BACKGROUND
Non-surgical treatment for carpal tunnel syndrome is frequently offered to those with mild to moderate symptoms. The effectiveness and duration of benefit from non-surgical treatment for carpal tunnel syndrome remain unknown.

OBJECTIVES
To evaluate the effectiveness of non-surgical treatment (other than steroid injection) for carpal tunnel syndrome versus a placebo or other non-surgical, control interventions in improving clinical outcome.

SEARCH STRATEGY
We searched the Cochrane Neuromuscular Disease Group specialised register (searched March 2002), MEDLINE (searched January 1966 to February 7 2001), EMBASE (searched January 1980 to March 2002), CINAHL (searched January 1983 to December 2001), AMED (searched 1984 to January 2002), Current Contents (January 1993 to March 2002), PEDro and reference lists of articles.

SELECTION CRITERIA
Randomised or quasi-randomised studies in any language of participants with the diagnosis of carpal tunnel syndrome who had not previously undergone surgical release. We considered all non-surgical treatments apart from local steroid injection. The primary outcome measure was improvement in clinical symptoms after at least three months following the end of treatment.

DATA COLLECTION AND ANALYSIS
Three reviewers independently selected the trials to be included. Two reviewers independently extracted data. Studies were rated for their overall quality. Relative risks and weighted mean differences with 95% confidence intervals were calculated for the primary and secondary outcomes in each trial. Results of clinically and statistically homogeneous trials were pooled to provide estimates of the efficacy of non-surgical treatments.

MAIN RESULTS
Twenty-one trials involving 884 people were included. A hand brace significantly improved symptoms after four weeks (weighted mean difference (WMD) -1.07; 95% confidence interval (CI) -1.29 to -0.85) and function (WMD -0.55; 95% CI -0.82 to -0.28). In an analysis of pooled data from two trials (63 participants) ultrasound treatment for two weeks was not significantly beneficial. However one trial showed significant symptom improvement after seven weeks of ultrasound (WMD -0.99; 95% CI -1.77 to - 0.21) which was maintained at six months (WMD -1.86; 95% CI -2.67 to -1.05). Four trials involving 193 people examined various oral medications (steroids, diuretics, nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs) versus placebo. Compared to placebo, pooled data for two-week oral steroid treatment demonstrated a significant improvement in symptoms (WMD -7.23; 95% CI -10.31 to -4.14). One trial also showed improvement after four weeks (WMD -10.8; 95% CI -15.26 to -6.34). Compared to placebo, diuretics or nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs did not demonstrate significant benefit. In two trials involving 50 people, vitamin B6 did not significantly improve overall symptoms. In one trial involving 51 people yoga significantly reduced pain after eight weeks (WMD -1.40; 95% CI -2.73 to -0.07) compared with wrist splinting. In one trial involving 21 people carpal bone mobilisation significantly improved symptoms after three weeks (WMD -1.43; 95% CI -2.19 to -0.67) compared to no treatment. In one trial involving 50 people with diabetes, steroid and insulin injections significantly improved symptoms over eight weeks compared with steroid and placebo injections. Two trials involving 105 people compared ergonomic keyboards versus control and demonstrated equivocal results for pain and function. Trials of magnet therapy, laser acupuncture, exercise or chiropractic care did not demonstrate symptom benefit when compared to placebo or control.

REVIEWER'S CONCLUSIONS
Current evidence shows significant short-term benefit from oral steroids, splinting, ultrasound, yoga and carpal bone mobilisation. Other non-surgical treatments do not produce significant benefit. More trials are needed to compare treatments and ascertain the duration of benefit.


Historically, there has been an ambivalent attitude in psychology toward the place of the "subjective" both in clinical practice and in research. This has been true even for phenomenological research where there is a desire to embrace the personal while there is also a concern that findings be presented as if they are objective in the sense of having an existence independent of the particular researcher's relationship to them. This article discusses a collaborative approach to research that depends on the development of a relationship of intimacy among the researchers and between the researchers and the phenomenon under study. The dialogal phenomenological approach has a twenty-year history and has been used to study phenomena such as social activism, helping and healing, forgiveness, and hopelessness. Focusing especially on two recent studies of hopelessness, I discuss how in the context of dialogue among researchers presence and intimacy, and truth and understanding become possible, and how working collaboratively makes it easier to find words to speak to what one encounters.


In this thesis, I investigate
the effects of social and political context on the process and outcomes of
science communication in two different settings, using Dietram Scheufele's
interpretation of science communication as political communication.

In the first setting, I examine
the communication of climate tipping points at the United Nations Framework
Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) using 26 semi-structured interviews and
271 surveys administered to members of the UNFCCC policy community. Survey
results revealed that only a small minority (14.3%) of policymakers defined
climate tipping points consistently with the scientific community. Interview
responses revealed that many policymakers believed they were not responsible
for incorporating new scientific advice into their work on negotiations, and
that this was the responsibility of scientists. Scientists interviewed
expressed frustration that policymakers were not willing to hear scientific
information they saw as irrelevant to their work on the negotiations.
Policymakers responding to interviews were also unwilling to defy social norms
by introducing a topic they saw as "complicated" into negotiations. Interview
respondents who believed climate tipping points should be discussed within
formal negotiations also noted that they interpreted the effects of climate
change as temporally or spatially immediate to themselves.

In the second setting, I examine
how the United States print media incorporated discussion of climate change
into coverage of the 2017 hurricane season via a content analysis of hurricane
coverage in six major US newspapers. Conservative papers and liberal papers displayed
significant differences in frequency and directness of references to climate
change, as well as a significant difference in the references to climate denial
messages, climate consensus messages, and use of proximity cues. However, the
conservative paper near a 2017 hurricane consistently displayed significant
differences in coverage from the other conservative papers. This paper
frequently used social norms in messaging to shift narratives of acceptability
of climate change discussion among conservatives. Both conservative and liberal
papers near a 2017 hurricane used proximity cues to indicate the effects of
climate change are both physically and temporally near at greater rates than
elite and regional papers not near a 2017 hurricane.

Taken together, these results
reveal that three major factors influenced climate change communication in
these two settings. First, power to define direction and content of science
communication explains the lack of communication about climate tipping points
at the UNFCCC. Policymakers' hold legitimate power over science communication.
This power is codified within UNFCCC structure. Policymakers' expert power is
also interpreted as more relevant to negotiations processes than scientists'
expert power; meaning policymakers are free to define what information is
"policy relevant" and therefore, what is communicated. Second, social norms
influenced how and whether communication occurred. Social norms prohibiting
behavior disruptive to consensus building influenced policymaker definitions of
"policy relevant." Social norms among US conservatives prohibiting serious
discussion of climate tipping points were also apparent. Finally, perceptions
of climate change as immediate and nearby seemed related to willingness to defy
social norms around climate change communication.


As one of the fundamental infrastructures for cloud computing, data center networks (DCN) have recently been studied extensively. We currently use pure software-based systems, FPGA based platforms, e.g., NetFPGA, or OpenFlow switches, to implement and evaluate various DCN designs including topology design, control plane and routing, and congestion control. However, software-based approaches suffer from high CPU overhead and processing latency; FPGA based platforms are difficult to program and incur high cost; and OpenFlow focuses on control plane functions at present.

In this paper, we design a ServerSwitch to address the above problems. ServerSwitch is motivated by the observation that commodity Ethernet switching chips are becoming programmable and that the PCI-E interface provides high throughput and low latency between the server CPU and I/O subsystem. ServerSwitch uses a commodity switching chip for various customized packet forwarding, and leverages the server CPU for control and data plane packet processing, due to the low latency and high throughput between the switching chip and server CPU.

We have built our ServerSwitch at low cost. Our experiments demonstrate that ServerSwitch is fully programmable and achieves high performance. Specifically, we have implemented various forwarding schemes including source routing in hardware. Our in-network caching experiment showed high throughput and flexible data processing. Our QCN (Quantized Congestion Notification) implementation further demonstrated that ServerSwitch can react to network congestions in 23us.


In a world where everything from how we take pictures to how we get our food is designed to happen as quickly and easily as possible, it can take a lot longer to learn how to make it all work behind the scenes. Theories and concepts can weigh you down when all you really want to know is how to create, design and go. That's where OpenGL SuperBible comes in. Complete with supporting figures and a CD packed with free tools, demos and libraries, OpenGL SuperBible simplifies 3D programming concepts without wasting your time with programming theory. Mac and Windows users will both find this comprehensive hands-on guide helpful as you learn to program for games, visualization applications and multi-platforms. This is the ultimate resource for any new programmer.


Mesenchymal stem cells (MSC) have been suggested to have protective effects through modulation of immune responses. We examined the hypothesis that MSC can modify the ability of endothelial cells (EC) to recruit neutrophils and lymphocytes. Using flow-based assays, leukocytes were perfused over HUVEC that had been cultured with MSC, either on opposite sides of porous filers or in direct contact for 24 h, and then stimulated with tumour necrosis factor-α (TNF-α) for 4 h or TNF-α and interferon-γ for 24 h. Cytokine-stimulated EC supported neutrophil and lymphocyte recruitment, and a combination of rolling, firm adhesion and transmigration was observed. EC cultured with MSC supported significantly lower total adhesion of both types of leukocytes, and the proportion of adherent leukocytes that migrated was reduced compared to EC monocultures. The effects were dependent on the number of MSC added, but were evident for ratios of MSC to EC <<0.1. Interestingly, antibody neutralisation of interleukin-6 (IL-6) or transforming growth factor (TGF)-β during co-culture largely abolished the inhibitory effects of MSC on recruitment of both types of leukocyte. These antibodies did not modify recruitment to cytokine-treated EC cultured alone. We conclude that MSC can adhere to and integrate with EC monolayers, and then inhibit the inflammatory recruitment of leukocytes. The inhibitory effects may be due to linked production and effects of IL-6 and TGF-ï□¢ in the co-culture milieu.


What procedures are adopted by contemporary painters and why? How are technologies adapted and appropriated into the methods and processes of painting? What kinds of skills do painters need? The Processes of Painting explored questions about methodologies and technologies as well as notions of expression and intention through a series of conversations with painters who teach at the UAL.


In this paper, we analyze mixed 0-1 linear programs under objective uncertainty. The mean vector and the second moment matrix of the nonnegative objective coefficients is assumed to be known, but the exact form of the distribution is unknown. Our main result shows that computing a tight upper bound on the expected value of a mixed 0-1 linear program in maximization form with random objective is a completely positive program. This naturally leads to semidefinite programming relaxations that are solvable in polynomial time but provide weaker bounds. The result can be extended to deal with uncertainty in the moments and more complicated objective functions. Examples from order statistics and project networks highlight the applications of the model. Our belief is that the model will open an interesting direction for future research in discrete and linear optimization under uncertainty.


This article is the transcript of a round-table talk delivered at the 2011 annual meeting of the Society for the History of Technology (SHOT) in Cleveland, Ohio. It considers the paradox that the close identification of "Asia" with "technology," globally as well as within Asia, has not been paralleled by a strong research program in the humanities and social sciences to understand this relationship, particularly its cultural ramifications. It outlines reasons for this, particularly in regard to teaching and research in the history of technology, and suggests that the recent rise of interest in STS in Asia represents a path forward.


In this research, it was aimed to investigate the effects of entrepreneurship education modules integrated with science education on entrepreneurship characteristics (risk taking, seeing the opportunities, being innovative, self-confidence, and emotional intelligence) of pre-service science teachers. The research was realized in 2013-2014 education years during a selective course with the participation of 26 third grade preservice science teachers in Turkey. The mixed design was adopted in the research. The qualitative dimension of the research was designed as phenomenological study while simple experimental method was preferred for the quantitative dimension. The data was obtained through "Entrepreneurship Scale" and semi-constructed interviews. The descriptive analysis was preferred in order to present the data obtained through interview while Wilcoxon Signed Rank Test was used for the data obtained before and after experimental implementation. As a result of the research, it was seen that entrepreneurship education had statistically significant positive effect on risk taking, seeing the opportunities, being innovative, and emotional intelligence characteristics of preservice science teachers, at the same time it was determined through the qualitative methods that it has a positive effect. However there was any statistically significant difference in terms of self-confidence characteristics. According to this results, there can be suggested that entrepreneurship education should be placed in science teacher education and experimental researches should be conducted for other entrepreneurial characteristics. Entrepreneurial characteristics are thought to be acquired through entrepreneurship education and can potentially be acquired through similar education modules. In-service education courses, such as seminars, can be organized for the science teachers who are in service and have not had entrepreneurship education.


Despite soaring investments in IT infrastructure, the state of operational network security continues to be abysmal. We argue that this is because existing enterprise security approaches fundamentally lack precision in one or more dimensions: (1) isolation to ensure that the enforcement mechanism does not induce interference across different principals; (2) context to customize policies for different devices; and (3) agility to rapidly change the security posture in response to events. To address these shortcomings, we present PSI, a new enterprise network security architecture that addresses these pain points. PSI enables fine-grained and dynamic security postures for different network devices. These are implemented in isolated enclaves and thus provides precise instrumentation on these above dimensions by construction. To this end, PSI leverages recent advances in software-defined networking (SDN) and network functions virtualization (NFV). We design expressive policy abstractions and scalable orchestration mechanisms to implement the security postures. We implement PSI using an industry-grade SDN controller (OpenDaylight) and integrate several commonly used enforcement tools (e.g., Snort, Bro, Squid). We show that PSI is scalable and is an enabler for new detection and prevention capabilities that would be difficult to realize with existing solutions.


Hematopoietic stem cell transplantation is commonly used in patients with certain hematological or bone marrow tumors. Total body irradiation combined with chemotherapy is part of the preconditioning protocol that was the most commonly used before hematopoietic stem cell transplantation. However, total body irradiation preconditioning damages other normal cells in bone marrow. Therefore, exploring the mechanism of radiation resistance in bone marrow mesenchymal stem cells is of great significance for recovering the hematopoietic function after cell transplantation. This study aimed to demonstrate the miR-29b adsorption of circRNA_014511 and explore the effect of circRNA_014511 on radiosensitivity of bone marrow mesenchymal stem cells. In this study, circRNA_014511 overexpression vector was constructed and transfected into bone marrow mesenchymal stem cells, miR-29b-2-5p and P53 were found to be decreased, which could be reversed by miR29b-mimics. Dual luciferase reporter assay confirmed the binding of circRNA_014511 and mmu-miR-29b-2-5p. Flow cytometry analysis showed the apoptosis rate of bone marrow mesenchymal stem cells overexpressing circRNA_014511 was significantly decreased. In the circRNA_014511 transfection group, after cells were subjected to 6Gy irradiation, G2 phase arrest appeared, the expression of P21 and GADD45A was significantly decreased, and cyclin B1 was significantly increased. Colony formation assay showed the survival fraction of circRNA_014511 overexpression cells after irradiation was significantly higher than control group, and the radiosensitivity was decreased. In conclusion,our findings demonstrated that circRNA_014511 could inhibit the expression of P53 by binding miR-29b-2-5p, and decrease the radiosensitivity of bone marrow mesenchymal stem cells by affecting cell cycle and cell apoptosis.


High-voltage (HV) power lines have been used as a communications medium since the 1920s. Those point-to-point links were typically based on single-sideband amplitude modulation. These days, the state of the art in HV power-line carrier (PLC) communications comprises the combination of analog systems, mainly for teleprotection tasks, and digital systems, used for voice and data transmission. Beside traditional core services (monitoring, operation management, and limitation and removal of failures), electrical utilities would like to satisfy the increasing need of new internal applications. In that way, quadrature amplitude modulation and, most recently, multicarrier modulation (MCM)-based modems are beginning to play an important role in HV PLC systems. Although the typical 4-kHz bandwidth has been recently increased up to 32 kHz, this paper proposes a low-power 256-kHz bandwidth multicarrier-spread-spectrum (MC-SS)-based physical layer. Based on channel measurements, the MC-SS symbol has been designed and tested in order to increase the user bit rate while delivering reduced power spectral density and bit-error rate.


While intolerant, abusive and hateful speech online has received a lot of attention by researchers in social, media and communication studies, its linguistic aspects have yet to be thoroughly investigated. This book contributes to filling this gap by showcasing how a linguistic perspective has much to offer in unravelling exactly what is occurring. With a common goal to interrogate the linguistic aspects of negative online behaviours on different social media platforms and against different targets, the authors approached the phenomenon from a different methodological frameworks. While primarily interested in identifying, describing and understanding intolerant, abusive and hateful speech online thoroughly and comprehensively, they also had a common belief that their work could inform efforts to contain or mitigate the impact of negative online behaviours regardless of where they occur.
Each chapter interrogates a different communicative practice in a specific modality on a range of online platforms in order to offer insights into different quantitative and qualitative approaches when it comes to the complexities of the linguistic analysis of negative online behaviours. The range of methodological frameworks and theoretical approaches utilized in the explorations into online discourses of racism, misogyny, homophobia/LGBQT+ rights and islamophobia/anti-immigrant discourses presented in this volume contribute towards a comprehensive understanding of the linguistic landscape of online hate. The studies in this volume analyse data from three very different countries, cultures and languages – Cyprus, Japan and Slovenia – which demonstrates that negative online behaviours are a global problem which cannot be ignored. Therefore, the findings of these studies have much wider implications.


The motion of plates and continents on the planet's surface are a manifestation of long-term mantle convection and plate tectonics. Present-day plate velocities provide a snapshot of this ongoing process, and have been used to infer controlling factors on the speeds of plates and continents. However, present-day velocities do not capture plate behaviour over geologically representative periods of time. To address this shortcoming, we use a plate tectonic reconstruction approach to extract time-dependent plate velocities and geometries from which root mean square (RMS) velocities are computed, resulting in a median RMS plate speed of ∼4 cm/yr∼4 cm/yr over 200 Myr. Linking tectonothermal ages of continental lithosphere to the RMS plate velocity analysis, we find that the increasing portions of plate area composed of continental and/or cratonic lithosphere significantly reduces plate speeds. Plates with any cratonic portion have a median RMS velocity of ∼5.8 cm/yr∼5.8 cm/yr, while plates with more than 25% of cratonic area have a median RMS speed of ∼2.8 cm/yr∼2.8 cm/yr. The fastest plates (∼8.5 cm/yr∼8.5 cm/yr RMS speed) have little continental fraction and tend to be bounded by subduction zones, while the slowest plates (∼2.6-2.8 cm/yr∼2.6-2.8 cm/ yr RMS speed) have large continental fractions and usually have little to no subducting part of plate perimeter. More generally, oceanic plates tend to move 2-3 times faster than continental plates, consistent with predictions of numerical models of mantle convection. The slower motion of continental plates is compatible with deep keels impinging on asthenospheric flow and increasing shear traction, thus anchoring the plate in the more viscous mantle transition zone. We also find that short-lived (up to ∼10 Myr∼10 Myr) rapid accelerations of Africa (∼100 and 65 Ma), North America (∼100 and 55 Ma) and India (∼130,80 and 65 Ma∼130,80 and 65 Ma) appear to be correlated with plume head arrivals as recorded by large igneous province (LIPs) emplacement. By evaluating factors influencing plate speeds over the Mesozoic and Cenozoic, our temporal analysis reveals simple principles that can guide the construction and evaluation of absolute plate motion models for times before the Cretaceous in the absence of hotspot tracks and seafloor spreading histories. Based on the post-Pangea plate motions, one principle that can be applied to pre-Pangea times is that plates with less than ∼50%∼50% continental area can reach RMS velocities of ∼20 cm/yr∼20 cm/ yr, while plates with more than 50% continental fraction do not exceed RMS velocities of ∼10 cm/yr∼10 cm/ yr. Similarly, plates with large portions of continental or cratonic area with RMS velocities exceeding ∼15 cm/ yr∼15 cm/yr for more than ∼10 Myr∼10 Myr should be considered as potential artefacts requiring further justification of plate driving forces in such scenarios. Disciplines Medicine and Health Sciences | Social and Behavioral Sciences Publication Details Zahirovic, S., Muller, R. Dietmar., Seton, M. & Flament, N. (2015). Tectonic speed limits from plate kinematic reconstructions. Earth and Planetary Science Letters, 418 40-52. This journal article is available at Research Online: http://ro.uow.edu.au/smhpapers/4238 Manuscript – Page 1 of 40 Tectonic speed limits from plate kinematic reconstructions 1 Sabin Zahirovic, R Dietmar Müller, Maria Seton and Nicolas Flament 2 EarthByte, School of Geosciences, The University of Sydney, NSW 2006, Australia 3 e-mail: email@example.com 4 5 Abstract 6 The motion of plates and continents on the planet's surface are a manifestation of long-term mantle 7 convection and plate tectonics. Present-day plate velocities provide a snapshot of this ongoing 8 process, and have been used to infer controlling factors on the speeds of plates and continents. 9 However, present-day velocities do not capture plate behaviour over geologically representative 10 periods of time. To address this shortcoming, we use a plate tectonic reconstruction approach to 11 extract time-dependent plate velocities and geometries from which root mean square (RMS) 12 velocities are computed, resulting in a median RMS plate speed of ~4 cm/yr over 200 Myr. Linking 13 tectonothermal ages of continental lithosphere to the RMS plate velocity analysis, we find that the 14 increasing portions of plate area composed of continental and/or cratonic lithosphere significantly 15 reduces plate speeds. Plates with any cratonic portion have a median RMS velocity of ~5.8 cm/yr, 16 while plates with more then 25% of cratonic area have a median RMS speed of ~2.8 cm/yr. The 17 fastest plates (~8.5 cm/yr RMS speed) have little continental fraction and tend to be bounded by 18 subduction zones, while the slowest plates (~2.6-2.8 cm/yr RMS speed) have large continental 19 fractions and usually have little to no subducting part of plate perimeter. More generally, oceanic 20 plates tend to move 2-3 times faster than continental plates, consistent with predictions of numerical 21 models of mantle convection. The slower motion of continental plates is compatible with deep keels 22 impinging on asthenospheric flow and increasing shear traction, thus anchoring the plate in the 23 more viscous mantle transition zone. We also find that short-lived (up to ~10 Myr) rapid 24 accelerations of Africa (~100 and 65 Ma), North America (~100 and 55 Ma) and India (~130, 80 25 and 65 Ma) appear to be correlated with plume head arrivals as recorded by large igneous province 26


Many believe that a bubble existed in Internet stocks in the 1999 to 2000 period, and that short-sale restrictions prevented rational investors from driving Internet stock prices to reasonable levels. In the presence of such short-sale constraints, option and stock prices could decouple during a bubble. Using intraday options data from the peak of the Internet bubble, we find almost no evidence that synthetic stock prices diverged from actual stock prices. We also show that the general public could cheaply short synthetically using options. In summary, we find no evidence that short-sale restrictions affected Internet stock prices. Copyright 2006 by The American Finance Association.


The paper looks at the increasing integration of China into the world market, with a specific focus on agricultural and food trade and on the Italian market. Agricultural trade among Italy and China has been limited to secondary products, especially originated in the livestock sector. However, in the last decade exchanges have been constantly increasing and the set of products changing deeply. Specifically, Italian exports to China have been specialising towards the typical "Made in Italy" processed products, showing a potential market for Italian agricultural and food products. In order to test the opportunity and the risks of the integration of China into the world agro-food markets, some similarity indices have been calculated, with refer to two different markets: the EU-15 and the Chinese market. In the first case the similarity of Chinese exports with those of some EU partners on the EU-15 market was considered; in the second the similarity of exports of some EU Member States to China was calculated. Taking into account the different level of quality of agro-food products, the main result of the analysis is that Chinese products entering EU are more complementary than similar to the EU products; at the same time, China is a great potential market for EU products, and Italy will compete with other EU countries in the gain of quotas on the Chinese agro-food market.


"You whore it out to a contractor," Major Tim Elliott said bluntly. It was April 2012, and I was at a swank hotel in downtown London attending "Forward Operating Bases 2012," a conference for contractors building, supplying, and maintaining military bases around the world. IPQC, the private company running the conference, promised the conference would "bring together buyers and suppliers in one location" and "be an excellent platform to initiate new business relationships" through "face-to-face contact that overcrowded trade shows cannot deliver." Companies sending representatives included major contractors like General Dynamics and the food services company Supreme Group, which has won billions in Afghan war contracts, as well as smaller companies like QinetiQ, which produces acoustic sensors and other monitoring devices used on bases. "We're profiteers," one contractor representative said to the audience in passing, with only a touch of irony.This article can also be found at the Monthly Review website, where most recent articles are published in full.Click here to purchase a PDF version of this article at the Monthly Review website.


Traditionally, government regulation in the United States follows a straightforward command approach. The government states the desired activities of the regulated firm, the allowable actions, and the prohibited actions. The firm is punished if it violates these strictures. Regulatory economists have identified many problems with this approach. First, there is the problem of asymmetry in information: Regulations cannot be enforced if they require information from the firm that the regulator cannot elicit reliably and at reasonable cost.


The notions of well-being and happiness are widely used today in a range of disciplines, areas of research, educational practice and daily life. However, these terms have to be considered critically, and careful reflection on their meaning is needed in each context where they are used (Soutter, Gilmore & O'Steen 2011). One reflection in the context of education has been conducted in relation to positive psychology as well as philosophical concepts and questions such as how to live a good life, the art of living and especially Schmid's (2000) concept of Lebenskunst or 'art of living' (Teschers 2013). Still, the research undertaken to connect these concepts with the area of early childhood education in particular has been rather limited. The current paper is one step to bridge this gap by exploring how the concept of the art of living relates to early childhood education and the notion of well-being as it is used in the New Zealand early childhood curriculum Te Whāriki (Ministry of Education 1996). It is proposed that early childhood educators can support the development of children's abilities to enable them to engage actively in shaping their own lives and developing their own art of living earlier rather than later in their lives. Further, suggestions are made for teaching practice about ways early childhood educators can support young children to become reflective, autonomous and knowledgeable human beings, who are able to take responsibility for their own lives.


4-Bromo-o-phenylenediamine and ethylimido-p-bromophenylacetate, 1, were subjected to microwave irradiation to synthesize benzimidazole derivative, compound 2. Ester derivative, 3, and hydrazide derivative, 4, of compound 2 were also synthesized, respectively. Finally, compound 4 was treated with 11 different aromatic aldehydes to obtain benzimidazole derivatives containing imine function. All reactions were carried out with microwave irradiation and conventional heating, and results were compared. Some of the newly synthesized compounds showed moderate antimicrobial activity against some tested organisms.


As the United States championed principles of freedom and equality during World War II, it denied fundamental rights to many non-white citizens. In the wake of President Franklin Roosevelt's 'Good Neighbor' policy with Latin America, African American and Mexican American civil rights leaders sought ways to make that policy of respect and mutual obligations apply at home as well as abroad. They argued that a whites-only democracy not only denied constitutional protection to every citizen but also threatened the war effort and FDR's aims. Neil Foley examines the complex interplay among regional, national, and international politics that plagued the efforts of Mexican Americans and African Americans to find common ground in ending employment discrimination in the defense industries and school segregation in the war years and beyond. Underlying differences in organizational strength, political affiliation, class position, and level of assimilation complicated efforts by Mexican and black Americans to forge strategic alliances in their fight for economic and educational equality. The prospect of interracial cooperation foundered as Mexican American civil rights leaders saw little to gain and much to lose in joining hands with African Americans. Over a half century later, African American and Latino civil rights organizations continue to seek solutions to relevant issues, including the persistence of de facto segregation in our public schools and the widening gap in wealth and income in America. Yet they continue to grapple with the difficulty of forging solidarity across lines of cultural, class, and racial-ethnic difference, a struggle that remains central to contemporary American life.


ABSTRACT The Bar of England & Wales, like the wider legal profession, does not reflect the society it serves. The current data published by the Bar Standards Board (BSB) suggests a profile in relation to gender and ethnicity that gives serious cause for concern. As regards additional diversity characteristics, the BSB (and others) have accepted that the existing datasets are not wholly reliable because of poor response rates to associated diversity questionnaires. In 2011, the Legal Services Board (LSB) introduced mandatory guidance that obliged its daughter regulators to put into place rules that relate to diversity monitoring and reporting across the legal profession. This paper is concerned with how the BSB has operationalised that statutory guidance in respect of the Bar. Drawing on data gathered from the websites of 160 chambers, I show significant non-compliance with the reporting rule, and question both how the BSB itself reports on diversity data and the drafting of the reporting rule. I ask whether non-compliance is partly a function of the complexity seen in how the BSB has made operational the LSB's reporting requirements. My data also suggests that the BSB should target its enforcement and educational approaches to the reporting rule to small and medium sized chambers.


The effects of interface density and total multilayer film thickness on the dielectric properties and breakdown behavior have been revealed in this work by investigating the environment-friendly energy storage multilayer films of Ba0.7Ca0.3TiO3 (BCT) and BaZr0.2Ti0.8O3 (BZT) dielectrics. Numerical simulations based on a finite element method have given the breakdown process vividly, which agreed well with the experimental results. Moreover, not only the ultrahigh energy storage density of 51.8 J cm−3 with a great efficiency of 81.2% at room temperature but also robust thermal stability has been obtained by optimizing the interface density and total thickness. High energy density above 25.1 J cm−3 and excellent efficiency over 63.6% from room temperature to 200 °C provide a solid basis for potential applications of the multilayer systems in harsh environments.


One of the main challenges in three-dimensional integral imaging is its limited depth of field. Such a limitation is imposed by diffraction, among other factors. The easiest way to improve the depth of field is by reducing the numerical aperture of the microlenses. However, such an improvement is obtained at the expense of an important deterioration in the spatial resolution. We propose a technique, which is novel in the context of integral imaging, for improving the depth of field with no deterioration of the spatial resolution. The technique, based on amplitude modulation of the array of phase elements, can substantially improve the figure of merit of the product of depth of the focus and the squared resolution.


Within a rhizomatic, arts-based narrative inquiry into my practice as a lecturer in a Third Level Institute of Technology I attempt to deterritorialise the pedagogical spaces of an Early Childhood degree. Inspired by Richardson and St. Pierre's (2005) notion of writing as inquiry and Creative Arts Practices (CAP) Ethnography I experiment with poetry, art and film in order to find my research voice and move through the complexity of learning using the rhizome (Deleuze and Guattari, 1987). An epistemological dialogue with my past traces a movement away from the dominance of positivist psychology as I step gingerly into autoethnography. I position myself within emerging stories of learner, teacher and researcher and formulate a research project that explores learning and teaching in an Early Years degree in Ireland.
Using the troublesome concept of intelligence in a first year psychology class a Learning Carnival is devised to transform the passive lecture space and mount a challenge to dominant psychometric traditions. A focus group allowed students to articulate the role of musical, kinaesthetic, linguistic and other 'intelligences' (Gardner, 1983) in the ways they learned and a film called 'Practice and the Internet' was made to playfully deconstruct some of the findings. Troublesome knowledge is better conceived as troubling knowledge embracing uncertainty in learning and promoting an active process over a static entity. Likewise intelligence as a noun already
presupposes a measurable entity and limits the potential to conceive learning as active, open ended and consisting of various creative processes.
Following a number of pioneers of arts based research and identity construction (Leitch, 2010; O' Grady, 2012), a self-study method prompted students' writing, portraits, masks and images to explore how they constructed their lives in their final year of a professional Early Childhood course. In collaboration with the students a short film called 'A Murmuration of Early Childhood' celebrated their artwork and collective poem 'Imagine a Child'. An assemblage of research data allowed individual voices within a collective participant voice to merge with the academy and maintain their primacy in a powerful evocative performance text called 'A Dawn Chorus'.
In exposing the influences on the author's researcher and learner identity the thesis performs a becoming-other and achieves a relative deterritorialization of the pedagogical spaces of teaching and learning (Deleuze and Guattari, 1987). In producing a challenge to dominant understandings of learning and intelligences the thesis makes a significant contribution to knowledge and scholarship through the use of arts-based narrative inquiry providing creative alternatives to teacher education in the Early Years. The autoethnographic lens highlights the complex political and social contexts that frame educational experiences and structure relationships between learners and educators and raises questions about the marginalisation and feminisation of childcare in Ireland. Of significance in this study are the ways that learners demonstrate their own agency within
limited subject positions and the power of education to provide a route to exhibit and express a personal identity beyond that of mother, father, old, young, male, female, carer.
Employing Arts-Based Narrative Inquiry, the thesis makes a significant contribution to knowledge through its focus on creative processes from conception to representation producing a piece of work that is polyphonic, dialogic and novel in the Bakhtinian sense (see Kim, 2016, pp. 72-76). To open up inquiry through creative media means going beyond the predictable and stepping into the unknown world of discovery where meaning emerges from the playful interactions between learners and educators – resonating with the notion of aesthetic play in narrative inquiry (Latta, 2013, in Kim, 2016, ps. 85 - 88). It is hoped that this work will join a burgeoning literature in narrative inquiry that empowers other educators to enter liminal moments of risk and improvise on a tune, take lines of flight and challenge modes of thinking that limit human experience.


Goal specification is an important aspect of designing autonomous agents. A goal does not only refer to the set of states for the agent to reach. A goal also defines restrictions on the paths the agent should follow. Temporal logics are widely used in goal specification. However, they lack the ability to represent goals in a non-deterministic domain, goals that change non-monotonically, and goals with preferences. This dissertation defines new goal specification languages by extending temporal logics to address these issues.
First considered is the goal specification in non-deterministic domains, in which an agent following a policy leads to a set of paths. A logic is proposed to distinguish paths of the agent from all paths in the domain. In addition, to address the need of comparing policies for finding the best ones, a language capable of quantifying over policies is proposed. As policy structures of agents play an important role in goal specification, languages are also defined by considering different policy structures.
Besides, after an agent is given an initial goal, the agent may change its expectations or the domain may change, thus goals that are previously specified may need to be further updated, revised, partially retracted, or even completely changed. Non-monotonic goal specification languages that can make these changes in an elaboration tolerant manner are needed. Two languages that rely on labeling sub-formulas and connecting multiple rules are developed to address non-monotonicity in goal specification.
Also, agents may have preferential relations among sub-goals, and the preferential relations may change as agents achieve other sub-goals. By nesting a comparison operator with other temporal operators, a language with dynamic preferences is proposed. Various goals that cannot be expressed in other languages are expressed in the proposed languages. Finally, plans are given for some goals specified in the proposed languages.


This thesis is the first comprehensive study of the writing of the author, journalist,
reviewer and scholar Betty Miller (1910-65). As such it seeks to develop a language
with which readers might think about her work.
Analysing the ways in which commentators have redrawn the critical maps of the
1930s and 40s provides a crucial context for an understanding of Miller's work as a
product of its cultural inception. Exploring the dynamics of the various socio-historic
and institutional forces that have come to bear on the availability and readability of
women's writing from this period, The Writing of Betty Miller looks at the
recuperative practices of feminist publishing houses as well as the near annihilation of
Miller's work in the Second World War.
Betty Miller's bestselling biography of Robert Browning and her non-fiction writing
for journals such as Twentieth Century and Horizon in the 1950s, begin to suggest a
literary context that draws out the allusions in and influences on her fiction. The seven
novels that she wrote between 1933-49, read chronologically, situate her amongst
contemporaneous debates on the gendered dynamics of marriage, the politics of the
Anglo-Jewish experience and the familial impact of war. They also confront literary
experiments of writing timeliness, boredom and violence. Close reading interrogates
her texts' most prevalent imagery and aesthetics, asking what makes her writing
particularly Millerian, whilst positioning a readership that pays attention to the
thoughtful examination of the morality of everyday decision-making that underlies
Miller's work.


Descending colon is a retroperitoneal part of colon extending from left colic flexure to the brim of pelvis. Rarely does it have a mesocolon. Descending colon is most commonly affected by ulcerative colitis, Crohn's disease and colon cancer. In the present case, cadaveric dissection of abdomen revealed a rare variation of descending colon. The descending colon had a mesocolon and was coiled in its lower part. The sigmoid colon was straight and displaced to a median position. Position of colon as in the present case might be asymptomatic, but can lead to volvulus formation, intestinal obstruction, constipation along with abdominal pain and pose a difficulty in radiological diagnosis and interpretation. Colonoscopy may not be advisable in such cases as the colonoscope may not pass through coiled descending colon and any forced attempt may pierce the wall of colon. This is the first case report of the coiled descending colon with a potential clinical importance.


Informalize! is the first book in the forthcoming Essays on the Political Economy of Urban Form series developed at WERK 11, a research hub of the ETH Zurich bringing together the various fields that have an impact on today's urban conditions. Edited by Marc Angelil and Rainer Hehl, this collection of four essays presents a cross-section of urban informality drawing on broader theoretical frameworks as well as case studies from Casablanca, Belgrade, and the Global South. Reading the city of yesterday as the physical manifestation of the failure of the urban economy to meet the needs of a growing population, Informalize! turns to the city of today and tomorrow as the representation of a paradigmatic shift toward new social, political, and economic orders and ways of collecting and applying urban knowledge. Contributions by Ananya Roy (University of California, Berkeley), Fran Tonkiss (London School of Economics), Milica Topalovic (ETH Studio Basel), and Tom Avermaete (Delft University of Technology).


The retroarc fold-and-thrust belt of the Central Andes exhibits major along-strike variations in its pre-Cenozoic tectonic configuration. These variations have been proposed to explain the considerable southward decrease in the observed magnitude of Cenozoic shortening. Regional mapping, a cross section, and U-Pb and (U-Th)/He age dating of apatite and zircon presented here build upon the preexisting geological framework for the region. At the latitude of the regional transect (24–25°S), results demonstrate that the thrust belt propagated in an overall eastward direction in three distinct pulses during Cenozoic time. Each eastward jump in the deformation front was apparently followed by local westward deformation migration, likely reflecting a subcritically tapered orogenic wedge. The first eastward jump was at ca. 40 Ma, when deformation and exhumation were restricted to the western margin of the Eastern Cordillera and eastern margin of the Puna Plateau. At 12–10 Ma, the thrust front jumped ∼75 km toward the east to bypass the central portion of a horst block of the Cretaceous Salta rift system, followed by initiation of new faults in a subsystem that propagated toward the west into this preexisting structural high. During Pliocene time, deformation again migrated >100 km eastward to a Cretaceous synrift depocenter in the Santa Barbara Ranges. The sporadic foreland-ward propagation documented here may be common in basement-involved thrust systems where inherited weaknesses due to previous crustal deformation are preferentially reactivated during later shortening. The minimum estimate for the magnitude of shortening at this latitude is ∼142 km, which is moderate in magnitude compared to the 250–350 km of shortening accommodated in the retroarc thrust belt of southern Bolivia to the north. This work supports previous hypotheses that the magnitude of shortening decreases significantly along strike away from a maximum in southern Bolivia, largely as a result of the distribution of pre-Cenozoic basins that are able to accommodate a large magnitude of thin-skinned shortening. A major implication is that variations in the pre-orogenic upper-crustal architecture can influence the behavior of the continental lithosphere during later orogenesis, a result that challenges geodynamic models that neglect upper-plate heterogeneities.


Additive Manufacturing holds significant promise for microwave component design, enabling the production of previously un-manufacturable, complex designs through 3D printing.
The research here reports the modelling, simulation, fabrication and testing of several microwave components, including the world's first ever 3D metal printed Sierpinski gasket antenna, with multiple resonance characteristics. One concern of 3D metal printing relates to surface finish. The impact of inherent surface roughness on the performance of the printed antenna has also been evaluated. Further, two different surface treatment techniques have been used and the RF improvement has been assessed. Considering the fact that these treatments may not be available to the wider RF community, two other possible ways to limit the surface roughness have also been highlighted and tested.
3D printing, being a layer-by-layer process, enables the designing of self-supportive structures through topological design optimization. This property has been utilized to design self-supportive, non-solid interior microwave components, to reduce their weight. The results showed the weight of the metal printed inner lattice antenna to be even lighter than a similar metal-coated (solid) polymer antenna, fabricated with comparatively similar RF performance.
In another exploitation, an alternative approach to mounting an antenna to its feeding circuitry has been developed, by printing an intricate, N-type female feed together with the microwave component, as a single monolithic component.
A final development related to enhancing the performance of existing antennas, including the fabrication of a novel horn antenna, with in-built periodic structures positioned at bespoke positions for side-lobe reduction and the first ever attempt at 3D printing an artificial dielectric lens, for possible 5G and power applicator applications.


The aim of this study was to explore and describe aspects that contribute to the psychosocial well-being of families from diverse cultures in a South African context by analysing data obtained through narratives, drawings and interviews with families. Participant families took part voluntarily in family interviews (N=36), written narratives (N=23) and drawings (N=14). These different methods of data collection provided rich data on family psychosocial well-being in a South African context with culturally diverse families, as well as on those aspects that influence family psychosocial well-being. The findings suggest that communication, mutual support, togetherness as a family and spirituality are the most prominent contributing factors, while financial difficulties and interpersonal conflicts or arguments are the most prominent hindering factors with regard to family psychosocial well-being in this group of participants.


Understanding the factors that encourage young people to become active agents in their own learning is critical. Positive psychology is one lens that can be used to investigate the factors that facilitate a student's sense of agency and active school engagement. In the second edition of this groundbreaking handbook, the editors draw together the latest work on the field, identifying major issues and providing a wealth of descriptive knowledge from renowned contributors. Major topics include: the ways that positive emotions, traits, and institutions promote school achievement and healthy social and emotional development; how specific positive-psychological constructs relate to students and schools and support the delivery of school-based services; and the application of positive psychology to educational policy making. With thirteen new chapters, this edition provides a long-needed centerpiece around which the field can continue to grow, incorporating a new focus on international applications of the field.


This paper provides non-experimental field evidence on positive and negative worker reciprocity. We analyze the performance reactions of professional workers to fair and unfair wage allocations in their natural environment. The objects of interest are professional soccer players in the German Bundesliga. This environment enables us to circumvent the main problems of observational studies on reciprocity because there is substantial transparency in individual player values and performance. Our main finding is that workers exhibit both positive and negative reciprocity toward employers who deviate from a player's perception of a fair market wage. This perception of a fair wage follows from a Mincer-type wage equation that incorporates a worker's past performance. The different results between changing and non-changing players are in line with theories of fairness perception but cannot be explained by private information from the employers or the personal career concerns of the players. Altogether, our findings provide strong evidence for the external validity of previous laboratory results on gift exchange in the labor market.


ObjectiveTo assess the effects of Australian complementary medicines advertising policy after major changes in 2018. These included a legally enforceable advertising code, stronger investigative and compliance powers for the Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) and enhanced educational resources for industry.MethodsAnalysis of the TGA complaint outcome database from 1 July 2018 to 30 June 2019 and the new regulatory measures.ResultsOf 1821 complaint records analysed, 92% were classified as low priority and closed by sending the advertiser a Regulatory Obligation letter. For low priority complaints, no details of the product, advertiser or alleged Code violation were published, and no follow-up was undertaken. Of 121 higher priority complaints, 79% failed to meet their key performance indicator (KPI) time to closure (60-90 days). These included complaints about dangerous sports supplements and ineffective weight loss and hangover products, some of which had been submitted in July 2018.ConclusionsComplaint classification and actions taken by the TGA were inconsistent. The TGA's new compliance powers were rarely applied. The new complaint system is less transparent than the one it replaced. There is a high rate of advertising complaints and a low rate of effective regulatory response. Time-based KPIs should be based on outcome measures, not when a case is closed by a process measure. An urgent review of the new system is required. Comment on Australia's 2018 Royal Commission into Misconduct in Banking is equally applicable to the TGA: 'Essentially a failure to enforce the law undermines the authority of the regulator whose fundamental responsibility is to do just that.' It also encourages others to break the law, leading to a race to the bottom and consumer detriment.What is known about the topic?The previous co-regulatory system for complementary medicines was the subject of long-standing criticism and high levels of regulatory non-compliance. The new system, operated solely by the TGA, was meant to overcome these problems.What does this paper add?High levels of advertising complaints persist. The TGA was unable to close many higher-priority complaints within the time frame set by its KPIs. These complaints involved serious breaches of the Therapeutic Goods Act 1989 (Cwlth), which can attract both civil and (strict liability) criminal penalties. However, in most cases compliance was achieved by negotiation. The TGA met its KPIs for virtually all complaints it classified as low priority because these were closed by merely sending an obligations letter with no follow-up.What are the implications for practitioners?The persisting high levels of regulatory violation mean that practitioners cannot trust the claims made for complementary medicines or give good advice. In addition, consumers are wasting their money on useless products and are diverted from seeking more evidence-based remedies.


By mapping the strong interaction between Rydberg excitations in ultra-cold atomic ensembles onto single photons via electromagnetically induced transparency, it is now possible to realize a medium which exhibits a strong optical nonlinearity at the level of individual photons. We review the theoretical concepts and the experimental state-of-the-art of this exciting new field, and discuss first applications in the field of all-optical quantum information processing.


The last two decades have seen considerable efforts directed towards making electronic health records interoperable through improvements in medical ontologies, terminologies and coding systems. Unfortunately, these efforts have been hampered by a number of influential ideas inherited from the work of Eugen Wüster, the father of terminology standardization and the founder of ISO TC 37. We here survey Wüster's ideas – which see terminology work as being focused on the classification of concepts in people's minds – and we argue that they serve still as the basis for a series of influential confusions. We argue further that an ontology based unambiguously, not on concepts, but on the classification of entities in reality can, by removing these confusions, make a vital contribution to ensuring the interoperability of coding systems and healthcare records in the future.


Abstract. We present the third generation of the coupled chemistry–climate model (CCM) SOCOL (modeling tools for studies of SOlar Climate Ozone Links). The most notable modifications compared to the previous model version are (1) the dynamical core has been updated with the fifth generation of the middle-atmosphere general circulation model MA-ECHAM (European Centre/HAMburg climate model), and (2) the advection of the chemical species is now calculated by a mass-conserving and shape-preserving flux-form transport scheme instead of the previously used hybrid advection scheme. The whole chemistry code has been rewritten according to the ECHAM5 infrastructure and transferred to Fortran95. In contrast to its predecessors, SOCOLvs3 is now fully parallelized. The performance of the new SOCOL version is evaluated on the basis of transient model simulations (1975–2004) with different horizontal (T31 and T42) resolutions, following the approach of the CCMVal-1 model validation activity. The advanced advection scheme significantly reduces the artificial loss and accumulation of tracer mass in regions with strong gradients that was observed in previous model versions. Compared to its predecessors, SOCOLvs3 generally shows more realistic distributions of chemical trace species, especially of total inorganic chlorine, in terms of the mean state, but also of the annual and interannual variability. Advancements with respect to model dynamics are for example a better representation of the stratospheric mean state in spring, especially in the Southern Hemisphere, and a slowdown of the upward propagation in the tropical lower stratosphere. Despite a large number of improvements model deficiencies still remain. Examples include a too-fast vertical ascent and/or horizontal mixing in the tropical stratosphere, the cold temperature bias in the lowermost polar stratosphere, and the overestimation of polar total ozone loss during Antarctic springtime.


We study two calibration problems for the lognormal SABR model using the moment method and some new formulae for the moments of the logarithm of the forward prices/rates variable. The lognormal SABR model is a special case of the SABR model [1]. The acronym "SABR" means "Stochastic-αβρ" and comes from the original names of the model parameters (i.e., α,β,ρ) [1]. The SABR model is a system of two stochastic differential equations widely used in mathematical finance whose independent variable is time and whose dependent variables are the forward prices/rates and the associated stochastic volatility. The lognormal SABR model corresponds to the choice β = 1 and depends on three quantities: the parameters  α,ρ and the initial stochastic volatility. In fact the initial stochastic volatility cannot be observed and can be regarded as a parameter. A calibration problem is an inverse problem that consists in determineing the values of these three parameters starting from a set of data. We consider two different sets of data, that is: i) the set of the forward prices/rates observed at a given time on multiple independent trajectories of the lognormal SABR model, ii) the set of the forward prices/rates observed on a discrete set of known time values along a single trajectory of the lognormal SABR model. The calibration problems corresponding to these two sets of data are formulated as constrained nonlinear least-squares problems and are solved numerically. The formulation of these nonlinear least-squares problems is based on some new formulae for the moments of the logarithm of the forward prices/rates. Note that in the financial markets the first set of data considered is hardly available while the second set of data is of common use and corresponds simply to the time series of the observed forward prices/rates. As a consequence the first calibration problem although realistic in several contexts of science and engineering is of limited interest in finance while the second calibration problem is of practical use in finance (and elsewhere). The formulation of these calibration problems and the methods used to solve them are tested on synthetic and on real data. The real data studied are the data belonging to a time series of exchange rates between currencies (euro/U.S. dollar exchange rates).


AgRP neurons in the arcuate nucleus of the hypothalamus (ARC) coordinate homeostatic changes in appetite associated with fluctuations in food availability and leptin signaling. Identifying the relevant transcriptional regulatory pathways in these neurons has been a priority, yet such attempts have been stymied due to their low abundance and the rich cellular diversity of the ARC. Here we generated AgRP neuron-specific transcriptomic and chromatin accessibility profiles during opposing states of fasting-induced hunger and leptin-induced hunger suppression. Cis-regulatory analysis of these integrated datasets enabled the identification of 28 putative hunger-promoting and 29 putative hunger-suppressing transcriptional regulators in AgRP neurons, 16 of which were predicted to be transcriptional effectors of leptin. Within our dataset, Interferon regulatory factor 3 (IRF3) emerged as a leading candidate mediator of leptin-induced hunger-suppression. Gain- and loss-of-function experiments in vivo confirm the role of IRF3 in mediating the acute satiety-evoking effects of leptin in AgRP neurons, while live-cell imaging in vitro indicate that leptin can activate neuronal IRF3 in a cell autonomous manner. Finally, we employ CUT&RUN to uncover direct transcriptional targets of IRF3 in AgRP neurons in vivo. Thus, our findings identify AgRP neuron-expressed IRF3 as a key transcriptional effector of the hunger-suppressing effects of leptin.


Unlike most other endogenous messengers that are deposited in vesicles, processed on demand and/or secreted in a regulated fashion, NO (nitric oxide) is a highly active molecule that readily diffuses through cell membranes and thus cannot be stored inside the producing cell. Rather, its signalling capacity must be controlled at the levels of biosynthesis and local availability. The importance of temporal and spatial control of NO production is highlighted by the finding that differential localization of NO synthases in cardiomyocytes translates into distinct effects of NO in the heart. Thus NO synthases belong to the most tightly controlled enzymes, being regulated at transcriptional and translational levels, through co- and post-translational modifications, by substrate availability and not least via specific sorting to subcellular compartments, where they are in close proximity to their target proteins. Considerable efforts have been made to elucidate the molecular mechanisms that underlie the intracellular targeting and trafficking of NO synthases, to ultimately understand the cellular pathways controlling the formation and function of this powerful signalling molecule. In the present review, we discuss the mechanisms and triggers for subcellular routing and dynamic redistribution of NO synthases and the ensuing consequences for NO production and action.


Summary Glyphosate-resistant (GR) Palmer amaranth has become a serious challenge for soybean producers in the mid-south and central United States, including Kansas. Field experiments were conducted at the Kansas State University Agricultural Research Center (KSU-ARC) near Hays, KS, and Kansas State University Ashland Bottoms (KSU-AB) research farm near Manhattan, KS, to determine the effectiveness of preemergence (PRE) and PRE followed by ( fb ) postemergence (POST) herbicide programs on GR Palmer amaranth control in Roundup Ready 2 Xtend soybean. The study site at Hays was infested with GR Palmer amaranth population prior to soybean planting; whereas, the Manhattan site had natural infestation of GR Palmer amaranth. Eleven treatments, including PRE alone and PRE fb POST-applied herbicides were investigated. All PRE treatments included Roundup PowerMax for control of other weed species, while POST treatments were mixtures of Roundup PowerMax and Engenia herbicides. A single PRE application of Fierce XLT and Panther PRO had ≥ 90% control of GR Palmer amaranth; whereas, control with Authority Elite and Zidua PRO did not exceed 83% at 6 weeks after POST (WAPOST). Combined over two locations, all PRE fb POST treatments had excellent control (≥ 96%) of GR Palmer amaranth at 6 WAPOST. No significant differences for soybean grain yield were observed among herbicide treatments at the Hays site; whereas, an approximate 10% increase in grain yield was observed with PRE fb POST vs. PRE alone programs at the Manhattan site. Based on these results, the two-pass programs (PRE fb POST) investigated in this research can be effectively used for season-long control of GR Palmer amaranth in Roundup Ready 2 Xtend soybean.


Web applications with complex interfaces consisting of multiple input fields should understand free-text queries. We propose a probabilistic approach to map parts of a free-text query to the fields of a complex web form. Our method uses token models rather than only static dictionaries to create this mapping, offering greater flexibility and requiring less domain knowledge than existing systems. We evaluate different implementations of our mapping model and show that our system effectively maps free-text queries without using a dictionary. If a dictionary is available, the performance increases and is significantly better than a rule-based baseline.


The Bader's topological analysis of the electron density obtained via ab initio quantum mechanical simulation at Hartree–Fock and DFT level has been performed for experimentally in situ heated structures of enstatite–protoenstatite MgSiO 3 . The measurements have been performed in the temperature range 1200–1400 K. The work was aimed at characterizing both the evolution of the electron arrangement in the crystal and that of the crystal-structure at the enstatite–protoenstatite phase transition in terms of topology of the electron density, with particular care about the Mg–O and the O–O bonds. The observed breaking of some chemical bonds with increasing temperature and/or due to the phase transformation have been explained, for the first time, in the light of a topological mechanism based on the Catastrophe Theory applied to the framework of the Bader's theory.


The essay reflects on political pressures exerted by and on scientists and technologists acting as advisors on political and economic matters of the high north.It uses two case studies to do this. One consists in the group of scientists from several nations who engaged as advisors to their foreign offices in the process leading up tothe ratification of the Spitsbergen/Svalbard treaty in 1920. The focus is on the discourse regarding hunting, mining and nature protections on these islands. The second case is the way technologists and geological scientists were engaged in the industrialisation of the USSR. These contexts of course differ in scale and in many other ways but are similar in certain respects. The discussion is centred on the problems of technocracy which is commented based on the Frankfurt school's elaborations on the open society and differing interpretations of technological determinism. This is related further to contemporary contentions over the balance between scientific based environmental stewardship and technological management in northern raw material extraction.


Parenting and other aspects of family functioning are widely understood to shape youth outcomes in areas such as academic performance and juvenile delinquency. Less is known, however, about how parent and extended family involvement may influence outcomes for justice-involved youth in tribal communities. This brief explores the perspectives of youth, parents, program staff, and stakeholders involved with Tribal Juvenile Detention and Reentry Green Demonstration ("Green Reentry") programs in three tribes funded by the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP). We briefly review prior research and theory on parent involvement and youth academic and delinquency-related outcomes in tribal and mainstream U.S. contexts; describe the Green Reentry initiative; and present qualitative perspectives on how parent and family involvement shape outcomes among youth in tribal communities.


The detection of thiol-containing amino acids, particularly L-cysteine (L-CySH), without any interference from other biochemicals is a challenging research interest in electroanalytical chemistry. Amongst various electrodes, the nanogold modified electrode has been reported to be effective for low potential electrochemical oxidation (∼0 V vs. Ag/AgCl) and sensing of L-CySH. Herein, we report a conductive carbon black (CB, CL-08) modified glassy carbon electrode (GCE/CL-08) with a high surface area (1000 m2 g−1), prepared by a simple drop-casting technique for efficient electrocatalytic oxidation at the lowest oxidation potential, −0.13 V vs. Ag/AgCl, and sensing of L-CySH in a pH 6.65 phosphate buffer solution. The trace metal impurities such as Ni (0.18 wt%) and Fe (0.42 wt%) in CL-08 are found to be key for such unique and unusual electrocatalytic property observed in this study. Compared with the multiwalled carbon nanotube and graphite powder modified electrodes, the GCE/CL-08 showed about 400 mV reduction in the oxidation potential and twenty times enhancement in the current signal for the CySH. A chronoamperometry detection of L-CySH on the GCE/CL-08 at an applied potential = −0.13 V vs. Ag/AgCl yielded a current linearity from 50 to 700 μM with a LOD = 45.87 nM. There are no interferences by common biochemicals such as ascorbic acid, dopamine, uric acid, xanthine, hypoxanthine and homo-cysteine on the L-CySH oxidation potential. Selective chronoamperometric detection of L-CySH in the blood serum demonstrated ∼100% recovery value as a validation for the present protocol.


The present dissertation deals with initial synchronization in Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA) networks. In the first part of this thesis an extensive and up-to-date review of the literature is presented.The basic theory of code acquisition as well as different techniques and structures used to achieve the initial synchronization are discussed. A survey of the most common theoretical approaches allowing performance characterization of the acquisition process is included. The effect of noise, interference, carrier Doppler, multipath propagation, fading and data modulation on system performance are reviewed. Advanced code acquisition approaches exploiting interference suppression techniques and multiple antennas are also described. A summary of the results obtained within the area of code acquisition in CDMA networks is also embraced by this thesis. The distinctive assumption is to consider the actual variable effect of multiple access interference on the delay-domain search process, instead of the usual constant approximation. Three directions of research are followed. Models for code acquisition in quasisynchronous and asynchronous CDMA networks are first developed and analysed. Closed-form expressions for the main performance figures of the acquisition process are derived and analysed. Results show a strong dependence of the mean acquisition time with the nature of the multiple access interference. In the second area of research the previous results are extended to consider code acquisition with a multi-branch (Rake) receiver in a multipath channel. A generic model for Rake receiver code acquisition is considered and developed, in which the synchronization takes place in two phases. The first detected path is allocated to the first finger during the initial synchronization phase, whereas the remaining fingers are successively allocated to other available paths in the postinitial synchronization phase. Performance measures for this acquisition process are also derived and analysed. Finally, based on the use of an antenna array and beamforming techniques, conventional delay-domain code acquisition is extended to the angular domain, resulting in a twodimensional (delay-angle) search. This technique is found to be feasible, outperforming the synchronization approach exploiting a single-antenna. It is found that there exists an optimal number of antennas that minimises the mean acquisition time. Two-dimensional code acquisition is studied in a variety of scenarios, including single and multipath channels, fixed and fading channels, and with uniform and nonuniform spatial distributions of interference. Different two-dimensional search strategies are studied. A clear dependence of acquisition performance with the search strategy and the particular distribution of interference is pointed out. The performance of two-dimensional code acquisition is found to be seriously deteriorated by the presence of spatially nonuniform interference. Schemes based on search strategy and adaptive detector structures are considered and analysed to combat the performance degradation in the mentioned case. A comparative study of code acquisition exploiting multiple antennas is also presented.


Inactivation of the tumour suppressor p53 is central to carcinogenesis and acquisition of resistance to drug-induced apoptosis. The majority of alterations are missense mutations and occur within the DNA-binding domain. However, little is known about the point mutations in the tetramerization domain (TD). Here we investigated the properties of a new p53 mutant (Lys 351 to Asn) in the TD identified in a cisplatin-resistant ovarian carcinoma cell line (A2780 CIS). We found that K351N substitution significantly reduces the thermodynamic stability of p53 tetramers without affecting the overall half-life of the protein. Moreover, p53 K351N has a reduced ability to bind DNA and to trans-activate its specific target gene promoters, such as bax. Data obtained from the analysis of p53 subcellular localization revealed that K351N mutation inhibits the nuclear export of p53 and accumulation in the cytoplasm induced by cisplatin treatment. These results identify p53 K351N as a new cancer associated mutant with reduced tumour suppressor activity and altered functions in response to apoptotic stimuli.


The Internet is increasingly being used for serious transactions involving money and goods. However, there hardly exists any means for users of Internet transactions to obtain third-party verifiable evidence of the transactions in which they participate. As a solution to this problem, we propose the use of a semi-trusted third party, called a digital witness, that can provide unforgeable transaction evidence without ever seeing the transaction contents. The witness is attached to secure communication sessions in an unintrusive manner: it requires no changes to existing servers or protocols. The key idea in enabling such a witness service is a novel algorithm that splits the computation of a message authentication code (MAC) between the client and the witness. We have implemented a prototype witness, tested it with real web sites and measured its performance. The experimental results show that the overhead of a witness is comparable to that of a web proxy. Therefore, the witness design can be implemented reasonably efficiently in practice.


Crop farming in India is labour intensive and obsolete. Farming is still dependent on techniques which were evolved hundreds of years ago and doesn't take care of conservation of resources. The newer scenario of decreasing water tables, drying up of rivers and tanks, unpredictable environment present an urgent need of proper utilization of water. We have the technology to bridge the gap between water usage and water wastage. Technology used in some developed countries is too expensive and complicated for a common farmer to understand. Our project is to give cheap, reliable, cost efficient and easy to use technology which would help in conservation of resources such as water and also in automatizing farms. We proposed use of temperature and moisture sensor at suitable locations for monitoring of crops. The sensing system is based on a feedback control mechanism with a centralized control unit which regulates the flow of water on to the field in the real time based on the instantaneous temperature and moisture values. The sensor data would be collected in a central processing unit which would take further action. Thus by providing right amount of water we would increase the efficiency of the farm. The farmer can also look at the sensory data and decide course of action himself. We have made the interface of our project keeping in view the educational and financial background of average Indian farmer. In this paper we are proposed a low cost and efficient wireless sensor network technique to acquire the soil moisture and temperature from various locations of farm and as per the need of crop controller take the decision to make irrigation ON or OFF.


Is science the only path to knowledge? In this sparkling and provocative book, Jonah Lehrer explains that when it comes to understanding the brain, art got there first. Taking a group of celebrated writers, painters and composers, Lehrer shows us how artists have discovered truths about the human mind - real, tangible truths - that science is only now rediscovering. We learn, for example, how Proust first revealed the fallibility of memory; how George Eliot understood the brain's malleability; how the French chef Escoffier intuited umami (the fifth taste); how Cezanne worked out the subtleties of vision; and how Virginia Woolf pierced the mysteries of consciousness. It's a riveting tale of art trumping science again and again.


A simple tapered fiber based photonic-plasmonic hybrid nanostructure composed of a thin tapered fiber and a pseudoisocyanine (PIC)-attached Au-coated tip was demonstrated. Using this simple hybrid nanostructure, we succeeded in observing two-photon excited fluorescence from the PIC dye molecules under a weak continuous wave excitation condition. From the results of the tip-fiber distance dependence and excitation polarization dependence, we found that using a thin tapered fiber and an Au-coated tip realized efficient coupling of the incident light (~95%) and LSP excitation at the Au-coated tip, suggesting the possibility of efficiently inducing two-photon excited fluorescence from the PIC dye molecules attached on the Au-coated tip. This simple photonic-plasmonic hybrid system is one of the promising tools for single photon sources, highly efficient plasmonic sensors, and integrated nonlinear plasmonic devices.


A microwave imaging sensor that measures the signal transmitted through a board was investigated with respect to the ability to predict the distribution of moisture and density in sawn lumber. Furthermore, the response from the sensor was related to strength properties of the boards. Multivariate statistics was used to relate the measured variables to various properties. A finite element model based on X-ray computed tomography images was developed to describe the interactions between microwaves and wood. The model made it possible to simulate the response from the sensor under varying conditions. The results show that microwaves can be used for prediction of density and moisture content. They can also be used for prediction of strength properties, mainly from the correlation to density, but also from the influence on microwaves of structural variations in the wood. The finite element model is useful in the evaluation of microwave sensors for wood, drying equipment or other applications where electromagnetic waves interact with wood.


Fresh volcanic glasses in the form of melt inclusions within quartz phenocrysts are commonly present in Paleozoic K-bentonites from New York State, Iowa, Kentucky, Pennsylvania, Newfoundland, and Quebec. Because these glasses are compositionally distinct from one layerto another, their geochemistry can be used to define chronostratigraphic horizons. In New York State, the K-bentonites occur within flat-lying, calcareous black shales of the Middle Ordovician Utica Formation. This glass has survived (1) because it has been sealed within a host crystal that is stable under most diagenetic conditions, and (2) because of the modest burial depths the Ordovician strata in this region. To demonstrate the potential of these volcanic glasses for stratigraphic correlations, isochronous surfaces have been established among three localities separated by 35 km. The immaculate preservation of these Ordovician glasses bodes well for the general application of this approach to younger, and perhaps even older, strata where geologic conditions have favored the survival of glass inclusions.


During late 2013 and early 2014, the Northern Hemisphere of Mars faced Earth. This provided a prime opportunity for studying its North Polar Cap (NPC). The writer measured the cap size during the intervals 30° < Ls < 70° and 82° < Ls < 134°. (The areocentric longitude of the Sun from Mars is designated as Ls and it determines the seasons on that planet; essentially, the beginning of the northern spring, summer, fall and winter are at Ls = 0°, 90°, 180° and 270°). NPC latitude measurements were made with the software package WinJupos. The mean latitudes were measured for 23 four-degree intervals of Ls. Wilcoxon Signed Rank Tests at the 90% confidence level are consistent with there being no statistical difference between the NPC in 2000 and both 2013 and 2011-2012 for 30° < Ls < 70°. Based on this same test there is a statistical difference for the NPC in 2002 and 2009-2010 compared to 2000. Therefore, it is concluded that the NPC may show interannual differences. Essentially, the NPC stopped shrinking at Ls = 82°. Its mean latitude for 82° < Ls < 134° was 81.9° ± 0.3° which is equivalent to a mean radius of 480 ± 18 km. This is nearly the same value that was measured between 1905 and 1971.


Area and volume values of buildings and building parts have been used in many applications including taxation, valuation and land use planning. Many countries maintain a national standard for representing the measurements of floor areas in buildings. The national standards generally use similar basis for measuring building floor areas, in fact, areas specified in national standards often have semantic differences. Therefore, a number of international standards have been developed for harmonizing floor area measurements; however, they also have differences. This study aims at harmonizing the floor areas defined in the international property measurement standards by revealing the semantic relations between them and formalizing them with an ontological approach. To achieve this objective, the international property measurement standards were firstly examined in order to identify semantics, principles and practices in floor area measurements. Then, the obtained information were utilized to develop a set of measurement ontologies for harmonizing the property measurement standards. This paper also investigates 3D data standards to reveal whether they can be utilized for realizing the property measurement standards.


Before blood tests, DNA testing, and close record keeping, resemblance was often utilized as the means through which paternity was secured. However, on what basis does a child look like his father? The answer to this question is dependent upon an ever shifting set of criteria and authoritative voice, all of which affect the child's physical appearance. This article explores the rich rhetorical strategies medieval Muslim physicians and scholars adopt to establish paternity through the generation and determination of like features between fathers and children. I argue that such strategies are informed by broader assumptions about male/female anatomy, wayward parental behavior, notions of piety, and the inherent fragility of masculinity and the patriarchal household. Observations for this discussion are drawn from a variety of medieval Muslim medical texts, bestiaries, ḥadīth collections, and other legal and theological treatises.


Context Cloud Computing is the new trend in the IT industry. Traditionally obtaining servers was quiet time consuming for companies. The whole process of research on what kind of hardware to buy, get budget approval, purchase the hardware and get access to the servers could take weeks or months. In order to save time and reduce expenses, most companies are moving towards the cloud. One of the known cloud providers is Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2). Amazon EC2 makes it easy for companies to obtain virtual servers (known as computer instances) in a cloud quickly and inexpensively. Another advantage of using Amazon EC2 is the flexibility that they offer, so the companies can even import/export the Virtual Machines (VM) that they have built which meets the companies IT security, configuration, management and compliance requirements into Amazon EC2.Objectives In this thesis, we investigate importing a VM running on VMware into Amazon EC2. In addition, we make a performance comparison between a VM running on VMware and the VM with same image running on Amazon EC2.Methods A Case study research has been done to select a persistent method to migrate VMware VMs to Amazon EC2. In addition an experimental research is conducted to measure the performance of Virtual Machine running on VMware and compare it with same Virtual Machine running on EC2. We measure the performance in terms of CPU, memory utilization as well as disk read/write speed using well-known open-source benchmarks from Phoronix Test Suite (PTS).Results Investigation on importing VM snapshots (VMDK, VHD and RAW format) to EC2 was done using three methods provided by AWS. Comparison of performance was done by running each benchmark for 25 times on each Virtual Machine.Conclusions Importing VM to EC2 was successful only with RAW format and replication was not successful as AWS installs some software and drivers while importing the VM to EC2. Migrated EC2 VM performs better than on premise VMware VM in terms of CPU, memory utilization and disk read/write speed.


This paper seeks to discuss Southeast Asia's armed forces and their political impact on their respective societies in the light of the deepening transnationalization process in the region. It shall outline the points of similarity that broadly identify the nature of these military establishments in the regional context. It shall also indicate the distinctions among these armed forces to stress the fact that no armed forces are entirely similar to the others. Armed forces occupy important positions in State apparatuses. They are part and parcel of the State leadership and the decision making power bloc. The extent of their corporate interests spans not just the State but also the whole society. They influence State internal policies and external relations. Anti-communism has been the most enduring ideological value/belief among armed forces in the region. Most of them are organically linked with the United States and other Western powers.


Many scientists use the Internet to present themselves and their work. The content they create could be used to improve the awareness and communication within the scientific community. This requires a sound understanding of the contents on scientists' profiles, especially with regard to their structure. Existing literature offers mostly basic categorisation, focusing only on single platforms. This article presents a study of scientists' profiles on institutional and private Web pages, social networking services, blogs, and microblogs. The aim of the study was to describe structures within the profile contents. For this purpose, 79 profiles belonging to 15 German scientists were identified and analysed using the constructivist grounded theory method. The result was a framework, suitable for structuring and further analysis of scientists' profiles. The framework describes three levels for the study of profiles: profile networks, profile instances, and content units. The content on the profiles can be classified with regard to its type, verbosity, and placement. The developed framework serves as a basic structure for further research into scientists' online self–presentation.


In the thirty years leading into Civil War, orators delivered hundreds of addresses to college literary societies throughout the United States. Those addresses, which were frequently given by lawyers, lawyer-trained politicians, and judges, condensed the orators' ideas about law, history, economy, technology, and education together into a short compass. They provide an important and overlooked set of data for understanding how antebellum intellectuals saw law in relation to moral, technological, and economic progress. "The Republics of Liberty and Letters" focuses on thirty-four addresses given at the University of North Carolina from 1827 to 1860 to see how the orators dealt with ideas about the Union, law, and constitutionalism, along with the ubiquitous but vague trope of "progress." The addresses reveal strong support for Union, often framed in terms of support for the Constitution, and emphasize the positive role that speech has in shaping politics. They are more moderate in approach towards the era's conflict over slavery and Union than addresses at many neighboring schools. However, there were also points of divergence between the orators. The Whig orators and the Democrat orators, for instance, divided over the place of the educated, the importance of the rule of law, and the dangers posed by increasing democracy. The addresses, thus, reveal important points of convergence as well as division. "The Republics of Liberty and Letters" is primarily about the content of political and legal ideas at the University of North Carolina from the 1830s through the 1850s. Yet, it has implications for cataloging constitutional ideas and then tracing how they relate to constitutional culture. It invites further work on ideas in literary addresses at other schools, along with work on addresses given by lawyers, politicians, and judges in other venues -- like legislatures and courts. Those popular constitutional ideas can then be put together with "formal" constitutional law (law in the courts) and with legislative action, and in that way enrich our understanding of the sources and contours of constitutional history.


Now, for the first time ever, there is a study of the poetry of Charles of Orleans that considers together the English, French, and Latin versions of this large and important body of lyric. Charles was a captive in England following the battle of Agincourt, pulled literally from beneath a heap of bodies and armor. During his twenty-five-year imprisonment, Charles wrote hundreds of poems in French and English, including the over 6,500 lines that form the first single-author lyric book in English. Coldiron analyzes several aspects of the poetry's significance, including its positions in literary history and theory, and its unusual challenges to medieval and Renaissance period categories. This well-written book explores Charles's poetic subjectivity and also presents unprecedented original primary research on the poet's final manuscript, a French-Latin book in facing column format. With theoretical sophistication, literary sensitivity, a richly contextualizing comparative method, and common sense, Coldiron argues that these translations connect cultures, languages, and literary traditions that were undergoing a crucial moment of conflict and separation just before the Tudor period.This book will be useful to a wide range of literary scholars, particularly those interested in cross-cultural literary relations, comparative literature, or the history of poetry in French and English. Scholars of medieval and early-modern poetry and those interested in the history of literary translation will be particularly interested in the ground breaking work contained here, yet a wider scholarly readership will also find its insights and approaches applicable in many other areas of literary inquiry. Lucidly written, the book displays theoretical sophistication without jargon and makes a significant contribution to our understanding of this important but understudied figure, as well as to our understanding of early modern literary translation.A. E. B. Coldiron is Assistant Professor of English, Louisiana State University.


In thermodynamics one learns that there are four factors that lead to the degradation of energy. One of these factors is mixing. A classic example of mixing occurs when fresh water mixes with salt water in the ocean. The total attention of the world towards producing fresh water from ocean water is the use of desalination (usually reverse osmosis). This paper clearly demonstrates that this approach ignores a potentially much better solution by capturing fresh water before it mixes with ocean water. An example is taken showing the potential to provide the total agricultural needs for the state of California by using a small fraction of the Columbia River discharge into the Pacific Ocean and conveying it approximately 1130 km by an aqueduct to the Sacramento River that serves the agricultural district of California. The design of the aqueduct is done using the Manning formula for open channel flow. An optimization analysis is performed based on this formula to assess the optimum configuration and slope of the aqueduct, the cost of that aqueduct, the power consumed in transporting the water, and the total cost of the water delivered. These results are compared to the energy and monetary costs for providing water by desalination. It is shown that desalinated water costs more than ten times water delivered by the proposed method. The greenhouse emissions from the proposed method are only a fraction of that due to desalination. Finally, the cost of water delivered by the proposed method is less than 25% of current average US cost for water.