Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to test the effects of augmenting an evidence-based physical activity intervention within an existing commercial weight loss program to assess effects on increasing physical activity and reducing psychological distress.

Design/methodology/approach
The CONSORT guidelines were adopted for the study. In total, 49 women with overweight or obesity (M age=39.5, SD:12.4; M Body Mass Index=31.02, SD: 2.10) enrolled in a six week commercial weight loss program were randomized to an intervention or a control group. Participants in the control group received care as usual; participants in the intervention group additionally received an evidence-based intervention to increase physical activity that included behavior change techniques including implementation intentions, goal-setting and self-monitoring.

Findings
Weekly steps increased in the intervention group (M=31,516.25; SD=9,310.17 to M=62,851.36; SD=13,840.4) significantly more (p<0.001,

η

p

2

=0.32) than in the control group (M=30,207.67; SD=7,833.29) to M=46,969.33 (SD=9,470.96), along with experiencing significantly lower anxiety (p<0.001,

η

p

2

=0.15), social dysfunction (p<0.001,

η

p

2

=0.16) and depression symptoms (p<0.05,

η

p

2

=0.08) at follow-up.

Research limitations/implications
This intervention warrants extension to those seeking to improve mental health through physical activity.

Originality/value
This study took a novel approach of augmenting a commercial weight loss program with a theory-based physical activity module, showing positive effects for physical activity behavior and psychological health.


Temporary streams lack streamflow at some time in the seasonal cycle, and include ephemeral, intermittent and episodic streams. They often serve as headwaters for the perennial stream network in a drainage basin, and given that headwater streams can comprise the majority of the drainage network, temporary streams are significant hydrologic features across the country. Nevertheless, they have received relatively little attention compared to perennial streams. In addition, much previous work on temporary streams has focussed on semi-arid and arid landscapes where annual evapotranspiration exceeds annual precipitation. While such climatic conditions do control the occurrence of temporary streams in some regions in Canada, temporary streams can also occur in sub-humid and humid climates. This paper examines the major controls on the occurrence and behaviour of temporary streams at the regional and reach scales in Canada; however, where necessary we also review literature from outside Canada on aspects of temporary streams relevant to the Canadian context. The paper assesses the temporal dynamics of temporary streams, along with key aspects of their geomorphology and ecology as well as current monitoring and modelling approaches. Temporary streams are very sensitive to anthropogenic and natural activities that can modify their hydrology and hydroecology, and they deserve greater attention from the Canadian hydrological community. Improved monitoring and process studies should be pursued in Canada.


Genomic rearrangements and associated copy number changes are important drivers in cancer as they can alter the expression of oncogenes and tumor suppressors, create gene fusions, and misregulate gene expression. Here we present SplitThreader (http://splitthreader.com), an open-source interactive web application for analysis and visualization of genomic rearrangements and copy number variation in cancer genomes. SplitThreader constructs a sequence graph of genomic rearrangements in the sample and uses a priority queue breadth-first search algorithm on the graph to search for novel interactions. This is applied to detect gene fusions and other novel sequences, as well as to evaluate distances in the rearranged genome between any genomic regions of interest, especially the repositioning of regulatory elements and their target genes. SplitThreader also analyzes each variant to categorize it by its relation to other variants and by its copy number concordance. This identifies balanced translocations, identifies simple and complex variants, and suggests likely false positives when copy number is not concordant across a candidate breakpoint. It also provides explanations when multiple variants affect the copy number state and obscure the contribution of a single variant, such as a deletion within a region that is overall amplified. Together, these categories triage the variants into groups and provide a starting point for further systematic analysis and manual curation. To demonstrate its utility, we apply SplitThreader to three cancer cell lines, MCF-7 and A549 with Illumina paired-end sequencing, and SK-BR-3, with long-read PacBio sequencing. Using SplitThreader, we examine the genomic rearrangements responsible for previously observed gene fusions in SK-BR-3 and MCF-7, and discover many of the fusions involved a complex series of multiple genomic rearrangements. We also find notable differences in the types of variants between the three cell lines, in particular a much higher proportion of reciprocal variants in SK-BR-3 and a distinct clustering of interchromosomal variants in SK-BR-3 and MCF-7 that is absent in A549.


A lot of relations have been newly regulated by the new Civil Code, which came into force on the 1st of July, 2001. The greatest alternations involve matrimonial and family relations. There is no separate code of The Matrimonial and Family Code left as such. The latter norms are included into the Third Civil Code book titled "Family Law". This article discloses only several problems of the new Civil Code. Norms relating to the rights and duties of family members suggest a few contradictions to Constitution of Lithuanian Republic and are incompatible with the other standards of Civil Code. Thus, our special attention is given to the following questions: 1) the parents' agreement on the support of their minors; 2) form and size of such support; 3) cohabitation – relations between a man and a woman living together without having their marriage registered; 4) marriage dissolution by the request of one of the spouses; 5) marriage realization by religious license; 6) children's rights. Previously listed norms are analyzed for being put into practice and improved progressivelly. Besides, we have also tried to review certain standards of foreign countries as well.


This discussion introduces several papers which examine solutions to challenges posed to local agencies by ongoing development of offshore petroleum resources. Innovative solutions have allowed agencies involved to: 1) develop a coordinated environmental review process (thus maximizing early agency involvement), 2) cooperatively address major issues, and 3) reduce project impacts and hazards through enforcement and monitoring programs. The Santa Barbara County Resource Management Department, through its Energy Division, is responsible for land use permits, environmental review, and overall coordination with other local agencies. In the last four years the Energy Division has processed (or is processing) permits for four OCS production and processing projects, four state tidelands production and processing projects, two marine terminals, three onshore pipelines, and four supply bases.


In large cities, due to expensive land price, high-rise buildings are built, in which the space dedicated to the elevators it considerable and reduces the rented surfaces. To decrease these lost surfaces, a multi mobile system is proposed: it consists of several moving cabins in the same shaft, permitting also horizontal motions. In this case, the use of direct linear motor drives without counterweight is requested. But it implies high mechanical power and energy consumption. A system design optimization permits to obtain a positive return of investment. This paper focuses on linear motors to move the cabins. Multi criteria system and motor designs are presented. Finally, the economical balance emphases the interest of multi mobile systems.


Geochemical data show that the major rock-forming components of Mercury are characterized by high sulfur content. X-ray fluorescence spectra obtained by the MESSENGER spacecraft orbiting Mercury indicate that the planet's surface differs in composition from those of other terrestrial planets. Relatively high Mg/Si and low Al/Si and Ca/Si ratios rule out a lunarlike feldspar-rich crust. The sulfur abundance is at least 10 times higher than that of the silicate portion of Earth or the Moon, and this observation, together with a low surface Fe abundance, supports the view that Mercury formed from highly reduced precursor materials, perhaps akin to enstatite chondrite meteorites or anhydrous cometary dust particles. Low Fe and Ti abundances do not support the proposal that opaque oxides of these elements contribute substantially to Mercury's low and variable surface reflectance.


This paper reconciles the asymptotic disagreement between Bayesian and frequentist inference in set‐identified models by adopting a multiple‐prior (robust) Bayesian approach. We propose new tools for Bayesian inference in set‐identified models and show that they have a well‐defined posterior interpretation in finite samples and are asymptotically valid from the frequentist perspective. The main idea is to construct a prior class that removes the source of the disagreement: the need to specify an unrevisable prior for the structural parameter given the reduced‐form parameter. The corresponding class of posteriors can be summarized by reporting the 'posterior lower and upper probabilities' of a given event and/or the 'set of posterior means' and the associated 'robust credible region'. We show that the set of posterior means is a consistent estimator of the true identified set and the robust credible region has the correct frequentist asymptotic coverage for the true identified set if it is convex. Otherwise, the method provides posterior inference about the convex hull of the identified set. For impulse‐response analysis in set‐identified Structural Vector Autoregressions, the new tools can be used to overcome or quantify the sensitivity of standard Bayesian inference to the choice of an unrevisable prior.


This study investigates whether increasing a superior's span of control improves the effectiveness of the budgeting process. We characterize the superior's utility function as consisting of utilities for norm enforcement and wealth, leading the superior to reject profitable projects believed to contain excessive slack. We develop theory to predict that superiors become more willing to reject projects as their span of control increases. Further, subordinates anticipate superiors' behavior and reduce slack as span of control increases. Experimental results are consistent with these predictions. As span of control increases, superiors show a greater willingness to reject projects that they believe contain excessive slack, and subordinates submit budgets with less slack. The net result is that superiors earn more profit per subordinate under an expanded span of control. Our study suggests that increasing span of control can improve the effectiveness of the budgeting process, an important component of most firms' control environments.


An Introduction to Music Technology, Second Edition provides a clear overview of the essential elements of music technology for todays musician. This book focuses on the topics that underlie the hardware and software in use today: Sound, Audio, MIDI, Computer Notation, and Computer- Assisted Instruction. Appendices cover necessary computer hardware and software concepts. Written for both music technology majors and non-majors, this textbookintroduces fundamental principles and practices so students can learn to work with a wide range of software programs, adapt to new music technologies, and apply music technology in their performance, composition, teaching, and analysis. Features: Thorough explanations of key topics in music technology Content applicable to all software and hardware, not linked to just one piece of software or gear In-depth discussion of digital audio topics, such as sampling rates, resolutions, and file formats Explanations of standard audio plug-ins including dynamics processors, EQs, and delay based effects Coverage of synthesis and sampling in software instruments Pedagogical features, including: Further Reading sections that allow the student to delve deeper into topics of interest Suggested Activities that can be carried out with a variety of different programs Key Terms at the end of each chapter What Do I Need? Chapters covering the types of hardware and software needed in order to put together Audio and MIDI systems A companion website with links to audio examples that demonstrate various concepts, step-by-step tutorials, relevant hardware, software, and additional audio and video resources. The new edition has been fully updated to cover new technologies that have emerged since the first edition, including iOS and mobile platforms, online notation software, alternate controllers, and Open Sound Control (OSC).


Background: Tuberculosis (TB) and tobacco are the major public health problems with high morbidity and mortality. Tobacco consumption is the most common modifiable risk factor associated with TB infection, relapse, and recurrence. This study aimed at estimating the prevalence of tobacco consumption patterns among patients with TB and assessing effectiveness of counseling and tobacco cessation intervention. Patients and Methods: A cross-sectional prospective study was conducted in patients with TB (pulmonary and extrapulmonary), ≥18 years registered under Revised National TB Control Program (RNTCP) (Directly Observed Treatment, Short-course), at a tertiary care hospital, South India, from January 2018 to June 2018. Relevant clinical data was collected. Participants were interviewed about tobacco consumption, and counseling was offered to these patients and willingness to quit tobacco usage was assessed using 5A and 5R's approach. Results: Of the total 125 patients, 40 of them were tobacco users (smoking and oral tobacco) with a prevalence of 32%. Mean age was 38 ± 2 years. Tobacco consumption was significantly high (19.2%) in the 31–50 years age group (P = 0.04) with an increased association among pulmonary TB. Majority of the tobacco users were male (38.96%), predominantly smokers (31.16%) and female patients were oral tobacco users (20.83%). With effective counseling, 60% of tobacco users were willing to quit tobacco gradually, while 27.5% were willing to quit abruptly and avail pharmacotherapy. Conclusion: There is high prevalence of tobacco usage among TB patients. Majority of males were smokers. Females were predominantly oral tobacco users. Implementing strategies for effective counseling and tobacco cessation intervention, in coordination with RNTCP would have greater impact on treatment outcome.


Plastic bronchitis (PB) is a rare condition known to be associated with many pulmonary, cardiac, and systemic diseases. It is characterized by the formation and expectoration of peculiar long branching casts of the bronchial tree with rubber-like consistency causing airway obstruction. PB does not present as early as the neonatal or immediate post-neonatal period (1). However, the condition is probably underestimated, as the casts with their specific ramifications are sometimes difficult to recognize. PB has been increasingly reported in relation to some cardiosurgical procedures, notably those bypassing the right ventricle via connecting the systemic venous vessels to the pulmonary artery (e.g., Fontan and Glenn) (2). Being mainly composed of laminated mucin, little fibrin, but usually no inflammatory cells, the bronchial casts associated with cardiosurgical procedures are classified as type-II (acellular) casts, while type-I (inflammatory) casts, mostly made of fibrin, a small amount of mucin and dense eosinophilic infiltrate, usually complicate pulmonary disorders (3). Although inflammatory mechanisms have not been considered for cases of congenital heart disease, small numbers of infiltrating cells, including eosinophils usually exist in the casts. We report on a preterm baby with pulmonary atresia and intact interventricular septum, that was not detected antenatally, who presented with cyanosis after iatrogenic induction of duct closure by a non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug, ibuprofen. Prostaglandin E1 infusion commences to reverse duct closure and keep its patency. A series of cardiosurgical procedures undertaken to improve oxygenation were complicated by an unusual cause of airway obstruction, PB with inflammatory cellular- type casts.


Although much research has been conducted on the psychology of mate poaching, little research has been conducted on the factors that predict intention to mate poach, from the perspective of the poacher. Recent research has paid some attention to the role of the dark triads in mate poaching. However, very little research has been conducted investigating the relationship between self-perceived mate value and intention to mate poach. We explored the role of the dark triads (Machiavellianism, narcissism and psychopathy), self-perceived mate value, and gender on one's intention to mate poach in 81 participants from Coventry University. We find that the only dark triad to significantly predict intention to mate poach was psychopathy, suggesting those who scored higher on psychopathic traits were more likely to mate poach. Furthermore, we find that self-perceived mate value significantly predicted intention to mate poach, suggesting those who perceive themselves as having a high mate value, are likely to engage in mate poaching, which is a novel finding.


This study investigated the attitudes and achievements of year one students using calculators to facilitate their pattern development. The investigation also involved the attitudes of the classroom teacher and parents to the use of calculators in mathematics education for year one students. A class of 22 year one students (10 males and 12 females) was chosen for the study. The class was involved in one forty-minute lesson per week using calculators for ten weeks. The lessons focused on the topic of patterns. The calculators were also available for the child ran to use in their free time. The effects on student performance were evaluated based on preand posttests. Changes in student attitudes were evaluated based on questionnaires given before and after the study, observations recorded in a researcher journal, and interviews with six selected students. Change in the teacher's attitude to using calculators was investigated using interviews before and after the study. Parent attitudes were evaluated using a questionnaire form at the completion of the instructional phase of the study. It was concluded that student performance had improved after the study, with students more able to correctly identify, continue and make up their own patterns. Student attitudes were also improved, with the calculators acting as a motivating tool for the students. The classroom teacher became much more positive and enthusiastic about the use of calculators with young children after she had observed her class using calculator8. The investigation also revealed that parents do not receive much information about using calculators with young children, but would like more information about this topic. At present, however, the parents feel that there could be detrimental effects from using calculators before students have mastered number work using traditional paper and pencil methods.


This thesis involves three related topics in the area of thermal stress resulting from sliding contact of frictional materials. These three contributions collectively and the discussion of them herein form a collective basis furthering the research and understanding within this field. Firstly, the effect of convective cooling on thermoelastic instability is evaluated using finite element analysis involving insertion of a thermal convection term in the formula for frictional heat generation. It has been found that convection or radiation heat dissipation can stabilize the thermal-mechanical feedback process, leading to a raised critical sliding velocity. Two representative models for brake and clutch systems are studied. The computational results reveal that the effect of thermal convection on critical sliding speed is significant for liquid cooling, but negligible for air convection. With a practical range of convection coefficients estimated from fundamental heat transfer theories, critical speed in the presence of convection can be doubled or tripled. However, the wave number for the lowest critical speed remains nearly unchanged regardless of convective dissipation. Comparisons between linear and quadratic finite element interpolations are also made via a set of convergence studies. The results show that implementing quadratic elements in the friction layer has an obvious advantage over implementing linear elements due to rapidly-oscillating temperaturevariations across the thermal skin layer. This is particularly important for future studies when higher-dimension problems are of interest. Secondly, a finite element model is iii developed for the fractionally excited thermoelastic instability problem in intermittent sliding contact with finite geometries and realistic friction materials. Existing analytical solutions are used to validate the method in several limiting cases. It is concluded that some caution must be taken for the commonly-used strategy of assuming time-averaged, frictional heat generation for intermittent contact. Predictions made by half-plane analytical solutions that assume thermally-nonconductive, rigid frictional surfaces considerably overestimate dimensionless critical speeds of realistic brake and clutch systems. Long wavelength perturbations become unstable at a dimensionless sliding speed approaching zero, which opposes the convergence of two unity in half-plane solutions. Averaging the heat input over the entire circumference is appropriate only when the period of frictional contact is longer than that of separation. These results merit the use of finite element analysis in more general applications involving intermittent contact. Thirdly, in the automotive world, the usage of sliding-disk mechanical systems that produce friction has ever led engineers to address problems regarding friction, heat, and distortion of materials, particularly friction discs themselves, with many examples found when disassembling working systems. Engineers have witnessed the phenomenon of thermal buckling, the conditions of which are analyzed herein from the perspective of moments that lead to buckling. Various parameters of system configuration, geometry, and graphical analyses based on theoretical calculations of buckling potential are considered. Distribution of temperature as a system parameter is given particular importance. It is our belief that these three contributions each provide further understanding of their respective domains while their results and their implications


The theoretical literature has long noted that talent can be used in both the entrepreneurial and non-entrepreneurial sectors, and its allocation depends on the reward structure. We test these hypotheses by linking administrative college admissions data for 1.8 million individuals with the universe of firm registration records in China. Within a college, we find that individuals with higher college entrance exam scores – the most important measure of talent in this context – are less likely to create firms, but, when they do, their firms are more successful than those of their lower-score counterparts. Additional survey data suggest that higher-score individuals enjoy higher wages and are more likely to join the state sector. Moreover, the score-to-firm creation relationship varies greatly across industry, according to the size of the state sector. These findings suggest that the score is positively associated with both entrepreneurial ability and wage-job ability but higher-score individuals are attracted away by wage jobs, particularly those of the state sector.


"Reading is not the mastery of a single learning task. There are numerous elements which must come together meaningfully"
(Watson & Badenhop, 1992, p.16). A successful reading program consists of more than a reading method; there are several connecting parts. If students are to learn to read, then they
must understand what it means to read, and they must believe that they would like to read. Reading needs to be seen as a purposeful and meaningful activity.

This paper explores the features of a successful classroom reading program. It looks at how teachers can organise
reading in ways which build on from the successful language learning that children have already accomplished in their homes and communities. The school is a key factor in
facilitating reading success and will be held accountable to a large extent for the reading successes or failures of its students. The community expectation is that almost all
students will master the basics of literacy. "While the backgrounds of the children can influence the ease with which they become literate, most children, in the first year of
school, can learn to read irrespective of home background and the location, type or size of school. Schools clearly are responsible to provide students with effective literacy instruction" (House of Representatives Standing Committee, It is through reading that children learn to read. Part of a teacher's role is to make reading easy and enjoyable for every student. "Every teacher worth her salts wants her pupils to be competent and sensitive readers" (Meek, 1982, p.10). This paper discusses how this happens. Teachers need to reflect on those characteristics that identify good classroom practice and the effective teaching and learning of reading. In a quality early childhood classroom where reading is valued and successful: how will the classroom look?; what will the students be doing?; what will the teacher be doing? What classroom characteristics nurture beginning readers? This paper explores the conditions which facilitate success in learning to read for every student in the class. It looks at preventing reading difficulties from developing. Prevention is considered in an absolute sense: preventing reading failure in the initial instance when students are introduced to reading during their early school years. How can we best ensure that students are introduced to reading in such a way that they succeed? This requires careful planning, skilled teaching and early intervention in the first years of schooling to assist students as necessary before they experience a sense of failure.


Medical errors have received a great deal of attention in recent years. The phrase "medical error" is an umbrella term given to all errors that occur within the health care system, including mishandled surgery, diagnostic errors, equipment failures, and medication errors. Medical error is a major problem in the UK and the USA, in both primary and secondary care, and policy initiatives have been implemented to reduce it.1–3

Medication errors are probably one of the most common types of medical error as medication is the most common health care intervention. In the USA, it is estimated that medication errors kill 7000 patients (both adults and children) a year.1 In UK hospitals, the incidence and consequences of medication errors appear similar to those reported in the USA—with prescribing errors occurring in 1.5% of prescriptions,4 and administration errors in 3–8% of doses given.5

Much of the research into medication errors and their prevention have been carried out in facilities that care primarily for adults. Information on medication errors in paediatrics is scarce. What is more, the extent of risk in paediatrics is not well studied.

This article will provide an introduction to medication errors in children and suggestions to reduce medication errors in children.

### Increased risk of medication errors in children

Paediatrics pose a unique set of risks of medication errors, predominantly because of the need for dosage calculations, which are individually based on the patient's weight, age or body surface area, and their condition. This increases the likelihood of errors, particularly dosing errors.6 For potent drugs, when only a small fraction of the adult dose is required for children, it becomes very easy to cause 10-fold or greater dosing errors because of miscalculation or misplacement of the decimal point. For example, Selbst et al 7 reported a case of a 10 month …


Trade policy reform in the form of trade liberalisation is a very important tool for raising living standards and improving a country's economy. Such reform on its own, however, is likely to be rejected by the public and those sectors that would be most adversely affected. The key to gaining support for trade policy reform really lies in the concept of transparency, which helps to explain policy change, which in turn assists the public to accept change and creates a coalition for change. Australia is a very good example of the power of transparency in trade policy reform. The Hawke government, elected in 1983, managed to liberalise a highly protected economy through the successful application of transparency. The government ensured that the public was privy to all information related to trade policy reform. Very influential in this drive was an enquiring media and an intellectual base that produced independent, evidence-based reports on the costs of trade protectionism. The short-term risks and long-term benefits were made clear to the public and, simultaneously, adjustment assistance was provided for those that would be most adversely affected by reform. Rather than pursue trade protectionism, South Africa could learn from the Australian experience by setting up a body of independent experts to determine the benefits of trade policy reform and publish their findings. Reform should be accompanied by openness and honesty, which will help garner public support for it if the public is kept fully informed of the need for it and the processes involved. The media should also engage with such issues and report on them. As long as the government tackles trade policy reform in an honest and Transparency in Trade Policymaking: Lessons for South Africa from Australia's Experiences r e c o m m e n D AT i o n s


In arid and semiarid areas, the availability of reliable data for water retention in relation to soil type, texture, and soil carbonate content is low. It is therefore desirable to explore the interaction between soil hydraulic properties and other physical and chemical properties to estimate the soil water retention curve (SWRC) from easily measured soil parameters. In this study, 72 soil samples were collected from rural areas throughout northwest Syria, covering most of its agroclimatic zones and soil types. Soil water content at different matric potentials and 11 chemical and physical soil properties were determined. A Pearson correlation matrix was computed on which principal component analysis was applied to three soil water contents, −1, −33, and −1500 kPa, and the 11 soil properties. Four principal components (PCs) explained 77% of the variation in the data set. The three soil water contents were highly linked to PC1, which was correlated with the plastic limit, texture, soil carbonate content, and specific surface area. In addition, the soil water content at −1 kPa was also linked to PC4, which was correlated with bulk density. Therefore, from the initial 11 soil properties, seven contributed to the three soil water contents (plastic limit, texture, soil carbonate, specific surface area, and bulk density); the remaining four (organic matter, gravel, cation exchange capacity, and hygroscopic water content) had a negligible influence. Consequently, pedotransfer functions might be estimated using the original seven, from the initial 11, soil properties or their corresponding PCs to estimate the SWRC.


Summary Araucaria cunninghamii (hoop pine) typically occurs as an emergent tree over subtropical and tropical rainforests, in a discontinuous distribution that extends from West Irian Jaya at about 0°30'S, through the highlands of Indonesian New Guinea and Papua New Guinea, along the east coast of Australia from 11°39'S in Queensland to 30°35'S in northern New South Wales. Plantations established in Queensland since the 1920s now total about 44 000 ha, and constitute the primary source for the continuing supply of hoop pine quality timber and pulpwood, with a sustainable harvest exceeding 440 000 m3 y−1. Establishment of these managed plantations allowed logging of all native forests of Araucaria species (hoop pine and bunya pine, A. bidwillii) on state-owned lands to cease in the late 1980s, and the preservation of large areas of araucarian forest types within a system of state-owned and managed reserves. The successful plantation program with this species has been strongly supported by genetic improvement activities since the late 1940s — through knowledge of provenance variation and reproductive biology, the provision of reliable sources of improved seed, and the capture of substantial genetic gains in traits of economic importance (for example growth, stem straightness, internode length and spiral grain). As such, hoop pine is one of the few tropical tree species that, for more than half a century, has been the subject of continuous genetic improvement. The history of commercialisation and genetic improvement of hoop pine provides an excellent example of the dual economic and conservation benefits that may be obtained in tropical tree species through the integration of gene conservation and genetic improvement with commercial plantation development. This paper outlines the natural distribution and reproductive biology of hoop pine, describes the major achievements of the genetic improvement program in Queensland over the past 50+ y, summarises current understanding of the genetic variation and control of key selection traits, and outlines the means by which genetic diversity in the species is being conserved.


Background: Podiatry aims and professes to undertake patient-centred practice. However, no podiatric literature was sourced that examines or discusses that most central component of our practice – the nature of our relationship with our patients; nor has any published research
specifically focussed on this area.
Aim: This study aimed to explore the nature of the patient-podiatrist relationship from the perspective of both private and National Health Service practitioners.
Methodological approach: A phenomenological approach, with a hermeneutic focus, was utilised to construct meaning and
understanding from the data of semi-structured interviews with eight participants. The researcher acknowledges herself as situated within the research, and a reflexive approach is demonstrated throughout. Iterative thematic
analysis was undertaken to enable development of meaning and understanding.
Findings: Findings were developed into six categories – relationship, engagement, role, image, reward and personal development, coming together in one overarching theme, that
of professionalism.
Discussion and application: Professionalism is discussed through the concept of macro- and micro-professionalism. The patient-podiatrist relationship can be a lens through which to consider aspects of micro-professionalism.
This research proposes that professionalism be redefined from an explicit and public corporate concept, to its demonstration at an individual level - accepting that it is indeed professional to 'care', both for and about the patient, and that caring is beneficial to both patient and
practitioner.


CASE DESCRIPTION
In Latvia in 2014, acquired idiopathic megaesophagus (AIME) was observed in increased numbers of dogs that consumed varieties of 1 brand of dog food. Within 2 years, 253 dogs were affected. In Australia in November 2017, 6 working dogs that consumed 1 diet of another brand of dog food developed AIME. In total, 145 Australian dogs were affected.

CLINICAL FINDINGS
AIME was diagnosed predominantly in large-breed male dogs (> 25 kg [55 lb]). Regurgitation, weight loss, and occasionally signs consistent with aspiration pneumonia (coughing, dyspnea, or fever) were noted. Most Latvian dogs had mild to severe peripheral polyneuropathies as evidenced by laryngeal paralysis, dysphonia, weakness, and histopathologic findings consistent with distal axonopathy. In Australian dogs, peripheral polyneuropathies were not identified, and histopathologic findings suggested that the innervation of the esophagus and pharynx was disrupted locally, although limited samples were available.

TREATMENT AND OUTCOME
Investigations in both countries included clinical, epidemiological, neuropathologic, and case-control studies. Strong associations between the dog foods and the presence of AIME were confirmed; however, toxicological analyses did not identify a root cause. In Latvia, the implicated dietary ingredients and formulations were unknown, whereas in Australia, extensive investigations were conducted into the food, its ingredients, the supply chain, and the manufacturing facilities, but a cause was not identified.

CLINICAL RELEVANCE
A panel of international multidisciplinary experts concluded that the cause of AIME in both outbreaks was likely multifactorial, with the possibility of individualized sensitivities. Without a sentinel group, the outbreak in Australia may not have been recognized for months to years, as happened in Latvia. A better surveillance system for early identification of pet illnesses, including those associated with pet foods, is needed.


The inspection of sewers can take place whether by means of fixed-intervals in a conventional surface-covering inspection, or by means of need-oriented strategies. Those need-oriented strategies can be differed between a selective inspection, an evaluation of the present sewer condition based on a representative samples and a failure-oriented forecasting strategy.

By setting up and implementing a numerical model it is now possible to carry out a comparison between strategies. Herewith, the potential of success from every single strategy concerning different boundary conditions has been evaluated.

For larger Sewer Systems a failure-oriented forecasting strategy presents a more reasonable alternative than the conventional surface-covering one. The reason is because the holding time from every sewer in a critical condition can be reduced considerably within this kind of oriented-need inspections compared to the conventional ones. Similarly, this method meets the ability to estimate the whole condition of a sewer for a given term in the minimum time, which usually could not be achieved by a conventional inspection. Oriented-need inspection strategies offer even superior advantages when the crop and the ground water pollution regulation controls have been followed from the beginning, in order to reduce holding times within sewers in a critical class-condition.


We will not be silenced.
Jean McClellan spends her time in almost complete silence, limited to just one hundred words a day. Any more, and a thousand volts of electricity will course through her veins.
Now the new government is in power, everything has changed. But only if you're a woman.
Almost overnight, bank accounts are frozen, passports are taken away and seventy million women lose their jobs. Even more terrifyingly, young girls are no longer taught to read or write.
For herself, her daughter, and for every woman silenced, Jean will reclaim her voice. This is only the beginning...
[100 word limit reached]


Although currency invoicing in international trade transactions is central to the transmission of monetary policy, the forces motivating the choice of currency have long been debated. We introduce a model wherein agents involved in international trade can invoice in the exporter's currency, the importer's currency, or a third-country vehicle currency. The model is designed to contrast the contribution of macroeconomic variability with that of industry-specific features in the selection of an invoice currency. We show that producers in industries with high demand elasticities are more likely than producers in other industries to display herding in their choice of currency. This industry-related force is more influential than local macroeconomic performance in determining producers' choices. Drawing on data on invoice currency use in exports and imports for twenty-four countries, we document that the dollar is the currency of choice for most transactions involving the United States. The dollar is also extensively used as a vehicle currency in international trade flows that do not directly involve the United States. Consistent with the results of our model, this last finding is largely attributable to international trade in reference-priced and organized-exchange traded goods. Although the magnitude of business-cycle volatility matters for invoicing of more differentiated products, it is less central for invoicing nondifferentiated goods.


Rejection sensitivity is the disposition to anxiously expect, readily perceive, and intensely react to rejection (Downey & Feldman, 1996). When highly RS people are rejected, they typically react with hostility and aggression against those who caused the perceived rejection and their intimate relationships are challenging because of this. College-age women and men (N=160) recorded three autobiographical memories of rejection, completed the Rejection Sensitivity Questionnaire (RSQ), Relationship Questionnaire (RQ) to measure attachment styles, the Satisfaction With Life Scale (SWLS) to measure their overall happiness with their lives, and the Thinking About Life Experiences (TALE) questionnaire to measure how the participants used their rejection memories (either the self, directive, or social function). The three rejection memories were coded for themes in specificity, integration (meaning-making), and redemption or contamination. It was found that participants with high levels of rejection sensitivity rated their rejection memories to be significantly more important (p = .014), more negative (p < .001), less positive (p = .027), and more frequently thought about (p < .001) than participants with low levels of rejection sensitivity. Participants high in rejection sensitivity used the self (p = .004) and social (p = .005) functions of memory and had more specific (p = .030) and contamination (p = .025) and less redemption (p = .026) memory themes than participants low in rejection sensitivity. Participants with high rejection sensitivity had significantly lower satisfaction with life than participants low in RS (p < .001). These results indicate that the way highly rejection sensitive individuals respond and interpret their rejection memories strongly affects the way their sensitivity to rejection forms and thus their relationships with other people.


This paper presents a robust and blind digital image watermarking technique to achieve copyright protection. In order to protect copyright material from illegal duplication, various technologies have been developed, like key-based cryptographic technique, digital watermarking etc. In digital watermarking, a signature or copyright message is secretly embedded in the image by using an algorithm. In our paper, we implement that algorithm of digital watermarking by combining both DWT and SVD techniques. Initially, we decompose the original (cover) image into 4 sub-bands using 2-D DWT, and then we apply the SVD on each band by modifying their singular values. After subjecting the watermarked image to various attacks like blurring, adding noise, pixelation, rotation, rescaling, contrast adjustment, gamma correction, histogram equalization, cropping, sharpening, lossy compression etc, we extract the originally inserted watermark image from all the bands and compare them on the basis of their MSE and PSNR values. Experimental results are provided to illustrate that if we perform modification in all frequencies, then it will make our watermarked image more resistant to a wide range of image-processing attacks (including common geometric attacks), i.e. We can recover the watermark from any of the four sub-bands efficiently.


An increase in the use of nanomaterials (NM) has been witnessed in many areas of human life. Therefore, assessment of genotoxicity of NM and nanoparticles (NP) is one of the main objectives of genetic toxicology. Despite this fact, human cytogenetic studies following the exposure to NP are still rare. Moreover, no relevant information on possible differences in sensitivity to NP related to gender is available. In this study we periodically (in September 2016, 2017 and 2018; pre-shift and post-shift each year) analyzed a group of workers (both genders), working long time in nanocomposites research, and matched controls. Aerosol exposure monitoring of particulate matter including nano-sized fractions was carried out during working shift. Micronucleus assay using Human Pan Centromeric probes, was applied to distinguish, besides the frequency of total MN in binucleated cells (BNC), also other types of chromosomal damage (losses and breaks). Moreover, whole-chromosome painting (WCP) for autosome #1 and both gonosomes (X and Y) were applied in third sampling period (2018) with the aim to identify the particular structural and numerical chromosomal aberrations. Obtained results showed: (i) differences in the risk of exposure to NP related to individual working processes (welding, smelting and machining); (ii) differences in chemical composition of nano-fraction; (iii) no effect of chronic exposure of NP (total MN) opposite to significant effect of acute exposure; (iv) gender-related DNA damage differences (females seem to be more sensitive to chromosomal losses). Additional data from WCP suggested increased frequency of numerical aberrations in gonosomes.


The debate concerning how much China should pollute is at the heart of international negotiations regarding climate change and environmental protection more generally. China is the world's leading polluter and leading emitter of greenhouse gases. It insists that it has a right to emit as much as it wants in the future. China interprets the principle of "common but differentiated responsibilities" to mean that China has a responsibility to help avoid the harmful consequences associated with climate change, but that its responsibility is different from that imposed on the United States and the rest of the developed world. In fact, there is no basis in environmental law for a right to pollute as much as someone else has already polluted. To the contrary, American law specifically rejects the idea that clean air or water can be polluted until the pollution actually causes harm. Despite its rhetoric, China has done much more to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions than it is legally obligated to do. It has acted from a variety of motivations, including a desire for global leadership, genuine environmental concern, fear of domestic instability, and the opportunity for economic growth. These gains are checked, though, by China's unwillingness to constrain its unprecedented economic growth and its inability to employ the law to actually control emissions.This article concludes by trying to reconcile China's rhetoric and China's actions in an effort to solve the problems that China's pollution poses for China, the United States, and the rest of the world. China should ensure that its pollution does not harm its own people or the rest of the world. China should commit to abiding by the rule of law to actually enforce the environmental regulations that it has enacted, and the United States can help China in that regard. The United States and China should also collaborate, compete, and commit in an effort to address the problems caused by China's pollution.


Experimental animals are an obligate screen to investigate microorganism pathogenicity. Numerous animal models have been used to analyse the virulence of the opportunistic human pathogen Aspergillus fumigatus but none of the experimental models used previously have been satisfactory. This report discuss these models and presents a murine model of pulmonary aspergillosis that is very easy and the most adapted to compare the pathogenicity of A. fumigatus strains. Strains to be tested are inoculated intranasally and synchronously to mice and strains isolated from the lung of mice killed by the infection are typed. The number of colonies recovered is directly correlated to the virulence of the strain.


Background: Fetal well-being is determined in large part by how well the placenta is able to supply oxygen and nutrients, but current technology is unable to directly measure how well a placenta functions. Near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS) utilizes optical methods to measure tissue oxygenation. This pilot project evaluated the feasibility of NIRS for fetal monitoring through the maternal abdominal wall using a sheep model. Methods: A miniature wireless 2-wavelength NIRS device was placed on the abdominal skin over the placenta of a pregnant ewe whose fetus had been chronically catheterized to allow arterial sampling for measurement of arterial oxygen saturation. The NIRS device has 3-paired light emitting diodes and a single photodiode detector; allowing measurement of an index of tissue oxygen saturation (TSI%). Fetal limb TSI% values were compared before and during fetal breathing movements. Correlation was made during these events between arterial values and placental TSI% monitored continuously in real time. Results: Serial measurements were obtained in a single experiment. The correlation between transcutaneous NIRS derived TSI% and direct arterial oxygen saturation was very high (R2=0.86). Measures of fetal limb TSI% were declined after episodes of fetal breathing (P<0.005). Conclusions: This correlation suggests that NIRS is sensitive enough to detect changes in fetal tissue oxygenation noninvasively through the maternal abdominal wall in real-time in a sheep model. NIRS data confirmed that fetal breathing movements decrease arterial oxygen saturation in fetal lambs. If validated by further study this optical methodology could be applied as means of monitoring fetal wellbeing in humans.


This study was carried out to investigate the safety related behaviour of road users aged 11-16. A self-completion questionnaire was designed to measure the frequency with which children from the target population carry out 43 different road using behaviours and a number of other variables including children's beliefs about the safety of their own road using behaviour. Two thousand four hundred and thirty three children from eleven secondary schools within England completed the questionnaire in lesson time at school. Factor analysis showed that scores on the 43 behaviour items were best represented by a three-factor solution. The three factors were named unsafe road crossing behaviour, dangerous playing in the road, and planned protective behaviour. Analysis of variance and stepwise multiple regression analyses showed that demographic variables and exposure variables had statistically significant effects on how often these behaviours were carried out. More interesting was the finding that respondents had realistic perceptions of their own behaviour as road users. The more respondents believed their road using behaviour to be unsafe and irresponsible, the more often they reported carrying out road using behaviour that was undesirable from a road safety point of view. These results and their implications for road safety interventions and further research are discussed.


Lorentz symmetry and the notion of light cones play a central role in the definition of horizons and the existence of black holes. Current observations provide strong indications that astrophysical black holes do exist in Nature. Here we explore what happens to the notion of a black hole in gravity theories where local Lorentz symmetry is violated, and discuss the relevant astrophysical implications. Einstein-aether theory and Hořava gravity are used as the theoretical background for addressing this question. We review earlier results about static, spherically symmetric black holes, which demonstrate that in Lorentz-violating theories there can be a new type of horizon and, hence, a new notion of black hole. We also present both known and new results on slowly rotating black holes in these theories, which provide insights on how generic these new horizons are. Finally, we discuss the differences between black holes in Lorentz-violating theories and in General Relativity, and assess to what extent they can be probed with present and future observations.


The first goal of this work was to develop models based on nonlinear ordinarydifferential equations or nonlinear algebraic equations, which produce the lift and drag coefficients on a cylinder or a cylinder-like structure. We introduced an improved wake oscillator for the lift, which combines the van der Pol and Duffing equations. We proposed a two-term quadratic model that relates the drag and lift coefficients, which reproduces the phase relationship between the drag and lift and its variation with the Reynolds number. We found that a mixed-type (external and parametric) forcing is needed to represent the effects of the cylinder motion. The second goal of this work was to develop a deeper understanding of the shedding and fluid forces on a cylinder and how they depend on its oscillatory motion within and outside the synchronization (or lock-in) band of frequencies. We performed extensive CFD (computational fluid dynamics) simulations and solved the unsteady Reynoldsaveraged Navier-Stokes equations that govern the flow fields around fixed and moving (in either the cross-flow or in-line direction) cylinders. We identified various wake modes that can exist, depending on the cylinder motion (direction, amplitude, and frequency) by using modern methods of nonlinear dynamics. The possible responses can be period-one, periodic with large period, quasiperiodic, or chaotic. Moreover, we found that the routeto-chaos is torus breakdown. We investigated how four frequency sweeps of the crossflow motion affect the response curves and the hysteresis phenomenon. We studied in detail the effect of the in-line motion on the wake and related this effect to the reduction in the lift and mean drag due to a synchronization type that is very different from the one due to cross-flow motion. Dedication I dedicate my Dissertation to my siblings: Belal "male" Eman "female" Mohamed (Hamaada) "male" Tarek "male" Yasmine "female"


Abstract Could the future of fashion be found in the past? As a result of the cumulative negative effects of over-consumption of fashion globally and the commensurate resource depletion this requires, as well as the sometimes catastrophic impacts on the laborers who make them, the accelerated pace of current fast fashion systems are now fundamentally unsustainable. There are however fashion producers who are putting sustainability at the forefront of their entrepreneurial ambitions and are focusing their formidable creative energies and expertise into incorporating re-use principles deeply into their design ethos, and developing no-harm, no-waste production models. Eileen Fisher and friends of light are both New York based garment manufacturers who are pioneering techniques that are in fact grounded within historical traditions: re-making garments and weaving to form respectively. This essay includes a description of the processes of these innovative design practitioners that was derived from site visits, and interviews with principles in both organizations and also includes a contextualization of the historical and philosophical antecedents of their respective operations. It also looks at the communication encoded in alternative paradigms of fashion production.


In this longpaper, we present the theoretical and practical implications of using the TAG data model and the associated syntax TAGML to express textual features (such as overlapping text structures, nonlinear text, or discontinuous text) in a way that corresponds more closely with the scholar's understanding of it. We will give examples from the field of textual genesis studies, which presents some particularly intriguing requirements for text modeling. As TAG considers text as a network of often implicit information, TAGML documents are inherently multi-layered and non-linear, and combine ordered and unordered information. Accordingly, scholars can digitally represent their understanding of a text in a more explicit and formalised manner. This paves the way to an innovative approach to creating, modeling, and processing textual objects.


Background: Perioperative cerebral hypoperfusion/ischemia is a major inciting factor of postoperative delirium, which is coupled with adverse outcome in elderly patients. Cerebral oximetry enables noninvasive assessment of the regional cerebral oxygen saturation (rSO2). This study aimed to investigate whether perioperative rSO2 variations were linked to delirium in elderly patients after spinal surgery. Materials and Methods: Postoperative delirium was assessed for 48 hours postsurgery in 109 patients aged over 60 years without a prior history of cerebrovascular or psychiatric diseases by the Confusion Assessment Method for the intensive care unit and the intensive care delirium screening checklist. The rSO2 values immediately before and throughout surgery were acquired. The preoperative cognitive functions, patient characteristics, and perioperative data were recorded. Results: During the 48-h postoperative period, 9 patients (8%) exhibited delirium. The patients with delirium showed similar perioperative rSO2 values as those without, in terms of the median lowest rSO2 values (55% vs. 56%; P=0.876) and incidence (22%, both) and duration of decline of rSO2<80% of the baseline values. The serially assessed hemodynamic variables, hematocrit levels, and blood gas analysis variables were also similar between the groups, except for the number of hypotensive events per patient, which was higher in the patients with delirium than in those without (4, interquartile range [IQR] 3 to 6 vs. 2, IQR: 1to 3; P=0.014). Conclusions: The degree and duration of decrease of the perioperative rSO2 measurements were not associated with delirium in elderly patients after spinal surgery.


During mammalian genome evolution, nuclear DNA content remained more or less unchanged and the chromosomal banding pattern was maintained with the exception of occasional chromosomal rearrangements. Chromosomal rearrangements occur frequently in individuals but only occasionally are they fixed into the common karyotype of a new species. The fixed rearrangements are passed on during evolution and unambiguously reveal how mammalian species are related to each other.

Keywords:

telomeres;
centromeres;
chromosome bands;
mobile genetic elements


Multiple mitochondrial dysfunctions syndrome (MMDS) is a group of autosomal recessive mitochondrial disorders that is associated with deficiencies related to nuclear genes: ISCA2 , ISCA1 , NFU1 , IBA57 , and BOLA3 . The syndromes are relatively new and recently discov-ered. Individuals with MMDS have reduced function of energy production stages in mito- chondria. The dysfunctions are mostly related to iron-sulfur (Fe-S) clustering system (ISC) and its biogenesis. The signs and symptoms of the patients may begin early in life, and can be quite severe leading to death more or less during infancy. Affected individuals have vari ous symptoms including brain dysfunction (encephalopathy), hypotonia, seizures, delayed developmental milestones, and cognition and psychomotor impairments. These individuals often have difficulty growing and gaining weight at the expected rate. Diagnosis of the disease can be challenging as in the case with most of the mitochondrial disorders. However, since the genetic causes of the MMDS are known, a laboratory test focusing on the causative genes will be helpful to determine the pathogenic mutations. This in turn would facilitate reducing the number of the diseases through carrier testing and genetic counseling and uti- lization of preimplantation genetic diagnosis in populations, especially those that display high rate of consanguinity, which are prone to have such autosomal recessive disorders.


Machine learning (ML) offers a variety of techniques to understand many complex problems in different fields. The field of heat transfer, and thermal systems in general, are governed by complicated sets of governing physics that can be made tractable by reduced-order modeling, and by extracting simple trends from measured data. Therefore, ML algorithms can yield computationally efficient models for more accurate predictions or to generate robust optimization frameworks. This study reviews past and present efforts that use ML techniques in heat transfer from the fundamental level to full-scale applications, including the use of ML to build reduced-order models, predict heat transfer coefficients and pressure drop, real-time analysis of complex experimental data, and optimize large-scale thermal systems in a variety of applications. The appropriateness of different data-driven ML models in heat transfer problems is discussed. Finally, some of the imminent opportunities and challenges that the heat transfer community faces in this exciting and rapidly growing field are identified.


"The greater issue is not education versus training at all, the issue is for what should we be educating and training our students?" WHAT'S THE DIFFERENCE between educating and training? An ongoing argument among school administrators, teachers, and parents is whether schools are institutions of education or training - education is about theory, and training is about practice. Education aims to cultivate the mind, and training seeks to move the mind to action. Education focuses on knowledge, while training concentrates on performance. Education sees knowledge for its own sake as power; training takes a more utilitarian view, seeing results-focused action as power. A world of difference hangs in the balance here. The Slim Difference The difference between the two terms as they are applied in institutional situations, however, may not be so easy to distinguish. In many contexts, we use the words education and training interchangeably. Teachers in common schools may tell their students, "You are getting an education to train yourself for future responsibilities, which include pursuing a career, furthering your education, raising a family, and paying your bills." Most trainers I meet in the corporate world consider themselves educators and talk to employees enrolled in their courses about the need for continual education. My own career serves as a useful example of the sometimes blurred line separating education and training. In my years of service as a college writing professor, I grew accustomed to the word teacher, a word more associated with education than with training; on the other hand, I have also worked as a communication consultant providing writing training programs for corporate employees, whose management refers to me as a trainer but who themselves call me a teacher. In fact, some companies have a Division of Education and Training, but they may not necessarily classify which of their functions deal with education and which address training. Then why do educators and trainers discriminate - and do so vaguely - between education and training? After all, both seem to address issues of intelligence and skill. Even the dictionary has trouble discriminating between the two words. Webster s provides as one of its definitions of educate "to train by formal instruction and supervised practice especially in a skill, trade, or profession." Meanwhile, it defines train as "to form by instruction, discipline, or drill; to teach so as to make fit, qualified, or proficient." The similarities seem more striking than the differences between these two words. Misconceptions about the Words Regardless of the denotative meanings of education and training, academics and businesspeople laud their preferred word and lambaste the other. Many corporate professionals like to think that training is for the highly specialized person who requires proficiency to succeed in a discipline. An information technology specialist, for instance, may need training in a new computer application to keep abreast of the field. …


Simplifying machine learning (ML) application development, including distributed computation, programming interface, resource management, model selection, etc, has attracted intensive interests recently. These research efforts have significantly improved the efficiency and the degree of automation of developing ML models. In this paper, we take a first step in an orthogonal direction towards automated quality management for human-in-the-loop ML application development. We build ease. ml/meter, a system that can automatically detect and measure the degree of overfitting during the whole lifecycle of ML application development. ease. ml/meter returns overfitting signals with strong probabilistic guarantees, based on which developers can take appropriate actions. In particular, ease. ml/meter provides principled guidelines to simple yet nontrivial questions regarding desired validation and test data sizes, which are among commonest questions raised by developers. The fact that ML application development is typically a continuous procedure further worsens the situation: The validation and test data sets can lose their statistical power quickly due to multiple accesses, especially in the presence of adaptive analysis. ease. ml/meter addresses these challenges by leveraging a collection of novel techniques and optimizations, resulting in practically tractable data sizes without compromising the probabilistic guarantees. We present the design and implementation details of ease. ml/meter, as well as detailed theoretical analysis and empirical evaluation of its effectiveness.


Conditional generation refers to the process of sampling from an unknown distribution conditioned on semantics of the data. This can be achieved by augmenting the generative model with the desired semantic labels, albeit it is not straightforward in an unsupervised setting where the semantic label of every data sample is unknown. In this paper, we address this issue by proposing a method that can generate samples conditioned on the properties of a latent distribution engineered in accordance with a certain data prior. In particular, a latent space inversion network is trained in tandem with a generative adversarial network such that the modal properties of the latent space distribution are induced in the data generating distribution. We demonstrate that our model, despite being fully unsupervised, is effective in learning meaningful representations through its mode matching property. We validate our method on multiple unsupervised tasks such as conditional generation, dataset attribute discovery and inference using three real world image datasets namely MNIST, CIFAR-10 and CelebA and show that the results are comparable to the state-of-the-art methods.


This is the fifth and final installment of William Loader's authoritative, acclaimed series on attitudes toward sexuality in the ancient world.

Sexual themes are never far beneath the surface where there are human beings. This was certainly the case for Christians in the first-century world. Some began in a strongly Jewish context and worked out their faith in dialogue with their scriptural heritage. Others had to work out their sexual ethics in a world strongly influenced by Greco-Roman ideals and practices.

In The New Testament on Sexuality William Loader explores the relevant cultural contexts and looks at New Testament texts related to sexuality, highlighting both the warnings about sexual wrongdoing and the affirmations of sexual union. He deals with specific themes such as divorce, same-sex relations, women and men in leadership, and celibacy; individual behavior, gender roles and rules, preferences, and hopes also fall under the scope of his investigation. Broad-ranging and thorough, this book engages both the biblical texts and the diverse ways in which they have been interpreted.


The book tracks the history of the youth service from 1844 to 1973. It is divided into four chapters.1844-1920 Finding the Roots: Looks at the foundation of today`s service and identifies the early pioneers and their early work.1921-1959 Growing a Youth Service: In the newly formed Northern Ireland state there are parellel developments in this phase with English youth work. We see the growth of unfiormed organisations as well as non-uniformed organisations with increasing support from the government.1960-1969 From Albemarle to a `Troubled` start: Albemarle was a significant policy development in England and Wales in 1960. Northern Ireland took some inspiration from this but the bubbling under of local tensions impacted on the develpment of the service in Northern Ireland.1970-1973 The Youth Service in the Height of the Troubles: This period sees the establishment of the statutory service and the setting up of the first traning course leading to a professional qualification in youth work at the NI Polytechnic.A feature of chapters 3 and 4 is the inclusion of examples from youth workers practice taken from old diaries or personal contributions through interview.Volume 2 (1974-present) is due to follow in 2016.


An irresistible invitation to reject the work ethic and enjoy life's simple pleasures (such as laughing, drinking and lying in the open air), Robert Louis Stevenson's witty and seminal essay on the joys of idleness is accompanied here by his writings on, among other things, growing old, visiting unpleasant places and the overwhelming experience of falling in love. Throughout history, some books have changed the world. They have transformed the way we see ourselves - and each other. They have inspired debate, dissent, war and revolution. They have enlightened, outraged, provoked and comforted. They have enriched lives - and destroyed them. Now Penguin brings you the works of the great thinkers, pioneers, radicals and visionaries whose ideas shook civilization and helped make us who we are.


INTRODUCTION The 1970s decade--like the decade now ending--was marked by a number of corporate scandals. The decade was ushered in by the revelation of the Watergate break-in and its aftermath. Watergate was followed by disclosures of numerous cases of bribery of foreign officials, leading eventually to the enactment of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act in 1977. (1) The decade was also marked by other types of questionable payments by publicly held corporations, both in the United States and overseas, leading to a series of enforcement actions by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) that resulted in consent decrees. (2) These revelations stimulated a vigorous debate in Congress, the federal regulatory agencies, the academic community, the organized bar, public interest groups, and the business community, as to how publicly owned corporations should be governed to prevent corporate misconduct, and to enhance oversight of the corporation, with some suggesting that corporation law should be federalized. (3) II PRE-EXISTING LAW ON DIRECTOR RESPONSIBILITIES The role of the corporate director--particularly the non-management director--became a focus of attention in this ongoing debate. Although there had been a marked increase in the number of manufacturing corporations whose boards of directors contained a majority of non-management directors--from 63% in 1967 to 83% in 1977 (4)--at the start of the decade, the non-management director was often not regarded as playing an active governance role. A survey of board of directors' practices and procedures of twenty-five large, public corporations, published by the General Counsel of General Electric Company in December 1969, disclosed that only about fifty percent of those corporations ever sent out advance notice to their directors of the agendas for board meetings. (5) This view of the passive nature of non-management directors was also reflected in an influential book published in 1971 by Myles Mace, a well-known professor at the Harvard Business School. (6) Existing legal standards similarly reflected the view that directors (particularly non-management directors) were not expected to be proactive. In the leading Delaware Supreme Court case of Graham v. Allis-Chalmers Mfg. Co., the court held that directors of a large, public company were not expected to be aware of, or take action to guard against, anti-trust violations by subordinates. (7) It would be another thirty years before the Delaware Chancery Court reexamined the Allis-Chalmers decision in In re Caremark Int'l, Inc. Derivative Litigation and recognized a duty of directors to monitor the affairs of corporations. (8) It would be still another ten years before the Delaware Supreme Court endorsed the Chancery Court's decision in Caremark, holding that the necessary conditions predicate for director oversight liability were either (1) an utter failure to implement any reporting or information system or controls; or (2) having implemented such a system or controls, conscious failure to monitor or oversee its operation, thus disabling themselves from being informed of risks or problems requiring their attention. (9) However, during the 1970s, such a duty of directors to monitor was not generally recognized by courts. (10) In the face of widespread disclosure of corporate misconduct, the SEC, under the chairmanship of G. Bradford Cook, undertook to prepare a position paper on the responsibility of directors. However, this effort was later abandoned by his successor as chairman, Ray Garrett, Jr., as being unworkable. (11) III ACTIVITY OF THE COMMIT-FEE ON CORPORATE LAWS A. Model Act Revisions In 1973, the Committee on Corporate Laws (Committee) entered the intense debate about the role of corporate directors by establishing a panel on the functions and responsibilities of directors. (12) The initial task of the panel was to consider sections 35 and 48 of the Model Business Corporation Act (MBCA), dealing with the board of directors and liabilities of directors. …


This thesis is concerned with the study of near-planetary rotation period oscillations in Saturn's magnetic field. Similar oscillations are present in a variety of other magnetospheric phenomena, most notably kilometre-wavelength radio emissions, and together they have a substantial influence throughout the Saturnian plasma environment. However, their origin remains poorly understood, despite more than a decade of study. Surprising new discoveries have been made regarding the seasonality of these oscillatory phenomena, and their intrinsic connection to the high-latitude upper atmosphere and ionosphere of the planet, though a complete theory of their origin remains to be developed. In this thesis, three detailed studies of this phenomenon are presented, each of which uses magnetic field data recently obtained by the Cassini spacecraft. The first consists of an extensive survey of near-equatorial field data during southern summer, from which the structure of the rotating oscillations is determined and the electrical currents flowing through the equatorial plane are calculated. The second study is prompted by the recent discovery of a north-south asymmetry in the period of related radio emissions, and consists of a survey of high-latitude magnetic field data in which evidence for a corresponding asymmetry in the magnetic field rotation period is found. Finally, the third study concerns the presence of long-term drifts between the phase of the magnetic field oscillation and the Saturn kilometric radiation (SKR) modulation, which, through construction of a simple theoretical model, is shown to arise as a consequence of 'rotational' modulations in the SKR rather than the hitherto assumed 'strobe-like' modulations. These three studies substantially further our understanding of these phenomena, and in the case of the detection of a rotational modulation in the SKR overturn three decades of previous thought. Consequently, the results presented here elucidate characteristics of these phenomena that any theoretical understanding of their origin must serve to explain, and will therefore be of central importance in further development of this topic in the future. Before presenting these three studies, an introduction to the topics of space plasma physics and planetary magnetospheres is presented in Chapter 1. This is followed in Chapter 2 with a discussion of Saturn's magnetosphere, and the topic of near-planetary period oscillations, and in Chapter 3 by descriptions of the instruments with which data used in this thesis have been obtained.


Background Xylan is one of the most abundant biopolymers on Earth. Its degradation is mediated primarily by microbial xylanase in nature. To explore the diversity and distribution patterns of xylanase genes in soils, samples of five soil types with different physicochemical characters were analyzed. Methodology/Principal Findings Partial xylanase genes of glycoside hydrolase (GH) family 10 were recovered following direct DNA extraction from soil, PCR amplification and cloning. Combined with our previous study, a total of 1084 gene fragments were obtained, representing 366 OTUs. More than half of the OTUs were novel (identities of <65% with known xylanases) and had no close relatives based on phylogenetic analyses. Xylanase genes from all the soil environments were mainly distributed in Bacteroidetes, Proteobacteria, Acidobacteria, Firmicutes, Actinobacteria, Dictyoglomi and some fungi. Although identical sequences were found in several sites, habitat-specific patterns appeared to be important, and geochemical factors such as pH and oxygen content significantly influenced the compositions of xylan-degrading microbial communities. Conclusion/Significance These results provide insight into the GH 10 xylanases in various soil environments and reveal that xylan-degrading microbial communities are environment specific with diverse and abundant populations.


The study area is located in southeast of the town of Sivrihisar (Eskisehir, Central Anatolia). The rocks (Neogene Age) located in the study area is divided into two lithostratigraphic units, namely Ilyaspasa (Lower-Middle Miocene) and Sakarya (Upper Miocene-Pliocene) formations. Sakarya formation is the subdivided into four members namely Gypsum, Lower Limestone, Clayey Dolomite and Upper Limestone. Gypsums show different crystal habit as lenticular, discoidal, rosette and swallow-tail in the field. Gypsum crystals are seen as massive levels, bedded gypsum, fracture filling and scattered within dolomite. Massive and bedded gypsum which interbedded with dolomite layers consist of only lenticular and discoidal gypsum crystals. These are white colored and finely crystalline (clay to sand sized). Also other gypsum crystals show different colors as bluish-grayish colored and light brown. Based on X-ray powder diffraction data, the mineralogical associations of all sections comprise mainly dolomite, gypsum, calcite, locally sepiolite, and in a few cases, palygorskite, smectite, illite and kaolinite. Coarse crystalline gypsum occurrences (discoidal, swallow-tail, rosette) contain a higher percentage of clay minerals than the smaller gypsum crystals. The study area has been influenced by freshwater, weak alkaline and alkaline conditions. The SO3 2- contents of clay-sand sized gypsum occurrences are found to be lower than in other gypsum occurrences


BACKGROUND Surgery remains the frontline therapy for patients with localized clear cell renal cell carcinoma (ccRCC); however, 20%–40% recur. Angiogenesis inhibitors have improved survival in metastatic patients and may result in responses in the neoadjuvant setting. The impact of these agents on the tumor genetic heterogeneity or the immune milieu is largely unknown. This phase II study was designed to evaluate safety, response, and effect on tumor tissue of neoadjuvant pazopanib. METHODS ccRCC patients with localized disease received pazopanib (800 mg daily; median 8 weeks), followed by nephrectomy. Five tumors were examined for mutations by whole exome sequencing from samples collected before therapy and at nephrectomy. These samples underwent RNA sequencing; 17 samples were available for posttreatment assessment. RESULTS Twenty-one patients were enrolled. The overall response rate was 8 of 21 (38%). No patients with progressive disease. At 1-year, response-free survival and overall survival was 83% and 89%, respectively. The most frequent grade 3 toxicity was hypertension (33%, 7 of 21). Sequencing revealed strong concordance between pre- and posttreatment samples within individual tumors, suggesting tumors harbor stable core profiles. However, a reduction in private mutations followed treatment, suggesting a selective process favoring enrichment of driver mutations. CONCLUSION Neoadjuvant pazopanib is safe and active in ccRCC. Future genomic analyses may enable the segregation of driver and passenger mutations. Furthermore, tumor infiltrating immune cells persist during therapy, suggesting that pazopanib can be combined with immune checkpoint inhibitors without dampening the immune response. FUNDING Support was provided by Novartis and GlaxoSmithKline as part of an investigator-initiated study.


Energy consumption increases all over the world as a result of industrialization in recent years. In this context, it has become important to meet increasing energy demand. It is significant to find alternative energy sources because of limited nonrenewable energy sources such as coal, petroleum, and natural gas. At this point, renewable energy sources have an important role to meet energy requirement. As a result, decision and policy making for energy is completely critical issue for countries. Various technical, economic, environmental, and social criteria are used to solve energy policy and decision‐making problems such as evaluation of energy projects, selection among energy alternatives, power plant site selection, and determining energy policy. Multicriteria decision‐making (MCDM) methods are used as effective tools to help decision makers while solving energy problems. There are a large number of studies including articles, conference papers, and book chapters, which examine energy problems by using MCDM methods in the literature. Therefore, analyzing these studies according to different features such as publication year, MCDM method, document type, statistical analyses, country, and published journal can be beneficial for leading researchers who study in energy decision‐making field. In this study, published papers, which use traditional MCDM methods to handle energy problems, are examined systematically. By the way, it is aimed to lead to researchers regarding MCDM methods which are utilized in energy applications. It also conducted some statistical analyses to obtain trends between years and MCDM methods. Besides, recent developments in energy field are presented through this comprehensive literature review.


Listeria monocytogenes is a foodborne pathogen, which causes listeriosis disease among humans and other animal species. Infections in humans mainly occur in immunocom- promised individuals and are caused by the consumption of ready-to-eat and raw food products contaminated with the pathogen. To ensure survival in nature, L. monocytogenes easily adapts to different environmental conditions, and that justifies the hurdles to pre - vent bacterial growth inside the food chain. Exposure to a single or multiple sublethal stresses, as those impaired by food processing, food matrices, and the gastrointestinal tract, can enhance tolerance of L. monocytogenes to stresses and increase its survival and pathogenesis. This chapter summarizes the current information on the adaptive response of L. monocytogenes to different stresses, namely (1) cold stress, (2) acid stress, (3) osmotic stress, (4) desiccation stress, and (5) high hydrostatic pressure, and the impact of these stresses on L. monocytogenes virulence. The objective is to provide the background infor mation that is necessary for the development of scientifically sound control strategies to improve food safety and to reduce the uncertainty of microbial risk assessments, associ ated to limited knowledge on the behavior of cells capable to adapt and survive stresses.


Modern software often provides automated testing and bug reporting facilities that enable developers to improve the software after release. Alas, this comes at the cost of user anonymity: reported execution traces may identify users. We present a way to mitigate this inherent tension between developer utility and user anonymity: automati- cally transform execution traces in a way that preserves their utility for testing and debugging while, at the same time, providing k-anonymity to users, i.e., a guarantee that the trace can at most identify the user as being part of a group of k indistinguishable users. We evaluate this approach in the context of an automated testing and bug reporting system for smartphone applications.


Medicine and law were related from early times. This relation resulted as a necessity of protecting communities from the irresponsible acts of impostors. Various legal codes dealing with medical malpractice existed in Egypt, Mesopotamia, China, Islam, Greece, Rome, Persia and India. Over the course of the past 30 years, interest in the history of psychiatry has boomed. Much of this proliferation of interest has taken place under the broad influence of postmodernism and has resulted in multiple and diverse histories that no longer seek to provide a linear narrative of constant evolutionary progress. Rather, these new histories explore and disrupt taken for granted assumptions about the past and provide a starting point for discussion and debate about the some of the very foundations of mental health care in South Africa. As a matter of practical importance knowledge of how knowledge accrues and knowledge of the mistakes of the past is of prime importance in preventing similar mistakes in present and future work. An important reason for specifically understanding historical psychiatry is the fact that many of the uncertainties experienced in the present are a direct result of decisions made in the past. The key issue is that while it is tempting to experience current psychiatric and legal approaches towards the mentally disordered as natural and permanent, an understanding of the past helps mental health and legal practitioners to see things in a different perspective. Psychiatric and legal approaches towards the mentally disordered have changed over time and can undoubtedly also be changed in future. Therefore, the research conducted in this article focuses on the history and development of law and psychiatry including prehistoric times, the Arabian countries, the Nile Valley as well as Greece and Rome.


Pristine trivanadate (LiV3O8) and doped lithium trivanadate (LiV3–xMxO8, M = Zn/Co/Fe/Sn/Ti/Zr/Nb/Mo, x = 0.01/0.05/0.1 M) compounds were prepared by a simple reflux method in the presence of the polymer, Pluronic P123, as the chelating agent. For comparison, pristine LiV3O8 alone was also prepared in the absence of the chelating agent. The Rietveld-refined X-ray diffraction patterns shows all compounds to exist in the layered monoclinic LiV3O8 phase belonging to the space group of P21/m. Scanning electron microscopy analysis shows the particles to exhibit layers of submicron-sized particles. The electrochemical performances of the coin cells were compared at a current density of 30 mA/g in the voltage window of 2–4 V. The cells made with compounds LiV2.99Zr0.01O8 and LiV2.95Sn0.05O8 show a high discharge capacity of 245 ± 5 mA h/g, with an excellent stability of 98% at the end of the 50th cycle. The second cycle discharge capacity of 398 mA h/g was obtained for the compound LiV2.99Fe0.01O8, and its capacity retention was found to be 58% after 50 cycles. The electrochemical performances of the cells were correlated with the electrical properties and the changes in the structural parameters of the compounds.


The goals of asthma management are the accurate diagnosis and effective control of symptoms, prevention of exacerbations and the achievement and preservation of best pulmonary function. Despite improvements in asthma care patients are still misdiagnosed or undertreated. The reason for this is simple, asthma is a heterogeneous disease, but in most primary and secondary care settings only one facet, variable airflow obstruction, is addressed. The two other main aspects of asthma, airway inflammation and airway hyperresponsiveness, remain under-utilized in both diagnosis and treatment of asthma. Treatment algorithms based on airway hyperresponsiveness have been successfully used to reduce asthma exacerbations but at the expense of more corticosteroid use. Using a non-invasive marker of airway inflammation has also been shown to reduce exacerbations compared with a control group following current guidelines, but with similar steroid dose between both groups and with comparative symptom and quality of life measures. There are various non-invasive markers of airway inflammation (as opposed to bronchial biopsy and bronchoalveolar lavage). This article will concentrate on the use of the two most clinically important methods of assessing airway inflammation, namely induced sputum and exhaled nitric oxide. It will evaluate the indications, practicalities and use for each method and discuss future areas for research. © 2006 Bentham Science Publishers Ltd.


In this paper, we address the problem of automatically generating human-like descriptions for unseen images, given a collection of images and their corresponding human-generated descriptions. Previous attempts for this task mostly rely on visual clues and corpus statistics, but do not take much advantage of the semantic information inherent in the available image descriptions. Here, we present a generic method which benefits from all these three sources (i.e. visual clues, corpus statistics and available descriptions) simultaneously, and is capable of constructing novel descriptions. Our approach works on syntactically and linguistically motivated phrases extracted from the human descriptions. Experimental evaluations demonstrate that our formulation mostly generates lucid and semantically correct descriptions, and significantly outperforms the previous methods on automatic evaluation metrics. One of the significant advantages of our approach is that we can generate multiple interesting descriptions for an image. Unlike any previous work, we also test the applicability of our method on a large dataset containing complex images with rich descriptions.


The increased demand for renewable energy sources and developing countries like India's need to secure its energy supply has spurred interest in development of bio fuel production whereas the exhaust emission of the biodiesel is deteriorating the environment also. The aim of the research is analyze the emission characteristics of Mahua Longofolia oil and its blends. Mahua Longofolia butyl ester is derived through transesterification process. A single cylinder, water cooled, four stroke diesel engine was used for this work. The following fuels were tested such as diesel, B10, B20, B30, and observe the exhaust emission characteristics in terms of concentration of NOX, CO, HC, particulate matter and smoke density. Observe results of diesel, Mahua Longofolia oil butyl esters and their blends with diesel by volume were compared. As load applied to the engine increases brake thermal efficiency of the fuel blends also increases. The maximum brake thermal efficiency is 32.47% for B30 at full load, which is 4.2% higher than standard diesel. As the load increases specific fuel consumption of the engine decreases gradually. At full load conditions the specific fuel consumption for the blends B20 and B30 is 0.363 kg/ kWh, 0.355 kg/ kWh respectively whereas for standard diesel it is 0.38 kg/ kWh. As load applied increases exhaust gas temperature get decreased. Lower calorific value of the blended fuel than standard diesel and lower temperature at the end of compression leads to reduction in exhaust gas temperature. As load increases mechanical efficiency of the blended fuel shows steady increase. At full load condition the maximum mechanical efficiency obtained from blend B10 and B20 is 61.7% and 58.96 % respectively. From the analysis of exhaust emission of the blends, it has found that at higher load condition B30 blends having higher hydrocarbon emission. At lower loads B30 blended fuel having higher NOx emission than standard diesel. The carbon monoxide emission is also higher than the standard diesel and B10 & b20 blends. Keywords— Mahua Longofolia, butyl ester, unmodified CI engine, performance, emission characteristics


New Zealand has a tradition of building granular pavements surfaced with chipseals. This form of construction is used on most rural roads and can perform well under traffic volumes of over 10 000 vehicles/lane/day. Because of New Zealand's mountainous topography many highways have very narrow shoulders. Due to this lack of lateral support and the intrusion of heavy axle loads onto the edge of pavement, edge failure has been encountered on many of these roads. This has more recently been exacerbated by the growth in forestry, which has seen large truck and trailer units transporting logs out of the forests. The main objective of the research work reported here is to investigate how the pavement shoulder properties and load parameters affect this type of distress. A three-dimensional finite elements model and a half-fractional factorial experimental design were made to study five factors, namely, shoulder width, shoulder stiffness, axle load, tyre pressure and pavement thickness. Each factor was studied at two levels to simulate extremely low and high conditions. The results of the finite elements model have been validated to ensure accurate predictions. The multilayer elastic solution was carried out using Circly and Everstress software. Linear and non-linear analyses using isotropic and cross-anisotropic material properties were compared to the actual strain measurements carried out at the Transit New Zealand accelerated test track facility (CAPTIF). None of the analytical solutions perfectly matched the measured strains. In addition, the results of the multilayer and finite elements analyses were compared together at different locations and depths from loaded area. The multilayer and three-dimensional finite elements solutions were reasonably close for stresses, strains and deflections. Only very slight differences were observed for stresses and strains near the surface, because of the difference between the circular and rectangular shape of loading areas in the mulilayer and finite elements analyses. The statistical experimental factorial analysis showed that the order of importance of the different factors affecting pavement response relies on the type of response and the location of that response. Three pavement responses were studied: maximum deflection between dual tyres, maximum deflection under the outer wheel load, and compressive strain at the top of the subgrade near the shoulder (300 mm from the centre of the dual). The axle load was the most significant factor affecting the deflection and strain at all locations. The interaction of shoulder stiffness, width and thickness has been shown to significantly affect the pavement response. It is proposed that the results of this research can be used by pavement designers to obtain an indication of the effect of lack of shoulder support on pavement performance.


This Article offers a new theory of how the law attempts to control intimate and family life and uses that theory to argue why certain laws might be unconstitutional. Specifically, it contends that by regulating non-traditional relationships and practices that receive little or no constitutional protection--same-sex relationships, domestic partnerships, de facto parenthood, and non-sexual procreation--the law is able to express its normative ideals about all marriage, parenthood, and procreation. By regulating non-traditional kinship, then, the law can be aspirational in a way that the Constitution would ordinarily prohibit and can attempt to channel all of us in ways that satisfy its normative ideals. This Article refers to this form of channeling or control as "back door" regulation, and maintains that by regulating at the margins, the law attempts to regulate everyone. In addition to offering a new theory of the family and its legal regulation, this Article uses that theory to enrich constitutional challenges to laws, like exclusionary marriage regimes, that selectively burden non-traditional intimacy and practices. Most broadly, it invites readers to consider how far the law reaches when it regulates as well as just how interconnected to one another the law's regulation (and discrimination) makes us.


Inactivated foot and mouth disease (FMD) vaccines have been used successfully as part of eradication programmes. However, there are a number of concerns with the use of such vaccines and the recent outbreaks of FMD in disease-free countries have increased the need for improved FMD control strategies. To address this requirement, new generation FMD vaccines are being developed. Currently, one of the most promising of these vaccine candidates utilises an empty viral capsid subunit delivered to animals by a live virus vector. This candidate, a replication-defective recombinant human adenovirus containing the capsid and 3C proteinase coding regions of FMD virus (FMDV), induces an FMDV-specific neutralising antibody response in inoculated animals. Upon challenge with a virulent animal-passaged homologous virus, swine and cattle vaccinated with this recombinant adenovirus are protected from clinical signs of FMD as well as from FMDV replication. One inoculation of a high dose of this vaccine candidate protected swine from challenge as early as seven days after vaccination.