Metagenome – Processing and Analysis by Sheetal Gosrani Metagenome means "multiple genomes" and the study of culture independent genomic content in environment is called metagenomics. Because of the advent of powerful and economic next generation sequencing technology, sequencing has become cheaper and faster and thus the study of genes and phenotypes is transitioning from single organism to that of a community present in the natural environmental sample. Once sequence data are obtained from an environmental sample, the challenge is to process, assemble and bin the metagenome data in order to get as accurate and complete a representation of the populations present in the community or to get high confident draft assembly. In this paper we describe the existing bioinformatics workflow to process the metagenomic data. Next, we examine one way of parallelizing the sequence similarity program on a High Performance Computing (HPC) cluster since sequence similarity is the most common and frequently used technique throughout the metagenome data processing and analyzing steps. In order to address the challenges involved in analyzing the result file obtained from sequence similarity program, we developed a web application tool called Contig Analysis Tool (CAT). Later, we applied the tools and techniques to the real world virome metagenomic data i.e., to the genomes of all the viruses present in the environmental sample obtained from microbial mats derived from hot springs in Yellowstone National Park. There are several challenges associated with the assembly and binning of virome data particularly because of the following reasons: 1. Not many viral sequence data in the existing databases for sequence similarity. 2. No reference genome 3. No phylogenetic marker genes like the ones present in the bacteria and archaea. We will see how we overcame these problems by performing sequence similarity using CRISPR data and sequence composition using tetranucleotide analysis.


BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES
This study aimed to assess the knowledge of secondary school pupils in Osun state about HIV/AIDS and the sources of their information.

MATERIALS AND METHODS
A multistage random sampling technique was used to select 592 secondary school pupils from 5 local government areas of Osun state, Nigeria. A self-administered questionnaire was used which composed of questions on their knowledge and sources of information about HIV/AIDS.

RESULTS
About half believed that HIV can be contracted via mosquito bites and 53.7% believed via kissing. Half of the respondents agreed that a person who looks healthy can be infected and possess the ability to describe the look of an infected person. Majority (92.6%) claimed to have heard about HIV/AIDS prior to the study. More than half (67.8%) agreed that HIV/AIDS is a life-threatening disease, 29.4% said there is a cure for AIDS, and 77.6% thought that the government is doing enough to deal with the disease. The most important sources of HIV/AIDS information among the respondents were the media and the least important sources of information were the traditional healers (35.3%).

CONCLUSION
This study revealed a high-level misconception among secondary school pupils in Osun state, Nigeria. Mass media was the major source of information with doubtful effectiveness evidenced by obvious erroneous beliefs. An improved multisectorial approach in HIV/AIDS education with greater participation of school and public libraries is advised.


A method to monitor drug binding to proteins in cells may help in target validation and drug optimization. Drug efficacy depends on the extent of binding to a cellular target (often a protein) with adverse effects caused by excessive target binding or by off-target binding. Engagement of a target protein inside cells is influenced by the effective drug concentration and by factors that regulate the protein conformation, making it difficult to predict efficacy based on in vitro affinity studies. Martinez Molina et al. took advantage of the shift in protein thermal stability caused by drug binding to directly monitor target protein-drug interactions in cells. The method was used to monitor drug target engagement in cancer cells and in mouse livers and kidneys. D. Martinez Molina, R. Jafari, M. Ignatushchenko, T. Seki, E. A. Larsson, C. Dan, L. Sreekumar, Y. Cao, P. Nordlund, Monitoring drug target engagement in cells and tissues using the cellular thermal shift assay. Science 341, 84–87 (2013). [Abstract] [Full Text]


Pregel [23] was recently introduced as a scalable graph mining system that can provide significant performance improvements over traditional MapReduce implementations. Existing implementations focus primarily on graph partitioning as a preprocessing step to balance computation across compute nodes. In this paper, we examine the runtime characteristics of a Pregel system. We show that graph partitioning alone is insufficient for minimizing end-to-end computation. Especially where data is very large or the runtime behavior of the algorithm is unknown, an adaptive approach is needed. To this end, we introduce Mizan, a Pregel system that achieves efficient load balancing to better adapt to changes in computing needs. Unlike known implementations of Pregel, Mizan does not assume any a priori knowledge of the structure of the graph or behavior of the algorithm. Instead, it monitors the runtime characteristics of the system. Mizan then performs efficient fine-grained vertex migration to balance computation and communication. We have fully implemented Mizan; using extensive evaluation we show that---especially for highly-dynamic workloads---Mizan provides up to 84% improvement over techniques leveraging static graph pre-partitioning.


We evaluate the role of financial conditions as predictors of macroeconomic risk first in the quantile regression framework of Adrian et al. (2019b), which allows for non-linearities, and then in a novel linear semi-structural model as proposed by Hasenzagl et al. (2018). We distinguish between price variables such as credit spreads and stock variables such as leverage. We find that (i) although the spreads correlate with the left tail of the conditional distribution of GDP growth, they provide limited advanced information on growth vulnerability; (ii) nonfinancial leverage provides a leading signal for the left quantile of the GDP growth distribution in the 2008 recession; (iii) measures of excess leverage conceptually similar to the Basel gap, but cleaned from business cycle dynamics via the lenses of the semi-structural model, point to two peaks of accumulation of risks – the eighties and the first eight years of the new millennium, with an unstable relationship with business cycle chronology.


This volume seeks to advance and popularise the use of corpus-driven quantitative methods in the study of semantics. The first part presents state-of-the-art research in polysemy and synonymy from a Cognitive Linguistic perspective. The second part presents and explains in a didactic manner each of the statistical techniques used in the first part of the volume. A handbook both for linguists working with statistics in corpus research and for linguists in the fields of polysemy and synonymy.


A panel of members of the 2009 International Myeloma Workshop developed guidelines for risk stratification in multiple myeloma. The purpose of risk stratification is not to decide time of therapy but to prognosticate. There is general consensus that risk stratification is applicable to newly diagnosed patients; however, some genetic abnormalities characteristic of poor outcome at diagnosis may suggest poor outcome if only detected at the time of relapse. Thus, in good-risk patients, it is necessary to evaluate for high-risk features at relapse. Although detection of any cytogenetic abnormality is considered to suggest higher-risk disease, the specific abnormalities considered as poor risk are cytogenetically detected chromosomal 13 or 13q deletion, t(4;14) and del17p, and detection by fluorescence in situ hybridization of t(4;14), t(14;16), and del17p. Detection of 13q deletion by fluorescence in situ hybridization only, in absence of other abnormalities, is not considered a high-risk feature. High serum β(2)-microglobulin level and International Staging System stages II and III, incorporating high β(2)-microglobulin and low albumin, are considered to predict higher risk disease. There was a consensus that the high-risk features will change in the future, with introduction of other new agents or possibly new combinations.


Historical data sources, like medical records or biological collections, consist of unstructured heterogeneous content: handwritten text, different sizes and types of fonts, and text overlapped with lines, images, stamps, and sketches. The information these documents can provide is important, from a historical perspective and mainly because we can learn from it. The automatic digitization of these historical documents is a complex machine learning process that usually produces poor results, requiring costly interventions by experts, who have to transcribe and interpret the content. This paper describes hybrid (Human- and Machine-Intelligent) workflows for scientific data extraction, combining machine-learning and crowdsourcing software elements. Our results demonstrate that the mix of human and machine processes has advantages in data extraction time and quality, when compared to a machine-only workflow. More specifically, we show how OCRopus and Tesseract, two widely used open source Optical Character Recognition (OCR) tools, can improve their accuracy by more than 42%, when text areas are cropped by humans prior to OCR, while the total time can increase or decrease depending on the OCR selection. The digitization of 400 images, with Entomology, Bryophyte, and Lichen specimens, is evaluated following four different approaches: processing the whole specimen image (machine-only), processing crowd cropped labels (hybrid), processing crowd cropped fields (hybrid), and cleaning the machine-only output. As a secondary result, our experiments reveal differences in speed and quality between Tesseract and OCRopus.


Abstract. This paper intends to show basic strategies and technical solutions that may reduce the consequence of a volcanic eruption on buildings. One of the most dangerous eruptive phenomena is pyroclastic flow, a gas-solid mixture which can flow slope down up to reach considerable distances from the point of emission, with a speed that can easily exceed 100 km/h (~30 m/s). The damage caused by the impact on buildings depends on the combination of several factors: the duration of phenomenon, the temperature of flow and the pressure produced by the impact. The study tries to define a design-oriented approach of retrofitting and new construction with specific reference to the possible eruption of Vesuvio or Campi Flegrei in the Campania Region of Italy. For both red areas, which are directly affected by the flows, the Department of Civil Protection defined only one solution, that is the preventive evacuation. Whilst through the proposed mitigation strategy, the task is to establish a resilient sector within the red areas where buildings can withstand pressure and temperature in order to achieve both economic benefits and make reconstruction easier.


This thesis explores the relationship between skills, creativity and domain. It is situated within an evolving topic of design creativity; an emerging field that interfaces between creativity research, which has often occurred in the field of psychology, and design research often associated with the fields of engineering, art and design.

Through five interconnected studies, and the domain of graphic design as the basis for experimentation, the research culminates in testing the relationship between creative output and skills considered important for competent performance in graphic design.

How to assess graphic design creativity in a manner credible to both the creativity research and design research community has been a core challenge for this thesis. The method selected - the Consensual Assessment Technique (CAT) - before this thesis had yet to be used as a reliable measure of graphic design creativity in experimental research. For this reason, three of the studies were directed at establishing the reliability of the CAT.

• One undertook the first systematic literature review of the CAT in design research;
• a second tested the assumption that a graphic design CAT would show acceptable levels of inter-rater reliability (as researchers had found in other domains of design);
• a third focused on optimising the CAT to measure graphic design creativity.

Additionally, given the wide range of graphic design competencies available, a conceptual framework was developed to prioritise those most important, and suitable, for experimental study. Two were identified (mental visualisation, and written comprehension) and each was tested for its relationship to graphic design creativity.

Where other researchers have suggested or found a relationship, in this study, no significant correlations could be evidenced for either mental visualisation or written comprehension with creative output. Such a finding is likely counter-intuitive to many in art and design, thus, the implications of this study impact upon debates within design creativity research, design education, and graduate skill gaps for the Creative Industries.


Multirate systems, including M th-band filters and filter banks, have greatly facilitated the analysis, understanding and compression of signals. Polyphase structure plays an important role in the study of multirate systems due to the fact that it provides a parallel and very efficient implementation architecture. In this dissertation, some polyphase structure-based approaches for the design and implementation of M th-band filters as well as filter banks are presented. The emphasis is placed on the development of new structures that satisfy certain constraints and having low computational complexity. A design algorithm for M th-band filters is first presented based on the generalized polyphase (GP) structure. Both the interpolation and linear-phase conditions are incorporated in the proposed GP realization of M th-band filters. By deriving a closed-form frequency response specification for each of the constituent filters in the GP structure, the design of the original large-tap FIR filter is simplified to the design of short-length constituent filters to reduce the overall design complexity. The GP-based approach is then extended for the design of M th-band filters meeting certain regularity requirements. To show the wide applicability of the proposed method, the design of 2-D M th-band filters via the GP structure is also considered. It is shown that by applying the singular-value decomposition (SVD) to each 2-D subfilter in the GP structure, the implementation complexity of the overall 2-D filter can be significantly reduced without introducing a large error. The second part of the dissertation is concerned with the development of new lattice structures for perfect reconstruction filter banks (PRFBs) with certain constraints, such as the linear-phase (LP) and the minor-image symmetry (MIS). The innovative work is based on the polyphase matrix representation of the analysis and synthesis filters, and a key idea of devising basic building blocks that are capable of propagating the desirable symmetry properties while being cascaded to generate the required lattice structures. Due to the added constraints, the resulting lattice structures have fewer parameters, leading to a speedy optimization design and a reduction in the heavy implementation burden. It is proved that there exists a complete and minimal lattice structure for MIS-PRFBs. It is shown that a class of well-known filter banks, namely, the cosine-modulated filter banks (CMFBs), is a subclass of MIS-PRFBs, whose non-singular matrices are of sparse coefficients. By introducing more prototype filters, in conjunction with a proper modulation, new CMFBs with more parameters are generated. Combining the linear-phase and mirror-image symmetries, a lattice structure with further reduced number of parameters is also developed for MIS-LPPRFB. The designed MIS-LPPRFB is then utilized as a block transform for image compression coding. Simulation results show that the MIS-LPPRFB, despite its reduced number of parameters, offers a competitive performance in terms of both the visual quality and the peak signal-to-noise ratio for various images under a wide range of compression ratios


Summary 1. To determine the mechanisms by which metal hyperaccumulation in plants could provide a chemical defence against insect herbivores, the feeding behaviour and performance of the desert locust, Schistocerca gregaria (Forskal), was investigated on plants of Thlaspi caerulescens J. & C. Presl containing different zinc concentrations, as well as on artificial food differing only in Zn content. 2. In choice experiments, locusts preferred T. caerulescens plants containing low foliar Zn concentrations (mean value 0·42 mg g − 1 dry biomass) compared with intermediate (1·50 mg g − 1 ) or high (5·77 mg g − 1 ) Zn concentrations. In no-choice experiments, there was no difference in the duration of the first meal, suggesting that locusts could not taste Zn directly, but total time spent feeding, amount of foliage eaten, and locust growth rate all decreased as foliar Zn concentration increased. 3. When presented with artificial food containing Zn concentrations of 0·5, 1·5 or 5·5 mg g − 1 , locusts fed at a slower rate on intermediate- and high-Zn diets, and their development time from fourth to fifth stadium was proportionately longer. The total amount of food eaten over the fourth stadium was similar for the different treatments, but locust mass gain was inversely related to Zn concentration in the diet. This was reflected in lower nutrient-utilization efficiencies in locusts on a high-Zn diet. 4. In choice experiments with artificial food, locusts showed very similar feeding behaviour to that on plants, consuming more of the low-Zn food. Experiments using food flavoured with coumarin, provided with or without Zn, showed that the locusts' aversion to Zn develops by a post-ingestive feedback mechanism involving associative learning. 5. These results support the notion that metal hyperaccumulation in plants can provide a defence against insect herbivores, and demonstrate that metal concentration per se can account for the deterrent effect of high-Zn foods. Aversion responses were evoked by Zn concentrations in the range 0·5‐5 mg g − 1 , an order of magnitude lower than those commonly observed in the foliage of T. caerulescens . This suggests that comparatively small elevations in Zn concentration could confer an adaptive advantage on plants by influencing the feeding behaviour of polyphagous insect herbivores, thereby contributing to evolution of the metal-hyperaccumulation trait.


This article considers the legal and policy deliberations on gene patenting that have occurred since the issue came to the fore in the early 1990s. The analysis is contextualised with brief overviews of the science of genetics and genomics and the law of patents. Legislation, administrative guidelines and case law are analysed, focusing on the jurisdictions of Australia, the US and the UK. This article concludes that, despite ongoing legal and policy developments, clear guidance as to the legality of gene patents remains elusive. It is obviously desirable to have proper and certain gene patenting laws. In time, this is likely to happen. In the interim, it is argued that other mechanisms are also available for dealing with gene patents, negating the desirability of a radical overhaul of gene patenting laws.


Families who immigrate with school-aged children face two particular challenges: the practice of parenting in general and the practice of parenting in an unfamiliar or acculturating school environment. It is on these challenges that an emerging professional group is working in Quebec. Specifically, it is the group of intercultural community workers in schools (ICSI). This group supports the social and educational experiences of immigrant families, facilitating collaborations between schools, families and communities. This article explores the practices of ICSI that stimulate the effective accompaniment of parents of recent immigrant students. Through a qualitative exploratory approach, semi-structured interviews were conducted with three ICSIs from different administrative regions. The results show the relevance of implanting a welcome protocol to better accompany these parents. They also help understand the evolution of the relation between these parents and school, according to the adjustments of their family project and the challenges raised by their settlement in the host society.


Message passing systems support the applications of concurrent events, where independent or semi-independent events occur simultaneously in a nondeterministic fashion. The nature of independence, random interactions and concurrency made the code development of such applications complicated and error-prone. Conventional code development environments or IDEs, such as Microsoft Visual Studio, provide little programming support in this regard. Furthermore, ensuring the correctness of a message passing system is a challenge. Typically, it is important to guarantee that a system meets its desired specifications along its construction process. Model checking is one of the techniques used in software verification which has proven to be effective in discovering hidden design and implementation errors. The required advanced knowledge of formal methods and temporal languages is one of the impediments in adopting model checking by software developers. To integrate model checking environments and conventional IDEs, this dissertation proposes a multi-phase development framework that facilitates designing, verifying, implementing and debugging state-based message passing systems. The techniques and design principles of the proposed framework focus on improving and easing the software development experience. In the first phase, a two-level design methodology is proposed through using abstract high-level communication blocks and hierarchical state-behavioral descriptions that were developed in this research. In the second phase, a new method based on choosing from a pre-determined set of patterns in concurrent communication properties is proposed to facilitate collecting the essential specifications of the system where the atomic propositions are linked with the system design. A complex property can be attained by hierarchically nesting some of these patterns. A procedure to automatically generate formal models in a model checker (MC) language is proposed. Once the model that contains both the design and the properties of the system are generated, a model checker is used to verify the correctness of the proposed system and ensure its compliance with specifications. To help in locating the source of an undesired specification, if any, a procedure to map a counter example generated by the MC to the original design is presented. In the third phase, a skeleton code of the design specification is generated in a general programming language such as Microsoft C#, Java, etc. moreover, the ability to debug the generated code using a conventional IDE while tracing the debugging process back to the original design was established. Finally, a graphical software tool that supports the proposed framework is developed where SPIN MC is used as a verifier. The tool was used to develop and verify several case studies. The proposed framework and the developed software tool can be considered a key solution for message passing systems design and verification.


The last third of the nineteenth century saw the world in flux. Science vied with religion to represent the soul of man, and technological advances opened the possibility of new ways of living. Yet as the world sank into a long depression, untrammelled capitalism continued to stretch the gulf between rich and poor. From Russia to America, across Western Europe and beyond, governments already unsettled by major shifts in geopolitical power were threatened by growing social unrest and the rise of socialism. And looming over them was the spectre of the Anarchist and the shadow of international terrorism. A Tsar and an Empress, Presidents and plutocrats were all vulnerable to the assassin's bombs and bullets, but so too was bourgeois society in its cafes and opera houses. It was a new kind of Terror that could strike anywhere and that permeated deep into the imagination of the times. Its true weapon, though, was not dynamite but fear itself: a fact quickly grasped by those whose job it was to protect the powerful. Yet in a credulous age, when hoaxers and forgers thrived, the fictions spun by police chiefs and their agent provocateurs were often no less beguiling. And out of the short-term actions of these forgotten individuals grew the noxious delusions of worldwide conspiracy that would poison the century to come. A masterly exploration of the strange twists and turns of history, "The World That Never Was" follows the interweaving lives of several key anarchists, and of the secret police who tracked them. Framed by the Paris Commune of 1871 and the 1905 revolution in St Petersburg, and spread across five continents, their's is the story of a generation that saw the dream of Utopia crumble, to be replaced by a dangerous desperation. Here is a revelatory portrait of an era with uncanny echoes of our own.


Background: Fitness is defined in the health context as a state of good health or physical condition, primarily as a result of exercise and proper nutrition. Conventional methods of measuring fitness are expensive, time consuming and require specialised methods. There is a need for noninvasive, fast methods of assessing health-related fitness and activity in athlete and non-athlete populations. The aim of this study was to establish any correlation between participants' self-assessed health-related fitness (HRF) index and the HRF index determined by sports scientists, as well as the laboratory-assessed HRF index and maximum oxygen uptake (VO2max) determined by sports scientists via direct methods in a laboratory, and finally, to determine any potential correlation between an activity-recall questionnaire (Kasari) and VO2max. Method: The participants consisted of 169 male and female volunteers between the ages of 18 and 55 years, taking neither supplements nor medication. The University of Pretoria's HRF index protocol was first carried out by participants on their own at home, and then in the laboratory under the supervision of sport scientists. The complete datasets of 150 participants were statistically analysed to establish correlations. Results: The results indicated highly significant and substantial correlations (ρ = 0.696, p < 0.001) between the participants' self-assessed HRF index and measurements by the sports scientists. There were moderate correlations between the laboratory-assessed HRF index and the direct VO2max (ρ = 0.512, p < 0.005), as well as the indirect VO2max (ρ = 0.588; p < 0.001). A significant correlation was found between the self-assessed HRF index and the indirect VO2max (ρ = 0.454; p < 0.001). The Kasari questionnaire correlated only weakly with the indirect VO2max (ρ = 0.278, p < 0.002) and not at all with the direct VO2max (ρ = 0.072, p < 0.731). Conclusion: Indications are that this test protocol may be conducted at home by individuals, without supervision, to determine exercise ability or fitness, or to monitor changes in physical fitness, thereby limiting expenses and costs.


The milk addiction paradox refers to an empirical finding in which commodities that are typically considered to be non addictive, such as milk, appear instead to be addictive. This result seems more likely when there is persistence in consumption and when using aggregate data, and it suggests that the AR(2) model typically used in the addiction literature is prone to produce spurious result in favor of rational addiction. Using both simulated and real data, we show that the milk addiction paradox disappears when estimating the data using an AR(1) linear specification that describes the saddle-path solution of the rational addiction model. The AR(1) specification is able to correctly discriminate between rational addiction and simple persistence in the data, to test for the main features of rational addiction, and to produce unbiased estimates of the short and long-run elasticity of demand. These results hold both with individual and aggregated data, and they suggest that, for testing rational addiction, the AR(1) model is a better empirical alternative than the canonical AR(2) model.


Introduction to Jewish and Catholic Bioethics: A Comparative Analysis, by Aaron L. Mackler. Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press, 2003. 265 pp. $26.95. What first struck me about this book was its title: It claims to be both an introduction to Jewish and Catholic bioethics and a comparative analysis of both. Because an introduction is usually aimed at beginners in a field and a comparative analysis-especially of book length-is generally intended for more advanced readers, I frankly did not know what to expect. And yet Aaron Mackler has indeed accomplished both purposes. In a style that is eminently clear, with little if any jargon and plenty of examples, he manages to introduce readers not only to the substance of Jewish and Catholic bioethics on a number of topics -euthanasia, assisted suicide, treatment near the end of life, abortion, in vitro fertilization, access to health care, and rationing-but also to the even harder thing to explain, namely, the methods each tradition uses in order to make medical decisions. I came to this book after considerable reading in bioethics and in Jewish and Catholic writings, and so I may not be a good barometer tor real beginners in this field; but I have taught introductory as well as advanced courses in all these fields for more than three decades, and so I do still have a feel for what works as an introductory text and what does not. This one certainly does: it is clear, interesting, respectful, and accurate in its depiction of both traditions. At the same time, this book is well worth reading by scholars in the field. That is because his "comparative analysis" is both rich and penetrating. Mackler brings multiple sources from each tradition to justify his comparisons. One of the great strengths of this book, in fact, is that he does not content himself with only one spokesperson for each tradition-even it that happens to be the current Pope. He rather demonstrates that sources from each tradition's past can be read and have been read to produce a range of positions on many of these issues. He then characterizes those ranges comparatively, showing that while some Jewish opinions on end-of-life issues are more restrictive than any Catholic position, Catholics often tend to be more restrictive than Jews on beginning-of-life issues. He explains this difference both methodologically and historically. Methodologically, Jews tend to treat these issues in largely legal terms, basing themselves on Jewish legal sources from the Torah to our own day. Texts in Exodus 21 and the Mishnah provide ample basis for seeing the fetus not as an independent being but rather as part of its mother. As a result, when the life or even the health of the mother is threatened by the fetus beyond the risks of normal pregnancy, Jewish law clearly prefers to save the life of the mother, who is a full-fledged human being by all accounts, in contrast to the fetus, who legally becomes a human being only at birth. Once born, however, Jewish sources see a person as fully human until death is clearly established by cessation of breath (and, for some, by cessation of heartbeat as well), and the classical Jewish aggressiveness with regard to health care has led many Jewish authorities to be reluctant to let go. In contrast, the Catholic tradition puts greater emphasis on theological doctrines. "A good death," a phrase that ironically appears in the Talmud as well, plays a much greater role in Catholic thought about withholding or withdrawing life-support systems, making most Catholic spokespersons fairly liberal about letting nature take its course without aggressive human interventions to try to stave off death (although for most this does not extend to giving assistance in suicide). At the beginning of life, though, Catholics are much stricter than Jews about maintaining even a pre-embryo in a petri dish, for most (but not all) Catholic sources see that as a full-fledged human being and one that cannot attain salvation unless baptized. …


The controversy over the vote count in the U.S. presidential election gripped the attention of the world. Six leading election experts from the United States and abroad discuss the causes of the debacle and offer some remedies.


The chapter uses two small-scale studies to examine the effects of metonymy in political discourse. We re-examine some theoretical constructs proposed as definitional of metonymy, particularly pragmatic function (Barcelona, 2003a) and inclusion of the source and target in the same functional domain (ibid.). By analyzing the dysphemism chickenhawk as an instantiation of the metaphoric mapping humans are animals and the metonymic mapping part of a scenario for the whole scenario in the euphemism body count, we delineate the possibilities and limitations of metonymic inferencing (Panther and Thornburg, 2003). The observed differences in the pragmatic effect of euphemistic and dysphemistic expressions ascribed to metonymy reveal its differing foregrounding and backgrounding force.


Tidal creeks transport both dissolved and particulate natural organic carbon materials and contaminants, connecting land-based activities with estuarine surface waters. It is important to characterize these materials in tidal creeks because it provides insights as to their origins and potential for ecosystem impacts. Surface water samples were collected from Bull Creek, Charleston, SC, a semi-urbanized tidal creek wetland, on five sampling dates from fall 2015 to spring 2016 to measure total suspended solids (TSS), turbidity, dissolved organic carbon (DOC), SUVA254 (specific absorbance as an indicator of aromaticity of DOC), and total water concentrations of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), a ubiquitous class of hydrophobic organic contaminants of concern. Stream discharge was also measured to allow an estimation of material flux. One of the sampling dates captured these parameters following a historic rainfall related to Hurricane Joaquin in October 2015, and therefore the aim of the present study is to characterize the sources and to quantify the transport of carbonaceous materials and PAHs in Bull Creek, with a focus on the response to this storm event. The quality of suspended solids and DOC were different following the October storm event in comparison to the other sampling dates, and they were more terrestrially derived as shown by shifts in SUVA254 and correlations between TSS and turbidity. Elevated levels of PAHs were detected in Bull Creek after the storm, and diagnostic ratios indicated that additional mixed sources were mobilized by the event. Combining the measures of both carbonaceous material quality and PAH profile contributed to a better understanding of the sources to the tidal creek. Shifts in PAH sources and suspended materials have implications for PAH toxicity to aquatic life, as well as for the appropriate approach to water quality monitoring. Future work should aim to develop relationships between discharge, suspended materials, and PAHs to facilitate more continuous monitoring of material transport in tidal creeks, especially during storm events, which have a strong influence on water quality. Journal of South Carolina Water Resources, Volume 4, Issue 1, Pages 3–11, 2017


Functionalized magnetic nanomaterials, composed of both organic and inorganic components, have recently been identified as promising solid-phase extraction adsorbents for various applications. Due to their superparamagnetic property, large specific surface area, as well as selective adsorption capacity, this unique class of nanomaterials exhibits an excellent performance in extracting and enriching numerous targeted analytes. This review mainly focuses on the recent advances in the synthesis and application of functionalized magnetic nanomaterials for the preconcentration of organic pollutants in environmental analysis. The development of three kinds of magnetic solid-phase adsorbents, including magnetic polymer nanomaterials, magnetic hybrid nanomaterials and magnetic mesoporous nanomaterials, are elaborated in this review.


. Cost estimating is one of the most important steps in project management. A cost estimate establishes the base line of the project cost at different stages of development of the project. A cost estimate at a given stage of project development represents a prediction provided by the cost engineer or estimator on the basis of available data. Numerous computer aided cost estimation software systems are now available. However, most practitioners is still using a spreadsheet application to estimate project costs, which is easy to use, but on the other hand is lack of providing the information that we needed quickly, because it stores the data not in database format. This study aims to develop a database model to estimate the cost of construction projects at different stages of project development. The study starts from analyzing the old system is already running, then proceed with developing a process model and database model in accordance with the results of earlier analyzes .


Preface ix Acknowledgments xi INTERNATIONAL OVERVIEWS Research Priorities and Progress in Hydrogen Energy Research in the EU 3 Constantina Filiou, Pietro Moretto, and Joaquin Martin-Bermejo Global Perspectives Towards the Establishment of the Hydrogen Economy 17 Jose lgnacio Galindo Materials Issues for Hydrogen R&D in Canada 27 E.E. Andrukaitis and Rod McMillan Overview of U.S. Materials Development Activities for Hydrogen Technologies 39 Ned Stetson and John Petrovic HYDROGEN STORAGE The Hydrogen Storage Behaviour of Pt and Pd Loaded Transition Metal Oxides 51 A. Molendowska, P.J. Hall, and S. Donet Progress of Hydrogen Storage and Container Materials 61 Y.Y. Li and Y.T. Zhang Synthesis of Activated Carbon Fibers for High-Pressure Hydrogen Storage 69 M. Kunowsky, F. Suarez-Garcia, D. Cazorla-Amoros and A. Linares-Solano High Density Carbon Materials for Hydrogen Storage 77 A. Linares-Solano, M. Jorda-Beneyto, D. Lozano-Castello, F. Suarez-Garcia, and D. Cazorla-Amoros A New Way for Storing Reactive Complex Hydrides on Board of Automobiles 91 Rana Mohtadi, Kyoichi Tange, Tomoya Matsunaga, George Wicks, Kit Heung, and Ray Schumacher Synergistic Effect of LiBH4 + MgH, as a Potential Reversible High Capacity Hydrogen Storage Material 97 T. E. C. Price, D. M. Grant, and G. S. Walker Thermodynamic Analysis of a Novel Hydrogen Storage Material: Nanoporous Silicon 105 Peter J. Schubert and Alan D. Wilks Nanocrystalline Effects on the Reversible Hydrogen Storage Characteristics of Complex Hydrides 111 Michael U. Niemann, Sesha S. Srinivasan, Kimberly McGrath, Ashok Kumar, D. Yogi Goswami, and Elias K. Stefanakos HYDROGEN PRODUCTION Recent Results on Splitting Water with Aluminum Alloys 121 J. M. Woodall, Jeffrey T. Ziebarth, Charles R. Allen, Debra M. Sherman, J. Jeon, and G. Choi Materials Challenges in SYNGAS Production from Hydrocarbons 129 C. M. Chun, F. Hershkowitz, and T. A. Ramanarayanan Encapsulation of Palladium in Porous Wall Hollow Glass Microsp heres 143 L. K. Heung, G. G. Wicks and R. F. Schumacher Alternative Materials to Pd Membranes for Hydrogen Purification 149 Thad M. Adams and Paul S. Korinko X-Ray Photoelectron Investigation of Phosphotungstic Acid as a Proton-Conducting Medium in Solid Polymer Electrolytes 159 Clovis A. Linkous, Stephen L. Rhoden, and Kirk Scammon HYDROGEN DELIVERY Evaluation of the Susceptibility of Simulated Welds in HSLA-100 and HY-100 Steels to Hydrogen Induced Cracking 169 R. E. Ricker, M. R. Stoudt, and D. J. Pitchure Friction and Wear Properties of Materials Used in Hydrogen Service 181 R.A. Erck, G.R. Fenske, and O.L. Eryilmaz Effect of Remote Hydrogen Boundary Conditions on the Near Crack-Tip Hydrogen Concentration Profiles in a Cracked Pipeline: Fracture Toughness Assessment 187 M. Dadfarnia, P. Sofronis, B. P. Sornerday, and I. M. Robertson Non-Destructive Hydrogen Content Sensors 201 Angelique N. Lasseigne, David McColskey, Thomas A. Siewert, Kamalu Koenig, David L. Olson, and Brajendra Mishra Temperature Programed Desorption Using an Off-the-shelf Hybrid Microwave Oven 211 R. Tom Walters, Paul Burket, and George G. Wicks LEAKAGE DETECTION/SAFETY Tritium Aging Effects on the Fracture Toughness Properties of Forged Stainless Steel 223 Michael J. Morgan Explosive Nature of Hydrogen in Partial-Pressure Vacuum 237 Trevor Jones Author Index 243


In order to obtain an optimal design of composite offshore wind turbine blade, take into account all the structural properties and the limiting conditions applied as close as possible to real cases. This work is divided into two stages: the aerodynamic design and the structural design. The optimal blade structural configuration was determined through a parametric study by using a finite element method. The skin thickness, thickness and width of the spar flange, and thickness, location, and length of the front and rear spar web were varied until design criteria were satisfied. The purpose of this article is to provide the designer with all the tools required to model and optimize the blades. The aerodynamic performance has been covered in this study using blade element momentum (BEM) method to calculate the loads applied to the turbine blade during service and extreme stormy conditions, and the finite element analysis was performed by using abaqus code to predict the most critical damage behavior and to apprehend and obtain knowledge of the complex structural behavior of wind turbine blades. The approach developed based on the nonlinear finite element analysis using mean values for the material properties and the failure criteria of Hashin to predict failure modes in large structures and to identify the sensitive zones.


Organic solar cells are a class of thin film solar cells that offer advantages of low-cost, flexibility, inexpensive fabrication techniques and large-scale production. However, the performance and stability of organic solar cells limit their commercialization. In this thesis, a theoretical study is carried out on the various operation mechanisms, including photo-generation of excitons, diffusion and dissociation of excitons and separation of charge carriers to their respective electrodes, in bulk-heterojunction organic solar cells. The analysis of results obtained from the above theoretical works is used in simulating optimal designs for two types of organic solar cells; bulk-heterojunction and hybrid structures. In this thesis, after the introductory chapter 1, the rates of excitation, diffusion and dissociation of excitons in bulk-heterojunction solar cells are derived, respectively, in the next three chapters of this thesis using the corresponding interaction operators, transition matrix elements and Fermi's golden rule. The rate of excitation of singlet excitons is derived using the usual exciton-photon interaction operator as perturbation and that of triplet excitons is obtained using the new time-dependent exciton-spin-orbit-photon interaction operator which depends on the atomic number of the constituting atoms. Thus, the influence of incorporation of heavy metal atoms on the photo-generation of triplet excitons is also studied. The effect of excitonic binding energy and diffusion length on the performance of bulk-heterojunction solar cells is presented. A dissociation mechanism for the Frenkel excitons into free charge carriers at the donor-acceptor interface is proposed and possible loss mechanisms in bulk-heterojunction organic solar cells are discussed. In addition, the study of the optical properties of bulk-heterojunction and hybrid organic solar cells is presented in Chapter 5, together with their designs, which are optimized using the semiconducting thin film optics simulation software (SETFOS). The layer thicknesses have been optimized with respect to maximum photon absorption in the active layer and the optimal designs thus obtained produce high power conversion efficiencies of 12.87% and 4.70% in the bulk-heterojunction and hybrid organic solar cells, respectively. These efficiencies are found to be notable enhancements from their corresponding current experimental power conversion efficiencies. The results of this investigation are expected to contribute towards the fabrication of high-efficiency bulk-heterojunction and hybrid organic solar cells.


There are legitimate historical reasons for speaking seriously about a civil law heritage in Louisiana. French and Spanish civilian influences permeated the Louisiana Civil Code when it was first enacted in 1808. The current status of the civil law in Louisiana, however, is problematic; the American common law methodology has made significant inroads into the operation of the current legal system. Separated from its parenting source by geography, time, and culture, Louisiana civil law has become an ill-defined civilian entity that, in reality, is more of a common law process with civil law trappings. The civil law nonetheless has a destiny in Louisiana and other American jurisdictions. The development of international trade and commerce creates a global need to accommodate and merge different legal traditions. The future mission of the civil law in North America may reside in its ability to provide a sensible procedural and substantive model of law for the resolution of international commercial disputes.The internationalization of law and legal practice offers an opportunity to update, adjust, and adapt Louisiana's civil law heritage to the realities of contemporary society and to resurrect it from the ashes of historical memory. The national and international legitimacy of Louisiana civil law lies in its comparative law role as a means of bridging the gap between the two principal Western legal traditions. The familiarity with opposing legal concepts and methodology and the academic sophistication in teaching different branches of law could make Louisiana a training ground for American and European lawyers who wish to engage in the practice of transnational commercial law.


We study the reliability of two-dimensional models of film flows down inclined planes obtained by us [Ruyer-Quil and Manneville, Eur. Phys. J. B 15, 357 (2000)] using weighted-residual methods combined with a standard long-wavelength expansion. Such models typically involve the local thickness h of the film, the local flow rate q, and possibly other local quantities averaged over the thickness, thus eliminating the cross-stream degrees of freedom. At the linear stage, the predicted properties of the wave packets are in excellent agreement with exact results obtained by Brevdo et al. [J. Fluid Mech. 396, 37 (1999)]. The nonlinear development of waves is also satisfactorily recovered as evidenced by comparisons with laboratory experiments by Liu et al. [Phys. Fluids 7, 55 (1995)] and with numerical simulations by Ramaswamy et al. [J. Fluid Mech. 325, 163 (1996)]. Within the modeling strategy based on a polynomial expansion of the velocity field, optimal models have been shown to exist at a given order in the long-wavelength expansion. Convergence towards the optimum is studied as the order of the weighted-residual approximation is increased. Our models accurately and economically predict linear and nonlinear properties of film flows up to relatively high Reynolds numbers, thus offering valuable theoretical and applied study perspectives.


Neurological disorders are one of the most important public health concerns in developed countries. Established brain imaging techniques such as magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and x-ray computerised tomography (CT) have been essential in the identification and diagnosis of a wide range of disorders, although usually are insufficient in sensitivity for detecting subtle pathological alterations to the brain prior to the onset of clinical symptoms—at a time when prognosis for treatment is more favourable. The mechanical properties of biological tissue provide information related to the strength and integrity of the cellular microstructure. In recent years, mechanical properties of the brain have been visualised and measured non-invasively with magnetic resonance elastography (MRE), a particularly sensitive medical imaging technique that may increase the potential for early diagnosis. This review begins with an introduction to the various methods used for the acquisition and analysis of MRE data. A systematic literature search is then conducted to identify studies that have specifically utilised MRE to investigate the human brain. Through the conversion of MRE-derived measurements to shear stiffness (kPa) and, where possible, the loss tangent (rad), a summary of results for global brain tissue and grey and white matter across studies is provided for healthy participants, as potential baseline values to be used in future clinical investigations. In addition, the extent to which MRE has revealed significant alterations to the brain in patients with neurological disorders is assessed and discussed in terms of known pathophysiology. The review concludes by predicting the trends for future MRE research and applications in neuroscience.


Intercultural Communications as a Clash of Civilisations: Al-Jazeera and Qatar's Soft Power, by Tel Samuel-Azran. New York: Peter Lang, 2016. 172 pages. ISBN 978-1-4331-2264-4 WITH the current stand-off between Qatar and Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and their allies, Samuel-Azran's book is extremely timely. Launched in 1996, Al-Jazeera now broadcasts on multiple channels and in four languages at a cost of $650 million a year. It reaches 260 million homes in 130 countries.


One goal of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 ("ARRA") is to provide all Americans with access to affordable broadband services, particularly to those Americans living in rural markets where demand and cost conditions do not favor network deployment. At the same time, there is growing support for regulations that may effectively force network operators to "invest their way out" of congestion rather than manage traffic to improve network efficiency and quality. In this BULLETIN, we demonstrate that such rules are likely to affect disproportionately networks located in rural areas or smaller networks in urban markets given the cost disadvantages faced by such firms. Since these markets are a central target of both the ARRA's stimulus funding and required National Broadband Plan, the imposition of strong "network management" provisions are likely to result in lower quality service and less availability in rural areas and potentially reduce competition in urban areas, as well as to reduce the effectiveness of stimulus grants and other subsidies. Further, we present some evidence indicating an elastic response of subsidy levels to increases in costs resulting from such regulations; specifically, a 1% increase in deployment costs arising from regulation increases the subsidy required for ubiquitous coverage by nearly 2%. Accordingly, policymakers seeking to expand quickly and efficiently broadband availability in rural markets should carefully and explicitly compare the benefits and costs from network management regulatory mandates, with a particular eye on disproportionate effects across market types.


It is widely assumed that as we grow older there is a gradual decline in the way we use our brains. This book draws on acclaimed and proven scientific evidence to put forward a sensational brand-new theory which explodes the myth and shows that, with the right sort of mental and physical exercise, you can actually significantly improve your brain power as you get older. Drawing upon a wealth of fascinating facts and records, with studies of great geniuses such as Einstein and Goethe who improved with age, THE AGE HEARSY is packed with practical advice and guidance on how you can actively learn to enhance your memory, powers of creativity and concentration.


The aim of the thesis was to examine the strengths and weaknesses of postmodernism(s) and the influence it had on the nursing discourse. This was to be achieved by using Fairclough's critical discourse analysis to examine the nursing literature. A literature search was conducted on major data bases of nursing journals, and after inclusion and exclusion criteria were applied 167 articles became the data for the study. The order of the discourse revealed that the dominant features included the following findings: 75% of the articles make reference to the theme of power; Foucault was the dominant theorist; and 73% of the articles were published in five nursing journals.

Further analysis was conducted concerning the theme of power relating to articles that utilised Foucault and postmodern critical theory. Articles that drew primarily from Foucault articulate an approach to power that exhibits high levels of consistency. This was not the case when Foucault was used in conjunction with other theorists or in the case of the postmodern critical theory articles. These articles included a high level of variation, confusion and contradiction. The Foucauldian critique of critical theory has had a profound impact on the discourse and this was particularly evident concerning issues relating to emancipation, empowerment and reflection. From the Foucauldian perspective these concepts were considered to be overly ambitious and privileged particular groups. In the case of reflection they undermined the 'self' by engaging in self-surveillance. Stripped of their emancipatory agenda, the postmodern critical theory articles lose their raison d'etre.

The findings have been interpreted using a framework based on Habermas' critical theory concerning his theories of communicative action and instrumental rationality. Further impact on the discourse emanates from societal and contextual issues concerning publishing and government funding since the discourse almost entirely originates from the university sector. This reveals that the postmodern nursing discourse, as a whole, is marginalised through issues relating to journal 'impact factor' ratings and research quality frameworks.


STUDY OBJECTIVE--To investigate the relationship between sociodemographic, behavioural, and family characteristics and the body mass index (BMI) (weight (kg)/height (m2)) of extremely obese people. DESIGN--Self reported sociodemographic, behavioural, and familial characteristics and weight and height were obtained by postal questionnaire. PARTICIPANTS AND SETTING--Adult, obese Dutch people who, on their own initiative, contacted our hospital for information on obesity treatment were sent a questionnaire. A total of 244 of 690 subjects had returned the questionnaire within the stated period of 80 days. Due to missing data 19 subjects could not be included in this analysis, leaving 191 women and 34 men. MAIN RESULTS--In women the BMI seemed to be significantly inversely associated with the level of education of the partner, the number of cups of coffee consumed, and number of cigarettes smoked a day. In addition, the BMI of women was positively related to BMI of their mothers. Together these variables explained 18.0% of the total variation in BMI. In men none of the selected variables was associated with their BMI. CONCLUSION--As the selected variables explained almost one fifth of the total variation in BMI, the impact of sociodemographic, familial, and behavioural factors should have more recognition in strategies aimed at reducing obesity.


Objective: To assess the correlation between defecation posture and risk of urinary tract infection (UTI) rates among a representative adolescent sample in Malaysia Methods: The study was conducted between February 2015 and September 2015 using Google forms. A total of 568 enrolled and 551 participated in the study. The online questionnaire was divided into three sections viz., informed consent info; demographic details; knowledge and attitude analysis. The form was circulated online to obtain the responses. Results: The mean age of study participants was 23.99 ΁ 6.04 years. Majority of the study population used western type of toilet and felt comfortable with it. In the public context (movie halls, shopping malls etc.), most of the study participants preferred to use Indian/squatting type of toilet to avoid bodily contact with the toilet bowl. The study population was Malaysian. The respondents normally defecated at least once a day and normally took <10 min to defecate. About 38.8% of the respondents who were having sharing accommodation were not sure about the frequency of toilet cleaning. Totally, 10.7% of the study participants had previous history of UTIs, with the average duration of infection being around 5 days to 3 weeks. Conclusion: Defecation is an important physiological event and many of the study participants required more education on normal physiological methods of defecation postures. Appropriate education is required to improve the personal health and reducing the risk of acquiring UTIs.


Recent developments in formal verification have identified approximate liftings (also known as approximate couplings) as a clean, compositional abstraction for proving differential privacy. This construction can be defined in two styles. Earlier definitions require the existence of one or more witness distributions, while a recent definition by Sato uses universal quantification over all sets of samples. These notions have each have their own strengths: the universal version is more general than the existential ones, while existential liftings are known to satisfy more precise composition principles.
We propose a novel, existential version of approximate lifting, called $\star$-lifting, and show that it is equivalent to Sato's construction for discrete probability measures. Our work unifies all known notions of approximate lifting, yielding cleaner properties, more general constructions, and more precise composition theorems for both styles of lifting, enabling richer proofs of differential privacy. We also clarify the relation between existing definitions of approximate lifting, and consider more general approximate liftings based on $f$-divergences.


Electromagnetic waves emitted by electrical and electronic devices constitute interference with each other, which becomes a problem for security devices, space vehicles, ships, electronics or even human beings. Electromagnetic interference (EMI) protective materials are being developed to eliminate such negative effects of electromagnetic waves. Especially carbon-based ones are becoming increasingly important. The carbonized material biochar, derived from biomass, emerges as a sustainable, renewable, environmentally friendly and inexpensive EMI material. In this study EMI protective effect of biochar derived from industrial tea waste biomass and its iron composite was investigated. The effect values of the samples were found to be greater than 10 dB.


Various approaches for service-oriented business-to-business integration (B2Bi) rely on a top-down development methodology. The starting point is a choreography model which is subsequently partitioned into multiple orchestrations. Most current approaches use the Web Services Business Process Execution Language (BPEL) for implementing the latter. At the same time, a plethora of other languages, such as Business Process Model and Notation (BPMN) 2.0 process diagrams, is available. As integration partners are free to select the orchestration language of their choice, it should be easy to integrate different orchestration languages with current choreography technology. Language transformation, starting from a suitable format, is a means to achieve this. In this paper, we assess BPEL 2.0 and BPMN 2.0 process diagrams for their suitability for this transformation in a services-based B2Bi setting using a requirements framework identified through a literature study.


Pogonophoran tube worms, elongated pyrite tubes and authigenic carbonate nodules are used to evaluate the occurrence of potential cold seeps in the syn-collision accretionary prism Kaoping Slope off SW Taiwan. At least two species of pogonophoran tubeworms were found in surface and core sediments. Pyrites occur in three different forms: fillings inside foraminiferal chambers, cements between calcareous microfossils, and elongated tubes. The bottom water off SW Taiwan is aerobic, but authigenic pyrites are found in the surface sediments at several sites, suggesting the existence of local reducing environments enabling the formation of pyrites. These environments are most likely caused by the occurrence of active cold seeps where methane expulses. Authigenic carbonates with highly depleted carbon isotope values (-54 to -43‰) were found at more than 5 locations, in agreement with a methane-derived source for the carbon. Integrating these geological and biological results, this study demonstrates that there are active cold seeps with methane expulsions in several anticline hinge zones east of the associated thrust faults in water depths of 800-1500 m of the frontal syn-collision accretionary prism Kaoping Slope. The existence of these high potential active cold seep sites is also supported by the occurrences of distinct bottom simulating reflectors (BSRs), shallow sulfate-methane interface and high concentrations of dissolved methane in bottom water.


Mice were made tolerant to and dependent on ethanol by administration of a liquid diet. Gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA) receptor-dependent uptake of 36Cl- by mouse cortical microsacs was used to study the actions of benzodiazepine (BZ) agonists and inverse agonists. Chronic exposure to ethanol attenuated the ability of a BZ agonist, flunitrazepam, to augment muscimol-stimulated uptake of 36Cl- and enhanced the actions of BZ inverse agonists, Ro15-4513 (ethyl-8-azido-5,6-dihydro-5-methyl-6-oxo-4H-imidazo[1,4]-benzodiazepine - 3-carboxylate) and DMCM (methyl-6,7-dimethoxy-4-ethyl-beta-carboline-3-carboxylate), to inhibit GABAA receptor-operated chloride channels. Augmentation of chloride flux by pentobarbital was not reduced by chronic ethanol exposure. Attenuation of flunitrazepam efficacy was transient and returned to control levels within 6 to 24 hr after withdrawal from ethanol, but increased sensitivity to Ro15-4513 was observed as long as 8 days after withdrawal. Chronic exposure to ethanol did not alter [3H]SR 95531 ([2-(3'-carbethoxy-2'propyl)-3-amino-6-p-methoxyphenylpyridazinium bromide] binding to low-affinity GABAA receptors or muscimol stimulation of chloride flux; and did not alter [3H]Ro15-4513 or [3H]flunitrazepam binding to central BZ receptors or allosteric modulation of this binding by muscimol (i.e., muscimol-shift). These results suggest that chronic exposure to ethanol reduces coupling between BZ agonist sites and the chloride channel, and may be responsible for the development of cross-tolerance between ethanol and BZ agonists. In contrast, coupling between BZ inverse agonist sites and the chloride channel is increased.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)


Notes Turning in the Client: Mandatory Child Abuse Reporting Requirements and the Criminal Defense of Battered Women^ I. Introduction The prevalence of domestic violence has long been an ugly secret in American society. Almost four million women are abused every year, and an individual woman's likelihood of being battered ranges from twenty to thirty-three percent.1 Law enforcement and society in general have long turned a blind eye to domestic violence, regarding it as too personal and too messy for public involvement.2 Erroneous stereotypes that domestic violence only happens to minorities, those in lower socioeconomic classes, or women are breaking down, but only very slowly.3 Battered women face many more problems than being beaten, however. Many find themselves as defendants in criminal proceedings-a result of fighting back, attempting to defend themselves, or using drugs or alcohol to dull the mental and physical pain from the abuse.4 As if the abuse and IMAGE FORMULA7 criminal charges were not enough, battered women with children face another potential battle. All fifty states, as well as Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands, have passed some type of mandatory child abuse reporting statute,5 which are a requirement in order for states to receive federal grants under the Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act.6 All mandatory reporting statutes require physicians to report, but many also require the same of social workers, teachers, child-care workers, nurses, lawenforcement personnel, and even citizens generally.7 Most statutes abrogate at least the doctor-patient and husband-wife privileges, and courts have held that the defense of "privileged communications" is unavailable for anyone included in a mandatory reporting statute.8 The attorney-client privilege is usually preserved,9 but some states require attorneys to report suspected child abuse,10 even if it places their clients in additional legal difficulty. Attorneys who defend battered women in states that include attorneys as mandatory reporters are trapped between loyalty to their clients and the statutes that require them to report suspected child abuse. This conflict seriously undermines the criminal defense of battered women. The Texas mandatory reporting statute provides an example of this problem. A provision of the Texas Family Code requires "professionals" to IMAGE FORMULA9 report suspected child abuse or neglect.11 The problem is that the provision does not allow any exceptions for traditionally "privileged" communications, even those between a lawyer and a client. As a result, lawyers in Texas are included as mandatory reporters under the provision. The close connection between child abuse and spousal abuse creates a terrifying legal trap for battered women, and a serious ethical dilemma for lawyers involved in domestic violence cases. For attorneys representing domestic violence victims, especially in criminal defense matters, child abuse is a critical issue for the client, the child, and the defense. Therefore, mandatory reporting requirements could profoundly affect the quality of the criminal defense of battered women, as well as prevent the candor and trust that are vital to getting a battered woman-whether she does or does not abuse her children-the help she needs. Part II of this Note examines the ethical and legal conflicts that arise when attorneys are mandatory reporters of child abuse. Part III describes the arguments in favor of including attorneys in mandatory child abuse reporting statutes. Part IV outlines the reasons why attorneys should not be mandatory reporters, especially attorneys defending domestic violence victims. Part V analyzes some potential solutions to the mandatory reporting dilemma and describes the legal barriers facing organizations like BWDP that might wish to challenge the application of mandatory reporting statutes to criminal defense attorneys. …


This study was designed to investigate the effects of nicotine on in vitro embryo development at a variable duration of treatment schedule. A concomitant oxidative stress level was also evaluated. Four- to six-week-old female mice (Mus musculus) were injected (s.c.) with nico-tine (5.0 mg/kg/day) for 7, 14 or 28 consecutive days. Animals were superovulated and co-habitated overnight with fertile male at a ratio 1:1. Forty-eight hours post-coitum, blood samples of the animals were collected for manoldialdehyde (MDA) estimation. On sacrifice, ovaries including the fallopian tubes were excised. Fallopian tubes were flushed and the normal embryos were subjected to in vitro culture. Out of 783 retrieved embryos, only 61% were found normal. Nicotine increased the number of abnormal embryos (61.7 ± 9.3) as compared to controls (40.3 ± 8.1). None of the embryos formed blastocyst following nicotine treatment for 7 days. When the length of treatment was extended for 14 days, embryonic development reached only up to 8-cell stage. However, most of the embryos stopped dividing at 2-cell stage after 28 days of nicotine treatment. Plasma MDA concentration was found to be higher in all the three groups of nicotine-treated experimental mice compared to control groups. Ovarian MDA levels showed a significant difference between the groups of animals treated with nicotine for 14 days and 28 days, but not between two other treated groups, those received nicotine for 7 days and 14 days, respectively. In conclusion, the degree of im-paired development of the preimplanted embryos seems to be directly correlated with the length of nicotine treatment with a corresponding increment of oxidative stress.


Aim/Purpose: Based on the stimulus-organism-response (SOR) model, the current study investigated social commerce functions as an innovative retailing technological support by selecting the three most appropriate features for the Chinese online shopping environment with respective value co-creation intentions.

Background: Social commerce is the customers' online shopping touchpoint in the latest retail era, which serves as a corporate technological tool to extend specific customer services. Although social commerce is a relatively novel platform, limited theoretical attention was provided to determine retailers' approaches in employing relevant functions to improve consumer experience and value co-creation.

Methodology: A questionnaire was distributed to Chinese customers, with 408 valid questionnaires being returned and analyzed through Structural Equation Modeling (SEM).

Contribution: The current study investigated the new retail concept and value co-creation from the consumer's perspective by developing a theoretical model encompassing new retail traits and consumer value, which contributed to an alternative theoretical understanding of value creation, marketing, and consumer behaviour in the new retail business model.

Findings: The results demonstrated that value co-creation intention was determined by customer experience, hedonic experience, and trust. Simultaneously, the three factors were significantly influenced by interactivity, personalisation, and sociability features. Specifically, customers' perceptions of the new retail idea and the consumer co-creation value were examined. Resultantly, this study constructed a model bridging new retail characteristics with consumer value.

Recommendations for Practitioners: Nonetheless, past new retail management practice studies mainly focused on superficial happiness in the process of human-computer interaction, which engendered a computer system design solely satisfying consumers' sensory stimulation and experience while neglecting consumers' hidden value demands. As such, a shift from the subjective perspective to the realisation perspective is required to express and further understand the actual meaning and depth of consumer happiness.

Recommendation for Researchers: New retailers could incorporate social characteristics on social commerce platforms to improve the effectiveness of marketing strategies while increasing user trust to generate higher profitability.

Impact on Society: The new retail enterprises should prioritise consumers' acquisition of happiness meaning and deep experience through self-realisation, cognitive improvement, identity identification, and other aspects of consumer experiences and purchase processes. By accurately revealing and matching consumers' fundamental perspectives, new retailers could continuously satisfy consumer requirements in optimally obtaining happiness.

Future Research: Future comparative studies could be conducted on diverse companies within the same industry for comprehensive findings. Moreover, other underlying factors with significant influences, such as social convenience, group cognitive ability, individual family environment, and other external stimuli were not included in the present study examinations.


Ultrasound (US) is an essential tool for evaluating trauma patients in the hospital setting. Many previous in-hospital studies have been extrapolated to out of hospital setting to improve diagnostic accuracy in prehospital and austere environments. This review article presents the role of prehospital US in blunt and penetrating trauma management with emphasis on its current clinical applications, challenges, and future implications of such use.


Data for the Red River of the North (Red River) Basin in Minnesota, North Dakota, and South Dakota were analyzed to determine whether the water quality of streams in the basin is adequate to meet future needs. For the Red River at Emerson, Manitoba, site, pH values, water temperatures, and dissolvedoxygen concentrations generally were within the criteria established for the protection of aquatic life. Dissolved-solids concentrations ranged from 245 to 1,100 milligrams per liter. Maximum sulfate and chloride concentrations were near, but did not exceed, the established secondary maximum contaminant level. The trace elements considered potentially harmful generally were at concentrations that were less than the established guidelines, standards, and criteria. The concentrations of lead that were detected may have occurred as a result of sample contamination. For the Red River upstream from Emerson, Manitoba, sites, pH and other field values rarely exceeded the criteria established for the protection of aquatic life. Many constituent concentrations for the Red River below Fargo, N. Dak., site exceeded water-quality guidelines, standards, and criteria. However, the trace-element exceedances could be natural or could be related to pollution or sample contamination. Many of the tributaries in the western part of the Red River Basin had median specific-conductance values that were greater than 1,000 microsiemens per centimeter. Sulfate concentrations occasionally exceeded the established drinking-water standard. Median arsenic concentrations were 6 micrograms per liter or less, and maximum concentrations rarely exceeded the 10microgram-per-liter drinking-water standard that is scheduled to take effect in 2006. The small concentrations of lead, mercury, and selenium that occasionally were detected may have been a result of sample contamination or other factors. The tributaries in the eastern part of the Red River Basin had median specific-conductance values that were less than 1,000 microsiemens per centimeter. Concentrations of pesticides that were detected and that had regulatory limits were less than the cited water-quality guidelines, standards, and criteria. Concentrations of compounds that were detected generally were less than the sediment-quality standards and criteria. The data considered in this report generally provide a good baseline from which to evaluate changes in water-quality conditions. However, because many of the trace elements detected, including lead and mercury, may have been the result of sample contamination, additional data are needed to confirm that traceelement concentrations generally are low. Concentrations of major ions, including sulfate, and specific conductance may continue to approach drinking-water standards during periods of low flow because the streams, particularly those in the western part of the basin, are sustained mostly by ground-water discharge that generally has large dissolved-solids concentrations.


The paper presents the results of researches conducted in two types of experimental fields organized in ecological, conservation versus conventional agricultural systems. An ecological agriculture field experiment was organized on a Chernozems in south-eastern part of Romania, for assessing the effect of soil organic fertilization with compost made from three organic waste (marine algae, farmyard manure and residual sludge from waste water treatment), applied in doses of 25, 50, 75 and 100 t/ha. The soil quality assessed by the main agrochemical analyses of soil samples collected towards the end of the plants growing season have demonstrated very good conditions for plants nutrition, especially for those cultivated on the soil fertilized with compost, revealing a higher nutrient content than the unfertilized or conventional mineral fertilized control. In the other experimental field belonging to the Drăgănești Vlașca Research and Development Agricultural Station, in the conservative and the conventional agricultural systems, soil surveys sampled in two stages have been analyzed for physics and chemical parameters, but in this paper, are presented the results of microbiological analyses, the total heterotrophic bacteria number, the total microfungi number and the soil respiration. The state of the soil aggregates arrangement that usually is more favorable in the conservative system as compared to the conventional ones led to a relative improvement of air circulation and better conditions for the water accumulation into the soil under conservative system. The reduced surface traffic allowed so called "soil resting" that have been led to a natural rearrangement of the soil aggregates and a slight improvement of the air and water regimes. According to agrochemical parameters, respectively microbiological activity, in both agricultural systems, ecological and conservative, the soil presented favorable properties for growing and developing of cultivated plants, less equal or even more than in conventional agricultural system.


New terms such as closest vector problem (CVP) and the shortest vector problem (SVP), which have been illustrated as NP-hard problem, emerged, leading to a new hope for designing public key cryptosystem based on certain lattice hardness. A new cryptosystem called NTRU is proven computationally efficient and it can be implemented with low cost. With these characteristics, NTRU possesses advantage over others system that rely on number-theoretical problem in a finite field (e.g. integer factorization problem or discrete logarithm problem). These advantages make NTRU a good choice for many applications. After the adaptation of NTRU, many attempts to generalize its algebraic structure have appeared. In this study, a new variant of the NTRU public key cryptosystem called BITRU is proposed. BITRU is based on a new algebraic structure used as an alternative to NTRU-mathematical structure called binary algebra. This commutative and associative. Establishing two public keys in the proposed system has distinguished it from NTRU and those similar to NTRU cryptosystems. This new structure helps to increase the security and complexity of BITRU. The clauses of BITRU, which include key generation, encryption, decryption, and decryption failure, are explained in details. Its suitability of the proposed system is proven and its security is demonstrated by comparing it with NTRU.


Olive growing is the most important agricultural activity in Italy, representing, in 2010, 56% of Italian farms and 76% of land used for permanent crops. Producing high-quality products, such as healthy and socially responsible produces, while containing costs, is the current market challenge, and evaluation tools are of utmost importance to help farmers shaping management practices to obtain competitive prod-ucts. This study applies Life Cycle Costing (LCC) and social Life Cycle Assessment (sLCA) as evaluation tools to compare the socio-economic impacts of organic and conventional farming systems of the Italian olive growing. Results showed a similar level of economic profitability in both scenarios, due to the public subsidies for organic farming, which balanced higher production costs. From a social point of view, some differences have been highlighted: organic farming would be suitable not only to increase incomes but also to improve the occupational health of the people involved.


We present negative ion-mode simulations within the QCEIMS program [Grimme, Angew. Chem., Int. Ed., 2013, 52, 6306]. It is an exhaustive and robust ab initio molecular dynamics/stochastic algorithm used to perform simulations of unimolecular decomposition of anions, in unprecedented detail. The objective of this approach is to compliment electron attachment spectroscopy and aid in the interpretation of relevant dissociation dynamics. Prototypical simulations are performed for the four nitrile compounds acetonitrile, cyanamide, aminoacetonitrile, and trifluoroacetonitrile. The unique decomposition pathways which naturally occur in the simulations are addressed along with fractional yields, reaction times and relative intensities of the fragments. Furthermore, trajectories of selected decomposition pathways of the aminoacetonitrile anion are investigated in greater detail, where we find that the relevant HOMO of the anion has a mixed π* and σ* character delocalized over the entire molecule.


Background Most ductal carcinoma in situ (DCIS) lesions are first detected on screening mammograms as calcifications. However, false-positive biopsy rates for calcifications range from 30% to 87%. Improved methods to differentiate benign from malignant calcifications are thus needed. Purpose To quantify the growth rates of DCIS and benign breast disease that manifest as mammographic calcifications. Materials and Methods All calcifications (n = 2359) for which a stereotactic biopsy was performed from 2008 through 2015 at Duke University Medical Center were retrospectively identified. Mammograms from all cases of DCIS (n = 404) were reviewed for calcifications that were visible on mammograms taken at least 6 months before biopsy. Women with at least one prior mammogram with visible calcifications were age- and race-matched 1:2 to women with a benign breast biopsy and calcifications visible on prior mammograms. The long axis of the calcifications was measured on all mammograms. Multivariable adjusted linear mixed-effects models estimated the association of calcification growth rates with patholo findings. Hierarchical clustering accounted for matching benign and DCIS groups. Results A total of 74 DCIS calcifications and 148 benign calcifications were included for final analysis. The median patient age was 62 years (interquartile range, 51-71 years). No significant difference in breast density (P > .05) or number of available mammograms (P > .05) was detected between groups. Calcifications associated with DCIS were larger than those associated with benign breast disease at biopsy (median, 10 mm vs 6 mm, respectively; P < .001). After adjustment, the relative annual increase in the long-axis length of DCIS calcifications was greater than that of benign breast calcifications (96% [95% confidence interval: 72%, 224%] vs 68% [95% confidence interval: 56%, 80%] per year, respectively; P < .001). Conclusion Ductal carcinoma in situ calcifications are more extensive at diagnosis and grow faster in extent than those associated with benign breast disease. The rate of calcification change may help to discriminate benign from malignant calcifications. © RSNA, 2019 Online supplemental material is available for this article.


Good governance has become a serious concern in developing countries. In SriLanka, a number of initiatives have been introduced to build good governance in localgovernment level. Some provincial governments have passed regulations that supportthe local government to build good governance. It is expected that this will facilitatecitizens" involvement in the public policy processes. This paper examines the level ofgood governance and discusses the initiatives taken by Navithanveli Predhesiya Shaba,to build good governance. Further to identify the challenges and future prospects inbuilding good governance in the institution. This study is a critical one based oninterpretative analysis which has used quantitative and qualitative data. The statedpurpose is examined by studying both primary and secondary materials. The primarydata has been collected through key informants by interviews and focus groupdiscussion. Four persons have been interviewed as key informants and five focus groupshave been discussed. The Secondary data has been collected from books, officialdocuments, reports, journals and news paper articles. The major finding of the study isthat the above institution is ineffective in building good governance due to thechallenges which have been faced by the institution owing to various reasons includinglack of knowledge of good governance, desperate and frustration of involving inpolitical activities of the people, etc. Key words: Good governance, Local government, Political participation


In addition to their use as colorants in food and cosmetics, various natural dyes possess photophysical properties that could enable their use as modular building blocks for preparing eco-friendly and non-toxic chromophores. Among the natural pigments, guaiazulene holds great potential due to its unique optical and electronic properties. Thus, in order to explore and understand the properties of guaiazulene-containing chromophores, a series of 4-styrylguaiazulenes 3a–l were prepared by condensation of the C-4 methyl group of naturally-occurring guaiazulene 1 with various aromatic carboxaldehydes 2a–l. Treatment of these analogs 3a–l with a strong acid protonates the electron-rich C-3 position and reveals a reversible halochromic behavior where the optical energy gap responds predictably to the electron-donor strength and the degree of π-conjugation. Additionally, acid-doping is accompanied by efficient fluorescence switch-on, where 3e(H+) and 3g(H+) exhibited considerably higher fluorescence quantum yields than the neutral precursor. These properties facilitated the design of a new non-erasable 3D fluorescence readout (permanent or write-once read-many, WORM) system, which is comprised of a switch-on fluorescent guaiazulene-containing chromophore 3e and a commercially available iodonium photo-acid generator (PAG) in thin polymethyl methacrylate (PMMA) films.


As the development of Renewable Energy Sources (RES) technologies increases, the problem of intermittency and variability from the RES integration into the grid arises for system planners. Therefore, this paper presents a dynamic multi-objective optimization model for the generation and transmission expansion planning (GTEP) problem with consideration to renewable energy sources. The proposed mathematical model minimizes the investment costs for transmission network and renewable energy expansion planning, operation costs and emissions for fossil fuel generating units as well as maximizes the economic incentives for utilizing renewable energy generating units. The dynamic planning strategy for the optimization problem is to consider the annual investment decisions associated with renewable energy sources integration and its effects on the GTEP procedure. The developed model is solved using CPLEX 12.8.3 and applied to a Garver's six bus test system and the numerical results show that the dynamic model permits system planners to adjust the system to future changes with time and ensures more utilization of renewable energy sources annually.


We analyse R&D activity in transport and communication technology (TCRD), in a Cournot duopoly. Transport and communication costs are of the iceberg type, i.e., using up some portion of the product along its path to the final buyer. Firms invest in TCRD to increase the net amount of the product that reaches consumers. A variety of equilibria arise as a result of the different levels of TCRD efficiency. If TCRD's productivity is high, the game is a prisoner's dilemma where both firms invest in TCRD. As the e¢ciency of the TCRD progressively fades we come across first a chicken game and, then, at lower e¢ciency, a game with an equilibrium in dominant strategies where the profits are at the highest. Social welfare is maximised by market strategies only when TCRD is very efficient.


Classical and African swine fever are highly contagious, notifiable viral diseases affecting different members of the Suidae family, both showing tremendous impact on animal health and pig production.
Optimization of CSF control strategies comprised two different approaches. In a first step, the current strategy of oral immunization of wild boar using a conventional C-strain vaccine was supplemented with the implementation of genetic DIVA using a recently developed multiplex rRT-PCR assay. This approach facilitates a rapid and reliable differentiation of field virus infected from C-strain vaccinated wild boar, and thus presents a promising tool also for emergency vaccination scenarios in domestic pigs. However, the use of conventional modified live vaccines like the C-strain does not allow serological differentiation of infected from vaccinated animals which is a prerequisite for modern disease control.
Therefore, the second part comprised the evaluation of the new generation marker vaccine CP7_E2alf to generate data for the authorization process. In the framework of the presented studies, innocuousness in calves, goats, lambs, and rabbits as well as safety in domestic pigs and wild boar was proven. Moreover, protection against lethal CSF challenge infection after oral and intramuscular vaccination of domestic pigs was investigated, and confirmed for a duration of at least 6 months. Furthermore, CP7_E2alf proved outstanding efficacy against challenge infection of domestic pigs and wild boar with a highly virulent CSFV strain of genotype 1.1 and an isolate of genotype 2.3 representing strains currently prevalent in Europe. Candidate CP7_E2alf showed all virtues of a safe and efficacious marker vaccine against CSF that would be suitable for intramuscular vaccination of domestic pigs and oral vaccination of wild boar. For this reason, licensing of CP7_E2alf will be beneficial for future CSF control.
African swine fever, one of the most important differential diagnoses of CSF, is currently affecting domestic pigs and wild boar on the territory of the Russian Federation. So far, the outbreak situation could not be resolved and the disease constantly spreads towards the EU. Disease dynamics, especially regarding wild boar, are almost unknown. For this reason, circulating ASFV isolates were characterized for the first time in animal experiments in
European wild boar of different age classes. As an exceptionally high virulence was observed in all age classes of animals, endemic situations driven by chronically infected animals or carriers seem unlikely.


This essay identifies two fundamental strategic issues confronting law schools and suggests how critical theory and research might contribute to institutional change. The first issue is the increasing segmentation of the profession – not just between corporate and personal legal services, but also between commodity and "bespoke" or "high-margin" work in both sectors. Law schools have three options for responding to segmentation: to ignore it, as most schools have done for decades (and continue to do, despite evidence that segmentation will only increase); to exploit it, as most top-tier law schools attempt to do, for instance by forming preferred-provider relationships with large law firms and other corporate-sector employers; or to combat it, as arguably it is in most law schools' interest to do, for instance by repurposing law schools to provide training that applies across sectors, and promoting a collective commitment to access to justice. Access to justice initiatives, however, lead directly to the second issue, which is the pressure for deregulation. Why should anyone pay monopoly rates for services that non-lawyers (such as information technologists) can competently and more efficiently provide? And what should be the role of law schools in training people and designing systems for the delivery of "law-related" (that is, unregulated) services? Deregulation presents a particular challenge for law school reformers, because it threatens the professional identity and status of legal academics. Moreover, the regulation of law schools is highly centralized and beyond any one school's control. Yet the pressure to rethink the boundaries of monopoly regulation will only grow stronger in light of access to justice initiatives and deregulation in other markets, such as the U.K. Law schools either can be proactive and start a collective conversation about the future of the profession – or simply continue to react competitively to external shocks. This essay aims to contribute to a collective conversation by proposing a direction and framework for institutional innovation. It argues, specifically, for shrinking the boundaries of the unified J.D. degree, to focus primarily on legal doctrine, method, and professional ethics; while expanding the development of specialized pre- and post-J.D. training. In other words, rather than further segmenting law schools according to the characteristics of employers, the essay argues for rethinking the sequencing of U.S. legal education, to create more flexible entry and exit points at various stages of specialization. Part I examines the sources of segmentation in the legal profession and criticizes calls for further segmentation of law schools according to the size and wealth of law firms and other traditional employers. Part II examines the increasing pressure for the deregulation of law practice and the challenges it poses for the existing (costly, three-year) J.D. degree. Part III examines the strategic and regulatory implications for law schools and explains how critical theory and research can contribute to institutional innovation.


The Partially Observable Markov Decision Process has long been recognized as a rich framework for real-world planning and control problems, especially in robotics. However exact solutions in this framework are typically computationally intractable for all but the smallest problems. A well-known technique for speeding up POMDP solving involves performing value backups at specific belief points, rather than over the entire belief simplex. The efficiency of this approach, however, depends greatly on the selection of points. This paper presents a set of novel techniques for selecting informative belief points which work well in practice. The point selection procedure is combined with point-based value backups to form an effective anytime POMDP algorithm called Point-Based Value Iteration (PBVI). The first aim of this paper is to introduce this algorithm and present a theoretical analysis justifying the choice of belief selection technique. The second aim of this paper is to provide a thorough empirical comparison between PBVI and other state-of-the-art POMDP methods, in particular the Perseus algorithm, in an effort to highlight their similarities and differences. Evaluation is performed using both standard POMDP domains and realistic robotic tasks.


Ultrasound (US) is a widely used clinical imaging modality that offers penetration depths in tissue of >10 cm. However, the spatial resolution in US imaging is fundamentally limited by diffraction to approximately half the wavelength of the sound wave employed. The spatial resolution of optical microscopy is limited by the same fundamental physics, but in recent years super-resolution imaging techniques have been developed that overcome the diffraction limit through the localization of many spatially separated photo-switchable or photo-activatable fluorophores. In this paper, we apply a related approach to demonstrate super-resolution imaging with US. We imaged dilute suspensions of microbubble contrast agents flowing through narrow tube-based phantoms. By spatially localizing multiple spatially isolated microbubbles, we constructed super-resolved microbubble location density maps that clearly resolve features 5.1–2.2 times smaller than the US system point spread function full width half maximum in the lateral and axial directions respectively. Our initial characterization experiment using a fixed 100 µm diameter brass wire and a US frequency of 2 MHz suggests that for an ideal stationary point scatterer the ultimate resolution of the unmodified clinical US system used could be in the range of 2–4 µm.


textabstractCongenital heart disease (CHD) refers to a series of birth defects that aff ect the heart and
thoracic vessels, aff ecting 6 to 8 out of 1,000 babies being born. In 40% of these children
no treatment is indicated because of minimal eff ect on hemodynamics and outcome.
In 60% treatment will be required; about half of them will require urgent surgery after
birth, while the other half will probably require surgery or medication at some point
during childhood. Due to advances in heart surgery, 85% of children with congenital
heart disease will survive into adulthood.
Although CHD has been recognized for centuries, therapeutic options were not available
until the 20th century. Until the late 1930s little advances were made in cardiac
surgery due to a lack of refi nement in anesthesia and problems related to now routine
perioperative support techniques, such as blood transfusion and mechanical ventilation. After the fi rst successful ligation of a patent ductus arteriosus in 1938, a lot of
new operations found their origin. In 1949 perioperative mortality, approached 14.5%. In the 1950s extracorporeal circulation made its entry. The introduction of new anesthetic
drugs and the use of prostaglandins to maintain ductal patency and pulmonary
blood fl ow was one of the most important advances of the 1970s. In the late 1970s
cardioplegia solutions were introduced. During the 1980s sufentanil and midazolam
off ered alternatives to potent volatile anesthetics, although hospital mortality was
still 6%. From the 1990s miniaturizing components of the cardiopulmonary bypass
circuit reduced priming volumes, producing less coagulation factor dilution and further
improvement in patient outcome.
During the past two decades, mortality after surgery for congenital cardiac disease has
decreased dramatically and is now reported to be 4% in the European Association for
Cardio-thoracic Surgery and the Society of Thoracic Surgeons Congenital Heart Surgery
Database, the focus of clinical research and eff orts to improve quality has now shifted
to that of the minimization of morbidity.