Understanding how fishers behave and make decisions is critical in determining
how best to manage fisheries. If the response of fishers to management measures
can be predicted, unexpected and undesirable outcomes can be avoided. Individual
transferable quota (ITQ) management has been introduced in many international
fisheries, with the purpose of accounting for human behaviour, as it theoretically
generates behavioural incentives that are aligned with management objectives (e.g.
reducing fishing costs). The ability of ITQ systems to meet continuing economic,
ecological and social objectives therefore is centred on ensuring fisher behavioural
incentives remain aligned with those objectives. This thesis used the Tasmanian
southern rock lobster (TSRL) fishery in Australia as a case study to assess
changing fishing practices and behaviour of fishers under ITQ management and
how this had evolved through time. The aim was to improve general understanding
of how ITQ implementation and design may affect fisher decision-making and
improve certainty in fishery management outcomes.
It is critical that an ITQ system is able to manage interactions with all ecosystem
components (e.g. non-target species) as required under ecosystem based fisheries
management (EBFM) principles. The TSRL fishery to some extent, was more
successful than other fisheries in accounting for these interactions, due to the
selective and benign nature of potting. In many sustainably certified fisheries,
input controls continue to be used in place of ITQ systems to manage ecosystem
components, particularly in non-selective fisheries (e.g. trawl). The continued use of
input controls however, can reduce the security of a fisher's ITQ right through loss of access and potentially separate their incentives and behaviour from management
objectives.
Successful ITQ management also requires the managing authority to set a binding
total allowable catch (TAC). Between 2008 and 2010, the TSRL had a non-binding
TAC, which reduced the price of quota on the market and caused a reactivation of
latent effort, increase in fleet capacity, reduction in economic efficiency and
dissipation of economic rent, as fishers engaged in a competitive race to fish during
times of high revenue. Changing fishing practices such as "double night fishing"
during these years also had the potential to lead to localised stock depletion
through concentration of effort, however the format of the commercial logbook
prevented a precise assessment of the fleet-wide extent and impact of double night
fishing. Consequently, this research highlighted the importance of being able to
collect fine-scale spatial and temporal data on fishing effort in order to enhance
decision-making.
It is also important in an ITQ system that those actively fishing own the majority of
their quota units. An implicit assumption behind the theory of ITQs is that those
fishing are quota owners, however in many developed ITQ fisheries, with free
transferability of quota units, the majority of the fishing is undertaken by lease
quota fishers. Following analysis of the physical risk tolerance of both quota
owners and lease quota fishers in the TSRL fishery, it was evident that their
behavioural drivers were divergent. Lease quota fishers were more responsive to
changes in expected revenue than quota owners, leading in some areas to
significantly higher risk tolerance levels. In other words lease quota fishers were
more prepared to take greater risks at sea than quota owners when expected revenue was high. This result was not entirely unexpected as lease quota fishers
face high costs of leasing quota and an increasing "cost price squeeze" between
what that must pay to lease quota and what they are paid for their catch.
Consequently, their behavioural incentives and underlying business structures are
likely to be different. This was also evident in a series of economic experiments that
were conducted to examine the propensity of groups with varying numbers of quota
owners and lease quota fishers, to coordinate to prevent assignment problems that
cause economic rent dissipation. Heterogeneous groups of lease quota fishers and
quota owners were less successful in coordinating with communication than
homogenous groups of quota owners. This was because lease quota fishers were
less likely to adopt a socially-optimal strategy for preventing rent dissipation
compared with quota owners due to having: (i) inequality in wealth; (ii) insecurity of
tenure and; (iii) asymmetric information exchange. It was only through the
institution of income-sharing cooperatives that lease quota fishers chose to
coordinate because income-sharing offset the incentive to over-appropriate the
resource, if participants doubt that others would do the same. While requiring
external validation in the field, the results highlight the importance of recognising
and understanding the differing behavioural incentives of lease quota fishers and
quota owners. They also highlight the need for managers to consider the trade-offs
associated with allowing free transferability of quota units and whether this meets
overarching management objectives.
While contributing to further discussion and debate on the costs and benefits of
ITQ management, this research highlighted the importance of understanding
behavioural incentives of different types of fishers in order to inform management
decision making. This type of research now and in the future has the potential to inform and ultimately improve the design and implementation of ITQ management
systems.


Computing aggregates over windows is at the core of virtually every stream processing job. Typical stream processing applications involve overlapping windows and, therefore, cause redundant computations. Several techniques prevent this redundancy by sharing partial aggregates among windows. However, these techniques do not support out-of-order processing and session windows. Out-of-order processing is a key requirement to deal with delayed tuples in case of source failures such as temporary sensor outages. Session windows are widely used to separate different periods of user activity from each other. In this paper, we present Scotty, a high throughput operator for window discretization and aggregation. Scotty splits streams into non-overlapping slices and computes partial aggregates per slice. These partial aggregates are shared among all concurrent queries with arbitrary combinations of tumbling, sliding, and session windows. Scotty introduces the first slicing technique which (1) enables stream slicing for session windows in addition to tumbling and sliding windows and (2) processes out-of-order tuples efficiently. Our technique is generally applicable to a broad group of dataflow systems which use a unified batch and stream processing model. Our experiments show that we achieve a throughput an order of magnitude higher than alternative state-of-the-art solutions.


We propose an inter-comparison of Smagorinsky type subgrid-scale models for the simulation of high Reynolds number katabatic flows, with the purpose of testing the validity of some of the model's assumptions for the considered application. Katabatic flows arise along sloping surfaces under stably stratified conditions and are a direct consequence of surface cooling. Understanding their structure is of great interest in meteorology because of the broad band of areas and scales that they cover, influencing from local valleys microclimate (e.g. over Salt Lake and Phoenix valleys) to synoptic scale motions (e.g. over Antarctica). Large-eddy simulation (LES), on the other hand, represents an important tool to study high-Reynolds number flows and has undergone significant developments and validations in the past years, confirming its reliability when adopted to simulate a variety of atmospheric (and industrial) flows. The stable stratification of the environment and the complex dynamics that arise close to the surface in katabatic winds – leading eventually to the formation of the so-called low level jet – represent a tough test case for closure models, questioning their applicability over a broad range of filter (grid) scales and motivating the proposed work. The study is performed in the idealized framework of the Prandtl model, the set of normalized, filtered Boussinesq equations is solved on a regular domain, adopting an in-house mixed pseudo-spectral / finite difference code. The original static Smagorinsky model (SMAG), the standard dynamic model with planar averaging of the coefficient (PASI) and the more recent scale-dependent Smagorinsky model with Lagrangian averaging of the coefficients (LASD) are adopted to independently parametrize the subgrid-scale terms for kinematic momentum and energy, which arise from the filtering operation. Results focus on the statistically steady state solution of the problem and show how mean profiles are consistent across subgrid-scale models and most of the discretizations, whereas second order statistics show strong dependence on the spatial resolution, which is partially alleviated once the scale invariance assumption of the model coefficient is relaxed. For the considered resolutions we show that scale-invariance of the model coefficient does in fact not hold – on average – in proximity of the low level jet and close to the wall. At these location of strong shear production the support of the LES filter is approaching the integral scale and the LASD model is therefore expected to provide a more accurate estimation of the Smagorinsky coefficient. Considerations regarding the dissipation rates of the different subgrid-scale models and on mixing efficiency of resolved and modeled turbulence will be discussed.


Objective: To measure the childhood and life course socioeconomic exposures of people born between 1871 and 1949, and then to estimate the probability of death between 1965 and 1994, the probability of functional limitation in 1994, and the combined probability of dying or experiencing functional limitation during this period. Setting, participants and design: Data were from the Alameda County Study (California) and pertained to people aged 17–94 years (n = 6627) in 1965 (baseline). Socioeconomic position (SEP) in childhood was based on respondent's reports of their father's occupation, and life course disadvantage was measured by cross-classifying childhood SEP and the respondent's education and household income in 1965. The health outcomes were all-cause mortality (n = 2420) and functional limitation measured using the Nagi index (n = 453, 17.4% of those alive in 1994). Relationships were examined before and after adjustment for changed socioeconomic circumstances after 1965. Results: Those from a low SEP in childhood, and those exposed to a greater number of episodes of disadvantage over the life course before 1965, were subsequently more likely to die, to report functional limitation and to experience the greatest health-related burden. Conclusions: All-cause mortality, functional limitation and overall health-related burden in middle and late adulthood are shaped by socioeconomic conditions experienced during childhood and cumulative disadvantage over the life course. The contributions made to adult health by childhood SEP and accumulated disadvantage suggest that each constitutes a distinct socioeconomic influence that may require different policy responses and intervention options.


The accumulation and disposal of fly ash is a common problem in thermal power plants leading to environmental concern. In this work, boron carbide (B4C) along with fly ash is added as reinforcement particles in the aluminium matrix to fabricate a new class of composite with reduced density and improved wear resistance. The hybrid metal matrix nanocomposites (MMNC) having Al7075 matrix alloy reinforced with B4C (1.5 wt%) and fly ash (0.5, 1.0 and 1.5 wt%) nanoparticles were produced by ultrasonic stir casting method. The microstructure study of the composite showed uniform dispersion of particles in the matrix and absence of unwanted carbides. The dry-sliding wear test was performed by varying weight % of fly ash (R), load (L), sliding distance (D) and sliding velocity (V) as input factors; to study wear rate (WR) and coefficient of friction (COF) being the output parameters. The experimental result is analyzed by response surface methodology (RSM) while the wear behaviour predictive model is developed using artificial neural networking (ANN). The ANN model with 4-6-2 network architecture is found effective with an average percentage error of 9.32% and 3.80% for WR and COF respectively. Analysis of variance (ANOVA) result established applied load as the significant parameter affecting both the responses (76.21% for WR and 79.55% for COF) followed by % fly ash (12.77% for WR and 9.62% for COF). A good enhancement in the wear properties of all combinations of reinforcements in Al7075 hybrid nanocomposites is observed. The hybrid nanocomposites having 1.5 wt% of B4C and 1.5 wt% of fly ash exhibited the maximum wear resistance.


■ A number of approaches have been advanced for taking data about a user's likes and dislikes and generating a general profile of the user. These profiles can be used to retrieve documents matching user interests; recommend music, movies, or other similar products; or carry out other tasks in a specialized fashion. This article presents a fundamentally new method for generating user profiles that takes advantage of a large-scale database of demographic data. These data are used to generalize user-specified data along the patterns common across the population, including areas not represented in the user's original data. I describe the method in detail and present its implementation in the LIFESTYLE FINDER agent, an internet-based experiment testing our approach on more than 20,000 users worldwide.


Dipole-dipole and hydrogen-bonding interaction reinforced (DHIR) hydrogels that demonstrate both excellent thermo-responsive volume change and high mechanical strength have been developed. Their thermo-responsive volume change originates from the balance between the temperature-sensitive reversible dipole-dipole and H-bonding interaction and an embedded super-hydrophilic component. By integrating these thermal responsive DHIR hydrogels with non-swelling polyurethane (PU) hydrogels, bilayered (DHIR-PU) thermomorphic actuators capable of shape transformation have been fabricated. The hybrid DHIR-PU hydrogels have a wide temperature window allowing dual-responsive actuations to be achieved. The new hydrogel-based actuators are highly attractive materials for a range of transformative applications in soft robotics, medical devices and advanced manufacturing.


In 1910, when Evelyn Wrench founded the Royal Over-Seas League, King George V was on the throne, the British Empire seemed invincible and for most people international travel was a new and exciting opportunity. One hundred years later, the world and Britain's place in it has been transformed almost beyond recognition. Yet the League has weathered all these changes and now enters its second century with a renewed sense of energy and purpose. How has the ROSL developed since 1910 and responded to the fundamental shift from Empire into Commonwealth? What are the enduring aims and values, shared by all members of the League, which inform its activities? And how will it continue to evolve and find its place over the next hundred years? This engaging and concise history of the first hundred years of the Royal Over-Seas League is lavishly illustrated with images from all aspects of the League's life and full of lively anecdotes about the many distinguished figures who have played a part in its creation. From Cecil Rhodes and John Ruskin, sources of inspiration to Evelyn Wrench, to Lord Northcliffe, Lord Baden-Powell and Earl Mountbatten, amongst many others who have been active in the League's development, the story also includes the many artists, musicians and writers who owe much to Royal Over-Seas League sponsorship of their early careers. A delightful commemoration of the rich history of the Royal Over-Seas League, it will inform and entertain anyone who is curious to find out more about this distinctive and important organization.


The concept of the beam propagation factor M2 is extended for chromatic laser beams. The definition of the beam propagation factor can be generalized with the weighted effective wavelength. Using the new definition of factor M2, the propagation of chromatic beams can be analyzed by the beam propagation factor M2 as same as that of monochromatic beams. A simple method to measure the chromatic beam factor M2 is demonstrated. The chromatic factor M2 is found invariable while the laser beam propagates through the dispersion-free ABCD system.


Demographic, economic and cultural changes increase energy consumption in the housing sector and cause even higher levels of the related greenhouse gas emissions. The goal of this work is to identify opportunities for developing renewable energy sources (RES) in the housing sector to improve its energy efficiency. The results of the study show that the construction industry, and especially the housing sector, can save more energy as compared to other types of the energy use. RES are important in reducing CO2 emissions in the housing sector and in improving the energy efficiency of buildings. In recent years, the production and consumption of energy from renewable sources in the housing sector have increased. However, the main volume of energy consumption in buildings is provided by fossil fuels. The main barriers to the introduction of renewable energy in the DNC housing system are financial ones, as well as logistical problems of biomass transportation and storage. To reduce these barriers, the authors offer a number of measures, including the governmental support for the use of renewable energy in the systems of heat supply and cooling of buildings, as well as the creation of storage facilities for renewable energy. The system of encouraging the use of RES applied in Denmark, which is the world leader according to the use of renewable energy in the housing construction, is considered as an example.


Architecture and urban planning have always been subject to, and affected by, processes of transnational cultural exchange and professional networking. Yet, the modes and geographies of knowledge mobility in urban development have matured in the last two decades, with various forces resulting in forms of transnational learning that are faster, more frequent and have more impact. The articles in this special issue provide an important contribution to understanding this maturation, and highlight the particular ways in which knowledge and practice relating to building design move from place to place. In this introductory article, we develop an analysis of how transnational building practices come to be. We highlight the way that transnational building practices can both deepen our knowledge of the constitution of knowledge mobility, and exemplify the profound tensions that result from the clash between the structuring logic of international markets and the need to adapt global ideas to local contexts. Thus, in addition to de-naturalizing mobility and teasing out how movement is manufactured, we draw attention to the way that the inescapable relationships between buildings and markets determine the trajectories and effects of transnational knowledge networks. This opening up of the political economy of mobility, we believe, is one of the most pertinent issues in relation to considerations of mobility more broadly.


Objectives To determine the prevalence and characteristics of users of prayer or spiritual healing among women. Design and setting This cross sectional study was conducted as a part of the Australian Longitudinal Study on Women's Health (ALSWH), a 20-year study that examines various factors affecting women's health and well-being. Participants The sample used in the current study were women from the 1946–1951 cohort (n=9965) (59–64 years) who were surveyed in 2010. Outcome measures Use of prayer or spiritual healing; demographic factors and measures of health status. χ2 Tests, analyses of variance (to determine associations) and a stepwise backward logistic regression model (for the most significant predictors) using a likelihood ratio test were used to determine the outcome measures. Results It is estimated that 26% of Australian women from the 1946–1951 cohort (aged 59–64 years) use prayer or spiritual healing on a regular basis. Women were significantly more likely to use prayer or spiritual healing if they were non-smokers, non-drinkers or low-risk drinkers, had symptoms of severe tiredness (OR 1.25; 95% CI 1.12 to 1.40), depression, (OR 1.30; 95% CI 1.11 to 1.53), anxiety (OR 1.33; 95% CI 1.15 to 1.53), diagnosed cancer (OR 1.84; 95% CI 1.28 to 2.65) or other major illnesses (OR 1.43; 95% CI 1.18 to 1.75) and used other complementary therapies. Conclusions A significant proportion of adult women are using prayer or spiritual healing. Given that prayer or spiritual healing was significantly associated with health symptoms, chronic illnesses and positive health seeking behaviours, respect for prayer or spiritual healing practices is required within health care settings. Future research is recommended around specific populations using prayer or spiritual healing, reasons for their use and potential benefits on health related outcomes and general well-being.


1. The importance and historical development of the search for reliable prognostic guides for the electroshock treatment of depressive states is briefly indicated.

2. The design of an investigation into alleged prognostic indices is described, using a rating scale of depressive symptoms and signs for the assessment of clinical status. Fifty female patients, aged 41–60, with primary depressive illnesses were investigated, their physique measured, and later treated by E.C.T. Re-assessments of clinical condition were made at 1 and 3 months after the completion of treatment, and the association between specific clinical factors and quantitative symptom-ratings examined statistically.

3. A significant relationship with response to electroshock was found between patient's age, physique and a clinical-item scale (Hobson) derived from the history and examination.

4. Certain of the results support the view that there are at least two clinically separate varieties of depressive illness.


The Message Passing Interface (MPI) is the library-based programming model employed by most scalable parallel applications today; however, it is not easy to use. To simplify program development, Partitioned Global Address Space (PGAS) languages have emerged as promising alternatives to MPI. Co-array Fortran (CAF), Titanium, and Unified Parallel C are explicitly parallel single-program multiple-data languages that provide the abstraction of a global shared memory and enable programmers to use one-sided communication to access remote data. This thesis focuses on evaluating PGAS languages and explores new language features to simplify the development of high performance programs in CAF.
To simplify program development, we explore extending CAF with abstractions for group, Cartesian, and graph communication topologies that we call co-spaces. The combination of co-spaces, textual barriers, and single values enables effective analysis and optimization of CAF programs. We present an algorithm for synchronization strength reduction (SSR), which replaces textual barriers with faster point-to-point synchronization. This optimization is both difficult and error-prone for developers to perform manually. SSR-optimized versions of Jacobi iteration and the NAS MG and CG benchmarks yield performance similar to that of our best hand-optimized variants and demonstrate significant improvement over their barrier-based counterparts.
To simplify the development of codes that rely on producer-consumer communication, we explore extending CAF with multi-version variables (MVVs). MVVs increase programmer productivity by insulating application developers from the details of buffer management, communication, and synchronization. Sweep3D, NAS BT, and NAS SP codes expressed using MVVs are much simpler than the fastest hand-coded variants, and experiments show that they yield similar performance.
To avoid exposing latency in distributed memory systems, we explore extending CAF with distributed multithreading (DMT) based on the concept of function shipping. Function shipping facilitates co-locating computation with data as well as executing several asynchronous activities in the remote and local memory. DMT uses co-subroutines/cofunctions to ship computation with either blocking or non-blocking semantics. A prototype implementation and experiments show that DMT simplifies development of parallel search algorithms and the performance of DMT-based RandomAccess exceeds that of the reference MPI implementation.


Unlike deterministic forecasts, probabilistic predictions provide estimates of uncertainty, which is an additional value for decision-making. Previous studies have proposed the analog ensemble (AnEn), which is a technique to generate uncertainty information from a purely deterministic forecast. The objective of this study is to improve the AnEn performance for wind power forecasts by developing static and dynamic weighting strategies, which optimize the predictor combination with a brute-force continuous ranked probability score (CRPS) minimization and a principal component analysis (PCA) of the predictors. Predictors are taken from the high-resolution deterministic forecasts of the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF), including forecasts of wind at several heights, geopotential height, pressure, and temperature, among others. The weighting strategies are compared at five wind farms in Europe and the U.S. situated in regions with different terrain complexity, both on and offshore, and significantly improve the deterministic and probabilistic AnEn forecast performance compared to the AnEn with 10-m wind speed and direction as predictors and compared to PCA-based approaches. The AnEn methodology also provides reliable estimation of the forecast uncertainty. The optimized predictor combinations are strongly dependent on terrain complexity, local wind regimes, and atmospheric stratification. Since the proposed predictor-weighting strategies can accomplish both the selection of relevant predictors as well as finding their optimal weights, the AnEn performance is improved by up to 20 % at on and offshore sites.


Cooling poses as a major challenge in the IT industry because recent trends have led to more compact and energy intensive microprocessors. Typically microprocessors in current consumer devices and state-of-the-art data centers are cooled using relatively bulky air cooled heat sinks. The large size heat sinks are required due to the poor thermophysical properties of air. In order to compensate for the poor thermal properties of air, it is typical to use chillers to pre-cool the air below the ambient temperature before feeding it to the heat sinks. Operating the chillers requires additional power input thereby making the cooling process more expensive. The growing cooling demand of electronic components will, however, render these cooling techniques insufficient. Direct application of liquid-cooling on chip level using directly attached manifold microchannel heat sinks reduces conductive and convective resistances, resulting in the reduction of the thermal gradient needed to remove heat. Water is an inexpensive, nontoxic and widely available liquid coolant. Therefore, switching from air to water as coolant enables a much higher coolant inlet temperature without in any way compromising the cooling performance. In addition, it eliminates the need for chillers and allows the thermal energy to be reused. All these improvements lead to higher thermal efficiency and open up the possibility to perform electronic cooling with higher exergetic efficiency. The current work explores this concept using measurements and exergetic analyses of a manifold microchannel heat sink and a small scale, first of its kind, hot water cooled data center prototype. Through the measurements on the heat sink, it is demonstrated that the heat load in the state-of-the-art microprocessor chips can be removed using hot water with inlet temperature of 60°C. Using hot water as coolant results in high coolant exergy content at the heat sink outlet. This facilitates recovering the energy typically wasted as heat in data centers, and can therefore result in data centers with minimal carbon footprint. The measurements on both the heat sink and the data center prototype strongly attest to this concept. Reuse strategies such as space heating and adsorption based refrigeration were tested as potential means to use the waste heat from data centers in different climates. Application-specific definitions of the value of waste heat were formulated as economic measures to evaluate potential benefits of various reuse strategies.Copyright © 2012 by ASME


This study is an intervention study conducted on students in the middle years of a Swedish suburban school. The aim of the study is to examine students' cooperative skills in ball games in the subject of physical education. The study's questions focus on what emerges in activity and in conversation when students receive cooperative tasks that they must complete together in ball games, and how these conversations and activities change during the learning process. The study also focuses on the patterns that occur in the game room when students must help each other cooperate, and on the consequences of these patterns for the learning of cooperation in ball games.The intervention consisted of three game laboratories, created as special tasks by means of cooperation, which were orchestrated. The study is based on and can be understood through John Dewey's pragmatic epistemology. It has a  constructionist basis which means that learning and development is seen as an active process where individuals creat meaning in cooperation with others. Furthermore, the theoretical framework implies that students and the environment are seen as constantly interacting, creating each other in a mutual transactional process. A practical epistemology analysis (PEA) was used for the analysis of `talk and action´ in order to explore students' constructions and reconstructions of meaning making and learning about cooperation in ballgames. The empirical material consists of 24 games played and 24 rounds of talks. The first game laboratory focuses on what students are doing and talking about when they are asked to achieve the first pass. The second game laboratory focuses on what they do and talk about in order to succeed together in getting across the field's halfway line before they get to shoot at goal. The third game laboratory focuses on what students should do to achieve the final pass before shooting at goal.The analysis of the game laboratories shows that it is not enough to pass or to create space as, own rooms in order to achieve cooperation in ballgames. The students' actions and agreements during talks must also harmonise with the purpose of the task in order to allow learning to cooperate in ballgames to occur. The patterns that emerged in the game room were convergence and divergence; students created their own rooms as well as isolated rooms. Furthermore, densified game room was observed to hinder cooperation, and thinned room to favour cooperation.


This Lexicon, aimed at NGOs, lawyers, diplomats and students, follows the same method as the Lexicon of Human Rights - Les definitions des droits de l'homme, published by Martinus Nijhoff Publishers in 2008. Definitions related to the environment are gathered by extracting them from relevant universal scope texts. This ordered grouping of definitions will enlighten the reader about the priorities of the international community regarding environmental law. Definitions are classified in alphabetical order, in separate English and French lists. In each language there is an alphabetical list of common terms with the equivalent second language term in square brackets. The list gives the exact detailed meaning followed by the source of each term. Following this list, a lexicon of the same terms is given under such general themes as "Mammals", "Gas", "Lead". Finally, a list of relevant documents which can be referenced for further information is included.


Cytokine alterations are more strongly correlated with illness duration than with measures of illness severity. Myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS) is an unexplained incapacitating illness that may affect up to 4 million people in the United States alone. There are no validated laboratory tests for diagnosis or management despite global efforts to find biomarkers of disease. We considered the possibility that inability to identify such biomarkers reflected variations in diagnostic criteria and laboratory methods as well as the timing of sample collection during the course of the illness. Accordingly, we leveraged two large, multicenter cohort studies of ME/CFS to assess the relationship of immune signatures with diagnosis, illness duration, and other clinical variables. Controls were frequency-matched on key variables known to affect immune status, including season of sampling and geographic site, in addition to age and sex. We report here distinct alterations in plasma immune signatures early in the course of ME/CFS (n = 52) relative to healthy controls (n = 348) that are not present in subjects with longer duration of illness (n = 246). Analyses based on disease duration revealed that early ME/CFS cases had a prominent activation of both pro- and anti-inflammatory cytokines as well as dissociation of intercytokine regulatory networks. We found a stronger correlation of cytokine alterations with illness duration than with measures of illness severity, suggesting that the immunopathology of ME/CFS is not static. These findings have critical implications for discovery of interventional strategies and early diagnosis of ME/CFS.


The absorption of the Greek world into the Roman empire created intellectual problems on several levels. In the first instance, Greek confidence in the superiority of Hellenic culture made explanations for the swiftness of Roman conquest all the more necessary. In accounting for Rome9s success, Greeks focused on the structure and character of the Roman state, on Roman attitudes towards citizenship, and on the nature of the Roman constitution. Greeks initially attempted to understand Roman institutions and beliefs by assimilating them to paradigms within Hellenistic political thought. On the one hand, this process tended to obscure substantial differences between Greek and Roman political theory. At the same time, appreciation of Rome9s relations with Italy created a means through which Greeks could imagine their own integration into the Roman community. Among the conceptual models available to Greeks of this age, only the polis provided a paradigm for a collectivity in which individuals had equal rights and toward which they directed their patriotic sentiments. That Roman Italy was not a polis did not force the coinage of new terminology: the polis formed a conceptual boundary that Hellenistic political philosophy never truly escaped. Repeated construals of Roman ideas and institutions on analogy with polis-based models ultimately forced a shift in the semantic fields of Greek political terminology and altered Greeks9 conceptual archetype of the political collectivity. This process provided a framework within which Greeks could justify their wholesale participation in imperial culture and political life: they could, on these terms, argue that the gradual evolution of the world toward a single, unified empire actualized man9s natural tendency to center his life around a single polis.


Networked computers are finding their way into a broader range of environments, from corporate offices to schools, homes, and shirt pockets. This new computing model fosters the development of distributed software components that communicate with one another across the underlying networked infrastructure. A distributed software component can be plugged into distributed applications that may not have existed when it was created. The intention is that many developers will reuse distributed software components to build new systems. An interface definition language usually is used to describe a distributed software component's interface. However, a notable limitation of current IDLs is that they generally only describe the names and type signatures of the component's attributes and operations. Current IDLs don't formally specify the behavior of the software component's operations. To help solve these problems, the authors have developed Biscotti (behavioral specification of distributed software component interfaces), a Java extension that enhances Java remote method invocation interfaces with Eiffel-style preconditions, postconditions, and invariants.


High levels of savings and investments are key to India's sustained and robust long-term growth. While India's saving rate has declined in recent years, a bigger challenge facing the economy is the intermediation of savings to finance the growing requirements of industry and infrastructure. This paper describes the trajectory of savings and investments in India. The major source of investment in the coming decades is expected to be investment in infrastructure and in micro, small and medium enterprises. The paper highlights the issues in infrastructure and MSME financing and proposes an agenda for reforms. Reduced financial repression, deep and liquid bond markets, improvement in banking regulation, improved access to bank credit to MSMEs should be the agenda for financial sector reforms. A framework for failure resolution of financial firms and a conducive environment for competition in the financial sector should be part of the strategy to promote the rate of savings and capital formation.


Medical research suffers because of pointless obstacles

Cancer Research UK and other medical research charities have warned the government that the human tissue bill will cause damaging confusion among doctors and hamper medical research unless crucial sections are clarified.1 The Data Protection Act, another well intentioned but loosely drafted law, has also been in the news. The Bichard inquiry has been investigating the decision by Humber-side police to erase the records of Ian Huntley's sexual offences involving children because he had not been convicted, and Richard Thomas, who as information commissioner is responsible for interpreting the Data Protection Act, has announced a public information campaign to prevent such embarrassing "misinterpretations" of the act.2 He says that "data protection principles are largely a matter of common sense," and told the Bichard inquiry that the decision to erase Huntley's records was "astonishing." This decision, like the General Medical Council's instruction to doctors that they might face litigation under the Data Protection Act if they notified their patients to cancer registries without obtaining fully informed consent, stemmed from the legal muddle that the Data Protection Act has engendered. To blame the muddled majority is to miss the point. It is the law, not police or medical training, that must be amended. Access to personal records should not require informed consent in certain circumstances, and these should be specifically exempted. The criterion of an overriding public interest has proved to be too ambiguous to be useful.

The deaths that will occur because of the effects …


This presentation features a case study of an implementation of VuFind at the East Carolina University Libraries. Cataloging representatives from the main university library, the health sciences library, and the music library formed a working group to evaluate the MARC fields that would be indexed and displayed for the end user of the VuFind discovery layer. The intent was to clarify scoping of resources based on the indexing tied to particular facets and search functionalities, and to replicate search functions available in the Libraries' existing Classic Catalog. The end result of this practice was to construct search options and parameters that would optimize discoverability of the library's resources. The presentation will reveal the facet elements selected for the implementation and the process behind mapping those elements. Additionally, an overview regarding decisions on the integration of MARC fields and elements behind search indices and the rationale behind these decisions will be discussed.


Setting: Alkamleen locality Gesira State -Sudan.
Objective: To set up a well structured health services that effectively led and meet the consumers needs and the aspiration of the health services providers, to facilitates an enabling environment to implement effective integration in health services in all health facilities in Alkamleen locality, to integrate the similar or related packs of health services to meet the needs of the consumers and aspiration of the health services providers, to maximize the utilization of the available recourses and, and to recommend of the interventions the support of the national health system.
Design: It is a pre-test – post-test control group design where all health personnel working at all health facilities in alkamleen locality will witness a training programme in integrated services at health facilities. That will be followed with a post intervention evaluation/study to assess the impact of the training program in improving the provision of health services.
Result: Managers at 45 health facilities were met by the study). 64% of them reporting that29 (64.4%) presence of health information system at their health facilities while 16 (35.6%) didn't. Working environment at the health facilities that 10 (22.2%) were having excellent working environment while 17 (37.8%) were of poor working condition. Training in integration of provision of health services, 18 (40%) managers reported the presence of integration system between the health service programmes while 27 (60%) didn't and only 2 (11.1%) reported that the delivery of the health service was ideally integrated. Strength of Integration between Programs 41 (91.1%) respondents reported that the integration was present between the Health Education, Nutrition, EPI and Maternal and Child Health programs while 4 (8.9%) reported between the Health Education and/or the Nutrition, EPI and Maternal and Child Health programs. The Health Education was the intersection programme between them. Distribution of the Programmes Integrated in the Provision of Health Services. 38 (84.4%) respondents reported the presence of perfect integration between them while 7 (14.4%) reported a partial integration between them. The integration was realized in terms of cooperation among health cadre, logistics and supplies, reports writing and attendance of the monthly meetings. Efficiency of health delivery packages, the EPI is topping the list where 44 (95.6%) of the total interviewed reported the presence of a responsible person and/or a manager who overseeing the delivery of EPI service, 37 (77.8%) reported the immunization technician, 42 (91.1%) reported the presence of monitoring and evaluation activity, 41 (91.1%) reported the presence of supplies and equipments and 42 (93.3%) managers reported the presence of training programmes in relation to EPI. However, the mental health, the aged and the health education were the least efficient health packages introduced; none of them was met any of the efficiency mental health indicators. Crosscutting Integration of the Health Delivery Packages perfect integration between the EPI and the Nutrition programmes; that was reported by 40 (88.9%) of the total health managers, EPI and Nutrition programmes were of good integration with the health education programme as was reported by 35 (77.8%) and 31 (68.9%) health managers consequently. However the aged (GER), mental and dental health were seen to be stand vertically with no integration 0 (0%) with any of the health delivery packages, EPI and Nutrition programmes were of good integration with the health education programme as was reported by 35 (77.8%) and 31 (68.9%) health managers consequently. However the aged (GER), mental and dental health were seen to be stand vertically with no integration 0 (0%) with any of the health delivery packages.


The Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA) requires that all potentially responsible parties, including current and former land owners, contribute to the costs of cleanup of contaminated property. CERCLA includes a provision that grants bona fide prospective purchaser (BFPP) status and exemption from liability to land owners if liability under CERCLA is based solely on owning the land. In PCS Nitrogen v. Ashley II of Charleston, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit refused to grant BFPP status to Ashley II and suggested that a high standard of due care is required to obtain such status. This Comment argues that the court's decision, and its suggestion that a high standard of due care is necessary to avoid liability, will make it more difficult for purchasers of contaminated land to avoid joint and several liability under CERCLA. The court's decision will deter businesses from purchasing contaminated land with the intention of remediation and redevelopment.


Screening for Opioid Misuse and Abuse in Chronic Pain Patients by Gloria Farris MS, University of Alabama, 2005 BS, University of Alabama, 1999 Project Submitted in Partial Fulfillment Of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Nursing Practice Walden University August 2017 Abstract In 2012, opioid prescriptions exceeded 250 million, which is equivalent to providing a prescription to every adult in the United States. Prescription opioids have contributed to over 100,000 deaths since the late 1990s with the greatest impact among adults 35 through 54 years of age. The purpose of this doctoral project was to introduce an evidence-based screening tool that will identify patients who are at risk of opioid misuse and aid in the development of the most effective treatment plan to manage chronic pain and avoid abuse. The Screener and Opioid Assessments for Patients with Pain (SOAPP), a screening tool, was given to 100 participants, both males and females between the ages of 25 and 65, in an outpatient pain clinic. The data collection method was a questionnaire consisting of 14 questions designed to predict behaviors of people using opioids for chronic pain. Participant questionnaire responses on the Likert-5-point scale of 0 (Never), 1 (Seldom), 2 (Sometimes), 3 (Often), and 4 (Very Often) were totaled with a score of 7 or above indicating a high risk for abuse. Once the SOAPP data were obtained scores were calculated and grouped into categories of low or high risk for opioid misuse or abuse. Results indicated that 25% of the participants scored at high risk for opioid misuse (22% were female and 27% male) implying that there was a need for additional monitoring by the physician and nurse practitioner. The mean age for high risk was 51 and for low risk 54. Pain management providers play a crucial role in the effectiveness and success of the patient's treatment. Positive social change may occur when assessment tools such as the SOAPP are used in the evaluation and management of patients with chronic pain and addiction.In 2012, opioid prescriptions exceeded 250 million, which is equivalent to providing a prescription to every adult in the United States. Prescription opioids have contributed to over 100,000 deaths since the late 1990s with the greatest impact among adults 35 through 54 years of age. The purpose of this doctoral project was to introduce an evidence-based screening tool that will identify patients who are at risk of opioid misuse and aid in the development of the most effective treatment plan to manage chronic pain and avoid abuse. The Screener and Opioid Assessments for Patients with Pain (SOAPP), a screening tool, was given to 100 participants, both males and females between the ages of 25 and 65, in an outpatient pain clinic. The data collection method was a questionnaire consisting of 14 questions designed to predict behaviors of people using opioids for chronic pain. Participant questionnaire responses on the Likert-5-point scale of 0 (Never), 1 (Seldom), 2 (Sometimes), 3 (Often), and 4 (Very Often) were totaled with a score of 7 or above indicating a high risk for abuse. Once the SOAPP data were obtained scores were calculated and grouped into categories of low or high risk for opioid misuse or abuse. Results indicated that 25% of the participants scored at high risk for opioid misuse (22% were female and 27% male) implying that there was a need for additional monitoring by the physician and nurse practitioner. The mean age for high risk was 51 and for low risk 54. Pain management providers play a crucial role in the effectiveness and success of the patient's treatment. Positive social change may occur when assessment tools such as the SOAPP are used in the evaluation and management of patients with chronic pain and addiction. Screening for Opioid Misuse and Abuse in Chronic Pain Patients by Gloria Farris MS, University of Alabama, 2005 BS, University of Alabama, 1999 Project Submitted in Partial Fulfillment Of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Nursing Practice Walden University August 2017 Dedication I would like to dedicate this to my son, Jermaine, whom I love dearly. Love you, Son, Mom


We present a synthesis of single scattering albedo for biomass burning aerosol from the SAFARI 2000 field campaign. Values at 550 nm were derived from three methods: airborne in situ measurements of aerosol scattering and absorption; airborne flux radiometry; and ground‐based sun‐photometer/radiometer retrievals from AERONET. Collocated comparisons indicate that uncertainties are well understood for all three methods. The new (Version 2) AERONET retrieval gives substantially lower single scattering albedo over bright surfaces, and the comparisons herein represent the first independent check of this retrieval. Combined in situ and AERONET data yield a regional value of 0.85 ± 0.02 (mean and total uncertainty), which we propose is representative of single scattering albedo for the Southern African region during the biomass burning season. This value agrees with the "highly absorbing smoke" model used in MODIS aerosol retrievals, but indicates that many of the AeroCom models overestimate single scattering albedo for this region and season.


The goal in neuromorphic engineering is to design circuits and systems which emulate the computational principles of biological nervous systems. As these circuits follow the same fundamental design principles as their biological counterparts, they represent an elegant solution for the design of bio-hybrid computing architectures. We present a neuromorphic bio-hybrid system in which electronic circuits are coupled directly to neuronal cell cultures for providing low-level access to biological signal processing. To form this bio-hybrid, we introduce a backbone system which allows the implements of different network topologies by routing Address-Event Representations (AER) of spikes from biological cells to neuromorphic circuits and vice versa. The use of a soft- embedded-processor realtime system allows the exploration of topology-evolving setups. The final goal in the application of this backbone system is the creation of a bio-hybrid neural network that is structurally plastic. Preliminary results have already been obtained in a first verification step, successfully forming a bio-hybrid neural network and thus promising a novel approach towards bioinspired Brain-Machine Interfaces.


Previous studies have found that inappropriate elevation of matrix metalloproteinase-9 (MMP9) expression and activity is coincident with early onset of emphysema in Smad3-null mice. Herein, we further investigated the role of increased MMP9 in emphysema pathogenesis and the related molecular regulatory mechanisms of elevated MMP9 in Smad3-null lung. Genetic blockade of MMP9 in Smad3-null mice significantly attenuated emphysema pathology but not hypoalveolarization during early postnatal lung development. Furthermore, Smad3 was found to be a transcription factor to positively regulate a protein deacetylase sirtuin 1 (SIRT1) by binding to an AP-1 site of SIRT1 promoter. A synergistic regulatory effect on SIRT1 expression was also detected between Smad3 and c-Jun. Consistently, Smad3 knockout lung at P28 had reduced SIRT1 expression, which in turn resulted in increased acetylation of histone H3 at the transcription factor activator protein 1 (AP-1), NF-κB, and Pea3 binding sites of MMP9 promoter and increased acetylation of NF-κB. In addition, increased Pea3 expression and nuclear accumulation was also detected in Smad3-null lungs at P28. Consistently, bindings of acetylated NF-κB and Pea3 to the MMP9 promoter were elevated in Smad3-null lung. We thus propose that deficiency of Smad3 causes downregulation of SIRT1 and increased Pea3 expression/nuclear accumulation, respectively. Decreased SIRT1 activity resulted in increased acetylation of histone H3 and NF-κB. Subsequently, increased bindings of transcription factors including NF-κB and Pea3 to MMP9 promoter significantly upregulate MMP9 transcription, contributing to emphysema pathogenesis.


Fishery statistics show that the herring-like fishes are among the most important in world fisheries of the present day (FAO, 1966). In East African waters, prior to the introduction of commercial pelagic fishing methods (EAMFRO, 1962; Losse, 1964, 1966), these fishes were exploited in very small quantities by a variety of indigenous fishing techniques, and virtually nothing was known of the species; their identity, biology or fishing potential. During preliminary biological and fishery investigations of fish caught by introduced purse-seine fisheries in the Zanzibar area of East Africa, it was found that accurate descriptionptions of species were required before these studies could be accomplished successfully. A large collection of clupeoid fish was therefore made during the routine investigations of the East African Marine Fisheries Research Organization (EAMFRO) from March 1963 to June 1966.


The purpose of this study was to investigate the extent to which the word "pet" provided valid results in the Lexington Attachment to Pets Scale (LAPS) (Johnson, Garrity, & Stallones, 1992). A multiple-groups confirmatory factor analysis, using maximum likelihood (ML) estimation, was conducted to test the hypothesized factor structures in the specified measurement model. Respondents to the Original version (i.e. used the word pet) and the Personalized version (i.e. embedded the canine's name as typed by participants) made up the two groups. Features of an electronic survey were necessary for this personalization and systematic alternative assignment to the two LAPS versions. A snowball sampling method utilized electronic mail to invite self-selected participants meeting the following criteria: 18 years or older; lived in the United States; and at least one dog living inside/outside their home and for whom they are responsible at least some of the time. According to collected human and canine demographics, the Original (n = 1,854) and Personalized (n =1849) groups appeared to be statistically equivalent (N = 3,703). The hypothesized measurement model generated a χ value of 4130.242, with 264 degrees of freedom and a probability of less than .001 (p <.001), suggestive of a lack of fit. However, goodness-of-fit indices were a consideration. Comparing the CFI (.95 vs. .862), TLI (.95 vs. .840) and RMSEA (<.05 vs. .063) cut off values with the results from this study respectively, reveals again, an inadequate fit. These results imply that the hypothesized measurement model was not consistent with the data and precluded specific tests of differential validity. While the results of this study made it inadvisable to further examine the differential validity associated with linguistic differences in the scale items, critical information was nonetheless identified. According to the data in the current study, the LAPS conceptualization of "pet attachment" (sic) may not be valid. Until further research provides stronger evidence, use of this scale could produce results that lead to invalid inferences. The original LAPS conceptualization and quantification of human and canine relationships is still a work in progress. Moreover, psychometric work is critically necessary before using the LAPS.


The search for perfection forces organizations to adopt new techniques and approaches, focused on the systematic creation of innovative solutions that facilitate the processes of continuous improvement. In view of this context, there was an opportunity to study the implementation of the Lean philosophy in the production line, at a processed food organization. A continuous improvement model was designed for an organizational system, combining tools used in both TRIZ methodology and Lean philosophy. Several Lean tools are used in the model in order to support problem formulation, e.g. Brainstorming, 5 Whys, Pareto Diagram, Ishikawa Diagram, Plan-Do- Check-Act (PDCA) Cycle. And the Kano Model integrated in the proposed model allows assessing employee satisfaction at a later stage than the implementation of previously found solutions. In case the problems identified are not very complex, were resorted to the use of both TRIZ and Lean techniques, such as cause/effect databases, the 40 problem solving TRIZ principles, visual management, 5S's or line balancing. But if the problems identified are more complex, which means with an inventive issue to be solved, Matrix of Contradictions and S-Field Analysis TRIZ tools proved to be more appropriate to find the proper solution. With the case study carried out, it was noted that the proposed model proved to be very useful as a roadmap for the implementation of Lean and TRIZ tools in the continuous improvement of industrial products, services and processes should be the ways to continually minimize them in a company.
Keywords: Continuous improvement, Lean, TRIZ, Management tools, Model proposed


Objective The detection of urinary lipoarabinomannan (LAM), a mycobacterial cell wall component, is used to diagnose tuberculosis (TB). How LAM enters the urine is not known. To investigate if urinary LAM-positivity is the result of renal TB infection we correlated the outcomes of urinary LAM-antigen testing to renal histology in an autopsy cohort of hospitalized, Ugandan, HIV-infected adults. Methods We performed a complete autopsy, including renal sampling, in HIV-infected adults that died during hospitalization after written informed consent was obtained from the next of kin. Urine was collected postmortem through post-mortem catheterisation or by bladder puncture and tested for LAM with both a lateral flow assay (LFA) and an ELISA assay. Two pathologists assessed the kidney histology. We correlated the LAM-assay results and the histology findings. Results Of the 13/36 (36%) patients with a positive urinary LAM ELISA and/or LFA, 8/13 (62%) had renal TB. The remaining 5 LAM-positive patients had disseminated TB without renal involvement. Of the 23 LAM-negative patients, 3 had disseminated TB without renal involvement. The remaining LAM-negative patients had no TB infection and died mostly of fungal and bacterial infections. LAM LFA had a sensitivity of 81% and specificity of 100% to diagnose TB at any location, and the LAM ELISA a sensitivity of 63% and a specificity of 100%. 54% (7/13) LAM LFA-positive patients were not on anti-TB treatment at the time of death. Conclusion Renal TB infection explained LAM-positivity in the majority of patients. Patients with disseminated TB without renal involvement can also be diagnosed with LAM. This suggests that other mechanisms that lead to urinary LAM-positivity exist in a minority of patients.


Analysis of initial teacher training (ITT) student data relating to the University of Huddersfield part-time in-service Cert Ed/PGCE over a three-year period has revealed significant change in the make-up of trainee cohorts. There has been an increase in younger trainees and in trainees very new to teaching, although more experienced and older trainees do continue to enrol. There has also been a considerable shift in the balance of trainees away from further education (FE) college staff. These changes have implications for those who manage and deliver teacher education for the sector. It remains of key importance that the curriculum is not experienced as overly 'FE-college centric' and that mentoring arrangements acknowledge the needs of trainees from diverse contexts. It is clear that in the delivery of ITT for the lifelong learning sector, increasingly, one size will not comfortably fit all. Within teacher education much emphasis is placed upon the role of differentiation in regard to trainee practice. The changing trainee profile identified requires that teacher education itself unambiguously models a differentiated approach – and, in relation to teacher education for the lifelong learning sector, differentiation must address workplace context.


Anni Albers (1899 - 1994) was one of the most influential textile designers of the 20th century. Born in Berlin, in 1922 she became a student at the Bauhaus in Weimar, where she met her husband, Josef Albers. From 1933 to 1949 Albers taught at Black Mountain College. The fifteen essays gathered here illustrate Anni Albers's concept of design as the pursuit of wholeness -- "the coalition of form answering practical needs and form answering aesthetic needs." This beautifully illustrated book addresses the artistic and practical concerns of modern design and considers the ever-changing role of the designer. Albers's work is in private collections and in those of leading museums both here and abroad. Among them are the Busch-Reisinger Museum at Harvard University, the Baltimore Museum of Art, the Museum Neue Sammlung in Munich, the Bauhaus Archiv in Berlin, and the Museum of Modern Art, Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the Cooper-Hewitt Museum in New York. Her previous books include On Weaving (1965) and On Designing (1961), both published by Wesleyan


The protection and revival of degraded and deforested land is the need of the hour. In order to tackle the issues that arise as a consequence of degradation and deforestation, principles of forest landscape restoration are being globally promoted. The Bonn Challenge is a global effort to bring 150 million hectares of deforested and degraded land into restoration by 2020 and 350 million hectares by 2030. The government of India made a Bonn Challenge pledge to bring under restoration 13 million hectares of degraded land by 2020 and an additional 8 million hectares by 2030. This report highlights the progress the country has made towards the pledge. Data was collected from government agencies, private companies and non-governmental organisations on their restoration efforts. Although not an exhaustive list, the data reveals patterns and provides a glimpse into the country's different initiatives towards restoration. The case studies that the report presents have been hand picked and showcase some of the best practices on restoration from across the country.


Abstract Uganda's army, the Uganda People's Defence Force (UPDF), has been operating on Sudanese territory since the late 1990s. From 2002 to 2006, a bilateral agreement between the governments in Khartoum and Kampala gave the Ugandan soldiers permission to conduct military operations in Southern Sudan to eliminate the Ugandan rebel Lord's Resistance Army (LRA). Instead of conducting a successful operation against Uganda's most persistent rebels – who had withdrawn into Sudanese territory and acted as a proxy force in Sudan's civil war – the UPDF conducted a campaign of abuse against Sudanese civilians. Drawing on extensive fieldwork conducted over several years, this article documents local experiences of a foreign army's involvement in the brutal Sudanese civil war. It outlines why continued operations of the UPDF outside their borders recreate the same problem they purport to be fighting: abuses of civilians. Since 2008, US military support for the UPDF mission against the LRA has called into question the viability of continued militarisation through an army that has committed widely documented human rights abuses. The foreign military has not brought peace to the region. Instead, it has made a peaceful environment less likely for residents of South Sudan.


We model a two-region country where value is created through bilateral production between masses and elites (bourgeois and landowners). Industrialization requires the elites to finance schools and the masses to attend them. Schooling raises productivity, particularly for matches between masses and bourgeois. At the same time, only country-wide education ("unified schooling") renders the masses mobile across regions. Alternatively, schools can be implemented in one region alone ("regional education") or the regionally dominant group can choose to implement schooling in its own region but refuse to share the costs/proceeds within the wider country-level group ("secession"). We show that schools are more likely to be set-up when the bourgeoisie dominates, but that this is not necessarily socially efficient. Unified schooling is always chosen if the identity of the dominant elite at the regional and country level is the same and/or the industrialization shock is sufficiently high. If instead the bourgeoisie is dominant in one region and landowners are dominant country-wise, the bourgeoisie of that region may promote the secession of the region, and this can be socially efficient. The model is shown to be consistent with evidence for 19th century France and Spain.


A police officer is in the foreground of a group of protesters during a protest in front of a site where Hispanic day laborers gather. Similar events were carried out in 17 cities of the United States as part of the national day of protest called "Stop the Invasion," alluding to the immigrants who enter this country illegally.


Assessment of Left Atrial Ejection Force in Patients with different Grades of Left Ventricular Diastolic Dysfunction
Objective: To assess left atrial ejection force (LAEF) in patients with different grades of left ventricular (LV) diastolic dysfunction compared to traditional Doppler and tissue Doppler measurements.
Methods: 120 patients enrolled into four equal groups (n=30), each group represented a different grade of LV diastolic dysfunction and 30 subjects with normal diastolic function. We assessed echocardiographic measurements of dimensions and diastolic function, LA volume index (LAVI), and LAEF and age-corrected %LAEF.
Results: In comparison to control subjects, the study group had more diabetic and hypertensive patients, increased all LV dimensions, estimated LVEDP (p<0.0001), LAVI (p<0.0001), LAEF and %LAEF (p<0.0001). On comparing different grades of diastolic dysfunction, patients with worse grades of diastolic dysfunction were older, more hypertensive and diabetic. They had larger LV dimensions, estimated LVEDP (p<0.0001), and LAVI (p<0.0001). LAEF and %LAEF showed an increase from grade I (8.84 ± 3.09 Kdynes, 188.93 ± 40.12%) to Ia (10.66 ± 3.10 Kdynes, 239.7 ± 72.45%) to II (11.82 ± 45.9 Kdynes, 256.57 ± 45.92%) then demonstrated a significant reduction in grade III to 2.77 ± 1.71 Kdynes, 57.88 ± 32.49% (p<0.0001) dropping below normal values seen in the control subjects (4.98 ± 1.72 Kdynes, 93.30 ± 9.31%) (p<0.0001). Linear regression analysis showed factors affecting %LAEF were: age, E-wave velocity, average e' velocity, E/A ratio and E/e' ratio.
Conclusions: LAEF is generally increased in patients with LV diastolic dysfunction compared to those with normal diastolic function. Patients in grade III diastolic dysfunction show marked impairment of LAEF dropping below those with normal diastolic function.


We propose verification techniques from hybrid control theory to address safety issues in the indoor operation of powered wheelchairs. Verification through hybrid system reachability can provide a mathematical guarantee of safety, where safety is defined as the ability of the system to remain within a desired subset of the state-space. Current efforts are in developing a general algorithm for verification in semi-automated systems, general methods for implementation of control laws for safety, and in the development of an instrumented smart wheelchair testbed at UBC.


ABSTRACT The drug target profile proposed by the Medicines for Malaria Venture for a malaria elimination/eradication policy focuses on molecules active on both asexual and sexual stages of Plasmodium, thus with both curative and transmission-blocking activities. The aim of the present work was to investigate whether the class of monovalent ionophores, which includes drugs used in veterinary medicine and that were recently proposed as human anticancer agents, meets these requirements. The activity of salinomycin, monensin, and nigericin on Plasmodium falciparum asexual and sexual erythrocytic stages and on the development of the Plasmodium berghei and P. falciparum mosquito stages is reported here. Gametocytogenesis of the P. falciparum strain 3D7 was induced in vitro, and gametocytes at stage II and III or stage IV and V of development were treated for different lengths of time with the ionophores and their viability measured with the parasite lactate dehydrogenase (pLDH) assay. The monovalent ionophores efficiently killed both asexual parasites and gametocytes with a nanomolar 50% inhibitory concentration (IC50). Salinomycin showed a fast speed of kill compared to that of standard drugs, and the potency was higher on stage IV and V than on stage II and III gametocytes. The ionophores inhibited ookinete development and subsequent oocyst formation in the mosquito midgut, confirming their transmission-blocking activity. Potential toxicity due to hemolysis was excluded, since only infected and not normal erythrocytes were damaged by ionophores. Our data strongly support the downstream exploration of monovalent ionophores for repositioning as new antimalarial and transmission-blocking leads.


We investigate a practical domain adaptation task, called source-free domain adaptation (SFUDA), where the source-pretrained model is adapted to the target domain without access to the source data. Existing techniques mainly leverage self-supervised pseudo labeling to achieve class-wise global alignment [1] or rely on local structure extraction that encourages feature consistency among neighborhoods [2]. While impressive progress has been made, both lines of methods have their own drawbacks - the"global"approach is sensitive to noisy labels while the"local"counterpart suffers from source bias. In this paper, we present Divide and Contrast (DaC), a new paradigm for SFUDA that strives to connect the good ends of both worlds while bypassing their limitations. Based on the prediction confidence of the source model, DaC divides the target data into source-like and target-specific samples, where either group of samples is treated with tailored goals under an adaptive contrastive learning framework. Specifically, the source-like samples are utilized for learning global class clustering thanks to their relatively clean labels. The more noisy target-specific data are harnessed at the instance level for learning the intrinsic local structures. We further align the source-like domain with the target-specific samples using a memory bank-based Maximum Mean Discrepancy (MMD) loss to reduce the distribution mismatch. Extensive experiments on VisDA, Office-Home, and the more challenging DomainNet have verified the superior performance of DaC over current state-of-the-art approaches. The code is available at https://github.com/ZyeZhang/DaC.git.


SUMMARYThe mating behaviour of Bombus terrestris was studied using wooden observation cages (50 X 50 X 70 cm) in the laboratory. Queens and males from reared colonies were isolated from the odour of the opposite sex before the experiments. Mating pairs (one per box) consisted of one 10-day-old virgin male and one 5-day-old virgin queen. The behaviour of each of the 80 pairs used was observed for 15 min, during which time 47 of the pairs copulated. Male behaviour could be divided into approach, inspection and attempt to copulate. Queen reactions to the male were immobility (13.8%), threat (53.9%) or flight (32.3%). Queens could also display inspection behaviour. The mating success of a behavioural sequence was positively correlated with the frequency of inspections by both sexes and negatively correlated with queen immobility. Flow diagrams showing sequences of types of behaviour are presented. The role of sexual pheromones in mating is discussed.


On Saturday December 27, the latest US-Israeli attack on helpless Palestinians was launched. The attack had been meticulously planned, for over 6 months according to the Israeli press. The planning had two components: military and propaganda. It was based on the lessons of Israel's 2006 invasion of Lebanon, which was considered to be poorly planned and badly advertised. We may, therefore, be fairly confident that most of what has been done and said was pre-planned and intended.


Abstract Detecting individuals of amphibian and reptile species can be a daunting task. Detection can be hindered by various factors such as cryptic behavior, color patterns, or observer experience. These factors complicate the estimation of state variables of interest (e.g., abundance, occupancy, species richness) as well as the vital rates that induce changes in these state variables (e.g., survival probabilities for abundance; extinction probabilities for occupancy). Although ad hoc methods (e.g., counts uncorrected for detection, return rates) typically perform poorly in the face of no detection, they continue to be used extensively in various fields, including herpetology. However, formal approaches that estimate and account for the probability of detection, such as capture-mark-recapture (CMR) methods and distance sampling, are available. In this paper, we present classical approaches and recent advances in methods accounting for detectability that are particularly pertinent for herpetological data sets. Through examples, we illustrate the use of several methods, discuss their performance compared to that of ad hoc methods, and we suggest available software to perform these analyses. The methods we discuss control for imperfect detection and reduce bias in estimates of demographic parameters such as population size, survival, or, at other levels of biological organization, species occurrence. Among these methods, recently developed approaches that no longer require marked or resighted individuals should be particularly of interest to field herpetologists. We hope that our effort will encourage practitioners to implement some of the estimation methods presented herein instead of relying on ad hoc methods that make more limiting assumptions.


An efficient access to external capital by businesses is essential to a market economy. Small businesses, which amount to a vital component of our market economy, face not only structural and economic disadvantages but also legal obstacles in their search for essential, external capital. The Titles II, III and IV of the Jobs Act were designed, at least apparently, to ameliorate inefficient legal rules governing small businesses' access to external capital. While the act itself is not without challenges and significant misdirection, it offered the Commission an opportunity to construct regulatory regimes that materially enhance efficient, small business capital formation. The Commission, however, has failed to take full advantage of this opportunity. Title II of the Jobs Act, as implemented by Commission regulations, changes Regulation D to permit a broad solicitation for investors in Rule 506 offerings. That change amounts to an efficient improvement that will provide some benefit to small businesses in search of external capital. A requirement for the exemption provided by the revised Rule 506, however, is that sales must be restricted to accredited investors only, and that by definition is a limited source of capital for small businesses. Without significant changes to the Commission's proposed rules implementing Title III (crowdfunding), the crowdfunding exemption will be less available for small business issuers than efficiency would require. The Commission's proposed rules are plagued by excessive disclosure requirements for small offerings, integration complications, and unmanageable risks created by actions of intermediaries. Without significant changes to the Commission's proposed rules implementing Title IV (popularly called Regulation A-Plus), the exemption provided by Regulation A-Plus will be essentially unavailable for small businesses. This is due to excessive disclosure requirements for small offerings and, more importantly, the failure to provide an effective preemption of state authority over small Regulation A-Plus offerings. The problems regarding the proposed crowdfunding regulations and the proposed Regulation A-Plus regulations are fixable, if the Commission has the will.


Global climate change will imply to increase in atmospheric temperature, which can affect the sensitive stadia and decrease rice yield. The objective of this research was to study the growth and production of rice varieties under hightemperature stress. This research was conducted using a split-plot design under partitioned polyethylene house in order to create temperature differences among main-plots. The partitioned treatment successfully increased by 1.7 °C of average temperature with a maximum temperature of 35.0 °C (T1) and 37.6 °C (T2). Rice varieties, namely IR64, Ciherang, IPB-3S, Way Apo Buru, Jatiluhur, Menthik Wangi and Silugonggo were randomized as sub-plot. The results showed that increasing temperature had no significant effect on plant height, tiller number, SPAD-value, leaf area index, and crop growth rate, but significantly decreased 1,000 grains weight by 4.57% and harvest index by 20%. The interaction between temperature and varieties significantly affected a percentage of a productive tiller and partially filled spikelets. Ciherang variety produced the lowest percentage of productive tillers on T2 by 57.6%. Way Apo Buru variety produced the lowest percentage of partially filled spikelets on T2 by 3.01%.


Background Health effects of ozone have been observed in numerous studies. However, analyses of more cause-specific morbidity or mortality outcomes have rarely been performed. A study was undertaken to determine the short-term associations of ozone with cause-specific cardiorespiratory mortality and morbidity by age groups. Methods Daily levels of ozone were measured at a background measurement station in 1998–2004 in Helsinki, Finland. All analyses were a priori restricted to the warm season. Daily cause-specific cardiorespiratory mortality and hospital admissions were studied in elderly people (≥65 years) and adults (15–64 years) and associations between ozone and asthma emergency room visits in children (<15 years) were analysed. All models were adjusted for PM2.5 and Poisson regression was used for the analyses. Results There was a positive association between ozone and admissions for asthma-chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) in elderly people (9.6%; 95% CI 2.0% to 17.8% at 0-day lag for 25 μg/m3 increase in ozone). Consistent associations were also found between ozone and asthma emergency room visits in children (12.6%; 95% CI 0.8% to 25.1%, 0-day lag). There was a suggestion of an association between ozone and admissions for arrhythmia among elderly people (6.4%; 95% CI 0.63% to 12.5%, 1-day lag), which was slightly confounded by PM2.5. Conclusions Positive associations were found for ambient ozone with asthma visits among children and with pooled asthma/COPD admissions among elderly people. The evidence for a positive association between ozone and cardiovascular health was weaker.


Several models for physics beyond the Standard Model predict new particles with a decay signature including hard photons and missing energy. Two well-motivated examples are supersymmetry with gauge-mediated breaking (GMSB) and the standard model with two universal extra dimensions. Both models lead to decay chains with similar collider signatures, including hard photon emission. The main discriminating feature are the spins of the new particles. In this paper we discuss how information about the spins of the particles can be extracted from lepton-photon or quark-photon invariant mass distributions at the Large Hadron Collider. The characteristic shapes of the distributions are derived analytically and then studied in a realistic Monte-Carlo simulation. We find that for a typical GMSB mass spectrum with particle masses below 1 TeV, already 10 fb−1 integrated luminosity at 14 TeV center-of-mass energy are sufficient to discriminate the two models with high significance.


The literature attributes a great deal of activity in many UK local authorities to their
commitment to the •sustainable development green ideology of the Earth Summit's Agenda
21 action plan for managing our Planet's future. Most studies of this response have focused
on behaviour and process, including that of some of the four UK Environment City local
authorities, alleged front runners in this field ie. Leicester, Middlesbrough, Leeds and
Peterborough. This thesis, however, examines closely the degree of actual political
commitment by the leaderships of these local authorities and the effect which the EC
Programme has had on them. The assessment of EC leadership commitment is made
against the radical assertion that Agenda 21 expects local authorities to lead a major shift
of both behaviour and altitude. In part, the assessment relies on a novel use of Schein's
(1987) method for uncovering levels of culture in combination with a new typology of
political commitment. It is found that actual, as opposed to declared and organisational,
ideological commitment is generally weak though varying widely between the local
authority leaderships and is strongest in Leicester, the 'lead' Environment City. Explanations
are presented for this. From public policy agenda building and implementation theory
perspectives, the designation of 'Environment City', itself, is judged to have been effective
in influencing behaviour and to a more limited extent, deeper levels of commitment. Theory
improvement helps to explain this through several newly defined concepts including those
of 'public policy franchising', 'issue wooden horsing' the 'politics of embarrassment' and
'grand mastery'. Other insights into how greater commitment by local authority leaderships
is encouraged is drawn from the case studies including the utilized opportunity for greater
local governmental power offered by the Agenda 21 role and the existence of
environmental 'statesmanship'. Citizens in the Environment Cities are found to be more
environmentally positive than has been reported of the UK population at large. Also, local
level evidence is presented of the nationally observed positive relationship between our
concern for each other as 'welfarism' and our concern for the rest of nature as
'environmentism'.


Angiogenesis, the sprouting of new capillaries from existing blood vessels, is essential for the survival of tissues and normally occurs during development and wound healing. Successful vascularization of engineered tissues is currently a major challenge, as it is critical for the survival and incorporation of implanted tissue replacements. While the role of soluble factors in regulating angiogenesis is well established, there is significant interest in uncovering the contributions of cellular interactions with the extracellular matrix (ECM). We chose to study the role of cell-ECM adhesion in regulating angiogenesis, with the hypothesis that quantitative changes in the degree of cell-ECM adhesion can regulate endothelial cell behaviors important for angiogenesis. We also hypothesized that we could employ our basic knowledge of angiogenesis to develop a synthetic material system to support vascularization for potential applications in tissue engineering. We first examined whether quantitative changes in cell-ECM adhesion regulate angiogenesis and observed increased angiogenic sprouting in three-dimensional fibrin gels with progressively decreasing densities of fibrin. Examining changes in global gene expression, we demonstrated a vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF)-induced upregulation of genes associated with vascular invasion and remodeling when cell adhesion was limited, whereas cells on highly adhesive surfaces upregulated genes associated with proliferation. We showed that proline-rich tyrosine kinase 2 (Pyk2) regulates both gene expression and endothelial sprouting through its enhanced activation by VEGF in limited adhesion contexts. These results suggest that limited cell adhesion can enhance endothelial responsiveness to VEGF and demonstrate a novel role for Pyk2 in the adhesive regulation of angiogenesis. Finally, we have developed poly(ethylene glycol) (PEG)-based hydrogels that support three-dimensional angiogenic sprouting. By tuning the mechanical, adhesive, and degradable parameters of these wholly synthetic materials, we have begun to identify conditions optimal for vascularization, as well as provided a tool to isolate the effects of single ECM parameters. We have demonstrated control of angiogenic sprouting by the MMP sensitivity of the hydrogels, as well as an interplay between ECM stiffness and adhesive ligand density in regulating sprouting. Together, these studies highlight the importance of cellular interactions with the ECM in regulating angiogenesis and demonstrate a path by which we can apply basic understanding toward vascularization of engineered tissues for tissue regeneration and repair. Degree Type Dissertation Degree Name Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) Graduate Group Bioengineering This dissertation is available at ScholarlyCommons: http://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations/408 First Advisor Christopher Chen


Micro- and nanofibers constitute an attractive platform for testing nonlinear devices with millimeter size in a simple and flexible fashion, with potential applications in ultra-fast all-optical communications. In this article, we present challenges that must be addressed and targets that can be reached using such a platform. We describe a tunable laser source capable of delivering pulses with a kilowatt peak power and a sub-0.1-nm linewidth that is specially designed for the study of resonant devices such as the nonlinear loop resonator. Experimental and simulation results are presented for silica microfiber based nonlinear devices. The prospect of developing hybrid devices combining highly nonlinear glasses and silica fibers is supported by numerical simulations of the coupling between two nanofibers of largely different optical indices.


1 Introduction In 2009, a letterhead of the international law firm Linklaters was found on a draft version of the Law Amending the Banking Act. (2) At the peak of the banking crisis, the Federal Ministry of Economics and Technology hired the private firm to write the draft bill. The writing of draft bills, however, used to be considered as a core function of Germany's ministerial administration (Mayntz 1985: 183f; Machura 2003). Thus, a harsh political dispute emerged on the benefits and boundaries of purchasing legal expertise through public bodies. A law firm which also represents investment banks was considered to be unable to write an impartial draft bill on the regulation of bank insolvencies (Suddeutsche Zeitung 2009a). Being accused by the left party (Die Linke) of pursuing clientele politics, the responsible minister justified the purchase of legal advice with the lack of in-house expertise (Bundestags-Drucksache 16/14133 [2009]: 1), which in turn urged the president of the union of civil servants (Deutscher Beamtenbund) to complain about continuous staffing cutbacks in the federal administration (Suddeutsche Zeitung 2009b). The Linklaters case might be a good example for the dynamics of political scandals, but more than that it points out to the issue of mandating private firms in the law drafting process. This topic has so far received little scientific attention and therefore raises at least two questions: First, what is the difference between purchasing legal advice and related phenomena such as outsourcing and policy advice? Secondly, what are the potential dimensions of the political dispute over the use of such practices in the federal law making process? In trying to answer the first question, this study suggests a preliminary theoretical conceptualisation of the phenomenon. Drawing on research on policy advice and contracting out, purchasing legal advice in the law drafting process will be characterised by its specific purpose, i.e. the formulation of draft bills, and the contractual relationship between private law firms and the federal bureaucracy. As regards the second question we seek to identify the underlying dimensions of political conflict that are linked to potential causes and consequences of purchasing legal advice. In order to enrich and consolidate the debate on purchasing legal advice with the so far limited available empirical evidence, the empirical analysis takes a rather unconventional approach: First, we conducted an anonymous postal-survey among the participants of a symposium on legislative outsourcing. (3) Secondly, we use ministry-specific information taken from the federal government's answer to a minor interpellation (Bundestags-Drucksache 16/14133 [2009]) and minister-specific data for an analysis of the frequency of purchasing legal advice for 15 federal ministries from 1990 to 2009. The data is not representative, nor is it suited to test the validity of the theoretical conceptualization. Yet, it provides first preliminary evidence on its plausibility and the potential political dimensions of purchasing legal advice. The following section reviews the contracting out and policy advice literature in order to derive a first conceptualization of purchasing legal advice. Afterwards we describe the analytical approach, data, and methods and present some explorative empirical evidence. Finally we summarise the study and discuss its further implications. 2 Towards a Conceptualization of Purchasing Legal Advice 2.1 Purchasing Legal Advice and the Regular Process of Federal Law-Making In order to gradually develop a first conceptualization of purchasing legal advice, it is purposeful to begin with a presentation of the more regular process of federal law making in Germany. The basic rules of the legislative process are set out in the Basic Law (Art. 76-78; 82) and the Joint Rules of Procedure for the Federal Ministries (Gemeinsame Geschaftsordnung der Bundesministerien, GGO). …


In this book, Earl Mac Cormac presents an original and unified cognitive theory of metaphor using philosophical arguments which draw upon evidence from psychological experiments and theories. He notes that implications of this theory for meaning and truth with specific attention to metaphor as a speech act, the iconic meaning of metaphor, and the development of a four-valued system of truth. Numerous examples of metaphor from poetry and science are presented and analyzed to support Mac Cormac's theory. "A Cognitive Theory of Metaphor" takes up three levels of explanation--metaphor as expressed in surface language, the semantics of metaphor, and metaphor as a cogitive process--and unifies these by interpreting metaphor as an evolutionary knowledge process in which metaphors mediate between minds and culture. Mac Cormac considers, and rejects, the radical theory that all use of language is metaphorical; however, this argument also recognizes that the "theory" of metaphor may itself be metaphorical. The book first considers the computational metaphor often adopted by cognitive psychology as an example of metaphor requiring analysis. In contrast to three well-known philosophical theories of metaphor--the tension theory, the controversion theory, and the grammatical deviance theory--it develops a semantical anomaly theory of metaphor based on a quasi-mathematical hierarchy of words. In developing the theory, Mac Cormac makes much-needed connections between theories of metaphor and more orthodox analytic philosophy of meaning, including discussions of speech acts and the logic of fuzzy sets. This semantical theory of explanation is then shown to becompatible with contemporary psychological theories of memory.


The Department of Environmental Affairs (DEA) recognises the need to protect human health and the environment from anthropogenic emissions of mercury. In 2003, various governments agreed on the need for global action on mercury based on its adverse health and environmental effects. Later, in 2009, they negotiated a legally-binding instrument on mercury and established the Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee (INC). Five INC negotiation sessions were held and in January 2013, the negotiations were finalised. The content of the convention, known as the Minamata convention, was adopted in October 2013 in Minamata, Japan and South Africa was a signatory of the convention.


Abstract Hepatocellular carcinoma is one of the leading causes of malignancy-related death in China. Its therapy in clinics is a big challenge. Ginsenoside Rh2 is one of the most notable cancer-preventing components from red ginseng and it has been reported that ginsenoside Rh2 exhibited potent cytotoxicity against human hepatoma cells. Rh2 exists as two different stereoisomeric forms, (20S)-ginsenoside Rh2 and (20R)-ginsenoside Rh2. Previous reports showed that the Rh2 epimers demonstrated different pharmacological activities and only (20S)-ginsenoside Rh2 showed potent proliferation inhibition on cancer cells in vitro. However, the in vivo anti-hepatoma activity of (20R)-ginsenoside Rh2 and (20S)-ginsenoside Rh2 has not been reported yet. This work assessed and compared the anti-hepatoma activities of (20S)-ginsenoside Rh2 and (20R)-ginsenoside Rh2 using H22 a hepatoma-bearing mouse model in vivo. In addition, hematoxylin and eosin staining, the deoxynucleotidyl transferase dUTP nick-end labeling assay, and the semiquantitative reverse transcriptase polymerase chain reaction method were used to further study the apoptosis of the tumors. The results showed that both (20S)-ginsenoside Rh2 and (20R)-ginsenoside Rh2 suppressed the growth of H22 transplanted tumors in vivo, and the highest inhibition rate could be up to 42.2 and 46.8 %, respectively (p < 0.05). Further, hematoxylin/eosin staining and the deoxynucleotidyl transferase dUTP nick-end labeling assay indicated that both (20R)-ginsenoside Rh2 and (20S)-ginsenoside Rh2 could induce H22 hepatoma tumor cell apoptosis, with apoptosis indexes of 3.87 %, and 3.80 %, respectively (p < 0.05). Moreover, this effect was accompanied by downregulating the level of Bcl-2 mRNA. In conclusion, both (20S)-ginsenoside Rh2 and (20R)-ginsenoside Rh2 can suppress the growth of H22 hepatomas without causing severe side effects, and this effect is associated with the induction of apoptosis.


The expected strong directional selection for traits that increase a male's mating ability conflicts with the frequent observation that within species, males may show extreme variation in sexual traits. These male reproductive polymorphisms are usually attributed to direct male–male competition. It is currently unclear, however, how directional selection for sexually selected traits may convert into disruptive selection, and if female preference for elaborate traits may be an alternative mechanism driving the evolution of male polymorphism. Here, we explore this mechanism using the polyandric dwarf spider Oedothorax gibbosus as a model. We first show that males characterized by conspicuous cephalic structures serving as a nuptial feeding device ("gibbosus males") significantly outperform other males in siring offspring of previously fertilized females. However, significant costs in terms of development time of gibbosus males open a mating niche for an alternative male type lacking expensive secondary sexual traits. These "tuberosus males" obtain virtually all fertilizations early in the breeding season. Individual‐based simulations demonstrate a hitherto unknown general principle, by which males selected for high investment to attract females suffer constrained mating opportunities. This creates a vacant mating niche of unmated females for noninvesting males and, consequently, disruptive selection on male secondary sexual traits.


The model plants Arabidopsis (Arabidopsis thaliana) and rice (Oryza sativa) have provided a wealth of information about genes and genetic pathways controlling the flowering process, but little is known about the corresponding pathways in legumes. The garden pea (Pisum sativum) has been used for several decades as a model system for physiological genetics of flowering, but the lack of molecular information about pea flowering genes has prevented direct comparison with other systems. To address this problem, we have searched expressed sequence tag and genome sequence databases to identify flowering-gene-related sequences from Medicago truncatula, soybean (Glycine max), and Lotus japonicus, and isolated corresponding sequences from pea by degenerate-primer polymerase chain reaction and library screening. We found that the majority of Arabidopsis flowering genes are represented in pea and in legume sequence databases, although several gene families, including the MADS-box, CONSTANS, and FLOWERING LOCUS T/TERMINAL FLOWER1 families, appear to have undergone differential expansion, and several important Arabidopsis genes, including FRIGIDA and members of the FLOWERING LOCUS C clade, are conspicuously absent. In several cases, pea and Medicago orthologs are shown to map to conserved map positions, emphasizing the closely syntenic relationship between these two species. These results demonstrate the potential benefit of parallel model systems for an understanding of flowering phenology in crop and model legume species.