be provided for the populace especially in developing countries where incidence of malnutrition are prevalence.


Nineteenth-century Protestant culture generally held marriage in high esteem, and the notion that marriage was "made in heaven" often explicitly undergirds the conventional resolution of domestic fiction. Despite many indications of a harmonious relationship between human love and religious faith, a countervailing cultural trend reveals a deep conflict between the two. Victorian Protestants worried that passionate love for another mortal creature might lead to heretical extremes, that human love might slip into idolatry, the worship of false and material gods. Jane Eyre memorably confesses that she has "made an idol" of Rochester, although she, of course, looks back upon this transgression from the vantage of marital happiness (274). In this essay, I focus on works in which misgivings about idolatrous love arise with more disruptive force. The marriage plots of Charles Kingsley's Yeast: A Problem (1851) and Charlotte Brontë's Villette (1853) both abruptly collapse, bringing into sharp focus a Protestant religious anxiety that subverts the conventional device with which Victorian domestic novels achieve closure.


In any kind of analysis of complex arrangements like those which constitute Craft Design and Technology Education, it is always easier to show what is wrong than to give clear and singular suggestions for improvement . In two articles written for this magazine I have tried to show that a great deal of fundamental thinking is still required about what this subject really is and how it ought to be serviced . The object of this short article, as a follow-up to the other two , is to alert readers to a possible vehicle which might offer CDT teachers the opportunity of pulling their design skills up by their bootstraps . This would be in contrast to waiting for the 'authorities' to provide the means of teacher improvement . I am going to suggest a 'self-help' idea ip this article, and would appreciate some feedback on it . But in order to set this in the context of the issues I raised in the previous two articles, let me briefly summarise these. The motivation behind them was that I wanted to try and find some plausable reason for what had begun to disappoint me so much; the realisation that Design Education (CDT) was largely failing to get a grip in the schools in spite of the terrific support it received .


We determine the intrinsic shapes and orientations of 27450 types I and II active galactic nucleus (AGN) galaxies in the spectroscopic sample of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey Data Release 7 by studying the distribution of projected axial ratios of AGN hosts. Our aim is to study possible alignments between the AGN and host galaxy systems (e. g. the accretion disc and the galaxy angular momentum) and the effect of dust obscuration geometry on the AGN type. We define control samples of non-AGN galaxies that mimic the morphology, colour, luminosity and concentration distributions of the AGN population, taking into account the effects of dust extinction and reddening. Assuming that AGN galaxies have the same underlying 3D shape distribution as their corresponding control samples, we find that the spiral and elliptical type I AGN populations are strongly skewed towards face-on galaxies, while elliptical and spiral type II AGN populations are skewed towards edge-on orientations. These findings rule out random orientations for AGN hosts at high confidence for type I spirals (delta chi(2) approximate to 230) and type II ellipticals (delta chi(2) approximate to 15), while the signal for type I ellipticals and type II spirals is weaker (delta chi(2) approximate to 3 and approximate to 6, respectively). We obtain a much stronger tendency for the type II spirals to be edge-on when just high [OIII] equivalent width (EW) AGN are considered, suggesting that > 20 per cent of low [OIII] EW edge-on type II AGN may be missing from the optical sample. Galactic dust absorption of the broad-line region alone cannot explain the observed inclination angle and projected axial ratio distributions of types I and II Seyfert galaxies, implying that obscuration by a small-scale circumnuclear torus is necessary. These results favour a scenario in which the angular momentum of the material which feeds the black hole retains a memory of its original gas source at least to some small, non-negligible degree.


Abstract. Many heuristic algorithms for solving optimization problems have been proposed, and efforts have been made to improve their efficiency in finding optimal solutions. However, the sampling-based search strategies of the heuristic optimization algorithms still require considerable time to locate optima, particularly in the hyper-dimensional parameter space that are typical for distributed hydrologic models. This study evaluated the performance of parallel computing methods, 'spmd' and 'parfor,' of Matrix Laboratory (MATLAB) in improving computational efficiency of solving optimization problems using sampling-based algorithms in hydrologic and water quality modeling applications. The parallel computing methods were applied in calibrating 34 parameters for hydrologic simulation of the Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) model and in identifying watershed-scale optimum spatial distributions of corn stover removal using the AMALGAM optimization algorithm. In the applications, the SWAT model was calibrated with NSE of 0.86 and R 2 of 0.93 at the watershed outlet for the calibration period of 1993 to 1999 using the parallel computing methods, and the calibrated model provided NSE of 0.84 and R 2 of 0.92 for the validation period of 2000 to 2009. The results clearly demonstrated the effectiveness of the methods in reducing computational time of the parameter calibration and spatial optimization. The SWAT model code modification was not required, and changes in the source code of the original sequential optimization algorithm were minimal. Thus, the parallel computing methods of MATLAB are expected to provide simple and quick solutions for improving efficiency of solving the optimization problems in watershed model applications.


This paper reports on the first two years of a longitudinal ethnographic study of 20 young people in northern England who have been officially classified as not in education, employment or training (NEET). Drawing on Henri Lefebvre's conceptualisation of space as perceived, conceived and lived, this paper analyses how young people comprehend, use and encounter places and spaces relating to residence, work and learning, and the role of spatialities in reproducing or interrupting aspects of social exclusion and marginality. A number of key themes emerging from the data are discussed, including the interaction of conceived, perceived and lived space in young people's struggles for subjectivity, the importance of agency and biography in shaping how different lived spaces emerge from this interaction, and the possibility of critical incidents causing shifts in lived space that intensify the difficulties young people face in finding appropriate education or employment. A particularly significant finding is that participants often feel isolated and lack control over their lives, resulting in alienation from authority and community that tends to further marginalise these young people, distancing them from meaningful contexts of education, training and work.


The irregularity of a graph $G$ is defined as the sum of weights $|d(u)-d(v)|$ of all edges $uv$ of $G$, where $d(u)$ and $d(v)$ are the degrees of the vertices $u$ and $v$ in $G$, respectively. In this paper, some structural properties on trees with maximum (or minimum) irregularity among trees with given degree sequence and trees with given branching number are explored, respectively. Moreover, the corresponding trees with maximum (or minimum) irregularity are also found, respectively.


Background:
In patients with COPD, a preserved BMI may improve survival. However, the implications for function and health status have not been fully established. We hypothesised that obese patients would have reduced physical capacity and more impairments than non-obese patients with COPD and comparator subjects.
Method:
As part of a longitudinal study of co-morbidities in COPD (ARCADE), 400 patients (COPD confirmed with spirometry) and 100 comparator subjects (past or current smokers) free from respiratory disease were assessed. In all subjects, spirometry, BMI, six minute walk distance (6MWD), the Timed Up and Go (TUG) and physical, medical, functional and psychosocial impairments using the Comprehensive Geriatric Assessment (CGA) were determined. Patients also completed the St George's Respiratory Questionnaire (SGRQ) and were categorised by BMI.
Results:
Patients and comparators were similar in gender and BMI COPD 28.0(5.5) comparators 28.5(4.6) kg/m2, and had similar proportions across the BMI categories, in both groups a third were obese (>30kg/m2). Lung function differed in patients and controls FEV1% predicted 58(20) and 105(15) respectively (p<0.01), but did not differ across the BMI categories. Patients had reduced 6MWD, increased TUG and CGA than comparators in each BMI category (all p<0.001) and in COPD 6MWD, TUG, CGA and SGRQ differed across the BMI categories (ANOVA p<0.05). Obese patients had reduced 6MWD and greater TUG, SGRQ than patients with BMI 20-29.9 (p<0.001).
Conclusion:
Obese patients with COPD had reduced physical capacity and more impairments than non obese patients and obese comparators. Optimisation of BMI may improve physical outcomes for patients with COPD.


The Chinese ideogram for crisis combines two characters: danger and opportunity. This indicates the duality of crisis and suggests several important issues for current and future analyses of crisis, crisis construals, and crisis lessons. First, the ideogram signifies that crises have both objective and subjective aspects corresponding to danger and opportunity respectively. Building on Regis Debray, we can say that, objectively, crises occur when a set of social relations (including their ties to the natural world) cannot be reproduced (cannot "go on") in the old way. Subjectively, crises tend to disrupt (even "shock") accepted views of the world and create uncertainty on how to "go on" within it. For they threaten established views, practices, institutions, and social relations, calling into question theoretical and policy paradigms as well as everyday personal and organizational routines. Second, in this sense, crises do not have predetermined outcomes: how they are resolved, if at all, depends on the actions taken in response to them. They are potentially path-shaping moments with performative effects that are mediated through the shifting balance of forces competing to influence crisis construal, crisis management, crisis outcomes, and possible lessons to be drawn from crisis. Third, without the objective moment, we have, at worst, deliberately exaggerated or even manufactured "crises," at best, unwarranted panic based on mis-perception or mis-recognition of real world events and processes.1 Sometimes, crises may be manufactured or, at least exaggerated, for strategic or tactical purposes not directly related to immediate events or processes. Agents may, for "political" motives, broadly interpreted, conjure crises from nowhere or exaggerate the breadth, depth, and threat of an actual crisis (Mirowksi, 2013). After all, "you never want to let a serious crisis go to waste" (cf. Rahm Emanuel's comment, made on the Bloomberg television channel in November 2008 in his capacity as transition manager for President-elect Barack Obama).2 A rigorous analysis of crises, crisis construals, and crisis management must be able to distinguish these alternatives or it could fall into a simplistic form of constructivism. Fourth, without the subjective moment, while disinterested observers may perceive a crisis developing either in real time or after the "event," the crisis will have insuflcient resonance for relevant participants to spur them into efforts to take decisive action. Yet the notion of critical moment and turning point is a key feature of crises as conventionally understood. Fifth, from this perspective, then, crises are complex, objectively overdetermined moments of subjective indeterminacy, where decisive action can make a major difference to the future (Debray, 1973, p. 113; see also pp. 99-100, 104-105). However, cautioning against too-easy an adoption of this kind of perspective, Janet Roitman (2014, p. 41) notes that, while positing a given situation as a crisis makes certain questions possible, it also forecloses other kinds of question and lines of investigation. In other words, an over-reliance by participants or observers on interpreting specific symptoms as evidence of a continuing crisis or yet another crisis can create a blind spot that sidelines alternative descriptions, diagnoses, prognoses, and potential courses of action. Taking crisis for granted as a starting point means that the nature of crisis as an explanandum is left unexamined and therefore directs attention to the search for the best explanation (or, at least, some explanation). So, rather than asking whether X (an event or process) does or does not constitute a crisis, treating it in an unquestioned, unreflective manner as a crisis, of whatever kind, short-circuits its analysis and, hence, decision-making about suitable responses. Although Roitman directs her criticism against historical narratives shaped by the interpretive couplet of crisis critique that is allegedly characteristic of modernity since the eighteenth century (cf. Koselleck, 1988; Festl, Grosser, and Thoma, 2018), her arguments are also very apt for the inflation of crisis diagnoses and discourses in recent decades as mentioned in Chapter 1. Indeed, the more crisis discourse expands, the greater the risk that crisis becomes an empty concept. This is especially true where crisis is employed counter-intuitively, as is often the case nowadays, to describe an enduring condition rather than, as implied in its original meaning, to identify a moment for decisive action that might restore the status quo ante or lead to more or less radical social transformation. This risk can be remedied on condition that the durability of crises is related to contingent conditions that block a resolution that might otherwise occur. This is compatible with the general principles of critical realism and is analysed by Gramsci, for example, in terms of a "catastrophic equilibrium of forces" (1971: 219-23, 300; cf. 1975: Q13, $27; Q14, $23; Q22, $10;3 for a discussion in relation to the crisis in Europe, see Keucheyan and Durand, 2015). These contingencies are illustrated in Chapter 4, where Andrew Gamble refers to the impasse of the British state or economy, which he regards as structural and deep-seated, leading to inertia, deadlocks or catastrophic equilibria. Likewise, Will Hout notes the permanent crisis in development assistance and explains this in terms of a failure to look beyond symptoms to deeper causes of poverty, inequality, and unsustainable development. In a different context, more related to crisis construals than the objective overdetermination of crisis, enduring crises are especially likely where repeated critiques serve as substitutes for transformative action, which is an obvious temptation of intellectuals, and can lead to fatalism, cynicism, or stoicism (cf. Thoma, Festl, and Grosser, 2015, p. 17; Hindrichs, 2015).


Colonization and infection of wounds represent a major reason for the impairment of tissue repair. Recently, it has been reported that tissue-tolerable plasma (TTP) is highly efficient in the reduction of the bacterial load of the skin. In the present study, the antiseptic efficacy of TTP was compared to that of octenidine hydrochloride with 2-phenoxyethanol. Both antiseptic methods proved to be highly efficient. Cutaneous treatment of the skin with octenidine hydrochloride and 2-phenoxyethanol leads to a 99% elimination of the bacteria, and 74% elimination is achieved by TTP treatment. Technical challenges with an early prototype TTP device could be held responsible for the slightly reduced antiseptic properties of TTP, compared to a standard antiseptic solution, since the manual treatment of the skin surface with a small beam of the TTP device might have led to an incomplete coverage of the treated area.


Energy models of buildings can be developed and used for analysis of energy consumption. A model offers the opportunity to simulate a building under specific conditions for analysis of energy efficiency measures or optimum design. Due to the great amount of information needed to develop an energy model of a building, the number of inputs can be reduced by making variable the most relevant input parameters and making the others to take common or standard values. In this study, an analysis of input parameters required by computational tools to estimate energy consumption in homes was done in two stages. In the first stage, common input parameters were identified for three software and three webtools based on the criteria that the input parameter should be common for at least two software and at least one webtool. In the second stage, a sensitivity analysis was performed on the inputs identified in the first stage. The software BEopt, developed by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, was used as the source of typical input parameters to be compared, and to perform the simulations for the sensitivity analysis. The base or reference model to perform simulations for the sensitivity analysis corresponds to a model developed with information from a research house located on the campus of the University of Texas at Tyler and default inputs for the BEopt B-10 reference benchmark. Results show that besides the location, and consequently the weather, common parameters are building orientation, air leakage, space conditioning settings, space conditioning schedule, water heating equipment, and terrain. Among these parameters, the sensitivity analysis identified the largest variations in energy consumption for variations on space conditioning schedule (heating and cooling setpoints), followed by the type of water heating equipment.


Self-supervised learning has been shown to be very effective in learning useful representations, and yet much of the success is achieved in data types such as images, audio, and text. The success is mainly enabled by taking advantage of spatial, temporal, or semantic structure in the data through augmentation. However, such structure may not exist in tabular datasets commonly used in fields such as healthcare, making it difficult to design an effective augmentation method, and hindering a similar progress in tabular data setting. In this paper, we introduce a new framework, Subsetting features of Tabular data (SubTab), that turns the task of learning from tabular data into a multi-view representation learning problem by dividing the input features to multiple subsets. We argue that reconstructing the data from the subset of its features rather than its corrupted version in an autoencoder setting can better capture its underlying latent representation. In this framework, the joint representation can be expressed as the aggregate of latent variables of the subsets at test time, which we refer to as collaborative inference. Our experiments show that the SubTab achieves the state of the art (SOTA) performance of 98.31% on MNIST in tabular setting, on par with CNN-based SOTA models, and surpasses existing baselines on three other real-world datasets by a significant margin.


Studies of modern sediments from tide-dominated marine coastal environments in the 1970s and 1980s led to the recognition of what were suggested to be unique sedimentary features formed by tidal currents. These features could be directly related to astronomical forcing by the Sun and Moon. Sedimentary structures formed by marine tidal processes are now frequently described in modern and ancient deposits. Here, we detail similar sedimentary features from shoreline deposits of Lake Eyre, Australia, a present-day, intracratonic playa lake setting, thus challenging the current paradigm that these structures are indicative of marine tidal influence. We attribute the formation of these features in Lake Eyre to meteorological tides generated by daily changes in wind direction and velocity, along with weekly to monthly discharge variations in the feeder river system. This is the first time such sedimentary features have been documented together in a continental setting. A key implication of this is that the classic "tidal" sedimentary structures recognized in ancient rock successions should not automatically be attributed to astronomical or marine tidal currents, since similar structures can be generated by meteorological processes in continental environments. Some interpretations of ancient marine tidal deposits without other lines of evidence supporting a marine depositional environment may therefore require reevaluation. Playa lakes and shallow perennial lacustrine settings should also be considered in the interpretation of strata containing what have formerly been considered classic marine tidal indicators.


In Europe, men who have sex with men (MSM) are one of the key populations most affected by sexually transmitted infections (STIs), including HIV. In many European countries, sex between men accounts for the bulk of new diagnoses of STIs and HIV. For example, 50% of new syphilis cases reported in 2012 in Europe were among MSM (and up to 80% in some countries) and 45% of new cases of HIV. Furthermore, in the last decade, there have been a number of outbreaks of STIs, such as Lymphogranuloma venereum , which have occurred simultaneously in a number of European cities, highlighting dense international sexual networks that exist among MSM.1

STIs are a major health concern because they can facilitate the transmission of HIV and in their own right, as many STIs have major sequelae. Gonorrhoeal infections are becoming increasingly difficult to treat and resistance is most apparent among MSM.2 The incidence of STIs among MSM is due, in part, to the high levels of sexual risk behaviour reported by MSM, which can be exacerbated by sero-adaptive sexual practices.3 Furthermore, concerns that new HIV prevention and treatment options, such the increasing emphasis on treatment as prevention for the HIV-positive individual and pre-exposure prophylaxis to prevent acquisition of infection in the negative individuals, may contribute to increasing levels of STIs in the future. Thus there is a need to ensure that …


FSE 2006 is the 13 annual Fast Software Encryption workshop, for the fifth year sponsored by the International Association for Cryptologic Research (IACR). Original research papers on symmetric cryptology are invited for submission to FSE 2006. The workshop concentrates on fast and secure primitives for symmetric cryptography, including the design and analysis of block ciphers, stream ciphers, encryption schemes, analysis and evaluation tools, hash functions, and message authentication codes (MACs).


New speech representation based on multiple filtering of temporal trajectories of speech energies in frequency sub-bands is proposed and tested. The technique extends earlier works on delta features and RASTA filtering by processing temporal trajectories by a bank of band-pass filters with varying resolutions. In initial tests on OGI Digits database the technique yields about 30% relative improvement in word error rate over the conventional PLP features. Since the applied filters have zero-mean impulse responses, the technique is inherently robust to linear distortions.


This paper describes Hy-CIRCA, an architecture for verified, correct-by-construction planning and execution for hybrid systems, including non-linear continuous dynamics. Hy-CIRCA addresses the high computational complexity of such systems by first planning at an abstract level, and then progressively refining the original plan. Hy-CIRCA is an extension of our Playbook 1 approach, which aims to make it easy for users to exert supervisory control over multiple autonomous systems by "calling a play." The Playbook approach is implemented by combining (1) a human-machine interface for commanding and monitoring the autonomous systems; (2) a hierarchical planner for translating commands into executable plans; and (3) a smart executive to manage plan execution by coordinating the control systems of the individual autonomous agents, tracking plan execution, and triggering replanning when necessary. Hy-CIRCA integrates the dReal non-linear SMT solver, with enhanced versions of the SHOP2 HTN planner and the CIRCA Control Synthesis Module (CSM). Hy-CIRCA's planning process has 5 steps: (1) Using SHOP2, compute an approximate mission plan. While computing this plan, compute a hybrid automaton model of the plan, featuring more expressive continuous dynamics. (2) Using dReal, solve this hybrid model, establishing the correctness of the plan, and computing values for its continuous parameters. To execute the plan, (3) extract from the plan specifications for closed-loop, hard real-time supervisory controllers for the agents that must execute the plan. (4) Based upon these specifications, use the CIRCA CSM to plan the controllers. To ensure correct execution, (5) verify the CSM-generated controllers with dReal.


Purpose

Digital technologies are changing the ways in which the meanings and identity of both consumers and brands are constructed. This research aims to extend knowledge of how consumer-made "selfie" images shared in social media might contribute to the destabilization of brands as assemblages.

Design/methodology/approach

Insights are drawn from a critical visual content analysis of three popular champagne brand accounts and consumer-made selfies featuring these brands in Instagram.

Findings

This study shows how brands and branded selves intersect through "heterotopian selfie practices". Accentuated by the rise of attention economy and "consumer microcelebrity", the authors argue that these proliferating selfie images can destabilize spatial, temporal, symbolic and material properties of brand assemblages.

Practical implications

The implications include a consideration of how selfie practices engender new challenges for brand design and brand management.

Originality/value

This study illustrates how a brand assemblage approach can guide investigations of brands at multiple scales of analysis. In particular, this paper extends knowledge of visual brand-related user-generated content in terms of how consumers express, visualize and share selfies and how the heterotopian quality of this sharing consequently shapes brand assemblages.


Steady-state infiltration rates (IRs) correlate well with temperature. They have been observed, however, to have values 1.5 to 2.5 times higher than predicted by viscosity, known as the t-effect. Many field studies that have observed the t-effect used continuous IR measurement systems. We measured 67 IRs using double-ring infiltrometers (DRIs) during the 2007 and 2008 autumn seasons in sand and loamy sand soils across a temperature range of 5 to 35°C. We found above-average to good correlation between temperature and IR. For loamy sand (n = 17), IR rate differences were accounted for by viscosity differences, but for sand (n = 30) the IR values were 2.0 to 2.9 times higher than the viscosity-predicted rate. Additionally, we found a difference in the IR temperature regressions based on the time of day of the measurements in the sand. Morning measurements were two times the viscosity-predicted IR, while afternoon measurements were nearly three times. This research corroborates other field studies that observed the t-effect using DRIs.


Path integration is a process by which an animal obtains its location by integrating its velocity over time. Evidence shows that path integration may contribute to certain neural activity patterns in the entorhinal cortex and the hippocampus, which probably serves important function in the animal's navigation system. Such neurons include place cells, firing only when the animal is at a certain region of the environment, and grid cells, which fire when the animal is at locations organized in a hexagonal grid pattern. Various models try to explain the neural mechanism of path integration and how the path integration system serves as the input to grid cells and place cells. Among the best results is the one given by our previous work [28]. The model links Welday et al.'s bank-of-oscillators model [39] with Fourier theory, implements path integration with spiking leaky integrate-andfire (LIF) neurons, and generates neurons with the desired activity patterns. However, the model depends on a regular placement of its parts. We extend our previous work into a generalized framework by allowing arbitrary placement and introducing a coupling approach that employs an iterative least-squares method. We build a neural network under the new framework with LIF neurons, conduct experiments with various parameter combinations, and evaluate the network's performance with new quantitative measures. Results show clear trends of the performance varying with some of the parameters, which may shed some light on the direction to a more effective path integration system.


Objective England's National Chlamydia Screening Programme provides opportunistic testing for all 15–24-year-olds in healthcare and non-healthcare settings. The authors undertook an evaluation of a population service-based postal chlamydia screening and treatment service, with registration and access to the service via the internet, in order to target screening interventions more effectively in future. Methods Individuals aged between 18 and 24 years, within the North East Essex Primary Care Trust, were identified for chlamydia screening by the service between 1 December 2008 and 31 January 2009. Associations between test uptake and positivity, and individuals' personal characteristics, were examined. The efficacy of partner notification was estimated, and the costs of screening were compared with the national average. Results Uptake of chlamydia screening was 11.5%, with lower response rates among men, individuals older than 20 years and those living in more deprived areas. The chlamydia positivity was 4.4% and higher in those reporting multiple sexual partners, individuals older than 20 years and those living in more deprived areas. The proportion of partners notified per index case was 0.17. The service contributed to 3431 of the overall 11 209 annual chlamydia screens of the Primary Care Trust in 2008–2009, at a cost of £78 per screening test completed and £1764 per case detected. Conclusions Our evaluation shows that this service model can contribute substantially to the overall coverage of chlamydia screening tests. However, the costs of service provision per case detected and treated, using this model, were high compared to the National Chlamydia Screening Programme.


The literature indicates that the values of, and justification for, rugby participation in Japan and New Zealand share many similarities including the development of young males' character (Abe, 2008; Phillips, 1996). Importantly to the pursuit of Olympism studies, such development resonates with de Coubertin's intentions for sport participation in young males (Muller, 2000). The current article presents hermeneutic interpretations of texts (conversations) held with Japanese and New Zealand secondary school rugby coaches. Findings reveal the ways Japanese coaches sought to enhance various qualities in their players as they spoke explicitly about developing traits beyond the physical domain. The idea of ningen keisei (人間形成; character development or human cultivation) emerged as the premise of their aims. Conversely, New Zealand coaches indicated that they put emphasis on technical skills, and despite equal opportunity, did not articulate any intention to develop their athletes beyond the physical domain. Although a complete paucity of underlying philosophies regarding character development in New Zealand secondary school rugby coaching practices is not being suggested here, the findings could signal an important consideration for future directions of school-based rugby participation.


Changes in land-use have been observed in banana-based systems in the African Great Lakes region affected by Xanthomonas wilt disease (XW) of banana. Through focus group discussions (FGDs) and the 4-cell method (to map the area under production and the number of households involved), changes in land-use were assessed in 13 XW-affected landscapes/villages along a 230 km transect from Masisi (where XW arrived in 2001) to Bukavu (XW arrived around 2014) in the Eastern Democratic Republic of Congo. Farmers' perceptions on the sustainability of new land uses were also documented. Soil nutrient content and erosion levels were measured for five major land-use options/trajectories on 147 fields across 55 farms in three landscapes along the transect. From banana being ranked the most important crop (92% of landscapes) before XW outbreaks, its importance had declined, with it grown on smaller farms by most households in 36% of the landscapes, while in 64% of cases by few households on smaller plots. Farmers uprooted entire banana mats or fields, expanding land under other crops. Species richness did not change at landscape level, although 21 crops were introduced at farm level. Banana is, however, still perceived as more sustainable due to its multi-functional roles. Soils under banana had better chemical attributes, while high erosion levels (Mg ha−1 year−1) occurred under cassava (1.7–148.9) compared with banana (0.3–10.7) and trees (0.3–5.9). The shifts from banana could thus affect supply of key services and sustainability of the farming systems. This study offers a good basis for interventions in XW-affected landscapes.


Molybdenum and tungsten chlorides, chloride oxides and chloride nitrides as well as thiazene and phosphazene metallacycles were studied by electrochemical methods in CH2Cl2. The different ligand systems have a profound influence on the redox potentials. The stabilization of high valency increases from the hexachloro to pentachlorooxo to chloronitrido complexes and the metallacycles. There is a systematic difference in the electrode potentials between molybdenum and tungsten redox couples. The geometries of the d1 and d0 species, optimized using density functional methods, are in good agreement with the available experimental data and trends in redox data are reproduced by the computed energy difference between the appropriate d1/d0 pair. The relative stability of the higher oxidation state is directly linked to the donor properties of the ligands present, and increases in the order: Cl6 < F6 < Cl5O < Cl4(N3S2) < Cl3(N3P2) < Cl4N.


Apart from figures on LGBT+ characters in television fiction produced by the American
television industry, such as the 'Where We Are On TV' – reports by the Gay and Lesbian Alliance
Against Defamation (GLAAD), quantitative data on LGBT+ representation television fiction
series remains scarce internationally. With this working paper, we aim to address this lack in the
context of Flemish television fiction. To meet the challenges posed by a lack of centralized data
on Flemish television fiction in general, and LGBT+ characters and storylines specifically, we
constructed a three-tiered database. Comprising of all 156 domestic television fiction series
between 2001 and 2016, the quantitative presence of LGBT+ characters in these series, and
individual traits of the 117 collected LGBT+ characters respectively. In doing so, we provide an
overview of Flemish television fiction in general, the distribution in these series of characters
who identify as LGBT+ and the storylines that relate to sexual and gender diversity, and offer a
tool to identify individual pertinent characters. Flanders presents itself as having a dynamic
television fiction industry in the past fifteen years, with genre diversity and a sizeable output. In
its general output, LGBT+ characters have had a significant habitual presence since 2001, with
a noted correlation to specific 'lowbrow' genres, and a noted lack in 'quality' series. The collected
characters display a severe lack of diversity, with most LGBT+ characters being gay male
characters, a significant majority being middle class, and few non- white LGBT+ characters.


We experimentally investigated the pragmatics of two melodies commonly used with Greek wh-questions, L*H L-!H%, described as the default, and LH* L-L% considered less frequent and polite. We tested two hypotheses: (a) the !H%-ending melody is associated with information seeking questions, while the L%-ending melody is pragmatically more flexible and thus appropriate also for non-information-seeking wh-question expressing bias; (b) the !H%-ending melody, being more polite, is more appropriate for female talkers, all else being equal. In Experiment 1, comprehenders rated !H%-ending and L%-ending versions of the same questions for politeness and appropriateness for the context in which they were heard (which favored either information seeking or "biased" wh-questions.) In Experiment 2, comprehenders heard the same questions and chose between two follow-up responses, one providing information, the other addressing the bias of the wh-question. Comprehenders rated !H%-ending questions more appropriate than L%-ending questions and judged the !H-ending questions of female talkers more polite. They also chose information-providing answers more frequently after !H%- than L%-ending questions, but the preference was higher for female talkers and depended on comprehender gender. The results argue in favor of a compositional view of intonational meaning which depends not only on the tune but also on context, broadly construed.


This study explores how recent Korean immigrant students experience learning social studies and how their unique social, cultural, and educational backgrounds as new immigrants shape their experiences in American schools. Based on survey and in-depth interviews with 43 Korean immigrant students in two urban and three suburban/rural areas, this mixed methods study examines Korean immigrant youths' perceptions about the nature of history and social studies as well as their experiences of learning social studies in their everyday classroom contexts. Our data analysis demonstrates that Korean immigrant students face varying difficulties in constructing meaning in US history and engaging themselves in social studies learning, which results in a negative learning experience and subsequent disinterest in social studies. Researchers identified three major challenges that Korean immigrant youths experience in their social studies classrooms: (1) Lack of English proficiency, background knowledge, and American patriotism, (2) White, American-centered perspectives and marginalization of their country of origin, and (3) Teachers' lack of care and disengaging pedagogies. The findings of this study provide implications for creating more meaningful and culturally relevant social studies learning for immigrant students.


In my first essay I use data from licensed child care centers in the state of Arkansas to examine the relationship between quality and price charged. To measure quality, I use Arkansas's Better Beginnings Quality Rating and Improvement System, a tier-structured voluntary certification program which can be viewed as a voluntary increase in regulations for licensed child care centers which allows them to send an observable signal of quality to consumers. Using an hedonic pricing estimation with controls for varying geographic markets, results indicate firms with Better Beginnings classification charge higher prices once the highest levels of certification are obtained. The results provide support for policy in favor of greater reporting or release of information regarding child care characteristics, especially those associated with higher quality care, which allow child care facilities to make their quality known in a way that is easily observable. My second essay seeks to answer the question: Why do some divorcing couples use the courts to settle child custody disputes? Settlement literature predicts that cases should settle efficiently and avoid court costs under symmetric information. Shavell (1993) proposes that settlement failure occurs when the resource under dispute is indivisible and the value placed on it is so high that wealth constraints are binding. These characteristics are present in child custody disputes. In these cases, sharing children through joint custody may be impractical because parents are not able or willing to share. The paper uses the Stanford Child Custody data set to empirically analyze how indivisibility may lead to settlement failure in child custody disputes using variables such as distance between the divorced parents' households, levels of hostility, and differences in custody type filed. Other variables included in the analysis are income, home ownership, involvement levels of each parent with the children, number of children, each parent's desire to settle the divorce case outside of the courts, and the use of lawyers. Results show that parents who file for different types of physical custody and couples that display high levels of hostility are more likely to end up in court. My final essay examines the hypothesis that divorcing couples make trade-offs between child custody and child support in order to secure their preferred custody outcome. Mnookin and Kornhauser (1979) introduce the concept of "bargaining in the shadow of the law" which describes negotiations made between parents in the framework of their existing legal setting. Using data from the Stanford Child Custody Study, I test to see if parents, specifically mothers, accept lower amounts of child support in order to receive sole physical custody of their children. Using a two-stage estimation approach to account for the joint determination of child custody and child support, I find that the legal environment surrounding divorce proceedings, including aspects such as mandatory mediation along with a preference of the courts for joint custody, significantly increases the likelihood of joint physical custody. Results from the estimation of the child support equation suggest that along with the typical guideline variables such as income of the parents, number of children, and visitation, the time between separation and filing for divorce and the mother filing for divorce significantly decrease the support award while lawyer representation of the mother significantly increases the amount of child support issued. Using a selection model, I find that the significant negative relationship between the custody and support equations, accounted for in the selection term, signifies that mothers who "win" their preferred custody are accepting lower amounts of child support. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would never have been able to finish my dissertation without the guidance of my committee members, help from friends and family, and support from my husband. I would like to express the deepest gratitude to my advisor and mentor, Dr. Amy Farmer, for her excellent guidance and example as a scholar and person. I would also like to thank my committee members, Dr. Jingping Gu and Dr. Andrew Horowitz, for your comments and thoughtful criticism. I also appreciate Susan and Lisa for their willingness to help with anything and everything. I would also like to thank Dr. Harold Christensen and Dr. Elizabeth Rankin for inspiring me to pursue the adventures of graduate school. I would also like to thank my family. First and foremost I would like to thank my Mom, Debbie. You have always been supportive and your belief in me has made this all possible. In addition I would like to thank Gail, Dale, Phyllis, Pop, Brian, and Joel. You have all encouraged me with your best wishes and I thank you for accepting me as part of your family. Finally, I would like to thank my husband, John. You are always there cheering me on and stand by me through the good times and bad. I truly appreciate your love, constant patience, and understanding during these tough years of graduate school.


Fault tolerance is increasingly important in industrial robots. The ability to detect and tolerate failures allows robots to effectively cope with internal failures and continue performing designated tasks without the need for immediate human intervention. To tolerate hardware failures, a set of fault tolerance algorithms are written for each component. These processes are responsible for detecting faults in their respective component and minimising the impact of the failure on the robot's performance. This work presents new intelligent neuro-fuzzy fault detection algorithms, which detect failures in robot components using analytical redundancy relations. An intelligent fault tolerance framework is proposed in which a fault component database or rule base and the detection algorithms work together to detect and tolerate sensor or motor failures in a robot system. Motor faults as well as sensor faults are considered. The Scorbot ER 5u plus model was simulated in robotics toolbox for MATLAB using the neuro-fuzzy algorithms.


Abstract:The 1728 Musin Rebellion, an attempt to overthrow King Yŏngjo, erupted out of intense court factionalism. Over 1000 rebels were investigated and punished by Yŏngjo's special tribunal. This article examines a hitherto neglected area: the punishments meted out to four of the most prominent leaders of the 1728 Musin Rebellion. Historians have focused on the causes of the rebellion rather than on its suppression, seeing rebellion as a thermometer of social problems. However, the diversity of rebel punishments requires some analysis: one was granted an "honorable" death, while another had his liver cut out and eaten, two received no trial and officials attempted to build a swamp to replace one rebel's home. An analysis of official trial records as well as private, legal, and cultural histories show that the court's punishments were initially motivated by strategic needs to destroy the rebel challenge. In addition, officials saw punishment as an extension of factional conflict, a course Yŏngjo was keen to discourage and he used punishments as a tool to solidify his political domination and pacify the post-rebellion court.


Cloud computing has received significant attention recently as it is a new computing infrastructure to enable rapid delivery of computing resources as a utility in a dynamic, scalable, and visualized manner. SaaS (Software-as-a-Service) provide a now paradigm in cloud computing, which goal is to provide an effective and intelligent way to support end users' on-demand requirements to computing resources, including maturity levels of customizable, multi-tenancy and scalability. To meet requirements of on-demand, my thesis discusses several critical research problems and proposed solutions using real application scenarios: Service providers receive multiple requests from customers, how to prioritize those service requests to maximize the business values is one of the most important issues in cloud. An innovative prioritization model is proposed, which uses different types of information, including customer, service, environment and workflow information to optimize the performance of the system. To provide "on-demand" services, an accurate demand prediction and provision become critical for the successful of the cloud computing. An effective demand prediction model is proposed, and applied to a real mortgage application.
To support SaaS customization and fulfill the various functional and quality requirements of individual tenants, a unified and innovative multi-layered customization framework is proposed to support and manage the variability of SaaS applications. To support scalable SaaS, a hybrid database design to support SaaS customization with two-layer database partitioning is proposed. To support secure SaaS, O-RBAC, an ontology based RBAC (Role based Access Control) model is used for Multi-Tenancy Architecture in clouds. To support a significant number of tenants, an easy to use SaaS construction framework is proposed.
As a summary, this thesis discusses the most important research problems in cloud computing, towards effective and intelligent SaaS. The research in this thesis is critical to the development of cloud computing and provides fundamental solutions to those problems.


According to the World Health Organization, cancer is one of the leading causes of death around the world, with 8.2 million deaths in 2012. More than 60 percent of the world's new cases of cancer occur in Africa, Asia, and Central and South America and these regions account for 70 percent of the world's cancer deaths. In low- and middle-income countries, expensive treatments for cancer are not widely available. Unsustainable cancer medication pricing has increasingly become a global issue, creating access challenges in low-and middle-income but also high-income countries. This report describes recent developments within the pricing of medicines for the treatment of cancer, discusses what lessons can be drawn from HIV/AIDS treatment scale-up and makes recommendations to help increase access to treatment for people with cancer.


Abstract The Fe(III)-reducing bacterium Geobacter sulfurreducens produces nanometer-sized magnetite by transferring electrons from organic matter or hydrogen to ferrihydrite, resulting in the reductive transformation of the ferrihydrite to magnetite, and the generation of ATP for growth. Electron transfer can occur by direct contact between the cell surface and the mineral or via a soluble "electron shuttle," for example a quinone-containing humic species. The minerals produced at different stages of ferrihydrite reduction during two experiments, one with and one without the humic analog anthraquinone-2, 6-disulphonate (AQDS), were measured using high-resolution synchrotron powder X-ray diffraction. Amorphous 2-line ferrihydrite converts to goethite, then to a mixture of goethite and magnetite, and finally to magnetite. Samples with and without AQDS showed the same general mineralogical trends, and the rate of reaction was faster in the presence of AQDS. In addition, two transient minerals structurally similar to goethite and magnetite were observed to form as intermediates between ferrihydrite and goethite and goethite and magnetite, but only in samples produced in the absence of the electron shuttle. These transient minerals were named proto-goethite and proto-magnetite. Proto-goethite has a shorter c-axis [4.467(20) Å] than crystalline goethite, a function of size (<2 nm) where quantum properties prevail. Proto-magnetite is identified by long tetrahedral (2.113 Å) and short octahedral (1.943 Å) Fe-O bonds compared to stoichiometric magnetite, possibly indicative of a coordination crossover caused by charge density [Fe(II)] migration to tetrahedral sites. Fe(II) in solution or sorbed to the mineral surface is considered to be the catalyst causing the mineral transformations. The Fe(II) is thought to form predominantly from the reductive dissolution of 2-line ferrihydrite by G. sulfurreducens.


We introduce a new method for approximate inference in Hybrid Dynamical Graphical models, in particular, for switching dynamical networks. For the important special case of switching linear Gaussian state space models (switching Kalman Filters), our method is a novel form of Gaussian sum smoother, consisting of a single forward and backward pass. Our method is particularly well suited to switching observation models, since one of the key approximations is obviated. We compare our method very favourably against a range of competing techniques, including sequential Monte Carlo and Expectation Propagation, for which we also derive a novel numerically more stable implementation using the 'auxiliary variable trick'. We show that the use of mixture representations for both filtering and smoothing can dramatically improve the quality of the approximation.


Aim: The aim of this thesis was to develop a framework of quality in radiographic service delivery in Ghana. This aim was to fit the medico-socio-cultural context of Ghana so as to promote the radiographers with additional knowledge about quality issues in the imaging services and patient care.
Methods: Mixed methods were used with a sequential explanatory design under two phases. Phase 1 was a quantitative design which employed participants' and service perspectives. A patient satisfaction survey (questionnaire) was used to gather data from 90 adult participants who were radiographically examined and who gave voluntary consent. The service perspectives involved the basic quality assurance and quality control procedures: reject film analysis and diagnostic reference levels. Phase 2 was a qualitative design which used semi-structured interviews of six radiographers, six patients and three managers to further explore and explain the quality of service issues identified in Phase 1.
Results: A reject film analysis rate of 14.55% was achieved. Diagnostic reference level values of 70 kVp and 18 mAs, and 60 kVp and 13 mAs were used to obtain images of diagnostic quality of postero-anterior (PA) chest for patients above and below average sizes. Diagnostic reference values of 75 kVp and 32 mAs, and 62 kVp and 21 mAs achieved images of diagnostic value of antero-posterior (AP) lumbar spine for patients above and below average sizes. Diagnostic values of 56 kVp and 5 mAs, and 52 kVp and 3 mAs also achieved quality images of AP knee for patients above and below average sizes. Four quality constructs were identified with diagnostic radiographic service provision both locally and nationally. The quality framework was built around the four main constructs: departmental management role, radiography workforce/staff role, quality and safety committee roles, and quality and safety outputs that would help improve efficiency and quality of radiographic service delivery in Ghana and to ensure patient satisfaction with the services delivered to them.
Conclusions: The constructs contributed to service delivery theory by developing a unique quality framework that would provide policy-makers and managers a practical understanding of factors that affect quality of radiographic service delivery.
Key words: Framework, quality service, reject rates, radiographic service, safety outputs.


Sediment overfeeding may induce important changes in the structure of the near-bed region of gravel-bed river flows, mainly in what concerns exchange of momentum and mass between the flow within the riverbed roughness elements and the flow in the upper regions. Although the turbulent structure of flows over gravelbed rivers is object of several previous studies, it is not well-known how statistics characterizing coherent turbulence events responsible by the generation of turbulent shear stresses are affected by bed load transport in flows over hydraulically rough beds with low relative submergence. This study is aimed at bridging this research gap. It is based on two-dimensional instantaneous velocity data, in the stream-wise and vertical directions, acquired with Particle Image Velocimetry in a laboratory flume. Two tests simulated framework gravel beds with sand matrixes, one of which fed with sand at near capacity conditions. The framework, immobile under the imposed flow conditions, consists of coarse gravel whose diameters range between 0.5 cm and 7 cm. Matrix and imposed sand feature a median diameter of 0.9 mm. For both tests, the quadrant threshold analysis technique was employed and transported momentum were analyzed and discussed in what concerns their intensity distribution for events in the four quadrants, and for several positions within the flow. It is shown that under mobile bed conditions, sweeps are dominant in the turbulence production in the pythmenic region of the flow. In the outer region of the flow, this is independent from the channel bed; in the overlapping intermediate layer, between the inner region and the pythmenic region, the flow characteristics depend on the position in relation to the crests and troughs of the bed.


OBJECTIVE
To identify atherosclerosis in the common carotid (CCA) and common femoral arteries (CFA) of patients with systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) and matched controls.

METHODS
Fifty-one consecutive patients with SLE were enrolled in the study. Controls were matched by age, sex, ethnicity, and atherosclerosis risk factors. All patients and controls underwent ultrasonic biopsy (U-B) of the CFA and CCA, a noninvasive screening technique that detects early atherosclerotic plaques and changes. The U-B features were classified and scored as follows: class A: normal (score 0); class B: interface disruption (score 2); class C: intima-media granulation (score 4); class D: plaque without hemodynamic disturbance (score 6); class E: stenotic plaque (score 8); and class F: plaque with symptoms (score 10). Total score was calculated. Classes A and B indicate an intact media; classes D to F point to a significant medial involvement; class C signifies a borderline lesion with a potential for regression to normal or progression to a plaque.

RESULTS
Mean ages were 40.5 years for SLE patients and 41 years for controls (p = 0.6). Ninety-six percent of the patients and controls were women. The mean disease duration of SLE was 8.65 years. Frequencies of risk factors among the SLE patients compared to controls were hypertension (30% vs 24%), smoking (23% vs 24%), and dyslipidemia (17.7% vs 17%). No patient had diabetes mellitus or family history of cardiovascular disease. A 3.17-fold increased rate of atherosclerotic plaques was detected in the SLE patients compared with controls (95% CI 1.08-10.9). Twenty-eight percent of SLE patients had at least a single class D-F lesion in one of the 4 vessels tested, compared with 10% in the control group (p = 0.02). In addition, the mean total U-B score of the SLE patients was significantly higher than that of the controls (5.65 vs 3.14; p = 0.02). Univariate analyses showed that the development of plaques in SLE was associated with a history of ischemic heart disease, hypertension, cardiovascular accident, and anemia. Multivariate analysis found plaques to be strongly associated with age, particularly in those older than 50 (OR 2.66, p = 0.000).

CONCLUSION
Patients with SLE have a high rate of atherosclerotic changes compared to controls. The development of atherosclerosis is strongly associated with age.


Vascular Endothelial Growth Factor (VEGF) is essential for angiogenesis and endothelial function.
Proteomic analysis of Human Umbilical Vein Endothelial Cells (HUVEC) identified Heat
Shock Protein 27 (Hsp27) as a major VEGF-regulated protein. Hsp27 is implicated in actin organization,
cell survival and migration, and is a potential mediator of these VEGF functions in the
endothelium. Studies of pharmacological inhibitors indicated that VEGF-stimulated Hsp27 serine
82 (S82) phosphorylation was resistant to p38 mitogen-activated protein kinase inhibition and mediated
by Protein Kinase C (PKC). VEGF activated Protein Kinase D (PKD), and this effect was
inhibited by small interfering (si)RNAs targeting selected PKC isoforms. PKD2 siRNA inhibited
VEGF-induced Hsp27 S82 phosphorylation, and PKD2 immunoprecipitated from VEGF-treated
cells selectively phosphorylated Hsp27 at S82. Hsp27 siRNAs markedly inhibited VEGF-induced
cell migration, increased apoptosis and reduced tubulogenesis. Furthermore, inhibition of PKC
but not p38 kinase inhibited VEGF-stimulated cell migration. Overexpression of S82A and S82D
Hsp27 mutants using adenoviral vectors (Ad) had no significant effect on migration. However,
VEGF reduced Hsp27 oligomeric size, and Ad-overexpressed S82D Hsp27 also formed smaller
oligomers than wild-type Hsp27. These findings identify a VEGF/PKC/PKD/Hsp27 S82 pathway,
indicate a role for PKD and HSP27 in VEGF-induced endothelial migration, and also suggest a
specific role for Hsp27 S82 phosphorylation in regulation of Hsp27 oligomerisation.
Further proteomic analysis of HUVECs identified Stomatin-Like Protein 2 (SLP2) as a major component
of anti-phosphotyrosine immunoprecipitates. The function of SLP2 is little understood.
VEGF did not alter the amount of anti-phosphotyrosine-associated SLP2, and further investigations suggested that SLP2 may not be directly tyrosine phosphorylated. SLP2 was localized to
mitochondria and co-immunoprecipitated with Prohibitin, a protein implicated in mitochondrial
function. However, siRNA-mediated SLP2 knockdown did not affect mitochondrial membrane
potential, apoptosis or migration of endothelial cells, and the function of this protein remains
unknown.


Spiritual intelligence and emotional intelligence can complement each other for purification of human life. On the one hand, spiritual intelligence strengthens spiritual and religious beliefs, thus establishing good qualities. On the other hand, emotional intelligence can improve social relationships, control emotions and help individuals progress towards perfection. This was a descriptive-correlational research where the sample size was estimated to be 424 students at Isfahan University of Medical Sciences selected through multistage cluster sampling. The measurement tools involved Trait Emotional Intelligence Questionnaire (TEIQue) developed by Petrides and Furnham (2003) and self-administered questionnaire for spiritual intelligence, whose reliability levels were calculated to be 0.84 and 0.87, respectively. The data were analyzed through multiple regression analysis. According to the regression analysis, the findings suggested that there is a relationship between spiritual intelligence and emotional intelligence. This relationship was observed in various dimensions of spiritual intelligence and emotional intelligence, between which a relationship was identified by the current study. Spiritual intelligence leads to more emotional intelligence; i.e. emotional intelligence strengthens spiritual intelligence.


The Golgi enzyme β1,6 N-acetylglucosaminyltransferase V (Mgat5) is up-regulated in carcinomas and promotes the substitution of N-glycan with poly N-acetyllactosamine, the preferred ligand for galectin-3 (Gal-3). Here, we report that expression of Mgat5 sensitized mouse cells to multiple cytokines. Gal-3 cross-linked Mgat5-modified N-glycans on epidermal growth factor and transforming growth factor–β receptors at the cell surface and delayed their removal by constitutive endocytosis. Mgat5 expression in mammary carcinoma was rate limiting for cytokine signaling and consequently for epithelial-mesenchymal transition, cell motility, and tumor metastasis. Mgat5 also promoted cytokine-mediated leukocyte signaling, phagocytosis, and extravasation in vivo. Thus, conditional regulation of N-glycan processing drives synchronous modification of cytokine receptors, which balances their surface retention against loss via endocytosis.


PURPOSE
The retinal nerve fiber layer (RNFL) exhibits birefringence that is due to the oriented cylindrical structure of the ganglion cell axons. Possible birefringent structures include axonal membranes, microtubules (MTs), and neurofilaments. MTs are generally assumed to be a major contributor, but this has not been demonstrated. In this study, the MT depolymerizing agent colchicine was used to evaluate the contribution of MTs to RNFL birefringence.

METHODS
Retinal nerve fiber bundles of isolated rat retina were observed through an imaging polarimeter set near extinction. Images were taken over an extended period. During baseline, the tissue was perfused with a physiological solution. During a treatment period, the solution was switched either to a control solution identical with the baseline solution or to a similar solution containing colchicine. The contrast of nerve fiber bundles was used to follow change of RNFL birefringence over time.

RESULTS
When imaged by the polarimeter, birefringent retinal nerve fiber bundles appeared as either bright or dark stripes. Bundles displayed as bright stripes were used to follow changes in retardance. The contrast of nerve fiber bundles was stable in control experiments. However, in treatment experiments, bundles were bright during the baseline period, but the contrast of bundles decreased rapidly when the colchicine solution was applied; bundles were barely visible after 30 minutes of treatment. After 70 minutes, the bundle contrast was close to zero at all wavelengths studied (440-780 nm).

CONCLUSIONS
MTs make a significant contribution to RNFL birefringence. The decrease of RNFL birefringence in glaucoma may indicate a loss of MTs.


JUST AS FRANK AND CHARLES commonly make a pair in Austenography--the sailor brothers, bringing knowledge of the war and the navy into the quiet domestic life of their sister, to the enrichment of her novels--so James and Henry Austen, though very different from one another in temperament and lifestyle, may be regarded as a pair: a pair of professional men living and working on the margin of the world of letters, with their own literary ambitions, abilities, and achievements. In a family adept at writing letters, charades, and light verse for their own amusement, only James and Henry (besides Jane) attempted serious authorship. In this essay I shall first establish the right of James and Henry to be regarded as literary men, looking at their personalities, their professional lives, and the range of literary texts they have left us. I shall consider to what extent their own ambitions were fulfilled, and examine some of the conflicting emotions roused in them by their sister's success. Her own fraternal feelings, as evinced by her letters, have led biographers to state categorically and repeatedly that Henry was her favorite, James the least favorite of her brothers. I hope to bring forward some evidence to modify this view. Along the way I shall ponder whether James and Henry helped inspire any of her fictional characters, always bearing in mind her own dictum that she was too proud of her creations to admit that they were only Mr. A or Colonel B. And lastly I shall investigate the role of these two brothers in shaping the view of Jane Austen, as a woman and a writer, that has come down to us through the centuries. On 4 January 1820, a few weeks after the death of her eldest son, James, the eighty-year-old Mrs. Austen wrote a letter to her sister-in-law Mrs. Leigh Perrot in which she enters into a comparison between James and his brother Edward, whom she refers to as Mr. Knight. After describing Edward as "most kind and liberal" Mrs. Austen adds that he is quite a man of business. That my dear James was not--Classical Knowledge, Literary Taste and the power of Elegant Composition he possessed in the highest degree; to these Mr Knight makes no pretensions. Both equally good, amiable and sweet-tempered. (Papers 264) This letter is valuable to students of the Austen family in several ways, not least in that it establishes James as amiable and sweet-tempered, in the eyes of his mother at least, a judgment to bear in mind wben we come to consider Jane's own comments about her eldest brother. Mrs. Austen's letter also confirms James in the character of scholar and writer, not just in his promising youth, but throughout his life. Of his performance as a clergyman, it will be noticed, Mrs. Austen makes no mention, though it was his clerical role that for thirty years defined his place in the local community and society at large. Mrs. Leigh Perrot had no need of this character sketch, since she had known James all his life; it was sheer indulgence on Mrs. Austen's part, for which she may be forgiven, having now lost two of her children, though it is notable that she did not think of mentioning Jane's literary powers. Many circumstances suggest that she was always most deeply attached to James, of all her children. It is quite common of course for proud parents to regard their firstborn as something of a genius in babyhood; and with high levels of parental attention and expectation, firstborns are indeed often high achievers, with a conscientious approach to life. James fits this pattern. He was a very satisfactory son for his scholarly father, having an aptitude for the classical studies that the Reverend George Austen was so well qualified to teach. By the age of fourteen, James bad matriculated at Oxford, where he remained, later as Fellow of his college, until 1790--eleven years. This was the only period of his life when James was resident anywhere other than Hampshire--though Oxford terms allowed him plenty of time back at Steventon. …


Idiopathic subglottic stenosis is a rare condition of unknown etiology characterized by circumferential stenosis in the subglottic larynx and upper trachea. Historically, patients were treated with dilation or ablation, however this approach has proven to be largely palliative and often leads to recurrence and the need for tracheostomy. A single-staged laryngotracheal resection and reconstruction is now the preferred definitive treatment for idiopathic subglottic stenosis and can be performed with excellent patient outcomes and rare subsequent progression of the disease. Avoiding anastomotic tension and devascularization are important technical keys to minimizing complications.


The refinement of radiocarbon dating using the information form tree-ring counts has raised serious doubts about the accepted theoretical framework of European prehistory. Monuments in Central and Western Europe have proved to be considerably older than their supposed Near-Eastern forerunners, and the record must be almost completely rewritten in the light of these new dates. "Before Civilization" is a preliminary attempt to do this with the help of analogies from more recent and well-documented primitive societies. The more glaring inconsistencies in the old theory are re-examined and Professor Renfrew shows convincingly how the baffling monuments of prehistoric Europe, like Stonehenge, could have been built without recourse to help from the 'more civilized' Near East.


Background: Palliative Care Outcomes Collaboration (PCOC) is a national voluntary quality initiative established to assist palliative care services across Australia improve practice and meet the National Standards for the Provision of Palliative Care. Methods: With funding from the Australian Department of Health and Ageing, PCOC is supporting specialist palliative care services to collect an agreed set of data items to measure outcomes for palliative care and to establish national benchmarking activities that will contribute to improving the quality of care for palliative care patients. Services collect three levels of routine data, patient demographic, episode of care and phase of illness. PCOC training sessions are used to explore how services will incorporate these three levels of data into their everyday practice. Results: The analysis of the data collected to date has provided palliative care services with information about the clinical state and trajectory of patients. An individual service's data can be compared with other services to demonstrate how patients in one service score on agreed outcomes when compared to other similar services. Data have been provided to services with multiple sites enabling comparison of service provision and work practices that can be used to identify areas for improvement and to drive change. PCOC is holding national workshops to explain the findings in the reports to services and participants at these gatherings have appreciated the opportunity to consider local issues in a broader forum. Report findings are being used for quality initiatives. Conclusion: This presentation will explore the many challenges that have confronted PCOC as it works with services to demonstrate how they can use the data for quality improvement processes and forge links with similar services.


Smart Grid is a major element of the Smart City concept that enables two-way communication of energy data between electric utilities and their consumers. These communication technologies are going through sharp modernization to meet future demand growth and to achieve reliability, security, and efficiency of the electric grid. In this paper, we implement an IPv6 based two-way communication system between the transformer agent (TA), installed at local electric transformer and various customer agents (CAs), connected to customer's smart meter. Various homes share their energy usage with the TA which in turn sends the utility's recommendations to the CAs. Raspberry Pi is used as hardware for all the CAs and the TA. We implement a self-healing mesh network between all nodes using OpenLab IEEE 802.15.4 chips and Routing Protocol for Low-Power and Lossy Networks (RPL), and the data is secured by RSA/AES keys. Several tests have been conducted in real environments, inside and outside of Carleton University, to test the performance of this communication network in various obstacle settings. In this paper, we highlight the details behind the implementation of this IPv6-based smart grid communication system, the related challenges, and the proposed solutions.


This colloquium discusses the intersection of love, care, and education in the field of early childhood education and care. While the name of the field reflects the belief that both care and education are seen as legitimate elements of the field's professional discourse, love is still unspoken, undefined, and taken for granted. The author argues that love is professional yet very personal, involving the feelings and strong emotional connection that exist in a complex relationship in professional early childhood classrooms. This colloquium urges us to realize and legitimatize both love and care in the field of early childhood education and care, rather than conflating love and care.


The vibration transmitted through a seat is influenced by the dynamics of the seat and the dynamics of the occupant. The principal objective of this thesis is to understand how the dynamics of the body and factors affecting the dynamics of the body influence the vibration transmitted through seats. Previous studies have shown that the apparent mass of the body and seat transmissibility are affected by the seating environment (e.g. vibration input spectra, backrest, hands position, foot position) and variability between people (i.e. physical characteristics), but these effects have not previously been systematically explored for realistic seating conditions. The apparent masses of 12 subjects were measured during exposure to random vertical vibration (from 0.125 to 40 Hz) to investigate the effects of the seat backrest, the footrest and steering wheel, and input spectra. In a rigid seat with no backrest, there were resonances in the apparent mass of the body around 5 and 10 Hz (with 1.0 ms-2 r.m.s broadband vibration). In the same seat with a rigid backrest, the median resonance frequency in the apparent mass increased from 5.47 to 6.35 Hz as the backrest was reclined to 30 degrees in 5 degrees increments; with a 100-mm foam backrest, the median resonance frequency decreased from 5.18 to 4.49 Hz as the backrest was reclined to 30 degrees. When subjects held a steering wheel, the mass supported on the seat surface decreased and there was an additional resonance at 4 Hz in the apparent mass. Moving the steering wheel away from the body reduced the apparent mass at resonance and increased the apparent mass around the 4 Hz resonance. As the feet moved forward, the mass supported on the seat surface increased, indicating that the backrest and footrest supported a lesser proportion of the subject weight. Applying force (0, 50, 100, 150, 200 N) to either the steering wheel or the footrest reduced the apparent mass at resonance and decreased the mass supported on the seat surface. Narrowband inputs at ½-octave intervals (from 1 to 16 Hz) presented at five magnitudes (0.25, 0.4, 0.63, 1.0 and 1.6 ms-2 r.m.s.) showed that the extent of nonlinearity previously observed with broadband vibration was frequency-dependent: the magnitude of vibration at frequencies less than 4 Hz had the greatest effect on the apparent mass at resonance, while vibration at frequencies less than 8 Hz had the greatest effect on the resonance frequency. A simple lumped parameter model was used to demonstrate that changes in the apparent mass with backrest contact, backrest inclination, hand position, foot position and vibration magnitude could be closely represented by changing the parameters in the model. Trends in model parameters, the damping ratios, and the damped natural frequencies were identified as a function of the model variables. A study was designed to determine how the physical characteristics of 80 seated adults (41 males and 39 females aged 18 to 65) affected their apparent mass and the transmission of vibration through a seat. Multiple regression models showed that while the strongest predictor of the vertical apparent mass at 0.6 Hz, at resonance, and at 12 Hz was bodyweight, weight was not strongly associated with seat transmissibility. A lumped parameter seat-person model was used to show that the dynamic stiffness of the seat increased with increased loading so as to compensate for increases in apparent mass associated with increased sitting weight. As age increased from 18 to 65 years, the apparent mass resonance frequency increased by up to 1.7 Hz. This change was greater than the 0.9-Hz increase in resonance frequency between sitting without a backrest and sitting with a backrest reclined to 15° and greater than the 1.0-Hz reduction in resonance frequency when the magnitude of vibration increased from 0.5 to 1.5 ms-2 r.m.s. Subject age was much the strongest predictor of the seat transmissibility resonance frequency and the transmissibility at resonance. The model was used to show that changes in the seat transmissibility with age could be predicted from changes in the apparent mass with age.


A guide to data collection, modeling and inference strategies for biological survey data using Bayesian and classical statistical methods. This book describes a general and flexible framework for modeling and inference in ecological systems based on hierarchical models, with a strict focus on the use of probability models and parametric inference. Hierarchical models represent a paradigm shift in the application of statistics to ecological inference problems because they combine explicit models of ecological system structure or dynamics with models of how ecological systems are observed. The principles of hierarchical modeling are developed and applied to problems in population, meta population, community, and meta community systems. The book provides the first synthetic treatment of many recent methodological advances in ecological modeling and unifies disparate methods and procedures.The authors apply principles of hierarchical modeling to ecological problems, including: occurrence or occupancy models for estimating species distribution; abundance models based on many sampling protocols, including distance sampling; capture-recapture models with individual effects; spatial capture-recapture models based on camera trapping and related methods; population and meta population dynamic models; models of biodiversity, community structure and dynamics; wide variety of examples involving many taxa (birds, amphibians, mammals, insects, plants); development of classical, likelihood-based procedures for inference, as well as Bayesian methods of analysis; detailed explanations describing the implementation of hierarchical models using freely available software such as R and WinBUGS; and, computing support in technical appendices in an online companion web site.


OBJECTIVE. We aimed to provide information that can be used as a guide to clinicians when advising breastfeeding mothers on normal lactation with regard to the frequency and volume of breastfeedings and the fat content of breast milk. METHODS. Mothers (71) of infants who were 1 to 6 months of age and exclusively breastfeeding on demand test-weighed their infants before and after every breastfeeding from each breast for 24 to 26 hours and collected small milk samples from each breast each time the infant was weighed. RESULTS. Infants breastfed 11 ± 3 times in 24 hours (range: 6–18), and a breastfeeding was 76.0 ± 12.6 g (range: 0–240 g), which was 67.3 ± 7.8% (range: 0–100%) of the volume of milk that was available in the breast at the beginning of the breastfeeding. Left and right breasts rarely produced the same volume of milk. The volume of milk consumed by the infant at each breastfeeding depended on whether the breast that was being suckled was the more or less productive breast, whether the breastfeeding was unpaired, or whether it was the first or second breast of paired breastfeedings; the time of day; and whether the infant breastfed during the night or not. Night breastfeedings were common and made an important contribution to the total milk intake. The fat content of the milk was 41.1 ± 7.8 g/L (range: 22.3–61.6 g/L) and was independent of breastfeeding frequency. There was no relationship between the number of breastfeedings per day and the 24-hour milk production of the mothers. CONCLUSIONS. Breastfed infants should be encouraged to feed on demand, day and night, rather than conform to an average that may not be appropriate for the mother-infant dyad.