Abstract Purpose: This study aimed to examine the longitudinal impact of evidence changes on menopausal hormone therapy (MHT) use in Australia. Methods: We analyzed two datasets of subsidized and total MHT use (2000–2016) using segmented regression analysis to explore the impact of the Women's Health Initiative (WHI) 2002 and 2007 studies. Analyses were stratified by class, route, and strength. Use was measured in defined daily dose/1000 women/day (DDD/1000/day) or packs/1000 women/month (packs/1000/month). Results: The drop in total MHT use after the WHI 2002 was substantial. The biggest decreases in class, route, and strength were estrogens (28.99 DDD/1000/day, 95% confidence interval [CI] 23.97, 34.01), oral (46.07 DDD/1000/day, 95% CI 41.13, 51.01), and medium strength (34.95 packs/1000/month, 95% CI 30.17, 39.73), respectively. However, vaginal use remained stable (−1.83 DDD/1000/day, 95% CI −3.83, 0.17). Profiles of total and subsidized use were similar over time. Utilization levels were relatively unchanged after 2007. Decreased utilization contributed to product discontinuation, with a lag of up to 4 years. Product discontinuation in 2009 further decreased utilization. Discussion and conclusions: MHT use remained low after 2002 despite evidence favoring its use in women younger than 60 years or within 10 years postmenopause. Continued low use could relate to the WHI 2002 media coverage, therapy objectives, key stakeholder uncertainty, health policies, and medicine availability.


In this paper, we provide a notable step towards filling the gap between theory (estimates of running-time) and practice (a discrete logarithm record computation) for the Tower Number Field Sieve (TNFS) algorithm. We propose a generalisation of ranking formula for selecting the polynomials used in the very first step of TNFS algorithm. For this we provide a definition and an exact implementation (Magma and SageMath) of the alpha function. This function measures the bias in the smoothness probability of norms in number fields compared to random integers of the same size. We use it to estimate the yield of polynomials, that is the expected number of relations, as a generalisation of Murphy's E function, and finally the total amount of operations needed to compute a discrete logarithm with TNFS algorithm in the targeted fields. This is an improvement of the earlier work of Barbulescu and Duquesne on estimating the running-time of the algorithm. We apply our estimates to a wide size range of finite fields GF(p^n), for small composite n = 12, 16, 18, 24, that are target fields of pairing-friendly curves.


BACKGROUND
The number of hip fractures occurring worldwide in 1990 was estimated at 1.7 million and is predicted to rise to 6.3 million by 2050. The vast majority occur as a result of simple falls and the impact of the femoral trochanter with the floor. Previous studies have addressed the problem from the patient's side of the impact. Little research has been carried out on the other surface involved in the impact, the floor. STUDY LOCATION: 34 residential care homes.

METHODS
(1) The mechanical properties of the floor were measured with force transducers. (2) The number and location of falls and fractures on the various floors were recorded prospectively for 2 years. The threshold for reporting falls in different care homes was assessed using a standardised set of scenarios.

RESULTS
A total of 6,641 falls and 222 fractures were recorded. Wooden carpeted floors were associated with the lowest number of fractures per 100 falls. The risk of fracture resulting from a fall was significantly lower compared to all other floor types (odds ratio 1.78, 95% CI 1.33-2.35). The mean impact force was significantly lower on wooden carpeted floors: 11.9 kN compared to the other floor types.

DISCUSSION
The possible implications of our findings are considerable. Residents of homes are typically frail and many have a propensity to falls. In designing safer environments for older people, the type of floor should be chosen to minimise the risk of fracture. This may result in a major reduction in fractures in the elderly.


A method of operating a security system includes accessing a database and obtaining a user PIN. A normal keypad is defined in which a plurality of alphanumeric characters are displayed in defined normal positions. A scrambled keypad is also defined including the PIN so that at least some of a plurality of alphanumeric characters are displayed on the scrambled keypad in positions which are different to the positions in which they would be displayed in the defined normal keypad. In addition, for each of the alphanumeric characters of the PIN the alphanumeric character which is normally displayed in the normal keypad in the position in which the alphanumeric characters of the PIN are displayed in the scrambled keypad is determined thereby to arrive at a scrambled PIN Data defining the scrambled keypad is then transmitted to a user over a first communications network.


OBJECTIVE
To study relationships between atlantoaxial subluxation (AAS) and total mortality in patients with rheumatoid arthritis (RA).

METHODS
Radiological reports and clinical files of patients with RA were reviewed for the presence of cervical spine involvement verified by cervical radiographs.

RESULTS
Among 241 patients with cervical radiographs, anterior AAS > or = 4 mm was found in 5% [95% confidence interval (CI) 2-8] of patients. Vertical and posterior subluxations were found in 1.4 and 0.5%, respectively. The mean observation time from RA diagnosis to AAS was 3.9 years. Patients with AAS had 8 times higher mortality than patients without AAS (95% CI 3-25). According to the death certificate, the patients died from cancer, stroke, and myocardial infarction. Cervical spine disorder was not mentioned on the death certificate. However, an autopsy was not performed.

CONCLUSION
We found high mortality in RA patients with AAS. AAS in the cervical spine developed relatively early in the course of the disease. Analyses adjusted for seropositivity, erosiveness, and glucocorticosteroids did not reduce the mortality rate ratio. Our results underline the need for careful evaluation of patients with RA with respect to development of AAS.


Security Policy Enforcement in Application Environments Using Distributed Script-Based Control Structures Klaus-Peter Fischer-Hellmann Dipl.-Math. Business processes involving several partners in different organisations impose demanding requirements on procedures for specification, execution and maintenance. A framework referred to as business process management (BPM) has evolved for this purpose over the last ten years. Other approaches, such as service-oriented architecture (SOA) or the concept of virtual organisations (VOs), assist in the definition of architectures and procedures for modelling and execution of so-called collaborative business processes (CBPs). Methods for the specification of business processes play a central role in this context, and, several standards have emerged for this purpose. Among these, Web Services Business Process Execution Language (WS-BPEL, usually abbreviated BPEL) has evolved to become the de facto standard for business process definition. As such, this language has been selected as the foundation for the research in this thesis. Having a broadly accepted standard would principally allow the specification of business processes in a platform-independent manner, including the capability to specify them at one location and have them executed at others (possibly spread across different organisations). Though technically feasible, this approach has significant security implications, particularly on the side that is to execute a process. The research project focused upon these security issues arising when business processes are specified and executed in a distributed manner. The central goal has been the development of methods to cope with the security issues arising when BPEL as a standard is deployed in such a way exploiting the significant aspect of a standard to be platform-independent The research devised novel methods for specifying security policies in such a manner that the assessment of compliance with these policies is greatly facilitated such that the assessment becomes suited to be performed automatically. An analysis of the securityrelevant semantics of BPEL as a specification language was conducted that resulted in the identification of so-called security-relevant semantic patterns. Based on these results, methods to specify security policy-implied restrictions in terms of such semantic patterns and to assess the compliance of BPEL scripts with these policies have been developed. These methods are particularly suited for assessment of remotely defined BPEL scripts since they allow for pre-execution enforcement of local security policies thereby mitigating or even removing the security implications involved in distributed definition and execution of business processes. As initially envisaged, these methods are comparatively easy to apply, as they are based on technologies customary for practitioners in this field. The viability of the methods proposed for automatic compliance assessment has been proven via a prototypic implementation of the essential functionality required for proof-of-concept.


A compact lab plant was designed for the continuous-flow synthesis of fluorine-containing compounds and was combined with an NMR analysis platform based on a benchtop NMR spectrometer. The approach of a unified synthesis and analysis strategy for fine chemicals was applied to three different reactions, all employing fluorine as a chemical probe for online-19F NMR analysis. A high temperature synthesis for the deprotection of a CF2H group was done as well as Ruppert–Prakash reactions for the perfluoroalkylation of benzaldehyde as a model substrate. The C–H arylation of furan with a trifluoromethylated aryldiazonium salt was performed as an example of a photochemically catalyzed reaction. All three reaction classes challenge the synthesis and analysis setup differently according to sample preparation (premagnetization of bubble-free sample) and spectrometer sensitivity (signal to noise ratio, spectral resolution, scan number, substrate concentration and flow rate), but nonetheless prove the successful application of the continuous-flow synthesis of fluorinated fine chemicals with integrated online NMR analysis.


This paper gives recommendations to researchers and developers on how to evaluate the performance of microgrids during island operation. A microgrid is a small grid including distributed energy resources and loads that can operate independently in the case of emergency of distribution systems. During island operation, the performance requirements of microgrids could be different than those during interconnected operation. To quantify the performance of microgrids, we propose a number of performance indices for voltage quality and reliability.


Today's optical wavelength division multiplexing backbone networks need to support traffic demands with very diverse capacity requirements. Recent studies have shown how to design an optical transport network that supports mixed line rates (MLR), where the wavelength channels of the optical paths (i.e., lightpaths) can have a variety of capacities (10/40/100 Gbps). Some preliminary work on the design of MLR optical networks has already appeared, but survivability, which is a key concern in optical network design, is a nascent topic in MLR networks. This study investigates the problem of protection in MLR optical networks: in particular, we study how to design a cost-effective transparent MLR network that provides dedicated protection at the lightpath level. We propose three mechanisms: MLR-at-p-lightpath protection (MLR-p), MLR-at-lightpath protection (MLR-l), and MLR-with-backup-flow-grooming protection (MLR-g). The design problem is solved by two different approaches: (1) a two-step approach that formulates part of the problem as an integer linear program and (2) a heuristic approach. Our results show that, by appropriate assignment of rates to lightpaths, MLR networks can provide protection for diverse traffic demands with much lower transponder cost compared to single-line-rate networks.


Bitcoin is defined as digital money within a decentralized peer-to-peer payment network. It is a hybrid between fiat currency and commodity currency without intrinsic value and independent of any government or monetary authority. This paper analyses the question of whether bitcoin is a currency or an asset and, more specifically, what is its current usage and what usage will prevail in the future, given its characteristics? We analyse the statistical properties of bitcoin and find that it is essentially uncorrelated with traditional asset classes such as stocks, bonds and commodities, both in normal times and in periods of financial turmoil. The analysis of transaction data of bitcoin accounts shows that bitcoins are mainly used as a speculative investment and not as an alternative currency and medium of exchange. Bitcoin is still small relative to the size of other asset classes and, thus, does not pose an immediate risk for monetary, financial or economic stability.


This paper reviews experiences with cross-breeding for milk production in the tropics. Data were compiled from 23 different studies evaluating the performance of different grades of cross-bred animals as well as local breeds. Relative performance of indigenous breeds compared with different grades of cross-breeds was calculated for three climatic zones. Traits considered were milk yield per lactation, age at first calving, services per conception, lifetime milk yield and total number of lactations completed. At 50 percent Bos taurus blood, lactation milk yields were 2.6, 2.4 and 2.2 times higher than those of local cattle in the highland, tropical wet and dry, and semi-arid climatic zones, respectively; lactation lengths increased by 1.2, 1.2 and 1.9 months in the above-mentioned climatic zones, respectively; there was a reduction in calving interval by 0.8 times and in age at first calving by 0.9 times. Similarly, cross-breds with 50 percent B. taurus genes had 1.8 times higher lifetime milk yields and a 1.2 times higher number of total lactations. Although cross-breeding faces a number of challenges such as better infrastructure, higher demand for health care, there are many advantages of using it. These are higher production per animal, higher income for the families and provision of high-value food. It is therefore likely to continue to be an important livestock improvement tool in the tropics in the future, where farmers can provide sufficient management for maintaining animals with higher input requirements and access to the milk market can be secured.


Our personal social networks are big and cluttered, and currently there is no good way to organize them. Social networking sites allow users to manually categorize their friends into social circles (e.g. 'circles' on Google+, and 'lists' on Facebook and Twitter), however they are laborious to construct and must be updated whenever a user's network grows. We define a novel machine learning task of identifying users' social circles. We pose the problem as a node clustering problem on a user's ego-network, a network of connections between her friends. We develop a model for detecting circles that combines network structure as well as user profile information. For each circle we learn its members and the circle-specific user profile similarity metric. Modeling node membership to multiple circles allows us to detect overlapping as well as hierarchically nested circles. Experiments show that our model accurately identifies circles on a diverse set of data from Facebook, Google+, and Twitter for all of which we obtain hand-labeled ground-truth.


This research attempts to clarify the difference between Japanese learners' intended tonicity and performed tonicity, i.e., between their knowledge and practice. The results were as follows: (1) The subjects tended to put a nucleus on the stressed syllable of the last word in each intonation phrase. They typically used high level pitch to highlight the word that they thought they had to put a nucleus on. (2) Their intended tonicity was strikingly better than their performed tonicity. (3) There was greater discrepancy between intended tonicity and performed tonicity when they had to find correct tonicity on their own than when they were provided with it. (4) We need to consider two kinds of errors: (a) error in intended tonicity (error in knowledge) and (b) error in performed tonicity (error in putting knowledge into practice). (5) Teaching tonicity requires providing with knowledge plus exercise to put knowledge into practice.


The right to life is essentially bound up with the darkest – and perhaps most disturbing – sides of prison: use of force, violent deaths and suicides, and the need for swift medical aid in the event of injury after violence or malady in prison. With regard to the right to life, the state applies two categories of obligations. Firstly, the state has negative obligations that can be drawn directly from the wording of Article 2 of the European Convention on Human Rights. Under the negative obligations, the state must refrain from doing things that would endanger a prisoner's life; for example, it must not employ non-proportional force. Secondly, the state has several positive obligations, not enumerated in Article 2. Under the positive obligations, it is not enough for the state to be passive and not violate the right to life; the state also has to take actions, such as establishing suicide prevention mechanisms in prisons. In addition, the positive obligations are more complex, because they include additional subcategories of duties, among them material and procedural obligations. Since the jurisprudence of the European Court of Human Rights is vast and the principles scattered across numerous judgements, the aim behind the article is to build a clear conceptualisation covering the various aspects of this fundamental right.


GLM|LIC Working Paper No. 10 | April 2016 What will it take to meet the Youth Employment Challenge in Sub‐ Saharan Africa? African demographics, economic structure, politics and globalization trends combine into a perfect storm for Africa's policy makers. The large cohort of youth entering Africa's labor force is the best educated one the continent has seen, and Africa is witnessing its best growth performance in decades; yet jobs remain elusive in the formal wage sector. This is largely because African economies have failed to transform structurally from low productivity agriculture to higher productivity non‐agricultural sectors and this, together with high fertility, has resulted in the structure of employment not changing much over time. The trends driving the employment challenge are not expected to change much over the next 20 years; informal sector is and will remain a major employer of youth, particularly the less skilled and less educated. A shift in policy thinking across Africa. It is imperative that policy makers make concerted efforts to raise productivity (and thus earnings) in the informal sector through targeted infrastructure and financial inclusion policies, rather than focusing exclusively on the formal wage sector. Programs need to stop training youth for jobs which do not exist and are unlikely to exist in the future, and instead help youth develop the business and financial skills and networks to establish themselves in the informal sector, both while they are in school and after they leave. This includes reorienting youth's own expectations toward how to make their own livelihood from the opportunities which exist. JEL Classification: D13, J21, J23, J46


The formulation of the SDG education targets was more inclusive than the processes linked with the MDGs. Key constituencies making representations through the Open Working Group and other consultative processes succeeded in formulating targets that stressed inclusion, quality and equality in all phases of education. However, the development of the global indicators for SDG4, has resulted in metrics that miss many of the values of the targets, most notably with regard to quality and free education and substantive, not simply distributive, meanings of equality. The article analyses why some of these slippages took place, and what potential there may be to mobilise for metrics that better depict the key tenets of the education goal and targets. The analysis thus considers ways forward for exploring measurement of the many meanings of quality and equalities in education, reflecting on numbers as instruments that impose power and hierarchy, and the possibility of using reflections on numbers and indicators for critical dialogue and an enhancement of participation, accountability, and work to change injustices in education.


In autoimmune disorders such as Multiple Sclerosis (MS) one of the determining alteration is the breakdown of self-antigen immune-tolerance. Peripheral immune tolerance is maintained, at least in part, by Regulatory T cells (Treg). Several studies have shown that either defects in the frequency or the suppressive capacity of Treg cells can contribute to the development of break of self-tolerance, and that in animal models of autoimmunity, adoptive transfer of Treg cells was able to stop disease process. Treg cells are known to be anergic in vitro to T cell receptor-induced (TCR) stimulation and this state correlates with their in vitro suppressive capacity. It has been reported that there are differences in the number of Treg cells in MS patients when compared with healthy controls. However there is also extensive evidence indicating a defect in the suppressive function of Treg cells from MS patients. In previous studies we showed that Treg cells produce an higher amount of leptin when compared with effector T cells and that leptin acts as a negative signal for the proliferation of Treg cells. In vitro leptin neutralization results in Treg cells proliferation. Although in last few years several studies have been performed to understand the molecular mechanism leading to autoimmune disorders development, there are no surrogate markers to predict the clinical progression of autoimmune diseases and the clinical response to the classical therapeutic regimes.


Wood has been the most popular construction material for centuries in Turkey, the middle part of the Black Sea region, which owned a vast forested area. Samsun province is the richest city in terms of religious wooden architecture heritage with its identified 114 wooden mosques. five traditional wooden mosques have been chosen as study area and documented in Kavak district, which is located in the south of Samsun. These mosques, used for prayer especially on fridays, religious holidays and funerals, have been built using various construction techniques and belonged to different periods. In this research, the wooden mosques are studied considering their relationship with environment and nature, shape of mass, plan scheme and interior and exterior architectural features. It is observed that these mosques have direct relation to the nature, especially water sources and forested area, and they are located far from the settlements in walking distance. The documentation is based on site survey drawings and interviews with religious officials, users of the mosques and theologians to understand the religious rituals of the region. until recently, the wooden mosques in Kavak have been studied only by art historians and theologians in detail about the values of mosques' art history. In this article, Kavak region mosque will be analysed through architectural perspective for the first time. Kavak mosques have some conservation problems such as intervention and lack of volunteers, bad climatic conditions and deterioration of the wood materials. In this research, it is aimed to create awareness on religious architectural heritage in Samsun, Kavak, which is a source for conservation studies by offering a database.


Head-Mounted Displays (HMDs) are becoming ubiquitous; we are starting to see them deployed in public for different purposes. Museums, car companies and travel agencies use HMDs to promote their products. As a result, situations arise where users use them in public without experts supervision. This leads to challenges and opportunities, many of which are experienced in public display installations. For example, similar to public displays, public HMDs struggle to attract the passer-by's attention, but benefit from the honeypot effect that draws attention to them. Also passersby might be hesitant to wear a public HMD, due to the fear that its owner might not approve, or due to the perceived need for a prior permission. In this work, we discuss how public HMDs can benefit from research in public displays. In particular, based on the results of an in-the-wild deployment of a public HMD, we propose an adaptation of the audience funnel flow model of public display users to fit the context of public HMD usage. We discuss how public HMDs bring in challenges and opportunities, and create novel research directions that are relevant to both researchers in HMDs and researchers in public displays.


While ample data on demographic change in local communities spanning numerous decades are available from the decennial censuses and other sources, information on change in the geographic distribution of population within local communities is virtually nonexistent. Municipal boundary changes, which reflect political change rather than geographic change in the distribution of a community's population, confound analyses of population change. Our main objective is to analyze housing change from 1940 to 1990 across the Wisconsin North Woods region at a fine spatial resolution. Our second objective is to introduce a new methodology to estimate this housing change using the "year housing unit built" question from the 1990 census, combined with county-level housing unit counts from previous censuses. Our estimates of housing density over the 50-year period demonstrate considerable change in Wisconsin's North Woods. The percentage of land with fewer than five housing units per square mile has declined while higher density areas have expanded, especially in the counties near the Minneapolis St. Paul and Green Bay Metropolitan Areas, as well as a recreational area with abundant lakes. Due to the availability of census data and the limited processing involved, the method can be costeffectively generalized to virtually any area of the U.S., including multi-state regions. This technique of estimating the growth in housing units in very small areas has practical policy implications for land use planning, forestry management, recreation management, water quality monitoring, reintroduction of native species, and various other land use, natural resources, and environmental issues.


To the Editor,

My work with, and research on, children with disorders of attachment was mischaracterized in the article, "Coercive Restraint Therapies," by Jean Mercer,[1] which was also previously published on the Web.[2] The techniques that Mercer describes as CRT [coercive restraint therapy] are never appropriate, and I do not use such methods in my work. I practice Dyadic Developmental Psychotherapy,[3] which is a relationship-focused approach based on attachment and developmental theories, for treating children with disorders of attachment. Dyadic Developmental Psychotherapy's central therapeutic mechanism is the development and maintenance of a contingent collaborative and affectively attuned relationship between therapist and child, between caregiver and child, and between therapist and caregiver. These principles, and the therapeutic approach that is Dyadic Developmental Psychotherapy, are generally understood to be within the mainstream of current thinking in the field of attachment research and practice.[4]

I would like to draw your attention to several inaccuracies and misrepresentations about my work in the Mercer article. Although Mercer is entitled to her opinions and positions, her misrepresentation of my work as CRT indicates is a substantial lapse in the monitoring of accuracy and truth. I am surprised at this oversight.

Specifically, Mercer states, "Two simple before-and-after studies claiming to support CRT have been posed on the Internet … The first, by Becker-Weidman, administered the RADQ and a behavior checklist to parents of 34 children before and after CRT. Becker-Weidman concluded that CRT had caused changes in the children.[1]" Mercer goes on to state (paraphrasing) that the significant differences between the test scores were confounded by simultaneous maturational change and natural variations in behavior because parents are most likely to bring children for treatment when their behavior is at its worst, so that spontaneous improvement occurs during the time of treatment but not because of treatment.

The Mercer article has several inaccuracies and misrepresentations regarding my study.

First, my study does not claim to support CRT. It does claim to support Dyadic Developmental Psychotherapy. "The study examined the effects of Dyadic Developmental Psychotherapy on children with trauma-attachment disorders who meet the DSM IV criteria for Reactive Attachment Disorder.[5]" This study is briefly excerpted with a few tables on my Web site http://www.center4familydevelop.com/prelimanaryresults.htm and http://www.center4familydevelop.com/outcomecontrol.htm. It is further elaborated in print.[5] In December of this year, the complete study will be published in a professional peer-reviewed journal, Child and Adolescent Social Work Journal. (Until then, the manuscript is available from the author).

Second, my study did not use a "behavior checklist," but used the Achenbach,[6] which is a well-researched instrument with excellent reliability and validity.

Third, Mercer states that I "administered the RADQ and a behavior checklist to parents of 34 children before and after CRT.[1]" As stated above, the treatment was not CRT but Dyadic Developmental Psychotherapy. More disturbing is the omission by Mercer of the fact that there was a control group of 30 children in the study. The inclusion of the control group was specifically to address issues of maturation and the possibility of spontaneous improvement. The study found that "Significant reductions were achieved in all measures studied … There were not changes in the usual-care group subjects (who received play therapy, individual therapy, family therapy, and other treatment from other providers not at the Center For Family Development).[5]" Both groups showed no differences on a variety of demographic variables measured, and they showed no differences on their pretest scores on the Achenbach. The 2 groups' post-test scores were based on instruments completed over 1 year after treatment ended, about 2 years after the initial test scores. The use of the control group, which was matched with the treatment group, makes Mercer's statement regarding maturational change and change caused "during the time of treatment but not because of treatment,[1]" wrong.

Mercer's characterization of Dyadic Developmental Psychotherapy as CRT is untrue, inaccurate, and misleading. Mercer[1] defines CRT as:

… alternate mental health interventions that are generally directed at adopted or foster children, that are claimed to cause alterations in emotional attachment, and that employ physically intrusive methods … CRT practices involve the use of restraint as a tool of treatment rather than simply as a safety device … and the withholding of food (italics added).

Dyadic Developmental Psychotherapy has nothing in common with CRT, as I demonstrate below.

No responsible provider of therapy could sanction the use of physically intrusive actions, intentionally causing pain, affective dysregulation, or the withholding of food as therapeutic. "The use of physical restraint and other coercive practices by CRT advocates stands in the sharpest possible contrast to conventional mental health practices.[1]"

Mercer's misrepresentations and inaccuracies regarding my work and Dyadic Developmental Psychotherapy are the following.

I do not practice CRT. My work is Dyadic Developmental Psychotherapy[3] and not CRT. Dyadic Developmental Psychotherapy does not meet Mercer's defining characteristics of CRT for the following reasons.

Alternate mental health practice: Dyadic Developmental Psychotherapy is based on generally accepted theory and practices. Hughes,[7] the developer of Dyadic Developmental Psychotherapy, states, "In looking for treatment strategies that are congruent with how secure attachments are facilitated, it is immediately obvious that the 'holding and coercive therapies' described by O'Connor and Zeanah have no place." Dr. Hughes goes on to list 7 principles of treatment for children with attachment disorders, none of which include the use of intrusive, coercive, violent, or restraining techniques or methods. O'Connor and Zeanah,[4] in describing treatment for children with attachment disorders, and referencing the work of Dr. Hughes, seem to support Dr. Hughes' approach. Daniel Siegel, MD, Associate Professor, UCLA School of Medicine [Los Angeles, California], and author of The Developing Mind,[8] described the book that I co-edited about Dyadic Developmental Psychotherapy as:

An informative assembly of chapters by people working on the frontlines to help children create the attachments that will help them thrive. Written from the point of view of what is practical and informed by new findings in science, the book will be of use to a wide array of caregivers and professionals. Here is a wealth of hard-won wisdom that will enrich the lives of many.[9]

Physically intrusive methods; CRT use of restraint as a tool of treatment rather than as a safety device: Dyadic Developmental Psychotherapy does not use physically intrusive or coercive methods. Nor is Dyadic Developmental Psychotherapy a "holding therapy," as defined by O'Connor and Zeanah.[10] My informed consent document[5] specifically identifies all intrusive and coercive behaviors as not therapeutic or part of treatment:

At The Center For Family Development we do not use wraps, compression hold, or holds that utilize provocative stimulation. The following are interventions that we DO NOT USE … . shaming a child or eliciting fear to get compliance. Coercing a child to engage in long or painful physical activities in order to get compliance or a response. Wrapping a child, lying on top of a child, "rebirthing," or similar techniques. Interventions based on power/control and submission. Interventions that are based solely on compliance.

In addition, this informed consent document has been on my Web site http://www.center4familydevelop.com/informedconsent.htm for several years. Sir Richard Bowlby[11] described dyadic developmental psychotherapy and the book that I coedited on this subject as:

A new paradigm for treating some of the most deeply troubled children in our society. One of the very few therapies that offers practical help to the most difficult to reach children and their families. The authors' passion for this groundbreaking therapy, and their deep understanding of attachment theory and how to apply it, shines through. This book offers both hope and new therapeutic insights; it is inspirational and daunting, scientifically logical and deeply moving.

Having met Sir Richard Bowlby and having had the opportunity to discuss Dyadic Developmental Psychotherapy in depth with him, his observations are well grounded in the facts.

Mercer's article is a polemic, rather than a scientific, approach to the issues that are involved in the diagnosis and treatment of children with disorders of attachment. An example of such a scientific approach can be found in the special issue of Attachment and Human Development.[12] Mercer is Chairwoman of Advocates for Children in Therapy's (ACT) Professional Board of Advisors.[13] ACT is an activist group with a limited focus on eliminating any treatment for children that uses attachment-based interventions.

I appreciate your giving me the opportunity to respond to the inaccuracies and misrepresentations in the Mercer article. I would also welcome the opportunity to respond to any questions that readers may have about Dyadic Developmental Psychotherapy or the evaluation and treatment of children with disorders of attachment.

Sincerely,

Readers are encouraged to respond to George Lundberg, MD, Editor of MedGenMed, for the editor's eye only or for possible publication via email: ten.epacsdem@grebdnulg


Abstract As part of the ICDP Chicxulub Scientific Drilling Project, the Yaxcopoil‐1 (Yax‐1) bore hole was drilled 60 km south‐southwest of the center of the 180 km‐diameter Chicxulub impact structure down to a depth of 1511 m. A sequence of 615 m of deformed Cretaceous carbonates and sulfates was recovered below a 100 m‐thick unit of suevitic breccias and 795 m of post‐impact Tertiary rocks. The Cretaceous rocks are investigated with respect to deformation features and shock metamorphism to better constrain the deformational overprint and the kinematics of the cratering process. The sequence displays variable degrees of impact‐induced brittle damage and post‐impact brittle deformation. The degree of tilting and faulting of the Cretaceous sequence was analyzed using 360°‐core scans and dip‐meter log data. In accordance with lithological information, these data suggest that the sedimentary sequence represents a number of structural units that are tilted and moved with respect to each other. Three main units and nine sub‐units were discriminated. Brittle deformation is most intense at the top of the sequence and at 1300–1400 m. Within these zones, suevitic dikes, polymict clastic dikes, and impact melt rock dikes occur and may locally act as decoupling horizons. The degree of brittle deformation depends on lithology; massive dolomites are affected by penetrative faulting, while stratified calcarenites and bituminous limestones display localized faulting. The deformation pattern is consistent with a collapse scenario of the Chicxulub transient crater cavity. It is believed that the Cretaceous sequence was originally located outside the transient crater cavity and eventually moved downward and toward the center to its present position between the peak ring and the crater rim, thereby separating into blocks. Whether or not the stack of deformed Cretaceous blocks was already displaced during the excavation process remains an open question. The analysis of the deformation microstructure indicates that a shock metamorphic overprint is restricted to dike injections with an exception of the so called "paraconglomerate." Abundant organic matter in the Yax‐1 core was present before the impact and was mobilized by impact‐induced heating and suggests that >12 km3 of organic material was excavated during the cratering process.


In the late 1980s, historian Hayden White suggested the possibility of forms of historical thought unique to filmed history. White proposed the study of "historiophoty," an imagistic alternative to written history. Subsequently, much scholarly attention has been paid to the category of History Film. Yet popular concerns for historical re-presentation and heritage have not fully addressed aesthetic effects of prior history films and emergent imagistic-historiographic practices. This dissertation identifies and elaborates one such alternative historiographic practice on film, via inter-medial study attending to British and American history films, an instance of multi-platform digital historiography, and an animated film - a category of film often overlooked in history film studies. Central to this dissertation is Gilles Deleuze's development of varieties of the Movement Image. Deleuze's Movement Image includes the "discursive image," a form which has not yet broken the coherence of sensori-motor connections between the object perceived and the affective response of the viewer. Related to the "discursive image," I propose that the "descriptive image" can capture what the larger category "representation" and the cinema-specific "spectacle" cannot. Drawing from literary and art-historical conceptions of the differences between "descriptive" and "narrative" forms, I propose that in the history film, the "descriptive image" functions as a meta-critical aesthetic, insisting that viewers perceive naturalized relationships as instead contingent. I argue that, rather than a "mature form" of realism, the "descriptive image" is a form of critical realism. Descriptive images are characterized by: long takes of long shots; the co-presence and co-equivalence of objects; a point of view neither neutral nor attributable to a character; and expressions of scope or forms for framing that assert that the given view is only one view from the set of possible views. Thus I examine exemplary texts that demonstrate a difference between "narrative understanding" and "descriptive understanding." These texts, despite their material differences, similarly present mixed historiographic forms, and enable us to see what studies of history on film, in their interest in re-presentation over presentation, have often missed: "descriptive images" allow us to differentiate the event of the film from an inadequate copy of an historical event.


Changes in homeostatic function, including sleep patterns and energy balance, are often predictive of age-related neurocognitive disorders such as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's disease. The basal forebrain has been implicated in both attentional processing and responses to homeostatic cues, suggesting a possible link between the significantly impaired attention task performance of Alzheimer's and Parkinson's patients and shifts in their homeostatic regulation. Recent research suggests a possible mechanism: the basal forebrain receives input from hypothalamic neurons that release the excitatory neuropeptides, orexin-A and orexin-B (orexins). Orexins bind with varying affinities to orexin-1and orexin-2-receptors on cholinergic neurons in the basal forebrain and increase the rate at which they fire action potentials in response to attentional demands and regulation of homeostasis. Degeneration of these cholinergic projections to the cortex is a hallmark of Alzheimer's and Parkinson's, but it is currently unknown if impairment is due solely to loss of these projections, or if the decline can be attributed to loss of particular receptors on these neurons. In order to evaluate the necessity of orexin-2-receptors for attentional performance, TCS-OX2-29, an orexin-2-receptor selective, non-peptide antagonist was administered via bilateral infusion into the basal forebrain of Rattus norvegicus prior to completion of an attention task with a distracter present. The findings suggest a doseand block-dependent decline in correct rejections at the 40 nm TCS-OX2-29 infusion into the basal forebrain on the sustained attention task with distracter compared to saline administration. An exploratory analysis technique revealed possible improvements in relative hits at 2 nm and 20 nm TCS-OX2-29 infusions into the basal forebrain. Combined, these findings suggest that the orexin-2-receptor is involved in attentional performance, and that blocking the orexin-2-receptor with TCS-OX2-29 may, at high doses, result in a decline in correct rejections, while lower doses of 2 nm and 20 nm may be involved in sensitization of the orexin-2-receptor, making it more likely to respond to binding of orexin A and orexin B. OREXIN-2-RECEPTORS IN THE BASAL FOREBRAIN 3 The Role of Basal Forebrain Orexin-2-Receptors in Attentional Performance in Rattus


The distributions of Sanderling and Turnstone were determined for the south side of the Tees Estuary. Location of roosting sites and the movement of the tide were the major factors affecting movement patterns of these two species. The invertebrate species Nerine, Bathyporeia and Eurydice, were observed to comprise virtually all of the Sanderling's open-beach diet. Extensive sampling of these three prey species showed a predictable occurrence along the beach with each species; most common at particular transect and distance below the High Water Mark, (e.g. Nerine was most abundant at 50 to 90 metres below the HWM). The times when these bands became available to 'foraging Sanderling helped to determine the movement patterns of the birds. Detailed studies of the feeding behaviour of Sanderling showed three main foraging techniques: probe feeding, water-column feeding and stitch feeding. The first two of these techniques have a visual component, (the Pause position). Switching occurred between these two techniques but was uncommon between the water column and stitch technique (which was a tactile feeding method). When feeding, Sanderling oriented themselves so that they could watch the progress of the waves. Colour-marked individuals of both Sanderling and Turnstone helped to determine movement, patterns, fidelity to site within a season and survival and fidelity between seasons. Mortality rates for Turnstone were especially low; fidelity was high for both species. Feeding observations on winter Turnstone showed both dispersed and concentrated situations. While aggression was seldom observed for Sanderling, it was common for Turnstone. Two main types of aggressive encounters were observed for the Turnstone and were determined mainly by the potential payoff of the encounter. The suggestion is advanced that aggressive patterns may help determine the dispersion of the Turnstone. Aggression may also help to determine the feeding location of the juveniles. Observations of breeding Turnstone (Finland) present, a picture of communal feeding (aiding in, predator awareness), high; nesting concentrations and numerous, interactions with the lafid species present. The latter include extensile robbing of larid eggs by Turnstone. Although the summer and winter Turnstone populations have different Wintering grounds, there are valuable comparisons to be made


The Australian Institute of Criminology has undertaken research into the offending and drug use careers of adult males, females and juveniles incarcerated in Australian prisons and detention centres. The objective of the Drug Use Careers of Offenders (DUCO) project is to further understand the drug use and criminal histories of incarcerated offenders and to contribute to the empirical evidence on the link between drug use and crime. This monograph, the third and final instalment in the DUCO project, examines the offending and drug use histories of 371 young offenders incarcerated in juvenile detention centres across Australia. The study confirms that juveniles in detention have extensive offending and drug use histories, in terms of both violent and property crime, and regularly use alcohol, cannabis and, to a lesser extent, amphetamines. The study identifies various risk factors for drug use and offending and highlights the need for a targeted approach to combat abuse, neglect and family drug use earlier in a child's life, as well as to have effective programs that address issues such as drug use, housing needs, skills development, individual and family support for chronic young offenders.


Women's perceptions of male circumcision (MC) have implications for behavioral risk compensation, demand, and the impact of MC programs on women's health. This mixed methods study combines data from the first two rounds of a longitudinal study (n = 934) and in-depth interviews with a subsample of respondents (n = 45) between rounds. Most women correctly reported that MC reduces men's risk of HIV (64% R1, 82% R2). However, 30% of women at R1, and significantly more (41%) at R2, incorrectly believed MC is fully protective for men against HIV. Women also greatly overestimated the protection MC offers against STIs. The proportion of women who believed MC reduces a woman's HIV risk if she has sex with a man who is circumcised increased significantly (50% to 70%). Qualitative data elaborate women's misperception regarding MC. Programs should address women's informational needs and continue to emphasize that condoms remain critical, regardless of male partner's circumcision status.


In studying the spatial organization of retail outlets it is of particular importance to estimate the relationships between any given enterprise and its suppliers. The pattern of dependence thus found also assists in demarcating the extent of the trade area of suppliers. According to central place theory, a distinct hierarchical pattern of dominance should be found whereby the lowest centres are dependent upon the suppliers in the next highest level for goods. At the same time Marshall1 has pointed out that a prerequisite for adequate analysis of a set of centres is the provision that this set comprises the total system of centres with regard to a pre-determined highest order place. This then requires that the spatial linkages should be determined, and closure of the system of places achieved.


The increasing use of detailed detrital-zircon provenance data calls for an understanding of the controls that sedimentary processes exert on changing detrital-zircon provenance signatures in time and space in addition to the well-established influence of tectonics. Our U-Pb detrital-zircon data from seventeen samples taken across a series of modern second-order rivers to deep-marine depositional systems in central California show that marine mixing processes and sediment pathway partitioning exert important controls on detrital-zircon provenance signatures. The second-order rivers that input sediment into this system produce differentiable detrital-zircon provenance signatures as a function of the unique geology of their drainage areas. The mixing of sediment through the marine realm can be traced through the evolution of distinct detrital-zircon signatures as sediment is transported from rivers down system through longshore drift into submarine canyons. Sediment input from second-order streams is mixed in the littoral and upper submarine-canyon environments, yielding provenance signatures that are not thoroughly mixed until the lower reaches of submarine canyons. Sediment partitioning in these dispersal systems results in distinct detrital-zircon provenance signatures for different dispersal systems over short length scales (< 50 km). These data suggest that sediment mixing in the marine realm is likely an important control on detrital-zircon provenance signatures in any system in which sediment is transported through longshore drift and sediment pathways are distinctly partitioned. Changes in the way sediment pathways are partitioned through time has the potential to create heterogeneous detrital-zircon provenance signatures in stratigraphic successions through time and between closely spaced deposits of the same age. When seen in an ancient system, this heterogeneity may be mistakenly attributed to tectonic controls without the recognition of the influence of sedimentary process.


The question that this article addresses is the role of personhood in development in post-Apartheid South Africa. Modernisation and Dependency theories are critically engaged and the limitations pointed out. The gap between the rich and poor has widened and south Africa was on the verge to be delcared junk status. An appraoch that considers personhood from an African perspective can lead to more effective and sustainable development. Effective development that is less dependent and exploitative can emerge from theological markers such as the Trinitarian God, relationships with the other and vulnerability.


This paper examines how post-closing contingent payment (PCP) mechanisms, such as earnouts and purchase price adjustments, can facilitate mergers and acquisitions transactions. The paper examines two informational environments: in the first, the seller has superior information about the value of the assets (private information setting) and in the second, the parties differ in their estimates on the value but are unable to overcome their difference (non-convergent priors setting). The paper also allows the parties to use either cash or the buyer's stock as consideration. By conditioning payment on post-closing, verifiable information, PCPs can mitigate the problems of private information or non-convergent priors. In the private information setting, PCPs function as an imperfect verification mechanism (like a product warranty) and can lead to all parties using the same PCP. In the non-convergent priors setting, PCPs can be used to satisfy different, non-convergent beliefs. The paper also addresses the issues of size limitations on PCPs and post-closing incentives to maximize (or minimize) the PCP (particularly, earnout) payments. When such issues are a concern, the paper shows that (1) neither party may use a PCP (particularly an earnout); and (2) stock-based PCPs will generally function better than cash-based PCPs. Stock works better because (1) its value is partially correlated with the value of the combined company, thereby reducing the burden of having to structure a large contingent payment; and (2) with respect to post-closing moral hazard, the parties partly internalize the deadweight loss from engaging in earnings manipulation.


We present the results of a study that collected, compared and analyzed the terms and conditions of a number of cloud services vis-a-vis privacy and data protection. First, we assembled a list of factors that comprehensively capture cloud companies' treatment of user data with regard to privacy and data protection; then, we assessed how various cloud services of different types protect their users in the collection, retention, and use of their data, as well as in the disclosure to law enforcement authorities. This commentary provides comparative and aggregate analysis of the results.


A π phase shifted distributed feedback (DFB) laser based on single mode large effective area heavy concentration erbium-doped fiber (EDF) has been demonstrated. The homemade EDF was fabricated by the modified chemical-vapor deposition (MCVD) technique, and the 13cm long π phase shifted fiber grating was written in the intracore of the EDF. The erbium-doped concentration is 4.19 × 10(25) ions/m(3), the mode field diameter of the fiber is 12.2801 um at 1550 nm, the absorption coefficients of the fiber are 34.534 dB/m at 980 nm and 84.253 dB/m at 1530 nm. The threshold of the DFB laser is 66 mW, and the measured maximum output power is 43.5 mW at 450 mW pump power that corresponding to the slope efficiency of 11.5%. The signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) of the operating laser at 200 mW input power is 55 dB, and the DFB laser has a Lorentz linewidth of 9.8 kHz at the same input pump power.


BACKGROUND
During 2008-12, France and Europe experienced large measles outbreaks, involving also healthcare workers (HCW). We aimed to estimate the vaccination coverage (VC) of measles among medical residents of the University of Aix/Marseille, in South-Eastern France.

METHODS
In March 2013, we conducted a cross-sectional study among all medical residents of the Medical Faculty of Aix/Marseille. We used a self-administered questionnaire to collect information on self-reported VC and reasons for vaccination and non-vaccination. We compared proportions, using the chi-squared test and prevalence ratios (PRs) with 95% confidence intervals (95% CIs).

RESULTS
Of 1152 eligible residents, 703 (61%) participated in the study and 95 (14%; 95% CI: 12-17%) reported having had measles in the past. Of all participants, 613 (93%; 95% CI: 91-95%) reported having been vaccinated against measles and 389 (76%; 95% CI: 73-80%) received two doses. Only 268 (38%) reported having visited an occupational health physician. Vaccinated individuals were more likely to report easy access to vaccination as the main motivation for measles vaccination, compared with unvaccinated residents (435; 71% and 21; 45%; P < 0.001, respectively).

CONCLUSIONS
VC among the medical residents of the University of Aix/Marseille was well below the recommended 95% coverage for two doses of measles vaccination. The majority of the study participants had not visited an occupational health doctor. Lack of easy access seems to represent major barriers to measles vaccination. We recommend that the student union, occupational health services and hospitals co-operate and address these problems in order to improve VC in this group.


Abstract We conducted a nest-box study from 1989–93 in north-central Florida, in an effort to increase the population of the threatened Southeastern American Kestrel (Falco sparverius paulus) and to evaluate the effect of providing artificial nest sites on the local population. A total of 388 nest boxes were erected in the experimental area. Over 75% of these nest boxes were placed >250 m away from roadside transects we established. This enabled us to measure changes in population density without the potential bias associated with the concentration of kestrels at specific nest-box sites. Annual censuses were conducted along 20 16-km transects to quantify population density in the control (no nest boxes) and treatment zones. Breeding attempts in nest boxes increased during each year of the study. Kestrel densities along the experimental transects increased from 5.0 birds/100 km2 to levels equivalent to the control zone within 3 yr of nest box placement (32.3 vs. 34.9 birds/100 km2). Kestrels preferred nest boxes in sandhill habitats over those in hammock habitats, and nesting attempts in sandhills had greater hatching rates, more fledglings produced, and greater overall nesting success. Compared with sites with nest boxes that were not used by kestrels, sites with selected nest boxes were characterized by having more longleaf pine (Pinus palustris), cabbage palm (Sabal palmetto), and ground cover <10 cm in height, and less broadleaf deciduous trees, oaks (Quercus spp.), roadside berms, hayfields, water, and gravel.


We study collaborative work in pairs when potential collaborators are motivated by the reputational implications of (joint or solo) projects. In equilibrium, individual collaboration strategies both influence and are influenced by the public assignment of credit for joint work across the two partners. We investigate the fragility of collaboration to small biases in the public's credit assignment. When collaborators are symmetric, symmetric equilibria are often fragile, and in nonfragile equilibria individuals receive asymmetric collaborative credit based on payoff-irrelevant "identities." We study payoff distributions across identities within asymmetric equilibria, and compare aggregate welfare across symmetric and asymmetric equilibria. (JEL A11, D82, I23)


Build Rich Applications that Run on the Desktop, the Web, Mobile Devices...Anywhere! Using JavaFX, developers and graphic designers can work together to build robust, immersive applications and deploy them anywhere: on the desktop, on the Web, and on millions of Java-enabled mobile devices. JavaFX lets you maintain your existing graphics and seamlessly integrate them into Java applications. Plus, JavaFX Script is a declarative language that allows you to preserve your investment in the Java platform while allowing more creativity with JavaFXs Rich Internet Application environment. JavaFX: Developing Rich Internet Applications brings together all the knowledge, techniques, and reusable code you need to quickly deliver production-quality solutions. Writing for both developers and designers, the authors explain how JavaFX simplifies and improves the RIA development process, and they show how to make the most of its ready-built components and frameworks. JavaFX covers everything from data integration to multimedia, special effects to REST. The authors present a full chapter of code recipes and a complete case study application. This books wide-ranging content includes Building and running JavaFX programs Understanding the role of graphics designers in creating JavaFX Graphical Assets Writing fast, efficient JavaFX Script programs Using data binding to simplify Model-View-Controller application design Creating rich user experiences with JavaFX visual components Bringing user interfaces to life with lighting, reflection, and other special effects Adding motion with the JavaFX animation framework Incorporating pictures, sound, and videos in your applications Creating RESTful applications with JSON and XML Writing JavaFX applications that make the most of the underlying Java platform The Java Series is supported, endorsed, and authored by the creators of the Java technology at Sun Microsystems, Inc. It is the official place to go for complete, expert, and definitive information on Java technology. The books in this Series provide the inside information you need to build effective, robust, and portable applications and applets. The Series is an indispensable resource for anyone targeting the Java platform.


We use heat kernels or eigenfunctions of the Laplacian to construct local coordinates on large classes of Euclidean domains and Riemannian manifolds (not necessarily smooth, e.g., with 𝒞α metric). These coordinates are bi-Lipschitz on large neighborhoods of the domain or manifold, with constants controlling the distortion and the size of the neighborhoods that depend only on natural geometric properties of the domain or manifold. The proof of these results relies on novel estimates, from above and below, for the heat kernel and its gradient, as well as for the eigenfunctions of the Laplacian and their gradient, that hold in the non-smooth category, and are stable with respect to perturbations within this category. Finally, these coordinate systems are intrinsic and efficiently computable, and are of value in applications.


A topology synthesis method is introduced using genetic algorithms (GA) based on novelty search (NS). NS is an emerging meta-heuristic, that guides the search based on the novelty of each solution instead of the objective function. The synthesized topologies are current follower (CF) circuits; these topologies are new and designed using integrated circuit CMOS technology of 0.35m. Topologies are coded using a chromosome divided into four genes: small signal gene (SS), MOSFET synthesis gene (SMos), polarization gene (Bias) and current source synthesis gene (CM). The proposed synthesis method is coded in MatLab and uses SPICE to evaluate the CFs fitness. The GA based on NS (GA-NS) is compared with a standard objective-based GA, showing unique search dynamics and improved performance. Experimental results show twelve CFs synthesized by the GA-NS algorithm, and their main attributes are summarized and discussed. This work is the first to show that NS can be used asa promising alternative in the field of automatic circuit synthesis.


Nowadays, the varicose ulcers (VUs) are one of the most worrying leg ulcers and are an important global health problem, with high costs related to the treatment and its complications. Moreover, the quality of life (QOL) of the patient could be affected by pain, sleep disorders, functional impairment, depression, and isolation. The VU patient care is complex, and it is necessary to know the aspects that contribute to the healing process for developing effective strategies. The members of the multidisciplinary health team should identify sociodemographic, clinical, and care aspects that interfere in tissue repair and therefore impacting the QOL. Self-efficacy, adherence to treatment, and self-esteem are other important aspects also related to healing and QOL, with implications for health care and the multidisciplinary team. To sum up, the use of multidisciplinary protocols allows the systematization of care for people with VUs in order to standardize therapeutic interventions with the aim to decrease the healing process time and, as a consequence, to improve the QOL.


An assay using a single-tube, 1-step multiplex reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) was established for the simultaneous detection of white spot syndrome virus (WSSV) and Taura syndrome virus (TSV). Three primer sets, 9195 F/9992 R, 94 F2/R2, and ITS F/28S R, were mixed at a ratio of 3:1:1 to amplify specific fragments of the TSV, WSSV, and Penaeus vannamei genome, respectively, in the RT-PCR reaction. Shrimp samples were experimentally infected with WSSV and TSV. PCR-amplified products detected in the nucleic acid extraction of shrimp pleopods produced 4 kinds of results. With no virus infection, 1 fragment of 892 base pairs (bp) was amplified from a ribosomal RNA gene by primer set ITS F/28S R as an internal control. In samples only infected by WSSV or TSV, 2 fragments could be seen: either from WSSV (530 bp) plus the internal control or TSV (231 bp) plus the internal control, respectively. In cases of co-infection with both viruses, all 3 amplified products were detected simultaneously. This study is the first report of Penaeus vannamei specimens co-infected with WSSV and TSV being detected using a PCR method via experimental infection.


A hybrid patterned sapphire substrate (hybrid-PSS) was prepared using an anodic aluminum oxide etching mask to transfer nanopatterns onto a conventional patterned sapphire substrate with microscale patterns (bare-PSS). The threading dislocation (TD) suppression of light-emitting diodes (LEDs) grown on a hybrid-PSS (HP-LED) exhibits a smaller reverse leakage current compared with that of LEDs grown on a bare-PSS (BP-LED). The strain-free GaN buffer layer and fully strained InGaN active layer were evidenced by cross-sectional Raman spectra and reciprocal space mapping of the X-ray diffraction intensity for both samples. The calculated piezoelectric fields for both samples are close, implying that the quantum-confined Stark effect was not a dominant mechanism influencing the electroluminescence (EL) peak wavelength under a high injection current. The bandgap shrinkage effect of the InGaN well layer was considered to explain the large red-shifted EL peak wavelength under high injection currents. The estimated LED chip temperatures rise from room temperature to 150 °C and 75 °C for BP-LED and HP-LED, respectively, at a 600-mA injection current. This smaller temperature rise of the LED chip is attributed to the increased contact area between the sapphire and the LED structural layer because of the embedded nanopattern. Although the chip generates more heat at high injection currents, the accumulated heat can be removed to outside the chip effectively. The high diffuse reflection (DR) rate of hybrid-PSS increases the escape probability of photons, resulting in an increase in the viewing angle of the LEDs from 130° to 145°. The efficiency droop was reduced from 46% to 35%, effects which can be attributed to the elimination of TDs and strain relaxation by embedded nanopatterns. In addition, the light output power of HP-LED at 360-mA injection currents exhibits a ∼ 22.3% enhancement, demonstrating that hybrid-PSSs are beneficial to apply in high-power LEDs.


People make surprising but reliable perceptual errors. Here, we provide a unified explanation for errors in the perception of three-dimensional (3D) motion. To do so, we characterized the retinal motion signals produced by objects moving with arbitrary trajectories through arbitrary locations in 3D. Next, we developed a Bayesian model, treating 3D motion perception as optimal inference given sensory noise and the geometry of 3D viewing. The model predicts a wide array of systematic perceptual errors, that depend on stimulus distance, contrast, and eccentricity. We then used a virtual reality (VR) headset as well as a standard 3D display to test these predictions in both traditional psychophysical and more naturalistic settings. We found evidence that people make many of the predicted errors, including a lateral bias in the perception of motion trajectories, a dependency of this bias on stimulus contrast, viewing distance, and eccentricity, and a surprising tendency to misreport approaching motion as receding and vice versa. In sum, we developed a quantitative model that provides a parsimonious account for a range of systematic misperceptions of motion in naturalistic environments.


Narcolepsy with cataplexy is a complex sleep disorder that affects the modulation of emotions: cataplexy, the key symptom of narcolepsy, is indeed strongly linked with emotions that usually trigger the episodes. Our study aimed to investigate haemodynamic and behavioural responses during emotional stimulation in narco‐cataplexy. Twelve adult drug‐naive narcoleptic patients (five males; age: 33.3 ± 9.4 years) and 12 healthy controls (five males; age: 30.9 ± 9.5 years) were exposed to emotional stimuli (pleasant, unpleasant and neutral pictures). Heart rate, arterial blood pressure and mean cerebral blood flow velocity of the middle cerebral arteries were continuously recorded using photoplethysmography and Doppler ultrasound. Ratings of valence and arousal and coping strategies were scored by the Self‐Assessment Manikin and by questionnaires, respectively. Narcoleptic patients' haemodynamic responses to pictures overlapped with the data obtained from controls: decrease of heart rate and increase of mean cerebral blood flow velocity regardless of pictures' content, increase of systolic blood pressure during the pleasant condition, and relative reduction of heart rate during pleasant and unpleasant conditions. However, when compared with controls, narcoleptic patients reported lower arousal scores during the pleasant and neutral stimulation, and lower valence scores during the pleasant condition, respectively, and also a lower score at the 'focus on and venting of emotions' dimensions of coping. Our results suggested that adult narcoleptic patients, compared with healthy controls, inhibited their emotion‐expressive behaviour to emotional stimulation, and that may be related to the development of adaptive cognitive strategies to face emotions avoiding cataplexy.


In light of the increased engagement with CPD Schemes in the UK and abroad and aspirations to Senior and Principal Categories ( HEA annual report 2017), it is pertinent to explore further how we, in fact, facilitate the development of PCK in staff, particularly those who are influencing and shaping others in practice.

We will consider how, through A5, K1-K3 and V3, a clear and meaningful relationship between what subject content is (K1), how pedagogical content is created (K2) e.g. through CPD (A5 ) and how it is best communicated to students (K3) could be correlated. For example, could embracing certain dialogic and literary practices in development schemes ensure that discussion and debate around PCK naturally and meaningfully arises?

Further scrutiny of the standards and an understanding of the essential skills and knowledge show that effective engagement is premised on using specialised knowledge to interpret and translate that knowledge into pedagogical practices. Such processes require critical refection on how Content Knowledge (CK) becomes PCK which must be understood in terms of a sophisticated and meaningful relationship between subject content and subject pedagogy. In other words the development of explicit and shared understandings of the 'episteme' of disciplines to help identify and define disciplinary pedagogies and their relationship with, for example, how students learn and the appropriate pedagogical methods required (K3).

The international mobility of students assumes effective systems in place to support the teaching and assessment of international students. In alignment with the Conference Theme, we should also, through the specific dimensions of the UKPSF, explore the idiosyncrasies and challenges that drive innovation across particular cultures, disciplines and institutions in teaching and learning. All categories of Fellows of the HEA must therefore evidence a deep conceptual understanding of their chosen discipline and its pedagogies including a capacity to understand and value different cultures and perspectives e.g. using resources and examples of scholarship from around the world.

Overall the important question is: In how far are we actually using the dimensions to evidence discipline focused CPD, the application of subject content to effective and inclusive teaching including research informed approaches, and what does that evidence look like?


Fifteen healthy Mangalarga horses, aged two to three years were used to evaluate the possible beneficial effects of dexamethasone and sodium diclofenac administration during experimental endotoxemia in horses. They were divided into three groups with five animals each: control (C), sodium diclofenac (SD) and dexamethasone (DM). All groups were given 0.1µg of Escherichia coli O55:B5 endotoxin/kg of body weight, intravenous, over 15 minutes, and one of the following preparations: group C - 20ml of 0.9% saline intravenous, 30 minutes before endoxin infusion; group SD - 2.2mg/kg, per os, 60 minutes before endotoxin infusion and group DM - 1.1 mg/kg, intravenous, 30 minutes before endotoxin infusion. No increase in rectal temperature was observed in the SD or DM treated groups. SD did not prevent the significant leukopenia, neutropenia and lymphopenia induced three hours after LPS injection, but DM attenuated these changes. No significant changes in plasma and peritoneal fluid total protein, inorganic phosphorus or glucose concentrations and in total nucleated cell count in peritoneal fluid were observed. SD was effective to prevent the fever and changes in intestinal borborygmi and DM blocked the cellular changes induced by experimental endotoxemia.


This study aims to find out lessons for public housing and management policies in Korea by analyzing the regeneration cases and policies in France. At first, this study did a survey that executed literature history. It involves public housing developments, regeneration and housing welfare policies in France. Then, the five regenerated cases were represented to be selected in Ile de France. Site investigation and expert interview surveys were executed in France 2004. The experts consisted of about 10 public service personnel and qualified architects. The regeneration of public housing complexes in France contributes toward reduction of social and economical regional differences with performing urban regeneration operations and social welfare programs. For the constructions, it is executed through collaboration with public housing organizations, the government and local governments. It is institutionalized for resident's participation in the process. In the planning and design aspect, they are characterized by activation of surrounding streets through mixed-use development. Semi private gardens are designed for security, privacy, maintenance and management aspects. And lastly, Based on the cases+and policies in France, Korean policies and regulations are suggested in this research.


BACKGROUND
The ability to consult effectively is key to the delivery of quality patient care. External peer review of consultations has been available to general medical practitioners (GPs) in the west of Scotland for several years. Pharmacists are expected to provide increasingly complex advice for patients. This study describes the development and first steps in the evaluation of a generic tool to be used to inform feedback about both GP and pharmacist consultations with patients.

METHOD
The tool was developed by a small group of GPs and tested for validity using a content validity inventory. An item correlation pilot (ICP) was carried out. Three experienced reviewers reviewed and scored three consultations in each of six GP tapes, a further three reviewers reviewed and scored three consultations in each of four pharmacists' tapes. The results underwent statistical analysis.

RESULTS
Pharmacists do not examine patients and so two similar instruments were developed, whereby two questions pertinent to patient examination were omitted from the pharmacist instrument. The content validity inventory demonstrated aspects of face validity and content validity of instruments. Statistical analysis of GP tapes suggested that the instrument could discriminate between GP consultations. Skills demonstrated by pharmacists were given lower scores, were less consistent than the GPs and the instrument did not discriminate between those performing at different levels.

CONCLUSION
The results suggest that the instrument is useful only when applied to practitioners who have been taught how to consult in a patientcentred manner, and have led to the introduction of training in consultation skills for pharmacists throughout Scotland. Potential reliability in providing peer feedback for GP consultations is important in the context of the provision of consistent, meaningful evidence for GP appraisal and revalidation in the UK.


This book is for anyone who has looked at artifacts from the Northwest Coast in a museum and wondered: "How were these made?" "What was their function?" "How were they used?" Hilary Stewart lifts artifacts out of their isolation in a glass case and puts them into the context of the life of early native people on the coast. Archaeological excavations, or "digs, " have unearthed an array of ancient artifacts. While items made of perishable materials such as wood, bark and hide usually decayed over time, many objects of stone, bone, antler and shell have been found. In clear, easy to read text and over 1000 illustrations and 50 photos, Hilary Stewart depicts a wide range of artifacts. These tools, weapons, hunting and fishing gear, household and ceremonial items and ornaments reveal much about a people's way of life: how they fed, clothed, adorned and housed themselves; their technologies, skills and art; their trading and travelling patterns.


Effects of hypoxia on the behavior and physiology of juvenile stage temperate reef fishes (genus: Sebastes) by Evan Gilman Mattiasen Masters of Science in Marine Science California State University Monterey Bay, 2018 The progression of climate change is predicted to cause large-scale changes to ocean chemistry (i.e., shifts in temperatures, salinity, ocean acidification, etc.) within the California Current. Forecasts from climate models and oceanographic observations indicate an increase in the frequency and duration of hypoxic events in the coastal zone, which have the potential to affect marine biodiversity and fisheries. Many studies have shown that exposure to extreme low dissolved oxygen (pO2) conditions can have deleterious effects on fish in early life stages, such as inhibition to growth and locomotion. Rockfish (Sebastes spp.) are a diverse group of species composed of fishes with varying life history characteristics. This study aims to determine how exposure of two species of young-of-the-year (YOY) juvenile rockfishes will perform under chronic exposure to varying dissolved oxygen levels. Copper rockfish (Sebastes caurinus) and blue rockfish (Sebastes mystinus) are two closely related species that differ in early life history traits. Copper rockfish have a short pelagic duration that begins with parturition in the spring and ends with recruitment to the kelp forest canopy after 1-2 months. Blue rockfish have a longer pelagic duration that begins in the winter and ends with recruitment to the benthic kelp forest habitat after 3-6 months. I compared how behavior and physiology were affected under chronic exposure to low pO2 at four treatment levels (ambient = 9.0 mg O2 L , moderate = 6.0 mg O2 L , low = 4.0 mg O2 L , hypoxic = 2.0 mg O2 L ). Behavioral tests were aimed at identifying changes in exploratory behavior (i.e., escape response trial), predator detection through olfactory perception (i.e., olfactory choice test), and changes in turning preference (i.e., behavioral lateralization). Physiological tests focused on determining changes in hypoxia tolerance (critical oxygen tension, pCrit), the capacity for aerobic activity (i.e., aerobic scope), and ventilation rates. Changes in growth rates of both species were also measured. The findings of this study indicate that both species express sensitivity to low pO2; however, the strength of the response differed between species. Copper rockfish exhibited decreased growth rates and reduced absolute lateralization following chronic exposure to the lowest oxygen levels. Behavioral tests did not differ with treatment for blue rockfish. Additionally, growth rates for blue rockfish followed the opposite trend of copper rockfish where individuals in the lowest oxygen treatment grew more than those in the control treatment. Both species exhibited decreases in aerobic scope and increases in ventilation rates with decreasing oxygen levels. Copper rockfish had a lower tolerance of hypoxia and weaker acclimation response compared to blue rockfish as measured by critical oxygen tension threshold (pCrit). A lower pCrit for fish exposed to low oxygen conditions indicates the potential for acclimation to those conditions. Despite the physiological changes that occurred for both species in low oxygen conditions, these results v provide evidence of acclimation to chronic hypoxia. Species with a greater capacity for acclimatization are potentially those with life history characteristics where larvae/juveniles have a higher probability of exposure to low oxygen conditions, leading to either acclimatization in the field or pre-adaptation to hypoxia over multiple generations. The differences expressed by each species suggest that acclimatization to changing ocean conditions may vary across closely related species, leading to winners and losers under future ocean conditions. Overall, increases in strength and frequency of coastal hypoxia events may have severe impacts on juvenile stage rockfishes that reside in kelp forests. While this study highlights adaptations to low oxygen, extended exposure to hypoxia decreased fitness of individuals through metabolic and aerobic depression, and changes to behavior. The information gathered in this study is critical for advancing the understanding of how these economically valuable species will fair in the future, and the information presented here will help inform policy makers to protect populations at risk.


The Latent Dirichlet Allocation topic model of Blei, Ng, and Jordan (2003) is well-established as an effective approach to recovering meaningful topics of conversation from a set of documents. However, a useful analysis of user-generated content is concerned not only with the recovery of topics from a static data set, but with the evolution of topics over time. We employ a compound topic model (CTM) to track topics across two distinct data sets (i.e. past and present) and to visualize trends in topics over time; we evaluate several metrics for detecting a change in the distribution of topics within a time-window; and we illustrate how our approach discovers emerging conversation topics related to current events in real data sets.


Many visions of the future include people immersed in an environment surrounded by sensors and intelligent devices, which use smart infrastructures to improve the quality of life and safety in emergency situations. Ubiquitous communication enables these sensors or intelligent devices to communicate with each other and the user or a decision maker by means of ad hoc wireless networking. Organization and optimization of network resources are essential to provide ubiquitous communication for a longer duration in large-scale networks and are helpful to migrate intelligence from higher and remote levels to lower and local levels. In this paper, distributed energy-efficient deployment algorithms for mobile sensors and intelligent devices that form an Ambient Intelligent network are proposed. These algorithms employ a synergistic combination of cluster structuring and a peer-to-peer deployment scheme. An energy-efficient deployment algorithm based on Voronoi diagrams is also proposed here. Performance of our algorithms is evaluated in terms of coverage, uniformity, and time and distance traveled until the algorithm converges. Our algorithms are shown to exhibit excellent performance.


This study explores perceptions of long-term residents regarding links between governance, landscape, and community change in the McKenzie River Valley (MRV) in western Oregon and provides a general assessment of factors affecting resilience and adaptive capacity. Residents interviewed indicated that dramatic changes driven by market competition, timber industry changes, increased regulation, and rural restructuring have occurred in both the landscape and community. The changes that have transpired have redefined the relationship between the community and the landscape, moving away from local dependence on timber harvests to an economy focused on tourism and other ecosystem services. In doing so the community has transitioned from one with a logging community identity to one that has begrudgingly become a retirement and vacation community. We found that the social-ecological system (SES) in the MRV is still in the midst of reorganization in the wake of the 1990s Timber Wars. As a result of low institutional capacity, the system is vulnerable to exogenous drivers of change. Using a modified version of Ostrom's (2009) framework for SES analysis, this study recommends policymakers and policy entrepreneurs take three key steps to facilitate enhanced resilience and adaptive capacity: 1) support transboundary management strategies that transcend landownership classifications; 2) tighten system feedbacks to include more local influence; and 3) develop local multilayered institutions organized vertically and horizontally. Future research should explore the potential for collaborative forestry and stewardship contracting to enhance social-ecological resilience in this valley.


With the advent of accessible digital technology in the 1990s, image archive collections that were once the sole preserve of the conservator or researcher with white gloves could now be made available to all. Creating digital surrogates offered promise for increasing public access, however, not without considerable challenges in the making. This article recounts and reflects upon how a local authority aimed to make, potentially, 250,000 glass plate negatives in numerous different local history collections generally accessible by scanning and subject indexing. It considers the challenges of providing metadata that would best meet end-user needs in a touch screen public access system and how and why a hierarchical classification scheme was developed to allow productive browsing of these historic collections of everyday life. The photographic archive case study is then revisited through a twenty-first century lens, discussing latest developments and the potential of open source tools for multidimensional access.


This research investigates the effects of bending on the electrical, optical, structural and mechanical properties of flexible organic photovoltaic (OPV) cells. Bulk heterojunction organic solar cells were fabricated on Polyethylene terephthalate (PET) substrates using Poly-3-hexylthiophene: [6, 6]-phenyl-C61-butyric acid methyl ester (P3HT: PCBM) as the active layer and Poly (3, 4-ethylenedioxythiophene) Polystyrenesulfonate (PEDOT: PSS) as the hole injection layer. All the organic layers were deposited by spin coating while the Al cathode was vacuum thermally evaporated. The Indium Tin Oxide (ITO) anode has an average optical transmittance of 85% in the visible spectrum, a sheet resistivity of 60 ohms per square and an average surface roughness of 3nm. The relationship between the optoelectronic performance of the various device layers and the applied mechanical strains has been analyzed. The effects of stress and strain on the current-voltage characteristics of the device and its failure were modeled using the Abaqus software.


Abstract. The temperature profiles of the satellite experiment Aura/MLS are horizontally spaced by 1.5° or 165 km along the satellite orbit. These level-2 data contain valuable information about horizontal fluctuations in temperature, which are mainly induced by inertia-gravity waves. Wave periods of 2–12 h, horizontal wavelengths of 200–1500 km, and vertical wavelengths of 6–30 km efficiently contribute to the standard deviation of the horizontal temperature fluctuations. The study retrieves and discusses the global distributions of inertia-gravity waves in the stratosphere and mesosphere during July 2015 and January 2016. We find many patterns that were previously present in data of TIMED/SABER, Aura/HIRDLS, and ECMWF analysis. However, it seems that Aura/MLS achieves a higher vertical resolution in the gravity wave maps since the maps are derived from the analysis of horizontal fluctuations along the orbit of the sounding volume. The zonal mean of the inertia-gravity wave distribution shows vertical modulations with scales of 10–20 km. Enhanced wave amplitudes occur in regions of increased zonal wind or in the vicinity of strong wind gradients. Further, we find a banana-like shape of enhanced inertia-gravity waves above the Andes in the winter mesosphere. We find areas of enhanced inertia-gravity wave activity above tropical deep convection zones at 100 hPa (z ∼ 13 km). Finally, we study the temporal evolution of inertia-gravity wave activity at 100 hPa in the African longitude sector from December 2015 to February 2016.


Early diagnosis of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is crucial for disease treatment and control. The clinical characteristics in patients infected with COVID-19 most commonly manifest fever, cough and fatigue, which in some patients can be accompanied by runny nose, headache and other symptoms. Additional symptoms such as diarrhea are less common. All research about the clinical characteristics of COVID-19, none of COVID-19 research mentioned that facial flushing was a clinical feature that could be found. The invisible facial flushing, unrecognized clinical sign with the naked eye could be detected by the smartphone application in the COVID-19 patients. This novel screening tool for COVID-19 patients will be potential for early diagnosis and may be used in conjunction with thermoscan camera as front line screening and diagnostic capacity. It will help all medical service providers the effective screening tool for the recognition and early diagnosis before performing CT scans and real-time RT PCR (rRT-PCR) assays, especially in some health care facilities where could not be performed due to lack of laboratory support. Furthermore, application in active case finding for COVID-19, the key actions to stop transmission is challenging in countries with community transmission.


After light became a part of the telecommunication system, the manipulation of light, especially the control of the speed of light, became a focus of research. By using the different approaches of the interaction between light and matter, there have been many successful attempts to slow down the speed of light, even to several meters per second. In the first part of my thesis, I studied pulse propagation in absorptive media (GaAs/AlGaAs multiple quantum well structures-MQWs) to gain insight into the linear interaction between matter and light. Systematic and fundamental measurements of pulse propagation in GaAs/AlGaAs multiple quantum well structures will be presented. These measurements are simulated by treating MQWs as a slab. These measurements and simulations will be compared while using a newly introduced general formalism. In the second part of my thesis, I will present another aspect of manipulating light: all–optical switching. Eric Gansen demonstrated all-optical switching in GaAs/AlGaAs MQWs at cryogenic temperatures. I will demonstrate that the same design of all-optical switch, which is based on polarized virtual carriers, can work without any serious loss of performance at near-room temperatures. Another material used in all-optical switches is Bragg-spaced-quantum-well structures (BSQWs) which are grown by molecular beam epitaxy. The growth of BSQW is challenging because of the associated unusually long growth times. In the last part of this dissertation, I will discuss the challenges involved in MBE growth of 210 period long GaAs/InGaAs BSQWs. By presenting basic characterization measurements of the


PURPOSE/OBJECTIVES
To describe the usefulness of daily pain management diaries to outpatients with cancer who participated in a randomized clinical trial of the PRO-SELF Pain Control Program.

DESIGN
Randomized clinical trial in which a daily pain management diary was used for data collection in the control group and for data collection and nurse coaching regarding the pain management program in the intervention group.

SETTING
Seven outpatient oncology settings.

SAMPLE
155 patients with pain from bone metastases and 90 family caregivers.

METHODS
Content and statistical analysis of audiotaped answers to a semistructured questionnaire.

MAIN RESEARCH VARIABLES
Patients' and family caregivers' perceptions of the usefulness of a daily pain management diary; specific ways in which the diary was used.

FINDINGS
Patients in both the intervention (75%) and control groups (73%) found the diary useful. The diary was used to heighten awareness of pain, guide pain management behavior, enhance a sense of control, and facilitate communication. Family caregivers in both groups also reported that the diary was useful.

CONCLUSIONS
The completion of a daily pain management diary is useful to patients and family caregivers and may function as an intervention for self-care.

IMPLICATIONS FOR NURSING
Research-based evidence supports the importance of using a daily pain management diary in clinical practice.


Abstract Based on the current context of the Sound and Music Computing (SMC) field, the state of the art in research and the open issues that have been identified and described in other articles of this journal issue, in this article we make a step forward and try to identify the broad SMC challenges and we propose strategies with which to tackle them. On the research side we identify a clear need for designing better sound objects and environments and for promoting research to understand, model, and improve human interaction with sound and music. In the education domain we feel the need for better training our multidisciplinary researchers and to make sure that they can contribute to the multicultural society we live in. There is also a clear need for improving the transferring of the knowledge and technologies generated by our community. Finally we claim that the SMC field should be very much concerned with its social context and that a number of current social concerns should be addressed. We accompany each of these challenges with strategies that should help researchers, educators and policy makers take specific actions to advance in the proposed SMC roadmap.


Semiconductor electrochemistry has known an important development in the eighties, especially aimed to the photoelectrochemical conversion of solar energy. More fundamental work is now being addressed toward the most simple and well-known semiconductors, especially silicon, In spite of its propensity toward oxidation, silicon has demonstrated its suitability for realizing photoelectrochemical cells in non-aqueous solvents, with good stability and performance comparable to Jiose of dry solid-state cells. Upon rinsing in fluoride medium, the silicon surface comes out covered with Si-H bonds. In contrast to common expectation, this coating is stable on an hour time scale even in the presence of water. In a solvent such as methanol, the formation of SiOCHj surface groups still reinforces surface stability. Chemical dissolution of silicon in alkaline media has long been known and used for its anisotropic properties. Recent studies have shown that, here again, the surface during the dissolution appears essentially hydrogenated, and the mechanism responsible for the anisotropy is being clarified. On the opposite, surface oxidation may be looked for, for example in view of the manufacturing of MOS devices or for the passivation of integrated circuits. Anodic oxidation may indeed provide oxides with a good electronic quality and improved thickness control. In fluoride media, significant work has been directed toward understanding the electrochemical dissolution processes of silicon. At moderate potentials, anodic dissolution may lead to the formation of porous silicon. This material, whose formation mechanism is still imperfectly understood, exhibits the characteristics of an original semiconductor. Especially, it may exhibit an intense luminescence in the visible range. This luminescence is presently arousing many excitement in view of its possible applications, but its origin is a matter of controversy. For more positive potentials, the anodic dissolution of silicon in fluoride media exhibits a polishing regime. For the most positive potentials, an original resonant electrical behavior of the interface has been observed. This behavior arises from an oscillating behavior on the microscopic scale. The origin of this oscillation, associated to a variation of the interfacial oxide thickness, is still to be elucidated.